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On September 10, the reality outside
the Kennedy School at Harvard was a stark inversion of the usual
scene, as former President Mohammad Khatami of Iran arrived to
speak. When protesters appear at these events, they usually bear
banners of peace or the occasional Palestinian or Lebanese flag,
but today the protesters on the sidewalk, organized by the Jewish
Community Relations Council, had engulfed themselves in a sea
of blue and white Israeli flags. Members of the young Republicans
and Democrats of Harvard, usually to be found among the audience
inside and ever anxious to toady up to the celebrity of the moment,
were now outside, making bipartisan common cause on the street
to protest the invitation to Mohammad Khatami.
What had happened? The whole
town, both on the Boston and Cambridge side of the Charles, had
been thrown into a tizzy by Harvard's invitation to Khatami.
The most virulent local neocon columnist, one Jeff Jacoby whose
words grace the pages of the Boston Globe, was apoplectic that
a "terrorist" had been invited to dear old Harvard.
(Jacoby, like Mike Barnicle before him, writes the same column
over and over again, a column, which can be summarized as: Muslims
are devils, America is great, Bush is greater, and Israel is
greatest.) One columnist for the Boston Herald opined that the
"Arab Lobby" (whatever that is) was in command at Harvard.
The reliable Alan Dershowitz also in the Globe equated Khatami
to David Duke, a comparison recently reserved for his fellow
faculty member Professor Walt, co-author of the Mearsheimer and
Walt paper exposing the role of the Israel Lobby in ginning up
the war on Iraq. (Dershowitz allowed that Khatami should not
be prevented from speaking but that Harvard should be more careful
with its invitations.) Descending to new depths, Republican Governor
Mitt Romney nursed his presidential ambitions by denying to Khatami
the protection of the Massachusetts state police, leaving the
State Department gendarmes and the Boston police to take up the
slack. Romney is quite the sick puppy, sending a message that
it is fine for every nut to go after a foreign dignitary not
to his liking.
What had happened to so roil
our fair city? This question can be addressed on many levels.
But of one thing we can be certain. The visa granted to Khatami
to visit five American cities was a defeat for the Israeli Lobby,
and no corner of that amen corner was happy about it. At the
national level, some neocons, as in the Washington Times's editorial
on the matter, sniffed that it was a minor event, which could
not hurt. Others were furious, like Max Boot of the Council on
Foreign Relations who noted in his column in the LA Times that
the visa could only give aid and comfort to the "quartet
of evil" in the Middle East: Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and
Iran. (The axis of evil has now lost its Iraqi and North Korean
members and, in a political tribute to the primacy of momentum
and energy over mass, spun itself into a quartet.) The Khatami
visa is the third major defeat for the Lobby. First came the
Mearsheimer and Walt paper; next the defeat of the master of
sanctimonies, Joe Lieberman, the Lobby's favorite senator, in
Connecticut by Ned Lamont, he of the Old Money; and now the visa
given to Khatami. So however one interprets the visa, it was
not something that the Lobby desired. It certainly does not make
engineering an American attack on Iran any easier for them.
So whence cometh the visa?
It was obvious from the outset that both President Bush and Secretary
of State Rice had approved it, something which Bush openly but
belatedly admitted. But why? Some say that Bush is trying to
appear more peace like leading up to the mid-term elections.
This hardly seems plausible since the visit will not register
even a one on the political Richter scale. Others say that Khatami
is a pro-U.S. mole on the Iranian political scene, but that too
seems very far-fetched and not in accord with past attacks on
him by the U.S. The third and most plausible scenario is that
perhaps Khatami provides an avenue for backing off from a losing
confrontation with Iran and perhaps also an aid in yanking free
of the Iraqi tar baby. And if Khatami is a vehicle for turning
away from war in the Middle East, the non-neocon political establishment
a la Mearsheimer, Walt, Brzezinski, Lamont et al may be scoring
a victory. It is too soon to say, but too few are asking the
question. (In this I am not suggesting that the non-neocon imperialists
are turning over a new leaf. In the end it cannot be left to
them to be anti-Empire, but they may be useful allies in avoiding
a harrowing string of wars in the Middle East which they see
as a grave error for their Empire, benefiting only Israel.)
