Building Peace is Closed

Maintaining a blog while living in a high-threat country is a tricky challenge.  I am benefiting from a very unique cross-cultural education and want to share my experiences with others, but the openness of a blog always entails some risk.  I was originally willing to assume that risk because I care so strongly about communicating across the gap between civilizations, but circumstances have finally led me to reconsider that decision.  The security situation now requires that I close up shop.

I will still be pursuing my personal mission of building peace: studying issues of war and peace, seeking to understand the world's most intractable conflicts, and searching out realistic ways to manage or solve them.  Perhaps it's for the best that I'm closing down now.  My time in-country is rapidly running out, and I need to devote my energy to making the most of the remaining months.  I have so much to learn and hope to make every day count.  I intend to immerse myself as deeply as possible in the culture this year.  When I emerge at the other end, I will look for opportunities to share what I've learned.  I will also look for ways to turn this knowledge into action: to roll up my sleeves and do the hard, practical work of building peace.

I've enjoyed sharing with you, and I've met some fantastic people along the way.  It's truly been a great journey.  I hope to see you all again soon.  Reach 364 out.

The Stuxnet worm

What a remarkable story: a super-virus so sophisticated that it can only be created by a powerful nation-state, designed to sabotage control systems and cause real-world explosions in industrial facilities, possibly designed to wreak havoc on Iran's nuclear program.

Wired, of course, has some of the best coverage.

The Stuxnet worm demonstrates the potential capabilities of cyberwarfare, its unique asymmetrical advantages, and the creative options it opens up for exercising power.  While most pundits and policy gurus treat the Iran problem with old, well-established paradigms, this story suggests that somewhere, in some deep dark cave, some scary smart people are dreaming up and executing ideas that the rest of us can only vaguely imagine.

Counter-Terrorism Conference

Around this time last year I attended a supposedly world-class counter-terrorism conference in Tel Aviv.  I was mostly disappointed by the conference's quality, but I did enjoy gaining some perspective on how Israelis think about their own security.  I also enjoyed hanging out with some US military colleagues and using the conference lectures as a springboard for discussion.

I didn't plan to go back, but with so much happening in this part of the world right now -- rapidly mounting pressure to attack Iran, the debate over settlement freezes, the farce of a peace process -- I ultimately decided it was worth getting another look at what the Israelis are thinking.  I also wanted an excuse to hang out with my American friends in Tel Aviv.

I mostly have the same critiques that I did last year, with one big exception.  Last year I felt like nobody wanted to take a critical look at themselves and ask hard questions about Israel's current policies and future.  This year some very distinguished speakers did exactly that.  They discussed how Israel's social cohesion is unraveling and how little consensus there is on many foreign policy decisions.  There was a lot of concern about Israel's rapid de-legitimization around the world.  One speaker even brought up Time's recent article "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace."  He criticized those who cry "anti-Semitism!" and suggested that when their friends hold up a mirror, maybe Israelis need to take a look. (I personally think the subject is vital, but thought it was a lousy article)

I was glad to hear this frank talk.  It reassures me that many Israelis really are thinking about their future and grappling with the most difficult questions.

I had a few interesting experiences while at the conference.  A US Army colleague and I met Lee Smith, author of The Strong Horse -- which I had read the week prior.  We skipped some conference sessions to talk a couple hours, then went out to dinner and for drinks.  Regrettably, after six hours together and entirely too much beer, we did not solve any of the region's problems.  Maybe next time.  There's a lot that Lee and I don't agree about, but I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss and debate with somebody who has a sharp mind and thinks differently from me.  I was sincerely challenged to think more on some issues and consider new perspectives.

I spoke with a few Israelis about my experiences living in Jordan.  These conversations were enlightening because they showed me how little the two sides talk to each other.  One scholarly Israeli told me that he had never met an Arab who supported a two-state peace deal with Israel -- friends assured him that they existed, but he'd never met one.  I was shocked to hear that, because almost every Jordanian I know supports a fair two-state solution (the enormous challenge, of course, being how the two sides define "fair" and whether a fair solution is even possible at this point).  In fact, I recently attended a conference in Jordan on that very subject.  I felt vindicated in my personal mission of trying to understand the two sides, then help them communicate with and understand each other.

I frequently encountered the belief -- among both Israelis and Americans -- that the Palestinian question isn't really that important, because giving the Palestinians a state wouldn't solve anything.  I disagree with that logic.  A Palestinian state certainly wouldn't solve all the region's problems, but it would address the single loudest complaint raised against Israel by the international community.  It would allow Israel to regain the moral high ground, and be in a much stronger moral position to fight any future battles.  And I personally think a fair deal would be more stable than the Israelis think.  The Egypt and Jordan peace treaties have held up remarkably well.  Based on my experience in Jordan, at least, really do mean it when they say they want a peace deal based on a two-state solution.

