Mourning the Manchester attack

After the terrible events of Monday night, the British government has suspended the election and the country is left shaken. The army has been deployed to protect “key sites” as the UK goes on ‘critical alert’ fearing an imminent terror attack.

Around 1,000 troops are being dispatched across the country. Up to 3,800 are available. It’s an unnerving show of strength as if to ward-off what we all fear is hiding in the shadows.

It’s also a natural move for Theresa May, our beloved leader, who is known for her authoritarian tendencies. May slipped and fell in the polls after an embarrassing U-turn over her ‘dementia tax’.

This ‘critical alert’ is as much a response to a genuine threat as it is a political manoeuvre.

In other ways, the response to the attack in Manchester has been the usual mix of virulent anti-Muslim racism, on the one hand, and conspiracy theory, on the other. Even before the body count emerged, social media was filled with comments like: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”. And that’s a polite example. Meanwhile, the conspiracists have trotted the theory that Ariana Grande ‘sacrificed’ the crowd for the Illuminati.

Apparently, the world isn’t scary enough for some people. Islamic State has claimed credit for the attack (though direct IS involvement has not been verified). People calling for a new war with ISIS ought to consider the group’s eschatology. Islamic State wants a war with the West in order to expand and entrench its support across the Middle East and beyond. This was the same logic behind 9/11.

Sometimes I get the feeling that people will listen to anything other than inconvenient truths. The fact that the UK was never attacked by radical Islamists until it invaded Afghanistan in 2001 is unmentionable. Let alone the subsequent wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. This picture is less comforting if you’re looking for a reason to stay passive.

If we want to secure ourselves from suicide bombings, we should set limits on what the British government can do abroad. Stopping the killings, the torture and the occupations would be a good start. Yet if you raise such concerns you will be accused of being a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. All the more reason not to be cowed into blind support for Western foreign policy.

There is a line to walk in these dark times. It’s important that the families of victims have time to mourn and solidarity has to be extended to the victims, alive and dead. But this solidarity has to be meaningful. It would be a disservice to the victims to support a violent, racist response. The unity of struggle means solidarity between the victims of Manchester and the victims of state violence.

Not only should we seek a rational account of attacks like this, we must do so for the sake of the victims. Pretending that the suicide bombing was an insane and senseless act, or that the perpetrators was a monster from birth, is a way of denying that the killer had any agency in the first place. To deny an action is rational is to deny the individual has any responsibility.

Seeking an explanation is not the same as excusing or even mitigating this atrocious crime. Even still, we’re told we should be blind to American aggression against the Middle East. As if it was inconceivable that the deaths of one million Iraqis would mean anything in the first place. As if no one would feel a deep, burning sense of rage about the state of play in West Asia.

The fear of introspection is a reactionary force in our lives. It’s the reason why certain people loathe Freud and Marx in equal measure. They offer the most inconvenient insights into the world we live in. The left should play the same role in exposing the crimes of states. But the left shouldn’t forget its aims are based on moving people to take action. It’s not enough to have the right ideas and an audience of twelve.

The danger is that the anti-immigrant right has fought and won a great deal of sway over the debates around multiculturalism, Islam and freedom of movement. Things that were once taboo are now mainstream. The left has not been able to combat this rightward lurch. The arguments in favour of labour migration and diversity are barely made, let alone understood.

This is why it’s vital for leftists to not just ‘call out’ the enemy. The problem for the left is that there is a lack of positive vision about what we want to do about the threat of terrorism. The left is right to defend the rights of Muslims, as well as refugees and the cause of free movement more broadly. But the defensive game can only go so far.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

Tell me lies about Syria

We're told that the Syrian civil war is just a proxy conflict between various powers: Bashar al-Assad is the face of an axis of resistance forged by Iran and Russia, while the US and its allies are backing the Islamist rebels as they try to takeover Syria bit by bit. This wrongheaded narrative has become incredibly powerful. The Syrian revolution has been subsumed into a geopolitical analysis of regional players.

The agency of armed groups in Syria has been supplanted for the flows of arms from the Gulf states and the US, the role of Turkey, the militias organised by Iran and the air campaign of Russian fighter jets. The context of the Arab Spring is completely lost, and the left-nationalist character of the uprising is concealed from public view. Instead, the Syrian civil war is just another senseless event, or the proxy struggle between the West and its anti-imperialist foes.

Through this narrow lens the use of poison gas in Khan Sheikhoun is either a false flag operation or just the symptom of the spiralling chaos of war. It looks like the Assad regime and its Russian patrons have resorted to poison gas out of exhaustion. The target is primarily civilian because the basis of the revolution were the elected councils fostered in rebel-held territory. This democratic alternative had to be snuffed out.

At the same time, the Western powers - the US, Britain and France, in particular - have not done much at all to support the Syrian opposition and the cause of a democratic Syria. The political support for the rebels only meant limited supplies of arms and funds, while the US has been happy to collaborate with Russia in bombing Syria. France and Britain have too taken to bombing the country. Yet the West has failed to provide air drops of food aid and take responsibility for the humanitarian fallout.

Although I oppose the West bombing Syria, don't mistake me for a fool who thinks Assad is worth defending. The Syrian regime is responsible for the bulk of deaths and suffering in the country, and it has a long record of collusion with the United States. The Assads sided with the US against Iraq in 1991 and the 'rendition programme' of torturing terror suspects after 2003. There's a reason the Blair government considered bestowing an honorary knighthood on Bashar al-Assad.

Don't tell me the Syrian Ba'ath regime is "anti-imperialist". Hafez al-Assad seized power from Salah Jadid in late 1970 after dragging his heels over the Syrian intervention on the side of the PLO in Jordan. At the time, the PLO was fighting to bring down the Hashemite monarchy and takeover the country. Perhaps fearing a rival Arab nationalist regional power, Assad was not eager to support Yasser Arafat. This is also why Syria would invade and occupy Lebanon in 1976.

