Judith Miller, American Flag, Bashshar's Speech, etc. I leave California for a few days, and so many things happen in my absence. Time should freeze while I am gone. Now I feel that I have to fill gaps. First, yesterday, I gave my talk at Southern Illinois University. After my talk, and during the questions and answers' session, this one man approached me trembling with anger, and then proceeded to toss an American flag bracelet--made in China no less--in my lap, asking me to wear it. I put it aside and I ignored him. My host and other members of the audience were quite apologetic and embarrassed. But in fairness to the audience of more than 100 people, this was one person only. Another person asked or wondered aloud whether this kind of thing happens to me all the time. I surprised him, and others in the audience, when I stated that this has never happened to me before. Audiences in the US before and after Sep. 11 have always been polite to me, even in disagreement. Most rude have been Lebanonese right-wingers and Zionists, in my experience in the US. One person asked me why I refer to Americans always as "you" and "you did", etc. He said that it would be much better for my credibility and acceptability if I were to speak as "we Americans." He prefaced his remark by asking about my citizenship status. I told him that I will continue to speak the way I do, in the manner I do. This has to do with my early impression of Arab speechmaking in the US. You see when I first came to this country, I so closely followed Arab-American and Zionist discourse, and debates in the media. I drew my conclusions from that, and shaped my way of talking, for better or worse. I observed early on that Arab-American speakers, including the late Edward Said, would remind their audiences at the rate of once per minute that they are American citizens. They would say: "as Americans, we call for this or that." That bothered me because 1) it sounded weak; 2) it reinforced the notion of the conditionality of the citizenship of Arab-Americans; 3) it is futile because those who do not accept the citizenship of Arabs would never accept it no matter what; 4) it tended to distance the speaker from the "Arabs over there" implying that "we are better Arabs than those real Arabs over there." For that I do not speak like that, and do not brandish my tax returns at every corner to show the audience that I am a tax paying citizen. And what if you are a citizen of the universe who float between planets, as I occasionally do? So that is that. Every time I travel, Arab students tell me their ordeals on and after Sep. 11. I have heard so many sad stories that I wish somebody collect them in a book form. This Lebanese student from Ba`albak who studied sciences at the university in Il, was working at the lab when Sep. 11 happened. He told me that for 3 months after that, those he worked with and who were friends with him, all--including the hippie types as he said--stopped talking to him. Just like that. And FBI agents visited him. They asked him: "Are you a member of a terrorist group"? He said: "No." They asked: "Do you know Arabs who are members of terrorist groups"? He said: "No." I have heard that account from other Arabs before. How dumb is that question? Do those highly trained agents expect somebody to one day admit membership in a terrorist organization? In 18th century Iran, the ritualistic Shi`ite cursing of the killers of Husayn was instated. After Sep. 11, I instated the cursing of Bin Laden whenever I travel. Travel was so much more convenient before Sep. 11. Do you remember the innocent times when little kids used to go to the cockpit and speak to the pilot? I could not do that as a kid: I have terrible motion sickness (and terrible fear of flying). I read the text of Bashshar Al-Asad's speech although I did not see it on TV. I spoke about it today on Al-Jazeera's Ma Wara' Al-Khabar. I spoke by phone as it was arranged quickly, from Edwardsville, Il. I had the opportunity to speak against Sa`d Hariri. My mother, who favors education and higher education--I don't--says that Bashshar is the only really educated Arab leader and it shows. I think that his speechmaking is much different, and superior to official Arab speechmaking. The rest, including the new younger leaders, like King `Abdullah of Jordan and King Muhammad of Morocco, simply inherited the speech writers of their fathers, and do not have sufficient command of the language to leave their own imprint on the speeches. Both King Husayn of Jordan and King Hasan of Morocco--especially the latter-- were rather eloquent on their own. But Bashshar does not speak in classically formal manner of speaking. He speaks a very proper but very modern Arabic, and his scientific training shows in the way he slowly and methodically builds the argument. In that regard, before I speak of substance, the speech was strong and well-put together, and clearly had Bashshar's style and mannerism. But he has no charisma, and comes across