By Hussein Ibish
Hussein Ibish is the vice chair of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America. This commentary appeared in The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
If anyone ever wondered what demons lurking in American culture might have possessed the singer Michael Jackson to bleach his skin and destroy his once-noble African features through a series of bizarre plastic surgeries - to literally cut off his nose to spite his face - all they need to do is cast their attention on the debate that has ensued in recent weeks in the United States about "racial profiling."
Racial profiling is a long-discredited American law-enforcement technique whereby police identify individuals as suspects based on their apparent race, ethnicity, age, and other simple identity criteria. This was a central feature of abuse against African-American and Latino populations throughout the country, but is now illegal and has few defenders. Except where Arabs and Muslims are concerned.
Following the attacks on the London mass transport system, the New York City subway instituted random searches of passengers, as a reassurance to the public and a deterrent to terrorists. Many American commentators have condemned this policy, as well as the U.S. government's entire counterterrorism strategy, for not engaging in racial profiling against Arab and Muslim Americans.
Many Americans are used to thinking in simplistic terms about race and ethnicity, of living in a world divided between black and white in which identity is obvious from pigmentation and can be discerned at a glance. Proponents of profiling have proven amazingly resistant to understanding that identifying Arab and Muslim Americans based on appearance is simply impossible.
Leaving aside the fact that over half of the Arabs in the United States are Christians, Arabs can resemble almost any group of southern Europeans, Latin Americans, Central and South Asians, or Africans.
Even more preposterous would be any attempt to identify Muslims by appearance, since Muslims come from almost every part of the world, and constitute a fifth of humanity. And, since about a third of American Muslims are African-Americans, any futile attempt at profiling of Muslims, especially in urban areas such as New York City, would immediately degenerate into yet another way of profiling black people.
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wants racial profiling but would "immediately exempt Hispanics, Scandinavians and East Asians," as if Hispanics were readily distinguishable from Arabs and South Asians. And, as his Washington Post colleague Colby King pointed out, "by eliminating Scandinavians from his list of obvious terror suspects, Krauthammer would have authorities give a pass to all white people."
Supporters of racial profiling cling to the idea that you can tell who is an Arab, and even a Muslim, just by looking at them. I was on a CNN debate recently with a profiling supporter who, when confronted with the facts, resorted to holding up the photos of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, and insisting: "They all look alike."
The tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the London subway could have been based in part on his dress and behavior, as British authorities maintain. But almost certainly Menezes would not been shot eight times in the head had he not been a young, brown-skinned man. British police looked at a Brazilian electrician and saw a Pakistani suicide-bomber.
Not that all the London bombers were of Pakistani origin - a fourth man was Jamaican. The failed bombers in the second group were all East Africans. And then you have Richard Reid, John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla, to mention but a few. But it's okay, "they all look alike."
Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind has also demanded that New York police use ethnic profiling in the subway searches, maintaining that "the London suicide bombers on July 7 and July 21 fit a very precise intelligence profile." He also found that "[T]hey all look a certain way." The police replied "racial profiling is illegal, of doubtful effectiveness, and against department policy."
Demagogues who call for profiling against American Muslims need to drop the pretence that this could be based on appearances or names. It would require Americans to carry identity documents confirming their official religious designation. And even if it were possible to profile Arabs or Muslims by sight, or Muslims were forced to carry religious identification to be produced on demand, the effect would still be to cast an impossibly wide pool of suspects and distract attention from behavioral and other contingent factors that may actually point to a potential threat.
Race, ethnicity and religious affiliation, even when accurately identified, are widely recognized by law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials as false leads, which in themselves say nothing relevant about whether or not an individual may be about to commit a crime.
Only two approaches in dealing with mass groups of people make sense: comprehensiveness, as at airports; or randomness, as in subways - anything in between serves less as a deterrent to terrorists and more as a tipping of the authorities' hand and a helpful hint for how not to get caught.
When U.S. airport security was based on a supposedly neutral, secret computer profiling system, dating from 1996 and leading up to September 11, 2001, the evidence strongly suggested that it resulted in widespread discrimination against Arab and Muslim travelers. However, it did not prevent the September 11 attacks.
The intensified post-September 11 airport security regime has been both more thorough and more equitable, despite the ongoing bureaucratic nightmare of "no-fly" lists. There was more evidence of intentional discrimination against Arabs and Muslims in domestic air travel before September 11 than after, precisely because the U.S. government has had to accept that serious security threats require policies that do not boil down to crude stereotypes or rely on subjective judgments about ethnicity.
Toward the end of his tenure as the first secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, explained to Americans: "There was a legitimate concern right after 9/11 that the face of international terrorism was basically from the Middle East. We know differently. We don't have the luxury of kidding ourselves that there is an ethnic or racial or country profile."
Most Americans understand that fighting terrorism with racism is repugnant to their values and won't work. And most people have enough sense not to cut off their nose to spite their face. But not everyone.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
STATE SECRETS?
By William Fisher
As whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asked the Supreme Court to review her dismissed case against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), mainstream media continues to refer to the government’s defense – the so-called State Secrets Privilege – as “rarely used”. In fact it has been used over sixty times since its creation in the 1950s.
The State Secrets Privilege is a series of American legal precedents allowing
the federal government the ability to dismiss legal cases that it claims would
threaten foreign policy, military intelligence or national security.
A relic of the Cold War, it has been invoked several times since the Sept 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Judges have denied the privilege on only five occasions.
It was used against Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Edmonds case, says there is an “acute” need for clarification of the state secrets doctrine “because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.”
The first case in which the state secrets privilege was invoked came in 1953. Widows of airmen killed in the crash of a military aircraft sued the government for details. The government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national security.
It was not until nearly 50 years later, in 2004, that it was revealed that the accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.
The state secrets privilege was used again in 2002 in the case of Notra Trulock, who launched a defamation suit against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American computer scientist who had been charged with stealing nuclear secrets for China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
President George W. Bush said national security would be compromised if Trulock were allowed to seek damages from Lee. Though it resulted in the case being dismissed, another suit was launched directly attacking then-FBI Director Louis Freeh for interfering and falsely invoking the State Secrets Privilege.
