The ASA boycott of Israel

The American Studies Association (ASA) called this week for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, as a protest against human rights violations in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank  It is an astounding piece of hypocrisy, even by the hypocrisy standards of liberal academia.  All it really proves is that rabid antisemitism is still alive and well, even in America.

Yes, some brutal things happen between Israel and the Palestinian communities.  Most of them initiated by the Palestinians, by the way.  I haven't heard of any Israeli suicide bombers blowing themselves up among civilians in the Palestinian territories. I keep wondering what the ASA people would suggest if, say, Mexico or Canada started firing random missiles into USA cities.  Terrorists took down two US buildings, and our response was to take down the government of two whole nations. So it is OK if we respond to terrorism, but not OK if Israel does?

I would be more impressed if the ASA initiated a boycott against other countries like, say, China, whose human rights abuses are much, much greater.  There are lots and lots of nations with worse human rights records than Israel.  Indeed, I suspect the US, in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is better qualified for an ASA boycott than Israel.    But in fact the ASA have simply displayed their antisemitism by singling out Israel.

I am glad to see that major universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton have spoken out against this blatant antisemitism. More universities and academics need to do so.

Edward Snowden – Traitor or Hero?

Now that, as a result of Edward Snowden’s revelations, the nation has begun to see the real scope of the extensive domestic surveillance that the US intelligence establishment has put in place since 9/11, the question again arises of whether Snowden’s actions made him a traitor or a whistleblower hero.

Clearly he violated the security agreements he signed, so he is technically a criminal.  On the other hand, without his revelations we would have had no idea of how out-of-control the security apparatus in this country had become – violating with impunity, and in secrecy, the most fundamental constitutional rights of Americans. Yes, all these intrusive surveillance systems are technically legal, but only because they were put in place secretly by executive order, and/or voted into existence by a Congress that was not doing its job (no surprise there). Indeed, James Clapper, testifying to the Congressional oversight committees as Director of National Intelligence, lied to them repeatedly (with no apparent consequences) about the extent of the surveillance systems, so it is hard to claim that there was any effective oversight by Congress.

Of course the intelligence bureaucracies will claim they need all the powers (and funds) that they can get – that is what bureaucracies always do.  Yet despite a massive PR effort, the security agencies have yet to identify a single case in which the collection of phone or email metadata has led to the prevention of a terrorist act. And by their own admission, the system has already been abused a number of times by analysts using it for personal reasons.

I am inclined now to think Snowden has done the country a great service, at some considerable risk to himself. I wouldn’t want to establish a precedent encouraging others to break their security agreements, but remember that when Nazi officials claimed at their post-war trials that they were just following orders when they committed terrible atrocities, we didn’t accept that as an adequate defense.  We argued that individuals had a responsibility to stand up to immoral orders. I think this may apply in Snowden’s case as well. He saw gross violations of our Constitutional rights, and stood up to oppose them, despite the risks and consequences.

We would do well to remember again Ben Franklin’s comment that “They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

The Politically Incorrect Guides

In general, the John Wiley “For Dummies” books, with their trademarked yellow and black cover, are uniformly good, and can pretty much be depended upon for good beginner information on whatever subject they cover. Wiley clearly tries to maintain a consistent standard in these books.

After reading the excellent “Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East” (published by Regnery Press) listed in the previous blog, I had initially assumed that the “Politically Incorrect” series with their distinctive covers would exhibit a similar uniform quality. However the quality in fact is quite uneven. For example, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism” is mostly a religiously-based argument for Creationism and Intelligent Design. And “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science” appears to be written by someone who doesn’t quite understand the scientific method.

Of course any book dealing with “politically incorrect” subjects is going to be controversial – that after all is the point - but it is not unreasonable to expect accurate reporting supported by sound evidence. These books are still worth reading, just to get an alternative point of view, but don’t expect them all to be of the same quality of Martin Seiff’s excellent book.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East

Martin Seiff is a veteran foreign correspondent with United Press International.  His 2008 book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East is a breath of fresh air in a field otherwise obscured by foggy theory and wishful thinking. He has little time for liberals and neocons who dream of imposing democracy in the area (and doing so in only a few years), and he is scathing about the inadequacies of various government leaders, particularly during the British administration of much of the Middle East in the last century.  If you are committed to believing Churchill never made mistakes, you won’t like this book. If you are committed to believing that free elections always bring good democratic government (despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary), you won’t like this book.

I don’t agree with all of his points (his brief for Saudi Arabia as a new center of stability in the region seems to me a bit of a stretch, for example), but his blunt, non-nonsense appraisal of the history and current condition of the Middle East seems to me far more realistic than what usually comes out of the academic world on this subject. And it is certainly politically incorrect - it will offend diehards on both the left and the right! It has been clear ever since we launched the Iraq and Afghan wars that our government is woefully naïve about the cultures of that area of the world, with consistently painful and expensive results. A book like this might help dispel some of that naiveté

Recommended: Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42

“A war begun for no wise purpose, carried on in a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, has been acquired by this war.”

This indictment, which might well describe the America experience in the war in Afghanistan, was in fact written in 1843 by the Rev G. R. Gleig, the British Army chaplain who accompanied the ill-fated British attempt to subdue Afghanistan.  William Dalrymple has written an excellent work, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42, detailing the whole ill-fated British expedition which ended in such humiliation in 1842.

One would have thought our Ivy-League-educated East Coast ruling elite would have learned something from the British experience, or if not that, then at least from the disastrous Russian experience of 1979-1989, which was far more recent.  But as the philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Return of a King is an interesting book to read, because there are so many parallels between the British experience and the American experience in Afghanistan. Both expeditions were launched by ideologically blinded people who drastically underestimated what would be required, both expeditions were hampered by inconsistent strategy and incompetent political and military leadership, both undertakings were distracted in the middle by other wars (Iraq for us, the Opium wars in China for the British), both undertakings suffered badly because the invaders did not understand the Afghan culture.

This is a book worth reading.