Category Archives: Commentary

All written commentary.

Iran Supreme Leader not keen on working with US on ISIS

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I guess the top boss isn’t too interested in the proposal for Iran to cooperate with the United States on countering the ISIS (Sunni Arab extremist) invasion in Iraq. Mainly because Iran’s religious leadership apparently wants Iraq to remain a united, Shia-controlled, majoritarian-rule satellite of Shia Iran:

[…] as Washington’s patience for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki diminishes, so do the prospects of coordinated efforts as Tehran sees Maliki as a reliable partner in Baghdad.

“The United States is dissatisfied with the result of elections in Iraq and they want to deprive the Iraqi people of their achievement of a democratic system, which they achieved without U.S. interference,” Khamenei said.
[…]
“The real fight is between those who want to bring back a U.S. presence and those who want Iraqi independence.”

 
As one reader asked, how soon until Iran’s most formidable Shia militant proxy, Hezbollah, shows up? They’ve already been battling groups like ISIS, quite successfully, in Syria for the past couple years.

From the U.S. perspective, this reluctance by Iran to cooperate on Iraq may be for the best, given that it’s not clear Iran’s interests are any more noble than anyone else’s. And it might clarify the confusion that is the American policy on the region. Or at least won’t make it worse.

middle-east-border-zoom

Washingskins

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Greg had a great post the other day on the controversy surrounding the Washington football team’s long-standing “nickname” — Redskins. I’ve spent more time than is healthy reading internet comment sections on this issue, so I consider myself an expert on the arguments against changing the name. Most are as vacuous as they are willfully ignorant.

“But what about the Fighting Irish? Or the Vikings? Or the Celtics? We would have to change them too.”

This one is my favorite. As if there’s no difference between mascots named for the predominant ethnic group in the area and a racial nickname for the sports team in a capital that once carried out an active policy of ethnic cleansing against that racial group. As someone with Norwegian, Irish, and Native American ancestry, I am particularly amused by these comparisons. No Minnesotans of Swedish origin are up in arms about being compared to their Viking ancestors. Sure, they did a fair share of pillaging, but Vikings had democratic assemblies and were among the most advanced seafaring civilizations of their era. Boston Celtics? The history of the basketball team cannot be told without contextualizing it within Boston’s identity as an Irish city (for better and for worse). Fighting Irish is a similar situation. It was coined by a member of Notre Dame’s own football team and embraced by the Irish Catholic student body, unless there’s a massive uprising against it we’re not hearing about.

“But Indians support the name!”

Then they’ll point to some ten year old poll and talk about how there are Redskin team names on Native American reservation. Oh, ok. No problem then. I guess the fact that some Natives don’t care negates those that do. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. Just like if your black friend lets you say slurs, you’re free to yell them around other black people and then name your business a racial slur. No problems there.

“Uhhg it’s the LIBERALS trying to PC everything up.”

Ah, the old P.C. canard. I prefer to think of this issue less as enforcing “politically correct” terminology and more making sure none of our sport teams are named something blatantly racist. When the Redskins were founded by vile racist George Preston Marshall, the term Oriental was in vogue to refer to Asian people. Does that mean we should name a team the Orientals? What about the Coloreds? That word and a few others were pretty popular around that time to refer to black people. Dan Snyder, owner of the Redskins, is a Jewish person. I wonder if he would appreciate a team named the Hebes (or worse) with a hooknosed Jew clasping a bag of gold. I know for sure the Washington Darkeys wouldn’t fly today, but this is essentially what we are talking about: an antique word, a relic from an era where pasty scientists obsessively studied the differences between the “races” and learned men established white dominion over the language.

“Don’t be weak and choose to be offended.”

This is perhaps the stupidest. First of all, you don’t really choose to take offense. But second of all, I don’t think Natives are “offended,” so much as sick of the bullshit. I know a decent amount of Natives, most of whom grew up on/close to a reservation. I once asked a friend of mine about the name Redskins and he replied,  “It’s not that it’s offensive — it’s just really dumb.” He went on to describe numerous different ways a team could honor Native Americans without going right to skin color. This guy has also paler skin than I do, but grew up in Oklahoma in a Native family. Just demonstrates the name is inaccurate in addition to stupid.

“It’s not racist! The Redskins are named after their Indian former coach”

This ones complicated and involves draft dodging. The Redskins were founded in Boston and originally shared a field with the Boston Braves baseball team. When they moved to Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, the name was changed to Redskins. Marshall was quoted at the time saying the name change was to avoid confusion with the other Native-referencing team, NOT because a coach was Native. It is also not at all clear the coach Marshall referenced, Willie “Lone Star” Deitz, was actually a Native American. Deitz was put on trial and briefly imprisoned for draft dodging WWI by claiming he was a Native American. The jury could not conclude he knowingly lied about his heritage, but a number of discrepancies in the Deitz family’s testimony, as well as his interactions with his supposed sister and her Sioux tribesmen, suggest otherwise. So not only is this origin story not true, the supposed Indian coach likely wasn’t a Native.