Reluctant to go to trial, the government worked out a plea bargain with Lee, who had been imprisoned for 278 days in solitary confinement. Lee pled guilty to improper handling of classified data and cleared of all charges relating to espionage. Lee was arrested in December 1999 and freed in August 2000.
Judge James A. Parker offered an apology to Lee for what he called "abuse of power" by the federal government.
The government invoked the privilege again in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who sought to sue then Attorney General John Ashcroft for his role in rendering Arar to Syria to face torture and extract false confessions.
Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said in legal papers filed at the time that “Litigating [the] plaintiff's complaint would necessitate disclosure of classified information."
Arar, who was born in Syria, was detained at New York John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002, on his way back to Canada from North Africa. He was held incommunicado by U.S. immigration authorities, and eventually “rendered” to Syria, where he was imprisoned for close to a year and claims he was tortured. He was released without charges.
The Arar case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and is also being investigated by an independent Canadian commission, with which the U.S. has refused to cooperate.
Barbara Olshansky, the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, said that government lawyers “are saying this case can’t be tried, and the classified information on which they’re basing this argument can’t even be shared with the opposing lawyers. It’s the height of arrogance—they think they can do anything they want in the name of the global war on terrorism.”
Again, in August 2005, a Federal Appeals Court affirmed the dismissal of a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) based on the Government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege.
Jeffrey Sterling, an Operations Officer with the CIA in its Near East and South Asia Division from 1993-2001, claimed he was told he was “too big and black” to receive certain CIA assignments, and that CIA management placed expectations on him “far above those required of non-African-American Operations Officers.” He also contended he was retaliated against for using the CIA’s internal equal employment opportunity process.
However, the court noted, “There is no way for Sterling to prove employment discrimination without exposing at least some classified details of the covert employment that gives context to his claim.”
The privilege was first invoked against Sibel Edmonds to prevent her from testifying that the Federal Government knew that Al-Qaeda intended to use airliners to attack the United States in 2001. The case was a $100 trillion action filed in 2002 by six hundred victim's families against officials of the Saudi government and prominent Saudi citizens.
Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that year challenging the retaliatory dismissal. An unclassified public report by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General contains much of the information the DOJ now seeks to block. The report concluded that Edmonds' whistleblower allegations were "the most significant factor" in the FBI's decision to terminate her.
Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the American Federation of Scientists, says, “Once rarely invoked, the state secrets privilege is now increasingly used by the government as a "get out of jail free" card to block unwanted litigation. The idea that courts cannot handle national security cases involving classified information is simply false. Classified information often figures in criminal espionage cases, and even occasionally in Freedom of Information Act cases. There are procedures for in camera review, protective orders, non-disclosure agreements, and so on.”
He adds, “In the same way, sensitive classified information could be protected in the current cases where the state secrets privilege has been invoked -- without shutting down the entire proceeding. As a society we should be seeking to expand the rule of law, not to carve out more areas where the government is immune to judicial review.”
As whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asked the Supreme Court to review her dismissed case against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), mainstream media continues to refer to the government’s defense – the so-called State Secrets Privilege – as “rarely used”. In fact it has been used over sixty times since its creation in the 1950s.
The State Secrets Privilege is a series of American legal precedents allowing
the federal government the ability to dismiss legal cases that it claims would
threaten foreign policy, military intelligence or national security.
A relic of the Cold War, it has been invoked several times since the Sept 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Judges have denied the privilege on only five occasions.
It was used against Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Edmonds case, says there is an “acute” need for clarification of the state secrets doctrine “because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.”
The first case in which the state secrets privilege was invoked came in 1953. Widows of airmen killed in the crash of a military aircraft sued the government for details. The government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national security.
It was not until nearly 50 years later, in 2004, that it was revealed that the accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.
The state secrets privilege was used again in 2002 in the case of Notra Trulock, who launched a defamation suit against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American computer scientist who had been charged with stealing nuclear secrets for China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
President George W. Bush said national security would be compromised if Trulock were allowed to seek damages from Lee. Though it resulted in the case being dismissed, another suit was launched directly attacking then-FBI Director Louis Freeh for interfering and falsely invoking the State Secrets Privilege.
Reluctant to go to trial, the government worked out a plea bargain with Lee, who had been imprisoned for 278 days in solitary confinement. Lee pled guilty to improper handling of classified data and cleared of all charges relating to espionage. Lee was arrested in December 1999 and freed in August 2000.
Judge James A. Parker offered an apology to Lee for what he called "abuse of power" by the federal government.
The government invoked the privilege again in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who sought to sue then Attorney General John Ashcroft for his role in rendering Arar to Syria to face torture and extract false confessions.
Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said in legal papers filed at the time that “Litigating [the] plaintiff's complaint would necessitate disclosure of classified information."
Arar, who was born in Syria, was detained at New York John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002, on his way back to Canada from North Africa. He was held incommunicado by U.S. immigration authorities, and eventually “rendered” to Syria, where he was imprisoned for close to a year and claims he was tortured. He was released without charges.
The Arar case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and is also being investigated by an independent Canadian commission, with which the U.S. has refused to cooperate.
Barbara Olshansky, the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, said that government lawyers “are saying this case can’t be tried, and the classified information on which they’re basing this argument can’t even be shared with the opposing lawyers. It’s the height of arrogance—they think they can do anything they want in the name of the global war on terrorism.”
Again, in August 2005, a Federal Appeals Court affirmed the dismissal of a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) based on the Government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege.
Jeffrey Sterling, an Operations Officer with the CIA in its Near East and South Asia Division from 1993-2001, claimed he was told he was “too big and black” to receive certain CIA assignments, and that CIA management placed expectations on him “far above those required of non-African-American Operations Officers.” He also contended he was retaliated against for using the CIA’s internal equal employment opportunity process.
However, the court noted, “There is no way for Sterling to prove employment discrimination without exposing at least some classified details of the covert employment that gives context to his claim.”
