By Russell A. Berman · Friday, September 8, 2006 As the debate over the invitation to former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to speak at Harvard’s Kennedy School continues, it is useful to contemplate specific aspects of his record. Because Mohammed Khatami was outflanked on his right by other extremists, he has sometimes appeared as a moderate. Because he has published books and taught at a university, he has been lauded as an intellectual. Yet his government led a brutal crackdown on university students in 1999, and his credentials as a reformer are dubious indeed. His visit to the US, seeking a “dialogue of cultures,” takes place in the context of an emerging campaign against “secular and liberal” faculty of the Iranian universities. Some pieces of the puzzle:
In an account of the status on “Women in Iran—A Look at President Khatami’s First Year in Office,” by Donna M. Hughes in Z Magazine, of October 1998, one reads:
Some analysts have said that the election of Mohammed Khatami to the position of President was due to the votes of women. Khatami’s strongest distinction seems to be that he was not the hard-line government’s favorite candidate. His election was no doubt a vote against the hard-liners. His upset election has garnered him the label of “moderate,” and raised expectations of people inside and outside of Iran.
Khatami has been in office one year now. Is he a moderate? Has the status of women markedly improved in Iran since his election?
There is a widely held view that Khatami supports the rights of women, but his statements and appointments don’t validate that view. Prior to his election Khatami said, “One of the West’s most serious mistakes was the emancipation of women, which led to the disintegration of families. Staying at home does not mean marginalization. Being a housewife does not prevent a woman from having a role in the destiny of her people. We should not think that social activity means working outside the home. Housekeeping is among one of the most important jobs.” (emphasis added)
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By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, September 7, 2006 Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami will be speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School on Sunday, September 10. The timing of the talk is particularly embarrassing: Iran has recently accelerated its purge of liberal and secular elements from its universities, as recently discussed here. To make matters worse, the topic of Khatami’s address is the “Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence.” The title reads like a parody of Iranian policy.
The situation in Iran is dire:
“Earlier this year, Iran retired dozens of liberal university professors and teachers. And last November, Ahmadinejad’s administration for the first time named a cleric to head the country’s oldest university in Tehran amid protests by students over the appointment.”
It is sorry that Harvard would give a platform to a representative of a dictatorial regime currently crushing its own academic world. That this takes place the day before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks testifies to a particular callousness.
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By Russell A. Berman · Wednesday, September 6, 2006 The process by which the Nazis rapidly removed potential regime opponents from the universities and the civil service came to be known as Gleichschaltung. Sometimes translated as “coordination,” the term is much harsher: all concerned are made the same, arranged in a single order, forced into uniformity. All that is different is made identical, and that which is non-identical is eradicated
The Associate Press now reports that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has called for a purge of secular and liberal faculty from the universities. In fact, precisely such a purge of liberals and leftists took place in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979—which makes it even more curious that parts of the western left somehow still look to Iran as a positive anti-imperialist force—but some reformist elements have later reemerged. The current call for renewed attacks on intellectuals indicates an effort to amplify the regime’s extremist position. It surely shatters any hope that the recent release from prison of critical intellectual Ramin Jahanbegloo (discussed here on August 31) would initiate a liberalization.
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By Russell A. Berman · Tuesday, September 5, 2006 Despite the approaching mid-term elections and the criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy, the left—domestically and internationally—has had a hard time in articulating an alternative positive vision. “Not Bush” only gets you so far: sooner or later a substantive alternative is needed to give opposition credibility. Facing turmoil (to say the least) in the Arab and Islamic world, what foreign policy would be preferable? Evidence demonstrates that neither “UN” nor “EU” is a believable response. But the problem is deeper than the pragmatics of current diplomacy.
