On Gaza

I am the child of Iranian refugees who lost everything, even their children, to Islamists like Hamas. My ability to write these words is a defiance of the horrors of Hamas and Islamism, which I consider one and the same. The victims of Hamas’s terror, the victims of all Islamist violence including my family, deserve my voice and I’ll always speak up for them.

My grandparents converted to a religion even more marginalized in Iran, Baha’i, for whom it is illegal to practice, inherit property, or attend university. Whether courageous and savvy, or bold and lucky, my grandma sent my dad to school in England, paving a path out of soon-to-be Islamist Iran. They left behind all property and savings, including my optometrist grandpa’s glasses factories, to pursue a life better than pariahs born on the wrong side of the fence. I still remember getting glasses every birthday despite being the only Adell with 20/20 vision.

My mom relinquished custody of my half-brother and half-sister to escape an abusive child marriage and moved to the US while my siblings endured the Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran Hostage Crisis, the US revoked my mom’s visa and deported her to the UK, where she was visiting her Baha’i boyfriend. The UK granted her asylum and she married that boyfriend, eventually reuniting the family in the US many years later. She documented her story in “Leaving Darkness”, her indictment of Sharia law.

I was born of conflict, and everything I know about conflict, I’ve seen reflected in the Middle East. I’ve long understood that the Middle East is the ultimate test of whether we can transcend conflict, or whether conflict can unwittingly subsume even the most inoculated of us and fragment our humanity into something smaller, weaker, and inhumane.

“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” So it goes with my Middle East major at UVA, my trips to Israel and Palestine, my work in refugee camps and now as Chair at Children in Conflict.

While the history is complex, the answer to this test is not. It’s as obvious as a mountain, unseen through narrow geology or selective focus, but by beholding each story in this mountain of suffering equally. How we answer this test depends on whether we can unlearn our subhuman categories and see cruelty of any color as simplistically as it should be seen – whether we can reimagine this conflict through the eyes of a child – and recognize that neither Hamas’s horrific attacks nor Israel’s brutal response can ever be justified.

Now on the outside looking in, I’m reminded why my family can count itself far more fortunate than the countless families reeling from loss today. So what was it that allowed my family to defy what Islamism would have me be?

What saved my family and truly defied the Islamist worldview was a framework that recognized our humanity, categorically and without category, as more than an expendable means to a messianic end. Without the humanists who fought for secular, multiethnic liberal democracies, and the humanitarians who painstakingly built universal international institutions like asylum under the Refugee Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I’d be as trapped as Gaza’s children are today.

It’s those who help the victims, not those who hunt the victimizers, that truly undermine brutality. We should be helping families like mine and children like me defy what Hamas would have them be. Instead, we are unwittingly endorsing Hamas’s sectarian worldview and reenacting their script with a mirrored brutality that can be just as ugly. With each kidnapped, strip-searched, orphaned, dead or dismembered child – with every rebuttal to aid and protection for each and every child – we are failing, and Hamas’s brutality is winning.

Still, I maintain my hope that our community can stand apart and transcend this conflict rather than be subsumed by it. I hope we can reimagine this conflict through the eyes of a child, through which none of these horrors can be justified. Only adults impose subhuman categories that rationalize murdering, kidnapping, burning, bombing, and burying children alive, which is why through the eyes of a child, there are two sides far more consequential than our conventional “two sides”: those who agree that no child should be a part of war, and those who rationalize otherwise.

I know where Hamas stands, and sadly, I know where some purportedly anti-Hamas stand – curiously compatible in disparately weighing dead children as a means to an end. Make no mistake, protecting future generations from the horrors of Hamas is a righteous end. But if you wouldn’t supply these means by sacrificing children you know, then it’s time to confront whether Hamas has successfully shut your eyes to the equal value of human lives.

Still, I hope that even the most vindictive perspective, when confronted by the suffering of a child, can be persuaded to recall the lessons humanists and humanitarians have painstakingly enshrined in international law: collective punishment, starvation as a weapon of war, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are crimes no preceding brutality or lofty goal can justify. Regardless of history or adversary, we must not compromise on a redline that protects each and every child: No whataboutism, no excuses, no recriminations – no child should be a part of war.

Gaza is home to over 2 million people – more than Manhattan – almost half of whom are children. Over 1% or 28,000 have been killed and 3% or 67,500 injured, 70% of whom are women and children. 85% are displaced and all are under “complete siege” with an unreliable safe zone of 8 barren square miles – roughly the section of Manhattan containing Central Park.

Most have no home to return to, with 70% of homes and 20% of agricultural land damaged or destroyed. The World Food Programme (WFP) reports over 50% have severe levels of hunger and over 90% have inadequate nutrition. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports virtually all Gazans skip meals daily, and in half of households, family members go full days without food. Adults are starving so children can eat.

The senseless deaths become truly staggering when we consider the deaths we can’t count, as public health scholars estimate indirect deaths can outnumber direct deaths by more than 15:1. With some simple math, if 40% of the 24,620 deaths are children, then at 100 days into the conflict, even a 2:1 ratio would make the WHO’s warning of a child killed every 10 minutes a grim underestimate.

