The revolution will be photographed

The Big Picture has photos from Tunisia. Glorious and evocative, as always:

Tinker Toy columns

I never understand what people whose worst fear is Sharia law--wherever it may arise--really mean when they say something could lead to "the imposition of Sharia law." It sounds like they think of it sort of like the Rapture: when the conditions are right, the prophecies are fulfilled and BAM! Each is judged and found wanting or worthy, and all of a sudden your wife can't drive the kids to school because driving is a big no, and you can't even drown your petty sorrows in a Scotch. Or maybe it's more like fairy dust: one minute you're sitting there in your nightgown, the next you're flying to Neverland, where all children are orphans, the infrastructure sucks, and nobody is allowed to kiss.

The Rapture model of sharia is one example of a kind of Tinker Toys, modular way of putting columns together that is sadly widespread, especially when dealing with complex subjects. This "instant sharia" idea is one of the Tinker Toys: it can be slotted in almost anywhere without much worry for logistics, time frame, context, etc., because it is a unit unto itself.

You see, this thought was triggered by this post by Aaron Goldstein on what might happen next in Tunisia (via Larison). In it, at one point, he writes:

The thing that has caught my attention about the events in Tunisia is the support it has received from al Qaeda. If elections are not held in a timely manner or if the results of said election are not deemed acceptable by the new administration an opportunity could present itself for al Qaeda to assert its influence and impose Sharia law. Should such a development come to pass then it could have grave implications not only in the Middle East but for the United States and the West. We could have an Afghanistan in Africa.

This is a brilliant example of Tinker Toy thinking, which I consider the worst kind of ignant, pundit-infected platitudinous thinking on Middle East politics. It's worse than the completely crazy stuff, like the thing about Hizballah and Mexico a few posts down, because at least the crazy stuff involves an actual thought process. The ingredients are totally wack, but at least there is an effort and some, um, creativity. Plus, it's pretty easy to spot.

Here, though, the writer is working with a highly limited set of ideas that came from elsewhere. To continue the toy analogy for a minute (follow me, here), if all you ever had was Tinker Toys--and not that many of them, either--there would be a limit to the kinds of things you could come up with. You could in theory go to the store and get a newer, fancier, more complex toy--by, oh, consulting an expert or doing some research--or you could play with something very basic and abstract, like blocks, and create almost anything just with your own thoughts. But Tinker Toy columns have neither of these virtues. They just keep plugging around the same limited repertoire.

Let me break it down for you here. Let's look at the last paragraph again:

The thing that has caught my attention about the events in Tunisia is the support it has received from al Qaeda. If elections are not held in a timely manner or if the results of said election are not deemed acceptable by the new administration an opportunity could present itself for al Qaeda to assert its influence and impose Sharia law. Should such a development come to pass then it could have grave implications not only in the Middle East but for the United States and the West. We could have an Afghanistan in Africa.

It's depressingly easy to translate this entire paragraph into some snarky equations and lose pretty much none of the meaning. Each equation is a Tinker Toy piece that we've all seen a million times in a million columns, most of which were likely Tinker Toy ones. The pared-down set of equations looks like this, where t = time:

Poorly understood Middle East event + (Al Qaeda connection ± relevance(x)) = DANGER
DANGER + (Elections + Perfection(x)) = Al Qaeda takeover
Al Qaeda takeover + t = Sharia law
Sharia law + t = problem for U.S. = Afghanistan

As it happens, the trusty formula has failed, because none of it actually makes any sense for Tunisia. This is what happens when you just string together a bunch of modular bits and bobs in a time-honored pattern without thinking too hard about it. Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (North Africa) is pretty negligible; their support for the revolution is because, um, they're revolutionaries. Their exhortations to the Tunisians to fight on in the good fight so they (Tunisians) can impose Sharia law later are just that: exhortations. That does not mean that they will be followed. This will really not happen. Fun fact: Tunisian feminists are talking about greeting one of the exiled opposition leaders--a fundamentalist--at the airport in bikinis. (I say rock on.) On a broader note, this Foreign Policy piece on Tunisia's history of fanatical secularism argues--convincingly, IMO--that the Tunisian political structure caved as easily as it did precisely because the revolution was absolutely not Islamist.

