WHEN THE BEST IN THE WEST GET IT WRONG

BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

The earthquake in China offers those in the Western press a chance to do what they do best --report the facts, but it may also turn out to be field day for those who like to hit a country when it is down. Some good old-fashioned reporting would be a good change of pace for certain US and European news outlets, especially the recently maligned CNN, to repair reputations tattered for sloppy reporting on Tibet.

Echoes of imperial prejudices and predilections as old as British colonialism itself could be heard in many Western reports that neatly played ethnic minority off ethnic majority. Really basic mistakes, like confusing Nepal with Tibet in photos and incorrect connecting of the dots went uncorrected too long, so hungry was the appetite for images that fit preconceived notions.

There may be no such thing as Western journalism in the sense that Chinese bloggers like to invoke the word, with conspiratorial overtones and an assumed intent to humiliate, but strikingly similar mistakes were made, apparently independently, across the world of Western journalism, from Germany to France to America and Britain. Might political and cultural differences not have something to do with it?

It's also a bit disappointing to see similar neo-colonial attitudes at work in some of the Western coverage of Burma's great tragedy. US First Lady Laura Bush set the tone, wagging her finger, finding fault in a way that eluded her ken in the case of Katrina, making veiled threats at a supine country in great distress, almost guaranteeing that US offers of aid would be viewed with suspicion and subject to delay. The story of a storm was quickly transmuted into a political equivalent of a quail hunting accident, in which Burma's government was the target, but collateral damage ensued.

Given such prevailing winds, China's timely material aid was viewed as a PR exercise, while reckless US and French offers to essentially invade Burma to save it from itself, were cast in a deeply humanitarian light.

The challenge for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is to keep the UN at the center of relief efforts, to steer a middle way, perhaps with the help of ASEAN, to keep the aid flowing without unnecessary political interruption or intervention.

When it comes to Myanmar, CNN continues to disappoint. At least the BBC has the courage of conviction of the English language to call Burma, Burma. For CNN anchors, it's "Miramar" or something appropriately exotic, and a ridiculous amount of air-time is devoted to the exploits of its daring reporters trying to sneak around behind the backs of Burma's police or bemoan the lack of access. The tone is triumphalist and self-congratulatory, and the meta-message clear --we are CNN, give us access or we will diss you.

And now, another huge human tragedy, the earthquake in Sichuan. Unless major screw-ups follow, the story should remain focused on the earthquake and its victims instead of degenerating into the predictable political sniping when a communist country, or a political system that dares to be different, falls on hard times.

Here CNN has a chance to reverse its declining China fortunes, for the Beijing bureau is lucky to have a seasoned China hand like Jaime Florcruz at the helm. The self-effacing Florcruz says things that are almost impossible to hear from "thugs and goons" Jack Cafferty or the big-haired, big egoed hacks back in Atlanta. Earlier today, he quietly pointed out in a live report that the Chinese government is pretty good at marshaling resources in times of disaster.

On a not entirely unrelated topic, I have been reviewing Western media coverage of Tiananmen 1989 for an upcoming twenty-year retrospective. I worked as a freelancer for BBC at that time, and at one time or another have done work with NBC, NHK, CCTV and have contributed to China documentaries aired by CBS, TV Asahi and PBS. It is dismaying that after all this time, an event of such importance to the Chinese people is still taboo to the Chinese media. Secondarily, it is lamentable that so much of the Western coverage was narcissistic and imagination-driven.

The story, just published in the Bangkok Post, that follows raises a question still pertinent in the aftermath of careless Western reports on Tibet, though the focus is instead on BBC, and the setting is Tiananmen. If a British media star can't tell the difference between a fellow reporter from Hong Kong staying in the same hotel and a Beijing student leader on the run, then by what rights is his view so authoritative as to be canonized by Granta as Western reporting at its best?

For the full story, see the selection below.

pc


http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/13May2008_news22.php

Rubin: Death of Michael Vinay Bhatia in Khost Province (RC/E), Afghanistan

Michael Vinay Bhatia, a researcher well known to many of those working on Afghanistan, died in an IED attack on his vehicle in Khost Province, Afghanistan, on May 7, 2008. Michael was working as a civilian employee of the U.S. Department of Defense as a member of the Human Terrain System of the Army. I last saw Michael when he came to visit me before his departure and I mourn his passing.

Some of Michael's Friends have put up a blog with links to many of the tributes to him that have appeared in the press and on the Internet, including to obituaries in the Boston Globe and on the website of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where Michael worked before leaving for Afghanistan.

From the Watson Institute tribute:

In addition to graduating magna cum laude in international relations from Brown University, Michael was a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute from July 2006 to June 2007. At the Institute, he was involved in a research project on Cultural Awareness in the Military, writing his PhD dissertation, and teaching a senior seminar on "The US Military: Global Supremacy, Democracy and Citizenship."

Over several years, Michael’s research and humanitarian work took him to such conflict zones as Sahrawi refugee camps, East Timor, and Kosovo, in addition to Afghanistan.

Of his work in Afghanistan, Michael wrote in November: “The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned to the population's concerns, views, criticisms and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan.”

Michael had recently published some of his research on Afghanistan.

His co-authored book on Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict: Armed Groups, Disarmament and Security in a Post-War Society was just released by Routledge in April. It assesses small arms and security-related issues in post-9/11 Afghanistan.

His edited book on Terrorism and the Politics of Naming was published by Routledge last September. Stating that names are not objective, the book seeks the truth behind those assigned in such cases as the US hunt for al-Qaeda, Russia’s demonization of the Chechens, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In August, his personal three-part photo essay, “Shooting Afghanistan: Beyond the Conflict,” was published by theGlobalist. In it, he wrote:

“Afghanistan will soon reach a desperate milestone – the thirtieth anniversary of ongoing conflict. … Though I have spent the majority of my time there researching the wars and those involved in it, conflict is not my primary memory and way of knowing it. I am compelled to write about experiences and ideas that cannot be placed into analytical paradigms, which do not speak to theories of war or peace, to destruction or to reconstruction, but instead to daily interactions that occurred in the course of research.”

