AFRICA’S DICTATORS: THE INCREDIBLE LAMENESS OF MADE IN THE U.S.A. BUSH’S WIRETAP DEFENSE ANDREW RICE JEFFREY ROSEN

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IDENTITY GOES TO WAR AMARTYA SEN THOMAS NAGEL JOSEPH BRAUDE ANNIA CIEZADLO

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MARTIN PERETZ

EDITOR Peter Beinart LITERARY EDITOR Leon Wieseltier EXECUTIVE EDITOR J. Peter Scoblic A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS MANAGING EDITOR Jeremy Kahn DEPUTY EDITOR Katherine Marsh SENIOR EDITORS Jonathan Chait, Jonathan Cohn, FEBRUARY 27, 2006 WASHINGTON, D.C. ISSUE 4,754 VOLUME 234 Michelle Cottle, Michael Crowley, Franklin Foer, Ruth Franklin, John B. Judis, Lawrence F. Kaplan, Ryan Lizza, Noam Scheiber, Andrew Sullivan, James Wood, Jason Zengerle LEGAL AFFAIRS Jeffrey Rosen Cover Story: Identity Goes to War ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Adam B. Kushner TNR ONLINE Richard Just, Editor Annia Ciezadlo 17 Beirut Dispatch: Comic Relief The “cartoon jihadists”in Lebanon Christiane Culhane, Culture Editor aren’t protesting Western blasphemy. They’re protesting Islamic FILMS Stanley Kauffmann THEATER Robert Brustein moderation. ART Jed Perl MUSIC David Hajdu DANCE Jennifer Homans Joseph Braude 19 Misled If American Muslims are generally moderate, why are their TELEVISION Lee Siegel leaders so radical? POETRY EDITOR Glyn Maxwell SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Joshua Kurlantzick CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Amartya Sen 25 Chili and Liberty As recent events have discouragingly demon- Fouad Ajami, David A. Bell, Paul Berman, Gregg Easterbrook, Jean Bethke Elshtain, strated, diversity breeds friction, even in places that proclaim multi- Nathan Glazer, Anthony Grafton, cultural tolerance. Does multiculturalism open doors or shut them? David Grann, Robert Kagan, Michael Kinsley, Charles Krauthammer, Jeremy McCarter, Are multicultural societies supposed to protect our culture from John McWhorter, Sherwin B. Nuland, Michael B. Oren, Christopher Orr, theirs or mix our culture with theirs? A critical look at some of the David Rieff, Maggie Scarf, Ronald Steel, Cass R. Sunstein, Alan Taylor, E.V. Thaw, confusions that multiculturalism has engendered in Europe and Asia. Helen Vendler, Michael Walzer, Sean Wilentz, Alan Wolfe, Robert Wright CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Thomas Nagel 30 The Many in the One The Ethics of Identity by Kwame Anthony Jack Coughlin, David Cowles, Vint Lawrence, David Schorr Appiah; Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS Anthony Appiah Massoud Ansari, Masha Gessen, Yossi Klein Halevi, Janine Zacharia ASSOCIATE EDITOR Spencer Ackerman ART/DESIGN DIRECTION Joe Heroun, Christine Car/H2C Media EDITORIAL-CORPORATE COORDINATOR P olitics & the W orld Linda Gerth PRODUCTION DIRECTOR AND INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR 4 CORRESPONDENCE The bloodiest wars, &c. Bruce Steinke PRODUCTION MANAGER Henry Riggs Peter Beinart 6 TRB | Broadcast Blues Why Iraq doesn’t make the TV news. ASSISTANT EDITORS Kara Baskin, Marisa Katz, Clay Risen The Editors 7 Slow Response Michael Chertoff says the Department of Home- ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR Steven Groopman land Security can handle natural disasters just as well as it can handle ASSISTANT TO THE LITERARY EDITOR Chloë Schama terrorism.And that’s exactly the problem. ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR Melanie Rehak REPORTER-RESEARCHERS 8 NOTEBOOK Is hunting safer than ping-pong? &c. Rob Anderson, Alexander M. Belenky, Eve Fairbanks INTERN, TNR ONLINE Jeffrey Rosen 10 Tap Dance Alberto Gonzales’s absurd performance. Tim Fernholz Andrew Rice 12 Kampala Dispatch: Made Man Uganda’s president was once the GENERAL MANAGER Allen Chin CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Lori Fleishman Dorr model of a modern African leader.Today, he’s just another dictator ONLINE BUSINESS DIRECTOR Ari Gersen on the make.And the United States let it happen. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER Emilie Harkin BUSINESS ASSISTANT Marjorie Powers Carol Flake Chapman 16 New Orleans Dispatch: Black Out ADVERTISING SALES & MARKETING Carnival rolls on—without the city’s African Americans. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Richard Parker DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING, WEST Joan Stapleton Tooley Martin Peretz 38 CAMBRIDGE DIARIST | Perotists ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Julie Sturmak Kettell PUBLISHING REPRESENTATIVE Perry Janoski, Allston-Cherry, Ltd. MARKETING MANAGER Alexandra Scott

TNR/ON SYMPOSIA ON PUBLIC POLICY Joan Daly B ooks & the Arts

FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION ACCOUNTING MANAGER Jessie Ahn Stanley Kauffmann 24 FILMS | Dissent, Great and Small Sophie Scholl—The Final Days BUSINESS ASSISTANT Grant Loomis evokes the bravery of Nazi protestors; the Academy Awards prove to be a promotional gimmick yet again. BOARD OF DIRECTORS ROGER HERTOG, Chairman MARTIN PERETZ MICHAEL STEINHARDT Toni Bentley 33 Shutters and Shudders Lee Miller:A Life by Carolyn Burke Meghan O’Rourke 36 POEM | Anatomy of a Failure

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CORRESPONDENCE

COPY RIGHT ason Zengerle is right that J candidates need more than military experience to claim credibility on secu- rity issues, but he’s wrong that Demo- crats lack a strong national security message (“Magic Bullet,” February 6). At the beginning of the 107th Con- gress, I founded, with my colleagues Representatives Adam Schiff and David Scott, the Democratic Study Group on National Security, which serves as a forum for the discussion of smart, innovative approaches to cur- rent national security issues. Working with the Study Group and others, Democrats have been light years ahead of Republicans in addressing the host of critical security challenges we face in the post–September 11 world. From finishing the job in Afghanistan to pro- viding enough troops and equipment in world” (“Divine Rights,” February 6). Iraq, Democrats were unified on many Hahn should check out the Taiping Re- issues the Bush administration got bellion in China in the middle of the wrong. And, from the creation of the nineteenth century. Estimates of casual- Department of Homeland Security to ties in that Chinese conflict range from the need for a unified international ap- 20 to 30 million. Our Civil War resulted proach to the nuclear crises in North in fewer than one million deaths. The Korea and Iran, Democrats were call- Taiping Rebellion was probably the ing for the policies Bush eventually second-bloodiest conflict in modern his- chose, long before the administration tory, exceeded only by World War II. realized Democrats were right. If only ROGER SCHMEECKLE Republicans copied us more, our brave Seattle, Washington soldiers might not be coming home to run against them. LEFT CLOUT REPRESENTATIVE STEVE ISRAEL our editorial on the leftward Member, U.S. Congress Y shift of political movements in House Armed Services Committee Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia (not to Washington, D.C. mention Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile) was incredibly patronizing WAR CLAIMS (“De Nada,” February 6). The neo- teven Hahn writes, “More peo- liberal economics promoted by the S ple were killed or wounded in the United States have proved a disaster Civil War than in all other American for the whole of South America, promot- wars combined. . . . Ours was, in fact, the ing persistent income inequality, civil bloodiest war of the nineteenth-century unrest, the rape of indigenous resources,

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THE NEW REPUBLIC (ISSN 0028-6583), Vol. 234, Number 7, Issue 4,754, February 27, 2006. (Printed in the United States on February 16, 2006.) Published weekly (except for combined issues dated March 20 & 27, June 5 & 12, July 10 & 17, August 14 & 21, September 11 & 18, and November 27 & December 4, 2006) at 1331 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20005. Telephone (202) 508-4444. For advertising inquiries, please contact Grant Loomis at (202) 508-4444 or our NY sales office at (212) 465-8447. Yearly subscriptions, $79.97; foreign, $119.97 (U.S. funds); Canada, $99.97 (U.S. funds). Back issues, $8.00 domestic and $10.00 foreign/Canada (includes postage & handling). © 2005 by The New Republic, LLC. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. Rights and permissions: fax (202) 628-9383. Indexed in Readers’ Guide, Media Review Digest. For hard copy reprints, call (202) 508-4444. Microform, Canadian Periodical Index, and CD-ROM are available through ProQuest, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Telephone (800) 521-0600. Postmaster: Send changes of address to The New Republic, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235. Member, Audit Bureau of Circulations. Unsolicited manuscripts can be returned only if accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope (e-mail address: [email protected]). For subscription inquiries or problems call (800) 827-1289 or visit our website at www.thenewrepublic.com. february 27, 2006 5

and environmental degradation—often with the tacit support of U.S. and West- ern multinationals. It’s all very well to say that the red line in the region should be democracy, but Western-style democ- racy is seriously discredited in impor- tant areas of the world, thanks primar- ily to U.S. policy. Hugo Chávez may be a big mouth with authoritarian tendencies—even a potential dictator—but are you offer- ing George W. Bush as a model alter- native? Don’t underestimate the im- portance of Latin America as a potential source of new political ideas. It should come as no surprise, given the shameful U.S. record of supporting repressive and cruel regimes until only 20 years ago. By “the dark ways of [Latin America’s] past,” you must be referring to dictatorships in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Argenti- na, Brazil, and El Salvador that were supported—covertly or otherwise—by the United States. Why is democracy so important now if it wasn’t in the 1970s and 1980s, when Chile and Nicaragua elected Marxist governments? Far too many of the world’s communities are being left in squalor, disenfranchise- ment, and environmental collapse to believe the pro-democracy blather emanating from the United States. BRENDAN MURPHY Macclesfield, England

he New Republic deserves T praise for “De Nada.” Coverage of Latin America has been so alarmist of late, due to troubling political de- velopments in Venezuela and Bolivia, that it hasn’t recognized the unprece- dented political strides made by many other countries in the region. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and especially Chile have recently made the region’s most significant steps toward first- world status in decades. The most striking aspect of these transitions is how little transition there has actually been. No longer does a right-to-left swing guarantee social and economic chaos. These Clintonesque leaders have shown foreign investors that Latin America is finally stable enough for development. Perhaps the truest test of a country’s success is whether it can elect a government from the opposite political spectrum and have nothing happen. JEFF AUXIER Salem, Oregon 6 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

white working class. From the creation of the Homeland Security Department to the Broadcast Blues debate over electronic surveillance, he has preferred polarization to national unity, omething important hap- even when there were relatively easy com- pened this week in Iraq. The promises upon which people from across United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia the ideological spectrum could agree. And, Islamist coalition that won a plu- because cable television feeds on the par- rality of seats in last December’s tisan divide as well, it has played right into Selections, chose Ibrahim Al Jaafari as its TRB Bush’s hands. Fox News, for instance, con- candidate for prime minister, which means stantly trumpets the “war on terror” but he’ll almost certainly get the job. Jaafari conveys remarkably little actual informa- was already Iraq’s interim prime minister, FROM WASHINGTON tion about events in the Islamic world. In- but few thought he’d keep the post in a stead, it uses “foreign policy” to endlessly permanent government. After all, Sunnis day” and “Fox News Sunday.” And those retell a story about the United States, in accused him of allowing Shia militias to were the responsible outlets. CBS’s and which Joe Six Pack faces off against the run roughshod in Iraq’s Interior Ministry. NBC’s Sunday evening broadcasts didn’t appeasing, beret-wearing, blame-America- Kurds and other secular Iraqis considered mention Jaafari’s selection at all. first liberal elites who want to send Osama him a closet theocrat who had tried to un- Americans deserve better. The argu- bin Laden to their Upper West Side dermine women’s rights to inheritance ment about how fast and under what con- shrinks. Trying to get information about and divorce. And just about everyone con- ditions to pull U.S. troops from Iraq has Iraq, or the rest of the Middle East, by lis- sidered him indecisive and ineffectual— quieted for the moment, but it will return tening to Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity is not a great quality when your government with a vengeance in the run-up to the like trying to get information about the is fighting for its life. Yet he got the job. 2006 elections. It’s a highly partisan, ideo- Soviet Union in the 1950s by listening to Turns out ineffectual and theocratic is just logically freighted debate—but, as much Joseph McCarthy. It’s a category mistake. what some members of the United Iraqi as possible, it should be dictated by events Fox’s jingoism and its isolationism are flip Alliance wanted in a prime minister. In on the ground in Iraq. The Bush adminis- sides of the same coin. particular, Moqtada Al Sadr pushed for tration obviously cannot be trusted to Msnbc is less ideologically homoge- Jaafari’s selection in a deal that could give portray those events to the public in an nous, but just as intellectually parochial. his followers four or five Cabinet posts. honest way.That leaves the mass media, Which leaves CNN. Several years ago, it It’s quite possible, in fact, that Sadr will and the mass media is doing a lousy job. decided that Fox had cornered the market emerge as the most powerful figure in Part of the problem is the structure of on shouting and that it should concentrate Iraq’s new government. You remember cable news. The typical format is a debate on providing information. Had it wanted Sadr—the guy the United States accused between two people, one liberal and one to provide information about the rest of of murdering a moderate Shia cleric just conservative. It requires little expertise the world, it could easily have done so, days into the war. The guy who recently from the participants and conveys little in- since its sister network, CNN Internation- visited Iran and Syria to express solidarity formation to the audience. It works best al, already reports extensively on news with their anti-American dictators. The for familiar, hotly contested domestic is- around the globe. If Fox has become the guy whose militia (which we tried—and sues like abortion and gay marriage, where megaphone for post–September 11 failed—to disarm several years ago) peri- the audience already knows what it thinks. American nationalism, CNN could have odically attacks British troops in the Iraqi Iraq can be approached this way, too: emerged as the voice of a post–September south. Yes, that Sadr. Well, he’s now Iraq’s Did Bush lie? Will it hurt him in 2006? 11 American internationalism. It could Dick Cheney. Could the Democrats do better? All these have nurtured the genuine curiosity about Jaafari’s selection sparked a lively de- debates work well on television because the world that existed, at least for a time, bate on U.S. talk shows. Hosts asked their they’re about us. The Jaafari story, by con- in the aftermath of the attacks. guests how it affected their views on troop trast, is unintelligible precisely because it’s Instead, a brief glance at CNN’s prime- withdrawal. Regional experts tried to ex- not about us. There’s no preordained par- time lineup for Tuesday, February 14 (the plain the murky political dynamic within tisan story line. What the viewer needs is day this column was written) promises sto- the Shia Islamist coalition. Pundits raised less opinion than information, less heat ries on adolescent wrestling, dangerous alarms about Sadr’s new power. Talking than light. And that’s just what our cable dog treats, a teenage murderer, an inter- heads speculated about how the Kurds talk shows rarely provide. view with Judge Judy, wasteful post- and Sunnis would respond. In fact, more than four years after Sep- Katrina spending, a company that is im- Actually, none of this happened. In re- tember 11 supposedly reintroduced the planting tracking chips in its employees, ality, Jaafari’s selection sparked little dis- United States to the world, America’s po- and a woman who says her dog discovered cussion in the broadcast media. It made litical television has failed almost as egre- her cancer. Americans may be ignorant the front page of Monday’s New York giously as America’s political leaders— about the country where our troops are Times and Washington Post, but, in the and in some of the same ways. For George dying—a place that could imperil our se- mysterious alchemy that converts print W. Bush, of course, the war on terrorism curity for years to come. But, when it news into network news, the Jaafari story has been one vast wedge issue, which he comes to the disease-detection potential of almost disappeared. According to tran- has used in the same basic way that Re- the family pooch, we can finally render an scripts, it received less than a paragraph of publicans used race in the 1970s and informed judgment. It’s about time. text on ABC’s “World News Tonight Sun- 1980s: to artificially divide liberals and the PETER BEINART FROM THE EDITORS ½ FEBRUARY 27, 2006 Slow Response

f only it had been a terrorist attack. That was forthcoming book, Open Target, “[T]he Homeland Security Department has essentially the complaint of former Federal Emer- served to make us only marginally gency Management Agency (fema) chief Michael safer, and, in the age of terror, ‘margin- ally’ safer is not safe enough.” Brown, who lamented to Congress last week that Still, the calls for Chertoff’s natural disaster response had become the “step- removal, coming from certain Demo- crats right now, are misguided. The child” of a Department of Homeland Security blame for our unpreparedness (DHS) focused exclusively on terrorism. If “a ter- lies in many places. And, although Chertoff, a former federal judge and rorist [had] blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then every- assistant attorney general, didn’t have I sufficient management experience body would have jumped all over that and been trying to do when he was confirmed to the Home- everything they could,” he said. The much-maligned Brown land Security post a year ago, firing received surprising sympathy for this wise been in play in the aftermath of a him at this point would only create narrative from some Democrats, with terrorist attack. DHS utterly failed in more confusion. DHS needs to build Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka agree- its role as a coordinating agency.Turf on what it’s got. ing, “We need an all-hazards approach wars compounded general disorganiza- And, to his credit, Chertoff has to . . . defending our homeland, not a tion, producing conflicting chains of been fairly open about admitting his ‘call 911 only if it is a terrorist.’ ” The command. Brown, for example, said he department’s shortcomings and Bush administration sent out DHS called the White House rather than his proposing fixes. This week, in the Secretary Michael Chertoff to deny it boss, Chertoff, because “it would have face of mounting criticism, he made was overemphasizing terrorism, but wasted my time.” Critical information an admirable pledge to confront there is some truth to Brown’s claim was passed along in fits and starts, so “stovepiped” command centers and about the sidelining of fema. Whereas that, for instance, although the Coast “mov[e] us forward to a fully integrat- the Clinton White House granted the Guard was flying over New Orleans ed and unified incident command” by agency Cabinet-level status, brought in throughout the first day of flooding, the start of the next hurricane season. veteran emergency managers, and pro- eyewitness reports didn’t reach Chertoff’s remarks, however, were fessionalized the federal government’s Washington until midnight. On top heavy on the specifics of how DHS disaster response, the Bush administra- of that, officials were slow to planned to update its technology tion has cut fema funding, downgraded act on the information they and vague about how he its responsibilities, and appointed had. As a result, essen- planned to change its cul- hacks like Brown. Yet the suggestion tial resources—water, ture. It may be that he’s that the Gulf coast would have fared shelter, a means of reluctant to say any- better if terrorists, rather than a hurri- escape—didn’t get to thing publicly that cane, had attacked gives the adminis- the people who needed would diminish the tration too much credit. It’s not that them as soon as they morale of his employ- DHS is better prepared for terrorism should have. And more ees. But we hope he than natural disasters. It’s that it’s un- than 1,300 people died. doesn’t expect too much prepared for both. If this tragedy reflects from technology alone. After a natural disaster like Hurri- a trade-off made in the Even the most sophisticated cane Katrina, many of the challenges name of the war on terrorism, hardware isn’t worth much are similar to those caused by a terror- it’s unclear what we’ve gotten in re- when somebody like Michael Brown ist attack. In both cases, there is an ur- turn. The Bush administration has pro- is using it. gent need to treat and evacuate vic- vided only a fraction of the resources This week, Chertoff rejected tims. Decisive action must be taken necessary to reduce our vulnerability Brown’s criticism about an overem- quickly, and yet coordination can be to attack, and ports, mass transit, and phasis on terrorism, saying, “Whether difficult, especially when communica- nuclear plants are all about as vulnera- it’s a natural disaster or a disaster tion systems are down. ble to attack as they were before Sep- caused by a terrorist, our response is Many of the problems that plagued tember 11. As former DHS Inspector often going to be the same.” He’s right. the Katrina response would have like- General Clark Kent Ervin writes in his And that’s what we’re worried about. ½ 8 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

Hunting Is Safer than Tiddledywinks . . . Karen Hughes’s Performance Stinks

STORM DAMAGE Safety Council statistics that purport to hen House Republicans an- show that hunting is not only safer than Wnounced back in September that fishing and swimming; it’s safer than they would conduct a special investiga- football, basketball, and baseball! Or tion into the government’s response to take this 2004 press release from Min- Hurricane Katrina, House Minority nesota’s Department of Natural Re- Leader Nancy Pelosi predicted a “sham” sources, which proclaims, “Based on the inquiry and vowed that Democrats number of people seeking emergency- would have nothing to do with it. This room treatment for sports injuries, The instinct was not unreasonable, nor was National Safety Council reports that her political strategy—trying to pressure hunting has fewer injuries per 100,000 Republicans into creating an indepen- people participating than football, base- dent panel modeled after the 9/11 Com- ball, cycling, volleyball, swimming, golf, mission. But, once it was clear the GOP tennis, fishing, bowling, badminton, wouldn’t budge, many Democrats urged billiards and ping-pong.” Pelosi to let them join the House Hunting is safer than billiards and inquiry. It was better to cry foul from ping-pong? Well, only if you twist the within than without, they said—and statistics. The first twist is not account- why let the GOP hog the spotlight? ing for the seriousness of an injury: Pelosi insisted her boycott strategy Getting hit by 200 pellets of birdshot is was best. That decision began to look treated just like spraining a pinkie in dubious during the investigatory com- ping-pong. Indeed, the agencies don’t mittee’s high-profile hearings last De- even include fatalities in the statistics cember, which offered starring roles to Nancy Pelosi they present. So, while the Texas Parks Republican members like committee and Wildlife Department can truthfully chairman Tom Davis and Christopher To be sure, the report did inflict dam- claim that more people in the United Shays of Connecticut. age on the Bush administration. But States are injured each year playing This week, Pelosi’s blunder became Bush isn’t up for reelection—House Re- football than hunting, many more peo- even more clear. The committee’s report publicans are. If only Nancy Pelosi had ple are killed while hunting. (In 2001, rips the Bush administration and makes realized that a few months ago. for instance, only eight college and high Homeland Security Secretary Michael school players died from injuries on the Chertoff look incompetent. Democrats SAFER THAN PING-PONG? football field directly related to play; could only watch as committee Republi- ntil this Sunday, the majority 79 people died hunting.) cans basked in coverage that has por- Uof Washington journalists didn’t The stats also err in using an injury trayed them as brave truth-tellers and know the first thing about hunting. But rate based on the number of participants provided them with badly needed politi- now that political reporters, thanks to per sport rather than the amount of time cal distance from the unpopular Bush Dick Cheney, have had to take a crash a person spends participating. For in- administration. News outlets from the course on the sport, one of hunting’s stance, a footballer likely attends prac- Associated Press to CNN turned to Re- dirty little secrets has been revealed: tices and games five or six days a week publicans like Davis and Shays—a mod- The “safety statistics” kept and promot- for three or four months out of the year. erate desperate to run away from the ed by various government agencies— A hunter, by contrast, may hunt only White House this fall—for quotes about which purport to show just how safe three or four times a year, for a few hours last August’s “national failure.” The hunting really is—are a total joke. each outing.Viewed this way, hunting is AP even took care to note that this Consider, for instance, the Texas pretty risky.Why government agencies was the man-bites-dog handiwork of a Parks and Wildlife Department. On the like the Texas Parks and Wildlife Depart- “Republican-dominated” panel. Mean- “Safety First” page of its online hunter- ment and Minnesota’s Department of while, Democrats found themselves in education course, the department de- Natural Resources feel the need to twist the odd position of praising Republicans clares that “hunting is one of the safest safety statistics in order to downplay this for not delivering the whitewash they outdoor activities you can enjoy” and risk is a mystery. Or maybe, given the had predicted. backs up its claim by citing National power of the gun lobby, it’s not.