I’m a pedantic economist who loves nothing more than quibbling over statistics, but in this case, that would be a distraction designed to obscure the obvious: Children are dying in numbers that defy comprehension, and we are failing to protect them. And if none of this crosses your redline, then it’s time to ask yourself if you have one.

Through the eyes of a child trying to make sense of this suffering, history may be a sensible explanation but it’s a nonsense excuse, because there is no excuse. Through my family, education, and work, I’ve learned something about those who “rationalize otherwise”, and about the cycles of violence that unify the innocent victims of Hamas, Lehava, and all stripes of supremacists, white, Islamist, and Jewish alike.

Three successive dispossessed generations of my family – Jews, bourgeois, and Baha’is – weren’t victimized by warring tribes. They fell prey to victimizers that were blinded by the lie of warring tribes, and were subsumed by the primacy of some subhuman category below our shared humanity. My family and countless others fell victim to the lie that human rights – peace, freedom, and security – can be sustained exclusively rather than universally, and by one category’s supremacy rather than transcendence above categories.

And therein lies the ultimate compatibility of Hamas with every stripe of supremacist, from Gaza to Lydda to my alma mater in Charlottesville, Virginia. Supremacists prioritize their category instead of humanity, contrive opposing categories, and counterbalance disparately weighted dead children, all in the name of messianic delusions that are somehow never satisfied. Supremacists’ opposing categories – their primacy, oppositionality, and even ontology – are a lie. The wisdom of a child – a wisdom within ourselves – can see through that lie, but with each dead child, we are killing that wisdom.

Sadly, we are all victims of that lie, a lie we’ve all heard and may have even felt compelled to tell precisely when its adherents have harmed us most. As Yuval Noah Harari explains:

Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about and what my particular role is in the cosmic drama. This role makes me a part of something bigger than myself, and gives meaning to all my experiences and choices.

The supremacist story fits the bill but blinds us to the truth. And the truth is that there are no conflicting categories, no “two sides” more salient and enduring, more predictive and explanatory, than the two sides of any and all conflict the world over: universalists and supremacists, humanitarians and sectarians, humanists and dehumanizers.

Confronted by this collective realization, conflict as we know it cannot survive. This radical reframing puts too many of us on the same side and leaves too few to perpetuate the lie. This is why opposing sides will rally like allies against the threat of a new narrative, and why the most shocking attacks come not at the height of war, but at the precipice of peace.

This is why an Islamist killed Anwar Sadat, a Zionist killed Yitzhak Rabin, a Hindu nationalist killed Mahatma Gandhi, and the Nation of Islam killed Malcolm X. This is why Baruch Goldstein attacked to undermine the Oslo Accords, why Hamas attacked to thwart Saudi-Israel normalization, and how supremacists depend on each other to defend their lie.

If not for this well-versed final act, starved of mutually reinforcing human sacrifices, conflict would simply wither and die. Yet somehow, despite this recurring glimpse into supremacists’ compatibility, interdependence, and reveal by fratricide of their true two sides, this final act so often scores an encore. And amid a resurgence of suffering that only supremacists wanted, amid collective disillusionment with another failed attempt for peace, supremacists notch another excuse for their ready rebuttal: “It’s complicated.”

I majored in Foreign Affairs of the Middle East. My advisor was an architect of the Camp David Accords and literally wrote the book on the Peace Process. Sure, it’s complicated in that there are a lot of names, dates, and events. You can study a lifetime and still only learn a fraction of them. But despite what ethnic cleansers tell you about how little you understand, there’s no threshold of names and dates where you realize thousands of dead children makes sense.

It’s not complicated. That’s an obfuscation meant to keep you silent and complicit. It’s not complicated, especially not for children. “It’s complicated” is the chosen narrative of supremacists to indoctrinate children into roles as jailers and prisoners in a real-life Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes meets Stanford Prison Experiment, and to answer the obvious childish question: “Why?”

It’s not complicated when you see the narrative for what it is: a sham. The two sides aren’t Israel vs. Gaza, Israeli vs. Palestinian, or Arab vs. Jew, and by design, you’ll never gain moral clarity with that narrative because it’s a false narrative. No particular two sides will ever provide the moral clarity and simplicity of conflict’s true and enduring two sides: those who defend human rights for all, and those who rationalize otherwise. If you hate Hamas for being the latter, be wary you don’t mirror their supremacist lie.

Universal human rights, the equal value of human lives, and aid and protection for each and every child – these reflect a morality compatible with the innocence of a child, through whose eyes all rationalizations for inflicting pain essentially look the same. We all recognize there’s something special about a child. Children are born with an innate sense of morality, but a child is not born thinking in tribes. A child precedes the notion of a tribe.

For a child, difference is more likely to prompt curiosity than revulsion. Children haven’t yet accumulated the baggage of national myths. They’re not just more innocent than us; they’re smarter than us. That’s why, when eight-year-old Abdullah Jabr says “War is stupid, and I want it to end”, we should listen to him. And I think we’re all in this community because we agree.