Michael's death while working for NATO's Regional Command/East came as I and other researchers have been trying to evaluate the claims of the U.S. and some journalists that its counter-insurgency activities in the region, including Michael's work, have been succeeding in improving security in this contested region across from Pakistan's North Waziristan Tribal Agency. By coincidence, as I was receiving and circulating information about Michael's sad death, I received another notice of the incident -- as a statistic. My source in Kabul has updated the comparison between number of Taliban and other insurgent attacks per week in 2008 and 2007. As I noted previously, data from the first 17 weeks showed a significant spike over the previous year in RC/E. The statistics from the first 18 weeks are now in, and the increase over last year continues.

But this time, we know the name of one of the statistics from week 18: Michael Bhatia.

The memorial blog for Michael contains links to his writings and photographs, as well as information on memorial services in the U.S. and U.K., where Michael studied at Oxford. It also includes information on how to contribute to a scholarship fund that is being established in his name.

Rubin: Marines Stuck Protecting Opium in Helmand

An AP story quoting me about the deployment of U.S. Marines to Garmser District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan is making the rounds on the Internets, and mostly being misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists who think it shows that the US government (or the "Bush crime family") is engaged in drug trafficking. A surprising number of them seem to be Ron Paul supporters. I thought I would try to explain what I think this story is about and what my quoted comments meant.

The nub:

The Marines of Bravo Company's 1st Platoon sleep beside a grove of poppies. Troops in the 2nd Platoon playfully swat at the heavy opium bulbs while walking through the fields. Afghan laborers scraping the plant's gooey resin smile and wave.

Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world's largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.

The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees -- money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won't be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans' only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

Thanks to the wonders of satellite technology (and, I imagine, the Thoraya company), the reporter, Jason Striuszko emailed me while he was in the field last week:

Hi. I'm on an embed right now with the Marines in Garmser and need to do a story about poppies. The whole town up and down the river is filled with fields. Some farmers have fled the barrages of fighting but many have stayed behind and are currently lancing. Marines are scratching their heads at the apparent contradictions --- hunting down and calling in airstrikes and artillery on Taliban but telling farmers they won't touch their fields, and telling farmers that they'll help protect them from the taliban. Of course, those fields will be harvested and some money likely used to help fuel the Taliban, and the Marines are thinking, essentially, "huh?"

Is this the best U.S. policy can do right now? To have Marines flooding a zone that Taliban will derive money from but not touching the crop?

I realize many would say this should be counterdrug policy or eradication police job, but it's a hard thing to swallow, no?

Will there ever be a day in Afghanistan, if the drug problem can't be fixed by other means, that military steps in?

I have already argued that there is no military or even law enforcement solution to the drug economy in Afghanistan. My answer, part of which Jason quoted, was:

This is the result on the ground of a one-dimensional military policy. All we hear is, not enough troops, send more troops. Then you send in troops with no capacity for assistance, no capacity for development, no capacity for aid, no capacity for governance, and you get a lot of head scratching. Of course now there is nothing they can do. Because they think it is a military problem, they send in the Marines during the fighting season, which is also the harvest season. Why didn't they send them in during the planting season with development aid? Because they don't know about planting and harvesting, or at least they have no idea how to integrate these very basic political and economic considerations into their planning.

If they attack the farmers of course they will lose control of the area. They should try to coopt as many of the local small traffickers as possible to keep them from selling to the Taliban (believe me, the local administration knows who they are) and then launch a big aid program for next year.

After all this time, they still have no idea what they are doing.

I can already hear the reply -- how can you say U.S. policy is one-dimensional, we are giving so much aid to Helmand that it would be the fourth largest aid recipient in the world if it were a country.... Of course, on paper U.S. policy is not one-dimensional. Somebody, somewhere is working in many different dimensions. But here is one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in Afghanistan -- a mini-surge of troops, even of Marines, who have not been in Afghanistan for years. And it seems to have been planned in a completely one-dimensionlal military fashion.

Just two weeks ago I was speaking at an Army seminar, where a colonel asked us civilian "experts" how the military could integrate non-military considerations into its planning. This is a perfect example of the failure to do so. These troops have been sent to Afghanistan with a mandate derived from years of lessons learned. Instead of being told to hunt, kill, and capture terrorists, they are being told to provide security to the local population. Finally. And how do they define providing security? Keeping the Taliban away.

If the planners had included analysts who understood Afghan society a little and also understood the concept of human security, they might have learned that the most important component of security in rural Helmand is gaining a livelihood, and that the opium economy is above all an adaptation to insecurity. The time to wean farmers from the opium economy is before planting, with aid and incentives, not at the time of harvest, when they have already sold their crop on futures contracts and have no alternative. Given the impossible situation in which their commanders have put them, the Marines are doing the right thing by leaving the poppy crop alone. But when will the decision makers understand what this struggle is really about? Not before January 21, 2009, I guess.

Rubin: In RC/E did David Ignatius a Stately Pleasure Dome Decree

I never paid much attention to David Ignatius. One of the luxuries of living in New York is not having to take the editorial page of the Washington Post too seriously. I did not even have a clear idea of what his views or journalistic habits were. But then I appeared on the NewsHour with him last week. I went into the studio thinking I would just give my analysis of the situation in Afghanistan after the attack on the Mujahidin Victory Day Celebration in Kabul, but instead found myself being asked to respond to his inane repetitions of PR handouts from the Defense Department. Scott Horton of Harper's characterized Ignatius' first article, a comprehensive cliche-ridden report on his one-week embed, as "Opium Dreams."