The Assad regime sought to clip the wings of the PLO and prevent the Lebanese Left from taking over Lebanon. The Syrian occupation would converge with American and Israeli interests in keeping the Christian Maronites in power and expelling the PLO from Lebanon. Later, Syria would support the US military response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. This would help bring the Lebanese civil war to an end, as the Iraqi regime would withdraw support for its allies in the war.

The Syrian Ba'ath regime was no more "anti-imperialist" than its rival in Iraq. Both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad were Soviet clients for many years, before defecting to the American camp. Iraq invaded Iran with full US approval, whereas Syria was more than happy to side with the US when Iraq went off the reservation. Meanwhile Syria has not challenged Israel since it lost the Golan Heights in the Six Day War and failed to recapture the territory in the 1973 war.

As for the claim that the Ba'ath regime is a secular socialist government, Hafez al-Assad rewrote the Syrian constitution to ensure that the president would always be a Muslim and constructed an alliance between the Alawite military leadership and the Sunni capitalist class. The state acted as a means of economic organisation and established a patronage network to sustain itself. This may have meant that the Syrian regime was willing to nationalise industry, but it was also willing to privatise these assets later on.

People continue to claim that the mixed nature of the Assad dynasty means that the state is the only non-sectarian alternative to Islamist barbarism. This fails to take into account the extent of violence and discrimination by the state against the Sunni working-class. Not only has the economy depended upon the exclusion of the Sunni urban and rural poor, the state has routinely repressed non-violent protest and tortured activists. The armed uprising was made inevitable by the regime because the Syrian security forces thought they could win easily.

When faced with an armed resistance the Syrian regime opened its prisons and released thousands of Islamists. Saddam Hussein did the same when faced with the US invasion. The Islamists have played a dual role: providing a strong front line for the rebels, but also acting as a counter-revolutionary agent. These militants may have been the toughest fighters, however, their actions have undermined the support for the revolution. This is all true even without taking into account ISIS and its monstrous actions.

It's hard to see how the civil war could end on just terms. As long as the Assad regime stands its ground, the hope of democracy and freedom in Syria is blighted and the reasons why the uprising happened go unchanged. In many ways, the Syrian opposition has more reason to keep on fighting than to settle in negotiations. The immense suffering in the country is down to the Syrian regime and its allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. For this reason, I suspect and fear that the war may continue to rage for years to come.

Catastroika: What's Syria in Russian?

In realpolitik minds, Vladimir Putin casts the shadow of a shrewd player on the world stage. He opposes ‘humanitarian interventions’, while he aggressively defends Russia’s national sovereignty. Even still, it’s true Putin understands power as well as he wields it. Putin’s primary interest is in the consolidation of the state and the maintenance of its power.

As recent events in Ukraine, and less recently in Georgia, demonstrate, Putin wants to secure the body national above all else. So why is there a Russian military presence in Syria?

For decades, the Assad regime maintained itself as a wedge between the Sunni elite and the Alawite military leadership. When the uprising began it had a popular, secular and democratic character (though these elements still exist) which was comprised by a diverse base. It was during the crackdown that it spiraled into a cycle of violence, into which hordes of Sunni Islamists flooded. As the uprising descended into a bloodbath, Putin may have began counting the miles between Syria and Chechnya.

The fact that the Chechen cause of independence from Russian hegemony has drawn Islamists from the Arab world must be unsettling. The prospect of Islamic State emerging from the chaos in Syria has sent shockwaves throughout the region. It could well embolden Islamic militants in the Caucasus, as it has elsewhere. After all, jihadi groups in Libya have declared allegiance to Islamic State, just as Boko Haram and al-Shabaab have done. The Assad regime may pose a bulwark, in Putin’s view, to the tide of Islamism.

So the Syrian regime does fit into Putin’s domestic agenda. However, it’s also the case that Syria fits into Russia’s regional interests. It’s a major nexus of fuel pipelines, and it has strategic value. Syria sits on NATO’s doorstep, alongside Iraq and Iran. It has a coastline with the Mediterranean, home to the US Sixth Fleet. Russia has long looked for counterweights to US proxies in the region. Consequently, Russia has been a major supplier of arms to the Syrian regime long before the civil war broke out.

Recently, it has come out that the Russian government offered a deal, in which Assad would step down. In February 2012, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari held talks with the envoys of the UN Security Council. The Russian representative, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Bashar al-Assad to cede power. This would be after peace talks between the regime and the opposition had started. The US, UK and France were convinced Assad was about to fall, so they rejected the Russian offer.

Ironically, the US continues to demand that Assad step down, and this prevents any serious negotiations. This demand helps to keep Assad in power. Otherwise it might be possible for the regime and the opposition to engage in peace talks. As Patrick Cockburn writes, serious negotiations could lead to power-sharing arrangements. It’s plausible that the Syrian regime would be willing to dump Assad to hold on. Yet, even when it was within reach the US did not jump at the opportunity. The Russian plan to drop Assad is not without precedent.

In February 2003, Putin dispatched his envoy Yevgeny Primakov to Baghdad to deliver a stern message to Saddam Hussein. By this point, Vladimir Putin had joined Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in opposing the US invasion of Iraq. Putin told Saddam that if he would step down from his post as President, voluntarily, to allow democratic elections to take place, then he could stay in the country. It was a last ditch attempt to stop the war. Perhaps fearing a coup d’etat by his generals, Saddam Hussein quietly rejected the idea.

Alas, the failure to prevent the Iraq war has now engulfed Syria in flames. The rhizome of Islamic militancy embedded itself deep into Iraqi society before reaching into Syria in the midst of civil war. The rise of Islamic State partly comes out of Saudi-Qatari ambitions to promote fundamentalism and combat secular nationalism and republicanism. It also comes out of the Iraq war, the experience of US occupation and the sectarian rule of the Maliki government. The new fundamentalist hive took shape because all political alternatives have been snuffed out.