David Cowles the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 9

NOT PERFORMING ince her appointment as TNR. commentary SBush’s public diplomacy czar last March, we’ve seen Karen EXCERPTS FROM THE NEW REPUBLIC ONLINE Hughes display a remarkable talent for failing to learn on the job (see THE HYPOCRISY OF BRITAIN AND FRANCE. than ever, Israel needs a strong deterrent. “Diplomatic Toast,” October 17, MEMORY LOSS At such a moment, the Jewish state’s 2005, and Notebook, November 7, By Jeffrey Herf nuclear weapons should be just as much 2005). Now it looks like her boss’s a nonissue as Britain and France wanted office has finally noticed her short- The resolution that the International theirs to be during the early ’80s. comings. On February 6, the White Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed two House’s Office of Management and weeks ago referring Iran’s nuclear pro- STATE’S DISHONESTY ON DARFUR. Budget (OMB) launched a website, gram to the U.N. Security Council con- WISHFUL THINKING ExpectMore.gov, to track the effec- tains a key flaw: At the insistence of By Eric Reeves tiveness of government programs. Egypt, and with the The site categorizes Hughes’s pub- backing of the Euro- Two weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of lic diplomacy effort as “Not Per- pean Union, the text State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer forming.” “There is no broad over- has a clause calling for signaled a shift in U.S. policy toward Dar- arching US Government public the creation of “a Mid- fur when she refused to say that geno- diplomacy strategy,” the assessment dle East free of weap- cide was currently taking place in the says. “Because of this lack of a plan, ons of mass destruc- region. Asked twice whether the Darfur programs such as this one may not tion, including their genocide was ongoing, she would only be the most effective both in the means of delivery”— say that “a genocide has occurred in long and short term.” (The OMB’s a pointed jab at the region’s only nuclear Sudan, and we continue to be concerned “Improvement Plan” announces power, Israel. The clause gives Iran a about the security environment in Dar- its intent to develop “an overarch- powerful rhetorical weapon. It could fur.” In other words, there was a geno- ing US Government strategic diplo- make a “generous” offer to refrain from cide, but now it’s over. Frazer went on to macy plan.” Thanks for the info, developing nuclear weapons if only Israel assert that “there isn’t large-scale, orga- OMB!) would unilaterally eliminate its weapons. nized violence taking place today.” But Hughes seems to have ab- And, when Israel refuses, Iran can claim This is mendacity. Recent reports sorbed one important lesson: If that it is Israel standing in the way of a from South Darfur, for example, make you’re “not performing,” why have nuclear-free regional utopia. clear that approximately 70,000 civil- an audience? After being pilloried But the clause is not merely bad geo- ians have been violently displaced by in the press for her obliviousness political strategy; it is also the height of Janjaweed raids recently. This replicates during her last “listening tour” of hypocrisy. It was only a quarter of a cen- the basic pattern of the last three years: the Middle East, she made a crucial tury ago, during the battle over missile Khartoum seeks to destroy Darfur’s change for her upcoming trip to the deployments in Europe, that Great Britain non-Arab or African tribal populations Middle East and Europe: She scaled and France found themselves in a situa- as a means of counterinsurgency war- back her media contingent from tion almost exactly analogous to Israel fare. These actions clearly fall under 16 reporters to . . . none. today. During negotiations with the United the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide, States over intermediate-range nuclear which says that intent to destroy civilian DEPARTMENT forces in the early ’80s, Moscow insisted populations based on their ethnicity OF CORRECTIONS that the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain constitutes genocide. elcome to Hillaryland” and France be included—a proposal that So why has the Bush administration ‘W(February 20) stated that London and Paris adamantly opposed. chosen this moment to suggest that Hillary Clinton’s legislative direc- Had British and French weapons been genocide is no longer taking place? tor, Laurie Rubiner, previously counted, the Soviets could have proposed Some of the answer lies in the awk- worked for Senator Lincoln Chafee to dismantle their SS-20 arsenal if only wardness of having declared Darfur and that he co-sponsored health Britain and France would eliminate their to be the site of genocide—which Colin care reform similar to a proposal own nuclear deterrents. Aware that the Powell did in September 2004—but she later developed. Although Ru- slogan of a “nuclear-free Europe” might subsequently proving unable to do biner briefly worked for Chafee, lead to demands for unilateral disarma- anything about it. Lacking an effective she mainly worked for Chafee’s fa- ment, the British and French govern- policy, Bush officials apparently decided ther, the late Senator John Chafee, ments persistently rejected this Soviet simply to rename the crisis. who co-sponsored the bill. negotiating ploy. “Settlers and Unsettlers” (Febru- Fast-forward to the present. A country Jeffrey Herf is a professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland at College ary 13) mistakenly claimed that Ter- sworn to Israel’s destruction is moving Park. rence Malick’s The Thin Red Line toward acquiring nuclear weapons, the Eric Reeves is a professor of English Language was made ten years after his last anti-Semitism of radical Islam is ascen- and Literature at Smith College and has written film. In fact, 20 years separated the dant, and Hamas has just won an election extensively on Sudan. films. We regret the errors. ½ in the Palestinian territories. Now, more FOR COMPLETE ARTICLES, GO TO TNR.COM

Eslami Rad/Gamma/NewsCom 10 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

something you could not likely get, then how can you say Alberto Gonzales’s spin. Congress intended to give you this authority?” Gonzales had no convincing answer, except to claim re- peatedly that the Supreme Court, in the case of Louisiana- Tap Dance born Taliban fighter Yasir Esam Hamdi, had ruled that the use-of-force resolution authorized the president to de- by jeffrey rosen tain an American citizen seized on the battlefield in Afghanistan. “And detention,” he said, “is far more intru- fter Attorney General Alberto sive than electronic surveillance.”This claim entirely misses Gonzales’s inept performance before the point: The Supreme Court’s reasoning suggested that the Senate Judiciary Committee last suspects seized on a foreign battlefield have fewer rights week, Republicans as well as Demo- than those seized at home, meaning the Hamdi ruling can- crats expressed strong skepticism about not be used as justification for domestic surveillance. In- the legality of the Bush administra- deed, in Hamdi, Antonin Scalia and John Paul Stevens tion’s domestic wiretapping program. insisted that the 2001 use-of-force resolution does not au- The growing bipartisan consensus about the program’s ille- thorize the detention of a citizen under any circumstances. galityA is a relief. The administration’s legal arguments were And, in the case of José Padilla, once alleged to be plotting transparently unconvincing from the moment The New a dirty bomb attack, four justices noted that the resolution York Times revealed the program’s existence, and, as fair- does not authorize the detention of an American citizen minded Republicans are recognizing in growing numbers, seized in the United States. the arguments are also dangerous in suggesting that the Gonzales’s argument is dangerous as well as unconvinc- president has the constitutional authority to ignore or dis- ing, since it has no obvious limitations. Would the use-of- tort legal restrictions with which he disagrees. force resolution authorize the president to open mail or to Now that congressional Republicans are protesting conduct “black bag” operations, breaking into the homes of President Bush’s brazen usurpation of their constitutional citizens without warrants, and conducting secret searches, prerogatives, the question remains: What do they intend to asked Senator Patrick Leahy? Gonzales, typically, said he do about it? The challenge isn’t figuring out the right policy; would not discuss these “hypotheticals.” (In his confirma- since September 11, it has been obvious that there are a se- tion hearing, Gonzales also called domestic wiretapping a ries of compromises that Congress and the president might hypothetical scenario, even though he knew that it was all strike to ensure broad surveillance of potential terrorists too real.) But, in its official defense of the domestic spying while protecting innocent citizens. The challenge is one of program on January 19, the Department of Justice was not political will: In light of the president’s arrogant unilateral- so coy. If courts interpreted the Foreign Intelligence Sur- ism, does Congress have the nerve to stand up for itself? veillance Act (fisa) to prevent the president from doing whatever he thought necessary to protect the nation during ince the domestic surveillance program was ex- a congressionally authorized war, the Justice Department posed, the administration has repeatedly insisted declared, the law itself would be unconstitutional. In short, that Congress implicitly endorsed the program on Justice’s answer to the black bag question is “yes.” September 14, 2001, when it authorized the presi- Of course, if you follow that reasoning, as Graham point- Sdent to use force against the perpetrators of the Septem- ed out, there is no reason the administration couldn’t, for ber 11 attacks. But, as Senator Russell Feingold objected— example, ignore or break the federal ban on torture if the with justifiable indignation—this is a “fantasy version” of the president decided that it impeded the war effort. “Taken to far more limited powers that Congress actually authorized. its logical conclusion,” Graham said, “it concerns me that And indeed, at the Gonzales hearings, most of the Republi- [the administration’s argument about its inherent authority] cans on the Judiciary Committee—including Senators Lind- could basically neuter the Congress and weaken the courts.” sey Graham, Mike DeWine, Sam Brownback, and Arlen Specter—explicitly repudiated this fantasy. Several senators fter suggesting that the administration had noted that the Bush administration had approached Tom the power to stretch laws to mean the opposite Daschle, then the majority leader, shortly before the resolu- of what Congress intends, Gonzales went on to tion came to the floor and asked that the words “inside the suggest fisa didn’t apply in this case, because it United States” be added to the authorization to use force. hadA been superseded by the use-of-force resolution. Even Although, given the circumstances, he was inclined to grant so, there was no meaningful difference, he insisted, be- most of the White House’s requests, Daschle refused, and tween Bush’s secret spying and the surveillance explicitly the request was withdrawn. Recognizing that Congress was allowed by fisa, which requires probable cause to believe unlikely to authorize electronic surveillance, Gonzales later that one of the parties to a wiretapped conversation is a commented, “That was not something we could likely get.” suspected spy or terrorist. The distinction between fisa’s As Specter asked him with incredulity last week, “If this is “probable cause” and the administration’s “reasonable the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 11 grounds” standard for wiretapping, Gonzales said, was se- time period for the administration to conduct warrantless mantic:“It’s the same standard,” he insisted lamely. In fact, searches could be extended in emergencies, as long as the it is not the same standard: Probable cause is clearly more administration sought approval from the fisa court after demanding. But the real difference is that fisa requires the fact. And Congress would conduct periodic secret administration officials to seek a judicial warrant for the hearings to ensure that the new authorities were, in fact, secret surveillance, while the administration insists on the focused on terrorists. need to supervise itself, without judicial oversight. The Gonzales hearing made clear, however, that the ad- s it realistic to expect Congress to strike a bargain ministration is determined to resist any attempts by Con- like this with the White House—codifying the broad gress to regulate surveillance, even when Congress propos- surveillance authority Bush has demanded in ex- es to codify the administration’s own proposals. In 2002, for change for restrictions on information-sharing, com- example, when DeWine proposed to lower the standard Ibined with judicial and congressional oversight? The fact necessary to obtain surveillance warrants on non-U.S. citi- that Congress agreed to reauthorize the Patriot Act with- zens connected to terrorism from “probable cause” to “rea- out meaningful modifications the same week that it held sonable suspicion,” James A. Baker, the Justice Depart- hearings on domestic surveillance does not inspire confi- ment’s counsel for intelligence policy, testified that the dence. Since the Patriot Act was passed soon after Septem- existing standard was working well and the lower one ber 11, almost all of the thoughtful civil libertarian objec- would likely be unconstitutional. (At the same time, the ad- tions have focused on a single provision, Section 215, which ministration was secretly applying the lower standard on its regulates the secret collection of physical evidence under own initiative.) Last week, DeWine asked Gonzales fisa. Before the Patriot Act, both electronic surveillance whether the administration would now support a federal and searches for physical evidence could only be conduct- law that allowed electronic surveillance of all international ed in secret and without warrants if there was probable communications where one party is affiliated with a terror- cause to believe that the target was a suspected spy or ter- ist group, subject to oversight by the House and Senate in- rorist. Under Section 215, the standard was lowered: Secret telligence committees. Gonzales demurred once again, re- searches can take place in any case where the government fusing to say whether he thought Congress even had the says the evidence is relevant to a terrorism investigation. power to ensure the president was following his own stated Civil libertarians have objected to Section 215 for the same program. reason they object to the Bush administration’s eavesdrop- Gonzales’s contortions are not only dangerous, they’re ping program: namely that the government could, in theo- unnecessary, since it’s easy to imagine a sensible way of ry, target its critics, certify that they had evidence relevant protecting privacy while also being tough on terrorism. to a terrorism investigation, go on a broad secret fishing ex- Since September 11, this magazine has argued that Con- pedition, and then prosecute them for crimes that had gress could guarantee balance by striking the following nothing to do with terrorism. bargain with the White House: The president gets expand- Last July, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment ed power to surveil people connected to terrorism sus- to Section 215 that would have ensured that the govern- pects, but only if there is outside oversight and only if evi- ment couldn’t obtain the sensitive personal records of dence collected during the surveillance can’t be used to Americans who have no connection to terrorist spies or prosecute them for lower-level crimes that have nothing to their activities. Unfortunately, this reform was abandoned do with terrorism (see “Security Check,” December 16, in the Patriot Act compromise that emerged last week. The 2002). The administration, however, responds that it must fact that the House and Senate, in the end, were unable to be able to prosecute potentially dangerous people for less agree on even this one eminently reasonable reform makes serious crimes to prevent them from committing acts of it hard to be optimistic that Congress will insist on the same terrorism (the equivalent of prosecuting Al Capone for tax protections when it comes to regulating eavesdropping and evasion). Congress could answer this objection by setting real-time electronic surveillance. up the following surveillance system: When the govern- Perhaps, however, Republican senators will remain so ment suspects someone of being a spy or a terrorist, it can outraged about the administration’s usurpation of their prosecute anyone for any crime, serious or trivial. But, prerogatives that they will finally stand up for themselves. until some degree of individualized suspicion develops, ev- Specter, for example, has pointedly challenged the adminis- idence uncovered in intelligence searches cannot be tration’s unconvincing legal arguments. Before he will con- shared with law enforcement officials to prosecute crimes sider new legislation, Specter wants the fisa court to review unrelated to terrorism. Judicial and congressional over- the Bush program and rule on constitutionality. If he thinks sight would also be put in place to ensure that the execu- that will shore up political support to resist the president’s tive kept its side of the bargain. In other words, warrants unilateralism, so be it. But, for more than four years since would be required, but the fisa court would grant them as September 11, Congress has acquiesced in the steady ero- long as one party to the conversation was a suspected ter- sion of its power. If Gonzales’s sorry performance doesn’t rorist, even if both parties were in the United States. The spur it to action, nothing will. ½ 12 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

about Africa’s failings, permissive of dissent, and enlight- Kampala Dispatch ened on many issues of public policy. Foreign governments showered the country with millions in aid. Everyone from Bono to President Bush came to see the Ugandan “miracle,” Made Man as it was called. Bill Clinton, when he visited in 1998, saluted Museveni as the leader of an “African renaissance.” by andrew rice Today, eight years on, the renaissance talk of the ’90s has come to seem terribly naïve. Leaders once hailed as fresh n and on they came, in a long, lowing and new now carry a whiff—or more—of the old stench of procession: Brown cows, dappled cows, dictatorship. One of them, President Laurent Kabila of Con- longhorns and short, their tails swish- go, is already dead—assassinated by his own bodyguard af- ing behind haunches branded y.k.m. ter several years of corrupt, tyrannical rule. In Rwanda, Con- Ugandan President Yoweri K. Musev- go’s neighbor and occasional invader, the austere Paul eni sat regally in a padded plastic chair, Kagame now presides over a ruthless police state. Isaias a ceremonial cattle prod stuck beside Afwerki, the first leader of independent Eritrea, has degen- him in the ground, watching with an expression of transport- erated into a drunken, paranoid hermit. He has canceled Oed delight. Cattle are prized all over Africa as symbols of elections, arrested critics, and abrogated the constitution wealth and status, but they have special meaning for Musev- while intermittently warring with his larger neighbor, eni, who was born into a pastoral ethnic group and tended Ethiopia.That country’s president, the brainy Meles Zenawi, his family’s herd from the age of four. Even today, when he a one-time confidante of Tony Blair, has lately taken to im- owns thousands, he claims to know all his cows by name. prisoning opposition politicians and shooting at protesters As the parade made its way across the acacia-dotted pas- who accuse him of stealing recent parliamentary elections. ture, Museveni rose from his chair to point out his favor- Museveni, to one degree or another, has engaged in all ite bulls. “This is my way of life,” he shouted. “I can’t forget these bad behaviors. He has attacked and looted Congo; my children just because I’m working for the regime. . . .” he has allowed fantastic corruption within his inner circle; He paused a beat, reconsidering his choice of words.“. . . For he has harassed journalists and cracked down on political the government.” dissent; he has amended Uganda’s constitution to allow I was tagging along with a delegation of Ugandan jour- himself to serve indefinitely. In November, he jailed his nalists, who had been invited up to the president’s ranch, a strongest opponent in this month’s presidential election, couple hours west of Uganda’s capital, to chronicle a day in charging him with rape and treason.“Once touted as one of Museveni’s life as a gentleman rancher. It was early No- the ‘new leaders of Africa,’ ” an American political analyst vember, the beginning of the political season that will cul- wrote recently in a damning confidential report to the minate in this month’s presidential election, and the sym- World Bank, “[Museveni], over the last eight years, has in- bolism was lost on no one. For two decades now, since he creasingly resembled the old.” marched into power with a victorious rebel army, Museveni Looking back, many of the foreign policy specialists who has styled himself as Uganda’s benevolent herdsman. He were most closely involved in raising Museveni up as an ex- often likens politics to cattle-keeping, and his governing emplar believe that their strategy backfired.“We have made method has been much like the one employed by the slim mistakes with Museveni, and we continue to compound men in threadbare clothing who patrolled the pasture in them,” said one former State Department official who front of him. They beat the grass with sticks to let the ani- served under Clinton. “The mistakes are that we have rein- mals know what path to follow. When one strayed out of forced his self-image as the darling of the West, repeatedly line, they chased it down and rustled it back with a solid and relentlessly.” The United States, the wealthy nations of thwack to the side. Europe, and lending institutions like the World Bank now Museveni has often claimed that he is the only Ugandan contribute more than half of Uganda’s budget in the form of with a vision for the country’s future, and, for a long time, foreign aid.Yet Museveni has virtually dared his benefactors Western policymakers believed it. In the mid-’90s, Museveni to punish him.And, for the most part, they have stood by im- was anointed one of a “new breed” of African military rulers passively as Uganda has grown more repressive and frac- who seemed poised to lead their once war-wracked coun- tious. Like parties to a bad relationship, Museveni’s suitors tries to stable, responsible—and even democratic—futures. can’t quite bring themselves to believe that Uganda’s presi- Among this group of youthful leaders, which also included dent is no longer the dashing man they once knew—or that, the presidents of Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Demo- perhaps, they never really understood him at all. cratic Republic of Congo, Museveni was always the most promising: charming, smart, willing to speak hard truths ow around 60—his tribe didn’t keep birth records—Museveni has been either fighting for Andrew Rice is writing a book about a Ugandan murder power in Uganda or leading it for well over half trial and the legacy of Idi Amin. Nhis life. He came of age during the 1960s, the the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 13