No one, not even an eight-year-old, is so naïve to think pacifism will work in a world with ISIS, Hamas, Lehava, or Kahanism – a world with Islamist, Jewish, or any other brand of supremacist. But we need to stand with Abullah Jabr, defend his childhood, and agree with his anti-supremacist premise as our shared goal: “War is stupid, and we want it to end.”

So how do we help Abdullah Jabr? And just as important, how do we help the Israeli children trapped in Gaza like four-year-old Ariel Bibas and the youngest Hamas hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas? You can donate so Children in Conflict and War Child can provide psychosocial support and child-friendly programs. But more importantly, you can do your part to make the whole world a child-friendly space: Say loudly and proudly why you donate.

While our partners are calling for a ceasefire, I personally think “ceasefire” is just another word without nuance that a condemned child will never know. Just say what you believe: Call for a hostage release, call for an end to Hamas, but please, call to protect the children. If I’ve convinced you of anything, I hope it’s that there is no conflict in speaking for Gaza’s children too. Call for something, anything, compatible with what you’d wish for your own children, because we know it’s not this. Prioritize your shared humanity, demand human rights for all, and call for an end to collective punishment, starvation as a weapon of war, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure – crimes no preceding brutality or lofty goal can justify.

Reframe the “two sides” to what gravely matters for all children: those who agree that no child should be a part of war, and those who rationalize otherwise; and thus recognize that neither Hamas’s horrific attacks nor Israel’s brutal response can ever be justified. Reject disparately weighted dead children as an acceptable means to an end, refuse to let conflict subsume your humanity and shut your eyes to the equal value of human lives, and never compromise on a redline that protects each and every child: No child should be a part of war. Ever.

on refuge.

I flew today, hyperaware that as I walked, I breezed passed possible death sentences and machinery that would preclude my existence.

If you don’t think you know the victims, you do: a family torn apart down the block, a mother weeping on a call with exiled children, another fate sealed for a water-logged baby ready to wash ashore for your comfort.

There’s a child under the rubble, that were it not for today, might’ve been your friend. My existence once safely slipped through holes punched by the sympathy of strangers. This is an excerpt from my mom's upcoming book, Leaving Darkness:

When we landed at JFK, it was around ten at night. Tired and hungry, I stayed in line for nearly an hour as the immigration officers separated those who had a US passport from those of us who just had visas, then separated those who had Iranian passports from the rest of the passengers. We all knew something wasn’t right. After another hour of waiting, an immigration officer appeared looking angry and very unhappy. In no time, I witnessed what it meant to be discriminated against and what it means to be a refugee. Almost all of us got yelled at and passports were stamped with refused entry, visas were cancelled, and people were escorted to unknown places. I saw with my own two eyes grown men crying and women begging for some explanation. The officer kept telling them they had no legal rights in this country and to go back to where they came from. All of them who went to her station were in less than five minutes escorted out, disappearing into thin air. Then it was my turn. I have never seen so much resentment in someone’s eyes as I saw in that lady’s that night. She looked at me, then looked at my passport and screamed, “What are you doing in this country? Why don’t you go back to your Mullah Khomeini?”

I just froze for a second. I couldn’t move any part of my body, yet alone answer her question. Then I got a hold of myself and told her I couldn’t go back. Everybody was looking to see my reaction; it was humiliating beyond words. She then asked why it was that I couldn’t go back, so I told her I had worked for the government of the Shah, and also the prime minister, who had been executed. She asked me if I could prove it and I told her I had pictures with the executed prime minister and other officials who were executed by the same people who took the hostages. She then ordered me to go and stand in the corner of that waiting room until the airport police brought my suitcase. For half an hour, I was on pins and needles until my suitcase arrived. That lady officer, right in the middle of the airport, in front of everybody, took my suitcase by its handle and shook it in the air. When it was opened, all my belongings were scattered on the floor. I just looked at her for any sign of humanity, but I didn’t find any. She then ordered me to go find the pictures in the middle of that mess and give them to her. For some reason, I could not cry or show any sign of objection, so I obeyed her orders and wondered what the difference was between her misusing her power and those thugs in my own country that the West considered barbaric and inhumane.

While she was doing all this, one of the airport staff felt so sorry for me that he came and whispered in my ear, “You should ask for political asylum.” I had never heard such a word and didn’t understand its meaning. When the immigration officer found out that man had told me to apply for asylum, she became angrier and ordered him to follow her to a higher authority. All of us could hear her screaming at him. She came back with an airport police officer and told me I was being deported and that the police had to accompany me until the next flight going to England. I asked her if it was possible that I could get ticket to go to France instead and she said yes. I gave her close to $200 to buy me a ticket to France. She took the money, but paid for my ticket to England instead without telling me.