“There are bigger issues we should be concerned about”

The history of the United States is a road paved with Native American bones. Since coming to this continent, Europeans have cleansed Natives from their lands, reneged on treaties, massacred Native women and children, conducted biological warfare against them. Many Native Americans live today in extreme poverty, while rape and sexual violence are epidemics on reservations. These are obviously much more pressing issues than a stupid team name. But the name Redskins remains a window into an epoch (one not yet entirely over) where racism was blissfully casual and the Washington football marching band wore headdresses and played “Dixie” before the anthem. Perhaps it is a fitting name for Washington D.C.’s team after all.

ISIS or ISIL: Lost in chronological, cultural translation

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Here on AFD’s blog and on our show, I’ve consistently used “ISIS” (not spelled out often at all) as the name of the group seizing control of parts of Syria and Iraq right now. Part of that is for convenience (or, as Nate said, to mockingly associate them with the spy organization on the FX animated series “Archer”) and part of that is not quite knowing how to culturally translate the meaning of the group’s name.

As a new article in the New York Times explains, that’s proven a problem for the whole English-speaking world, from governments to the media. The organization uses an old-school Arabic geographic phrase in their name which doesn’t precisely translate at a 1:1 word ratio into existing English terms for the region’s geography and history.

الدولة الاسلامية في العراق والشام, or al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil-Iraq wa al-Sham. The difficulty comes from the last word.

Al-Sham is the classical Arabic term for Damascus and its hinterlands, and over time, it came to denote the area between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, south of the Taurus Mountains and north of the Arabian desert. Similarly, in Egypt, “Masr” may refer either to Cairo or to the whole country. Used in that sense, al-Sham takes in not just Syria but also Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and even a part of southeastern Turkey.

That is fairly similar in extent to what Western geographers call the Levant, a once-common term that now has something of an antique whiff about it, like “the Orient.” Because of the term’s French colonial associations, many Arab nationalists and Islamist radicals disdain it, and it is unlikely that the militant group would choose “Levant” to render its name.

The fighters do not like “Syria” either, though. Syria is what the Greeks named the region in ancient times, possibly after the Assyrian people who once lived there, though that derivation is disputed. And at times in the past, the term “Syrian” was used to mean specifically a Christian Syrian, while Muslims or Jews living there would be called Shami. Today, when Arabs speak of Syria, they usually mean only the modern state, which the insurgent group is fighting to obliterate.

 
Compounding the problem is that the rebel faction appears to frequently use archaic Arabic phrases/words that are not common in modern Arabic, in place of their modern synonyms. This would perhaps be equivalent to insisting on using only Anglo-Saxon rooted words in place of every Franco-Norman rooted word in the English language.

Or I guess a bit like the pedants who insist on not using any of the newfangled American English words (and new usages) that have come into vogue since the rise of computers… But I digress. Or as George Orwell might edit me: I am getting off track.

If you disagree with our use of “ISIS,” contact us. It might impact our choice.
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Why is Iran suddenly publicly debating death sentences?

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Iran has had a wave of pardons issued by victims’ families as the condemned were standing on the gallows platform awaiting execution. And notably, Iranian media is publishing and promoting this trend. TV anchors are rallying viewers in opposition to specific instances of the death penalty and people are even crowd-funding payoff money to buy the families’ pardons (which is legally permissible). However, the overall number of death sentences has been rising too, recently

So the question is: is this a PR stunt by the elective branches of the government to make the country look better, is it a power play between branches, or is it a genuine movement to curb the death penalty?

Among the big three state executors in the world — China, Iran, and the United States — it would be remarkable if Iran had a successful anti-death penalty mass movement before the United States.

And by remarkable, I mean that would be to America’s future enduring shame and discredit. Or would be, if our country was known for historical introspection and admission of error.

What took so long? Washington NFL team loses trademark for racial slur.

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Past Arsenal For Democracy co-host Greg on the significance of today’s trademark ruling against Washington’s NFL team.

This morning, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled in favor of Amanda Blackhorse, a psychiatric social worker and Navajo woman who, along with four other Native Americans, challenged the “Washington Redskins” trademark in court this Wednesday. The ruling cancels six federal trademarks registered by the professional football franchise from Washington, D.C. between the late 1960s and 2000.

Blackhorse, et al. challenged the trademark under Section 2(a), 15 U.S.C. §1052(a) which prevents the issuance of trademarks that “may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.” That the name “redskins” is disparaging has been fairly well established over the past several decades–the USPTO had already cancelled the “redskins” trademark in 1992 because of its disparaging nature, a decision that was only reversed in federal appeals court because of a technicality–and does not warrant reexamination here (you either get it or you don’t). More telling are the USPTO’s selections from this enormous evidence body of evidence:

Some highlights from the official 177 page opinion document include…

Offensive cheerleaders
uspto-cheer

Offensive marching bands
uspto-band

Offensive programs
uspto-program1

Multiple dictionary definitions.
uspto-dictionary1

uspto-dictionary2

And many more.