The region is home to over four million soldiers divided between the different states. Yet Islamic State has been left to take shape and seize huge swathes of territory. The problem is clear: you can’t defeat Islamic State without working with Assad, and you can’t defeat Assad without empowering Islamic State. How can you pretend you stand for liberal values and take sides in this fight? The West has a problem. The liberal apologists for ‘humanitarian intervention’ have an even bigger problem. But it’s not the only one.

It looks like there is no coherent strategy. The US faces a myriad set of competing interests, among its proxies, and its foes. Turkey wants Assad to fall, and it’s been willing to lend support to Islamic State. Especially as this threatens the aspirations of Kurdish nationalists. To Erdogan, ISIS are the anti-PKK. Meanwhile Iran and Hezbollah share a common interest in defending the Assad regime. In a bid to destroy the Ba’athist regime, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funneled arms and treasure to the Salafi jihadists. So Israel is happy to watch the corpses pile up, but it fears Islamic State reaching its borders.

It’s would be much more viable for Russia to back the Syrian regime. The Russian government has longstanding connections to Iran, which in turn needs Syria to help arm and fund Hezbollah. Without this alliance, Israel might still be occupying southern Lebanon. The Iranian government also wants to keep Iraq as a sovereign and democratic country because it can easily be dominated by the Shi’a under those conditions. So it’s obvious who has the potential to forge a coherent strategy. But it would likely leave the Syrian regime (possibly not Assad) in power.

However, the reasons why the Syrian people rose up against Bashar al-Assad have not been resolved. Human rights are still a far away dream, let alone democracy. Hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered and millions have been displaced. It’s clear that the Putin government does not have the best interests of Syrians at heart. Peace and stability in West Asia really just chimes well with the status quo. If the global order is redefined and reconstituted, Putin could easily lose out.

This article was first published at Souciant.

The real substance.

The real substance of Obama's state of the union address was in the positions he has already taken and merely reaffirmed yesterday. The truth of his government can be read in these statements. Below, I've included excerpts here and underlined particularly important sentences:

First, we stand united with people around the world who have been targeted by terrorists -- from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris. (Applause.) We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we have done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies. (Applause.)  

At the same time, we’ve learned some costly lessons over the last 13 years. Instead of Americans patrolling the valleys of Afghanistan, we’ve trained their security forces, who have now taken the lead, and we’ve honored our troops’ sacrifice by supporting that country’s first democratic transition. Instead of sending large ground forces overseas, we’re partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.  

In Iraq and Syria, American leadership -- including our military power -- is stopping ISIL’s advance. Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group. (Applause.) We’re also supporting a moderate opposition in Syria that can help us in this effort, and assisting people everywhere who stand up to the bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.  

Now, this effort will take time. It will require focus. But we will succeed. And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIL. We need that authority. (Applause.)

Of course, it goes without saying that the Islamic State emerged out of an array of conditions which the US helped to create - not only in its destabilisation of the whole region, but in its encouragement of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to back Syria's Islamist rebels. The fact that the President has done this and reserves the right to act unilaterally against such 'terrorists' would have been noted by any serious observer. Instead the media was largely silent on these points and preferred to focus on 'middle-class economics'. But wait, it gets better.

Second, we’re demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small -- by opposing Russian aggression, and supporting Ukraine’s democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. (Applause.)  

Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, as we were reinforcing our presence with frontline states, Mr. Putin’s aggression it was suggested was a masterful display of strategy and strength. That’s what I heard from some folks. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads -- not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve. (Applause.)

What's missing from this picture? Well, the coup which threw out Viktor Yanukovych was supported by NATO and the EU to bring Ukraine within the US-EU orbit of influence. The US opposes Russian aggression, but only as a response to its own unilateralism. Don't just take my word for it. Here's what Mikhail Gorbachev said in a recent interview with Der Spiegel.

NATO's eastward expansion has destroyed the European security architecture as it was defined in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. The eastern expansion was a 180-degree reversal, a departure from the decision of the Paris Charter in 1990 taken together by all the European states to put the Cold War behind us for good. Russian proposals, like the one by former President Dmitri Medvedev that we should sit down together to work on a new security architecture, were arrogantly ignored by the West. We are now seeing the results.

NATO was founded to counter Soviet aggression. It makes little sense, if we accept its initial claims, why it would continue to exist after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not only does it exist, but it has been expanded. Now Obama brags about the economic sanctions he has imposed on Russia as a punishment. It's a clear message: the US will not accept the standards it applies to others.

Derby's Terrorists.

I just read a report in The Guardian on a recent suicide bombing in the town of Beiji just north of Baghdad. The perpetrator was Kabir Ahmed, a British citizen from Derby - where I'm also from. The report details the impact: "The blast killed Lieutenant General Faisal Malik Zamel, who was inspecting forces in the town, and seven other police officers, while wounding 15 people, hospital staff and police officers." It wasn't all too surprising. I often wonder about the extent of alienation in the British Muslim community.

At the same time, there were car bombs in Baghdad and Ramadi which killed 12 people. So we should remain aware that we are only interested in a British death and its significance. We are always overly fixated on our own, even if we count our own among the enemy. I can't help but feel the need to comment when I read of the bombing. It reminds me of the Tel Aviv bomber Omar Sharif, who went to Bemrose as I did, albeit years earlier, and lived in Normanton - the city's Asian district, known in racist terms as a 'ghetto'. My mum recalls the area being described as the Black Hole of Calcutta and my own memory is littered with instances of racial tensions between white and Asian people. My first encounter with racism was in the playground of Becket.

