Salon.com > Murtaza Hussain

Jeffrey Goldberg’s Qatari myopia

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:39:00 +0000

There’s something to be said for self-awareness, and where its absence can lead an individual. Thursday’s Bloomberg View featured an attack by columnist Jeffrey Goldberg against the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, which he described as “The Attention Starved Teen of the Middle East.” Nothing should insulate Qatar or any government from harsh criticism, but Goldberg’s argument is notable for deep myopia, hysteria and essential hypocrisy.

Goldberg’s piece takes aim at, among other things, the alleged dishonesty of Qatari foreign policy. Citing Qatar’s dual policy of good relations with Israel and funding of the Hamas-led administration of the Gaza Strip, Goldberg excoriates Haim Saban – an Israeli-American and another major funder of Brookings (along with the Qatari government itself) – for his public embrace of Qatari Prime Minister Hamid bin Jasim Al-Thani. Denouncing Qatar as “seeing nothing incongruous about maintaining open contacts with Israelis while funding an organization whose declared goal is killing Israelis,” Goldberg fails to grasp the distinction between preventing the economic collapse of the Gaza Strip and of funding terrorist attacks against Israel. Qatar explicitly falls into the former category. Saban, the Israeli government and the Israeli private sector are willing to talk to Qatar regardless of its relationship to Hamas, so why isn’t Goldberg?

My colleague died for peace

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:46:00 +0000

Two years ago Ahmed Shihadeh enjoyed a peaceful, if routine, life as a married young man living and working in the suburbs of Damascus. A master’s student in economics at Damascus University, he, like everyone else around him, never accounted for a popular revolution or subsequent government crackdown to abruptly upend his world.

Only one of the millions of ordinary Syrians whose day-to-day existence has been dramatically altered by the conflict in the country, Ahmed was suddenly compelled by the extraordinary circumstances around him to change from an ordinary student working at a local bank into an activist fighting to undermine a violently repressive government. Amid the increasing chaos, Ahmed left his studies to join a group of peaceful activists to found a citizens’ newspaper named Enab Baladi, created to disseminate local news on the revolution.

Ahmed found himself thrust into a world where he lived under constant threat and had to operate in secret, printing and distributing physical newspapers with the knowledge that he would be tortured and killed were his work discovered. The contrast with the normal life he enjoyed two years ago could not be starker, but as much as the situation deteriorated and the world he inhabited slowly ceased to exist, he refused to leave his home or his aspirations for a democratic Syria. Ahmed would write of the revolution he fought for:

Paul Bremer still believes Iraq is better off

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:57:00 +0000

This past week, while giving a speech at an event organized by the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society in London, former U.S. civil administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer was confronted by the legacy of the human catastrophe he had helped facilitate during his tenure in that country. In an incident captured on video, an Iraqi man in the crowd who stood up to address the panel and said that he had been forced to flee Iraq after “the U.S. destroyed my country” threw both his shoes at a seemingly stunned Bremer before being removed from the event. In the commotion afterward he can be heard to yell “You f***** up my country, you destroyed the country. F*** you and f*** your democracy.” After regaining his composure and suggesting that the Iraqi man “improve his aim if he wants to do things like that,” Bremer addressed the quieted crowd by saying, “If he had done that while Saddam Hussain had been alive he would be a dead man right now.” Upon hearing Bremer’s words of proud reassurance, the gathering of neoconservative think-tank intellectuals burst into applause -- a moment emblematic of the arrogance that legal impunity has generated for the architects of one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century. For Bremer -- who often refers critics to "the Iraqi people" when questioned over the country's monumental cost in human suffering during his civil administration -- to be confronted by one of those very same Iraqis and still maintain his hubristic defiance is indicative of his moral bankruptcy and that of the neoconservative movement for which he remains an esteemed representative.

Blame anarchy for Benghazi

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:00:00 +0000

After leading a massive international air campaign to rescue the Libyan revolution from Moammar Gadhafi, Americans were understandably shocked and appalled to wake up to news that extremist militants had stormed the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens as well as three embassy support staff. Contrary to what this incident seems to suggest, Libyans are not anti-American, and indeed are one of the most staunchly pro-American constituencies in the Middle East and North Africa. Recent Gallup polls show that strong majorities of Libyans view America and American leadership in a positive light and want to enter a new era of closer, more cooperative relations with the West. Indeed, a poll of the Eastern Libyan region of which Benghazi is the major metropolitan center shows U.S. favorability at 90 percent. The new, democratically elected and thus representative government of Libya was unequivocal in its condemnation of the violence against the U.S. embassy. Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Bushagar called it “an attack on America, Libya and free people everywhere." He specifically referred to the murdered ambassador as “a friend of Libya” and denounced the killers as barbaric.