The privilege was first invoked against Sibel Edmonds to prevent her from testifying that the Federal Government knew that Al-Qaeda intended to use airliners to attack the United States in 2001. The case was a $100 trillion action filed in 2002 by six hundred victim's families against officials of the Saudi government and prominent Saudi citizens.
Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that year challenging the retaliatory dismissal. An unclassified public report by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General contains much of the information the DOJ now seeks to block. The report concluded that Edmonds' whistleblower allegations were "the most significant factor" in the FBI's decision to terminate her.
Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the American Federation of Scientists, says, “Once rarely invoked, the state secrets privilege is now increasingly used by the government as a "get out of jail free" card to block unwanted litigation. The idea that courts cannot handle national security cases involving classified information is simply false. Classified information often figures in criminal espionage cases, and even occasionally in Freedom of Information Act cases. There are procedures for in camera review, protective orders, non-disclosure agreements, and so on.”
He adds, “In the same way, sensitive classified information could be protected in the current cases where the state secrets privilege has been invoked -- without shutting down the entire proceeding. As a society we should be seeking to expand the rule of law, not to carve out more areas where the government is immune to judicial review.”
Saturday, August 13, 2005
LBJ’S DIVIDEND
By William Fisher
If you spend your life as a writer, you’re always concerned about who’s reading and whether they’re hearing what you thought you were saying.
I wrote a piece last week about Lyndon Johnson and the magisterial speech he made to Congress 40 years ago urging quick passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I used the speech to illustrate the ‘good’ LBJ. I used his disastrous Vietnam misadventure to show the flipside of his nature. And I drew a parallel between LBJ’s complexity and the position in which George W. Bush finds himself as he considers his legacy.
I concluded that “Quagmire, not Selma, is the word that has come to be associated with LBJ’s presidency”, and suggested that, if President Bush wants to leave us a history we can all be proud of, he needs to learn the lesson LBJ learned at such great cost to himself.
This little essay drew a ton of email. A few of the more temperate comments are below. You can decide if the readers were hearing what I thought I was saying.
Kevin H. wrote: “At first, when I read your article at Common Screams, uh, I mean, Common Dreams, I thought it was a great recounting of one of LBJ's best speeches. But at the end, I realized the first 90% was just a setup to use the last 10% to take a jab at George Bush. Actually, it was a horrible, or perhaps I should say, non-existent, segue. But, hey! who cares?, what can one expect from the usual crowd of sad-sack lefties that infest so much of the Web?”
Tim Anderson wrote, “LBJ's civil rights legislation is significant. However, that contribution to our society is no reason to soften a critique of his role in the destruction of Vietnam. To describe his participation in that atrocity as one of 'hubris', or of receiving 'bad advice' covers up his deliberate destruction of the people and environment of that country, and the lies he knowingly and repeatedly told the American public to continue his murderous policy. There is a notable continuity in US foreign policy over the last 50 years (Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc) regardless of particular individuals or parties in power.”
Some responses were short and to the point. One said, “Johnson rode Kennedy's coat-tails and took the credit for the work he implemented.”
Another said, “LBJ had two sides. Good and evil. You need to learn more about the latter side. Research some of the JFK assassination books.”
And yet another. “When was the only time we were attacked as a nation that resulted in no congressional hearings? Try the USS Liberty. Check out who covered it up. LBJ was a politician with agendas. He's as worthy as our current president. I'm sure you're quite versed in US history but you dropped the ball on this article. Come-on man...”
I found all these missives instructive and compelling. But the one that really moved me came from a reader identifying himself as the “Grandson of Jesus Inclan of Cotulla, Texas” (where LBJ taught school in 1928). It's a long message, but worth contemplating.
“Congratulations on well written article”, he began. “As a descendent and relative of the students LBJ taught in Cotulla, many things have changed and many still have not. LBJ would have been a fool not to have seen the great injustice done to Mexicanos in South Texas. Growing up there, segregation still exists and you find this region of the country still one of the poorest.
“What has happened is that through the injustice lived and (was) witnessed by countless veterans of many wars and the history of hatred and violent suppression in this part of the country, people have mobilized to be destroyed by projects such at COINTELPRO that suppressed with the support of the U.S. Govt. the promotion of true democracy.
“Many liberal and conservatives destroyed the Civil Rights and subsequent Chicano and Black movements with the support of LBJ. That is part of LBJ's legacy and why he is rightly labeled for his Vietnam folly.
“It is foolish to think that our current so-called head of state will listen or even cares. The change you wish for will not come from our society at large. The change if it is not crushed as it was in the past will come from the working poor and immigrants. Especially Mexicano immigrants who come to this country with a history of strife and revolution.
“If you follow Social Movements in Latin America this will soon follow in the next 50 years here in the U.S. A wealthy man like LBJ had the privilege and opportunity to be given what was basically dropped into his lap at the cost of thousands of lynchings and murders.
“True change will only come from those who understand what challenge is and not from the privilege class who wait for such opportunities to land on them. Sacrifice by people of color in war, in daily life, is what makes this possible. The privileged of this country only wait to learn different ways of taking advantage of the sacrifice of others. I view most in this country in power, privilege, with opportunity as such opportunists. Never really able or willing to make the kind of sacrifice and commitment necessary to truly follow through and the rhetoric.
“I challenge you as I challenge others to make the kind of sacrifice necessary for this as my family has for the past 200 years in South Texas.”
That email made writing the LBJ piece well worth all the effort to get every word just right. Here was an experience and a point of view I couldn’t possibly know about or appreciate from where I’m sitting.
As a consequence, I have begun to exchange emails with this Grandson of Jesus Inclan of Cotulla, Texas, for whom I have many questions and from whom I will doubtless learn much.
For a writer, being challenged is a huge dividend.
If you spend your life as a writer, you’re always concerned about who’s reading and whether they’re hearing what you thought you were saying.
I wrote a piece last week about Lyndon Johnson and the magisterial speech he made to Congress 40 years ago urging quick passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I used the speech to illustrate the ‘good’ LBJ. I used his disastrous Vietnam misadventure to show the flipside of his nature. And I drew a parallel between LBJ’s complexity and the position in which George W. Bush finds himself as he considers his legacy.
