Salon.com > Matt Duss

Hollywood of hate

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Not since the Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee honeymoon tape has a crappier film received so much attention. Having watched the trailer for “The Innocence of Muslims,” it seems to me that the best possible response would be a new episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Tragically, some in Egypt and Libya apparently thought this crude propaganda was worth rioting over, and the riots have now left four people dead in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The attacks on the American embassy and consulate, and the deaths they caused, are clearly a criminal outrage, and responsibility belongs solely to the killers. There’s obviously no equivalence between producing a crude propaganda film and taking part in a violent riot. (Though new reporting suggests that the film may actually have had very little do with the violence in Libya.) Such a tragedy shouldn’t be used to limit speech, however offensive. If you don’t support the free speech of clearly talentless, bigoted provocateurs like the pseudonymous Sam Bacile you don’t really support free speech.

Smugglers’ tunnels are Hamas’ lifeblood

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

RAFAH, Gaza Strip -- The first things you notice are the trucks, entering Rafah’s dusty main thoroughfare from small side streets, flatbeds fully loaded and covered. Then there are the young boys packed three to a motorbike, darting heedlessly in between the rumbling behemoths, clutching shovels. As you get closer, you see the enormous mounds of earth and rubble, some 10 feet high and more, set amid acres of makeshift canopies, tents and metal garages, which serve as loading docks for Rafah’s booming tunnel trade.

This underground entrepot is now another front in the multifaceted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After years of virtual – and sometimes actual -- civil war, the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have gotten more serious about reconciling and forming a united front, ostensibly to better achieve Palestinian national goals, more immediately to stem growing popular discontent at the abject failure of either party to do so. Yet the unity talks have also exposed a division between Hamas’ external leadership, represented by Khaled Meshaal, and the Gaza-based leadership, represented by current Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. When Meshal and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah announced the outlines of a deal (one that would make Abbas both president and prime minister of a unity government) in Qatar earlier this month, the Hamas leadership in Gaza strongly criticized it, saying they hadn’t been sufficiently consulted.

The neocons’ big Iran lie

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Gen. Eric Shinseki told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would be required to occupy Iraq in order to stabilize it in the wake of an invasion.

What quickly followed is well known. Several days later, in what journalist James Fallows called “probably the most direct public dressing-down of a military officer, a four-star general, by a civilian superior since Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur, 50 years ago,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called Shinseki’s estimate “wildly off the mark,” and said that “it’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself.”

The snake oil of “Who lost Iraq?”

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

When Communist forces took over China in 1949, a debate erupted in U.S. foreign policy circles over “Who lost China?” Amid the growing ferment of the Red Scare, blame was soon affixed to “China hands” in the State Department who, either through incompetence or (more likely, according to Red-hunters like Joe McCarthy) nefarious intent, had neglected to give the anti-Communist forces of Chiang Kai Shek the support they had required, and thus helped deliver China into the hands of America’s enemies, undermining the cause of freedom and democracy. Over the next few years, the hysteria grew to such an extent that eventually even President Dwight Eisenhower was accused by some on the extreme right of abetting the Communist conspiracy through failing to combat it as vigorously as he should have.

Scary movie: Commander in chief Gingrich

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Presidential campaigns offer an opportunity to compare what the candidates say on the trail with what the job requires in the White House. With regard to foreign policy in 2012, the issue of Iran offers a case in point. In recent weeks, the United States and the Islamic Republic have once again clashed publicly while still seeking to negotiate privately over Iran's nuclear program. The responses of President Obama and of the candidates who hope to succeed him illuminated the fundamental foreign policy choice facing voters who will choose a commander in chief next November.

On Sunday, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln moved through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most heavily trafficked oil export route, on schedule and without incident. While the carrier had transited the strait numerous times before, it did so on Sunday amid a series of threats from members of the Iranian government in response to a tightening of international sanctions against Iran’s oil exports.

The “appeasement” parrots of the GOP

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:08:00 +0000

With the country still struggling to pull itself out of an economic recession, foreign policy has not rated the highest among issues discussed by the Republican presidential candidates. But among those foreign policy issues that have been debated, one has dominated the agenda: Iran. And other than Ron Paul, the candidates have arrived at the same verdict on President Obama’s Iran policy: It is appeasement.

Speaking at a forum last month, the candidates lined up to launch the charge at Obama. “For every thug and hooligan, for every radical Islamist, he [Obama] has had nothing but appeasement,” said former Sen. Rick Santorum. “Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy,” said former Gov. Mitt Romney. In September, standing alongside hard-line supporters of Israel’s settlements, Texas Gov. Rick Perry similarly condemned the administration’s “Middle East policy of appeasement” -- at almost precisely the same moment that Obama was delivering a speech defending Israel at the United Nations and demanding that Iran meet its nuclear treaty. In late December, Newt Gingrich said on an Iowa radio program, “You have an Obama administration who’s dedicated to appeasing our enemies and dedicated to giving away our secrets.”

Talking to the Muslim Brotherhood (finally)

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Last week, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration had decided to significantly increase contacts with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, in the wake of the group’s significant showing in recent elections. According to the Times, the new contacts represented “a historic shift in a foreign policy held by successive American administrations that steadfastly supported the autocratic government of President Hosni Mubarak in part out of concern for the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology and historic ties to militants.”

“Now, the Americans come to meet us in person because they have estimated that we will be coming to power,” Mohamed Saad Katatny , the secretary-general of the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, told the Washington Post, “and therefore they want to know us, but we have not discussed more than the general conditions and made introductions.”

Hawks who learned nothing

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:00:00 +0000

This month, after almost nine years that left 4,484 American soldiers and well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, the U.S. war in Iraq came to an end. As the troubling recent reports indicate, the new Iraq will continue to struggle with enduring political tensions and serious security challenges for years to come.

As my colleague Peter Juul and I noted in our recent report on the war’s costs, The Iraq War Ledger, the end of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime represents a considerable global good, and a nascent democratic Iraqi republic partnered with the United States could potentially yield benefits in the future. But when weighing those possible benefits against the costs of the Iraq intervention, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy.