I'm Questioning Something

New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz writes:

If you buy today's WSJ, you'll also get a 3/4 of a page premium: Fouad Ajami's dazzling essay on why the Sunnis are being defeated in Iraq, and why it is right that they should be. It's my estimate that Saudi Arabia will accede to Shia dominion in Iraq; in any case, it hasn't many options. It certainly doesn't have battalions to fight it. Sunni Jordan has even fewer options, and it is not heroic. This is also the end of Egypt as a diplomatic intermediary. It has zero cards to play in Iraq. The Arabs know that increasingly it is standing on very wobbly knees. Soon, its nationhood will be questioned ... and not just by me. Sunni Egypt can't even function as a middleman between Israel and the Sunni Palestinians. But that gets me on to another subject.

What does this mean? Are we questioning the nationhood of Egypt or of "the Arabs"? And why are we celebrating the rise of Shi'a power in Iraq while simultaneously we're in the grips of white-knuckled fear about Iran? Ajami's article is no better -- full of baffling, unsupported assertions. "Iraq's Shia majority . . . has come to view the Palestinians and their cause with considerable suspicion." Since when? Have we forgotten about this so quickly?

Comments

Shorter Marty: 'I r00l, raghedz dr00l!!! ROTFLOL!!'

[I seem to remember some bloviator talking about Iran's support for Hamas the other day. Language truly is malleable for the neocons.]

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 30, 2007 6:55 PM

And why are we celebrating the rise of Shi'a power in Iraq while simultaneously we're in the grips of white-knuckled fear about Iran?

This sentence seems to me to be bigoted. Shi'a are not monolithic. Any non-bigot would be able to differentiate between Iranian Shi'a and Iraqi shi'a. (It's OK to call someone a bigot like this, right?)

Posted by Al | January 30, 2007 7:02 PM

It's hard to imagine Martin Peretz ever declaring himself to be in love with Eugene McCarthy, but he did. Of course, it's ridiculous to think that even if Iraqi Shia were becoming suspicious of the Palestinians that they would say, "Hey, let's side with Israel." So, is Martin Peretz in love with the state of Israel (as he said the same time he declared his love for Eugene McCarthy), or does he just have issues with Palestinians?

www.matthewstruhar.blogspot.com

Posted by Matt | January 30, 2007 7:11 PM

Al, while the average Shi'ite on the street is an individual, the two major Shi'ite parties that control Iraq are rather close to Tehran. No one who is being serious and honest disputes this.

Peretz, as Timothy Noah has written, questions the whole idea of Arab identity and Arab nations. Never mind that Egyptian identity is one of the oldest in the world; Peretz only cares that the Israelites were the first nation in history and thus are the only real nation in the area (at least in his version of it. When we're talking about history that far back, figuring out the "first ever ___" is a little dicey and just reflects the politics of the person making a claim). To Peretz, there is no real difference between Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, etc. identity because they are all Arab nations, therefore they cannot be real nations. To allow for the idea of any Arab nation would open up the door to allowing for a Palestinian nation. Peretz makes no differentiation between Palestinians and terrorism, so in his view, there can be no real civilian Palestinian society because they are all guilty, so whatever violent means are used against Palestinians are justified.

Posted by Reality Man | January 30, 2007 7:36 PM

Obviously, only Ahmed Chalabi's dupes thought Iraq would go buddy-buddy with Israel (rumors about Israeli training of Kurdish forces aside), but that the Iraqis are anti-Israel doesn't mean most of them have much love for the Palestinians.

I seem to recall that, as part of his attempts to become an Arab nationalist icon, Saddam put a lot of effort into sponsoring Palestinian aspirations and favoring Palestinian exiles after he overran Kuwait in 1990, and that there was a lot of Shiite resentment about Palestinians given housing and university education in Iraq, such that there were early reports of pogroms against Palestinians, long before there were reports of widespread ethnic cleansing on confessional lines in Iraq (an example; there were also lots of early reports of ethnic cleansing in Mosul, mostly by Kurds).

This is all from my recollections of the mainstream US press, so use all appropriate caveats.

Posted by Warren Terra | January 30, 2007 7:37 PM

Iraq's Shia majority . . . has come to view the Palestinians and their cause with considerable suspicion.

This is just the current stupid American strategy for the region, which is to retrench our alliances with authoritarian Sunni Arab governments in the Middle East (democracy be gone!), led by Saudi Arabia, so as, in the face of the chaos in Iraq and Lebanon, to form a counterforce to the spreading influence of Iran.