heady first days of independence, and attended the Univer- army, where the president’s hard-living brother, Lieu- sity of Dar es Salaam, then a hotbed of leftist thought. In his tenant General Salim Saleh—imagine Billy Carter in olive youth, he idolized Che Guevara, traveled to North Korea fatigues—held enormous sway. When Museveni invaded (where he learned to shoot), and wrote his thesis on Franz Congo in 1998, Saleh and his other generals promptly set Fanon, colonial Africa’s theorist of violent liberation. With- about pillaging the country for gold, diamonds, and timber. in a few years, he had launched his first rebellion in Uganda, They took kickbacks on deals for faulty weaponry, and against the murderous dictatorship of General Idi Amin. they padded the military payroll with nonexistent soldiers, After Amin’s 1979 ouster, he went to war against Uganda’s whose wages they pocketed. Eventually such “ghost sol- new president, Milton Obote. Provoked by the insurgency, diers” came to make up perhaps one-third of the army, Obote proved to be just as brutal as Amin; his army massa- leading to military setbacks in Congo and in Uganda’s cred countless civilians while trying to crush Museveni. north, where a ragtag rebel army terrorized the populace. When Museveni came to power in 1986, at the head of an As the carnage mounted, grand mansions belonging to army of uneducated farmers and Kalashnikov-toting chil- members of Museveni’s inner circle appeared atop Kam- dren, he promised “a fundamental change in the politics of pala’s green hills. our country.” To the world’s surprise, he proved good to his Diplomats and aid workers based in Uganda knew what word. And, even more remarkably, what happened in Ugan- was happening: Many of them rented their houses from the da seemed to reproduce itself all over Africa in the years that kleptocrats. But they developed a winking attitude toward followed. Dictators like Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam the graft. Those who disbursed Uganda’s aid knew their and Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko fell, and, from the ruins of civ- budgets, and maybe their jobs, were tied to the perception il wars, new leaders emerged. Like Museveni, their roots that the country was a continuing success. So they did noth- were in the Marxist milieu of the ’60s, but, with the cold war ing when money meant to fund schools and health clinics ending, they were willing to forsake socialism and embrace was diverted to the army or to Movement’s extensive polit- the tough economic reforms that Western donors demanded. ical machine. Some Africa experts, like Stanford Universi- For the United States, the new breed—many of whom spoke ty’s Jeremy Weinstein, argue that the massive influx of aid English—represented a way to challenge France’s spheres of may actually have retarded democratic reforms, because it influence in Africa. It was argued that, though they had come made the “new breed” governments less dependent on to power by force of arms, these “new soldier princes,” as popular support. journalist Howard French called them, possessed a certain Museveni seems to have calculated, correctly, that the kind of legitimacy, having waged long struggles with the sup- rules would be different for a darling. So, even as formerly port of their countrysides. These were peasant revolutions strife-ridden countries like Mozambique, Namibia, and the World Bank could love: Mao without the Marx. Kenya selected new leaders in free elections, he continued The former rebels ruled by force, but they often talked of to argue that only an enlightened autocrat could hold democracy, if only as a distant aspiration. In Uganda, Mu- Uganda together. He gradually eased into the time- seveni presided over the enactment of a new constitution, honored role of the patriarchal African leader.These days, intended to protect human rights. He reversed racist eco- the president is surrounded by a shrinking cadre of loyal- nomic policies, welcoming back investors from India, who ists who reverently refer to him as mzee, a Swahili word had been kicked out by Amin. He promoted an open politi- evoking a village elder, or, more straightforwardly, as “the cal culture, grudgingly tolerated a raucous free press, and Big Man.” He thinks nothing of Mobutu-esque gestures was one of the first African leaders to talk honestly about like flying his pregnant daughter to visit a German obste- aids, a disease destined to kill more Ugandans than all the trician aboard the presidential jet. country’s wars and dictators combined. He maintained a In 2001, Museveni ran for his second and, it was then as- frugal lifestyle and encouraged his underlings to do the sumed, last elected term in office. The campaign turned same. Only one political party was allowed, the ruling nasty when Colonel Kizza Besigye, a former ally, decided Movement Party, but Museveni reasonably argued that to run against him. Museveni won, in an election marred such strictures were temporarily necessary: Uganda’s old by fraud, and Besigye fled into exile, claiming he feared for parties had fractured along tribal and religious lines.“There his life. Soon afterward, ruling party politicians began a were numerous signs to indicate that a process was moving campaign to amend the constitution to remove term limits, forward that was positive in terms of setting the stage for a which would allow Museveni to run the country indefinite- genuine democracy,” says Johnnie Carson, the American ly. Through it all, Western diplomats did little more than ambassador to Uganda from 1991 to 1994, who has since issue critical communiqués; the aid kept flowing. become critical of the regime. “I think too much slack was given,” says John Prender- gast, formerly an Africa specialist on Clinton’s National Se- ut Museveni’s admirers were slow to curity Council staff and now a senior adviser at the Interna- recognize—or remained willfully blind—when he tional Crisis Group.“During the Clinton administration, we stopped living up to his renaissance man reputa- tried to be clever and we tried to maintain access, and I look Btion. Corruption reemerged, particularly in the at it in horror.” Bush’s Africa policy has differed little from 14 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

Clinton’s, and Museveni still has unabashed supporters at bunal on separate charges. One day, black-clad men armed the State Department. It hasn’t hurt that he has become a with machine guns—members of a military intelligence unit vocal supporter of the war on terrorism and cozied up to called the Black Mambas Urban Hit Squad—surrounded leaders of America’s evangelical movement. Uganda’s High Court building, just to show the judges who was boss. The government slapped new restrictions on the hat afternoon at his ranch, as black thunder- movement of foreign journalists and threatened to ban an heads rolled in across the savannah, Museveni independent newspaper. Meanwhile, Museveni barn- beckoned me and a couple of Ugandan journal- stormed the country with the leader of his abusive political ists to hop into his bulletproof Toyota Land militia in tow. TCruiser. He drove us back to the ranch house, skidding The repressive measures, however, have exacted a politi- along the muddy unpaved road. He wanted to keep talking cal cost. In the days after Besigye’s imprisonment, several about animal husbandry. But our minds were on politics European nations cut their aid to Uganda, as did the World and the big issue of the week: Kizza Besigye’s return. Bank. If the amounts were symbolic, the message was clear: The previous Wednesday, the former presidential candi- Harder days are coming for Museveni. He is not yet a dicta- date arrived on Ugandan soil after four years in exile. On tor in the mold of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, another his drive from the airport to Kampala, 25 miles away, his car former rebel who was a darling in his own day, but it now had been mobbed by thousands of chanting supporters seems beyond dispute that Uganda’s herdsman is guiding waving tree branches in celebration.At a massive rally held his people down the same path. The situation is similar for that evening, the colonel had attacked Museveni for allow- all the new breed rulers. Many who once admired them, ing his cronies to grow rich while the rest of Uganda sunk such as Prendergast, say the time has come to treat the sol- deeper into poverty.“We now know we have the votes,” Be- dier princes like what they have become: just another gen- sigye had said in his distinctively low, gravelly voice.“If any- eration of Big Men in Africa. “It’s the basic principle of one wants to use force to steal our votes, then he will be un- ‘speak softly and carry a big stick,’ ” he said.“We walk loud- dertaking the most serious risk of his life.” ly and carry a toothpick, and these governments just laugh As he drove past scruffy villages where farmers lined the at our efforts at promoting democracy.” roadside, clapping in the pelting rain, Museveni told us he Pressuring a leader like Museveni on his weakest wasn’t worried. “They can have a crowd of 20,000—that’s point—his country’s dependence on foreign generosity— not surprising at all—if they go where they are concentrat- can work. In early January, after the aid cuts, a Ugandan ed,” he said. Movement’s support lay in Uganda’s country- judge abruptly freed Besigye, calling his prolonged deten- side, he told us, not the cities, where only 14 percent of the tion “illegal and unlawful.” More recently, after the same population lives. Asked to predict how he would do in the judge indicated that he is likely to acquit Besigye of rape, election, Museveni replied,“It will be like 80 percent.” and a top general thunderously denounced him, he re- “Are you going to arrest him?” asked a Ugandan jour- signed from Besigye’s treason case, citing his health and nalist in the front seat. Rumors of a crackdown on Besigye saying, “I still love my dear life.” Besigye remains free for had been flying ever since he’d returned. Uganda’s intelli- now, drawing large and enthusiastic crowds between court gence agencies had long alleged that, in the wake of his 2001 dates. The campaign itself has thus far been relatively defeat, Besigye had plotted a civil war to overthrow the peaceful, probably because of heightened international government, and there was ample circumstantial evidence. scrutiny. Museveni might be forced into a runoff; he could (On one memorable occasion, Besigye called a radio show even conceivably lose. Whatever happens, fraud charges, to instruct his supporters to “train and wait” for war.) Now court challenges, and public unrest are sure to ensue. But that he had returned, Besigye was refusing to disavow re- few Ugandans doubt who will remain in charge when the bellion. “He must make sure he does not run afoul of the tear gas clears. law,” Museveni told us, choosing his words cautiously. “He The night of Besigye’s arrest, as soldiers patrolled the will have to stop it, because I’m sure—I’m not a lawyer, but darkened streets of downtown Kampala, I visited a bar he must be breaking some law.” frequented by a crowd of boisterous, educated young Ten days later, to no one’s surprise, Besigye was arrested. Ugandans. I’d spent many nights arguing about politics Kampala descended into riots, the worst urban violence the there, and I knew the regulars split roughly evenly be- city had seen since the end of the civil war. The day of the tween Museveni supporters and opponents. But, that arraignment, I stood in a packed, sweltering courtroom as night, everyone was busy filling out yellow cards identify- Besigye was charged with plotting rebellion and raping his ing themselves as members of the ruling Movement Party. former maid. Outside the court’s window, police were Ideals were a luxury, they said; if there was going to be shooting tear gas at protesters gathered in a park across the trouble, they wanted to be on the winning side. Only my street. Periodically, the staccato sound of automatic rifle fire friend Joseph, a hardcore Besigye man, refused to sign up. rang out. “Politics is getting nasty,” he said disgustedly. “We are go- Besigye’s arrest began a menacing few months. He was ing back to those old days.” Then he downed his beer and denied bail and subsequently dragged before a military tri- stalked off into the gloom. ½

16 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

Zulu’s membership to hold their place in the city until the New Orleans Dispatch rest of the black population can return. “That’s why our theme this year is ‘Leading the Way Back Home,’ ” he says. Most black New Orleanians have remained ambivalent Black Out about which decision—Belfield’s or Hamilton’s—is best. But they are deeply sympathetic to the fear of marginaliza- by carol flake chapman tion that underscores both approaches. James Borders, a consultant to nonprofit organizations who also lost his t was a bittersweet reunion last Saturday for the home, worries most about the survival of black New Or- men of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club. leans.“For me, the holy trinity of New Orleans culture is the Dressed in their signature yellow-gold jackets, they brass bands, the Mardi Gras Indians, and the social aid and gathered in front of the St. John Missionary Baptist pleasure clubs,” he says. The news media’s focus has been Church on Jackson Avenue for a church service, on seeing this year’s Carnival, particularly the participation the first event of the Carnival season. In ordinary of the historically black Zulu krewe, as a sign of resilience. years, the service would kick off the season with a But missing in that story is the more desperate one of the Iblessing, and things would get progressively more festive black community trying, through Carnival, to keep a foot- during the two-week countdown to Mardi Gras day, when hold in their city. Zulu floats roll down the club’s traditional parade route, with members transformed by blackface makeup, wild wigs, and or all its air of frivolity, Carnival has long been a grass skirts into comical, stylized African characters. This way for groups to proclaim their place in the city, year, though, the service was a memorial, and fewer yellow- beginning with the original antebellum krewe of gold jackets than usual were in evidence at the church. Many Comus, regarded as the founder of Carnival’s pa- of the members greeted one another in the fervent way of Frade tradition. Members of Comus took pains to differenti- long-lost family members. ate themselves through Carnival from newer arrivals in Like the city of New Orleans, post-Katrina Carnival has town. Carnival was also a field on which the city’s residents become whiter. In contrast to the diminished presence of grappled with racial issues. For years, some of the oldest Zulu, Endymion, the largest of the major krewes and mostly krewes were white-only, and, long after blacks outnum- white, will likely roll with even more riders than usual. Mem- bered whites in the city, Rex, an elite white-only krewe, con- bers of Zulu, like much of the city’s black community, lost tinued to dominate the festivities. But, in 1991, the absurdity their homes to the post-Katrina flood. Currently, more than of lily-white clubs parading in a predominantly black town half of the club’s 500 members are living outside New Or- became too much, and, after long and bitter debate, the leans. Many members journeyed to the event not from their black-majority City Council passed an ordinance to prevent homes in the Ninth Ward, Gentilly, or New Orleans East, but discriminatory clubs from marching on public streets. The from Atlanta, Houston, or other cities that took in evacuees. Carnival war, as some regarded it, illustrated that Carnival Some couldn’t make it back at all, including ten who sur- had become as much a political ritual as a social one. Rex vived Katrina but died after the traumatic evacuation. invited nonwhite members into its ranks, but some of the A few of the club members who were missing, though, oldest krewes, including Comus, chose to give up parading were absent by choice. The city’s decision to carry on with rather than open up their membership. the Carnival season in the absence of so many black resi- Black New Orleanians, however, like women and gays, dents troubled some, including Zulu member and attorney had long since made their own niche in the Carnival season. David Belfield.After members voted in December to partic- Zulu originated in 1909 as one of the social aid and pleasure ipate in this year’s Carnival, Belfield sued the club, seeking to clubs that were formed in the black community as a kind of have the vote nullified on the grounds that members had not social safety net. But, even within the black community, been properly notified. “I love Mardi Gras,” says Belfield, Zulu, whose founding members were inspired by a musical who lost his home and is now living in Lawrenceville, Geor- comedy skit involving an African tribe, became a controver- gia. “But what is there to celebrate when 70 percent of the sial symbol of black identity.During the 1960s, when the idea population is not even living in New Orleans?” of clowning in minstrel-show blackface went against the no- Choosing not to march in Carnival is a significant ges- tion of black power and black-is-beautiful, many younger ture, given the importance of the celebration to the city, not blacks spurned the group. But, by the time of the Carnival only in economic terms but also in symbolic ones. But, with war in the early ’90s, Zulu had become a pillar of Carnival, the city’s future still so uncertain, particularly for its black along with Rex, and the kings of the two clubs had begun population, choosing to march has significance as well. For meeting as equals in a ritual on Lundi Gras, the day before Zulu President Charles Hamilton Jr., parading is a way for Mardi Gras. In one of Carnival’s great ironies, Zulu, with its comic parody of white and black royalty, had taken on a Carol Flake Chapman is the author of New Orleans: kind of gravitas in the city’s social world. Behind the Masks of America’s Most Exotic City. By the time Katrina hit, Carnival had become an eco- the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 17 nomic engine driving the city’s tourism industry, one of the few industries left in town, and therefore something of a sa- Beirut Dispatch cred cow,even beyond its historical and cultural significance. Pro-Carnival boosters were fond of pointing out Carnival’s multiplier effect to the economy: It pumped some $1 billion Comic Relief into the city, directly and indirectly, each year.To attack Car- nival, then, was to attack not only the city’s social fabric, but by annia ciezadlo also its economic base. or the Western news media, always eager fter Katrina, the economic argument for to revisit Lebanon’s bloody 15-year civil war, Carnival doesn’t really hold water, so to speak. the Muslim rampage through a Christian This year, the city is expecting far fewer tourists, neighborhood in Beirut on February 5 was a and no one seems quite sure how the city will disappointment. A mob of predominantly payA the $2.7 million it’s going to have to spend on police Sunni Muslims threw stones at a Maronite overtime and other expenses. For the first time, the city has Catholic church—a desecration most militias hired a p.r. firm to drum up corporate support, but, so far, refrained from even during the civil war—and yet Beirut’s only Glad Products, the trash bag maker, has come through FChristians turned the other cheek. A peaceful counter- with a commitment. demonstration that night felt like a Cedar Revolution class But, perhaps because Carnival has less of an economic reunion: Young men and women milled around chanting purpose this year, its symbolic one is heightened.A number desultory slogans, then went home. By nightfall, what was as- of Mardi Gras Indians, who come from the city’s poorest sumed to be a ham-handed Syrian attempt to stir up sectari- neighborhoods, are making new suits this year, and they an trouble in Lebanon had fizzled. “We will not fall in the plan to march on Mardi Gras day as an act of defiance. trap,” proclaimed Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. “Our na- Hamilton talks about the decision to march not only in tional unity is stronger than Syrian destruction.” terms of stake-holding but also in terms of civic duty, ex- The cartoon intifada—as the sometimes violent protests plaining, “Some people are saying we shouldn’t participate. over a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depict- But we have to take the lead in putting normalcy back into ing the Prophet Mohammed have come to be known—has the city.” It is the same argument that members of the city’s been portrayed in the Western press as an epic struggle be- tourism industry—as well as members of the city’s white tween West and East, Christendom and Islam.The image of Carnival clubs—have made. angry, stone-throwing Muslims assaulting the Christian But that goal—normalcy—remains elusive, even on Mar- neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh fit right into that clash-of-civi- di Gras day. Zulu will parade with only one-third or so of its lizations paradigm. usual number of floats, and it has had to advertise on the In- But, as the world tuned in to watch a classic Christian- ternet for riders. The St. Augustine Marching 100, the leg- Muslim image from Lebanon’s last war, it missed another endary black high school marching band, has been merged— picture: mainstream Sunni clerics frantically trying to hold along with the school itself—with an uptown prep school, back a bandana-wearing, brick-throwing Sunni mob that no and the combined band will march on Mardi Gras day with longer respects their clerical robes. “I asked those trouble- Rex instead of Zulu. Missing, too, will be the black throngs makers,‘What do the people who live in Ashrafiyeh have to that used to picnic on Claiborne Avenue, under the i-10 over- do with the people who published those blasphemous car- pass, where thousands of junked cars are now parked. toons about our Prophet?’ ” lamented one Sunni cleric from It is this backdrop that is keeping former marchers like Dar Al Fatwa, Lebanon’s highest Sunni spiritual authority. Belfield, a onetime king of Zulu, away.To hold Carnival un- “I asked them, ‘Why were those men destroying cars and der these conditions, Belfield says, is a “frivolous gesture.” public property? Why did they throw rocks at a church, Belfield wrote Mayor Ray Nagin asking that the city put which is a house of God?’ Those people were not true Mus- Carnival on hold until its exiled citizens could return, but lims.They had other agendas.” neither Nagin nor Zulu has heeded his call. In Lebanon and Syria, the cartoon jihad is not a battle Still, no one is under the illusion that this will be Carnival between West and East. It’s a struggle by mainstream Sun- as usual. In recognition of that, Zulu added a jazz funeral to nis to contain a growing network of radical Islamists. The Saturday’s memorial service. As the men marched through Sunnis who burned Beirut’s Danish Embassy weren’t there the city to the dirge and dance rhythms of the Pinstripe jazz to defend their Prophet from Lurpak butter or an obscure band—past ruined houses still spraypainted with rescue Danish newspaper. They weren’t even there, really, to as- markings—the parade felt like a tentative step in trying to sault Christians.They came to Ashrafiyeh—from Lebanon’s take back the streets and to hold them in trust for those who northern Islamist pockets, its Palestinian camps, and from couldn’t be there. But, even with Zulu leading the way home neighboring Syria—to teach the mainstream Sunni estab- for the black community, as their theme declares, it is going to be a very long road back. ½ Annia Ciezadlo is a writer in Beirut, Lebanon. 18 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic lishment a lesson. Most of all, they were there to send a a figure as his father. “The radical Sunni fringe has a lot of message to Saad Hariri, the Saudi- and U.S.-backed figure- control outside Beirut,” says Eugène Sensenig-Dabbous, an head of Lebanon’s current parliamentary majority and the assistant professor of political science at Lebanon’s Notre ostensible leader of Lebanon’s Sunni community.The mes- Dame University and co-head of the Libanlink Diversity sage was this: You cannot control us. What’s frightening is Center, a Beirut-based interfaith nonprofit. that they might be right. After the February 5 clashes, some Lebanese are worried that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad may be using Lebanon’s ere’s a story from Lebanon that didn’t make radical Sunnis against Hariri in a battle for the Sunni street. the international news: On February 2, some- But, in doing so, the Syrian regime risks repeating the mis- one detonated a small, one-kilogram bomb at a take the United States made when it funneled billions of Lebanese army barracks in Ramlet Al Baida, dollars to Afghan mujahedeen: feeding a jihad it cannot Ha wealthy seafront neighborhood in predominantly Muslim keep caged.Take the Ahbash, a cultlike movement carefully West Beirut. Three hours earlier, someone claiming to rep- groomed by Syrian intelligence into a Lebanese proxy. Ger- resent “Al Qaeda in Lebanon” called a Lebanese newspa- man prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who conducted the U.N. per and threatened to bomb several security bases unless investigation into Rafik Hariri’s murder, found evidence the government freed 13 members of the group arrested in that the Ahbash played a key role in planning Hariri’s early January.The phone call was traced to Ain Al Hilweh, killing. “After the Hariri assassination, the Ahbash adopted the most squalid and desperate—and the most militant—of a low profile, but it doesn’t mean that their influence is de- Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps. creasing,” says Lokman Slim, leader of Hayyabina (“Let’s Today, Lebanese security forces are worried that Al Go”), a civil society group that promotes a secular Lebanon. Qaeda–linked networks have decided to set up a military infrastructure in Lebanon, perhaps even forging ties to Jor- or years, the Syrian regime’s rationale for occu- danian terrorist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. On February 11, pying Lebanon was this: Without Syria to babysit, Lebanon’s acting interior minister admitted as much to a Lebanon’s warring factions would collapse back French newspaper, adding that “the soil is fertile.” Accord- into civil war. That’s the rationale that led the ing to the Lebanese newspaper As Safir, some of the Al FUnited States to back the Syrian dominion over Lebanon Qaeda suspects confessed to planning the same types of ter- for more than a decade. Similarly, the Baath regime has al- rorist attacks in Lebanon as in Iraq. ways used radical Sunnis as bogeymen. Without its dicta- In fact, they already tried once. In September 2004, Leb- torship, goes the argument, the Muslim Brotherhood anese security forces uncovered a plot to bomb, among oth- would ignite the Levant. er sites, the Italian Embassy—in the heart of Beirut’s rebuilt Syria has cried the Islamist wolf for so long that the West, downtown—as retaliation for Italy’s support of the Iraq war. and perhaps even the Lebanese government itself, has be- When a suspect named Ismail Khatib died in custody, resi- gun to underestimate the real threat.That miscalculation be- dents of his hometown, Majdal Anjar, erupted with rage, de- came painfully obvious on February 5, when Lebanese secu- stroying shops on the Beirut-Damascus road, smashing win- rity forces made a miserable showing despite ample warning dows, and blocking the highway with burning tires. Long that trouble was on its way: first the burning of the Danish before the February 5 demonstrations, the Majdal Anjar Embassy in Damascus, then busloads of Islamists massing in riots revealed a deep current of support for Al Qaeda–style cities like Tripoli, in northern Lebanon. “It takes two hours terrorism: “The Interior Ministry accuses Ismail Khatib of to get from Tripoli to Beirut—they could have stopped recruiting fighters against the American invaders in Iraq. them, but nothing was done,” says Farid El Khazen, a mem- Well, this is an honor for him that should earn him respect, ber of parliament and a political science professor at the not death in a Lebanese detention center,” raged pro-Syrian American University of Beirut. “And they knew that, the activist Maan Bashour at the dead man’s funeral. Last week, day before, there was a rehearsal, so to speak, when they in a disquieting sign of interconnected loyalties, the anony- burned down the Danish Embassy in Damascus.” mous Ain Al Hilweh caller threatened that his group would Ever since the Iraq war, and especially in recent months, not permit “the tragedy of Ismail Khatib” to be repeated. Assad’s government has shown an increasing willingness to For the Lebanese government, northern Islamist pockets play with Islamist fire. After all, a bulwark isn’t much use like Majdal Anjar have been a perennial embarrassment. In without something to hold back. As the Syrian regime theory, Lebanon’s prime minister—and its leading Sunni grows increasingly desperate, it is more and more willing to families—represent the Sunni minority. But even Rafik entertain the kind of Islamists that could pose a threat to its Hariri, the powerful and popular former prime minister own existence and the entire region—a threat that the slain a year ago, had a hard time controlling Lebanon’s Is- Lebanese government has, until recently, been loath to ac- lamist backwaters. Hariri came from the relatively peaceful knowledge. “It proves that the Lebanese have learned very southern city of Sidon, not from the restive Sunni north. His well the message of the Syrian Baath regime,” says Slim. son Saad is now the putative leader of the anti-Syrian ma- “Instead of saying, ‘We have a problem inside the country,’ jority in parliament. But inexperienced Saad is not as strong we are hiding it.” Until now. ½ the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 19