I do wonder about the role of such communal tensions in the radicalisation of young British Muslims. From what I've seen I suspect disaffection with British society plays a role, but it's not a matter of a clash of cultures. There are a wide array of factors I would take into account. The English North and the Midlands have suffered economic deprivation for more than three decades now. On top of that there is the element of racism, as well as political disillusionment (which is also behind the rise of the Far-Right in the UK too) and a shift towards anti-politics. Religion stands as an alternative under such conditions. It's an identity-marker and it holds out hope of salvation by transcendence of the present situation. Tragically, it won't be taken seriously...

This latest incident comes after the US confirmed a series of air strikes against the Islamic State leadership. The US has been engaged against Syrian targets for quite some time now and its campaign in Iraq has found allies in Europe more than willing to join them. So far it seems that these airstrikes can be regarded as part of US efforts to maintain regional instability and, by extension, keep its hand on the global oil spigot.

Putin's Asia.

My latest article for Souciant focuses on Putin's foreign policy in West Asia. Here's an excerpt:

Last year, many commentators in the West were aghast at the Russian stance on the Syrian civil war. It was in early 2013 when Russia and China presented a united opposition at the UN Security Council to intervention in Syria. Then it was flabberghasted at the Russian opposition, in the summer of 2013, to Obama’s proposed ‘punitive measures’ (e.g. indiscriminate bombing). This was after Assad’s use of chemical warfare, which led to Putin pledging more military hardware as a gesture of support. The proponents of ‘humanitarian interventions’ will pretend that Vladimir Putin succeeded in deterring the Americans.

In reality, the US government would have gone ahead whatever the UN Security Council concluded if it had really wanted to intervene. It certainly didn’t stop when the UN opposed the occupation of Iraq. The sudden capitulation may have been more symptomatic of any clear strategy in Washington than anything else. The Sino-Russian veto was a convenient pretext not to directly intervene and watch the conflict play out.

The US non-strategic proposal of ‘punitive measures’ was a lot like Israeli airstrikes against Syria in early 2013. Nothing constructive could’ve come of it, and probably nothing good was intended. Once again, there was no great loss in waiting it out in the absence of any willing military collusion. In the United Kingdom, parliamentary debate on Syria opposed the government’s stance and – for the first time since 1782 when the British conceded American independence – the country had to rule out getting involved.

In the end, Obama decided not to pursue punitive measures and hold back until Assad had rid his regime of chemical weapons. The US government may well have concluded that it would be best to draw out the conflict for as long as possible, due to the various forces tied up in the country, thereby ensuring long-term instability. Everyone is playing the Syrian game right now: militants, Iranians, and so on. As long as there is no unanimous victor, there is no impetus to bomb.

Putin backed the move to clean Syria of chemical weapons for the very opposite reason: if the secular nationalist regime can survive, then there is the possibility of a stability beneficial to Russian interests. This is the crux of the matter. The US has a vested interest in regional instability, which keeps its opponents busy, whereas the Russians have an opposing interest in stability which may allow them to assert their influence. On Syria, these interests ultimately converged, and settled on chemical weapons.

You Got More With Gore.

There is a lot one could say about Gore Vidal so naturally Nicholas Wrathal found himself spoilt with access to rolls of archive footage. That was on top of the footage Wrathal accumulated of the late author over several years. There would’ve been plenty of substance for United States of Amnesia even without the interviews conducted. By this time, Gore Vidal was in what he described as the ‘bright spring of my senility’ though even as an octogenarian he was still confident that there was no problem that could not be solved if people would only listen to him. All in all Wrathal seeks to strike a balance between the personal and the political. Of course, the personal is political but in the case of some the character and private life follow through into politics and chime together in unison.

It would be impossible to cover one and not the other. The film opens with Gore at the grave of his partner – a grave he now shares, as he knew he would then – speaking with some solemnity and distinctive witticism. Vidal was not one to give away too much on private matters, certainly not the five decades he spent with Howard Auster. The word ‘love’ was conspicuously absent in his vocabulary, instead he described his relationship with Auster as a business arrangement and even as platonic. As he himself put it “I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.” And yet we find a very different Gore Vidal penned love letters to Anaïs Nin in his early twenties. “You are quite necessary to me as you know” he wrote before offering marriage and a new life together. This was not a subject included in the film.

In a way this is appropriate as it would go too far in one direction and serve to over-humanise the subject. We are what we pretend to be, as Vidal’s friend Kurt Vonnegut once remarked. This astute observation captured the extent to which the performative fictions we undertake are constitutive of our reality. It’s not just that it was the work he produced and the ideas he kept as a reservoir are what drew people to him. It was that the show he put on – as we all do – was more who he was than the vulnerable and desperate letters of a nascent writer in the 40s. It was more becoming when Gore remarked “I am exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside.” It was this Gore who was on show in the public feuds with William F Buckley, Jr., Norman Mailer and Truman Capote.

The love letters to Anaïs Nin were written around the same time as The City and the Pillar (1948) which shocked readers in its depiction of homosexuality not only as a kind of sexual conduct but as a form of love as well. It was a love affair between two all-American boys, no deviants or fairies to be found. It provoked quite a storm and Gore found himself effectively blacklisted by The New York Times. He would write for television and theatre to make money as he was effectively ostracised by the literary establishment. In his own words Wrathal wanted to look at the US in the last half of the 20^th Century through the eyes of Gore Vidal – a viewpoint often neglected. Rightly then Wrathal includes not just the way in which Vidal contributed to the changing perceptions of homosexuality, but the celebratory inventions he devoted to ‘triumphant women’ in books like Myra Breckenridge (1968) as the prospects of sexual liberation flourished.

Gore Vidal had become a litterateur by this point and was thoroughly embroiled in the American political discourse, especially when it resembled nothing more than a bloodsport. Under the slogan ‘You’ll Get More With Gore’ he ran for office in 1960 and won more votes than any other Democrat in decades. Shocked further left by the Kennedy administration and its depredations in Cuba and Vietnam he became involved in the People’s Party in an effort to break the duopoly. The Party had called for a maximum wage and maintained a tough stance on the Vietnam War. He would later reflect that this made sense given that the last potentially revolutionary moment in the US was in the 1930s. In the end Gore threw his weight behind the McGovern campaign – probably the last liberal progressive campaign to be waged – and once the McGovernites were vanquished Vidal later ran against Jerry Brown in California to challenge the Reagan era as it was ushered in.