I was truly astounded last Sunday to read his second article -- Oh Person from Porlock where art thou? Couldst not have interrupted this opium-induced orientalist phantasie before such lines as:

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

Somebody should have told Ignatius that Usama left Jalalabad in 1996, in order to move to Qandahar, to be closer to Mulla Muhammad 'Umar, leader of the Taliban, and that he moved again in December 2001, this time to the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies of Pakistan, where he has re-established a secure base of operations. Did Ignatius even bother to read last July's National Intelligence Estimate on "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland?" One key judgment:

Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa’ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here.

• As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment.

It is of course legitimate to disagree with NIEs, by, for example, questioning their evidential basis, looking for evidence of bias, presenting contrary evidence... But on the basis of a one-week embed in which a "journalist" discovers something that everybody who cares to already knows -- that Bin Laden is not in Afghanistan?

And Ignatius' solution for the problem of al-Qaida in FATA? Also lifted directly from a DoD handout:

The essential mission in combating al-Qaeda now is to adopt in Pakistan the tactics that are working in Iraq and Afghanistan. This means alliances with tribal warlords to bring economic development to the isolated mountain valleys of the FATA region in exchange for their help in security. And it means joint operations involving U.S. and Pakistani special forces to chase al-Qaeda militants as they retreat deeper into the mountains.

Military action with warlords plus economic aid -- not a word about Pakistan's democratic government, its policy positions, or the issue of governance in FATA. A U.S.-led counter-terrorist offensive in the Tribal Agencies -- actually I think I have unjustly maligned the Department of Defense by calling this idea a DoD handout. I have discussed this issue with a number of senior US military and civilian defense officials, and all of them show greater understanding of the situation than Ignatius.

What exactly do you have to write to be discredited in this country?

Rubin: Security and Global Food Crisis

In two previous posts (Taliban?- What's That Got to Do with the Price of Bread? and More on Wheat, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Global Security) I discussed the impact of the global food crisis on security in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When I first wrote about this in February, the global food shortage was only starting to attract media attention. Since then many articles and surveys have appeared, including a cover article in the Economist, which compared the impact of the crisis to a "silent tsunami." The U.N. Secretary-General has convened a special Task Force on the Global Food Crisis.

My colleague at the Center on International Cooperation, Alexander Evans, has published a briefing paper on Rising Food Prices. Summary Points:

• Global food prices have risen 83 per cent over the last three years. The increases have been driven by high income growth in emerging economies (probably the single most significant factor),use of crops for biofuels, the relative inelasticity of supply, historically low stock levels and some speculative investment.
• More recently, national concerns over inflation and prices have led some countries to reduce exports and others to try to build up stocks – creating a feedback loop that feeds on itself to drive prices up still further. In the medium to longer term, ‘scarcity trends’ – climate change, the cost of energy inputs, scarcity of land and water – could limit the supply-side response.
• In the immediate term, the priority is to increase both the volume and the quality of humanitarian assistance available to poor people, including by moving away from in-kind food aid and towards cash transfers or voucher systems – although it is important to be clear that there are outstanding questions about how these social protection systems will work, and they should not be seen as a panacea. The issue of compensatory financing may also arise for some countries facing balance-of-payments difficulties.
• n the longer term, the key challenge is to increase the supply of food: the World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise by 50 per cent by 2030, as a result of rising affluence and growing world population. Achieving this challenge will require something close to a revolution, and a massive investment in agriculture in developing countries.
  
•  If supply fails to keep pace with rising demand, then the question of ‘fair shares’ is likely to emerge as a significant global issue. Already, the effect of a burgeoning global middle class switching to diets with more meat and dairy products – both relatively inefficient in terms of grain use – has been to reduce the affordability of staple foods for poorer consumers.
  

The report is published by Chatham House.

Rubin: Data on Security in Afghanistan's Regional Command/East

My debate with David Ignatius on the NewsHour has sparked a discussion about security in NATO's Regional Command/East, has sparked a debate about the reported success of U.S. counter-insurgency efforts. Washington Post "reporter"/government stenographer David Ignatius claimed that "the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy has begun to get some traction." In a subsequent post, in addition to criticizing the helicopter tour/PR handout school of "journalism," I cited data showing that in the first quarter of 2008 attacks by anti-government elements in the east had increased 30 percent over the same period last year.

Peter Marton at [My] State Failure Blog reviews the arguments about security in RC/E and notes that it is not the same as the "Eastern Region" (ER) as defined by my source. That ER consists of four provinces (Laghman, Nangarhar, Kunar, and Nuristan), whereas RC/E includes ten others as well (Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Ghazni, Logar, Wardak, Bamiyan, Parwan, Panjshir, and Kapisa).

I asked my source to aggregate the data by NATO command and got the following chart for the first four months of 2008 compared to 2007:

This chart shows that throughout RC/E attacks have been only slightly higher this year than last year, though there has been a spurt in the last week of April, when the Taliban announced their spring offensive. It will be important to see if the insurgent surge continues.

Marton cites U.S. military claims (relayed by Anne Marlowe) that the attacks are concentrated in smaller areas. Combined with the above data, the conclusion seems to be that U.S. efforts have confined the same or slightly greater effort by the insurgents to a smaller area. Given the nature of guerrilla warfare, which places a premium on mobility, surprise, and strategic choice of targets, this does not seem like much success.

After this debate, the U.S. embassy in Kabul wrote to offer me the RC/E helicopter tour. I'll take up the offer when I can, but my next trip (forthcoming soon) will be too short. Meanwhile, I wrote my correspondent in Kabul that "It's nice to know that when the government collapses in Kabul, at least Khost will still be secure." He wrote back to say, "You gave my my first laugh of the day, and it's 7 PM here." But he who laughs last....

Rubin: Against Holocaust Denial, Against Naqba Denial (Updated with letter from The Guardian)

I try to be friendly, I try to be kind.
Now I'm gonna drive you from your home, just like I was driven from mine.
Someday baby you ain't gonna worry po' me any more.