Moderate Muslims and their radical leaders. Misled by joseph braude

ow a year and a half into Abdurah- Jewish, and Western targets abroad. In that very same 1996 man Alamoudi’s 23-year prison sen- address to the IAP, he said: “I think if we are outside this tence for violating anti-terrorism sanc- country, we can say,‘Oh, Allah, destroy America’” and that tions, it might seem hard to remember “[y]ou can be violent anywhere else but in America.” During why both the Clinton and Bush ad- a conversation recorded shortly before his 2003 arrest, he ministrations used to embrace him, for again counseled against attacks in the United States, but years, as a leader of Islam in America. he called for strikes in Europe and Latin America. He ex- It might seem troubling that an FBI spokesman, as recently pressed the view in Arabic that the Al Qaeda attack on the Nas 2002, had dubbed Alamoudi’s organization, the then- U.S. Embassy in Kenya had been “wrong,” but only because Washington-based American Muslim Council, “the most “many African Muslims have died and not a single Ameri- mainstream Muslim group in the United States.” It might can died,” and he went on to say that “I prefer to hit a Zion- seem perplexing that the National Conference of Catholic ist target in America or Europe or elsewhere. . . . I prefer, Bishops, in a statement praising Alamoudi’s group as “the honestly, like what happened in Argentina. . . . The [Buenos premier, mainstream Muslim group in Washington,” had dis- Aires] Jewish Community Center. It is a worthy operation.” missed warnings about the organization and its long-serving In July 2004,Alamoudi pleaded guilty in an Alexandria, Vir- director as “Muslim-bashing.” ginia, federal court to smuggling Libyan money into the But the reasons Alamoudi enjoyed this status are not so United States and concealing his financial transactions and difficult to understand. He purported to represent millions foreign bank accounts from the IRS. He also admitted to of American Muslims, who deserve a political voice in having participated in a plot to kill the crown prince of Saudi Washington. And, throughout his public life, he spoke out Arabia—the present King Abdullah—in consort with Al against terrorist attacks in the United States. In a typical Qaeda affiliates in London. speech to thousands of American Muslims at the annual This picture of Alamoudi leads to a troubling conclusion: convention of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) During the time he was holding himself out as a spokesman in Chicago in 1996, for instance, he told the audience,“Once for Islam in America,Alamoudi’s words and deeds amount- we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. . . . ed to a toxic moral influence on American Muslims and a There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no repugnant misrepresentation of that community to the way.We have other means to do it.” politicians and priests who embraced him.Worse,Alamoudi To a large extent, his reputation as an influential moder- is hardly one of a kind. Many of those recently held out as ate Muslim became self-perpetuating, his stature enhanced moderate leaders of the American Muslim community— each time he met with a mainstream politician or clergy- and embraced as such by American politicians—are any- man. The pages of his organization’s newsletter and sympa- thing but. For over a generation, supporters of Hamas, Is- thetic publications reported that he had held meetings with lamic Jihad, and Hezbollah have promoted their views and President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and National solicited support in numerous U.S. mosques, Islamic cen- Security Adviser Anthony Lake in the mid-’90s. The State ters, and convention halls—as journalists and a litter of in- Department reportedly sent Alamoudi on diplomatic jun- dictments and convictions in recent years have documented kets to Muslim countries in the late ’90s. Bush administra- for the public. The opportunistic acceptance of the United tion officials had picked up where their predecessors in the States by Islamists like Alamoudi as “the dominion of White House left off, granting Alamoudi and his associates truce”—a concept that has been spelled out in detail by photo opportunities with the president and an open-door leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, both inside and outside policy with senior administration officials. the United States—is inherently shaky.It is a truce that asks What these mainstream politicians and government insti- to be breached—as recent cases of terrorist planning by tutions largely missed, however, was that, if you listened American Muslims in the United States suggest. to Alamoudi carefully, he stopped sounding so moderate. The American Muslim community and the U.S. political While he generally advised against attacks in the United establishment can and should do better than this. In contrast States, he enthusiastically endorsed terrorism against Israeli, to various governments in Western Europe, where official negotiations with domestic Islamists have been deemed nec- Joseph Braude is a weekly columnist for The New Republic essary, there is no need to reach such accommodations here. Online and the author of The New Iraq. Fortunately, given the largely successful integration of Mus- 20 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic lim immigrants in the United States, there is reason to hope facing nine counts in a Tampa terrorism indictment—after a that the Alamoudis of America will be superseded over time jury acquitted him in December of eight counts and failed by more progressive Muslim voices. To some degree, such to reach a verdict on the rest of the 17 originally included in changes have already begun. But this natural process has the indictment—arising from the charge that he helped fi- been delayed and stifled by American political leaders’ un- nance and steer the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. natural selection of extremists to represent Islam and Islam- Through his lawyer, Arian has conceded a close affiliation ic aspirations in the United States. with the Islamic Jihad leadership and extensive financial re- mittances to individuals affiliated with the group. Arian ritiques of American Islamist leadership typi- does not deny having publicly called for the death of Is- cally come with the disclaimer that most Muslims raelis, nor does anyone dispute that a former colleague of in the United States do not call for the death his in Tampa,Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, now heads the Is- of Israelis or Jews, let alone anybody else. This lamic Jihad organization. Yet Arian’s thinly veiled activism Cunderstatement does not begin to capture the disconnect did not lose him an invitation to the White House in 2001 or between most American Muslims and groups like Alamou- friends and supporters in the United States who have cham- di’s American Muslim Council that have spoken and acted pioned his cause in the name of political freedom and Islam on their behalf. Islam in America, a millions-strong religion, in America. does not resemble a cross section of the Muslim world, Whatever value judgment one places on Arian’s strident the Middle East, or any Muslim country.Among immigrant anti-Israel activism, one cannot help but notice that it indi- Muslims to the United States, Shia—who include nearly all rectly promoted killing projects beyond Israel, including in of the country’s Iranian Muslim immigrants and a signifi- the United States. Several conferences organized by Arian cant proportion of South Asians and Arabs—may well out- in Chicago featured Abdel Aziz Odeh—a cleric subse- number Sunnis. Arab-American Christians outnumber quently listed by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co- Arab-American Muslims—though demographics and shift- conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—as a ing migration trends are poised to taper if not invert this guest speaker, and one conference gave a platform to Omar disparity. Black Muslims, relative newcomers to main- Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik now serving life in stream Sunni Islam, easily represent one of the largest prison for his central role in the 1993 bombing and subse- waves of conversion in twentieth-century Islamic history— quent plots to attack New York City. as well as one of the most remote from the faith’s tradition- The natural connection between terrorism overseas and al heartlands. If all these disparate groups held a contested against the United States lies in the enduring alliance be- election for a single American Muslim community leader, tween Israel and the United States and the inherently wealth and demographics might easily induce a dead heat transnational nature of the militant ideology Arian and between an Iranian Shia businessman in Los Angeles and a Shallah espoused.Though Islamic Jihad is focused on Pales- black Sunni cleric in Chicago. tine, it is not a discrete national liberation movement. The How strange, therefore, that the most prominent nation- group posits the centrality of the Palestinian cause within a al Muslim legations to Washington have, for decades, been broader armed struggle to reclaim all Muslim lands from headed mainly by Sunni Arabs and Sunni Pakistanis, many rulers deemed un-Islamic—and arguably, by extension, all of whom have baldly espoused the tenets of Wahhabism those who support them. and the Muslim Brotherhood. Both of these ideologies are Alamoudi, Shallah, and Arian also appear to have had as anti-Shia as they are anti-Jewish. And Muslim Brother- something in common with scores of other American Is- hood architect Sayyid Qutb, whose teachings are frequently lamists and Islamist institutions subsequently charged by cited in Saudi-subsidized books that have been distributed prosecutors with abetting terrorism overseas. While they in numerous American Sunni mosque libraries, was no fan may have frowned upon attacks on U.S. soil, their indict- of American blacks, either. In his Arabic-language account ments suggest they had no qualms about flagrantly trans- of visiting the United States in the late ’40s, The America I gressing the country’s laws. The 42-count Texas indictment Have Seen, he called jazz “this music that the savage bush- against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Develop- men created to satisfy their primitive desires, and their de- ment, an avowedly pro-Hamas organization whose sup- sire for noise on the one hand, and the abundance of animal porters were ubiquitous in Sunni American mosques and noises on the other.” Islamic centers throughout the ’90s, does not merely allege Evidence of the radicalism lurking beneath the moder- $12.4 million in material support to a terrorist group; it ate veneer of many of those who have headed prominent charges conspiracy, tax evasion, and money-laundering.The Islamic organizations is not hard to find. Take the case of 2002 North Carolina conviction of Mohamed Hammoud on Sami Al Arian, a former University of South Florida profes- charges of materially supporting Hezbollah and several as- sor. To be sure, Arian shared Alamoudi’s opposition to ter- sociates on charges of smuggling, racketeering, and money- rorism on U.S. soil, leaving aside a memorable speech about laundering is stunning not merely because of its gravity— jihad in which he cried,“Let us damn America,” from which the defendants had funneled over $1 million to the group he subsequently distanced himself. But Arian is currently and sent advanced military technology and global-position- the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 21 ing systems—but also because their tactics are reminiscent against an Arab country and a Muslim people—calling for of other organized crime syndicates. Hammoud and his co- armed jihad against the occupier. So did 26 Saudi clerics in defendants had organized an inventive cigarette-smuggling a joint edict released in November 2004. In a December ring from North Carolina to Michigan. sermon, he also called upon God to protect Iraq from “the Unlike common criminals, these Islamists’ crimes are the American Satans.”Though Qaradawi has been banned from result not of a moral lapse, but rather of a consistent moral entering the United States since 1999, he can still reach position. Many radical Islamists subscribe to a traditional thousands of Arabic-speaking U.S. homes via Al Jazeera, on Muslim legal convention that divides the world into the which he hosts a weekly program about Islamic life. “dominion of Islam” (Dar Al Islam), where Islamic law pre- vails, and the “dominion of war” (Dar Al Harb), where war his strand within American Islamist culture, prevails pending the country’s Islamization. A debate has however thin, is relevant to the rash of initiatives been aired publicly in the Muslim community as to which by some Muslims in America to assist Al Qaeda, sphere the United States belongs. But, if the United States which federal prosecutors have brought to light is within the dominion of war, all kinds of criminality may Tsince September 11. It was through a predominantly Arab- be permitted. As an article in Al Zaitounah, the flagship American mosque outside Buffalo, New York, that six publication of the IAP, reported in 1994, “Some Muslims American-born Yemeni ethnics—mostly employed, mar- permit themselves to take money from non-Muslims in ried, and college-educated, all registered Democrats—met a America, whether individuals or companies, and avoid re- pair of preachers who lured them to an Al Qaeda training imbursing them, on the grounds that America is an infi- camp in Afghanistan and a meeting with Osama bin Laden. del country.” A journalist who visited the young men’s hometown of Al Zaitounah interviewed three senior Muslim Brother- Lackawanna, New York, described the Al Qaeda trainees as hood clerics on the question of whether the United States “the cool, assimilated guys in the community.”The FBI agent was part of the dominion of war.Their responses left a good who elicited their first confession—from a member of the deal of wiggle room as to the answer. Qatar-based Youssef group who had been intercepted in Bahrain—recalled in a Al Qaradawi, at the time a star attraction at well-attended “Frontline” interview, “[W]hen we got on the plane on our Islamist conferences in the United States, clarified at the way to the States, and he met the case agents from Buffalo, outset that Israel was the dominion of war and that “it must one of his biggest concerns [was], ‘How are the Buffalo Bills be dealt with on this basis until all rights and lands are re- doing?’ That tells me that he really likes what he has here.” stored to their owners and justice takes the place of the scum These youths had experienced an integrated, American Is- regime that is present there now.” (It bears noting that lamic cultural environment that condoned suicide bombings Yitzhak Rabin, then–prime minister of the “regime” to in Israel as surely as it cheered the home football team. which Qaradawi referred, had signed the Oslo accords with When a local Al Qaeda preacher and his Saudi colleague the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) a few sought to recruit them, they apparently did so by building on months earlier.) Asked whether the United States belongs the moral foundation that formed the bedrock of their reli- in a similar category, Qaradawi replied, “The bifurcation of gious environment—by asking them to take a short walk the world into two dominions, a dominion of war and a do- from the dominion of truce to the dominion of war. minion of Islam, does not necessarily mean that war must be Other members of the community, to be sure, took issue waged against every dominion that is not a dominion of Is- with the preachers’ arguments. The apprehension of the so- lam. Some dominions should be fought, while other domin- called “Lackawanna Six,” in fact, was reportedly the result of ions could be affixed to the dominion of Islam by pacts and information provided to the FBI by the Yemeni-American truces, as has been the case in Islamic history.” Noting that community—and the Saudi preacher had not lasted long in one of the four schools of Sunni Islamic law, the Shafii the local mosque. But the case may have been as much a school, had allowed for a third designation,“the dominion of learning experience for Al Qaeda and its affiliates as it was truce” (Dar Al Ahd), Qaradawi suggested,“It may be gener- for the United States: It demonstrates that some number of ally possible to classify America and Western states as the second-generation American Muslims can be lured into dominion of truce, because they share treaties, common in- American killing projects within the framework of their in- terests, and embassies with Arab and Islamic countries and digenous religious milieu—provided the recruitment is car- do not—at least for the time being—pose a direct, unveiled ried out discreetly, outside the purview of other American aggression to Muslims or Muslim countries.” The other two Muslims who disagree with Al Qaeda. Effective recruitment clerics did not substantively differ with Qaradawi. in the United States may be tricky and time-consuming, but A decade later, it would be difficult for any American it is doable—and some of the blame for this state of affairs follower of Qaradawi to avoid concluding that the cleric’s rests on the failings of America’s Islamist leadership. conditional acceptance of the United States as “possibly” Further evidence of the pernicious effect the radicalism the “dominion of truce” no longer applies—if it ever did— of these so-called moderate Muslim leaders have on their based on its own logic. Qaradawi himself has confirmed his flocks can be seen in several other recent terrorism cases. view that America’s invasion of Iraq was a direct aggression Consider the businessman in Brooklyn who allegedly 22 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic helped Sheik Mohammed Al Hasan Al Moayad channel edged that cair received money from the Holy Land Foun- money to Hamas and Al Qaeda (part of the multimillion- dation, the avowedly pro-Hamas charity that now faces fed- dollar total that the sheik allegedly raised and remitted). eral charges of supporting terrorism. The Holy Land Foun- Before Moayad’s conviction last spring in a Brooklyn fed- dation was co-founded by Mohammed El Mezain, who went eral court for conspiring to support both organizations, ju- on to work for a new nonprofit entity, KindHearts for Chari- rors were treated to a taste of the cleric’s flamboyant per- table Humanitarian Development. KindHearts has fun- sonal style through clandestine recordings of his meetings. neled money back to some of the same groups as Holy Moayad not only celebrated a suicide bombing in Israel, he Land. Its 2003 tax return shows that $77,571 was transferred also bragged that Osama bin Laden held him in the highest to the IAP. Among its remittances to overseas coffers in esteem and had called him “my sheik.” On the basis of his 2002, $100,000 went to the Sanabil Association for Relief many explicit recorded comments, it’s hard to imagine any- and Development in Lebanon, which the Treasury Depart- one who partnered with Moayad being deluded into think- ment designated a Hamas-supporting entity in August 2003. ing he wished to kill only Israelis or support only Hamas.As Mezain has since been charged with aiding Hamas through for the studious distinction between Israelis and American the Holy Land Foundation by federal prosecutors, and he Jews, it was plainly confused by 34-year-old Ahmed Hassan has departed KindHearts; but a veteran of at least one other Al Uqaily, an Iraqi-born resident of the United States for Islamist charity shut down by the government for providing over a decade who worked for a Krispy Kreme doughnut support to terrorist groups also works for the organization. shop in Nashville, Tennessee. In October 2004, he paid an All these American Islamist leaders and organizations, undercover agent $1,000 for two M-16 machine guns, four in turn, have maintained direct, public affiliations with the hand grenades, and several hundred rounds of ammunition. Plainfield, Indiana–based Islamic Society of North America A Tennessee judge sentenced him in October 2005 to four (isna), the largest and oldest umbrella organization of Mus- years and nine months in prison for illegally possessing the lim groups in the United States and Canada. Its numerous weapons, which he had planned to use to attack two Jewish ties to Brotherhood and Hamas activists do not amount to facilities—in the Nashville area. an indictment of isna as a whole or the tens of thousands of Of course, law-abiding American Muslim leaders do not predominantly Sunni Muslim Americans who attend the bear responsibility for the crimes of some misguided souls group’s annual convention. For that matter, nor does the in Lackawanna, Brooklyn, Nashville, Washington, Richard- fact that alleged Islamic Jihad backer Arian, according to son, Chicago, Charlotte, and a handful of other cities where several published conference proceedings, co-founded isna. Islamist killing projects and terrorism financiers have been These links do not devalue the $20,000 isna donated to vic- busted since September 2001. But they do owe their flocks, tims of Hurricane Katrina in September or the vaguely and all Americans, a firm moral stand against the global worded condemnation of “terrorism” that the group added murder fetish that aroused some of their jailed and far-flung its name to back in July. (See Judea Pearl’s insightful tnr counterparts. They should consistently repudiate Islamist Online article on the document, “Word Choice,” on Sep- civilian carnage—whether in Tel Aviv and New Delhi or tember 13, 2005.) But they do underscore the commonplace New York and Riyadh—and relentlessly counter the set of acceptance of Hamas and Islamic Jihad within the culture teachings that sanction it. Such leadership has been too of interlocking Islamist institutions that have achieved the slow in coming—a tragedy for which some of the blame ex- most prominence in America. tends beyond the Muslim community. This gut-wrenching state of affairs poses a recurring dilemma for outsiders whenever an Islamist leader in the ashington’s cozily intertwined Mus- United States seeks the same status-boosting acknowledge- lim advocacy groups tend to pool person- ment from elected officials that other political interest nel, ideals, and Saudi largesse and co-habit groups do. When isna invited President Bush to address its Qaradawi’s permanent floating dominion annual convention in Rosemont, Illinois, last September, ofW truce. By the time Alamoudi was indicted in 2003, the a total rebuff would have snubbed tens of thousands of American Muslim Council’s preeminent mainstream status American Muslims in attendance—but an acceptance in Washington had been supplanted by the Council on would have elevated the mainstream communal esteem of American-Islamic Relations (cair). Its long-serving execu- their questionable leadership and affiliates, as surely as tive director, Nihad Awad, had been a prominent officer of Alamoudi had been endowed a mainstream status he did the IAP, whose conferences Alamoudi memorably ad- not deserve. (Bush sent Undersecretary of State for Public dressed. In November 2004, a federal judge declared the Diplomacy Karen Hughes as his representative.) IAP civilly liable for the Hamas killing of an American citi- zen in the West Bank. Awad left the association to found he circumstances under which some Sunni cair in 1994—but, rather than try to distinguish himself from Islamists rose to prominence in the United States his former colleagues, Awad has also declared his support are intimately linked to U.S. government policy for Hamas in his new capacity and declined to denounce the decisions: Isna’s most radical affiliates, including movement’s bloody tactics. Furthermore, he has acknowl- Tthe IAP and the now-defunct Muslim Arab Youth Associa- the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 23