As part of this, no doubt, there will be efforts to woo the Palestineans to the new arrangement, through (likely false) promises of better conditions and statehood, with the condition they will be required to reject and/or villainize Hamas in the process.

In reality, I don't see this strategy as viable or wise at all, and the best way forward is to bring all parties to negotiations, including Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria, and make the effort to end this bullshit once and for all (at least get to a next cooperative and more peaceful stage of recognition and reconciliation). There's room for everyone to be pursue success and compete with each other for markets and influence in the region. For Iraq, it would also be best to have all parties on board, rather than opening the door for proxy wars centering on Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon for the next few decades, even while we have more pressing concerns like ecological limits, energy, and climate change/global warming that demand global cooperative action which will not be possible in the future imagined by the current American and Israeli leadership.

Posted by Jimm | January 30, 2007 7:43 PM

As for the quote about Iraq's Shii'a looking skeptically at the Palestinians, there is little to no evidence of that, though the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, as part of the strategy to drive the wedge into the region, will try very hard to convince the Palestinians that the Iraqi Shii'a, and Iran, have any concern for their welfare.

Posted by Jimm | January 30, 2007 7:47 PM

I think Ajami must be referring to this.

http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iraq/10098499.html

If he is, he's an idiot to think Iraqis don't support the "Palestinian cause" and condemn Israel. Like other Arabs, they are perfectly content to oppress the Palestinians within their own countries while simultaneously condemning Israeli actions. This hypocrisy isn't exactly new and one would think Ajami would have understood it by now.

Posted by skyler | January 30, 2007 7:56 PM

From wikipedia, it seems that F. Ajami works with Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum, so Marty P. is in the not unknown situation of one Israel-lobby affiliate being 'dazzled' by another.

Posted by otto | January 30, 2007 8:02 PM

Didn't both Peretz and Ajami advocate for the US invasion in the first place? Why should anybody listen to either of them?

Posted by Jonathan Versen | January 30, 2007 8:03 PM

"Iraq's Shia majority . . . has come to view the Palestinians and their cause with considerable suspicion." Since when?

Maybe its a purposeful misreading of the fact that Iraqi Shia have been resentful of Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Iraq, because a) Saddam treated them much better than native Iraqi Shia and b) Shia view the local Palestinians as potential allies of the Sunni insurgent militias/jihadists.

Both of those factors have nothing to do with the Shia view of Israel/Palestine, which is obviously going to heavily favor "Palestinians and their cause" (put in quotations just because its a quote) with respect to the Israelis.

I think it's a willful misreading of stories like this:

Shias order Palestinians to leave Iraq or 'prepare to die'

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 30, 2007 8:05 PM

In other words, the Shia militias are treating the Palestinians much like one of Saddam's favored minorities ... just like they're treating Christians, actually. Somehow I doubt that particular minority is mentioned by Ajami, despite apparently being on the receiving end of 'considerable suspicion' by Shia death squads.

Posted by tequila | January 30, 2007 8:16 PM

I agree with your comments about Wesley Clark, but it looks like Pat Buchanan is your new best friend Matt. (OMG!!)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/hysteria_at_herzliya.html

Posted by Marty W. | January 30, 2007 8:30 PM

Re: To Peretz, there is no real difference between Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, etc. identity because they are all Arab nations, therefore they cannot be real nations.

Hmm, I wonder if he would think the same about the Spanish speaking nations of Latin America?

Posted by Jonf | January 30, 2007 8:32 PM

I fail to see how there is anything rude or insulting about "Democrat" instead of Democratic. I find myself doing that elsion all the time and I'm not exactly a righwinger. It's very common in English to drop an extra syllable if the result is a recognziable piece of vocabulary with much the same meaning, and also to use a noun in place of an adjective. You will find constructions all the time like "a wood fence" in place of "a wooden fence". "Democrat party" is the same sport of linguistic phenomenon, and Karl Rove did not invent it.
This teapot tempest reminds me more than a little of the umbrage taken by some Christians over the abbreviation "Xmas".

Posted by Jonf | January 30, 2007 8:36 PM

I'm inclined to think this little essay is Peretz's adolescent way of calling out the Sunni Arab states for the big fight against Iran and the Great Subversive Shia Threat by attacking their manhood and their courage. Phrases like these:

"accede to Shia dominion [submissive]"
"not heroic"
"wobbly knees"
"doesn't have the batallions [balls] to fight it"
"nationhood [manhood] will be questioned"
"zero cards to play"
"can't function [perform]"

seem like phrases to calculated to work your basic self-respecting specimen of Arab manhood up into a righteous display of pride and prowess.

