Why isn't Michel Aoun a household name yet?

Surprise, surprise: Beirut is a war zone again. And, even less surprisingly, the tangle of alliances resembles a veritable Gordian knot.

But it's worth looking into who's fighting whom here, because no one seems to be talking about the most important piece of it. The media has been telling the story of a conflict pitting Hizbullah and its allies, whoever they may be, against the Western-backed government, led by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. When reported this way, the conflict looks like nothing more than the same old song and dance: an Islamist organization, seething with hatred for All That Is Good And Holy (read: the West, particularly America), grabs up weapons and starts trying to impose its vision of a new societal order, dissenting opinions be damned.

If you read between the lines, though, the story gets much more interesting. Because, you see, Hizbullah's allies aren't the radical Islamists that everyone seems to assume they are. In fact, their most powerful ally is none other than the Free Patriotic Movement, a political party led by a former army commander named Michel Aoun, who just happens to be a Christian. Yes, that's right: Hizbullah, the "terrorist organization" which the American government says is following in the ideological footsteps of Ayatollah Khomeini, is allied with a Christian. (Digression: this is further evidence that the American government actually has no idea of what's going on in the Middle East. No organization that supported Khomeini's belief in vilayet-i faqih would ever ally itself politically with a party headed by a non-Muslim. In order for vilayet-i faqih to work, the Jurist in charge has to actually be a Muslim.)

And there's more. Not only is Hizbullah allied with the FPM, but two years ago it signed a public memorandum with them outlining the goals of their partnership. There are a lot of interesting words in there, but Section X is far and away the most surprising. In that section, which talks about protecting Lebanon's sovereignty, the two groups address the issue of Hizbullah's (substantial) military capacity. While no solution is explicitly given, the document quite definitively states that any acceptable solution must "objectively define conditions that would eliminate the reasons and justifications for keeping these weapons." In other words, two years ago Hizbullah signed a document in which it promised to disarm itself, making no mention of the obliteration of Israel as a precondition.

Why isn't this being talked about? Am I the only one who sees it as a good thing that Hizbullah has allied itself with the Free Patriotic Movement, which calls for, among other things, women's rights, adherence to international laws, and democracy in its charter? Hizbullah probably doesn't like Israel any more now than it did before it entered into this alliance, but this type of gesture, crossing religious boundaries to further objectively positive ends (i.e. the disarmament of the Lebanese militias) should cause people to stop and take notice. Terrorist organizations don't do this sort of thing, Mr. President.

I've saved the best part of this story for last: according to Hizbullah's website, al-Qaeda has declared war on Hizbullah. The stated reason is that al-Qaeda wants to "defend the Sunni community of Lebanon." I'd be shocked if Hizbullah's alliance with the FPM weren't part of the calculus as well. Either way, Hizbullah is clearly starting to run afoul of at least one segment of the radical community. Those of us who have an interest in winning some support in the region might do well to ask why.

With Friends Like These...

So Larry Lucchino, president and CEO of the defending world champion Boston Red Sox, came to speak at Calhoun yesterday. He said a lot of interesting things, but what struck me the most were his thoughts about payroll disparities in baseball. We aren't talking about a minor phenomenon here: Alex Rodriguez makes more money than the entire Florida Marlins roster combined, and the Yankees roster in total makes only slightly less money than the rosters of the Nationals, Pirates, A's, Rays, and Marlins put together. Revenue sharing has helped the situation somewhat - while the Yankees are still far and away the most profligate spenders, there are now 12 teams with payrolls between $138m and $98m, ranging from big-market teams (Red Sox, Mets) to small-market ones (Blue Jays). But the problem with revenue sharing is that it lacks an accompanying salary floor. The opposite of a salary cap, a salary floor is a minimum amount of money which must be spent on player salaries. It is designed to make sure that teams actually take their revenue sharing checks and put them to their intended use (i.e. paying players) instead of siphoning off the money into the owners' bank accounts and continuing to field a cheap, mediocre team.

On its face, a salary floor seems like a good idea, and one would assume that the players' union would be behind it - after all, unions have long championed minimum wage laws, which is basically the concept behind a salary floor (albeit applied to the collective wages of all players, not to each individual). Surprisingly, though, the players' union is vehemently opposed to a salary floor. The rationale, at least according to Lucchino, is that the union opposes any attempt to regulate salaries at all, fearing that it would be the first step on the road to salary caps (either for a team or for individual players).

Basically, the players' union is allowing its irrational fear of a slippery slope of regulation to dominate its thinking, resulting in a situation where the Marlins can field a team with an average salary of about $650,000 while the average Yankee makes just over 10 times that much. Is it just me, or does this scenario run counter to the raison d'etre of unions? Unions are supposed to look out for all of their members, not just the powerful ones. Instituting a salary floor does not necessarily mean that a salary cap is coming, and even if it did, why would the union give preferential treatment to the elite players (whose exorbitant salaries would be reined in somewhat by a cap) instead of the average players (whose low salaries would be increased by a salary floor)?

