"The Arc of Crisis: U.S. Policy in the Middle East and South Asia", a Middle East panel at Yearly Kos, has gotten some mention in the blogosphere in the past couple of weeks. In the weeks leading up to Yearly Kos, we heard about the upcoming Middle East panel from MarkinSanFran, a Kog who had helped Juan Cole organize it. Juan Cole had pulled together a group of panelists that he predicted would be spectacular:
John Mearsheimer, U of Chicago (of 'Israel Lobby' fame)
Fariba Zarinebaf (Northwestern U., Iranian history)
Manan Ahmed (blogger, Chapati Mystery; grad at U of Chicago)
Dennis Perrin (blogger, Red State Son)
me.
Some Kogs who weren't able to attend Yearly Kos have been waiting for further news about Cole's spectacular panel.
Although one of the intended panelists, Fariba Zarinebaf, was unable to attend, other panelists not only took part in the panel but in other Yearly Kos events beforehand. A couple of participants in the panel were interviewed at Yearly Kos before the panel: the interview from TPM with Juan Cole has been seen widely in the left blogosphere. An interview by Pajamas Media with John Mearsheimer has been extensively commented on also by the right blogosphere – but I’m not linking to it. In fact, the right wing blogosphere has been commenting extensively about the event, but I haven’t seen any of them claiming to be eyewitnesses.
So, for those of us who were not able to attend The Arc of Crisis, I’ve compiled some reports from various panelists (Dennis Perrin and Manan Ahmed) and bloggers (Matthew Ygelsias at the Atlantic and Moira Whelan at Democracy Arsenal) who actually were there.
SETTING:
Whelan:
I have been to a lot of Middle East panels in my time, but I gotta give it to Kos, this was the best. One. Ever. For one, I laughed...and not just at Dennis Perrin who was on the panel talking about the influence of satire, but Juan Cole and even John Mearsheimer got a few laughs as well. That’s not to say that it wasn’t serious. In fact, I’d say the opposite. The audience and the panel were passionate. Matt has some thoughts on Mearsheimer’s presentation. Unsung on the panel was Manan Amed who had some interesting thoughts about Pakistan. He talked about how important Obama’s speech was, and what a major step forward it is regarding the challenges we face. The audience was more interested in talking about Israel and Palestine, and of course, Iraq.
Ahmed:
In general, YearlyKos reminded me of all the tech conventions that I attend - white, middle-aged with suitable floral printed attire, and hair that defies treatments known to humanity. Word is that they will change the name to Netroots Convention or something boring. Good luck with that.
Perrin:
In contrast, our panel seemed pushed to the side, an afterthought to the grander Kos netroots stages. The panel before us bled into our time, forcing us to start late. Then we discovered we had no moderator, so Juan assumed that role, and he and I essentially bussed the panel table, clearly away used water cups and coffee containers. There was no fresh water for us; we had to make do with what was left over from the previous panel. It was a disheveled start, but the audience quickly filed in and filled up the seats, with more standing in the back and to the side. Once things settled down, Juan welcomed everyone, and the panel kicked off, with us speaking in alphabetical order.
MANAN AHMED
Ahmed:
As billed, I was at the podium at 4:00, ready to change the discourse in our nation. Well, it may take a little more than that. I presented a rant-free version of the post below which tried to highlight the fallacies in Obama’s argument. My co-panelists were Juan Cole - who gave a wonderfully off-the-cuff rundown of Dick Cheney’s pathology and the Oil Connection, John Mearsheimer - who predicted an Apartheid state in Israel [sounded more of a statement of fact rather than a prediction, to me] and Dennis Perrin - who tried to make light of our current predicament, thankfully!
I didn’t get many questions but I didn’t expect to. It was gratifying, however, that tons of people introduced themselves to me over the weekend, and told me how much they appreciated my remarks, asked what they could do to help. I had no good answers. The section of my remarks about the Lawyers was the best ‘eye-opener’. Just the fact there is a middle-class, a professional middle-class in Pakistan was astounding to many. That this middle-class was out rioting in the streets for Justice was revelatory. One lawyer I spoke to said with a look of wonderment, "If a Lawyer picks up a rock...". Such is the state of our media that we don’t even know that Pakistan has a middle class that shaves.