The left (and liberal) imagination would prefer to cast the confrontation with Islamic extremism or, yes, Islamic fascism, as a matter of imperialism and “anti-imperialism.” The terminology constitutes a treasured legacy of the left, not only from Lenin’s account of imperialism and capitalism (which then permitted him and his successors to mask Soviet Russian expansionism as somehow “anti-imperialist”) but also from a more honorable resistance in the US and Europe to imperial expansion of the late nineteenth century.
In the meantime, anti-imperialism is today’s last hurrah of the traditional left. Having given up nearly all of its other principles, especially in the phase of multiculturalism and post-modernism, it drapes itself in the anti-imperialist flag as a way to remember its glory days. Hence the grotesque sight of the (extreme) left celebrating the reactionary forces of Hezbollah (ask about the role of women or the status of free unions).
The problem however is that the theory of anti-imperialism—probably insufficient already a century ago—is simply irrelevant today. Exactly which natural resources are being fought for in Afghanistan, that fabled land of plenty? Which advanced capitalist company really needs to export its “surplus capital” to the Sunni triangle? And which is the national liberation movement that leads Sunni to kill Shi’a in Pakistan?
None of these conceptualizations of empire and anti-imperialism is adequate to the current situation, which is very explicitly being driven by something else: either an ideological-religious fanaticism or, on a deeper cultural level, a desire for death. Let us consider the account most recently televised by our compatriot and now Al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, otherwise known affectionately as “Azzam the American.” Gadahn, who has been sought by the FBI for several years aired an address on tajed.net on September 2. In it he articulates aspects of the Islamic-fascist critique of the West and, as has been widely reported, called for conversion to Islam. . . .
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, September 4, 2006 Arguments against the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo have generally focused on the problem of establishing a zone that appeared to be outside commonly accepted rules of law. The captives were treated neither as prisoners of war, subject to treaties and international law, nor were they seen as vested with the constitutional rights applicable within the US. To some extent, this ambiguous outcome resulted from the anomalous nature of the war in Afghanistan but generally characterizes the wider war on terror: the enemy, not made up of regular soldiers, is also not a composed simply of criminals in the normal sense of the term. To date, the conflict between the liberal approach to view terrorists as criminals and respond with police action and the administration’s view of them as enemies, justifying a war footing, leaves an unresolved categorical problem, which—to say the least—has become an enormous political problem.
As a problem for political theory, Guantanamo points to concerns about a “state of exception,” as formulated by thinkers as diverse as Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. To what extent do political systems depend on exceptions? That sort of argument, evidently, could lead to an apologetic claim of the necessity of extralegality. Others may wish to comment on that line of thought. Of additional interest however is the duplication of processes of extralegality in the recent experience with special prosecution. In terms of the political spectrum, if Guantanamo was a problem for “the right,” special prosecution—especially Fitzgerald’s—is a problem for the “the left.”
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By Russell A. Berman · Sunday, September 3, 2006 One of the features of the historical totalitarian regimes was the refusal to concede losses or defeats. In part this reflects ideological blinders, a refusal to recognize reality—or to test one’s views against reality—as was the case with the last Minister of Propaganda under Saddam, who claimed the American forces had been repelled, even as they were entering the capital. In addition, this inability to admit to defeat functions as ideology, a way to coerce support to movements or regimes, which promote themselves as victors in order to cement loyalty. Finally, the insistence on maintaining the appearance of victory despite losses reflects a willingness to sacrifice both resources and people: no matter how many have been killed, the totalitarian PR apparatus calls it a win. It is callousness in the face of suffering.
Hezbollah’s declaration of victory follows these patterns. While it is true that the Israelis were not able to oust Hezbollah, neither did Hezbollah achieve its goals—which is only a “victory” if the standard is dumbed down far enough. Journalistic echoing the credo of a victory amplifies Hezbollah ideology, but the claim just does not match reality. Sober and moderate voices in the Arab world are beginning to point that out. To the extent that this blog has made the argument regarding “Islamic fascism,” it is equally important to take note of the critical analyses within the Arab world itself. . . .
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