The police officer held my ticket and said he was giving it to me when I entered the plane. He was put in charge of me until then, and he sat by me awaiting the flight at 6 a.m. the next morning. I asked him if I could use the ladies’ room. He told me since he couldn’t go to the ladies’ room, it was not possible. I simply couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In about an hour, he asked me to follow him to a designated area of the airport that had rooms with bars as doors. He put me in one of the rooms and locked the door and I suddenly realized what a dangerous situation I was in and it was a lot more serious than I could ever imagine. No one knew where I was or what had happened to me. I was someone without a country, without legal rights or legal representation. I had no one to turn to and was totally at the mercy of strangers who were disgusted with the savagery of the hostage crisis in Iran. To them I was part of that uncivil, chaotic, and lawless country. None of my family knew where I was, assuming I was in England; in England, they were assuming I was in the US. I burst into tears. I was hungry, tired, humiliated, and needed so badly to go to the ladies’ room. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. The airport staff felt badly for me but no one could do anything. Eventually one of the lady officers in that designated area of airport staff accompanied me to the ladies’ room and then put me back in the detention room again.

The next morning at 5 a.m., the airport police accompanied me to the security checkpoint. Everybody was looking at me and wondering why I was escorted by the police. I looked anything but a criminal, yet I was being treated worse than one. After the search, they handed me my purse and the officer walked me onto the plane and handed me over to the air hostess. Eventually I got to my seat and assumed I was going to Paris. The flight attendant came to ask me if I wanted anything and I asked her the time of our arrival time in Paris. She looked at me surprised and told me we were going to London and not Paris. I was about to scream, but there was no use so after she left, I opened my purse to get a tissue when I noticed that all my cash had been stolen and I was left with close to $5 dollars! There are no words to describe my miserable situation. I was going to my death sentence. I totally understood how those people felt going to the electric chair. I cried and cried almost all the way back to London.

When we landed, my heart was pounding as though it was escaping my chest. The immigration officer looked at my passport and asked me why I came back so soon. I told him what happened and then he did the same and said by international law he too was going to deport me back to Iran on the next flight at 6 p.m. It was close to noon; I had only six hours left to live. They put me with a lot of other deported people from Iran, Pakistan, and India into a very small room that smelled so bad and the air was so thick you could touch it. It was nearly two days that I had nothing to eat and no sleep. I asked the police guard if I could make a call. He felt so bad for me, he told me if I could make it quickly and not tell anyone, I could.

I got some change from him and called that wealthy English girlfriend of mine. When she picked up the phone, as quickly as I could I explained my situation and begged her to do something or to find that young architect to tell him what was about to happen to me. Later, they told me what they really did for me. She immediately called her husband, explaining to him that I was going to be deported to Iran. He, knowing the situation in Iran, immediately called his lawyer in London and told him to represent me and to tell the British authorities that money was no object and he was ready to support me financially and they should not send me back to Iran, for if they did I would be killed or sent to prison. His lawyer called immigration explaining my situation and telling them that if I was sent back to Iran, there was a great chance that I would be executed and that they had to wait until the next day and he would come personally to London to get me. I don’t know if anybody can in any way explain why that man did such a charitable act of love for an unknown woman from another culture, but without a blink of his eye, he so generously offered all he could to save my life.

The immigration officer came to tell me personally that they would not send me back to Iran until the next day and that my fiancé was on his way to see me. I was so relieved I was not going back to Iran. By late in the afternoon, they put all the thirty of us in a bus and drove us to a building like a detention center. I couldn’t sleep in the room they gave me, which had two bunkbeds with four other women sleeping on them. I sat on a chair waiting for the morning to come. One of the guards felt sorry for me and gave me a glass of milk; he then took me to a private room to sleep in. In the morning, they put us all on the bus again to go back to the airport. In that bus, I was thinking of all the people who had no one to help them and who were going to get deported to the very country they were escaping. In the airport, they put us back into that small room again. I waited for three hours until my name was called. This time, they were more attentive and took me to a private room where I saw that young architect waiting for me. When I saw him, I just lost it and cried my heart out; he comforted me and then said that everything was set for me to apply for political asylum, explaining what that word really meant. In a very short time, three officials came to take me with them. That young architect asked if he could come with me to help me with my English, but they refused. It took nearly fourteen hours to be interviewed by those people from Scotland Yard. They eventually released me and told me I would hear from them sometime soon.

That young architect took me to a hotel and fed me after nearly three days of hunger. I collapsed on the hotel bed and passed out. I was not supposed to do anything or go anywhere and I had to stay under that young architect’s direct supervision until the authorities notified me as to whether I was granted political asylum. They even held my suitcase with all the documents that I’d ever possessed. That young architect took me under his care when I had no country, no identity, no money, no clothes, no means of support, no legal status anywhere in the whole world, and no other place to go but to his house. After we arrived in Newcastle, the next day that young architect’s brother gave me couple pairs of jeans and shirts to wear. His family were nice to me but in that town almost everyone knew about my situation, especially about that rich gentleman who got me the lawyer and told them that money was no object. They were all waiting anxiously to hear about my destiny. It took nearly four months until I got the call. I was granted political asylum and could stay in England as long as I lived! God had given me another country and I could feel safe and protected at last.

a caption for a captive (or "merkel streikt").