tion (maya), promoted militancy in support of the Afghan leaders might be a necessary measure, among other neces- Jihad during the later years of the cold war—when Presi- sary measures. During the bloody riots around Paris last dent Reagan himself stood squarely behind the Afghan fall, the pro–Muslim Brotherhood Union of Islamic Orga- fighters they championed. In the ’80s, the IAP and maya nizations of France (uoif) appears to have joined the gov- jointly brought Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s ac- ernment in calling for calm by pitting religion against the knowledged spiritual mentor, on tours of American Islamic rioters. Since 2003, the uoif has been the largest con- centers from his base in Peshawar, Pakistan. Azzam’s so- stituent member of the French Interior Ministry’s French journs across the Atlantic were truly within the borders of a Council for the Muslim Religion—a body established to “dominion of truce” at the time, in the sense that the United bring French Islam into the mainstream by granting it offi- States and Azzam’s Wahhabi backers in Saudi Arabia were cial status.A fatwa issued by the uoif declared,“It is not ac- aligned in support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. Yet, ceptable to express feelings of desperation through damag- even then,Azzam used the occasion of his U.S. visits to push ing public properties and carrying out arson. . . . Under for attacks far beyond Afghanistan. In a Brooklyn mosque, Islam, one cannot get one of his or her rights at the expense as has been widely reported, Azzam memorably declared of others.” Though some observers labeled the riots an “in- that the “jihad of the sword” was global, and he explicitly tifada” or “jihad,” Islamist voices in France that extol jihad called for its fulfillment inside the United States. Camera in Palestine and Iraq were successfully enlisted to try to pans of the sermon’s audience in a video recording of the undermine that ideological conception when it came to event subsequently revealed the presence of a co-conspira- French terrain. Having achieved official recognition by the tor in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Mahmud French Interior Ministry, the Brotherhood group evidently Abouhalima, taking in the cleric’s message. found enough common ground with the Republic to add its American groups like maya and the IAP, which hosted voice to calls for calm. In doing so, the uoif issued the fatwa and boosted Azzam in this country,are in some ways compa- despite its grievances about the country’s foreign policy— rable to Islamist groups in other pro-Western countries, which supports harsh crackdowns by the Algerian regime once encouraged by their host governments out of defer- on Algerian Islamists—and the second-class status of Mus- ence to their struggle against a common, godless enemy: lim immigrants to France. This dominion of truce–style ac- Egypt’s late president, Anwar Sadat, gave the Muslim commodation appears to be valuable to the French: The Brotherhood a chance to flourish in his country, hoping that Muslim Brotherhood movement may well command more the movement would serve as a counterweight to his com- popularity among France’s predominantly North African munist and socialist opposition—a policy that did not sur- Arab Sunni Muslim immigrant population than the Re- vive his assassination by a radical Islamist. Israel’s govern- public itself. ment, prior to the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, used to But the United States has succeeded where France and engage Sunni Islamists in Palestine, hoping that they would much of Europe have failed. As Spencer Ackerman ob- serve to challenge the PLO’s monopoly on Palestinian poli- served in these pages recently (see “Religious Protection,” tics; it was in this manner that Hamas was born.The fact that December 12, 2005), American Muslims enjoy social inte- Hamas espouses suicide attacks on civilian targets does not gration and acceptance, religious tolerance, economic op- erase its social function as a provider of some health and portunity, and a higher standard of living than the general human services to Palestinians. But it does—and should— population. These blessings mean that American imams, undermine the movement as a moral voice on any national unlike their French counterparts, are not in the position of or global stage. In a similar vein, both Alamoudi’s American shepherding socially restive flocks. According to demogra- Muslim Council and Nihad Awad’s cair have fought for phers, Jews and Muslims in the United States overwhelm- Muslim civil rights in the United States, among other just ingly co-habit the two coasts and a handful of urban areas causes. But their avowed support for Hamas and other in between. Nowhere since Baghdad in the 1930s—where manifestations of radicalism should call into question their a plurality of Jewish urban elites famously commingled pretext of speaking on behalf of millions of American with their Sunni and Shia counterparts in business, the pro- Muslims—and disqualify them as interlocutors on behalf of fessions, civil service, and music—have the points of inter- American Muslims to the United States government. This section between the two faiths been so manifold, so easy- is not to preclude the possibility that they may revise their going, and so fruitful. Nowhere else has the medieval views—or that true moderates may emerge from within the distinction between dominions of “war,” “Islam,” and ranks of organizations tinged by an older generation of poor “truce” been so irrelevant, so anachronistic. For this rea- leadership. It is, in fact, to demand that such a transforma- son, the United States does not need to countenance Is- tion occur. lamist interlocutors who endorse militancy and radicalism abroad, even while calling for a truce at home. It can find f the United States were France—where a mas- and promote true moderates more representative of Islam sive, ghettoized Arab Muslim underclass encircles the in America. The United States owes this much to its Mus- capital city in an exurban wall of rage—then sending lim community, and its Muslim community owes this much Ipoliticians to build bridges with domestic Islamist to itself. ½ 24 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

other accounts of anti-Hitler resistance. Stanley Kauffmann on Films Latter-day moral superiority is a bit easy. Whenever I read about the acquiescence of Aryan Germans in the abduction of Dissent, Great and Small their Jewish neighbors in the Nazi days, I have to wonder, if I had been Aryan, how self-sacrificially noble I would have been. Belated though the White Rose’s ome twenty years ago quietly maintaining her innocence, which actions may seem, they were still over- Germany sent us a film called we know she does to protect others as whelmingly brave. The White Rose, which told the well as herself, while he tries to bring her Julia Jentsch plays Sophie with a re- chilling true story of Munich not only to confession but to an acknowl- solve not to act. She relies largely on university students who in 1942 edgment of something other than politi- thinking the appropriate thoughts and Sformed a resistance group by that name. cal error—ingratitude. He reminds her, or letting them take care of what we see These students printed anti-Hitler leaf- thinks he is reminding her, of how much and hear. This approach is about three- lets and distributed them she and her fellow students quarters effective; occasionally we could in the university: eventually owe to Hitler’s regime: have used a touch—just a touch—of evi- they were caught, tried (or SOPHIE SCHOLL— their very education, for dent feeling. Alexander Held gives Mohr “tried”), and decapitated. THE FINAL DAYS chief instance. Mohr him- an air of expertise colored with a tacit The White Rose was one (Zeitgeist) self knows what the war is need to believe in what he is doing. The of the most moving films THE 78TH ANNUAL costing—he has a son on cinematographer, Martin Langer, clothes I have ever seen. Michael ACADEMY AWARDS the eastern front—but he most of the film in gray light. Rothemund Verhoeven’s directing felt believes it will all prove uses the sky thematically throughout: hushed, and Lena Stolze, worthwhile in a golden fu- Sophie looks upward whenever she gets who played Sophie Scholl, one of the ture. Thus these interrogation scenes are a chance—not religiously (although she group’s leaders, seemed a secular saint, not the usual harrying onslaught by a dia- is religious) but with an implied recogni- modest but sure. (In fact, Stolze had bolical policeman: they flirt with truth— tion of a worldly beauty that she will played Sophie in an earlier film that canted, grubby truth. (Presumably these miss. Sophie Scholl is not as devastatingly dealt chiefly with her cellmate after her scenes are accurate. Rothemund says he moving as The White Rose, but it, too, capture.) even interviewed Mohr’s eighty-three- evokes awe in lesser beings. Now we have a German film called year-old son for insight into his father’s Sophie Scholl—The Final Days, di- character.) Eventually Sophie’s show of Hollywood is again congratulating itself rected by Marc Rothemund and written innocence is cracked by other evidence. (a practice in which it has long been by Fred Breinersdorfer, occasioned by The effect on Mohr is not entirely tri- skilled), this time on the recent Oscar the recent availability of relevant rec- umphant.When she is taken to her execu- nominations for Best Picture. It boasts ords. Verhoeven’s film dealt mostly with tion, Mohr is there to watch, not gloating. that the five films chosen were relatively the students’ activities before their cap- One point, mentioned in neither low-budget pictures about serious sub- ture. (This included the recruitment of Verhoeven’s nor Rothemund’s film, must jects. The most expensive was Munich, one of their professors, who had asked be noted. It is an uncomfortable fact that which cost $68 million, not much of a them why they were risking their lives in German university students had been drop in the King Kong bucket. As it this way.They said they were only acting among the most heated supporters of happens, four of the five choices (Munich on principles that he had taught them. So Hitler from his beginning. Disillusion did the exception) were praised here and are he joined them; and he, too, was caught not appear signally until the late 1930s. well worth seeing. Still, under the eye of and decapitated.) Rothemund, however, This festered into outright resistance, completeness, the roster is a sorry joke. virtually begins with the arrest of Sophie among some students, only after the de- It is hardly news that the Oscar cere- and her co-activist brother Hans, along feat at Stalingrad, which made the war mony is a promotional gimmick. Films with a third young man. This new film seem futile. It takes no whit from the that are not promotable are out of the concentrates on Sophie’s interviews with courage of the White Rose to remember race. To complain about this situation a chief interrogator, and then her excori- that the students’ actions came only after is like protesting the commercialization ation, along with the two young men, by victory seemed impossible; but it does add of Christmas. Still, in anything like a long a judge in a courtroom. The three defen- historical perspective. To put it another view, it is horrendous that Oscar pays dants are permitted to share a last ciga- way, and with forehead pressed reveren- no attention to an important fact: with rette.We see Sophie led to the guillotine. tially to the ground, we can ask whether strange persistence, America produces The fresh interest in Rothemund’s there would have been a White Rose if small-scale, intelligent, interesting films, film is in those scenes with the interroga- the Germans had won at Stalingrad. and they are automatically ignored by tor, Mohr. Sophie faces him in his office, Still, the forehead stays down, as with the Oscar nominating committee be- the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 25

cause they cannot benefit from promo- believe, will linger in the minds of those called independent pictures and are out- tion. (Similarly, the Tonys in the New who saw them as long as any of the five standing in a field that continually pours York theater never go to Off-Broadway nominees: Me and You and Everyone We free-spirited artistic venture into the productions.) Obviously enough, the Os- Know, written and directed and per- American film world. But they are not, car in itself is no absolute guarantee of formed by Miranda July; Junebug, writ- in Academy terms, promotable. quality: the point is that the Academy of ten by Angus MacLachlan and directed Well, I won’t miss the Oscar broad- Motion Picture Arts and Sciences arbi- by Phil Morrison (for which Amy Adams cast, anyway. Talk about comedy! I’ll trarily and continuously shuts out a vital got a best supporting actress nomina- never forget the year that Marisa Tomei segment of our motion picture work. tion); and Nine Lives, written and direct- beat Vanessa Redgrave for the support- Here are three American films that, I ed by Rodrigo García. They are all so- ing actress award. ½ Amartya Sen Chili and Liberty The uses and abuses of multiculturalism.

I. gion, of the community in which they the fact that all British residents from the he demand for multi- happen to have been born, taking that Commonwealth countries, from which culturalism is strong in the unchosen identity to have automatic pri- most non-white immigrants have come to contemporary world. It is ority over other affiliations involving pol- Britain, have full voting rights in Brit- much invoked in the mak- itics, profession, class, gender, language, ain immediately,even without British citi- ing of social, cultural, and literature, social involvements, and many zenship. Integration has also been helped Tpolitical policies, particularly in Western other connections? Or should they be by largely non-discriminatory treatment Europe and America. This is not at all understood as persons with many affili- of immigrants in health care, schooling, surprising, since increased global contacts ations and associations, whose relative and social security. Despite all this, how- and interactions, and in particular exten- priorities they must themselves choose ever, Britain has recently experienced the sive migrations, have placed diverse prac- (taking the responsibility that comes with alienation of a group of immigrants, and tices of different cultures next to one reasoned choice)? Also, should we assess also fully homegrown terrorism, when another. The general acceptance of the the fairness of multiculturalism primarily some young Muslims from immigrant exhortation to “Love thy neighbor” might by the extent to which people from dif- families—born, educated, and reared in have emerged when the neighbors led ferent cultural backgrounds are “left Britain—killed many people in London more or less the same kind of life (“Let’s alone,” or by the extent to which their through suicide bombings in July 2005. continue this conversation next Sunday ability to make reasoned choices is posi- Discussions of British policies on morning when the organist takes a tively supported by the social opportu- multiculturalism thus have a much wider break”), but the same entreaty to love nities of education and participation in reach, and arouse much greater interest one’s neighbors now requires people to civil society? There is no way of escaping and passion, than the boundaries of the take an interest in the very diverse living these rather foundational questions if ostensible subject matter would lead one modes of proximate people. That this multiculturalism is to be fairly assessed. to expect. Six weeks after the July terror- is not an easy task has been vividly illus- ist attacks in London, when Le Monde trated once again by the confusion sur- n discussing the theory and published a critical essay called “The rounding the recent Danish cartoons of the practice of multiculturalism, it British Multicultural Model in Crisis,” the Prophet Mohammed and the fury is useful to pay particular attention the debate was immediately joined by a they generated. And yet the globalized to the British experience. Britain leader of another liberal establishment, nature of the contemporary world does Ihas been in the forefront of promoting James A. Goldston, director of the Open not allow the luxury of ignoring the diffi- inclusive multiculturalism, with a mixture Society Justice Initiative in America, cult questions that multiculturalism raises. of successes and difficulties, which are of who described the Le Monde article as One of the central issues concerns relevance also to other countries in Eu- “trumpeting,” and replied: “Don’t use how human beings are seen. Should they rope and the United States. Britain ex- the very real threat of terrorism to jus- be categorized in terms of inherited tra- perienced race riots in London and Liver- tify shelving more than a quarter-century ditions, particularly the inherited reli- pool in 1981, though nothing as large as of British achievement in the field of what happened in France in the fall of race relations.” There is a general issue Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize 2005, and these led to further efforts to- of some importance to be debated and in Economics in 1998. His new book, ward integration. Things have been fairly evaluated here. Identity and Violence:The Illusion stable and reasonably calm over the last I will argue that the real issue is not of Destiny, will be published by W.W. quarter-century. The process of integra- whether “multiculturalism has gone too Norton this spring. tion in Britain has been greatly helped by far” (as Goldston summarizes one of 26 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic the lines of criticism), but what particular has been a periodic but persistent de- to such a hybridization of behavioral form multiculturalism should take. Is mand that immigrants give up their tra- modes across the world that it is excep- multiculturalism nothing other than tol- ditional styles of life and adopt the domi- tionally difficult to identify any local cul- erance of the diversity of cultures? Does nant living modes in the society to which ture as being genuinely indigenous, with it make a difference who chooses the they have immigrated. That demand has a timeless quality. But thanks to Tebbit, cultural practices—whether they are im- sometimes taken a remarkably detailed the task of establishing Britishness can posed on young children in the name view of culture, involving quite minute become nicely algorithmic and wonder- of “the culture of the community” or behavioral issues, well illustrated by the fully easy (almost as easy as answering whether they are freely chosen by per- famous cricket test proposed by Lord the GCSE questions just cited). sons with adequate opportunity to learn Tebbit, the Conservative political leader. and to reason about alternatives? What His cricket test suggested that the sign ebbit has gone on to sug- facilities do members of different com- of a well-integrated immigrant is that gest, more recently, that if his munities have, in schools as well as in the he cheers for England in test matches cricket test had been put to society at large, to learn about the faiths against the country of his own origin use, it would have helped to and non-faiths of different people in the (such as Pakistan) when the two sides Tprevent the terrorist attacks by British- world, and to understand how to reason play each other. born militants of Pakistani origin: “Had about choices that human beings must, if Tebbit’s test has, it must be admitted, my comments been acted on, those at- only implicitly, make? the merit of definiteness, and gives an tacks would have been less likely.” It is immigrant a marvelously clear-cut pro- difficult to avoid the thought that this cedure for easily establishing his or her confident prediction perhaps underesti- II. integration into British society: “Cheer mates the ease with which any would-be ritain, to which I first came for the English cricket team and you will terrorist—with or without training from as a student in 1953, has been be fine!” The immigrant’s job in making Al Qaeda—could pass the cricket test by particularly impressive in mak- sure that he or she is really integrated cheering for the English cricket team ing room for different cultures. into British society could otherwise be without changing his behavior pattern BThe distance traveled has been in many quite exacting, if only because it is no one iota in any other way. ways quite extraordinary. I recollect longer easy to identify what actually is I don’t know how much into cricket (with some fondness, I must admit) how the dominant lifestyle in Britain to which Tebbit himself is. If you enjoy the game, worried my first landlady in Cambridge the immigrant must conform. Curry, for cheering for one side or the other is de- was about the possibility that my skin example, is now so omnipresent in the termined by a number of varying factors: color might come off in the bath (I had British diet that it features as “authen- one’s national loyalty or residential iden- to assure her that my hue was agreeably tic British fare,” according to the British tity, of course, but also the quality of play sturdy and durable), and also the care Tourist Board.In last year’s General Cer- and the overall interest of a series.Want- with which she explained to me that tificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) ing a particular outcome often has a con- writing was a special invention of West- examinations, taken by graduating tingent quality that would make it hard ern civilization (“The Bible did it”). For schoolchildren around sixteen years old, to insist on unvarying and unfailed root- someone who has lived—intermittently two of the questions included in the ing for any team (England or any other). but for long periods—through the pow- “Leisure and Tourism”paper were:“Oth- Despite my Indian origin and national- erful evolution of British cultural diver- er than Indian food, name one other type ity, I must confess that I have sometimes sity, the contrast between Britain today of food often provided by take-away cheered for the Pakistani cricket team, and Britain half a century ago is just restaurants” and “Describe what custom- not only against England but also against amazing. ers need to do to receive a delivery ser- India. During the Pakistani team’s tour The encouragement given to cultur- vice from an Indian take-away restau- of India in 2005, when Pakistan lost the al diversity has certainly made many con- rant.” Reporting on the GCSE in 2005, first two one-day matches in the series of tributions to people’s lives. It has helped the Daily Telegraph complained not six, I cheered for Pakistan for the third Britain to become an exceptionally lively about any cultural bias in these nation- match, to keep the series alive and inter- place in many different ways. From the wide exams, but about the “easy” nature esting. In the event, Pakistan went well joys of multicultural food, literature, mu- of the questions, which anyone in Britain beyond my hopes and won all of the re- sic, dancing, and the arts to the befud- should be able to answer without any maining four matches to defeat India dling entrapment of the Notting Hill Car- special training. soundly by the margin of four to two (an- nival, Britain gives its people—of all I also recollect seeing, not long ago, a other instance of Pakistan’s “extremism” backgrounds—much to relish and to definitive description of the unquestion- of which Indians complain so much!). celebrate. Also, the acceptance of cultur- able Englishness of an Englishwoman A more serious problem lies in the al diversity (as well as voting rights and in a London paper: “She is as English as obvious fact that admonitions of the largely non-discriminatory public ser- daffodils or chicken tikka masala.” Giv- kind enshrined in Tebbit’s cricket test vices and social security, referred to ear- en all this, a South Asian immigrant to are entirely irrelevant to the duties of lier) has made it easier for people with Britain might be a bit confused, but for British citizenship or residence, such as very different origins to feel at home. Tebbit’s kindly help, about what will participation in British politics, joining Still, it is worth recalling that the count as a surefire test of British identity. British social life, or desisting from mak- acceptance of diverse living modes and The important issue underlying the friv- ing bombs. They are also quite distant varying cultural priorities has not always olity of the foregoing discussion is that from anything that may be needed to had an easy ride even in Britain. There cultural contacts are currently leading lead a fully cohesive life in the country. the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 27