The way he had refused to concede any ground to the thuggish anti-Communism of the Cold War was admirable to put it mildly. With this in mind Wrathal arranged for Gore Vidal to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev and take a boat ride in Venice. The film charts Vidal’s opposition to Vietnam through to his historical fiction and the controversial view he takes of Roosevelt’s entry into WW2. To the accusations of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’ on such matters Wrathal lets Gore speak for himself. It is in these clips that the journalist he once considered his ‘dauphin’ appears on screen to contribute. Wracked with cancer Christopher Hitchens gives his viewpoint and we are shown the last meeting between the two of them where Gore shows some reluctance to engage. By then the late Hitchens had broken with his former comrades on the invasion of Iraq and Vidal was among those who denounced him. Not surprisingly we find the passing of Hitchens was much more mourned by the liberal intelligentsia than Gore. The reason is obvious: the Hitch had conceded in principle where Vidal remained stern. Vidal saw the American Republic in ruin, or approaching it at least, its institutions crumbling and an economy heavily militarised. It was a system to be criticised and even condemned, but not defended in such dark times.

This article was originally written for Red Monthly.

Proxy Motivations.

The backbone of calls for intervention has long been Turkey. How may we make sense of this? The government of Erdogan has its own fantasies of neo-Ottoman glory and may want to reassert its authority and influence over the region it ran for so long. That goes hand-in-hand with the old aim of carving a Kurdish Republic out of the body of a nearby neighbour to answer the Kurdish question, conveniently, without handing over any pieces of Anatolia. That aim has almost been achieved in Iraq where the Kurdish province has become more and more independent of Baghdad through its oil arrangements with Turkey. The Kurds of Syria are under threat from certain rebel forces, leading to 40,000 of them fleeing to Iraq and now the bridge over the river Tigris has been closed. That doesn’t particularly worry the Turkish government. But Erdogan might like to see a conclusion of some kind hastened by force in order to cease the influx of refugees to camps on Turkish soil.

All the while the major support for the Syrian rebels comes from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Saudi royal family want to see the competing model of Ba’athism dead and has no scruples about sending swarms of Wahhabi fundamentalists into Syria to finish the job. In doing so the House of Saud hopes to see the life of the republican and secular nationalist rival snuffed out. No such thing as Arab unity when it comes to holding onto the oiliest dirt in the ‘Middle East’. The sectarianism of this war was triggered by factors not totally internal to Islam. In Syria there is a class basis for sectarianism as the military is dominated by Alawite Muslims and economic power rests in the hands of a Sunni Muslim elite. Perhaps the Saudi oligarchy hopes to see a new regime which relies on the Sunni elite in Syria and not on the military dominated by Alawites. It would be a convenient move to flood the country with arms to Islamist groups who wish to deal with the Alawite Muslim minority.

Not coincidentally the Syrian regime is the only Arab ally of Iran, an officially Shi’ite republic, to the extent of backing Khomeini in the fight with Saddam. The Iranian government is now returning the favour in pledging support to Assad and going as far as sending 4,000 troops to assist in quashing the rebellion. The Assad regime is the stable route of arms to pass from Iran to Shi’ite militia in Lebanon and Iraq. Both the Iranians and the Hezbollah are anxious at the possibility of greater isolation in a region vulnerable to the military adventures of Washington and its proxies. Hezbollah may have defeated Israel in 2000 and 2006 at a huge cost. Hassan Nasrallah will be more than aware that the Israelis are not going to forget about Lebanon any time soon. Significantly, Lebanon has refused to grant the US permission to utilise their airspace to launch the attack. The Jordanian and Iraqi governments have joined with Lebanon in this refusal. So that would effectively rule out an attack from the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and Diego Garcia. If there is to be a strike then it will have to be orchestrated from the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile the al-Maliki government would prefer not to see Syria bombed by the US for it may stir the sectarian impulses which are already pulsating within its own borders. Perhaps Nouri al-Maliki fears a Sunni rebellion. The Shi’ite militias of Iraq have already clashed with rebel forces in the defence of Assad’s regime and have threatened further action. Likewise the Hezbollah have threatened to take action should the US start flinging cruise missiles like pebbles. On the other side of Lebanon, the Israeli government wouldn’t mind if Assad disappeared but fear what might arise in Syria if he actually does fall. The possibility of an unencumbered fight between Israel’s enemies doesn’t appeal much, but neither would free elections. Note that the Israeli airstrikes against Syria were not stepped up to take out the Assad regime; instead it seemed to be more directed towards prolonging and exacerbating the conflict. So long as Hezbollah and Iran are left vulnerable it doesn’t matter how high the mountain of Arab corpses rises.

This article was originally written for The Third Estate on September 2nd 2013.

Goodbye, Mr Ahmadinejad.

 

It’s good to see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finally out of office. It was a shame that the protest fallout of the last election didn’t succeed in ousting him. Instead the thugs of the Revolutionary Guard were deployed and the demonstrations were crushed. The emergence of Hassan Rouhani as the next President should not be understood in separation from those events just four years ago. The violence of the state remains a flagrant memory for Iranians. The spectrum of Iranian politics may only be varying forms of conservatism. In this election it was particularly so, as the ‘Supreme Leader’ Khamenei sought to ensure the range of candidate was incredibly narrow. Even former President and veteran politician Rafsanjani was barred from entering the race. Yet it was Ahmadinejad’s crony who was rejected for an old ally of Rafsanjani and Khatami.