All that is well and good--after all, it's not a real day if someone writing about the middle East hasn't gone overboard regarding the threat of fundamentalism--but what really kicks the excerpt up a notch in Tinker Toys silliness is the nod to Afghanistan. The only way that makes sense is if you think of Afghanistan as more or less simply a cipher bearing the conditions of Fundamentalist, Uncivilized/Backward*, Scary, Ungovernable, and Big Problem For Us, which would mean anything else that bore those same conditions would be the same thing.

It's much easier to think this way when you don't know much of anything about the subject--if Tunisia is a completely non-defined cipher, it can become anything very easily, and if Afghanistan is an ill-defined cipher, then it's very easy to find parallels to it. The two places are very, very different, and no AQ In the Maghreb boogeyman can just show up, declare sharia, and change that. A much better parallel for Tunisia is probably Turkey: like Turkey a few decades ago, Tunisia has a fairly strong economic track record for a developing nation; trade, tourism, geographic and institutional ties with Europe (including strong French influence in political thought); an ingrained history of state-enforced secularism; and a strong class of intellectuals and professionals (who spearheaded the revolution in Tunisia's case). Turkey has evolved and grown since the '80s, but Tunisia is a plausible younger sibling.

The real things to worry about for Tunisia at this point are a relapse to authoritarianism, as has happened with many of the so-called color revolutions in the past few years; or, a bloody fight for a new equilibrium that leads to civil war like the Algerian Civil War. One of the things to definitely not worry about is impending, sudden sharia law.

_________________
*Barf. I do not endorse yada yada I hate those words.

I wish it really were all like Four Lions

In the proud tradition of violent Islamic extremism being mostly counterproductive, a suicide bomber who seems to have been supporting Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (which has claimed responsibility against a rival group who had been taking over territory from TTP. They are referred to as "the Salarzai tribe," (though my reading in more specialized places suggests that going straight to tribal classifications is often not the best course, cough, understatement).

The counterproductive part is that while the bomber (gender apparently still in contention, no ID that I've seen anywhere) took out several of the intended targets, the chosen place for this event was...a World Food Programme event. The words coming to my mind go something like "I mean, honestly" but that doesn't seem right. It just seems, again, counterproductive--there was no other way to do this? Of course intimidation is a major part of coercing the local populace in any insurgency effort, but this sort of thing is not too far off from what lost al-Qaeda a lot of support elsewhere.

At any rate, 43 people were killed in this incident, and:

On Friday, a force of 150 militants in Mohmand Agency (just south of Bajaur), had targeted 5 checkpoints of the Frontier Corps, a Pakistani government paramilitary unit, killing 11 troops in the Safi and Baizai districts. Some 24 of the rebels were killed in a riposte by government sources. This attack also came in revenge for the Taliban having been expelled [by the Salarzai] from those areas of Mohmand Agency.

On Saturday, Pakistani troops using helicopter gunships came back after the insurgents, allegedly killing 40 of them in Baizai and Lakro villages.

This leaves the headline at "Over 80 Dead."

Juan Cole has a pretty good roundup of what all went down.

If only Four Lions were all there was to it.


[Note: embedded video is even worse now than it was before. Once upon a time I could adjust the size in the code, but not now, noooo. Link is all you get. Sorry.]

Sad news

RIP, Richard Holbrooke.

Fun with words!

Ezra Klein points us to a fun new toy:

Citizens for All That Is Good About America
By Ezra Klein

Americans for America. The New Century Foundation for Progress. A Bright Future for Children and Families. PAC names are a genre unto themselves. A proud, optimistic, vapid genre that's designed to sound so much like apple pie that you never think to look at the filling -- or, to be less metaphorical, the money. The Sunlight Foundation decided to have some fun with this and set up a PAC-name generator. Some of these PACs are the real deal, but most are just perfect PAC names waiting to find a home.

He seems to have chosen "Strong Women, Good-Looking Men and Above Average Children for Liberty" as his flag to fly, but me? Well, unbeknownst to all, I am actually the founder of "New Englanders against Sinister Sentiments."

You're welcome, world.

They're coming to get you

I just. I can't. This is really quite amazing. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) has convinced Huckabee--who had her on his Fox News show to talk about this--that Hizballah operatives are being funneled from Iran through to Venezuela, up to Mexico, and then infiltrating the U.S. via the Mexican border in collaboration with drug cartels. In order to plant car bombs, or something.