Bob Dylan, Someday Baby.

May 8, Israeli Independence Day, will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, an occasion to be marked in Israel and Jewish communities around the world with celebration. As always, Independence Day is preceded by Holocaust Remembrance Day (May 2) and Yom ha-Zikaron (Memorial Day, on May 7, in memory of those fallen for the state.

May 15 will mark the 60th anniversary of the Naqba (catastrophe), as Palestinians call the founding of Israel and their consequent defeat, expulsion, and exile. Palestinian and other communities will mark the day with mourning, protest, and anger.

The founding of Israel is often justified, at least partly, as reparation for the genocide of European Jews by the German Nazi regime. For many Jews, the creation of this state redeems, if anything can (and in my view it can't) not only that ultimate atrocity, but also the entire history of Jewish suffering and persecution, seen as a prelude to national rebirth.

Of course the Nazi genocide and all the rest of the history of persecution of the Jews does not and cannot provide any moral justification for punishing Palestinian Arabs. (When I mentioned this in a previous post, a commenter listed various incidents in history where Jews have suffered in Muslim countries. Of course such incidents occurred. But Palestinians are no more guilty of the 1840 blood libel of Damascus, not to mention various outbreaks in 12th and 11th century Cordoba and Granada, than they are of the Holocaust. Palestinian Arabs began to attack Jews only after the Zionist movement began its efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.)

Nonetheless, a few anti-Zionists (notably President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran) have resorted to denial of the historical fact of the Holocaust in order to undermine one of the justifications for the Jewish state. Some non-Jews may not understand how painful, threatening, and offensive this denial of history is. It is like denial of our our own experience, which validates our very existence.

I learned of the Holocaust as a child. When I was 12 or 13, a friend's father, all of whose family had been killed, told us sitting on his lawn one night what it felt like to be whipped at Auschwitz. In the Jewish Day School I attended, we saw Nazi documentary footage of the Warsaw Ghetto, including piles of starving bodies. When my grandfather died, my great aunt found letters in Yiddish in the basement informing his father (after whom I am named) of the death of his sisters, who had stayed behind in Balti, Bessarabia. (This area was in Russia when my great-grandfather left it around 1900. It became part of Romania after World War I and the Russian Revolution, and was joined to the USSR as the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic after World War II. Today it is part of the Republic of Moldova. The violent peregrination of ethno-national borders in Eastern-Central Europe is not as irrelevant to this story as may first appear -- the same process is now going on in many other places, Israel-Palestine among them.)

I also learned about Israel and Zionism as a child. I learned that the Jewish settlers in Palestine scrupulously respected the rights of the few Arabs who lived in the mostly abandoned country, buying whatever land they obtained for a fair market price. I learned that the corrupt shaikhs and bureaucrats stirred up the common people against the Jews because they feared the ideology of equality, democracy, and socialism that they were bringing. I learned that the international community recognized the right of Jews to a homeland in establishing the British Mandate over Palestine after the defeat of the Ottomans, but that anti-Semitic British officials favored the Arabs, even while the Jews of Europe were being massacred by Hitler. I learned that in 1948, after the establishment of the State of Israel by the United Nations, and the declaration of Independence by the Yishuv (the political organization of the Jewish settlers in Palestine) the new Israeli government urged all Arabs to remain in their homes, where they would be protected as equal citizens of the State of Israel, but that the reactionary Arab regimes, which were trying to destroy the new state, broadcast repeated calls to the Arabs of Palestine to flee until the Jews were destroyed, and that most of the Arabs carried out this instruction, showing their bad intentions. The Jewish state miraculously survived and then rescued the Jews of the entire Arab and Muslim world from persecution. It brought these communities to Israel, while the Arabs and their supporters refused to accept this exchange of populations. Instead they preferred to use the Palestinian refugees as political tools.

In other words, I learned to deny the Naqba. My subsequent reading and experience have led me to conclude that the account I learned of the founding of Israel, is not much closer to the truth than the claim that the deaths at Auschwitz were mostly due to disease and war conditions. Of course some people in concentration camps did die of disease and war conditions.
Arab leaders certainly exploited the Palestinians for political gain. But the denial of the Naqba that I learned is, I imagine, as painful, threatening, and offensive to Palestinians as denial of the Holocaust is to Jews.

(I am not equating the Holocaust and the Naqba. Murdering an entire population is worse than expelling most of a population from their homes, treating those who remain as second-class citizens, occupying more of their land, and repressing them through military reprisals, mass detentions, blockades, and targeted killings. Racist genocide is worse than nationalist ethnic cleansing. But no action can be justified on the grounds that even worse actions are possible).

This is not an issue for historians. It is one of the core issues blocking a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is the issue that prevents Hamas from offering to recognize Israel. It is the issue that makes Israel resist any recognition, however symbolic, of the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founder of Hamas, referred to this dispute in his recent Op-Ed in the Washington Post. After recounting the killing of his two sons and his son-in-law, he signaled his recognition of the Holocaust by comparing the resistance of Gazans to that of the Warsaw Ghetto. But he added:

Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime at the core of the Jewish state -- the violent expulsion from our lands and villages that made us refugees -- to slip out of world consciousness, forgotten or negotiated away.

Naqba denial is as non-negotiable to Palestinians as Holocaust denial is to Jews.

[But Hamas is a terrorist organization! I can't spend time here exploring all the hypocrisies surrounding the word "terrorist." Suffice it to say that I never heard an American official apply it to the Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s, though their missiles caused far more civilian deaths in Kabul than missiles from Gaza or South Lebanon have in Israel. I am totally opposed to killing civilians for political purposes, either intentionally or because the attacker cannot be bothered to avoid it. But I am also against using that principled opposition to evade accountability for other kinds of crimes.]