I concluded that “Quagmire, not Selma, is the word that has come to be associated with LBJ’s presidency”, and suggested that, if President Bush wants to leave us a history we can all be proud of, he needs to learn the lesson LBJ learned at such great cost to himself.
This little essay drew a ton of email. A few of the more temperate comments are below. You can decide if the readers were hearing what I thought I was saying.
Kevin H. wrote: “At first, when I read your article at Common Screams, uh, I mean, Common Dreams, I thought it was a great recounting of one of LBJ's best speeches. But at the end, I realized the first 90% was just a setup to use the last 10% to take a jab at George Bush. Actually, it was a horrible, or perhaps I should say, non-existent, segue. But, hey! who cares?, what can one expect from the usual crowd of sad-sack lefties that infest so much of the Web?”
Tim Anderson wrote, “LBJ's civil rights legislation is significant. However, that contribution to our society is no reason to soften a critique of his role in the destruction of Vietnam. To describe his participation in that atrocity as one of 'hubris', or of receiving 'bad advice' covers up his deliberate destruction of the people and environment of that country, and the lies he knowingly and repeatedly told the American public to continue his murderous policy. There is a notable continuity in US foreign policy over the last 50 years (Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc) regardless of particular individuals or parties in power.”
Some responses were short and to the point. One said, “Johnson rode Kennedy's coat-tails and took the credit for the work he implemented.”
Another said, “LBJ had two sides. Good and evil. You need to learn more about the latter side. Research some of the JFK assassination books.”
And yet another. “When was the only time we were attacked as a nation that resulted in no congressional hearings? Try the USS Liberty. Check out who covered it up. LBJ was a politician with agendas. He's as worthy as our current president. I'm sure you're quite versed in US history but you dropped the ball on this article. Come-on man...”
I found all these missives instructive and compelling. But the one that really moved me came from a reader identifying himself as the “Grandson of Jesus Inclan of Cotulla, Texas” (where LBJ taught school in 1928). It's a long message, but worth contemplating.
“Congratulations on well written article”, he began. “As a descendent and relative of the students LBJ taught in Cotulla, many things have changed and many still have not. LBJ would have been a fool not to have seen the great injustice done to Mexicanos in South Texas. Growing up there, segregation still exists and you find this region of the country still one of the poorest.
“What has happened is that through the injustice lived and (was) witnessed by countless veterans of many wars and the history of hatred and violent suppression in this part of the country, people have mobilized to be destroyed by projects such at COINTELPRO that suppressed with the support of the U.S. Govt. the promotion of true democracy.
“Many liberal and conservatives destroyed the Civil Rights and subsequent Chicano and Black movements with the support of LBJ. That is part of LBJ's legacy and why he is rightly labeled for his Vietnam folly.
“It is foolish to think that our current so-called head of state will listen or even cares. The change you wish for will not come from our society at large. The change if it is not crushed as it was in the past will come from the working poor and immigrants. Especially Mexicano immigrants who come to this country with a history of strife and revolution.
“If you follow Social Movements in Latin America this will soon follow in the next 50 years here in the U.S. A wealthy man like LBJ had the privilege and opportunity to be given what was basically dropped into his lap at the cost of thousands of lynchings and murders.
“True change will only come from those who understand what challenge is and not from the privilege class who wait for such opportunities to land on them. Sacrifice by people of color in war, in daily life, is what makes this possible. The privileged of this country only wait to learn different ways of taking advantage of the sacrifice of others. I view most in this country in power, privilege, with opportunity as such opportunists. Never really able or willing to make the kind of sacrifice and commitment necessary to truly follow through and the rhetoric.
“I challenge you as I challenge others to make the kind of sacrifice necessary for this as my family has for the past 200 years in South Texas.”
That email made writing the LBJ piece well worth all the effort to get every word just right. Here was an experience and a point of view I couldn’t possibly know about or appreciate from where I’m sitting.
As a consequence, I have begun to exchange emails with this Grandson of Jesus Inclan of Cotulla, Texas, for whom I have many questions and from whom I will doubtless learn much.
For a writer, being challenged is a huge dividend.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
LOOKING BACK AT LBJ
By William Fisher
In our country, we seem to revere only a few presidential speeches – Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural, John F. Kennedy’s “Ask Not”, and a few others.
But I have to confess that, while I have written thousands of words about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it has been many years since I actually listened to the words President Lyndon B. Johnson used to introduce this legislation.
I did that yesterday. Thanks to television’s last outpost of civility, C-SPAN, I watched transfixed as LBJ addressed a joint session of Congress.
Behind him was Vice President Hubert Humphrey seated next to House Speaker John McCormack. Before him were all the members of the Congress he loved so much, all the members of the Diplomatic Corps and the Supreme Court, and the whole Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the man who would ultimately share with the president the ignominious legacy of Vietnam.
“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy,” he began.
He went on: “I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.
“At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
“There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.
“There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight, ” he said, bringing most of the audience, Republicans and Democrats, to their feet – with the exception of Southern Democrats, who sat on their hands.
LBJ, more than almost anyone alive on that day, knew the political price he might have to pay. Because he knew the Congress better than anyone else.
Perhaps in purely rhetorical terms, LBJ’s speech wasn’t up to Lincoln, FDR or JFK. But in so many ways it was at least as consequential as any words ever uttered by an American president.
With the confidence of one speaking to friends, LBJ intoned:
“This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections -- Federal, State, and local -- which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.
“This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution.
“It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government if the State officials refuse to register them.
“It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this legislation will ensure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting.”
Later, aware of the power he held, he said: “All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.
“But I would like to caution you and remind you,” he went on, “that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.
“Of course, people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check.
“So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we are also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.
Looking back on his early days as a teacher in a Texas schoolroom full of Mexican-Americans who could not understand why people didn’t like them, LBJ said, “I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country”.
Then he threw down the gauntlet: “But now I do have that chance -- and I'll let you in on a secret -- I mean to use it.”
