Dying to Win

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Books You Should Read, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue

By Robert A. Pape,
Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
[Excerpt from Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert A. Pape (New York: Random House, 2005, pp. 1-2, 5-7).]

Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but there is a great confusion as to why. Since many such attacks—including, of course, those of Septemper 11, 2001—have been perpetrated by Muslim terrorists professing religious motives, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause. This presumption has fueled the belief that future 9/11’s can be avoided only by a wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, a core reason for broad public support in the United States for the recent conquest of Iraq.

However, the presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America’s situation and harm many Muslims needlessly. Continue reading Dying to Win →

Out on an Amputated Limb

Iraq War, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue

As November breaks, the news from the warmongering of terrorism has two new flares. In Pakistan, where some think Osama might still be cave sitting, General Pervez Musharraf has announced (or shall we say re-announced) martial law. On the border of Kurdish-controlled Iraq, some 100,000 Turkish troops are said to be poised for an attack on the PKK operating out of Iraqi territory. Meanwhile the fires have hardly been dampened in Iraq or Gaza and President Mubarrak of Egypt has been slated to run yet again. The more we wish things to change, the more they seem to stay the same. But there is a thread running throughout all these events: the role of America as a tarnished symbol of democracy and as unilateral neoconnected bull in a west-of-China shop. Continue reading Out on an Amputated Limb →

E-mail to Allah

Iraq, Poetry

by Salah Hassan

Dear Allah,

I don’t have to speak to You
Like Mohammed al Maghout did
Nor like Fadhil al Azzawi
Now I have e-mail
And You can answer me
By a click on reply
Many questions bother me
And You must give an answer
In the meantime I have become forty five
And I think I am wise enough
To speak to You about Your duties
What are You doing all day?
Do You read the papers?
Do you listen to the radio?
Didn’t You hear anything in the Friday prayers
About Iraq? Continue reading E-mail to Allah →

Picture Iraq in 1925

Archaeology and Antiquities, Architecture, Iraq, Photography, Teaching Resources


A Street in Baghdad, photo by A. Kerim, 1925.

Can you picture a Baghdad street without damage from the ongoing war in which shrapnel and broken glass draw the blood or ordinary Iraqis of all persuasions? One way is to return to the past more than 80 years ago to the year before the Baghdad Museum was created. The website Iraq Museum International has a number of interesting pages on the archaeological and pictoral history of Iraq. One of these is an online exposition of 72 sepiatone photographs taken by A. Kerim in 1925, published by the Hasso Brothers in Baghdad and printed by Rotophot A.G. in Berlin. These photographs are currently in the Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives. The photographs cover all aspects of life, architecture and daily life and are well worth looking at or using in a classroom.

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #8

Iraq, Literature, Poetry

[Note: This is the eighth in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #7 2/18/1957

Directorate of Public Trading, Baghdad

My Kind Brother, the Soaring Poet, Mr. Yusuf al-Khal,

Sweet greetings. I have received all four of your letters, but only laziness has caused me to postpone responding to them day after day.

In the month of September I was in Beirut, and I searched for you a lot, but to no avail. I sat at Faisal Restaurant across from the American University, and I roamed the university, but I was not lucky enough to see you or two other brothers whom I was anxious to meet, Khalil Hawi and Munah Khoury. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #8 →

What the Heck, I mean Hayek…

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Lebanon, Terrorism Issue, YouTube Watch

[Webshaykh’s note: With so much discredited foreign policy decision-making, perhaps we should go back to the Nancy Reagan doctrine and look at the ouija board. Give political anti-realism a chance…what the heck, Mr. Hayek… See it for yourself on Youtube.]

‘Clairvoyant’ sees new Lebanese president, more assassinations, Hizbullah ‘surprise’

Daily Star staff
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

BEIRUT: Reputed clairvoyant Michel Hayek predicted late on Sunday that “Lebanon will witness the election of a new president despite current problems.” He also ruled out the “imminent” threat of civil war. In an interview with George Salibi on New TV, Hayek foresaw “a few skirmishes and problems” in the country.

“There is no impending end to the string of assassinations,” he said, referring to the political murders that have plagued Lebanon since 2005.

Nicknamed “the Nostradamus of the Middle East,” Hayek is known for his yearly predictions for Lebanon, the Middle East and the world. Continue reading What the Heck, I mean Hayek… →

A True Culture War

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue


[Photograph taken in Afghanistan by Sergey Maximishin, 2001.]

[Webshaykh’s Note: It is a rare day when an anthropologist’s commentary is published in the New York Times. Here is yesterday’s op-ed by Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago, reproduced below. I invite readers to post their views here. I gave my own view of Anthropo covertus in an earlier post.]

by Richard Shweder, New York Times, October 28, 2007

IS the Pentagon truly going to deploy an army of cultural relativists to Muslim nations in an effort to make the world a safer place?

A few weeks ago this newspaper reported on an experimental Pentagon “human terrain” program to embed anthropologists in combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. It featured two military anthropologists: Tracy (last name withheld), a cultural translator viewed by American paratroopers as “a crucial new weapon” in counterinsurgency; and Montgomery McFate, who has taken her Yale doctorate into active duty in a media blitz to convince skeptical colleagues that the occupying forces should know more about the local cultural scene.

How have members of the anthropological profession reacted to the Pentagon’s new inclusion agenda? Continue reading A True Culture War →

American Aristocracy

Humor and Satire, Poetry

Of all the notable things on earth,
The queerest one is pride of birth
Among our “fierce democracy!”
A bridge across a hundred years,
Without a prop to save it from sneers,
Not even a couple of rotten peers–
A thing for laughter, fleers, and jeers,
Is American aristocracy!

English and Irish, French and Spanish,
Germans, Italians, Dutch and Danish,
Crossing their veins until they vanish
In one conglomeration!
So subtle a tangle of blood, indeed,
No Heraldry Harvey will ever succeed
In finding the circulation. Continue reading American Aristocracy →