The long-term future of the clerical regime will be on the mind of the ‘Supreme Leader’, as it always has been, and it was clear that the continuity of the Ahmadinejad era may not be the wisest way of proceeding. Mysterious charges have come to pass against the outgoing President, which he will face in November and that in itself is significant.[1] It’s possible that the Islamic regime is looking to split the grass-roots opposition of the Green movement. If a series of reforms are passed it may be a way for the clerics to extend their rule by winning over more of the young and women as a base. That’s one possibility as the support of conservative Iran in conjunction with a police state may not be enough to guarantee the future of the Islamic Republic. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the ‘Supreme Leader’ may be able to offset serious reform at home through the Syrian conflict. The safe bet might be on reformist gestures rather than any substance.

As Patrick Cockburn has observed, Tehran is fully behind the Assad regime because the attempt at regime change in Syria is interpreted as a necessary precondition for a strike on Iran and possibly its Shi’ite allies in Lebanon and Iraq. In fact, the Iranian re

gime has just pledged 4,000 troops to the defence of the Assad dictatorship.[2] It’s astonishing that there can be a discourse on these events without any regard for history. The motivations in Tehran for backing Assad to the bitter end are hardly discussed. It is long forgotten now that the Syrians were the only regional powers to support Iran (along with Israel incidentally) in the savage war with Iraq in the 1980s. In those days the US found Saddam Hussein to be an adequate ally against Khomeini’s Islamic regime. Yet once the Gulf War came and went Hafez al-Assad became the preferred Arab despot for the Washington tyrannophiles.

If we examine history (itself a heresy in contemporary discourse) we find that we have been here before. The previous government to Ahmadinejad was headed by President Khatami and it posed as a shift to reform from the past administrations. The aims were to normalise the Islamic Republic and resituate it in the traditional role that Iran has played in the region. Elected in 1997 Mohammed Khatami relied on the support of the women’s vote, as reformists typically do, as well as the urban middle-classes. He convinced the ‘Supreme Leader’ to allow him to run because the system requires a steam valve to release the political tension built up after nearly two decades of conservative governments. It was a politically expedient sales-pitch to a faux-cleric who was once President himself. From all of this we can see that the Iranian leadership cannot be taken as ‘irrational’ or ‘crazy’.

The Khatami administration had no qualms with the structural adjustments to the Iranian economy. Indeed, Khatami was eager to speed up the processes of privatisation and deregulation which he had inherited from Rafsanjani. Likewise the aim of re-establishing Iran in its traditional role required a normalisation of relations with the US, as well as client-states like Israel and Saudi Arabia. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the traditional role of Iran was a ‘cop on the beat’ alongside mercenary-states such as Israel, Turkey and Pakistan. This is the crowd to which Rouhani belongs. In these terms it’s easy to see the appeal of the anti-imperial bluster with which Ahmadinejad straddled Iran for nearly a decade. The former Mayor of Tehran promised the Iranian people economic concessions, such as instituting pensions for the thousands of women who work as carpet weavers and were blinded by their occupation by the age of 40.[3] The backbone of conservative populism in Iran is the rural and urban poor, precisely those desperate enough to seek refuge in religion.

At the same time, Ahmadinejad offered crumbs to the poor and needy he opted for the Khomeini vision of Islamic Iran as the only alternative to the decadence of Western liberalism. This is the alternative to the Khatami propositions to normalise relations with Washington. It’s what has led Iran to forge alliances with Caracas as well as Moscow and even Pyongyang. Yet there must be a tension in the ruling-class of the country to allow for such a fluctuation between the ‘moderates’ and the ‘extremists’. The foreign policy of Iran remains completely rational in the terms understood by Iran’s intelligentsia. The development of nuclear power and the capability for nuclear weapons was originally a policy of the Shah. After seizing power Khomeini immediately had the reactors shut down, only to reluctantly reopen them once Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass-destructions and Iran needed a deterrent. So this is an old story, nothing new.

President Khatami sought to normalise relations with the US by lending intelligence support to the invasion of Afghanistan. It was saleable move as the Taliban had butchered Shi’ites and killed Iranian diplomats after which Khatami acted to prevent a war with Afghanistan. The Khatami government helped set up Hamid Karzai as the US objectives shifted from retaliation for the World Trade Centre attacks to regime change in Afghanistan. In return for these gestures Bush put Iran on the ‘Axis of Evil’ for its sponsorship of groups like Hezbollah. That was in early 2002 and months later when the US and Britain were looking for support to invade Iraq the incorrigible Jack Straw flew to Tehran. The memory of the insane war with Iraq was, and is, still haunting Iran. Khatami offered to provide assistance – in the form of intelligence, logistics and advice – to the forces looking to plunder Mesopotamia. The future of Iraq was no less insignificant than that of Afghanistan.

Jack Straw pitched the idea to Colin Powell, who found it appealing, but couldn’t convince the White House to get behind the idea. It may have been arrogance on the part of the Bush administration. Perhaps the Bushites feared the prospect of an emboldened Iran and its influence filling the void left-over from Saddam Hussein. In the end the US couldn’t hold-off elections and couldn’t prevent Iran from having a hand in the future of Iraq. It may have been inevitable in a predominantly Shi’a country. Neither Iran nor Iraq wants a re-run of the war that took place in the 80s. The prospect of peaceful relations between Iran and Iraq could lead to greater stability in the region, and that’s undoubtedly not what the US wants. The possibility of a Shi’ite alliance across West Asia is terrifying precisely because it could threaten the US control of the oil spigot.

Despite Washington’s intransigence the Khatami government sought a roadmap of improving US-Iran relations. Khatami wanted to hold talks with the US and put everything on the table. He offered to turn Hezbollah into a non-violent political organisation which accepted the two-state peace settlement.[4] In exchange Khatami hoped the US government would abolish all sanctions on Iran and refrain from instigating regime

change in Tehran.[5] It was drawn up through discussions between Khatami, Khamenei and others. According to a BBC documentary on Iran’s recent political history the ‘Supreme Leader’ actually gave his approval for 85% to 90% of the proposals. George W Bush sent a sharp message to Tehran by refusing to acknowledge or engage with the offer. The message was received and by the next election the ‘reformism’ of Mohammed Khatami had been written-off as a failure. Onto the stage marched Ahmadinejad with the blessing of the clerical establishment.