In other respects, I found myself sympathizing with the Israelis more after being in Israel -- particularly over the questions of Iran and Hizballah.  It's relatively easy for an American to gamble that Iran won't actually use a nuclear weapon if it obtains one; even if we're wrong, life still goes on.  But as I explored Tel Aviv -- running along the beach, watching children ride their bicycles through the streets on Yom Kippur, dining with my friend's family on their apartment balcony -- I could feel something of what the Israelis must feel: the grim knowledge that all this really could be erased in an instant.  I'm not making a policy prescription here; I'm just saying that I can understand why American and Israeli perspectives have diverged on the Iran issue.

On the subject of Hizballah, I read ICG's recent report on "Israel and the Axis of Resistance" and an excellent WINEP report about what an Israeli-Hizballah war might look (thanks to Exum for the link).  I'll admit it: I'm scared.

I have no answers, but one thing is for sure: the problems in this region are going to get far worse before they have a chance at getting better.

Ugly Europeans

Americans are allegedly such lousy travelers that the world has invented an epithet to describe them: "the ugly American."  This term encapsulates their allegedly "arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, and ethnocentric behavior" and their ignorance of and insensitivity to foreign cultures.

I'm here to demand a little justice.  Sure, there are some ugly Americans out there, but while living in the Middle East I have met more ugly Europeans than you would possibly believe.

Most Americans I know who live in Jordan make at least some effort to respect the conservative Muslim culture by dressing modestly.  So it was a total shock the first time I went to Petra, and saw crowds of European girls strolling around in spaghetti-string tank tops, bikini tops, and miniskirts.  In Le Kef, Tunisia I saw so much skin that I decided the European tour companies must enforce a dress code.

At Mt. Nebo, where Moses first looked down on the Promised Land, I witnessed an irate Italian yelling at the Jordanian ticket agent and a group of tourist police -- all of whom had been exceptionally kind and hospitable to us when we arrived.  The problem?  They wouldn't give a youth discount to this man's 14 year-old son (off a base ticket price of about $3).  The Italian bellowed and pontificated about how he was a very important lawyer and demanded respect, while his wife and son stood miserably off to one side staring at the ground.  Then he stalked off to his hired car and berated his Jordanian driver.

Last winter my family and I went camping in the serene, isolated nature reserve in Wadi Dana.  The Jordanian park rangers informed us that one other group had a reservation that night.  They rolled in around 8:00 that night: ten Danish girls in their early 20s.  They demonstrated their enlightened European culture sensitivity when they began unloading cases of beer from the truck.  They spent the night getting obliterated and asking their Jordanian guide to teach them dirty words in Arabic.  The party only ended at 4:00am when I stumbled out of my tent and politely asked them to shut up.


The grand prize, though, goes to the Czech backpacker I saw yesterday at the King Hussein/Allenby bridge crossing between Jordan and Israel.  He was standing in line behind me, surrounded by hundreds of Palestinian families with their children, wearing a t-shirt with a picture from Woodstock of a topless, stoned girl smoking a joint.

So a little justice for us Americans, please!

Anti-Muslim hysteria

Yes, I'm still alive.  It's been a busy summer and I haven't kept a regular schedule, which always makes it harder to keep the blog updated.  Yesterday I returned from a fantastic week in Tunisia where I explored the ruins of Carthage, explored seafront fortifications from the Fatimid Caliphate, lounged on the beach, and tried to make sense of an Arabic dialect that is half-French.  I am heading off on another trip tomorrow.

A few people have asked me what I think about all this NY mosque business and the threats of Qur'an burnings.  Well, I'm angry and embarrassed.  America should be better than this.  The anti-Muslim hysteria undermines our most precious values, is a threat to our national security, and makes it impossible to win the long war on Islamic extremism.  When I caught up on a week's worth of news today I was glad to see that General Petraeus, Secretary Gates, Secretary Clinton, and President Obama all agree.  I'm just glad that university is out for the summer, so I don't have to try and explain all this to my Jordanian classmates.

At another level, I'm amazed at how one no-name bigot from Florida has created a global crisis.  I immediately thought of John Robb, who argues that in today's world individuals can leverage vulnerable points in networks to create mass damage and tie up bureaucracies with cumbersome and expensive responses.  In his book Robb writes, "The threshold necessary for small groups to conduct warfare has finally been breached, and we are only starting to feel its effects... this threshold will finally reach its culmination--with the ability of one man to declare war on the world and win."

That's exactly what Terry Jones is doing.  He found a "vulnerability" along the fault line between civilizations, pushed the right button, and created a global crisis out of thin air.  Snowballing media coverage, anti-American demonstrations, personal involvement from a 4-star general, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the American President... where does it end?

So congratulations to Mr. Jones on proving John Robb correct, and singlehandedly causing the worst damage to America's standing in the Muslim world since Abu Ghraib.  You are now one of the United States' most formidable enemies.  I hope you enjoy your new role as militant Islam's number one recruiter, and hope that you find some consolation in the warm glow of media spotlights when American blood starts to flow.

Robb himself blogged about how this incident validates his ideas.  Read his remarks here and here.