I swear, I am not making this up:

As [TPM has] reported, Myrick believes Hezbollah "is partnering with Mexican drug cartels in the U.S. borderlands and may be planning 'Israel-like car bombings of Mexican/USA border personnel or National Guard units.'" Part of her evidence of this is that "well trained officials are beginning to notice the tattoos of gang members in prisons are being written in Farsi" along the Southwest border.

She's since expanded on this theory, claiming that because Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are "very good friends," Iranian members of Hezbollah "go from of course Iran into Venezuela, stay up to two years, learn the language, get false documents, and then transit up through Mexico to come across our border."

Huckabee had Myrick on his show on Sunday, and was quite alarmed at this "pretty explosive information," because "we're not hearing this - not from the Department of Homeland Security."

This is shatteringly stupid for a number of reasons. As many commenters at TPM pointed out, the drug cartels would have to be very, very dumb indeed to do anything like this, as it would certainly be very bad for business. Secondly, a Hizballah member with Farsi tattoos on would be an odd duck indeed, Iranian influence or no.

Thirdly, the slender thread of truth here--that Hizballah once was active in Latin America--is being rather abused. Hizballah has not been active in a major way in this hemisphere for over a decade, as far as I know; and when they were active in Latin America, the attacks took place in Argentina.

Now, if you Google around, you can find what look like some fairly reliable sources backing this claim up (MSNBC, for one). But no serious academic source I've encountered has ever mentioned the ongoing existence of a widespread fundraising operation by Hizballah in Latin America (which at least seems a slightly more plausible version of a similar claim), and the DHS has officially stated that it has no "credible information on terrorist groups operating along the Southwest Border."

Finally, the only way this could ever possibly work would be if a) all brown people looked alike and b) no brown people of any kind had any interest in stability/the absence of car bombs in the U.S.; otherwise the terrorists would be immediately distinguishable from the drug dealers, and/or the loyal American citizens of Hispanic or Arab descent might choose to enlighten their chalky overlords neighbors.

I assume I don't need to elucidate what's wrong with those premises.

A thought

What is the deal with genies these days? For one thing, they keep showing up in ads all of a sudden, and for another, they seem to be mostly not Arab. Like not in any way. One of them is a Scottish man in a tux:


And the other, whom I am certain I will not be able to find, is a guy who I suppose could be Arab (or meant to be) but at least initially came off Hispanic, and who was wearing a muscle shirt. He was advertising really cheap phone service.

I have no idea what this means. Not that this is the most serious trend in the zeitgeist regarding anything east of Istanbul or south of Sicily, but what the hell, I've been watching a lot of TV lately.

Wow

US totally grifted by random Afghan:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

It really just kind of sums everything up, huh.

Rolling Stone ventures to MENA (!)

Rolling Stone is launching Rolling Stone: Middle East.

Needless to say, I subscribed immediately. I hope it's obvious why this is a huge deal; for one thing, this is a major American pop-culture publication showing major interest in the cultural products and pop life of a region that is almost uniformly understood as backward, primitive, and totally lacking in anything Rolling Stone could ever be interested in. That in itself is a huge deal.

If people in the region read it, that could be even better. It would be complicated, as validation by Western observers always is for almost any Arab group, individual, movement, or trend; but it could also be very valuable. It depends on how they play it at RS, and on how many people in the region actually read it and take it seriously. (Those variables are, of course, related--it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing). As much as it can be fun to make fun of RS these days, when I was in high school that magazine was incredibly important to me. I was the proverbial sad indie kid, and it was kind of a lifeline at times. There are some kids in the Middle East who are probably already consuming this kind of Western media, whether they can actually get their hands on the glossy or whether it's via an Internet cafe; how great is it that they could get their own deal? Something actually meant for them?

The major caveat is that as far as I can see, it's all in English. That worries me a little, and it throws the emphasis back toward the remedial-Orientalist perspective. Maybe there is or will be an Arabic-language version or website; I really, really hope so. Even if that doesn't happen, I still very much applaud this step.

And finally, it'll just be fun for me.

rollingstone.me.com, people: go. Read. Be pleased.

Here we go

It seems the ever-restrained Texas Board of Education is now on a mission to remove "Muslim propaganda" from our nation's poor, defenseless textbooks.

It's no surprise at all--it's perfectly to be expected, right on schedule, really--but it still blows.