In my personal pantheon of Presidential achievements, LBJ’s words on that day rank among the most portentous ever spoken.
Just think of what was accomplished in the days and weeks immediately following passage of this historic legislation forty years ago. And how it changed our country forever – for the better.
All of which only magnifies the excruciating sadness of LBJ’s downfall – and, for most Americans, his legacy. Quagmire, not Selma, is the word that has come to be associated with LBJ’s presidency.
I can think of no starker example of the price we mortals pay for hubris, for taking bad advice, for listening to people who peddle misinformation, for insisting on “staying the course” undeterred by inconvenient facts.
That’s a lesson our current President has yet to learn.
Like all second-term presidents, George W. Bush would like to leave a legacy that makes Americans proud. But what will it be based on? Iraq? The “war on terror”? Social Security? The “spread freedom” rhetoric of his second inaugural?
I hardly think so.
Our president needs to take an hour out of his vacation and listen to Lyndon Johnson.
In our country, we seem to revere only a few presidential speeches – Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural, John F. Kennedy’s “Ask Not”, and a few others.
But I have to confess that, while I have written thousands of words about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it has been many years since I actually listened to the words President Lyndon B. Johnson used to introduce this legislation.
I did that yesterday. Thanks to television’s last outpost of civility, C-SPAN, I watched transfixed as LBJ addressed a joint session of Congress.
Behind him was Vice President Hubert Humphrey seated next to House Speaker John McCormack. Before him were all the members of the Congress he loved so much, all the members of the Diplomatic Corps and the Supreme Court, and the whole Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the man who would ultimately share with the president the ignominious legacy of Vietnam.
“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy,” he began.
He went on: “I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.
“At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
“There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.
“There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight, ” he said, bringing most of the audience, Republicans and Democrats, to their feet – with the exception of Southern Democrats, who sat on their hands.
LBJ, more than almost anyone alive on that day, knew the political price he might have to pay. Because he knew the Congress better than anyone else.
Perhaps in purely rhetorical terms, LBJ’s speech wasn’t up to Lincoln, FDR or JFK. But in so many ways it was at least as consequential as any words ever uttered by an American president.
With the confidence of one speaking to friends, LBJ intoned:
“This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections -- Federal, State, and local -- which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.
“This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution.
“It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government if the State officials refuse to register them.
“It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this legislation will ensure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting.”
Later, aware of the power he held, he said: “All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.
“But I would like to caution you and remind you,” he went on, “that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.
“Of course, people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check.
“So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we are also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.
Looking back on his early days as a teacher in a Texas schoolroom full of Mexican-Americans who could not understand why people didn’t like them, LBJ said, “I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country”.
Then he threw down the gauntlet: “But now I do have that chance -- and I'll let you in on a secret -- I mean to use it.”
In my personal pantheon of Presidential achievements, LBJ’s words on that day rank among the most portentous ever spoken.
Just think of what was accomplished in the days and weeks immediately following passage of this historic legislation forty years ago. And how it changed our country forever – for the better.
All of which only magnifies the excruciating sadness of LBJ’s downfall – and, for most Americans, his legacy. Quagmire, not Selma, is the word that has come to be associated with LBJ’s presidency.
I can think of no starker example of the price we mortals pay for hubris, for taking bad advice, for listening to people who peddle misinformation, for insisting on “staying the course” undeterred by inconvenient facts.
That’s a lesson our current President has yet to learn.
Like all second-term presidents, George W. Bush would like to leave a legacy that makes Americans proud. But what will it be based on? Iraq? The “war on terror”? Social Security? The “spread freedom” rhetoric of his second inaugural?
I hardly think so.
Our president needs to take an hour out of his vacation and listen to Lyndon Johnson.
Monday, August 08, 2005
BUSH COURTS BLACK CLERGY
William Fisher
President George W. Bush continues to seek to increase his support from the African American community – most recently with a pledge to persuade corporate foundations to give more money to faith-based charities.
In a closed-door session at the White House with 17 black ministers and civic leaders — his second such meeting since January – Bush said the White House plans to sponsor a March summit to bring together corporate foundation leaders and faith-based social service organizations, many of which are affiliated with black churches.
The Administration plans to focus on major corporate foundations with policies limiting or forbidding contributions to religious charities. Those include foundations run by Ford Motor Company, General Motors, IBM, Exxon Mobil, and Citigroup.
Corporate Foundations are responsible for some $12 billion in grants each year.
Bush first raised the faith-based issue four years ago, when he said in a commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, "The federal government will not discriminate against faith-based organizations, and neither should corporate America."
But his latest pledge came as part of increasing attention by the White House to working with African American religious leaders.
Black pastors were credited with increasing Bush's share of the black vote from 9% in 2000 to 11% last year. They also helped Republicans win substantially higher margins in key states such as Ohio, Michigan and Florida.
One pastor at the White House meeting said Bush's pledge would force corporate executives to consider questions of race as they distribute millions of dollars in donations designed to boost companies' images.
"This is all about whether white corporations become rational corporate citizens when it comes to black Americans, who are lagging behind all social groups," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who heads a church and charity in Boston.
"I think we can all understand (corporations’) reluctance, just as we see within government a reluctance to fund a faith-based organization because you don't want money to go to preaching or proselytizing," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Towey noted that many faith-based groups had separate accounts — one for strictly religious activities and one for social services — so that "the corporate or foundation or government money can go to the social service itself" and not the religious component.
But, he added, "While we have removed barriers [on donations to faith-based groups] at the federal level, within corporate boardrooms and foundation boardrooms, there are still barriers in place."
The House of Representatives has approved a number of faith-based measures during the Bush administration, but none have survived in the Senate, where there are strong feelings about maintaining the constitutional separation of church and state and the potential for employment discrimination by faith-based groups.
House legislation has approved – and President Bush has endorsed – the acceptability of faith-based organizations being able to hire only people of their own faith. Many commentators and much of the Senate believe this constitutes employment discrimination.
The current emphasis on corporate giving is seen as an extension of the administration's efforts to increase government grants to religious social service agencies.
