Scott Paeth

Another take on "Islamo-Fascism"

Matt Yglesias offers another analysis of "Islamo-Fascism" (which, like the griffon and the unicorn, doesn't exist per se, but is cobbled together from the parts of other beasts):

I briefly considered responding to Christopher Hitchens' defense of "Islamofascism" (the term not the doctrine) via a roundabout discussion of Orwell fetishism, but suffice it to say that I identify with the pragmatist tradition and the thing to ask about a term like this is what does "Islamofascism" do.

And it's pretty clear what it does, namely provide a spurious patina of unity and sameness to diverse phenomena involving Muslims Behaving Badly so that al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Assad, Saddam, Iraqi insurgents, Somali Islamists, plus sundry oppressive folk practices common in portions of the Islamic world like female genital mutilation in parts of Africa, "honor killings" in parts of South Asia, etc. The question to ask ourselves is what, if anything, is accomplished by devising and deploying a term that unites all those phenomena. If you want to use emotional outrage at 9/11 to leverage political support for an invasion of Iraq, then the answer is obviously "yes." Similarly, if you want to leverage outrage at 9/11 into political support for a bombing campaign in Iran then the answer is "yes."

But I don't want to do either of those things, and, indeed, I think the people who do like to do those things are having an immensely detrimental impact on our ability to understand events in the contemporary world and pull the United States out of the foreign policy tailspin we've been in recently. Which is a long way of saying, I'm not buying.

Leaving aside for a moment that I'm pretty sure you can't answer "yes" to "what is accomplished by devising and deploying a term that unites all those phenomena," I'm pretty sure I get Matt's point, and agree with it. This is what happens when you couple the off-the-cuff style of blogging with the desire to offer a serious analysis of a very un-serious term.

"Islamo-Fascism" "Awareness" "Week"

Well, it's that time of year again. And as usual it crept up on me. That's right! Get out the decorations! It's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"!

Whuh?

Yup. From the fevered mind of David Horowitz, comes another howler. A nation-wide, week-long (or so) celebration of "Islamo-Fascism Awareness." Of course, when the right-wing in this country becomes "aware" of anything, it's always a cause for celebration, provided of course that what they are aware of is an actual, you know, thing.

And of course, even my beloved adversaries at the DePaul Conservative Alliance* are in on the act, though they are renaming it "Terrorism Awarness Week" (yet interestingly, no reflection on nationalist terrorism in the IRA  vein). Sponsoring several events this week around campus. If I didn't have enough reasons to be glad I'm on sabbatical, I can now add the sense of freedom I have to not attend any of this.

However, in recognition of this auspicious occasion, I thought I'd link to a passage from Juan Cole's blog (Juan of course, knows something about Islam, unlike David Horowitz, who doesn't):

There can be Muslim fascists, just as there can be Christian fascists (and were, in Spain, Italy and Germany, and parts of Central and South America; the Spanish fascists and the Argentinian ones, e.g., were adopted by the United States government as close allies.)

But there cannot be "Islamic" fascists, because the Islamic religion enshrines values that are incompatible with fascism. 

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way. Fascism glorifies "war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness." Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself.

I know Andrew Sullivan and others have made careers out of touting the dangers of "Islamo-Fascism," and in Sullivan's case it's no doubt an attempt to associate himself with his hero George Orwell. No doubt also, it's an attempt to equate the current "War on Terror," a war that's badly directed, poorly conceived, and intellectually and morally incoherent, with the war against fascism, in which the enemy was clear, the cause was just and the goal was evident.** Alas, life provides  few such easy moral and political targets, and just because we'd like Osama bin Laden to be Hitler doesn't make him so. It was more accurate to compare Iraq to Nazi Germany, but then, prior to the invasion, Iraq's politics could not be said to be "Islamo-" anything, even though it was largely run by Muslims.

*When I say "beloved adversaries," I'm not being ironic. My experiences with the DCA have been uniformly positive, and my experience of them has been, to an individual, that of sincere, highly intelligent, motivated, and woefully misguided young women and men. One reason I enjoy interacting with them is that it's much more fun to have arguments with people who don't agree with you than with people who do, for what I imagine are obvious reasons.