These points were quickly seized upon hand, is a distinctly English invention, Unless it is defined very oddly, multicul- in post-imperial Britain, and despite the unknown in India before Lord Clive, and turalism cannot override the right of a diversions of such invitations as Tebbit’s evolved, I imagine, in the British army person to participate in civil society,or to cricket test, the inclusionary nature of mess. And we are beginning to see the take part in national politics, or to lead British political and social traditions emergence of new styles of preparing In- a socially non-conformist life. No matter made sure that varying cultural modes dian food, offered in sophisticated sub- how important multiculturalism is, it within the country could be seen as being continental restaurants in London. cannot lead automatically to giving pri- entirely acceptable in a multi-ethnic Brit- In contrast, having two styles or tra- ority to the dictates of traditional culture ain. To be sure, there are many natives ditions co-existing side by side, without over all else. who continue to feel that this histori- the twain meeting, must really be seen as The people of the world cannot be cal trend is a great mistake, and that dis- plural monoculturalism. The vocal de- seen merely in terms of their religious approval is often combined with severe fense of multiculturalism that we fre- affiliations—as a global federation of resentment that Britain has become such quently hear these days is very often religions. For much the same reasons, a a multi-ethnic country at all. (In my last nothing more than a plea for plural multi-ethnic Britain can hardly be seen as encounter with such a resenter, at a bus monoculturalism. If a young girl in a a collection of ethnic communities. Yet stop, I was suddenly told, “I have seen conservative immigrant family wants the “federational” view has gained much through you all!,” but I was disappointed to go out on a date with an English boy, support in contemporary Britain. Indeed, that my informant refused to tell me that would certainly be a multicultural despite the tyrannical implications of more about what he had seen.) Yet the initiative. In contrast, the attempt by her putting persons into rigid boxes of given weight of British public opinion has been guardians to stop her from doing this (a “communities,” that view is frequently moving, at least until recently, quite common enough occurrence) is hardly a interpreted, rather bafflingly, as an ally strongly in the direction of tolerating— multicultural move, since it seeks to keep of individual freedom. There is even a and even celebrating—cultural diversity. the cultures separate. And yet it is the much-aired “vision” of “the future of All this, and the inclusionary role of vot- parents’ prohibition, which contributes multi-ethnic Britain” that sees it as “a ing rights and non-discriminatory public to plural monoculturalism, that seems to looser federation of cultures” held to- services, have contributed to an inter- garner the loudest and most vocal de- gether by common bonds of interest and racial calm of a kind that France in par- fense from alleged multiculturalists, on affection and a collective sense of being. ticular has not enjoyed recently. Still, it the ground of the importance of honor- But must a person’s relation to Brit- leaves some of the central issues of mul- ing traditional cultures—as if the cul- ain be mediated through the culture of ticulturalism entirely unresolved, and I tural freedom of the young woman were the family in which he or she was born? want to take them up now. of no relevance whatever, and as if the A person may decide to seek closeness distinct cultures must somehow remain with more than one of these pre-defined in secluded boxes. cultures or, just as plausibly, with none. III. Being born in a particular social back- Also, a person may well decide that her ne important issue con- ground is not in itself an exercise of cul- ethnic or cultural identity is less impor- cerns the distinction between tural liberty, since it is not an act of tant to her than, say, her political convic- multiculturalism and what choice. In contrast, the decision to stay tions, or her professional commitments, may be called “plural mono- firmly within the traditional mode would or her literary persuasions. It is a choice Oculturalism.” Does the existence of a be an exercise of freedom, if the choice for her to make, no matter what her diversity of cultures, which might pass were made after considering other al- place is in the strangely imagined “feder- one another like ships in the night, count tematives. In the same way, a decision to ation of cultures.” as a successful case of multiculturalism? move away—by a little or a lot—from the There would be serious problems Since, in the matter of identity, Britain is standard behavior pattern, arrived at af- with the moral and social claims of mul- currently torn between interaction and ter reflection and reasoning, would also ticulturalism if it were taken to insist isolation, the distinction is centrally im- qualify as such an exercise. Indeed, cul- that a person’s identity must be defined portant (and even has a bearing on the tural freedom can frequently clash with by his or her community or religion, question of terrorism and violence). cultural conservatism, and if multicultur- overlooking all the other affiliations a Consider a culinary contrast, by not- alism is defended in the name of cultural person has, and giving automatic priori- ing first that Indian and British food can freedom, then it can hardly be seen as ty to inherited religion or tradition over genuinely claim to be multicultural. India demanding unwavering and unqualified reflection and choice. And yet that ap- had no chili until the Portuguese brought support for staying steadfastly within proach to multiculturalism has assumed it to India from America, but it is effec- one’s inherited cultural tradition. a pre-eminent role in some of the official tively used in a wide range of Indian food British policies in recent years. today and seems to be a dominant ele- he second question re- The state policy of actively promot- ment in most types of curries. It is plen- lates to the fact that while re- ing new “faith schools,” freshly devised tifully present in a mouth-burning form ligion or ethnicity may be an for Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh children in vindaloo, which, as its name indicates, important identity for people (in addition to pre-existing Christian carries the immigrant memory of com- T(especially if they have the freedom to schools), illustrates this approach, and bining wine with potatoes. Tandoori choose between celebrating or rejecting not only is it educationally problematic, cooking might have been perfected in inherited or attributed traditions), there it also encourages a fragmentary per- India, but it originally came to India from are other affiliations and associations ception of the demands of living in a de- West Asia. Curry powder, on the other that people also have reason to value. segregated Britain. Many of these new 28 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic educational institutions are coming up an “all or nothing” view of a faith, Ak- parochial recollections, combined some- precisely at a time when religious pri- bar liked to reason about particular times with small capsules of packaged oritization has been a major source of components of each multi-faceted reli- history of religion—not to mention the violence in the world (adding to the his- gion. Arguing with Jains, for example, lampooning cartoons encountered out- tory of such violence in Britain itself, Akbar would remain skeptical of their side the school. The priorities of genuine- including Catholic-Protestant divisions rituals, and yet he was convinced by ly multicultural education can differ a in Northern Ireland—themselves not un- their argument for vegetarianism and great deal from the intellectual segmenta- connected with segmented schooling). even ended up deploring the eating of tion of a plural monocultural society. Prime Minister Tony Blair is certainly flesh in general. Despite the irritation right to note that “there is a very strong all this caused among those who pre- f one issue concerning faith sense of ethos and values in those ferred to base religious belief on faith schools involves the problematic schools.” But education is not just about rather than reasoning, he stuck to what nature of giving priority to unrea- getting children, even very young ones, he called “the path of reason,” the rahi soned faith over reasoning, there immersed in an old inherited ethos. It is aql, and insisted on the need for open Iis another momentous issue here, which also about helping children to develop dialogue and free choice. Akbar also concerns the role of religion in categoriz- the ability to reason about new decisions claimed that his own liberal Islamic be- ing people, rather than other bases of any grown-up person will have to take. liefs came from reasoning and choice, classification. People’s priorities and ac- The important goal is not some formulaic not from blind faith or what he called tions are influenced by all of their affil- parity in relation to old Brits with their “the marshy land of tradition.” iations and associations, not merely by old-faith schools, but what would best en- There is also the further question religion. The separation of Bangladesh hance the capability of the children to (particularly relevant to Britain) about from Pakistan was based on reasons of live “examined lives” as they grow up in how non-immigrant communities should language and literature, along with politi- an integrated country. see the demands of multicultural educa- cal priorities, and not on religion, which tion. Should it take the form of leaving both wings of undivided Pakistan shared. each community to conduct its own spe- To ignore everything other than faith is IV. cial historical celebrations, without re- to obliterate the reality of concerns that he central issue was put a sponding to the need for the “old Brits” have moved people to assert identities long time ago with great clar- to be more fully aware of the global that go well beyond religion. ity by Akbar, the Indian em- inter-relations in the origins and devel- The Bangladeshi community, large as peror, in his observations on opment of world civilization? If the roots it is in Britain, is merged in the religious Treason and faith in the 1590s. Akbar, of so-called Western science or culture accounting into one large mass along the Great Mughal, was born a Muslim draw on, say,Chinese innovations, Indian with all the other co-religionists, with no and died a Muslim, but he insisted that and Arabic mathematics, or West Asian further acknowledgment of culture and faith cannot have priority over reason, preservation of the Greco-Roman her- priorities. While this may please the Is- since one must justify—and, if necessary, itage (with, for example, Arabic transla- lamic priests and religious leaders, it cer- reject—one’s inherited faith through tions of forgotten Greek classics being tainly shortchanges the abundant culture reason. Attacked by traditionalists who re-translated into Latin many centuries of that country and emaciates the richly argued in favor of instinctive faith, Ak- later), should there not be a fuller reflec- diverse identities that Bangladeshis have. bar told his friend and trusted lieutenant tion of that robust interactive past than It also chooses to ignore altogether the Abul Fazl, a formidable scholar with can be found, at this time, in the school history of the formation of Bangladesh much expertise in different religions: curriculum of multi-ethnic Britain? itself. There is, as it happens, an ongoing “The pursuit of reason and rejection of When a British or an American math- political struggle at this time within Bang- traditionalism are so brilliantly patent as ematician today employs an algorithm ladesh between secularists and their de- to be above the need of argument. If tra- to solve a computational problem, he or tractors (including religious fundamen- ditionalism were proper, the prophets she implicitly commemorates the contri- talists), and it is not obvious why British would merely have followed their own bution of the ninth-century Muslim math- official policy has to be more in tune with elders (and not come with new mes- ematician al-Khwarizmi, from whose the latter than with the former. sages).” Reason had to be supreme, in name the term “algorithm” is derived, The problem, it must be admitted, did Akbar’s view, since even in disputing and from whose path-breaking Arabic not originate with recent British govern- reason, we would have to give reasons. mathematical book, Al-Jabr wa al-Muqa- ments. Indeed, official British policy has Convinced that he had to take a seri- balah, the term “algebra” originates. Even for many years given the impression that ous interest in the diverse religions of if Muslim faith schools fail to celebrate it is inclined to see British citizens and India, Akbar arranged for recurring dia- such non-religious works of Muslim intel- residents originating from the subconti- logues involving not only people from lectuals, should not all British students— nent primarily in terms of their respec- mainstream Hindu and Muslim back- old Brits as well as new ones—read some- tive communities, and now—after the grounds in sixteenth-century India, but thing about such global contributions to recent accentuation of religiosity (includ- also Christians, Jews, Parsees, Jains, and the roots of modern world civilization? ing fundamentalism) in the world—com- even the followers of “Carvaka”—a Educational broadening is important not munity is defined primarily in terms of school of atheistic thinking that had ro- only in Britain but across the world, in- faith, rather than by taking account of bustly flourished in India for more than cluding the United States and Europe. more broadly defined cultures. The prob- two thousand years from around the World history need not come to children lem is not confined to schooling, nor to sixth century B.C.E. Rather than taking (as it often does) only in the form of Muslims. The tendency to take Hindu or the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 29