Now we have seen the process fall the other way. The terms Ahmadinejad spent in office reaped no great results for Iran. The intransigence and aggression of the West was hardly deterred by the absurd posturing of the crackpot statesman. Talk of war has been a recurrent theme in discourse for Americans, Europeans and Israelis. Meanwhile the huge costs incurred by the Iraq war meant the possibility of war with Iran unfeasible for a long time. Later, the Bush administration refused to back Ehud Olmert’s dream of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.[6] Yet the White House has since launched a campaign of assassination against nuclear scientists in the country. The US has even gone as far as to remove the MEK from its terrorist list.[7] It was a sweet ‘Thank You’ for the group’s cooperation in the campaign of bombing and killing Iranian scientists. It’s a strategy which has been coupled with economic strangulation in the form of sanctions, which may keep the Iranian people from rising up against the regime.

All the while Tehran is no doubt very aware of the threat posed by US military bases in neighbouring countries: the Fifth Fleet is based on Bahrain and the island of Diego Garcia has been utilised to station bunker-busters and nuclear submarines. It would be ridiculous to attribute any responsibility to Iran for this aggression. Lebanon was the battlefield between Israel and Iran in 2006, now it may be Syria’s turn. The effect of the Lebanon war was conservative in Iran; the Syrian civil war may have similar consequences. Time will only tell. The contradictions of Iranian society are turning, as always, in societies everywhere, towards a conclusion which will only be obvious in hindsight. The enemies of democracy in Iran include not just the ‘Supreme Leader’, but the US, Israel and Britain as well. Whether or not we see war in coming decades is very much up to us.

This article was later posted at the Third Estate on August 6th 2013.

---

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/mahmoud-ahmadinejad-summons-iran

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-to-send-4000-troops-to-aid-president-assad-forces-in-syria-8660358.html

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/iran-votes-for-new-president-farewell-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-well-miss-you--but-not-that-much-8658144.html

[4] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0525-05.htm

[5] Ibid.

[6] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1

[7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19767043

Mailer's Conservatism.

Question: It was much more clean when you were an anarchist. We knew what that meant. But Left-Conservative?

Mailer: I have to redefine the term for myself every day because on its face, we have an oxymoron. But, it does have meaning for me. I think there are elements in the remains of left-wing philosophy (which has not had all that many new ideas for the last 30 years), that are worth maintaining.

Question: Such as?

Mailer: The idea that a very rich man should not make 4,000 times as much in a year as a poor man. On the other hand, I am not a liberal. The notion that man is a rational creature who arrives at reasonable solutions to knotty problems is much in doubt as far as I’m concerned. Liberalism depends all too much on having an optimistic view of human nature. But the history of the 20th century has not exactly fortified that notion. Moreover, liberalism also depends too much upon reason rather than any appreciation of mystery. If you start to talk about God with the average good liberal, he looks at you as if you are more than a little off. In that sense, since I happen to be—I hate to use the word religious, there are so many heavy dull connotations, so many pious self-seeking aspects—but I do believe there is a Creator who is active in human affairs and is endangered. I also believe there is a Devil who is equally active in our existence (and is all too often successful). So, I can hardly be a liberal. God is bad enough for them, but talk about the devil, and the liberal’s mind is blown. He is consorting with a fellow who is irrational if not insane. That is the end of real conversation.

On the other hand, conservatism has its own deep ditches, its unclimbable walls, its immutable old ideas sealed in concrete. But lately, there are two profoundly different kinds of conservatives emerging, as different in their way as the communists and the socialists were before and after 1917, yes, two types of conservatives in America now. What I call “value conservatives” because they believe in what most people think of as the standard conservative values—family, home, faith, hard work, duty, allegiance—dependable human virtues. And then there are what I call “flag conservatives,” of whom obviously the present administration would be the perfect example.

I don’t think flag conservatives give a real damn about conservative values. They use the words. They certainly use the flag. They love words like “evil.” One of Bush’s worst faults in rhetoric (to dip into that cornucopia) is to use the word “evil” as if it were a button he can touch to increase his power. When people are sick and have an IV tube put in them to feed a narcotic painkiller on demand, a few keep pressing that button. Bush uses evil as his hot button for the American public. Any man who can employ that word 15 times in five minutes is not a conservative. Not a value conservative. A flag conservative is another matter. They rely on manipulation. What they want is power. They believe in America. That they do. They believe this country is the only hope of the world and they feel that this country is becoming more and more powerful on the one hand, but on the other, is rapidly growing more dissolute. And so the only solution for it is empire, World Empire. Behind the whole thing in Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the near-East as a stepping stone for eventually taking over the world. Once we become a twenty-first century version of the old Roman Empire, then moral reform will come into the picture. The military is obviously more puritanical than the entertainment media. Soldiers can, of course, be wilder than anyone, but the overhead command is a major pressure on soldiers, and it is not permissive.

Question: Who in American politics is a value conservative?