JUAN COLE:
Perrin:
Juan took the podium next, and gave a very animated, at times funny, talk about what possibly lies ahead in Iraq. Juan insists, and I largely disagree with him, that US troops will be withdrawn by '09 at the latest, leaving Iraq to whatever fate then befalls it. In Juan's view, the Sunnis, after a bloodbath, will once again control Baghdad, and that a new Ba'ath Party will most likely be created. The Shias will retreat to the south, and the Kurds will go about their business in the north, ready to fight should the Sunnis attempt any incursion on their turf. In other words, Iraq will roughly be what it more or less was after the first Gulf War, minus Saddam and his sons, of course. I don't think that a Hillary Clinton administration would oversee such a pull-out, given Hillary's past militarist posturing. She may now say that the war should end, but this, as the New York Times reported on Saturday, is a calculated rhetorical shift to pull in the more "liberal" members of the Dem party, many of whom were at YearlyKos. Should she be elected, I trust that a different, more "pragmatic" strategy will suddenly emerge. We'll see.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER:
Perrin:
John Mearsheimer followed Juan, and his presentation, about the four possible roads Israel can take with regards to the Palestinians, was extremely sensible to the point of being predictable. John has received acres of abuse since his and Stephen Walt's paper on the Israel lobby was released, but in person, John's a very polite, friendly, down-to-earth guy. You'd half expect to meet a fire-breathing Jew-hater given some of the attacks he's endured, but as is usually the case in this area, the sliming has little-to-nothing to do with the actual person. If anything, John's too cautious and conservative, for my taste. When he said that of the remaining options left to Israel, the most likely one would be some form of apartheid for the Palestinians, I wanted to interrupt him by saying that this pretty much already happened. But I'm a team player when it comes to panels, and besides, it might come up during Q&A.
Yglesias:
John "The Israel Lobby" Mearsheimer isn't shying away from controversy. He says he sees four options for Israel/Palestine -- A two-state solution, a binational solution, the expulsion of the Arab population from a Greater Israel, and the construction of a Greater Israel governed along apartheid lines -- and that he thinks the apartheid outcome is the most likely one. He says Israeli leaders, despite agreeing to the UN partition plan, have never been interested in seeing the creation of a viable Palestinian state and he includes Yitzhak Rabin (though he says the Palestinians got "tantalizingly close" to a viable state at Camp David and Taba) in that category.
To Mearsheimer, the key point is that the mainstream Israeli view would create a Palestinian state that doesn't control its own airspace, its own borders, or its own water supply -- conditions that he says don't create the basis for a viable state. I don't imagine you'll see any of the Democratic politicians stopping by the conference tomorrow endorsing these views or anything like it.
DENNIS PERRIN:
Perrin:
Finally, it was me. As I grabbed the podium mike, I said that following three distinguished academics with my more showbiz background left me with only one way to greet the crowd -- "Yo yo yo, YearlyKos, whazzzz upppp!" This got a nice laugh, which I built on by quoting Condi Rice's statement from Ramallah as reported by one of my favorite comedy sources, the New York Times:
"We believe strongly in the right of people to express themselves and their desires in elections." But, [Rice] added, once elected, "you have the obligation to govern responsibly."
An even bigger laugh. In comedy, found humor is oftentimes your best friend.
I then delivered the crux of my talk, which I truncated a bit due to time constraints. Essentially, I made two points: 1) Unlike the Vietnam era, where there was an abundance of antiwar satire and comedy, from the National Lampoon to The Committee to The Smothers Brothers (among others), the Iraq era has been satirically deficient, save for a few exceptions like The Daily Show, which isn't all that cutting, given the horror that surrounds us; and 2) You cannot find mainstream American comics and comedy shows that skewer Israelis and Zionists with the same nasty, at times openly racist, routines that are commonly employed against Arabs and Muslims. Judaism and Jewish culture have been sent up by Jewish comics since vaudeville. But where, I asked the audience, do you see satirical assaults on Israeli Zionists?