as dour. And he has no sense of humor either; his father was a weaker speaker but has wit, I am told by people who knew him, and from what we read. Bashshar's effort at humor fails, although his invocation of a colloquial saying at the end was effective. On substance: regarding the non-existent, reforms in Syria, Bashshar spoke without saying anything. He did not say anything of significance, and just went around in circles, I felt. He did not deny that reform was not speedy, but did not tell us why and how, and what plan of reform he wishes to enact, if any. He left the Syrian audience scrambling for answers, I felt. On the Mehlis investigation, the speech, and Syrian foreign policy, suffers from a major contradiction as I said today on AlJazeera. On the one hand, Bashshar says that the Mehlis Team and UN resolutions reflect a dangerous US-Israeli conspiracy; but on the other hand, Bashshar also says that his government will cooperate with the investigation. This will only mean that Syria will cooperate with a conspiracy that targets Syria. How logical is that? I agree with him that no matter what Syria does or does not do, the US will only be satisfied with total surrender and submission, as Arab governments have only shown the US total surrender, and the US wants no less from Syria. Lebanon has followed suit FAST in that regard, and Hizbullah representatives sit naively and foolishly in the Sanyurah government thinking that they are being very smart and shrewd. He took issue with the characterization of the previous domination of Lebanon as "Syrian guardianship over Lebanon." But that is accurate; it was Syrian guardianship over Lebanon, although I agree with him that Rafiq Hariri was a pillar of that guardianship. I was pleased with his mocking of Sanyurah and Sa`d Hariri because you do not read or hear any criticism of the Hariri tools in the Arabic press (I may do an AlJazeera show soon on Hariri by the way--stay tuned). But I wonder what kind of reaction the speech will have on Lebanese public opinion, not merely as mis-represented in the Hariri media. You can't tell. You would expect that Bashshar would give the Syrian people something in order to achieve national unity or some form of real popular support. But he gave the people, nothing. These are regimes that can only take from their people, and can only give their enemies. I saw Judith Miller on CNN. Why does she giggle whenever she is asked a question? Does she think that it make her look appealing? I just does not work. Not in her case anyway. Mark my words. She was fired from the New York Times, but will soon announce that she singed with a major US media organization, probably print AND TV. Just wait. But that is not all bad; she can at least continue to search for Saddam's WMDs. A new report now reveals that there was a CIA report denying the link between Al-Qa`idah and Saddam a weak before Colin Powell gave his speech at the UN. So not only did he lie, but he knew that he was lying. That speech: an anthology of lies and fabrications. I feel vindicated: because I gave a same day evaluation of the speech on AlJazeera when people were praising the speech as "convincing." Only Le Monde and me were not convinced it seems. There is a new Chairperson of the Joint Chief of Staff. In a speech, he compared Al-Qa`idah to Nazi Germany. That is so wrong and so dangerous a rhetoric. Not only because there is fortunately NO mass movement among Muslims that supports and cheers Bin Laden, but also because such rhetoric unwittingly contributes to the cult of Al-Qa`idah in the region. This is what the Zarqawi biographer said about the US contributing to Zarqawi's own cult of personality by its exaggerated reports on him. I saw some of the coverage of the Jordan's bombing on US TV "news" media. I noticed that they are still talking about the letter from Dhahiri to Zarqawi, when everybody now knows that it was not authentic. How shallow is the TV foreign news coverage, and how ill-informed. But the bombing in Jordan was--make no mistake--part of the Domino Effect of the Iraq War. Bush spoke about the Domino Effect of Iraqi Democracy, and we saw what happened there. Instead of "freedom spreading" as Rice said today, I see bombings spreading in the region. But the killers did not know that Mustafa `Aqqad and his daughter would be among the victims in Amman. `Aqqad (see my post on him last week), is really a big name in the Arab world, and the Arabic press is full of outrage at the killers and at the bombing. But you can look at the bombing, and at other bombings by Al-Qa`idha and fellow kooks as a sign of their utter failure. They have so miserably failed at winning any level of public support, that they now don't care about who they kill and where. This has become a cult of blood and killing. I was happy to see the failure of our governor's initiatives here in California. He deserved that fate, and maybe voters will learn that the heroic images from film do not translate into real life.