Mailer: Someone like Taft would be a good example of a value conservative. Eisenhower, probably, a gentle value conservative. More recently? Reagan, I think, was not. I will say that I don’t think Reagan ever had an original idea in his life. I once sat next to him, as near as I am sitting to you, at a lunch for eight people. This was in 1972 at the convention that nominated Nixon for the second time. I spent the entire meal trying to figure out a tough question to ask him. I always found that if you meet someone’s eyes, a good question can come to mind. And for two hours he sat there, perfectly calm and pleasant and kept making jokes and talking. It was a lightweight conversation. The physical impression of him was that he had about as much human specific density as, let’s say, a sales manager for a medium-sized corporation in the Midwest. That kind of modest, mild, well-knit heft was in his bearing. During those two hours, he chatted with all six Time reporters at the table, and his eyes never met mine. I found myself unable to come up with that tough question as a result. It became a matter of decorum. The mood was too genial. It occurred to me after he became president that he probably, if he could help it, never spent time talking to anyone who was of no use to him. An instinctive climber who scaled the face of success with great skill: that was his gift, if you will. He was surrounded by people who had many powerful ideas and who illumined him to the point where they could wind him up and then he could do his special stuff. At the time, he had an enormous impact on value conservatives because they thought he was one of them. I suspect he had about as much to do with them as a screen star does with an agricultural laborer.

No Earthly Ideas.

 

As Obama is still settling into his second term, many have already turned to speculate at who will be running in 2016. Speculation over a GOP candidate range from Chris Christie to Paul Ryan and beyond, whereas prognostications regarding a Democratic candidate seem to be preoccupied with Hillary Clinton. In the background you should be able to sense the lowering of expectations, a foreclosure on the very possibility of a manifested opposition. The realm of the possible narrows further, the field down closes to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for the pollsters. Of course, it remains to be seen who is even considering running. At this point all potential candidates will shirk from announcing such a bid for fear of putting a hat in the ring too early. That's just sensible conduct for any politico. So it should surprise no one that when Bill Clinton was asked whether or not Hillary would run he responded by saying he had "no earthly idea". With that non-answer Bill demonstrates the same glibness that would win over the audience at the Democratic National Convention.

 

By 2016 BO, as the reactionaries call him, will be even more withered and white-haired than today, a far cry from the inflated Kennedy-cum-Christ figure of 2008. That figure will be an even more distant memory in four years than it is today. Not a modicum of the Messiah left, instead a mauled continuity pervades. Given the level of hopeful projections onto Obama, disillusionment was inevitable. The lowering of expectations is not unusual to Democratic politics, very often it lays the way for the politics of reaction. The disappointments of Jimmy Carter led to the Reaganites gaining office through a mediocre mandate to roll back the intrusive government. Similarly the Clinton era left the Democrats without a legacy worth defending when the Bushites were ushered into office under disgraceful circumstances. It's strangely appropriate that we find Clinton being hailed as a future candidate at this point. It's as though the despair in the awake of Obama's second term are already foreseeable. And that's true because there's so much to cry about already.

In February Democratic pollsters found Hillary Clinton leads the top GOP 2016 contenders in red states such as Alaska, Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Georgia. Even though Clinton had only been replaced with Kerry for a week or two at this point and the prospects of her nomination still seem way-out to those concerned by dynastic formations in apparently democratic societies. It looks like Obama is the future and Romney is the past just going by the demographic change in birth-rates. So the white populism that Clinton reached for in '08 definitely won't cut it in '16. It's plausible that she could appeal to the Latina vote simply as she's a Democrat and on the moral issue of abortion. By contrast, it's difficult to spot a spokesperson of American conservatism capable of overcoming the GOP's contradictions. The Republicans will probably have to tone down the anti-immigrant rhetoric to gain a greater slice of the hispanic vote. Then in March Reason estimated there is around 22% of support for Clinton. It seems more likely than it did a couple of months ago.

 

What might we expect from a future Clinton White House? The eminent feminist Bonnie Greer deems the Obama administration a second Clinton administration. That's one answer to the question. So if Hillary Clinton wins office it will be the third Clinton White House. With all of this in mind, we can judge the woman by her record at the State Department, as well as the period in which she was First Lady. We can set our expectations pretty low if these joint-records are to be taken as a fair representation of Clinton. And we have no reason to think otherwise. So we may gauge a few things from the Clinton record at the White House, which contains a few serious hiccups:
 

• On the campaign trail Bill Clinton was faced with mounting interest in his extramarital relationship with Gennifer Flowers. The candidate opted to see to it that a lobotomised black man was put to death.
• The first Clinton administration armed the Turkish government as it waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurds and leaving 50,000 people dead.
• Having inherited the aftermath of the First Gulf War the Clinton White House imposed economic sanctions against Iraq and starved over 500,000 people to death.
• President Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan under the pretence that it was a chemical weapons factory. In fact it's likely that the President knew full well and was looking for a neat distraction with Monica Lewinsky in the news reels.
• During this period Hillary Clinton advocated military intervention in Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999). She is no dove in other words.

There is plenty more to go into, though we should probably scrutinise the Clinton record at the State Department. In office with former rival Obama the Clinton record does not fair much better. The Obama administration reacted with timidity to the Arab Awakening that threatened to unseat all kinds of bulwarks to democracy. Clinton was not a voice of dissent and described Mubarak as 'family' only to see Hosni given the boot by his generals. Clinton oversaw the NATO intervention in Libya, which rapidly escalated from a UN sanctioned no-fly zone to a full-blown and illegal bombing campaign on the side of the rebels. Though at least the campaign was on the side of a rebellion. You can't even say that about the swarms of drones Clinton sent over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Impressed yet? And this is meant to be the best of American liberalism, its finest choice for the State Department in 2008 and its President in 2016.

 

All the while the Clintons have been more than complicit, totally supportive actually, of the decline of the American welfare state. Then there's the stomping out of the social democratic wing of the Democrats. They pioneered the method of triangulation, which goes as follows: loot the supportable planks from the Republican platform, bag the corporate funding that follows it; "test the water" with polling, all while keep the liberal Left on board with the lesser evil logic. Obama and the Clintons represent the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Do we really need another right-wing in American politics? Aren't the Republicans right-wing enough for both parties? Expect nothing less from the people who thought that the problem in America, after 12 years of Republican government, is that the Democratic Party is too left-wing. Not only that but the American under-class have to be brought back in line, it's not warfare but welfare to be slashed and burned.