"There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. This legacy aspires to the shackling of [other] bodies. It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.



And should one live in such a body? What should be our aim beyond meager survival of constant, generational, ongoing battery and assault? I have asked this question all my life.



I have sought the answer through my reading and writings, through the music of my youth, through arguments with your grandfather, with your mother. I have searched for answers in nationalist myth, in classrooms, out on the streets, and on other continents. The question is unanswerable, which is not to say futile. The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, of confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from ghosts and myths."

-Ta-Nehisi Coates

here on a hill slope facing the sunset and the wide-gaping
gun barrel of time
near orchards of severed shadows
we do as prisoners and unemployed do:
we nurse hope.

something syria this way comes (finally).

Better 200,000 lives late than never…



Last night, Obama announced the US will intervene in Iraq and Syria under the authority granted by the AUMF:

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) In General. -- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements.
(1) Specific statutory authorization. -- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

Two years late at the most forgiving, and with the FSA on its last legs in Aleppo, maybe too late…

For over four years now, I’ve watched, hoped, and teared up as Syria bled, disintegrated, and hemorrhaged 10 million refugees. We should’ve been the FSA’s air force long ago, but instead I found myself envying my peers’ ability to otherize away others’ suffering: “You can’t help people by bombing them;” “We should lead by example here before we go there;” and “Iraq”. Always over and over again, “Iraq,” as though no humanitarian intervention could ever work again because “Iraq”.

America has spent the last few years paralyzed. In the pendulum swings of a fickle American worldview, hopelessly informed by its own narrow foreign policy experience, the lessons of 13 years ago seem lost. Emboldened by a war weary America wishfully pretending faraway suffering can remain forever far away, as it was pretending on the eve of the 11th, the scourge of Islamism has run rampant with impunity, more ascendant today than ever.

Advocating intervention in September 2012, I wrote:

Isolationism is never a good idea, unless you want a world that suffers recurring existential wars. Ignoring tyranny until it directly threatens America or Americans is a guaranteed way to allow expansionist ideologies to reach their apex before being confronted, not to mention espouses something of a nationalist moral double standard.

Now that the US has allowed ISIS’s brutal and expansionist ideology to grow substantially before being confronted, America is halfheartedly muddling to confront it.



Last night, Obama made a barely convincing case (for the second time). As Obama cited an ambiguous case for American exceptionalism – that America must intervene qua America, and Americans should support intervention qua Americans – I found myself so immured in sympathy to the Syrians qua humanity that an argument qua Americans seemed like some sort of strange aside.

As Obama launched into a tirade about America, he lost me, so let me make my own case for intervention. To quote my latest intellectual hero:

I am responsible even for those who are not in any form of contractual relationship with me, or who do not form part of my community, or my nation, or who are not covered by the same legal framework as me. This helps to understand, for example, how I can be responsible for those who live at a distance from me, who are under a different form of political organisation, or those who are stateless. In Levinas’ framework, even those we never meet, those whose names and faces we do not know, present us with a demand. It is, then, a question of accepting our global interdependence and even our obligation to protect the lives of those we do not know. For Levinas, this primary obligation is expressed through what we commonly call commandments, “Thou shall not kill”: a requirement to preserve life. This does not mean that I can or should preserve the life of every individual (of course I cannot do so, and to imagine I could would be unhealthy, it would imply some sort of narcissism, a certain messianism), but rather that I should think about what kind of political structures we need to sustain life and minimise those forms of violence that extinguish it. This does not mean I am capable of making these structures come into existence - responsibility is not the same as efficacy - but rather that I can fight for a world that maximises the possibility of preserving and sustaining life and minimises the possibility of those forms of violence that, illegitimately, take life, or at least reduce the conditions that make it possible for this to happen. –Judith Butler

To make a case around seperable American interests is nonsensical; there can be no difference between my interests and another’s in the realm of universals, because universality entails inseparability. While politically unpalatable, America is not the indispensible nation to the extent the world submits, America is indispensible to the extent it submits to the world, in service of universal human rights and liberal internationalism.

Narrowing what constitutes America’s interests away from universality and into a shortsighted opposition is a recurring habit of political convenience. America as opposition once led the US to declare victory in Afghanistan when communism was defeated, and abandon an illiberal Afghanistan to a breeding ground for Al Qaeda. That same narrowing has more recently caused us to abandon Libya, Iraq, and Syria, and move the goal posts away from universal liberalism and towards wherever history happens to stand when people become impatient.

Haughty words can evoke the right emotions, but they can’t write the right history, a history in which Syria and Iraq are secular, liberal, and free from both ISIS and Assad. Last night’s speech is a start, but a speech can’t force America to fight for its ideals, rightly defined as unambiguously liberal and inherently universal. The dialectic is still obsessed with difference: who America fights against, but not who or what America fights for.

While many spent today thinking of 2,000 Americans that died 13 years ago, I thought of the 200,000 Syrians that didn’t have to. Still, a liberal Syria remains unspoken, and while we refuse to speak of what we fight for, we are universally and chronically haunted by what we must fight against.

sadomonetarism?