We need a common history so that we can have a common future. Here's my outline:

Zionism arose as Jewish nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century as ethno-nationalism of other groups threatened the Jews of the Hapsburg and Russian empires. The European struggles over creating nations and states in that region resulted in both World Wars, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing of Germans from much of Eastern Europe, the ethnic cleansing of much of Yugoslavia, and mass migrations of many groups to create the more homogeneous states that exist there today. Ideologically, Zionism was one of several alternatives open to the Jews of Europe. The Dreyfus Affair convinced Theodor Herzl (from the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary) that liberal integration would fail. Some turned to nationalism, and others to socialism. The largest number, including my ancestors, found an apolitical solution in emigration to the U.S. or elsewhere.

Simultaneously, the Ottoman Empire, like its European counterparts, was becoming weakened by international competition and internal nationalist movements. The weakening of the Ottomans opened the possibility for European Jews to settle in Palestine as part of a nationalist movement rather than, as previously, as religious pilgrims. To an extent that those unfamiliar with Jewish texts might not appreciate, the "Land of Israel" occupied and occupies a central place in the Jewish imagination. Three times a day religious Jews prayed for God to return them to the land from which they had been exiled, and in times of national catastrophe, chiliastic or messianic movements had repeatedly formed around a return to the land. Zionism provided a secular national transformation of this cultural pattern, and therefore melded Jewish nationalism (a new phenomenon) with the messianic passion of the return.

Palestinian Arabs (and most of the rest of the world) were not aware of these currents, nor, quite understandably, did they conclude that because of these beliefs they should allow a group of foreigners to form a state on their land. Britain could call on related Biblical narratives in sympathy with the plan for a Jewish National Home in Palestine, though strategic objectives (desire for a friendly population near the Suez Canal) certainly played a role.

Jews were persecuted, even massacred, in much of Europe, but they largely shared the European assumption that Western colonialism represented progress, and that the decision by the League of Nations to award a Mandate over Palestine to Britain, including the creation of a Jewish National Home, was a legitimate and binding decision in international law. In Palestine as elsewhere the subjects of colonial rule had a different perspective.

The creation of Israel was part of the global redrawing of borders, forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, imperial breakdown, and genocide that overwhelmed much of the world during and after World War II. As the Jewish state was established in Palestine, resulting in war and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, a Muslim state, Pakistan, was carved out of India, leading to far bloodier wars and many more deaths. Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and elsewhere, by virtue of their affiliation to the former occupier. Serbs, Croats, Albanians and others in and around Yugoslavia started the process of ethnic cleansing that continues today. The USSR seized territory from all the states to its west, with huge concomitant population transfers. These are just a few random examples. The formation of ethno-nationalist states through violence and population transfer was the rule rather than the exception -- which did not make it any more legitimate or tolerable for its victims.

In this general violent upheaval of nationalism, Jewish survivors were not welcome in their former homes and were even massacred at times on their return. The victorious countries of World War II, including the US, still emerging from both Depression and wartime deprivation, were not willing to open their borders to millions of refugees. As after other historical incidents of disaster (the various Jewish Naqbas) a movement (with messianic components such as the teachings of Rav Kook) arose around the return to the land, this time taking the form of nationalism. What happened in Palestine was nothing unusual -- it was happening all over the world. National movements recruited desperate, idealistic, devoted, cruel, thoughtful, and thoughtless people in service of creating states on territories by excluding others. After all they had been through, the Jews would not rely on anyone else for their security, and if their desperate and heroic act of national revival created other victims, it was up to the rest of the world to compensate them.

Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and others in the colonial world narrated these events as part of a different story. The European powers that won the war were also the major colonial powers and used their domination of the United Nations and the world scene to create a state in Palestine without consulting its inhabitants, who naturally resisted. Some saw this as part of an ongoing struggle of Muslims against their enemies, who aimed to destroy them.

Perhaps if the Arab states, still emerging from colonial domination themselves, had been stronger and had more resources, they could have reached an agreement that would include absorption of the Palestinian refugees, as Germany accepted the repatriated Germans or India and Pakistan accepted each others' refugees. But these countries were insecure and poor themselves. Their populations, and most of all, the Palestinians themselves would not accept it. Nor was there any reason that they should. No people is obliged to surrender its sovereignty and security to redress wrongs committed by others. Every person has the same individual human rights that the world affirmed (if hypocritically) largely in response to the Holocaust itself. Among these basic rights, included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (passed by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948) is the "right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." There is no exception for Palestinian refugees. But it wasn't enforced for Jews or many others. Why for them? But this is not a question likely to interest Palestinians expelled from their homes and still living under occupation or as refugees 60 years later.

That was the "foundational crime" of which Dr. al-Zahar wrote. I propose a reframing: the Jews and the Palestinians are joint victims of the Holocaust and the Naqba, of the history of nationalism, racism, and colonialism, from which we are all suffering. They should jointly demand of the rest of the world assistance and support in finding a way out of this tragedy.

Therefore: no to Holocaust denial, no to Naqba denial. There are still plenty of difficult issues to resolve. But let's start with the tragic truth.

Update: From the Guardian:

We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary

In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.

In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.

In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.

In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.

We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.