The free market may be good for some things, and it may allow certain individuals to reap enormous rewards, but it is emphatically not an egalitarian system - the strong survive, and the weak are trampled down. Unions are, at their core, supposed to be a way to counterbalance these Darwinian tendencies. Maybe someone should tell the MLB players' union this...

Please excuse the lack of posts

Have been swamped with work for the past few weeks, and now it's reading week, followed by finals week. Will try to get in a post or two, but either way I'll be returning with a vengeance around mid-May.

How do you say "Gallup Poll" in Hebrew?

The Economist has a very interesting piece on its website today about the opinions of residents of the Middle East regarding the upcoming elections. Not surprisingly, their preferences are most influenced by the candidates' views on foreign policy, but two things really jumped out at me.

The first thing is how close the ratings of McCain and Clinton are in the Israeli press (7.75 and 7.5, respectively, on a 10-point scale with 10 as the best - Obama gets a 5.12). McCain and Clinton obviously differ in their predictions and prescriptions for Iraq and the Middle East, but, at least in the Middle East, those differences clearly aren't seen as being all that important. Unfortunately, the article doesn't include any rankings of Bush, so we can't say for sure whether they see any difference between Bush's policies and those of Clinton/McCain. But if the view that McCain is just a wrinklier version of Bush is anywhere near as prevalent in Bethlehem, Israel, as it is in Bethlehem, PA, then the perceived similarities between McCain and Hillary can't be a good sign for her.

The other thing that stood out was Obama's support among the Arabs. Most interesting was the note about how badly the "Barack Hussein Obama" disparagements have played in the Middle East. Again, guys, the Middle East situation is as much about perception and framing as it is about actual policy. If we elect Hillary, not only will we have elected a president whom the Arabs are less enthusiastic about, but we will have failed to elect someone whom they do seem to support. I'm not sure which would hurt us more...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Forcing You to Check Your Dignity at the Gate Since 2007

(This was supposed to be posted shortly after I arrived home from Turkey last week, but the vagaries of my college schedule conspired against me)

So it's about 2:15 p.m. in the afternoon the Saturday before last, and I've just landed at Logan International Airport (that's in Boston, for those of you from outside the New England area) after a seven-hour flight from Frankfurt. At this point I've been traveling for 18 hours, so I don't really feel like I'm in any condition to get riled up about anything. Once my family and I finally get off the plane (good lord, 747s take a LONG time to empty out), we head to Customs, where I am greeted by the sight of non-US citizens waiting in line not only to have their passports checked, but to be fingerprinted.

Yes, that's right. EVERY SINGLE NON-US CITIZEN had to get fingerprinted - all four fingers and the thumb on both hands, using some little gadget installed at the little Customs booth where the guy in the uniform sits. I nearly blew a gasket when I realized what was going on; it's probably a good thing that I didn't, because my doing so probably wouldn't have gone over too well with the Customs officers.

But this new "security measure" (read: procedure by which civil liberties get further curtailed) has continued to gall me ever since I saw it. First of all, is this really a good time to make America seem even more paranoid to all of the 5.5+ billion humans who don't happen to hold one of our passports? We're not going to negotiate with the U.N., we're not going to sign global warming treaties, and now we're going to fingerprint everyone who wants to come to our country? This is sure going to help our image in the Middle East, guys. Although, to be fair, at least we can't be accused of racial profiling if we subject everyone to this nonsense.

I expect that most rebuttals to my indignation would be something along the lines of, "Adam, you're being ridiculous - September 11 changed everything." Whether it did or not is neither here nor there (it didn't, by the way). Even if it did, what possible purpose does fingerprinting everyone who enters the country serve? Someone should inform the Bush administration that, much as it might surprise the denizens of the White House, terrorists aren't actually stupid. The vast majority of the plotters either have no criminal record or have taken the necessary precautions to make sure that they won't be caught on a cursory background check. And an even vaster majority of the actual bombers/hijackers/operatives who carry out the attacks are recruited from madrassas, slums, or rural villages - bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and unencumbered by any criminal history. So the likelihood that fingerprinting will actually catch any of the fish that the police are presumably looking for is, quite frankly, astronomically small.

What about the few terrorists (be they masterminds or operatives) who do have existing criminal records? Or what about the theory that we should get everyone's prints on file so that, while they may not be heading for a car-bomb appointment this time, they'll be caught when and if they attempt to do so in the future? To both of these questions, my response is simple: are our neighbors doing this, too? If a terrorist wants to set off a bomb in America, he's not going to mind flying to Guadalajara or Toronto or even Buenos Aires, hopping an appropriately stealthy means of ground transportation, and entering the country overland. Unless everyone starts checking all incoming passengers, all we've done is add a little detour to the travel plans of the terrorists from whom we are trying to protect ourselves.