In the pop psychological playbook of Zionist hacks like Peretz, Arabs are basically pre-intellectual children driven by shame and vainglory. He is counting on those basic emotional responses, plus a little time-honored "my nation is better than your nation" taunting, to push some buttons.

Peretz derives from the same school of geniuses who persuaded the Bush administration that the best way to get invaded Iraqis to submit to US force was to strip them naked and humiliate them in places like Abu Ghraib.

Posted by Dan Kervick | January 30, 2007 9:40 PM

"This sentence seems to me to be bigoted. Shi'a are not monolithic. "

Sez you, Al.

I've seen some goddamn big Shi'a.

Posted by Jon H | January 30, 2007 9:48 PM

I don't know if "Iraq's Shia majority . . . has come to view the Palestinians and their cause with considerable suspicion." But I'm pretty sure that Matt's link to an article about Iraqi Shia sympathy for Hezbollah sheds no light on the issue. Hezbollah isn't a Palestinians organization, after all.

Posted by Ragout | January 30, 2007 10:03 PM

If you cant stop it you might as well learn to like it.

Or Something.

Posted by r4d20 | January 30, 2007 10:46 PM

Realityman,

Peretz is a blithering fool, but to be fair you should recognize that is not strictly true that Egyptian identity is one of the oldest in the world. Egypt has been an Arab country only for the past 1300 years or so, the Arabs are conquerors and interlopers with no cultural connection whatsoever to the people who built Luxor, the Pyramids, etc. The Copts are the real Eqyptians, the ones who have a tradition stretching back 6000 years but they are now an oppressed minority in their own land. Even the (now sadly almost extinct) Greek and Jewish communities in Alexandria are more "Egyptian" than the Arabs. The question of "Egyptian identity" is far more problematic than many Westerners realize.

Posted by vanya_6724 | January 31, 2007 4:10 AM

And just to clarify, I do realize that it is an utterly ridiculous fantasy to believe that Egypt will ever become once again a nation of Copts, Greeks and Jews living in cultural harmony. I think it is clear though that Peretz dreams at night of ethnically cleansing Arabs from Egypt and turning the clock back to 500 AD.

Posted by vanya_6724 | January 31, 2007 4:17 AM

Marty's angry because he paid for the Journal when the article was free.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110009597

Posted by P O'Neill | January 31, 2007 10:08 AM

Marty Peretz, along with every neoconservative and liberal hawk, wants the U.S. to fight the Israeli right's race war. That should have been clear to everyone since 2002. Thank god you're finally calling these fuckers on it.

Posted by brendan | January 31, 2007 11:15 AM

Brendan, au contraire.

As a liberal hawk and a hopeful believer in democracy, I see democracy helping the region in the long run.

The paranoid conspiracy theorists said the the neocons somehow conned Bush into installing a pro-Israel regime in Iraq, which is not true in fact. They recognize Israel, which is good, but when Israel assassinated Hamas's founder, the Iraqi foreign minister denouced Israel and Sistani, the Shia spiritual leader, denounced the "Usurpers."

What the regional dictatorial Sunni Arab regimes do is demonize Israel to shift attention away from their undemocratic, dysfunctional governments, but they don't do anything really to help the Palestinians. (At least they aren't seeking nuclear arms, like Iran, and saying Israel should be wiped from the map. But this could change.)

Both Israel and Iran are glad Saddam is gone. But it's interesting that democracy is bringing a harder line against Israel. The Palestinians elected Hamas. (Sharon didn't want the election to happen, but Bush forced them). Sistani forced Bush to have direct elections in Iraq, which brought to power an Iran-aligned mostly Shia coalition, which includes the radical, anti-American, Iranian financed Sadrists.

When Iranian-financed Hezbollah started the war last summer, the Saudi and Egyptian governments denounced them for instigating it, but then quickly changed their tune when the Sunni masses cheered on Hezbollah, which ended up handing Israel a political/PR disaster.

Democracy in the Middle East is bad for the Zionist right. Peretz tries to talk tough, but Hezbollah's defeat of Israel last summer is a harbinger of things to come. Israel has choice: make an honest attempt to make a two-state solution happen or suffer the consequences.

Posted by Peter K. | February 1, 2007 10:50 AM