Seymour Alexander
Ruth Appleton
Steve Arloff
Rica Bird
Jo Bird
Cllr Jonathan Bloch
Ilse Boas
Prof. Haim Bresheeth
Tanya Bronstein
Sheila Colman
Ruth Clark
Sylvia Cohen
Judith Cravitz
Mike Cushman
Angela Dale
Ivor Dembina
Dr. Linda Edmondson
Nancy Elan
Liz Elkind
Pia Feig
Colin Fine
Deborah Fink
Sylvia Finzi
Brian Fisher MBE
Frank Fisher
Bella Freud
Catherine Fried
Uri Fruchtmann
Stephen Fry
David Garfinkel
Carolyn Gelenter
Claire Glasman
Tony Greenstein
Heinz Grunewald
Michael Halpern
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Anna Hellman
Amy Hordes
Joan Horrocks
Deborah Hyams
Selma James
Riva Joffe
Yael Oren Kahn
Michael Kalmanovitz
Paul Kaufman
Prof. Adah Kay
Yehudit Keshet
Prof. Eleonore Kofman
Rene Krayer
Stevie Krayer
Berry Kreel
Leah Levane
Les Levidow
Peter Levin
Louis Levy
Ros Levy
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky
Catherine Lyons
Deborah Maccoby
Daniel Machover
Prof. Emeritus Moshe Machover
Miriam Margolyes OBE
Mike Marqusee
Laura Miller
Simon Natas
Hilda Meers
Martine Miel
Laura Miller
Arthur Neslen
Diana Neslen
Orna Neumann
Harold Pinter
Roland Rance
Frances Rivkin
Sheila Robin
Dr. Brian Robinson
Neil Rogall
Prof. Steven Rose
Mike Rosen
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead
Leon Rosselson
Michael Sackin
Sabby Sagall
Ian Saville
Alexei Sayle
Anna Schuman
Sidney Schuman
Monika Schwartz
Amanda Sebestyen
Sam Semoff
Linda Shampan
Sybil Shine
Prof. Frances Stewart
Inbar Tamari
Ruth Tenne
Martin Toch
Tirza Waisel
Stanley Walinets
Martin White
Ruth Williams
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Devra Wiseman
Gerry Wolff
Sherry Yanowitz

Rubin and Ignatius Debate Afghanistan on the NewsHour (Updated)

I appeared tonight on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in a segment on Afghanistan. Margaret Warner interviewed me along with the Washington Post's David Ignatius, back from a one-week tour of Afghanistan escorted by the U.S. embassy and military. He claims to have reported only what he saw with his own eyes, but he does not understand even what he saw with his own eyes very well.

For instance, he claims that thanks to the wonderful counter-insurgency work of the U.S. in Afghanistan's Regional Command/East, the area is more secure. No doubt his hosts took him to the most secure areas. Data I posted from an independent source show that insurgent attacks in the first quarter of 2008 in the Eastern Region were up 30 percent over last year, only slightly less than the nationwide increase of 38 percent. Not only that -- although the NewsHour discussed only the attack on President Karzai at the April 29 Mujahidin Victory Day celebration in Kabul, here's what was going on at the same time in a part of RC/E that David Ignatius did not visit:

Taliban militants killed 19 Afghans, including seven civilians, and wounded 41 more in a suicide bomb attack on a drug eradication team in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said.

The Taliban have vowed to step up suicide attacks this year, to undermine the faith of Afghans in the ability of their government to provide security and to sap support in the West for the continued presence of international troops in the country.

The bomber targeted an opium poppy eradication team led by the district chief, tribal elders and police officers as they left the local government headquarters in Khogiani, a town south of the city of Jalalabad, close to the Pakistan border.

Gunmen opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades following the suicide attack, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Twelve police officers and seven civilians were killed, the Interior Ministry said. Two Australian journalists were also among the wounded, the ABC broadcaster said on its Web site.

The eradication of course is carried out under very heavy US and UK pressure. As I have argued on this blog and elsewhere, poppy crop eradication, not poppy cultivation, drives rural communities to ally with the Taliban.

I thought that after all the scandals about journalists misleading the public by repeating government leaks and press releases and "reporting" from escorted tours, major journalists like columnists at the Washington Post would have learned something. Apparently not. Repetition of government propaganda without independent investigation or analysis does not constitute journalism. Readers can decide what it does constitute.

Listen to the program (Real Audio), or watch it (streaming video).

Update (May 1): Scott Horton links to this in his comment on The Afghan Opium Dreams of David Ignatius. Happy Mission Accomplished Day!

People and Power - The Iranian Campaign

Farideh Farhi

People and Power is the name of the documentary made by Kouross Esmaeili about the Majles elections that just took place in Iran. It was apparently shown on Aljazeera but you can find its Part I and Part II on youtube. I think it is a well done documentary, showing aspects of Iranian politics not usually seen in the Western media. Interviews are done with candidates in Tehran from different political inclinations (conservative, independent conservative, and reformist). You can also listen to the arguments these candidates use to talk to their constituents and the impact US threats of military action against Iran has on these arguments.

Just in case you are interested, among the candidates shown in this documentary only the conservative candidate (Hamid Rassai) made it to the parliament. But he made it only in the second round and with mere 270,000 votes. In the first round in which 1.9 million people voted he was not able to receive the necessary 25 percent of the ballots cast. In the second round, however, only 730,000 people voted in the city of Tehran, allowing him to garner the necessary numbers to be among the top vote getters. According to the interior minister the number of eligible voters in Tehran is about 5.2 million people (others have said it is about 6.4 million). So Rassai managed to make it to the parliament with about 5 percent or less of the total number of eligible voters in Tehran. Low voter turnout in Tehran in fact helped conservative candidates gain 29 of the 30 seats in the capital. But Mohammad Ali Ramin, Ahmadinejad's close confidante, received only 15,000 votes in the first round and never made it to the second round.

Rubin: Debate on Commitment to Afghanistan

The current (May-June 2008) issue of The American Interest includes a debate on long-term strategy in Afghanistan. Army Colonel Thomas Lynch argues that only a long-term U.S.-Afghanistan security treaty, combined with reassertion of the U.S. lead of the international forces, will stabilize the country by signaling to all and sundry that the U.S. will not leave. I respond that unilateral commitments will only provoke more resistance from Afghans and regional powers, and that Afghan stability ultimately depends on lowering the level of threat through multilateral diplomacy and political negotiations.

Such debates are a regular feature of this relatively new journal.

I received a fascinating and detailed critique of both articles from an international official whose contribution will have to remain anonymous. I will post it as soon as it can be adequately sanitized.