Yet again, the American government has proven its ability to adopt comparatively ineffective defense mechanisms in the most egregiously offensive way possible. In the modern world, terrorist operatives are extremely hard to pick out of a crowd, and terrorist masterminds never need to leave the comfort of their home half a world away from their target(s). And while America is protected by two rather large oceans, it's not as if the only way to get to America is to fly into an American airport and pass through Customs. But despite these glaring flaws in their strategy, the Bush administration continues to beat on, a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

If A Muezzin Shouts In A Forest, And Nobody Prays...

Dateline: Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, southwest of Reykjavik.

Currently sitting on the plane back from Istanbul, where I have spent the last eight days – apologies for the hiatus in posts, but sacrifices must be made at times.

Turkey is a very interesting country in many ways, quite a few of which will find their way into my writing in the coming days. But I want to begin with the most salient one to any visitor: the omnipresence of the muezzin, and its incongruity given the general balance Turkey has historically struck between religion and secularity.

The muezzin, in case you are unaware, is the guy who issues the call to prayer five times per day by bellowing…something…in Arabic from the minarets of the local mosque. There are approximately 2,000 mosques in Istanbul today, all of which resound with the more-or-less sweet strains (depending on the quality of each mosque’s loudspeaker system) of the muezzin at the five predetermined times: pre-dawn (approximately 5:40 am), noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and “nightfall” (sometime around 8 pm).

As any visitor to Istanbul will readily attest, you can’t escape the muezzin when the time comes. The only time during the eight days I was in Istanbul when I was awake and didn’t hear him was while sitting on the tarmac at Ataturk Airport (more on him later) for my flight home.

Yet for all of their volume and effort, the muezzins had no visible influence on the Turks. I was in Istanbul for eight days, and I saw no one – I repeat, no one – stop to pray when the muezzin started up. Of course, sometimes this was because I was in my hotel room, or in a tourist-heavy locale where all of the people around me were either non-Muslims or had been trained to ignore the call to prayer for fear of scaring away the tourists and their wads of cash. But even when we were wandering around the residential sections of the city, where no one around us spoke anything other than Turkish, the muezzin’s call went seemingly unheeded.

So what does this say about Turkey? Perhaps it just means that the government's famous commitment to enforced secularity has won out over any Turk's instinct to publicly express his or her religious convictions? But the muezzins are Turkish government employees: the government owns every mosque in Turkey, and the calls to prayer are thus explicitly sanctioned by the government. The answer is clearly not that Turks are not religious people: there are 2,000 mosques in Istanbul alone, and over 80,000 in the country (according to our Turkish guide).

The most obvious answer would seem to be that prayer has simply been relegated to the private sphere: if you are in private when the muezzin starts up, you pray; if you are in public, you don't. But if prayer is a private endeavor, why is the call to prayer such an obtrusively public one? The Turks have a long and proud history of iconoclasm when it comes to their religious institutions, starting with Ataturk's abolition of the caliphate after a nearly 1300-year run. So while some countries might broadcast the calls just out of deference to tradition, Turkey would not seem to be one of them.

I am not in a particularly great position to posit explanations for the behavior of the 15,000,000+ residents of Istanbul, nor to generalize it to apply to the rest of Turkey. In the more conservative eastern and southern portions of Turkey, for example, I would bet a lot of money that when the muezzin shouts, many more people stop and pray. But the fact that I am not a Turk, nor was meant to be, does not make what I observed any less striking to me. If nothing else, the observations of foreigners may at least help to dispel stereotypes.

And the award for the most ridiculous excuse ever goes to...

...Ms. Geraldine Ferraro, for her response to the backlash about her comments that Barack Obama owes his success to his being black. Ms. Ferraro, who apparently has a history of saying stupid things about presidential candidates, said on "The Early Show" (CBS vintage) that "it wasn't a racist comment, it was a statement of fact."

If you read the article linked above, you will see that this woman has too much of a history of saying this sort of stuff for her response to have been anything other than dead serious. Leaving aside the logical Mobius strip that Ms. Ferraro must have been traveling down in order to believe that the statement-of-fact comment was a good thing to say, this sort of thing worries me. As I blogged about previously, it is a known psychological phenomenon that the mere mention of an idea, no matter how outlandish it is, will convince at least a few people that it is true. So while the vast majority of people have reacted to Ms. Ferraro's rantings with the contempt that she deserves, there will be at least a few voters who will believe her. And in a race as close as this one, that is a problem.

But what bothers me most about this whole thing is the lack of outrage from the Clinton campaign. The only thing that we've heard on the matter from a Clinton spokesman (one not named Mark Penn!) is that they "do not agree with" what Ferraro had to say. Notice that they didn't say anything about how disgustingly wrong-headed the comments were, or about how such words are a clear violation of the style of campaign that Hillary initially promised to run - that is, one free of attack ads and other staples of negative campaigning. They're desperate for anything they can get now, particularly after watching the minuscule gains they made on March 4th evaporate, and then some, with the results from Wyoming and Mississippi. But have they really fallen far enough that Ms. Ferraro is no longer worthy of their contempt?