But securing corporate support may be problematic. Companies are reluctant to risk offending customers by being seen to be involved in religion. Corporate foundations tend to follow strict guidelines by giving only to established groups and benign causes such as education and the arts. However, numerous companies contribute to groups such as Habitat for Humanity and the Salvation Army, which have religious components but are considered credible charities.
Despite turmoil in the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives – one of its most senior officials resigned earlier this year claiming that the office had insufficient resources -- faith-based offices have been opened in ten agencies, including the Labor Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Grants made by these departments were credited with helping Bush make political inroads with black preachers in battleground states and increasing the president's share of the vote among African Americans in the 2004 election.
Attending the White House meeting was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who briefed the ministers on her recent trip to Africa. In May, Rice hosted about two dozen black ministers in San Francisco for a discussion of ways to increase funding to black faith-based groups doing relief work in Africa.
That meeting was followed by criticism from several black ministers that Bush had not done enough to increase funding to fight HIV in Africa.
But in a letter later delivered to Bush, some of the same clerics wrote to "vigorously applaud" the administration's Africa policy, including White House efforts at the recent G-8 summit in Scotland that led to debt relief for African nations.
Meanwhile, a storm is brewing on the religious right against Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s endorsement of expanded research using embryonic stem cells.
Frist spoke by video to the first "Justice Sunday" evangelical rally in April, but was not invited to address next week’s "Justice Sunday II”. Instead, the invitation went to embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, who has become the center of a major controversy about illegal fund-raising practices and accepting favors from lobbyists.
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said on the group's Web site that Frist's recently announced stem cell stance "reflects an unwise and unnecessary choice both for public policy and for respecting the dignity of human life."
Another conservative group that will participate in the rally, James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family”, is also upset about Frist's stem cell decision. A spokesman said, "Our views have not changed; Senator Frist's views have evidently changed."
President George W. Bush continues to seek to increase his support from the African American community – most recently with a pledge to persuade corporate foundations to give more money to faith-based charities.
In a closed-door session at the White House with 17 black ministers and civic leaders — his second such meeting since January – Bush said the White House plans to sponsor a March summit to bring together corporate foundation leaders and faith-based social service organizations, many of which are affiliated with black churches.
The Administration plans to focus on major corporate foundations with policies limiting or forbidding contributions to religious charities. Those include foundations run by Ford Motor Company, General Motors, IBM, Exxon Mobil, and Citigroup.
Corporate Foundations are responsible for some $12 billion in grants each year.
Bush first raised the faith-based issue four years ago, when he said in a commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, "The federal government will not discriminate against faith-based organizations, and neither should corporate America."
But his latest pledge came as part of increasing attention by the White House to working with African American religious leaders.
Black pastors were credited with increasing Bush's share of the black vote from 9% in 2000 to 11% last year. They also helped Republicans win substantially higher margins in key states such as Ohio, Michigan and Florida.
One pastor at the White House meeting said Bush's pledge would force corporate executives to consider questions of race as they distribute millions of dollars in donations designed to boost companies' images.
"This is all about whether white corporations become rational corporate citizens when it comes to black Americans, who are lagging behind all social groups," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who heads a church and charity in Boston.
"I think we can all understand (corporations’) reluctance, just as we see within government a reluctance to fund a faith-based organization because you don't want money to go to preaching or proselytizing," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Towey noted that many faith-based groups had separate accounts — one for strictly religious activities and one for social services — so that "the corporate or foundation or government money can go to the social service itself" and not the religious component.
But, he added, "While we have removed barriers [on donations to faith-based groups] at the federal level, within corporate boardrooms and foundation boardrooms, there are still barriers in place."
The House of Representatives has approved a number of faith-based measures during the Bush administration, but none have survived in the Senate, where there are strong feelings about maintaining the constitutional separation of church and state and the potential for employment discrimination by faith-based groups.
House legislation has approved – and President Bush has endorsed – the acceptability of faith-based organizations being able to hire only people of their own faith. Many commentators and much of the Senate believe this constitutes employment discrimination.
The current emphasis on corporate giving is seen as an extension of the administration's efforts to increase government grants to religious social service agencies.
But securing corporate support may be problematic. Companies are reluctant to risk offending customers by being seen to be involved in religion. Corporate foundations tend to follow strict guidelines by giving only to established groups and benign causes such as education and the arts. However, numerous companies contribute to groups such as Habitat for Humanity and the Salvation Army, which have religious components but are considered credible charities.
Despite turmoil in the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives – one of its most senior officials resigned earlier this year claiming that the office had insufficient resources -- faith-based offices have been opened in ten agencies, including the Labor Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Grants made by these departments were credited with helping Bush make political inroads with black preachers in battleground states and increasing the president's share of the vote among African Americans in the 2004 election.
Attending the White House meeting was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who briefed the ministers on her recent trip to Africa. In May, Rice hosted about two dozen black ministers in San Francisco for a discussion of ways to increase funding to black faith-based groups doing relief work in Africa.
That meeting was followed by criticism from several black ministers that Bush had not done enough to increase funding to fight HIV in Africa.
But in a letter later delivered to Bush, some of the same clerics wrote to "vigorously applaud" the administration's Africa policy, including White House efforts at the recent G-8 summit in Scotland that led to debt relief for African nations.
Meanwhile, a storm is brewing on the religious right against Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s endorsement of expanded research using embryonic stem cells.
Frist spoke by video to the first "Justice Sunday" evangelical rally in April, but was not invited to address next week’s "Justice Sunday II”. Instead, the invitation went to embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, who has become the center of a major controversy about illegal fund-raising practices and accepting favors from lobbyists.
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said on the group's Web site that Frist's recently announced stem cell stance "reflects an unwise and unnecessary choice both for public policy and for respecting the dignity of human life."
Another conservative group that will participate in the rally, James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family”, is also upset about Frist's stem cell decision. A spokesman said, "Our views have not changed; Senator Frist's views have evidently changed."