Khatami
versus Huntington. Clash of Civilizations versus Dialogue of
Civilizations.
There is great irony in Khatami
showing up at Harvard since Khatami is the foremost international
spokesman, opposing Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington's view
of "The Clash of Civilizations." Huntington's "theory,"
which may be taken as the ur-document of neocon foreign policy
made its debut in a 1993 paper in Foreign Policy, "The Clash
of Civilizations," followed by a book of the same name.
This very phrase has been front and center in Bush's speeches
recently, including his pathetic discourse on the anniversary
of 9/11. Two features distinguish Huntington's "theory".
First it is marked by a bellicosity, which sees conflict and
war as the inevitable result of differences. And second it postulates
an unavoidable clash between the U.S./European "civilization"
on one side and the Sinic (i.e., Chinese) on the other. In this
clash, the Muslim "civilization" will be an inevitable
ally of the Sinic (from which Japan is conveniently excepted).
This of course is a very convenient view of the world for partisans
of Oil, Empire and Israel.
Looking back at Huntington's
book in an essay in The Nation October 4, 2001, "The Clash
of Ignorance," well worth reading today, the late Edward
Said noted how Huntington's ideas were used to view the world
in the wake of the events of 9/11:
"Most of the argument
in the pages that followed relied on a vague notion of something
Huntington called "civilization identity" and "the
interactions among seven or eight [sic] major civilizations,"
of which the conflict between two of them, Islam and the West,
gets the lion's share of his attention. In this belligerent kind
of thought, he relies heavily on a 1990 article by the veteran
Orientalist Bernard Lewis, whose ideological colors are manifest
in its title, "The Roots of Muslim Rage." In both articles,
the personification of enormous entities called "the West"
and "Islam" is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated
matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world
where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one
always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his
adversary. Certainly neither Huntington nor Lewis has much time
to spare for the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilization,
or for the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures
concerns the definition or interpretation of each culture, or
for the unattractive possibility that a great deal of demagogy
and downright ignorance is involved in presuming to speak for
a whole religion or civilization. No, the West is the West, and
Islam Islam."
Conveniently for the Lobby,
Wilson also claimed that, in the looming titanic confrontation
between China and the West, the Muslim civilization would necessarily
fall into the Sinic camp. This despite oppression of Muslims
in China. But never mind that inconvenient fact; like those eager
Harvard undergrad politicos, Wilson knew who buttered his bread.
Armed with this "theory," champions of the everlasting
dominance of the American Empire and the control of that most
precious resource, petroleum, could make common cause with Israel
in going after the Arabs. With that common U.S./Israeli enemy
put away, the Empire could then proceed to deal with "Sinic
civilization." Such are the "theories" that occupy
the minds of Empire's strategists. What great thinkers are these.
In response to this "theory"
an Iranian cleric, scholar and political figure, Mohammad Khatami,
put forward the idea of a "Dialogue Among Civilizations."
Wikipedia informs us that:
Mr. Khatami introduced the
theory of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Huntington's
theory of Clash of Civilizations. After introducing the concept
of his theory in several international societies (most importantly
the U.N.) the theory gained a lot of international support. Consequently
the United Nations proclaimed the year 2001 (! ) as the United
Nations' Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations, as per
Khatami's suggestion. Pleading for the moralization of politics,
Khatami argued that "The political translation of dialogue
among civilizations would consist in arguing that culture, morality
and art must prevail on politics." Khatami has become an
international personality, and he has gained much fame among
intellectuals all over the world.
In fact Khatami was in the
U.S. just before last Sunday's Harvard visit to attend a U.N.
conference on the Dialogue Among Civilizations along with Desmond
Tutu and many others. And yet of Khatami the U.S. press had little
to say other than he might be a supporter of "terrorism."
So while Khatami is a cleric
and many of his ideas are garbed in the rhetoric of religion,
his fundamental view that dialogue is better than war is well
worth heeding. And as an alternative to the neocons' bellicose
views on the inevitable Hobbesian Clash of Civilizations, it
recommends itself highly.
* He did not include the shameful
behavior of the establishment peace and justice complex at the
time of the Khatami visit but hopes to comment on that in the
near future. A video of Khatami's speech and the Q&A session
at Harvard should be posted soon on the Kennedy School's web
site soon.
Now
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