It’s okay, Krugman, I get it. You’ve got the best of intentions, but bias is our blindspot and we all do it. Really though, it’s a hell of a stretch to argue that the rich don’t benefit from loose monetary policy:

“Quite simply, easy-money policies, while they may help the economy as a whole, are directly detrimental to people who get a lot of their income from bonds and other interest-paying assets — and this mainly means the very wealthy, in particular the top 0.01 percent.”

Interest income is only (less than?) half the picture. The whole picture has to include capital gains. QE drives up financial asset prices, which shores up balance sheets, confidence, and thus economic recovery. But guess who typically has financial assets? Hint: it’s not people living from paycheck-to-paycheck.

“As you can see on page 26 of this Fed report, the median American family in the middle income bracket has about $19,900 in financial wealth. By contrast, the median family in the top income bracket has $423,800 in financial wealth. So any move by the Fed to push up asset prices is likely to increase wealth inequality in the short term.” -Washington Post

QE increases inequality. A simple Google search shows this is more than the general consensus, and even the Fed implicitly admits it. Not sure where Krugman’s coming from on this one, aside from his desire to conjure an evil straw man stymying his policy preferences:

“It turns out, however, that using monetary policy to fight depression, while in the interest of the vast majority of Americans, isn’t in the interest of a small, wealthy minority.”

While I support aggressively accommodative monetary policy, I do so in spite of inequality, for which fiscal policy should compensate. While I want what Krugman wants, I don’t want it advanced on false merit, especially if it weakens the necessary impetus for complementarily “accommodative” fiscal policy.

untitled.

"Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love. Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot enter into dialogue."

"A deeply political knowledge of the world does not lead to a creation of an enemy. Indeed, to create monsters unexplained by circumstance is to forget the political vision which above all explains behavior as emanating from circumstance, a vision which believes in a capacity born to all human beings for creation, joys, and kindness, in a human nature which, under the right circumstances, can bloom.

When a movement for liberation inspires itself chiefly by a hatred for an enemy rather than from this vision of possibility, it begins to defeat itself. Its very notions cease to be healing. Despite the fact that it declares itself in favor of liberation, it’s language is no longer liberatory. It begins to require a censorship within itself. Its ideas of truth become more and more narrow. And the movement that began with a moving evocation of truth begins to appear fraudulent from the outside, begins to mirror all that it says it opposes, for now it, too, is an oppressor of certain truths, and speakers, and begins, like the old oppressors, to hide from itself."

-bell hooks

something syria this way comes. (continued.)

A couple months ago, I posted that an intervention was imminent. Okay, well now it's really imminent, but way too late. The way I see it, the US and the West really dropped the ball on Syria. (Should've dropped the bombs sooner.)

When the revolution began in Syria, it hadn't taken on the sectarian and extremist tone it has now. The rebels were split between moderate Islamists (like the Muslim Brotherhood) and good old-fashioned secular liberals. Had they won a swift victory, I think you would've seen a Libya-like success story with a moderate democratic government replacing Assad. The US could've made it happen at pretty low cost, and would've garnered a ton of both loyalty and credibility with the incoming regime, and likewise the incoming regime could've benefited from US advice and backing. (Not to mentions tens of thousands of lives would've been saved.)

Back in November 2011-ish, the rebels were basically a united Free Syrian Army, relatively loyal to the Syrian National Council. (Al-Nusra didn't even exist.) The membership of the SNC was public, and like I was saying, it had some moderate Islamists and some great secular liberals. Even some Alawites supported the revolution.

But this was all against the backdrop of US presidential elections, and Republicans were already using Libya as a political attack. It was a political decision not to intervene, as it might've cost Obama the presidency. As time went on, things got shittier. The rebels became more radical, foreign fighters poured in, both sides pushed the sectarian line for their own purposes, cities turned to rubble, refugees poured out, and the death toll mounted. All of this was completely unnecessary, but unfortunately, it's too late now.

And the worst part is, there's no option left nearly good as intervention was back then. Today, the rebel ranks swell with extremist Al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda) shitheads, so there's really no one to support, yet non-intervention means losing all credibility when it comes to forbidding the use of WMDs. It's either help the extremists rebelling against Assad, who will use their victories to commit genocide against Alawites and impose Sharia Law, or let the genocidal autocrat use chemical weapons unchecked, setting a pretty terrible precedent for anyone else that that would defy America's red line on WMDs.

That said, what'll happen? After I broke ranks with the Economist on the Egyptian coup (I'm all for the coup), we're back on the same page about Syria. At this point, the US has to intervene to save face. (The red line, use of chemical weapons, has been crossed.) But with no one to support, they don't want to deliver victory to Islamist extremists. So they'll do something light, something that doesn't tip many scales, and something that just allows them to say "Look, we back up our words." If there's a way we can still bring victory to the moderate rebels in the FSA and sideline Al-Nusra, than I pray the dummies at the CIA figure it out before we intervene. If not, I'm basically expecting a really expensive PR fireworks show.