Sikh religious leaders as spokesmen for There is a real need to re-think the Gender, as Gandhi pointed out, was the British Hindu or Sikh population, re- understanding of multiculturalism, so as another basis for an important distinc- spectively, is also a feature of the same to avoid conceptual disarray about so- tion that the British categories ignored, process. Instead of encouraging British cial identity and also to resist the pur- thereby giving no special place to con- citizens of diverse backgrounds to inter- poseful exploitation of the divisiveness sidering the problems of Indian women. act with one another in civil society, and that this conceptual disarray allows and He told the British prime minister, “You to participate in British politics as citi- even, to some extent, encourages. What have had, on behalf of the women, a com- zens, the invitation is to act “through” has to be particularly avoided (if the plete repudiation of special representa- their “own community.” foregoing analysis is right) is the confu- tion,” and went on to point out that “they The limited horizons of this reduc- sion between a multiculturalism that happen to be one-half of the population tionist thinking directly affect the living goes with cultural liberty, on the one of India.” Sarojini Naidu, who came with modes of the different communities, with side, and plural monoculturalism that Gandhi to the Round Table Conference, particularly severe constraining effects goes with faith-based separatism, on the was the only woman delegate at the on the lives of immigrants and their fam- other. A nation can hardly be seen as a conference. Gandhi mentioned the fact ilies. But going beyond that, how citizens collection of sequestered segments, with that she was elected the president of and residents see themselves can also af- citizens being assigned places in prede- the Congress Party, overwhelmingly the fect the lives of others, as the violent termined segments. largest political party in India (this was events in Britain last summer showed. in 1925, which was exactly fifty years be- For one thing, the vulnerability to influ- fore any woman was elected to preside ences of sectarian extremism is much V. over any major British political party). greater if one is reared and schooled here is an uncanny simi- Sarojini Naidu could, on the Raj’s “repre- in the sectarian (but not necessarily vio- larity between the problems sentational” line of reasoning, speak for lent) mode. The British government is that Britain faces today and half the Indian people, namely Indian seeking to stop the preaching of hatred those that British India faced, women; and Abdul Qaiyum, another by religious leaders, which must be right, Tand which Mahatma Gandhi thought delegate, pointed also to the fact that but the problem is far more extensive were getting direct encouragement from Naidu, whom he called “the Nightingale than that. It concerns whether citizens the Raj. Gandhi was critical in particu- of India,” was also the one distinguished of immigrant backgrounds should see lar of the official view that India was poet in the assembled gathering, a differ- themselves as members of particular a collection of religious communities. ent kind of identity from being seen as a communities and specific religious eth- When Gandhi came to London for the Hindu politician. nicities first, and only through that mem- Indian Round Table Conference called bership see themselves as British, in a by the British government in 1931, he n a meeting arranged at the supposed federation of communities. It found that he was assigned to a spe- Royal Institute of International Af- is not hard to understand that this frac- cific sectarian corner in the revealingly fairs during his visit, Gandhi insist- tional view of any nation would make it named “Federal Structure Committee.” ed that he was trying to resist “the more open to the preaching and cultiva- Gandhi resented the fact that he was be- Ivivisection of a whole nation.” He was tion of sectarian violence. ing depicted primarily as a spokesman not ultimately successful, of course, in his Tony Blair has good reason to want to for Hindus, in particular “caste Hindus,” attempt at “staying together,” though it “go out” and have debates about terror with the rest of the population being is known that he was in favor of taking and peace “inside the Muslim communi- represented by delegates, chosen by the more time to negotiate to prevent the ty,” and (as he put it) to “get right into British prime minister, of each of the partition of 1947 than the rest of the Con- the entrails of [that] community.” Blair’s “other communities.” gress leadership found acceptable. Gan- dedication to fairness and justice is hard Gandhi insisted that while he himself dhi would have been extremely pained to dispute. And yet the future of multi- was a Hindu, the political movement also by the violence against Muslims that ethnic Britain must lie in recognizing, that he led was staunchly secular and not was organized by sectarian Hindu lead- supporting, and helping to advance the a community-based movement. It had ers in his own state of Gujarat in 2002. many different ways in which citizens supporters from all the different reli- But he would have been relieved by the with distinct politics, linguistic heritages, gious groups in India. While he saw that massive condemnation that these barbar- and social priorities (along with different a distinction can be made along religious ities received from the Indian population ethnicities and religions) can interact lines, he pointed to the fact that other at large, which influenced the heavy de- with one another in their different capac- ways of dividing the population of In- feat, in the Indian general elections that ities, including as citizens. Civil society in dia were no less relevant. Gandhi made followed in May 2004, of the parties im- particular has a very important role to a powerful plea for the British rulers to plicated in the violence in Gujarat. play in the lives of all citizens.The partici- see the plurality of the diverse identities Gandhi would have taken some com- pation of British immigrants—Muslims of Indians. In fact, he said he wanted to fort in the fact, not unrelated to his point as well as others—should not be primar- speak not for Hindus in particular, but at the Round Table Conference in Lon- ily placed, as it increasingly is, in the bas- for “the dumb, toiling, semi-starved mil- don in 1931, that India, with more than ket of “community relations,” and seen as lions” who constitute “over 85 percent of 80 percent Hindu population, is led today being mediated by religious leaders (in- the population of India.” He added that, by a Sikh prime minister (Manmohan cluding “moderate” priests and “mild” with some extra effort, he could speak Singh) and headed by a Muslim presi- imams, and other agreeable spokesmen even for the rest, “the Princes . . . the dent (Abdul Kalam), with its ruling party of religious communities). landed gentry, the educated class.” (Congress) being presided over by a 30 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic woman from a Christian background rassing for me, as an Indian, to claim that, ity and giving priority to the community- (Sonia Gandhi). Such mixtures of com- thanks to the leadership of Mahatma based perspective over all other identi- munities may be seen in most walks of Gandhi and others (including the clear- ties, which Gandhi thought was receiving Indian life, from literature and cinema headed analysis of “the idea of India” support from India’s British rulers, may to business and sports, and they are not by Rabindranath Tagore, the greatest In- well have come, alas, to haunt the coun- regarded as anything particularly special. dian poet, who described his family back- try of the rulers themselves. It is not just that a Muslim is the richest ground as “a confluence of three cultures, In the Round Table Conference in businessman—indeed the wealthiest per- Hindu, Mohammedan, and British”), In- 1931, Gandhi did not get his way, and son—living in India (Azim Premji), or the dia has been able, to a considerable ex- even his dissenting opinions were only first putative international star in wom- tent, to avoid indigenous terrorism linked briefly recorded, with no mention of en’s tennis (Sania Mirza), or has cap- to Islam, which currently threatens a where the dissent came from. In a gentle tained the Indian cricket team (Pataudi number of Western countries, including complaint addressed to the British prime and Azharuddin), but also that all of Britain. But Gandhi was expressing a minister, Gandhi remarked, “In most of them are seen as Indians in general, not very general concern, not one specific to these reports you will find that there is as Indian Muslims in particular. India, when he asked,“Imagine the whole a dissenting opinion, and in most of the During the recent parliamentary de- nation vivisected and torn to pieces; cases that dissent unfortunately happens bate on the judicial report on the killings how could it be made into a nation?” to belong to me.” Yet Gandhi’s farsight- of Sikhs that occurred immediately after That query was motivated by Gand- ed refusal to see a nation as a federation Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her hi’s deep worries about the future of In- of religions and communities did not Sikh bodyguard, the Indian prime minis- dia. But the problem is not specific to “belong” only to him or to the secular ter, Manmohan Singh, told the Indian India. It arises for other nations too, in- India he was leading. It also belongs to parliament,“I have no hesitation in apol- cluding the country that ruled India until any country in the world that is willing ogising not only to the Sikh community 1947. The disastrous consequences of to see the serious problems to which but to the whole Indian nation because defining people by their religious ethnic- Gandhi was drawing attention. ½ what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood and what is enshrined in our Constitution.” Singh’s multiple identities are very much in Thomas Nagel prominence here when he apologized, in his role as prime minister of India and a leader of the Congress Party, to the Sikh The Many in the One community, of which he is a member (with his omnipresent blue turban), and to the whole Indian nation, of which he is a citizen. All this might be very puz- The Ethics of Identity and the international reach of universal zling if people were to be seen in the By Kwame Anthony Appiah standards of human rights. Most of us “solitarist” perspective of only one iden- (Princeton University Press, have our own reactions to the prohibi- tity each, but the multiplicity of identities 376 pp., $29.95) tion of the Islamic head scarf in French and roles fits very well with the funda- lycées and Turkish universities, the re- mental point Gandhi was making at the Cosmopolitanism: strictions on English signage in Quebec, London conference. Ethics in a World of Strangers the battles over gay marriage, the teach- Much has been written concerning By Kwame Anthony Appiah ing of intelligent design in American the fact that India, with more Muslim (W.W. Norton, 201 pp., $24.95) public schools, the practice of female people than almost every Muslim- circumcision in Africa, the return of the majority country in the world (and with n his two new books Kwame Elgin Marbles to Greece, or the claim nearly as many Muslims—more than 145 Anthony Appiah undertakes to that liberal rights should be regarded million—as Pakistan), has produced ex- combine a form of liberalism that merely as an ethnic custom of the West. tremely few homegrown terrorists acting aspires to universal validity with Appiah is wonderfully perceptive and in the name of Islam, and almost none a full recognition and substantial levelheaded about this tangle of issues. linked with Al Qaeda. There are many Iacceptance of the important cultural and His central claim is developed from causal influences here, including the in- ethical diversity that characterizes our the pluralistic liberalism of John Stuart fluence of the growing and integrated world. The Ethics of Identity is a philoso- Mill. Even though individual lives are Indian economy. But some credit must pher’s contribution to ethical theory; what really matter, those lives and their also go to the nature of Indian democrat- Cosmopolitanism is a more popular work value depend on identities of many dif- ic politics, and to the wide acceptance in of social and political reflection; but both ferent kinds shaped by the thick web India of the idea, championed by Gand- are of wide interest—invitingly written of diverse cultures, religions, associations, hi, that there are many identities other and enlivened by personal history. and practices that make real, existing than religious ethnicity that are relevant Some of the issues Appiah addresses human beings. A theory of human good to a person’s self-understanding, and are familiar from contemporary public also to the relations between citizens of debates about multiculturalism, the re- Thomas Nagel is the author, most recent- diverse backgrounds within the country. lation of the state to religious pluralism, ly, of Concealment and Exposure and I recognize that it is a little embar- the effects of economic globalization, Other Essays (Oxford University Press). the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 31 cannot be based on an abstract univer- t one time, the dominant sal concept of the human—either biolog- liberal response to social con- ical or metaphysical—because humanity tempt or demeaning stereo- alone is not a sufficient identity for any types attached to blacks, gays, of us.We are all much more concrete and orA women was to try to erase the ethical specific and embedded than that. significance of such identities altogeth- Appiah has more identities than most er—an attitude expressed in the embar- of us. Born to a Ghanaian father and an rassing modifier “. . . who happens to be English mother, nephew of the king of black.” But this has been displaced in Asante and grandson of a British chan- our time by the effort to turn them from cellor of the exchequer, brought up in limits into parameters: Africa and educated in England, he now teaches at Princeton and is a leading fig- An African American after the Black ure in the philosophy and African Amer- Power movement takes the old script ican studies academic establishments. His of self-hatred, the script in which he parents were Methodists, but some of his or she is a nigger, and works, in com- relatives are Muslim and many of them munity with others, to construct a believe in witchcraft. And he is gay. Ap- series of positive black life-scripts. piah may insist that such complexity is In these life-scripts, being a Negro is not rare, but it has given him a greater recoded as being black: and for some sense of freedom than I suspect is felt by this may entrain, among other things, people whose identities are simpler. This refusing to assimilate to white norms puts him in a particularly strong position of speech and behavior.... It will not to explain why individualistic liberalism even be enough to be treated with is not inevitably at war with parochial equal dignity despite being black: for identities, even though some identities that would suggest that being black can be oppressive or even crippling. Ap- counts to some degree against one’s piah is as cosmopolitan as it is possible dignity.And so one will end up asking to be, but he has maintained his local to be respected as a black. roots in full consciousness, and espouses a form of liberal multiculturalism that he Appiah tells the same story about gay calls “rooted cosmopolitanism.” identity after Stonewall, but he then adds: The view is developed at three levels: the individual, the societal, and the global Demanding respect for people as or universal. Like Mill, Appiah believes blacks and as gays can go along with that the individual level provides the notably rigid strictures as to how one foundation. Some of what is good and is to be an African American or a bad for human beings is determined by person with same-sex desires.... our animal biology alone, but the essen- It is at this point that someone who tially human goods depend on identities takes autonomy seriously may worry that are determined by each individual’s whether we have replaced one kind membership in smaller groups or systems of tyranny with another. of human relations.Think how important a person’s family, profession, native lan- A further problem with black solidar- guage, or religion is in determining what ity in particular is that it relies on a du- it means for his life to go well. bious criterion of identity. Many Amer- These sources of value can also be icans believe that a person with one sources of trouble, of course. Appiah ap- African American parent and one cau- plies a distinction made by Ronald Dwor- casian parent is an African American. If kin between circumstances that are this principle is re-applied consistently, it parameters for determining what would results in the “one-drop rule,” according constitute a successful life and circum- to which any African ancestry makes one stances that are limits—“obstacles that black. But Appiah cites statistical studies get in the way of our making the ideal showing that millions of Americans who life that the parameters help define.” It look white and are regarded by them- illuminates the problematic ethics of selves and others as white have ancestors identity when we notice that some of the who were African slaves—and that these most politically salient identities function Americans may even outnumber those both as parameters and as limits, and who regard themselves as black. If that is that there are struggles at both the indi- so, then the ordinary conception of black vidual and the societal level over how identity is incoherent. to categorize them. This argument may impose too much 32 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic logic on a vague concept, but it makes sires for cultural preservation, however race talk that it would supplant in an important point. In trying to turn the quixotic. (I sympathize completely with liberal discourse. tables on racism, the civil rights move- the lament of a classicist I know that stu- ment and black solidarity have not chal- dents at Oxford are no longer required to He concludes that for linguistic minori- lenged the conceptual racism associated write Greek and Latin verse.) ties, such as the Québécois, it is political with the one-drop rule, and may thereby Appiah shares with Mill an insistence inclusion rather than community preser- be missing an opportunity to undermine on the value of social diversity to permit vation that the state should aim at, and the grip of the categories themselves: the flourishing of different individuals, let the chips fall where they may. and a distaste for uniformity. But like Current U.S. practices presuppose, Mill, he thinks this means that some ppiah is very good on the by and large, that there is a fact of the forms of diversity should not be tolerat- confusing issue of the “neu- matter about everyone as to whether ed: “It may be that many of us value di- trality” of the state in a plural- or not she is African American. One versity not because it is a primordial good istic liberal society. Since this is required to fill in forms for all sorts but because we take it to be a correlative isA an evaluative concept, it cannot mean of purposes that fix one’s race, and of liberty,of nondomination. But if auton- general value neutrality, but must mean other people—arresting police offi- omy is the sponsoring concern, the diver- neutrality among a certain subset of val- cers, for example—may be required sity principle—the value of diversity sim- ues and practices based on a non-neutral to do so as well....Were the govern- pliciter—cannot command our loyalty.” evaluative premise. Appiah believes that ment to modify these practices, it So he is not sympathetic to the kind of an- a requirement of equal respect for indi- would remove at least one tiny strut thropological relativism that supports the viduals underlies such neutrality as lib- that gives support to the idea that protection of traditional group practices eralism requires—among religions, con- social conceptions of race are consis- even if they impose serious disadvantages ceptions of the good life, sexual mores, tent with reality. or inequalities on some members of the and so forth. But respect for individuals group (often its female members, as with and their autonomy will rule out respect Appiah’s position is not that individual arranged early marriage). And he denies for identities that undermine it, and the autonomy requires freeing ourselves of that the mere legal possibility of exit from liberal state, while it will not engage in thick identities, but that we have to con- such a group is sufficient to immunize the formation of souls to a single stan- sider their constraining as well as their it from societal oversight to protect the dard, will try to impose through educa- enabling effects, and even their rational- individual rights of its members.The right tion and public forms of equality the con- ity, in deciding how to be who we are. of exit is not enough to cancel the con- ditions for pluralistic self-realization. straining power of strong communal Equal respect is required of the state, ppiah poses the societal identities. What the state should do, how- but not of individuals, whose personal question this way: “What ever, depends on how fundamental the associations and communal identities es- claims, if any, can identity competing claims are: Appiah would not sentially involve exclusive attachments groups as such justly make require the Catholic Church to admit without which life would be impover- uponA the state?” His answer, basically, is women to the priesthood. ished and abstract: “A radical egalitarian “none.” Groups have no inherent moral Appiah is also unsympathetic to might give his money to the poor, but he standing; their importance depends on preservationism: the obligation of a soci- can’t give his friends to the friendless.” their importance to the lives of individu- ety to help identity groups, cultural or Or, “to put the matter paradoxically: im- als. Appiah resists Charles Taylor’s claim linguistic, to ensure their survival into suc- partiality is a strictly position-dependent that the value of a culture is not deriva- ceeding generations—which goes beyond obligation. What is a virtue in a referee tive from its value to individuals, but the its obligation to see that present members is not a virtue in a prize-fighter’s wife.” reverse. of those groups do not suffer discrimina- The final level of Appiah’s analysis is Whatever may be the political impli- tion or persecution. Individual autonomy the world as a whole. He is not a moral cations, I think that he is here taking ethi- trumps group preservation, just as it does relativist; he believes in universal human cal individualism too far, and that Taylor in the case of arranged marriages: rights.There is objective truth, not only in is on to something important.When a lan- science but in morality—though this does guage and its literature, or a musical or The ethical principles of equal dignity not guarantee that we will all come to artistic form, or even a cuisine or a game, that underlie liberal thinking seem to agree on it. But he does not think this dies out, so that no one is able any longer militate against allowing the parents points to a utopian crusade to bring the to appreciate or to practice it, something their way because we care about the world under the authority of a single stan- valuable has gone out of existence. This autonomy of these young women. If dard, as other visions of objective univer- cannot be explained by the harm to exist- this is true in the individual case, it sal truth—Christian, Muslim, Marxist— ing individuals, all of whom will have oth- seems to me equally true where a have too often hoped. He believes that er things to do and other ways to flourish. whole generation of one group wishes the pluralistic liberalism that permits co- Even though the lost element of culture to impose a form of life on the next existence within liberal states can find its could have continued only in the lives of generation—and a fortiori true if they counterpart for the world. This is partly individuals, its absence is not a loss to seek to impose it somehow on still because what is universal hardly exhausts them if they do not miss it. It is the recog- later generations. the truth: nition that its disappearance would be a And once we attend to these vistas loss nonetheless, though a loss to no one, of descent, it may strike us that cul- Identity is at the heart of human life: that motivates some of the strongest de- ture talk is not so very far from the liberalism . . . takes this picture seri- the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 33