Far from tyrannical (as some in the #tcot echo chamber on Twitter have suggested today), this decision is well within the purview of the federal government, the guarantor of Intellectual Property. Protection of intellectual property, that is, in a manner that prevents individuals from using others’ proprietary ideas to make money, is not an inalienable right. The government has not banned Washington’s football franchise from calling themselves the “Redskins.” Instead, they have reevaluated the value of protecting such a trademark and determined that its harm (the marginalization of an entire race) exceeds its benefit (preventing individuals from profiting from ideas that are not their own).

It is unlikely that this decision alone will precipitate a name change. The team will, undoubtedly, appeal the decision and there is a chance an appeals court could once again rule in its favor. However, the movement to change the name is near critical mass. Now that the USPTO will no longer enforce the “Redskins” trademark individuals are free to create their own Redskins merchandise to sell for profit.

In fact, they have always been free to do so, but the Washington Redskins now have fewer tools at their disposal to go after trademark infringement. Which is not to say we condone or recommend such an action. Not only is still remarkably offensive, but Washington Redskins owner, Dan Snyder, has never been one to shy away from a lawsuit.

Unfortunately, loss of revenue from unofficial merchandise sales are probably of little concern to an organization worth a reported $1.7 billion. Yet the USPTO decision is one of great symbolic importance and illustrates an ongoing trend: if public opinion continues to move against using an obvious racial slur as a mascot, Washington owner, Dan Snyder, may need to reconsider the declaration he made in May 2013:

“We’ll never change the name…It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”

What if ISIS just burns out?

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If it’s really true that Al Qaeda dumped ISIS for being too evil (which I highly doubt, as I’m sure it was more about competition, territory, or leadership) then I’d find it hard to believe that any people would allow them to rule over an area for long.

Ultimately, terrorist groups tend to hold political power only as long as they can deliver services more than they oppress people. It’s easy to take power but hard to hold it.

Is the only way to stop them really military action? What about letting them burn out under their own terribleness?

Banging around in the dark in Mesopotamia

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Mesopotamia: the land between two rivers, the buffer between eastern and western empires, the perennial peripheral battle zone between Persia and her Western challengers. Today: Iraq.

Parthian Empire at its greatest extent. Credit: Keeby101- Wikimedia

Parthian Empire at its greatest extent. Credit: Keeby101- Wikimedia

The Republican Iraq policy of the past 12 years has been to stumble through a pitch-black room of broken hazards with no awareness of what’s behind, what’s nearby, or what’s ahead. But they triumphantly declare that we’re almost there and everyone else is an unpatriotic traitor who wants us to fail.

On the other side of the room, Iran — supposedly the Republicans’ greatest boogeyman since the Soviet Union and at least the second greatest since 1979 — is standing silently with night vision goggles and thousands of years of knowledge of what’s behind. If we get too close, it steps out of the way, but remains inside the room. It used to wait outside the room, in the darkened hallway, but then the Republicans opened the door by trying to get into the room, as if they had no idea Iran was even next to the room and that that closed door had been the only thing keeping Iran out.

I don’t have an instinctive, overriding opposition to Iran the way some do. But if the goal was to keep Iran from gaining influence over more territory, there had to be a counterbalancing force left in Iraq which was in opposition to Shia Iran. And that would have meant a minority-led dictatorship, statistically speaking. Which is not a reason to support the existence of such a thing (though we had managed to mitigate it without dismantling it by 2002). But their bumbling haste meant they didn’t even attempt to reconcile that their regional policy goals — taking out the Iraq regime and containing Iran — were at complete odds. Today they find themselves rallying to the Shia-aligned government whose biggest friends are in Tehran, condemning the President for not unquestioningly dumping money, bombs, and troops into the cause, even as they condemn his efforts to negotiate a nuclear solution with Tehran.

Worst of all: Still today they refuse to entertain the idea that the 2003 invasion was a mistake of vast and sweeping proportions on all possible fronts. A crippling, even rippling, disaster at home in our politics, economy, and budget; the elephant in the room on U.S. foreign policy for years to come; and a massive disruption that upended the delicate Middle Eastern balance and tore a fragile country apart into a bloodbath. At least most Democrats who supported it, despite how obviously bad an idea that it was at the time, have the decency to admit they screwed up.

The continued denial of reality on Iraq, let alone repentance, from Republicans right now makes me politically angry in a way I haven’t felt since George W. Bush was in office. Their genuinely — not even strategically or cynically — held belief that President Obama is to blame for what’s happening now is merely the infuriating cherry on top of a rage sundae.