That's it for now. If you really must have more, I never posted this gem, but here's a Facebook argument where I called for intervention back in the good old days:

September 27, 2012

Yes, exactly what we need: another US-led bombing campaign in the Middle East in support of a nebulous group of rebels that probably hate us.

5 Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now

www.nytimes.com

President Obama needs to apply his own doctrine on foreign conflict spots where it would benefit the United States most: Syria.720

Jack: Can't we mind our own business? If conflict doesn't spill over borders I see no reason to be involved.

Elliott: We better start minding our own business.

Jack: Kony 2013!

Erin: Well spoken Elliott.

Chris Adell: intervene.

isolationsism is never a good idea, unless you want a world that suffers recurring existential wars. ignoring tyranny until it directly threatens america or americans is guaranteed way to allow expansionist ideologies to reach their apex before being confronted, not to mention espouses something of a nationalist moral double standard.

i understand the impetus for isolationism. america is the reluctant empire because it is the world's first liberal empire. the reluctance arises from liberalism's inherent inclination to "live and let live," but the empire arose from the occasional (and existentially necessary) realization that the containment policy of george f. kennan is a surefire way to fight forever and never win.

the best defense is a good offense, and a good offense means fostering liberalism around the world. to spurn global liberalism in the name of american liberalism (isolationism) would be a fatal mistake for the american empire.

as for the particulars of your "another bombing campaign," i would assume you're talking about libya? great americans and many brave libyans lost their lives, but because of them libya is so far a success story.

Elliott: Adell, there are plenty of other ways to intervene besides bombing and support of nebulous rebels. You sound like a pre-Iraq invasion neo-con. Look how well that turned out. There is no existential threat to the United States in the Middle East right now other than our own foolish, interventionist foreign policy, which has had the comprehensive effect of alienating the entire region. We intervened in Iran in the 1950s to remove a democratically elected president, and replaced him with an autocrat whose policies fueled the Iranian revolution. We've tacitly supported the Assad family for generations because we know that Assad is more predictable than the Sunnis who might replace him, and what we really care about is maintaining the status quo vis-a-vis Israel. We supported Mubarak for thirty years (Egypt was the second largest recipient of US direct foreign aid behind Israel) and, because of our support for Mubarak's brutalist regime, we managed to ensure the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and still more radical elements of Egypt's constellation of political Islam-motivated groups, who are now something less than our friends. And no, I'm not talking about Libya—I'm talking about Syria (read the article). Hence "another," Libya being the first. I'm not advocating isolationism (as if we've ever been isolationist anyway, since we've worn big pants post-WW1). I'm advocating diplomacy and humanitarian aid in lieu of bombs and bullets; I'm advocating a major investment in the capacity of our State Department and a divestment from our military. I'm advocating a culture of fixing our own problems first before we attempt to fix the "existential" problems of others. I'm arguing that American intervention—as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Vietnam, Israel-Palestine, etc.—creates false power dynamics that prolong and complicate conflicts. I'm advocating that we grant autonomy and agency to the citizens of the world and stop pretending that we know better than they do, or that it's our white man's burden to fix their problems. Because, guess what, it never works.

Jack: Some top CIA terrorism analysts of all people have more or less said what Elliott is saying. American Exceptionalism isn't exceptionally good, and in the end no matter how unpallatable it may be all nations are responsible for taking care of their own domestic problems. We are not world police

Jack: Also my Kony comment was totally sarcastic. I think it's a perfect example of how dangerous and expensive counterinsurgency wars start.

Elliott: I think you're right Jack. It's interesting to me that one of the reasons Democrats supported expansion of the Afghan war was out of fear that abandoning Afghanistan would throw Afghanistan's women back into the clutches of the Taliban. As if spreading the insurgency to far-flung corners of hitherto peaceful Afghanistan (Kunduz, Baghlan, etc.) made Afghanistan safer for women, or for anyone else? Civilian casualties skyrocketed. So did US casualties and US debt.

Paul: Spent three weeks in Syria. "Israel and its American puppets are allied with Assad." When I mentioned the US interest in weakening Hezbollah and Iran I was kicked out of Free Syria. Many of the Free Syrian Army have lost family fighting against the US in Iraq. The Jihadist group I spent a night with called the Taliban brothers. They don't probably hate the US. They do. Proceed accordingly.

Chris Adell: i'm not a pre-iraq necon, i'm a post-libya liberal interventionist. i'm not advocating we unilaterally invade and replace a regime with an occupation, i'm advocating we support a rebelling population against a genocidal autocrat. surely you can see that syria parallels libya much more than it does iraq.

the u.s. has and in many ways still has a miserable foreign policy in the middle east. it fails to recognize that to the extent that it fights for the individual liberty of americans at the expense of others, it can count on endless reactionary conflicts that radicalize populations against america (blowback). but to the extent that america fights for the individual liberty of all and articulates that, it can count on massively outgunning threats in the battle for hearts and minds (libya).

that the u.s. has gotten foreign policy wrong so often in the past does not mean the u.s. can't and shouldn't start getting it right now. that self-interested interventions have failed in the past does not mean all interventions fail. i'll agree with "it never works" in those self-interested and misguided cases such as iraq, operation ajax, etc. but i will not agree that intervention never works. the gulf war, the kosovo war, and libya are all success stories. syria would be one, too.