Sunday, August 07, 2005
TRAINING ARABS TO TELL THEIR STORY
By William Fisher
It’s only a small stretch to argue that the only thing less effective than U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East is the pathetic effort of the Arab world to communicate anything credible to American and other Western audiences.
The reasons are numerous. Many of the people who work in the mid- to upper-levels of Arab governments are either technocrats or owe their jobs to cronyism, and are often ill equipped to carry them out. There are many bright, technically proficient men and women serving in communications-related jobs in Arab governments, but they are largely employed in putting out propaganda for domestic consumption on state-owned media. These governments do not have formal public diplomacy programs.
As a group, Arab states find it impossible to agree on much; so, for example, the Arab League has little to communicate, even if it had a public diplomacy program. Finally, Western prejudices against Arabs are huge; even if the Arabs could craft the right messages, it would take years and extraordinary strategic and tactical skills – and serious resources -- for them to be heard and believed.
Yet, absent any public diplomacy initiative from the Arabs, its conversation with the West will continue to be a dialogue of the deaf.
All the more reason Arab governments need to know about a new private-sector American program: the first-ever Master’s Degree in Public Diplomacy, just launched by the University of Southern California at Los Angeles.
But how, governments may ask, can an American program help Arab public diplomacy?
One of the program’s “Toolbox” courses offers an example. "The Rhetoric of War, Peace and Religion," will look in a non-partisan way at cross-cultural rhetoric. The two professors developing this course have specialized in analyzing messages from both sides of the equation. Their research and instruction focuses on the motivations and roots surrounding conflict, American vs. Middle Eastern ways of war (from the U.S. concepts of presidential checks and balances, to motivations of national honor), to the role of rogue states as global players and the messages of their actors, how these messages are received cross-culturally vs. their intended message.
The program will also offer special topics courses. For example, a Middle East-centered course called "Media Diplomacy" looks at the role of non-state media actors in cultivating favorable images abroad, from examination of the “CNN effect” -- the impact of cable and satellite television such as Al Jazeera in shaping public opinion in and of the Middle East -- to cyber diplomacy and the role of official websites.
There are two core courses devoted to examining comparative global and historical practices of public diplomacy. And an international broadcasting course that includes guest lecturers from around the world, who discuss their strategies, tactics, successes and failures in using this tool for public diplomacy.
USC is also working to create a scholarship to fund to help Middle Eastern mid-career professionals, including government employees, to study in the Master's Program.
Joshua S. Fouts, Executive Director of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy, says, “Because we are an academic institution, we do not have an agenda of training people to think a certain way about the U.S. or the U.S. government.”
Why should Arab governments care?
The reasons might seem obvious, but arguably are not being appreciated in the Arab world. In the West, three things are ‘known’ about Arabs: first, all Arabs are terrorists, and all terrorists are Muslims; second, Arabs care only about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America’s failure to ‘fix it’; and, third, Arabs control the price of petrol at the pump.
People in the United States or France or Germany or the U.K. know virtually nothing about Arab traditions, civilization, scholarship, arts and literature, sense of family and hospitality.
Yet Arabs make up substantial minorities of the populations of Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Informing the indigenous populations there might help keep more Arabs and Muslims from becoming second-class citizens.
Moreover, the West is the principal investor in Arab economies and the principal customer for Middle East exports. The West pumps billions in aid into North Africa and Middle East. And, if all that were not enough, there is the issue of pride: The Middle East has much to be proud of and should feel an obligation to let others know that.
These days, it’s hard for any voice to be heard. But it’s even harder if no one is trying. And, among Arab nations, no one is really trying. Just about the only time the West hears anything about Arabs and Muslims – aside from bombs exploding – is through media reports about brutal, repressive governments, prisoners being tortured or disappeared, an election being rigged, or an Arab League Summit breaking up because of intramural squabbles. The last positive news out of the Arab world came not from a government, but from the scholars who wrote the Arab Development Reports.
As a matter of simple self-interest, it’s time to begin reversing this flow of negative information. In exactly the same way the U.S. now finds itself in a very long-term struggle to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, the Middle East faces a no less daunting challenge in getting the West to begin to understand it. It can’t be done quickly. But it can’t be done ever if someone doesn’t make a start.
That will require will and skill and knowledge not currently present. That’s why the California initiative is important.
It’s only a small stretch to argue that the only thing less effective than U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East is the pathetic effort of the Arab world to communicate anything credible to American and other Western audiences.
The reasons are numerous. Many of the people who work in the mid- to upper-levels of Arab governments are either technocrats or owe their jobs to cronyism, and are often ill equipped to carry them out. There are many bright, technically proficient men and women serving in communications-related jobs in Arab governments, but they are largely employed in putting out propaganda for domestic consumption on state-owned media. These governments do not have formal public diplomacy programs.
As a group, Arab states find it impossible to agree on much; so, for example, the Arab League has little to communicate, even if it had a public diplomacy program. Finally, Western prejudices against Arabs are huge; even if the Arabs could craft the right messages, it would take years and extraordinary strategic and tactical skills – and serious resources -- for them to be heard and believed.
Yet, absent any public diplomacy initiative from the Arabs, its conversation with the West will continue to be a dialogue of the deaf.
All the more reason Arab governments need to know about a new private-sector American program: the first-ever Master’s Degree in Public Diplomacy, just launched by the University of Southern California at Los Angeles.
But how, governments may ask, can an American program help Arab public diplomacy?
One of the program’s “Toolbox” courses offers an example. "The Rhetoric of War, Peace and Religion," will look in a non-partisan way at cross-cultural rhetoric. The two professors developing this course have specialized in analyzing messages from both sides of the equation. Their research and instruction focuses on the motivations and roots surrounding conflict, American vs. Middle Eastern ways of war (from the U.S. concepts of presidential checks and balances, to motivations of national honor), to the role of rogue states as global players and the messages of their actors, how these messages are received cross-culturally vs. their intended message.
The program will also offer special topics courses. For example, a Middle East-centered course called "Media Diplomacy" looks at the role of non-state media actors in cultivating favorable images abroad, from examination of the “CNN effect” -- the impact of cable and satellite television such as Al Jazeera in shaping public opinion in and of the Middle East -- to cyber diplomacy and the role of official websites.