Rubin: NWFP Peace Plan Tabled

Khalid Aziz, head of the Awami National Party Task Force in Peshawar has published a preview of the peace plan to be set before the Northwest Frontier Province (Paskhtunkhwa) Provincial Assembly in the coming days. The plan proposes a "multi-dimensional approach," rather than focusing lopsidedly on the military:

The plan . . . is a mid-term three- year proposal costing about $4 billion and aims at reducing the insurgency by 30 per cent. Its other objectives are the reduction of attacks on security forces, sharply curtailing suicide bombings, the retrieval of physical space lost to the militants and re-establishing the writ of the state.

Some of the highlights of the plan are: an increase of 14,000 men in the police and the constabulary, establishment of permanent regional religious peace conferences, and regulating the entry and qualification of prayer leaders. A Rs600 million rural endowment fund will be established for mobilisation of 4,000 village peace committees. Besides their role in securitisation of rural areas, they will work in tandem with other rural organisations for distribution of micro credit and other services.

Five hundred madressahs will be upgraded for imparting marketable skills to students. One of the core programmes is the rehabilitation of 12,000 former militants. To reduce poverty, 7,000 new jobs per annum are planned for educated youths. More than ten thousand new daily wages jobs will be provided through implementation of infrastructure projects.

Implementing the plan will require aid from the u.S., Saudi Arabia, and other donors. Aziz also suggests that it should provide a much needed occasion for the U.S. to rethink its approach to the terrorist threat:

The debate on the peace plan provides an opportunity to positively influence the security policies of the US in this region. If global security requires Pakistan to remedy a socio-political crisis emerging from an Islamist movement in Pakistan, then, in all fairness, it must be ensured that an indigenous Pakistani plan is used for solving the problem. Only a few days ago, the US accountability office criticised the US executive branch and stated: "The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan"s FATA." It then went on to say that the US relied on the Pakistani military to address US national security goals.

I will provide further documentation on this plan and related plans for the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies as it becomes available. Meanwhile I strongly recommend Aziz's article.

I previously commented on the GAO Report to which Aziz refers, as did the Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Rubin: Negotiate with Bitter Pashtuns who Cling to Religion, Guns

[In response to comments: Warning! Title and text may contain irony. Read at your own risk. In case of outrage, read links and think it over.] Ten days ago the new Chief Minister of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province (soon to be renamed Pakhtunkhwa) gave his inaugural speech to the Provincial Legislative Assembly. He promised that "in the next session of the provincial assembly we shall present a comprehensive peace plan for our province." He promised to look for "a negotiated settlement to the problem of militancy" despite "many rejectionists at local, regional and international levels with various agendas and positions who might jeopardize the process."

At least somebody is working on a plan. The U.S Government's General Accountability Office (which, unaccountably, has continued to operate through the current administration) has issued a report entitled "Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas." Unlike, say, the "Patriot Act" or the "Protect America Act," in this case the title provides an accurate summary of the contents.

The report provides a lot of evidence to back up the title, but in case you would like a simple summary of what the GAO means by lack of a "comprehensive" plan, take a look at this breakdown of U.S. expenditures in the border regions of Pakistan:

This might be what Chief Minister Hoti had in mind by "rejectionist," but a more accurate term might be "oblivionist." Note the amount spent to support political reform: 0%.

Some U.S. commanders are now pressing for more attacks by the U.S. inside FATA. For now, the administration has decided not to jeopardize relations with Pakistan's new democratic government by undermining its policy before it can even formulate it. There is indeed a serious question of how to balance the time required for a political solution that will isolate al-Qaida and eliminate its safe area permanently, and the potentially urgent threat posed by militants who are undermining the international effort in Afghanistan (not just a US effort) and may strike in Europe or even the U.S. again. For a balanced assessment of this problem, we turn to Peshawar, Pakistan, where Khalid Aziz, former chief secretary of NWFP, is responsible for much of the strategic thinking going into the government's peace plan.

Aziz recently outlined his ideas in a conference paper and discussed the obstacles to implementing them in an article published today in Pakistan's The News. He notes the somber background: apparently the situation is even worse than in Pennsylvania small towns:

If a "class" and regional analysis of the insurgency is made, it will show that it is based on support of conservatives, who inhabit the poverty stricken and under-developed regions of the NWFP and tribal areas. In the NWFP, more than 33% and in FATA more than 45% of the population lives on or below the poverty line composed of those who earn $1 or less per day.

The liberal economic development model followed in Pakistan since the late 1980s and based on diminishing public expenditure on education and health has forced a sizeable population to seek the services of madressahs and Islamic charities for their basic needs. A large majority of such persons are committed followers of the Islamist. This is the flip side of the liberal model of economic development and globalisation.

Another significant social transformation of the 1980s was our involvement in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. It was the emergence of "Jihadism" as the preferred Pakistani state policy. This ballooned with help from international Islamic charities, many of which focused on NWFP and FATA. This was a shift from state responsibility to private actors.

The war in Afghanistan brought an immense amount of money and weaponry to this lightly policed and institutionally weak region. According to a reputable estimate, from 1979 to 1992, the Afghan-Pakistan duo received $66 billion worth of weapons from various countries!

Thus a conservative Pakhtun society living in poverty was financially enriched and weaponised.

Aziz describes the combination of hope and fear aroused by the Chief Minister's promise to find a peaceful solution:

To those who listened it sounded too good to be true! People wished to know basis of the optimism behind these stirring words. They wondered whether the hard non-state fighters, who were involved in war, could be swayed by rhetoric alone. They were also aware that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [Taliban Movement of Pakistan] has laid down impractical pre-conditions before participation. These include the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, withdrawal of the Pakistani military from FATA, and non-interference in the jihad against US forces in Afghanistan. At the same time the US has said that it has no intention of withdrawing from Afghanistan in the near future. Therefore, can any peace plan succeed in the face of such rigidities?