** However, despite the current passion that conservatives have for fighting fascism, let us not forget that the founding publication of modern conservatism, The National Review, referred to Spain's Fransisco Franco as a "National Hero" or that Republican adminstrations from Nixon through Bush the Elder gave aid and comfort to actual fascist governments in Chile, Peru, Guatamala, and El Salvador, as well as supporting neo-Fascist movements such as the Contras in Nicaragua. So, please forgive me if the current "anti-fascist" brand of conservatism strikes me as somewhat insincere.

More Gore

Ah what the heck. Here's a better picture of Al Gore. Congratulations again, Al!

Al Gore Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

The good news from Oslo is that Al Gore has one the Nobel Peace Prize! Here's the story from MSNBC:

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said in a statement. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

I can hear right-wing heads exploding from here.

I have to admit, I was watching Olberman last night speculate on whether this would mean that Gore would finally throw his hat into the presidential ring, and I was feeling skeptical, both about him winning and about him running for president. Nevertheless, I'm glad he's won the Nobel. I don't know that he necessarily deserves it more than some others, but he certainly has worked tirelessly over the last several decades to bring the issue of global warming to public attention. So here's hoping that this catapults him into even greater prominance, and perhaps we can actually do something about climate change.

However, what Joshua Marshall over at Talking Points Memo bears mentioning as well:

There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000. By every just measure, Gore won the presidency in 2000 only to have George W. Bush steal it from him with the critical assistance of the US Supreme Court. It's worth taking a few moments today to consider where the country and world would be without that original sin of this corrupt presidency.

The Marathon

For those of you who have checked this site recently and noticed the plea for funds at the top of the page, it will probably be no surprise that I ran the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.

At least, I tried to.

As news outlets have been reporting, approximately 300 people collapsed during the race on Sunday in record high temperatures, and one guy died. It was definitely a difficult day for such a grueling run. After 3 and a half hours, race officials canceled the remainder of the race, leaving those of us who had already completed the bulk of it and were willing and able to finish hanging out to dry.

On the one hand, I certainly understand that, hot as it was, and with many people collapsing, and with one guy dying, they really had very little choice but to call the race. But, and I want to make this clear, it was the lack of fluids along the race route that was responsible for so much of the hardship. Running, I did not see a real water station until at  least mile four. Others reported not seeing one till mile seven. In any event, by the time I got to the mile four station, they were almost out of water. For the faster runners, this probably didn't even register, since they still had plenty of water when they went past. But for slow guys like me, it was a really big deal.

Now, I should point out that I was actually doing quite well. I had planned ahead, had a full water bottle, was given another water bottle by a bystander as I ran, and had power bars and gu in my pack. So, I was good to go. At mile 16 I was feeling good and looking forward to finishing, when they started telling us the race was canceled and we should walk. They didn't give us the option of completing on own, they just corralled us, forced us back to Grant Park, and then insultingly told us we were completing a "fun run." Fun run my ass! I did not train six months and give up almost every Saturday all summer long for a "fun run."

I was ready and able to finish that race. If it hadn't been for the ineptitude and incompetence of the organizers, I could have. They didn't have a choice to cancel the race, but they choices they made in planning made that outcome inevitable, and someone should lose their job over it.

However, on the bright side, I did run 16 miles, and I did raise $1,400 for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. There's  still time to donate too. If you'd like, just click this link, and donate whatever you feel is appropriate. And thanks to all of you who supported me. It means a great deal to me, and to the good people at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.

9/11 Has Made Us Stupid

That is the punch line of Thomas Friedman's New York Times column today. He continues: "I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again."

Every so often, Friedman writes something that sensible and realistic and witty, and I think to myself, "what a good analyst of American foreign policy and globalization!" Then, however, I remember that, no matter how good it is to hear him say that we've run out of "friedmans" in Iraq (one "friedman," for those who don't know, equals 6 months, in homage to the many, MANY times that Friedman declared that the "next six months" in Iraq are "crucial"), no matter how much he's gotten over his "suck on this" mentality with regard to the Middle East, he was still the primary cheerleader among the "liberal hawks" leading up to the war, and is among the most directly responsible, among the intelligentsia (such as it is the United States) for ginning up the publicity for the Iraq war, and continuing to support it despite the ever increasing evidence that it was a) a bad idea from the get-go, and b) handled completely incompetently in any case.

So I'm glad that, for today at least, Friedman has come around to a genuinely sensible point of view on what the legacy of 9/11 has been in this country. However, I have absolutely zero confidence that he will have the same opinion tomorrow. After all, he is a "sensible liberal," and that means never having to say your sorry.