ously, and tries to construct a state and society that take account of the ethics Toni Bentley of identity without losing sight of the values of personal autonomy. But the cosmopolitan impulse is central to this Shutters and Shudders view, too, because it sees a world of cultural and social variety as a precon- dition for the self-creation that is at the heart of a meaningful human life. Lee Miller: A Life if the need to escape the narcissism that By Carolyn Burke was required of her as a model forced her What is universal, though immensely (Alfred A. Knopf, 426 pp., $35) to pick up a camera in self-defense. Thus important, merely provides a protective Miller manifested a notable androgyny, framework for the flourishing of individ- ee who? Uncanny beauty, beginning as a goddess of the infamous uality.And we can come to agree on cer- fashion model, Surrealist “male gaze” and then becoming the gaze tain basic protections in practice without muse, assistant and model of herself. In so doing, she confounded her starting from a common theoretical foun- Man Ray, Vogue photograph- friends, her lovers, and herself. dation. (Here Appiah invokes Cass R. er, war photographer, sexual Now Carolyn Burke, the author of a Sunstein’s constitutional theory of “in- Lbohemian, Lady Roland Penrose: thus is fine biography of the poet Mina Loy, completely theorized agreements.”) The this genuinely fascinating woman identi- has produced the first full-length life of key to co-existence and mutual benefit fied, diffused, and therefore mostly for- Lee Miller, almost thirty years after her from the variety of forms of life is famil- gotten. Even those who recall her name death. Burke’s splendid and gripping and iarity, and not just reason. We have to often are not sure why.Too many talents thoroughly researched book offers an get used to one another, and then over or accomplishments in a beautiful wom- opportunity to re-assess the three-dimen- time our habits will evolve. Sheer ex- an arouses suspicion. She must be a dilet- sional woman and her two-dimensional posure can accomplish a great deal. This, tante who was given the opportunities prints. To look at the photos of Miller Appiah points out, is how attitudes to- that beauties often are granted, usually and then the photos by he, produces a ward homosexuality have been trans- by the men who want them, or some- kind of visual and emotional dissonance: formed in our own society. And it may thing from them. Miller in an elegant gown by Patou re- eventually have its effect on the “woman But Lee Miller cannot be so easily dis- clining languidly on a wall like a young question” that he thinks plays a large part missed. Her messy, unbelievably interest- Garbo; and then, a few pages later, her in fueling Islamic hostility to the West. ing life, full of famous lovers and momen- image of the legs of liberated Dachau It is a humane and optimistic vision, tous encounters with the history of her survivors in their stripes, standing around eloquently expressed. Disarmingly, Ap- time, provides an occasion to reflect on a great white, dusty pile—the gassed, piah describes his view at one point as the problem of the intelligent beauty. It is gray bones of other Jews. Concentration “wishy-washy cosmopolitanism,” and if a problem that rarely elicits understand- camps are not the usual hangouts of ex- these books have a fault, it is that of ing or sympathy. If Miller had been an supermodels. under-rating the depth of the conflicts ordinary-looking woman who had taken that make the spread of liberalism so dif- her lacerating photographs of World he story starts with Eliza- ficult. Appiah’s golden rule of cosmo- War II and its aftermath, she would prob- beth Miller’s rape, at the age politanism is a famous quotation from ably be better known and more regularly of seven. But we must begin the comic playwright Terence, a former praised. Talent is always acceptable as a at the beginning. She was born North African slave who lived and wrote substitute for beauty.But both? Men, and Ton April 23, 1907, the second of three in Rome:“I am human: nothing human is even many women, have trouble with so children of a well-to-do bourgeois fam- alien to me.” Though he acknowledges much kindness from fate. It must also be ily.The only girl in the family, she imme- that pessimists “can cite a dismal litany to noted that Miller herself did less than diately became her daddy’s darling. the contrary,” Appiah believes that the nothing to promote her reputation.After Theodore Miller was a person of consid- accumulation of changes in individual her death, more than sixty thousand pho- erable accomplishments and intelligence, consciousness brought on by communi- tos and negatives were found piled in a mechanical engineer with a lifelong in- cation and mobility is already propelling boxes and trunks scattered in the attic of terest in any and all gadgets. (His father us along this upward path. He rejects by her English farmhouse. It is thanks to her had been a champion bricklayer.) Thom- implication the “clash of civilizations” as son Antony Penrose and his wife Suzan- as Edison was his hero. He was an Emer- the global drama to which we are all con- na Penrose that we have these extraordi- sonian Democrat, an educated man, and demned. I hope the future will prove him nary images at all. a great believer in science. “What count- right, though the experience of our time Miller’s life as a Vogue cover girl who ed,” writes Burke, “was what one could makes me wonder. Episodes such as the was shot by the greatest photographers measure or record.” He was also a defiant recent widespread and violent reaction of her time—Edward Steichen, Arnold atheist.Waking from a coma at the age of to a few cartoon depictions of Moham- Genthe, George Hoyningen-Huene, ninety-three, as if emerging from a meta- med prompt the grim reflection that it Horst P. Horst, Man Ray—preceded her physical experiment, he scandalized the took centuries of bloodshed for the West life behind the camera. She made the rare to move from the wars of religion to its transition from object to subject, her in- Toni Bentley is the author, most recently, present roughly liberal consensus. We telligence and her restlessness providing of The Surrender:An Erotic Memoir may have to wait a long time. ½ the bridge from one to the other. It is as (Regan Books). 34 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic nurses attending him by declaring tri- a cotton swab to remove infected secre- of his grown daughter. Lee sitting on a umphantly,“I want you to know that God tions and then daubed with “picric acid table, facing forward, one leg crossed, does not exist!” in glycerine.” Elizabeth’s brothers were barely hiding her sex, looking sideways; With five hundred employees under not told what was wrong with their sis- Lee in the bathtub; Lee naked with his firm but benevolent jurisdiction, ter; they just heard her screams from the naked girlfriends. “Theodore was always Theodore Miller was the superintendent bathroom and then watched as their begging us to pose for him in different of Poughkeepsie’s largest employer, the mother disinfected every surface the con- stages of undress,” said Tanja Ramm, a DeLavel Separator Company, whose ma- taminated little girl had touched to pre- close friend. “If you didn’t do it, you’d chines separated heavier liquids from vent further infection. feel prudish.” The photographs can be lighter ones. His delight in physical trans- Miller never mentioned her rape, but dated as late as the 1930s. formation and modern technology found it haunted her forever, and it haunts Burke handles this curious situation its greatest outlet in his lifelong with a simple telling of the hobby of photography.And his facts. Florence was often in at- blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby tendance at the photo sessions. daughter became his favorite There was never any sign that subject—her life lovingly docu- Elizabeth’s intimacy with her mented literally every step of father went further than pos- the way. Early on in her child- ing for his lens. Many people— hood, he gave Elizabeth her including her brothers— first camera. The darkroom was attested that Miller adored her a sanctuary. father and trusted his love Miller’s mother, Florence probably more than that of any MacDonald, of Scots-Irish de- man who followed. OK. Got it. scent, had been Theodore’s No funny business—except nurse during a bout of typhoid, that all of this is funny busi- and while she clearly made a ness. Burke shies from further good match with the ambitious interpretation; but to look at Miller, she was the less promi- these nudes and see them, in- nent parent, and her husband evitably, through the eyes of ruled the roost. While Theo- the father is creepy to say the dore doted on his little princess, least, and incestuous to say the who became a tree-climbing obvious. While one can believe tomboy, Florence favored the that Theodore meant well and eldest son, John, dressing him in adored his daughter, he would girls’ clothes—a habit he con- be regarded very suspiciously tinued well into adulthood, with today. the occasional public scandal. Between her rape and her During a visit to a family nude photo shoots, Elizabeth friend in Brooklyn in 1914, became—surprise!—a rebelli- young Elizabeth was raped by a ous teenager. She cursed, she male friend of the friend. She smoked, she performed practi- was rushed back to Poughkeep- cal jokes for which she was sie with great concern, but also expelled from her Quaker great secrecy. The details of the boarding school. But other in- crime remain unknown, but the fluences were at work to in- results were clear. The seven- COURTESY ABBEVILLE PRESS spire her dramatic persona. She year-old contracted gonorrhea Man Ray, Untitled, circa 1929 was enthralled by performers— and was thus traumatized, re- Bernhardt, Pavlova, the Deni- peatedly over the years, not only by the Burke’s book.The beautiful little girl be- shawn dancers, the Ziegfeld girls, all of illness but also by its horrific cure. For came “wild” after this, her brother John whom she saw perform on stage. She the next twelve months, isolated from any later observed. Within the year, Theo- took some “interpretive” dance lessons social intercourse, she had to visit the dore proposed a new kind of photo for and acted in a few local plays, but re- hospital several times a week and, at his daughter: mimicking the scandalous served her highest respect for women home, endure antiseptic baths adminis- painting “September Morn,” which fea- writers. She emulated her idol Anita tered by her mother, followed by an “irri- tured a nubile naked girl, he had the Loos by writing movie scripts with her gation” of the bladder with potassium eight-year-old Elizabeth pose naked but girlfriend that were “full of naked sinners permanganate using a glass catheter, a for her slippers outside their house in on bearskin rugs.” Theodore could have douche can, and a rubber tube. This pre- the freezing snow. “December Morn” shot the movie. penicillin medieval torture was followed was the first of many nudes that Theo- When Elizabeth was seventeen, her by a douche with a mixture of boric acid, dore would take of his daughter over the mother attempted suicide by gassing carbolic acid, and oils. Twice a week, the next few decades. herself in the car—she had fallen in love little girl’s cervix had to be probed with Daddy took lots of naked pictures with another man—but Theodore saved the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 35 her just in time.As with Elizabeth’s rape, sorbed a lot from the distinguished pho- while Miller was openly having others. it was all very hush-hush. Florence pro- tographers for whom she had posed, and “It has reduced every other passion in ceeded, against Theodore’s advice, to see she wished to learn more about their me, and to compensate, I have tried to a well-known Freudian analyst, and re- work. Armed with an introductory letter justify this love by giving you every mained in her marriage. He, meanwhile, from Steichen to Man Ray, an Ameri- chance in my power to bring out every- had numerous affairs over the years and can expatriate painter and photographer thing interesting in you.” “For the first was still pinching his caretakers’ bottoms who had acquired widespread fame in and last time in his life,” said a friend, from his wheelchair in his nineties. Europe for his experimental Surrealist “Man had to surrender. To have this images, she set sail again for Paris. This fascinating, intelligent woman as his mis- year later, at age eigh- was the beginning of her nomadic multi- tress was fatal.” But the endless melo- teen, Elizabeth sailed to Paris continental existence. She said later that drama notwithstanding, their artistic for the first time, chaperoned she went to Paris “to enter photography collaboration was magnificent. “I do not by her Polish French teacher by the back end,” by studying with the photograph nature,” Ray explained, “I MadameA Kohoszynska, who was won- masters. In this she was not alone; she photograph my fantasy.” He got plenty derful but couldn’t speak French. Unno- was in fact in the vanguard of women en- of that from Miller, with her body fre- ticed by Madame, they checked into a tering the art form behind the camera. quently sectionalized in his images of maison de passe, a brothel. “It took my Margaret Bourke-White, Berenice Ab- her, as in “La Prière,” with her back and chaperones five days to catch on, but I bott, and Germaine Krull were all begin- backside scooped in Sadian worship, and thought it was divine,” Miller gleefully ning their careers in the 1920s. in “Observatory Time,” with her lips— recalled. She spent her days watching In true bohemian fashion, two of and lips alone—floating enormously clients go in and out of rooms, and shoes Elizabeth’s young American lovers were across the sky. He placed her all-seeing being changed in the hallway with regu- friends and tossed a coin to decide who eyeball at the tip of a metronome’s pen- lar frequency. “I felt everything opening would see her off from the pier. Alfred dulum, and in numerous photos her up in front of me,” she said. Her future De Liagre (who was to become a well- nude torso is headless. was found and she declared Paris “my known Broadway director) won the Miller was unintentionally responsi- home!” She stayed seven months study- bet, but the other swain, a pilot, flew his ble for the discovery of “solarization,” a ing at a school for stage design and learn- plane overhead, dropping a cascade of photographic technique that produces ing the language. red roses on the ship’s deck at Eliza- enhanced edges in a photograph due to a Back in Poughkeepsie, she was out beth’s feet. Flying back to his airfield, he partial reversal of the black and white of rowing on a local lake with one of her picked up a student for a flying lesson, the negative. In the darkroom one day, many eager suitors when the young man and their plane crashed, killing both of she accidentally turned on the light while dove off the side of the boat. Elizabeth them. (Burke, curiously, declines to men- some negatives were still being devel- watched as his dead body was dragged tion this tragic ending to a grand roman- oped. Man Ray was furious, but as the from the lake a few hours later. His moth- tic gesture.) Elizabeth, now twenty-two, model was no longer available to redo er blamed her. Soon came an aborted already had two dead lovers to her the photos, they developed the images stint at Vassar, after which Elizabeth, fi- credit. Somewhere across the Atlantic, anyway. Thus accident was, as usual, the nanced by her father, moved to New between New York and Paris, the femme mother of invention. York and enrolled at the Arts Students fatale called Lee Miller was born. League. She was discovered by no less y 1930, Miller and the than Condé Nast himself. Standing on a n Paris, she went straight to Russian émigré Tatiana Iacov- street corner, the founder of the maga- the home of Man Ray, but was told leva—muse to the Russian poet zine empire pulled Miller back on the that he had left town for the sum- Vladimir Mayakovsky, and lat- curb out of oncoming traffic. Between mer. She proceeded to a local café Ber the infamous wife of Bertrand du her beauty and her babbling in French he Iand in walked Man Ray. “I asked him to Plessix and mother of Francine du Ples- immediately suggested that she visit his take me on as his pupil,” she recalled in six Gray—were called the most beautiful offices. She appeared shortly thereafter one understated version of the much-told women in Paris. Miller met all of Parisian on the cover of the March 1927 issue of tale. “He said he never accepted pupils, society. She even starred, to Man Ray’s Vogue in a drawing by George Lepape, a but I guess he fell for me. We lived to- consternation, as the painted Muse in cloche framing her face. gether for three years and I learned a lot Jean Cocteau’s classic experimental film Not yet twenty, Miller was launched about photography.” Man Ray’s affair The Blood of a Poet. In December 1930 as a top model into New York society. with Kiki de Montparnasse, the unfor- her father came to Europe, and took She wrote in her diary of her “supreme gettable and flamboyant model of some photos of his twenty-three-year-old egoism.” With her shimmery bobbed of his greatest portraits, had been over daughter nude in the tub in their shared hair, smooth fine features, and slim body, for a year, and he was, as he recalled, hotel room in Hamburg. Back in Paris, she perfectly embodied the flapper, the “ready for new adventures.” He got Man Ray and his mistress’s father in- garçonne, the sexually free modern them. Miller—seventeen years his junior dulged their mutual delight in photo- woman. A mini-scandal ensued when an and a good head taller—became his graphing scenes of three or four naked elegant shot of her by Steichen showed student, his assistant, his receptionist, his girls frolicking on a bed with Miller as up in magazine ads for the “new and im- collaborator, his muse, his lover, and fi- the centerpiece. As testament to this ex- proved” Kotex sanitary pads. nally his misery. traordinary father-daughter relationship, After two years of New York celeb- “I have loved you terrifically, jealous- Ray produced one of his most moving rity, Elizabeth found that she had ab- ly,” he wrote in the middle of their affair, images of Miller in profile, conservative- 36 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic ly clothed, nestling across her father’s Anatomy of Failure horizon, Stravinsky in the air, lap, eyes closed, resting her head upon and Freud under the bed.” Mean- his shoulder. Oh, that every woman Shadows passed over the statues in the night— while, the adoring Bey was send- could be so trusting of her father. crossed them, hesitated, vanished; ing Miller money for her sum- During a visit to St. Moritz with even the dust was white as a bird. mer sojourn. Charlie Chaplin—also a likely lover— Back in Cairo, Miller kept up Hoyningen-Huene introduced Miller Someone had loved me, had a constant correspondence with to a handsome and wealthy Egyptian stopped loving me. I had Penrose and made plans for fu- businessman named Aziz Eloui Bey failed in a minute but final way; ture European exploits. “I want and his beautiful wife Nimet, whom the Utopian combination of se- Miller befriended and photographed. all the words exchanged curity and freedom” she wrote to Bey was almost twenty years Miller’s risen past the boundaries her husband in November 1938, senior, and they began a secret affair of what had been made not only hinting at her double that would result over the course of life but stating her lifelong credo, the next few years in devastation for and what wasn’t yet outlined, risen “and emotionally I need to be Man Ray—he made a self-portrait like a parrot toward a sky completely absorbed in some with a gun to his head. It also was the only to find a painted ceiling and a stenciled sun. work or in a man I love. I think cause of the suicide of Nimet, in a ho- the first thing for me to do is to tel room from alcohol poisoning. I lived in a museum, slept take or make freedom—which By 1932, Miller had returned to up against a body of stone, will give me the opportunity to New York alone and, with the finan- spine to block-grey base become concentrated again, and cial backing of several businessmen, just hope that some sort of secu- opened her own studio. She employed as a stranger’s face looked rity follows—even if it doesn’t her younger brother Erik as an assis- down upon me, the struggle will keep me awake tant and photographed, in addition to a bird in someone else’s mind. and alive.” fashion shoots, many artists of the To another lover, Bernard day—Joseph Cornell, Gertrude Law- MEGHAN O’ROURKE Burrows, she stated a year later, rence, Virgil Thompson, and John “You see darling, I don’t want Houseman (who wrote of his “unre- to do anything ‘all for love’ as I quited lust” for her). Miller’s images can’t be depended on for any- were shown at the Julien Levy Gallery, thing. In fact I have every inten- with whose eminent owner she had an . . . but the pictures are swell.” On her tion of being completely irresponsible.” affair. It was at this time that she took love life, she reported in an equally cool (Burke’s version of this declaration is: “I the famous portrait of herself in profile, fashion that “If I need to pee, I pee in the don’t want you to do anything ‘all for short, wavy hair held back with a head- road; if I have a letch for someone, I hop love’ as I won’t marry you, I won’t live band, clothed in rich, ruched velvet, look- into bed with him.” And there were sev- with you and I can’t be depended on for ing like a flapper transplanted as Renais- eral abortions along the way. (The gon- anything.”) It was 1939 and Hitler was sance maiden.The photo was intended as orrhea had not left her infertile, as it did about to provide Miller with an opportu- an advertisement for the headband. in 50 percent of cases at the time.) nity to unleash herself “completely.” After less than two years of her New York life, a success by any standard, she he summer of 1937 found he left Egypt—“I’m never again changed course. Bey arrived in her back in Paris, without her returning,” she wrote—for Eng- America, and in June 1934 she abruptly husband, in a whirlwind of land and remained in Europe closed her New York studio, married social activities. At a costume for the entire war. She began him, spent her honeymoon at Niagara Tparty in Paris she met Roland Penrose, a Sworking again for “Brogue,” as British Falls like a good American bride, and wealthy British painter and writer who Vogue was called, and remained in Lon- then sailed, like Cleopatra, for Alexan- was an eager member of the Surrealist don photographing the Blitz, which re- dria and a new life in Egypt as Madame circle.After waking in his bed two morn- sulted in a book published in 1940 Eloui Bey. For the next few years, she ings later, she embarked on a passionate called Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain played bridge, drank martinis, took long affair with Penrose, and a wild summer Under Fire, edited by Ernestine Carter desert safaris, learned snake-charming, of bohemian partner-swapping and exhi- and written by Edward R. Murrow. She raced camels, skied on sand dunes, and bitionism that included a visit to Picasso was living with Penrose, and soon his ex- photographed the epic landscape from at Mougins. There Lee was painted by wife Valentine moved in and completed the top, and bottom, of pyramids—and Picasso six times and gladly loaned to the family. Miller was appointed a war became, as was her way, increasingly him by Penrose for a night or two. Back correspondent for Condé Nast and in bored. “I could easily and with pleasure in Roland’s bed, he introduced her to July 1944, just over a month after the become an alcoholic,” she wrote. bondage, apparently with her full com- Allied invasion of Normandy, she was The human costs of her adventurous pliance. (Later he gave her a set of hand- sent by Audrey Withers, the editor of way of living continued to mount. Of one cuffs made from Cartier gold.) Vogue, across the channel to report on photography expedition, she wrote to Eileen Agar, a friend, wrote in her the battlefield duties of American nurs- her brother: “Unfortunately I ran over a memoir that in the South of France that es. She proceeded, often against Army man or something . . . it spoiled the trip summer there was “Surrealism on the orders, to traipse through war-torn Eu- the new republic Ǡ february 27, 2006 37 rope with her camera and notebook in colour as the striped garb of the mized, and deconstructed by Man Ray; hand. She became lovers with Dave Dachau skeletons . . . a skinny and then Miller herself looking deeply Scherman, a brilliant young photograph- gladiator. He gasped and fought into the wide-open eyes of a dying child er on assignment from Life. In Paris for and struggled for life, and a doctor and making us look with her into that the Liberation, she stayed at the Hotel and a nun and I just stood there and abyss. Rarely, if ever, has a woman wield- Scribe, which had been requisitioned— watched.There was nothing to do. ed such potency, and such vulnerability, the Nazis had used it as their press In this beautiful children’s hospital both before and behind the lens. Yet by bureau—for Allied journalists, and she with its nursery-rhymed walls and the end of this sad, busy life, as Burke was a happy participant in the celebra- screenless windows, with its clean tells it, one retains little love for Miller. tory festivities of drinking, eating, and white beds, its brilliant surgical in- Can a life be both fascinating and emp- bed-hopping. struments and empty drug cupboards ty? While Miller certainly had moments She subsequently traveled with her there was nothing to do but watch of distinction behind her camera, the camera to Brussels, Alsace, Frankfurt, him die. Baring his sharp toothless pervasive inconsistency in all her en- Aachen, and Heidelberg. In Leipzig, she gums he clenched his fists against the deavors leaves her a shadowy figure. photographed the corpses of the city’s attack of death.This tiny baby fought Jane Livingston has suggested that treasurer, his wife, and their daughter for his only possession, life, as if it Miller’s tragedy was “that the artist (who looks eerily like young Elizabeth), might be worth something.... never really wholly believed in the real- suicides from poison. In Berlin, she was ity of her own driving gift and power- famously photographed by Scherman Below this entry the page is slashed by ful achievement”—the problem of the taking a bath in Hitler’s tub. (Could one the nib of Miller’s pen. talented woman again. There is some- get clean in such a place?) Later, down thing to this, obviously; but I cannot the street, she took a nap on Eva ack in England, she was escape the feeling that finally Miller was Braun’s bed. In Dachau and in Buchen- granted a divorce by Bey and a party girl at history’s party. And yet wald, she photographed survivors scav- married Penrose. They moved there may be some edification even in enging in garbage for food, the piles of to a sprawling country estate this stern judgment—the encouraging the starved but freshly dead, the pits of Bcalled Farley Farm. There she continued thought that nobody is too small or too decomposing skeletons, the utter deso- her slapdash bohemian existence with a obscure for his or her own times, and lation of mass murder. Those images are constant rotation of houseguests, and that history, and art, may find even a girl unforgettable. produced with Penrose, at the age of from Poughkeepsie. ½ thirty-nine, a son. She was disinterested ith her constant sup- in motherhood and the relationship with ply of cognac in a flask, her only child involved years of mutual as well as an assortment verbal abuse and belittlement. A rap- of uppers and downers, prochement of sorts occurred shortly be- WMiller was by the end of the war worn, fore her death. haggard, ill, depressed, and alcoholic. For her remaining thirty years, Miller Unable to return to normal postwar was a ruin. Despite a face-lift, she became life, she continued across Europe docu- barely recognizable for her early beauty. menting the devastation. In Bucharest, She drank, gained weight, lost interest in she found a gypsy with a trained bear sex, caused frequent hysterical scenes, and got the massage of her life, providing and watched while her husband took a a rare sweet and humorous moment, series of young lovers. She lost interest in captured astonishingly on film by Harry photography and took her only solace Brauner. “The bear [Miller surmised in a passion for cooking, which resulted she was three hundred pounds] knew in a friendship with James Beard, and her business,” wrote Miller. “She sat her in winning the rather dubious honor for great, furry, warm bottom down on the the best open-faced sandwiches from the nape of my neck, and with gentle shuf- Norwegian Tourist Board. She called fles, went from my neck to my knees cooking “pure therapy.” But it did not and back again . . . I felt marvelous af- cure her. “I could never get the stench terwards, racing circulation, flexible and of Dachau out of my nostrils,” she told energetic.” Burke shortly before her death. In 1966 In Vienna, a well-equipped children’s Penrose was knighted—he called himself hospital had everything but drugs for its “Sir-Realist” and Miller became “Lady tiny patients, and thus they died, one af- Penrose from Poughkeepsie.” She died ter the other, producing Miller’s most eleven years later of cancer, at the age moving piece of prose and the haunting of seventy.The obituaries were brief and photograph to match. inaccurate. Miller’s legacy resides in a few haunt- For an hour I watched a baby die . . . ing images: Miller on her father’s lap, He was the dark dusty blue of these Electra triumphant, an American pietà; waltz-filled Vienna nights, the same Miller’s vacant radiance solarized, epito- 38 february 27, 2006 Ǡ the new republic

every state is a different campaign, CAMBRIDGE DIARIST which encourages the candidates to shift and dissemble and contradict, à la John Kerry in 2004. With Perot, however, you had someone who was who he was. He Perotists was simplistic, maybe, but he was not tricky. He did not have to beat down oss Perot ran for presi- As the authors, Professors Ronald other candidates to make it into the dent twice, first in 1992 B. Rapoport and Walter Stone, know finals. His candidacies were also suffused against George H.W. Bush very well, Perot was not a typical third- by a sense of freshness—if not exactly and Bill Clinton, the sec- party candidate. Many people were competence. (The only time he really ond time in 1996 against drawn to him, but they disagreed about lost a debate was the substantive one RClinton and Bob Dole. In both races, why they were. When so many Ameri- with Al Gore over nafta. Perot may he ran without the support of a major cans were lured to Theodore Roosevelt’s have had a populist attitude. But Gore party. (He funded his initial run, under Bull Moose Party in 1912, they knew knew what he was talking about. The the banner “United We Stand,” himself; why: to tame capitalism, to preserve public grasped this, and it was at that the next, as a representative of the Re- natural America, to extend national very moment that Perot’s star began form Party, he did not.) I recently asked power in the world. In the 1920s, those to fall.) a small group of Harvard undergradu- who voted for Robert LaFollette knew ates,“Who is Ross Perot?”A Texas bil- why they had to become progressives: Perot took votes away from Bush lionaire, said one. He bought a copy of to oppose ruthless individualism and 41 in 1992 and thereby gave the election the Magna Carta, said another, conjur- competition and to assert the principle to Clinton. Rapoport and Stone demon- ing an idiosyncratic but correct detail and practice of cooperation. In 1948, strate that voters who supported Perot from Perot’s life. He also bought Gen- the voters who cast their ballots for in 1992 turned the tide Republican in eral Motors, piped up a third, and was Strom Thurmond did so because they the congressional elections of 1994. wrong at that:Actually, Perot sold his were racists, and those who supported One year, Perot was a decisive minus for company, Electronic Data Systems, to Henry Wallace chose him because they the GOP; two years later, a decisive plus. GM.The fourth said that Perot had run and he were fellow travelers of com- This is not a contradiction. In his first for president on a third-party ticket, but munism and the Soviet Union. (Please presidential race, Perot appealed that she had little idea what it stood for: don’t roll your eyes. Wallace’s Progres- to the economic nationalism of voters “For heaven’s sake, the shambles of the sive Party was a pure creation of the when the two major party contenders party were split between Pat Buchanan Communist Party.) Buchanan is a xeno- were trying to play down the issue and Ralph Nader in 2004.”This is not an phobe and a nativist, and his followers entirely. In the House elections of 1994, especially precise legacy. In some sense, latched on to him because that is exactly a revolutionary year for the Republican Perot would have spent his money more what they wanted; Nader is a paranoid Party, Perot voters gravitated mostly to meaningfully had he bought himself with an ascetic streak who, like his sup- GOP candidates because they spoke to another private jet. porters, wants to bring down U.S. capi- and for a familiar muscular patriotism. talism. There were no mysteries about It’s not only the young who have what attracted supporters to The Perot wild card without Perot no idea who Perot was and for what he these candidates. is bad news for Democrats. Most of stood. Before reading Three’s a Crowd: those middle-aged voters who went for The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Per- By contrast, the only thing one Perot simply cannot vote for the mushy ot, and Republican Resurgence (Univer- might say without doubt about Perot is Democratic policies and attitudes on sity of Michigan Press)—a stimulating that he is a crank. But this is not politi- national defense and security. In any and consequential study by two political cally clarifying.Which itself begs two case, it is good news for John McCain. scientists who are rare in that they work questions.Why did Perot win so much of As the authors demonstrate, McCain from both statistics and a deep (even the popular vote (19 percent in 1992; picked up many Perot voters in the instinctual) grasp of the party system— 8 percent in 1996)? And why are those 2000 primaries. He has distanced him- I could summon only Perot’s obsession who will run the presidential campaigns self from the most distasteful of Bush with nafta and his calls for cutting the of the major parties right now reading policies without losing the hard edge deficit, which the Clinton-Gore adminis- this book about a nutty political aspirant that people can attribute to his long tration went on to dissolve quite ad- who has disappeared from public view? and heroic stay in the Hanoi Hilton. mirably. (Maybe it was Perot’s hostility In any event, this is one reason why the to nafta that lured Buchanan and Nad- The answer to the first of these aspirants to the Republican succession er, paranoid isolationists both, to forage queries is at least as impressionistic as can read this book with some pleasure. for votes and residual infrastructure in it is statistical. People simply don’t like And why, probably, since they don’t the detritus of the Reform Party.) And the caucus and primary system in which like encountering unpleasant tidings, yet, forgotten though he may be, there unrepresentative and idiosyncratic Howard Dean and company may not are reasons for Democrats and Republi- states (like weird New Hampshire and have yet bought it. In the end, they will cans alike to ponder Perot’s legacy as the ever-weirder Iowa) anoint front-runners because they will have to. But it will 2006 elections approach and the 2008 and determine the direction of presi- probably be too late. presidential race assumes form. dential races. It is also apparent that MARTIN PERETZ Out In Decadence Principle Bias Honesty Cronyism Experience

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EDUCATION NEXT In the new issue of Education Next A JOURNAL OF OPINION Is There a “Qualified Teacher” Shortage? AND RESEARCH What factors do affect the market for teachers, anyway?

In the flurry of activity surrounding implementation of No Child Left Behind, the federal requirement to have a “highly qualified” teacher in every classroom by 2005 seemed an impossible goal. But 2005 has come and gone and the crisis never happened. Why not? The shortest answer is that the dearth of qualified teachers is largely a myth. So is the related notion that raising teachers’ pay across the board would bring significantly more qualified numbers to the profession. A more productive line of inquiry explores the SUBSCRIBE possible benefits of replacing our rigid teacher compensation system with a more Receive four quarterly issues at the rate of $20. market-based system. FREE ISSUE Receive a complimentary —Michael Podgursky issue of the latest Education Next without obligation. How Good at Rating Teachers Are Principals? Call 800.935.2882 or visit www.educationnext.org The best—and the worst—stand out Elementary- and secondary-school teachers in the United States traditionally have been compensated according to salary schedules based solely on experience and education. Concerned that this system makes it difficult to retain talented teachers and provides few incentives for them to work to raise student achievement, many policymakers have proposed merit-pay programs. Such programs come with challenges, however. For instance, if students are not tested annually in each subject, how do we determine the merit of a teacher in a year without testing? Can a merit-pay system overcome these obstacles? One option is to turn to principals and ask them to determine the size of pay raises. However, there has been little evidence on the accuracy of their judgments. This

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