No one answered, for the simple reason that this kind of comedy scarcely exists. The Onion has done a few funny bits about Israeli aggression, but try getting that on The Daily Show, much less SNL, Leno, Letterman, or Conan.
DISCUSSION:
Whelan:
At the risk of delving into a subject matter in which I have no expertise (the Middle East Peace Process), as a wonky type, I found a few things interesting about the conversation that followed. It’s less of a debate at Kos, and more of a given, that AIPAC and other groups have disproportionate power, and those that think differently simply don’t have the money/organization etc to compete. The panelists correctly pointed out that the blogs are really the only place where the Israel and Palestinian relationship is being talked about without the influence of "the Israel lobby." Because bloggers don’t really face recourse from typical levers of power (money, media, etc) the Israel lobby is accused of wielding with great effectiveness. The conversation can be fairly vibrant and democratic. Frankly, I think if the blogs are going to exercise power on foreign policy, this will probably be the area of biggest influence.
The coolest part about this panel really to me was John Mearsheimer. Juan Cole (of whom I am now a giant fan) did a fantastic job of really making the Middle East accessible, but still bringing in major fire power. I really don’t think people at Kos realized just how influential Mearsheimer is on the entire field of foreign policy, which made it all that more interesting. I have to say, that as someone who’s read everything he’s ever written, I was SHOCKED when people interrupted him, or questioned his judgment on the idea that oil companies did not, in fact, orchestrate the war in Iraq. He is, after all, John friggin Mearsheimer. I’m sure when he speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations, people don’t interrupt him. I don’t think the Presidents he’s counseled interrupt him. Mearsheimer was totally into it which was fantastic.
Juan has the right formula for how best to have national security conversations with/in the blogosphere. It left me wanting more, and it was pretty clear the audience agreed.
Perrin:
The Q&A focused mostly on Israel/Palestine, with some bantering about the future of Iraq. Pakistan and Obama did not come up, for obvious reasons, and after a while, Juan specifically asked the crowd for a Pakistan question so Manan could be part of the discussion. One was asked, Manan thoughtfully responded, then it was back to the war and the Israelis and Palestinians.
... Our audience was very opinionated and energetic, but before long, Juan shut the whole thing down, noting that we were going overtime. I felt that since we were the last panel, we should've kept going, for at least another half hour. But once Juan made his announcement, the majority of people left. So that was that.
ASSESSMENTS:
Perhaps inspired by Dennis Perrin’s urging attendees to take a humorous look at the Middle East (and indeed ourselves), I’ll leave you with this assessment of the panel by blogger Katie Halper at Working Life:
Nazi Kos
Bill O'Reilly is the only journalist honorable enough to go after the Daily/Yearly Kos Nazis. But one journalist cannot do it all, and so I decided to investigate the hate-site's convention for myself. I went to several panels, and the most hateful of all was The Arc of Crisis: U.S. Policy in the Middle East and South Asia" which included speakers Juan Cole, John J. Mearsheimer, Dennis Perin,and Manan Ahmed. This panel proved, once again, that the liberal, Jewish gay vegan bloggerati are getting their panties all up in a bunch about the Middle East.
Anyone with a shred of critical thinking ability knows that the situation in the Middle East is not an arc of crisis, but rather an arc of mission accomplishment and progress. When that little scuffle broke out between Israel and Hezbollah just last summer, Condoleezza Rice explained, in her typically infinite wisdom, "What we're seeing here are the birth bangs of a new Middle East." Building on this insightful assessment, I think it’s clear that what we are seeing today in Pakistan are merely the stretch marks or hemorrhoids, of democracy. And what we are seeing in Iraq is the episiotomy of liberty.
Had the rightwing bloggers actually attended, I don’t think they could have said it better themselves.
(Hat tip to Robert Naiman, for his diary last week about one issue that was raised on the panel and the related discussion)