Elliott: Chris, do you know who the rebels are? Are you so naive as to think that just because Assad is a bad guy that his various enemies are saints? I would not agree that Syria parallels Libya more than Iraq—on the contrary! Syria is ethnically and economically diverse and has long had a Sunni majority ruled by a tiny, nominally Shiite minority; in that way, Syria is much more like Iraq than Libya (Iraq's Sunni ruling class ruled over a large Shiite majority and Kurdish + Turkmen minorities). By contrast, Libya's tribes are fractured, but they are fairly homogeneous in terms of economic status and religion. Syria is a Pandora's box of competing interests linked to outside stakeholders (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey), at the crossroads of the Sunni and Shiite spheres of influence, far more strategically important than Libya. Hello—that's why it was a no-brainer to bomb Libya, for trigger happy NATO, but no one wants to touch Syria with a ten foot pole. America should fight for the individual liberty of all through soft power and by example, not by bombing other peoples' dictators. And how can we say we fight for the individual liberty of all when we supported men like Mubarak and the Shah until the bitter, bitter end? When we have prisoners held without being charged for years in Guantanamo Bay? When we kill hundreds of civilians with drone strikes in Pakistan? When we ensured the murders of tens of thousands by bolstering the most nefarious dictatorships in Latin America? "Getting foreign policy right" henceforth means leading by example, not by the sharp end of the spear. You cannot compare Syria to the Balkans (and by the way, the majority of the killing had already happened there by the time we intervened, and there are plenty of folks there who don't think American intervention worked out so well for them, and it's WAY to early to decide how Libya will work out, which, by the way, is a tiny country with a tiny population and abundant natural resources). I'm not sure you've given enough thought to what's at stake in a post-Assad Syria, and I do not mean to imply that I want to see Assad hang on, only that I think we need to let the Syrians fight their own revolution and allow an organic balance of power to rise from the ashes.

Chris Adell: i've spent a fair amount of time trying to answer "who the rebels are?" but no, i don't because no one does. anyone who says they know who is dominant in an admittedly amorphous and multifaceted group doesn't know what they're talking about.

that said, i wouldn't advocate intervention without first having studied the leadership of the free syrian army and syrian national council. the muslim brotherhood is well represented, but would not necessarily be dominant. on the ground, syria is much more susceptible to jihadist infiltration than other arab uprisings, which is actually one of the reasons i support intervention. time is on their side, and the longer we wait, the more radical and jihadist the rebels become. (and the more clout the MB has on the council, if the SNC is even relevant by the time this is all over.)

demographically, syria is neither like libya or iraq, but i wasn't speaking demographically. i was speaking about the parallel contexts for military intervention.

about the previous foreign policy failures, aka american support for tyrants, america will surely and rightly be received with the utmost skepticism by the arab street, but again, that the u.s. has gotten foreign policy wrong so often in the past does not mean the u.s. can't and shouldn't start getting it right now. and getting it right means both leading by example and carrying a big stick, or a big spear in your metaphor, and knowing when to use it.

i in no way was attempting to compare syria to the balkans, that was merely an counterfactual to your assertion that "it never works."

what is "organic" or "unorganic" balance of power is a senseless term with no regard for individual liberty. sometimes granting autonomy and agency to the citizens of the world means shifting the balance of power, and in those cases, i'm all for it.

Elliott: Chris, you sound like a DC wonk. Perhaps it's time for you to fly over to the Middle East and spend some time on actual Arab streets. Get a sense of how folks in the Middle East feel about US military intervention. Get a sense of how folks in the Middle East feel about the United States, period. While you're at it, spend some time with the US military and learn about the backbreaking, heartbreaking, and heretofore futile work of "delivering freedom to the world." Then come back and tell me that you think we ought to go bomb Assad's troops.

Chris Adell: the ultimate ad hominem trump card. you're right, then. i know nothing.

Elliott: Honestly you sound like Chris Hitchens, who for all of his brilliance let his ego get the best of him and provided frighteningly sound moral justification for Bush's war in Iraq. Sorry, but you simply can't protect people by bombing them.

Chris Adell: i'm flattered by the comparison. the consequences of a syrian intervention are all hypothetical suppositions so i can't say you're definitely right or wrong, but i wouldn't provoke you if i didn't appreciate your take. i'll leave it there.

Elliott: I wouldn't say it's an ad hominem trump card. It's just a pretty good idea to talk "to" the people that you're talking "for." I've spent much of the past four years in the Middle East, and another chunk of the last decade either in or alongside the military. So, if it's a trump card, it's not because it's ad hominem, it's just because it's true.

Chris Adell: fair enough.

Jack: I just don't want the government to have a reason for me to get recalled. Syria, figure your stuff out on your own because I have shit to do.