Britain’s Assange overreach

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:35:00 +0000

The prosecution of Julian Assange has taken a comically dark twist now that the British government has threatened to storm the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has sought asylum. Contrary to popular belief, Julian Assange is not a criminal. He has not been charged with or convicted of any crime, nor is he wanted in any country on criminal charges. If the U.K. does raid the Ecuadorean embassy, legally the territory of that country, it will be breaking the law and exposing the fundamental hypocrisy of its claims about the respect of the rule of law internationally.

Not Running From the Law

Is drone war moral?

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0000

[UPDATE BELOW]

“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer ... [but] I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy. I have a duty, and I execute the duty.” By their own accounts, drone pilots spend weeks stalking their targets -- observing the intimate patterns of their daily life such as playing with their children, meeting neighbors, talking to their wives -- before finding a moment when the family is away to launch the missile that will end their target's life. Afterward they drive home like any other commuter, perhaps stopping at a fast food restaurant or convenience store before coming home to their families for the night. “I feel like I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, I just don’t deploy to do it.”

Chicago: Aurora all the time

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 19:28:00 +0000

The aftermath of the movie theater shooting in Colorado that claimed the lives of 12 people brought out once again the familiar calls for greater gun control and national reflection to determine what could have triggered such a shocking act of violence. These types of harrowing incidents often tend to produce legitimate collective soul searching, which sometimes even manifests in effective legislation to prevent similar crimes from occurring in the future.

However, as heinous as the Colorado shooting was, viewed on its own it is worth noting that in terms of scale it pales in comparison to the near-industrial-level killing that regularly ravages much of inner-city America; in particular the city of Chicago, which has been grappling with years of protracted violence that has produced numbers of dead and wounded more appropriate to an active war zone than a major American city. Since 2001, more than 5,000 people have been killed by gunfire in the streets of Chicago, a staggering number that is more than double the number of American soldiers who have been killed fighting in Afghanistan during the same period. The majority of the violence has been attributed to gang rivalries that have escalated into open warfare, and as in any war innocent civilians have often borne a disproportionate share of the suffering.

Iraq foots the bill for its own destruction

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:56:00 +0000

When considering the premise of reparation being paid for the Iraq War it would be natural to assume that the party to whom such payments would be made would be the Iraqi civilian population, the ordinary people who suffered the brunt of the devastation from the fighting. Fought on the false pretence of capturing Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the war resulted in massive indiscriminate suffering for Iraqi civilians which continues to this day. Estimates of the number of dead and wounded range from the hundreds of thousands into the millions, and additional millions of refugees remain been forcibly separated from their homes, livelihoods and families. Billions of dollars in reparations are indeed being paid for the Iraq War, but not to Iraqis who lost loved ones or property as a result of the conflict, and who, despite their nation’s oil wealth, are still suffering the effects of an utterly destroyed economy. "Reparations payments" are being made by Iraq to Americans and others for the suffering which those parties experienced as a result of the past two decades of conflict with Iraq.

The moral supporters of terrorism

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:46:00 +0000

By Murtaza Hussain

On July 22, 2011 a bombing and shooting massacre was carried out in Norway by an individual motived by fanatic anti-immigrant and Islamophobic beliefs; an atrocity which shocked the world and which could only honestly be described as terrorism. The perpetrator, himself an ethnic Norwegian, hoped to bring about political change through acts of wanton violence against civilians, many of them children and young adults. That this was indeed terrorism is important to note, given that at present Western civilization is purportedly at war with terrorism itself, as well as, crucially, those who provide inspiration and support to terrorists. In this battle those who are even tangentially related to acts of terrorism or purveyors of terror are liable to be incarcerated without due process, tortured, and even killed without public outcry. From the perspective of the state, such is the seriousness of terrorism and such are the extraordinary measures which must be taken to prevent terror from being carried out.