On the other hand the Feb 18 election has clearly indicated that the people of Pakistan voted against militarism and violence. The Taliban recognise that resort to force alone will not lead to the achievement of their main political objective which is the creation of an Islamist Caliphate.

However, while everyone waits for good sense to prevail, there may be forces amongst the non-state fighters planning another strike in the West. If that happens, one may be certain of an air war in FATA and this could lead to incalculable harm to Pakistan. This in a nutshell is the danger surrounding the process of talks. . . .

Many conservative Pakhtuns believe that the fighting in Swat, Kohat and Waziristan is a war of liberation against US occupation of Afghanistan; they fight the Pakistani state because of its alliance with the US. However, it does not make it a US war alone. Whatever may be the case at the start, this is now Pakistan's war, since the objective of the insurgents is to change the nature of the Pakistani state. To fellow Pakistanis I would say that it is our war, whether we like it or not.

Compare what Aziz has written to General Musharraf's speech on September 19, 2001, when he told Pakistan that his aim was to "save Afghanistan and Taliban." What Musharraf said in that speech was that supporting the war against the Taliban was the "lesser of two difficulties," compared to driving the U.S. into the arms of India. All negotiations with militants pursued by Musharraf's government had as their aim to balance the imperative of acting against al-Qaida with that of saving the Taliban as a strategic asset for Pakistan.

Aziz says the opposite: the Taliban and other militants are fighting "to change the nature of the Pakistani state," and that therefore "It is our war, whether we like it or not." Negotiations in support of the expansion of democracy and federalism in Pakistan are not the same as negotiations in support of balancing military action against al-Qaida with preservation of the Afghan Taliban. The program of the new government in Pakistan and NWFP, unlike that of Musharraf, corresponds to the aspirations of the majority of people in the NWFP and FATA, including many conservatives, and it can win their support. If negotiations do not suffice to disarm the militants, the required military action, in support of an elected government trying to extend democracy and social services, will gain far more domestic support in Pakistan than Musharraf's balancing act ever could have. This government of Pakistan has articulated goals consistent with international objectives in the region and believes in pursuing negotiations in support of those goals without abandoning its own vision of a stable democratic Pakistan at peace with its neighbors.

Khalid Aziz and others like him are developing the "comprehensive plan" to uproot terrorism from the border regions of Pakistan. As part of our assistance, we should follow the advice of Lt.-General David Barno:

In Congressional testimony this month, a former top American commander in Afghanistan said the need for more action was urgent. “A senior member of the administration needs to go to Pakistan and take the intelligence we have on Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani network inside of Pakistan and lay it out for their most senior leadership,” said the retired commander, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno.

He said the American envoy should “show them exactly what we know about, what they don’t know about what’s going on in their tribal areas and say, this is not a tolerable situation for you nor for us.”

“And,” he added, “we need to sit down and think through what we can collectively do about this.”

I'm not sure what the new government supposedly does not know about; in my experience the Pashtun nationalists had better intelligence than what I heard from the US government. But we now have a full partner in Pakistan, elected, ironically enough, by Pakistani voters angry at what the GAO calls the "lack of a comprehensive plan," rather than just a military approach. It is indeed time to "sit down and think through what we can collectively do" with these partners.

LET ONE HUNDRED BOYCOTTS BLOOM!

PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM


Boycott CNN! Boycott Carrefour! Boycott anyone who boycotts the Olympics!

Boycotts are a blunt instrument, albeit drawn from the trusty democratic toolbox. That boycott fever seems to be the mood on the streets of China these days is a testament to how discontent with domestic problems has been eclipsed by disappointment with the West.

When China is weak, the country is ridiculed, exploited, and poked fun of. When China is strong, the country is ridiculed, exploited and poked fun of. “What do you want from us?” is the question of the moment, to borrow the title of a funny and oddly moving bit of guerilla video by “a silent Chinese”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rApn09pRZCk) about the frustration of being continually looked down upon. It chronicles a century of humiliation at the hands of the West, ironically set to the tune of Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

China, isolated and ostracized for decades because of its rejection of capitalism and a Western-dominated economic system, at last abandons its homegrown revolutionary system for an open-door, pro-business, pro-trade system, abiding by rules created by others, joining international organizations dominated by others. Chinese doff the dusty Mao jacket and communal economic arrangements to imitate the West.

What is imitation if not a kind of flattery? China’s nouveau riche don the suit and tie, imbibe the MBA and CEO lifetyle, they sip champagne and smoke cigars in five-star hotel lobby and trade tips on golf courses likeWestern businessmen—and they still get no respect. And if the most powerful people in China get no respect, imagine how the ordinary people feel.

Lack of respect is central to the informal eruptions of popular Chinese anger in the street in recent years, whether it be anti-Japan, anti-France or anti-CNN movements. Whether the issue at hand is being portrayed as willing idiots in Japanese textbooks, or being treated with dismissive disdain by the French President or being manipulated by US government backed destabilizers such as the National Endowment for Democracy, Radio Free Asia and the CIA-tinged Free Tibet movement, the resentment is real.

Beijing’s Olympic bid is hard won and ordinary Chinese people have made considerable sacrifices; not just incessant labor and heavy infrastructure investment, but spiritual sacrifices as well. Chinese have been called on by their own leaders, no less than foreign ones, to give-up a traditional way of doing things in favor adopting the norms of a global capitalist system dominated by powerful Western actors. It’s a system in which the rich get richer, as can be seen in America and increasingly in China. No wonder boycotts make businessmen nervous.

How can you keep your head up when you are asked to reject your own way of life but are not fully accepted by the arbitrers of the new rules? Japan felt this way after the heyday of Meiji and Taisho era Westernization; no matter what it did it could never really join the Western club. Angered at Western racism, documented and affirmed by W.E.B DuBois among others, Japan in the Showa era came up with a racist response of its own, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

It is not because Chinese are arrogant and