There are two core courses devoted to examining comparative global and historical practices of public diplomacy. And an international broadcasting course that includes guest lecturers from around the world, who discuss their strategies, tactics, successes and failures in using this tool for public diplomacy.
USC is also working to create a scholarship to fund to help Middle Eastern mid-career professionals, including government employees, to study in the Master's Program.
Joshua S. Fouts, Executive Director of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy, says, “Because we are an academic institution, we do not have an agenda of training people to think a certain way about the U.S. or the U.S. government.”
Why should Arab governments care?
The reasons might seem obvious, but arguably are not being appreciated in the Arab world. In the West, three things are ‘known’ about Arabs: first, all Arabs are terrorists, and all terrorists are Muslims; second, Arabs care only about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America’s failure to ‘fix it’; and, third, Arabs control the price of petrol at the pump.
People in the United States or France or Germany or the U.K. know virtually nothing about Arab traditions, civilization, scholarship, arts and literature, sense of family and hospitality.
Yet Arabs make up substantial minorities of the populations of Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Informing the indigenous populations there might help keep more Arabs and Muslims from becoming second-class citizens.
Moreover, the West is the principal investor in Arab economies and the principal customer for Middle East exports. The West pumps billions in aid into North Africa and Middle East. And, if all that were not enough, there is the issue of pride: The Middle East has much to be proud of and should feel an obligation to let others know that.
These days, it’s hard for any voice to be heard. But it’s even harder if no one is trying. And, among Arab nations, no one is really trying. Just about the only time the West hears anything about Arabs and Muslims – aside from bombs exploding – is through media reports about brutal, repressive governments, prisoners being tortured or disappeared, an election being rigged, or an Arab League Summit breaking up because of intramural squabbles. The last positive news out of the Arab world came not from a government, but from the scholars who wrote the Arab Development Reports.
As a matter of simple self-interest, it’s time to begin reversing this flow of negative information. In exactly the same way the U.S. now finds itself in a very long-term struggle to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, the Middle East faces a no less daunting challenge in getting the West to begin to understand it. It can’t be done quickly. But it can’t be done ever if someone doesn’t make a start.
That will require will and skill and knowledge not currently present. That’s why the California initiative is important.
A WIN FOR SCIENCE!
By William Fisher
Hooray, a win for science!
At last, there is something nice I can say about John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science advisor.
It’s about time. I have usually found myself being critical of Dr. Marburger for either being complicit or remaining silent as the Bush White House adopts anti-science policies or spins science to pander to the President’s base of right wing religious fanatics.
I have disagreed with him on issues ranging from sex education (sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy) to condom use (changing the posting on the website of the Centers for Disease Control to replace a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one emphasizing condom failure rates) to environmental protection (adding so many hedges to the climate change section of the EPA's report card on the environment that former administrator Christie Whitman deleted the section rather than publish one that was so scientifically inaccurate) to breast cancer (suggesting that women should be “counselled” about an alleged risk of breast cancer from abortions, while there is scientific consensus that no such link exists).
But after the commander in chief put his foot in his mouth last week by telling reporters that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution, Dr. Marburger was busily doing damage control.
He told the New York Times that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept."
But being a good team player, Dr. Marburger went on to say that Mr. Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.
Social context? What is social context doing in a science class? Maybe in sociology, or comparative religion or anthropology, but in science classes?
I must confess to a certain sympathy for Dr. Marburger, however. I can’t think of a worse job for a scientist than trying to bring science to George W. Bush.
The reason has been clear for a long time. Science is about facts, and our President doesn’t care about facts. Ideology trumps every time – whether the subject is reproductive rights, HIV-AIDS, missile defense, prisoner abuse, social security, stem cells, or going to war.
I could almost be more forgiving if what we hear from George W. Bush was merely government spin. We’re used to that. We sort of expect it from our politicians, and we can deal with it.
What I find far more troubling is that the mythologies and half-truths coming out of the White House are what the media now politely refers to as ‘deeply held beliefs’. Like basing foreign policy on looking into President Putin’s soul!
Transparency notwithstanding, I almost think I’d prefer secrecy.
Hooray, a win for science!
At last, there is something nice I can say about John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science advisor.
It’s about time. I have usually found myself being critical of Dr. Marburger for either being complicit or remaining silent as the Bush White House adopts anti-science policies or spins science to pander to the President’s base of right wing religious fanatics.
I have disagreed with him on issues ranging from sex education (sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy) to condom use (changing the posting on the website of the Centers for Disease Control to replace a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one emphasizing condom failure rates) to environmental protection (adding so many hedges to the climate change section of the EPA's report card on the environment that former administrator Christie Whitman deleted the section rather than publish one that was so scientifically inaccurate) to breast cancer (suggesting that women should be “counselled” about an alleged risk of breast cancer from abortions, while there is scientific consensus that no such link exists).
But after the commander in chief put his foot in his mouth last week by telling reporters that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution, Dr. Marburger was busily doing damage control.
He told the New York Times that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept."
But being a good team player, Dr. Marburger went on to say that Mr. Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.
Social context? What is social context doing in a science class? Maybe in sociology, or comparative religion or anthropology, but in science classes?
I must confess to a certain sympathy for Dr. Marburger, however. I can’t think of a worse job for a scientist than trying to bring science to George W. Bush.
The reason has been clear for a long time. Science is about facts, and our President doesn’t care about facts. Ideology trumps every time – whether the subject is reproductive rights, HIV-AIDS, missile defense, prisoner abuse, social security, stem cells, or going to war.
I could almost be more forgiving if what we hear from George W. Bush was merely government spin. We’re used to that. We sort of expect it from our politicians, and we can deal with it.
What I find far more troubling is that the mythologies and half-truths coming out of the White House are what the media now politely refers to as ‘deeply held beliefs’. Like basing foreign policy on looking into President Putin’s soul!
Transparency notwithstanding, I almost think I’d prefer secrecy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
