Podcast with Michael Totten
Well, eventually, everyone comes through Knoxville at some point--Glenn and I had the pleasure of meeting up for dinner and discussion last night over barbeque with Michael Totten, of MichaelTotten.com. For those of you not familiar with Michael's work, he is a blogger and writer who travels to the Mideast to bring his readers first-hand interviews and political goings-on in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Israel and soon, Algeria. The conversation was so interesting, we thought our listeners would want to hear more so we persuaded him to come to our studio for a podcast on his past and recent travels around the Mideast. Listen as Michael talks about his travels to Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq and Israel.
Most fascinating to me was Michael's discussion of the different political mindsets between those in the more secular areas of Israel, such as Tel Aviv, who identify more with leftist Europeans and those in Jerusalem who are seen as more right-leaning in their views. The psychology of why this political split is there is fascinating to me (as a Jew, why would you want to identify with leftist Europeans?)--if you have some thoughts about this, let me know in the comment section.
You can listen to the podcast by clicking here or directly (no downloading necessary) by clicking here. For dial-up users, you can listen here. If you would like to view our archive of podcasts, go to TheGlennandHelenShow.com.
This podcast is sponsored by VolvoCars.us.
Update: You can see more about Michael Totten's trip to Knoxville including pictures here.
posted by Helen at 11:49 AM
15 Comments:
Dr. Helen you just keep getting better. And the Volvo ads are nice and tasteful.
anonymous 11:06:
Thanks for the positive feedback--it is nice to hear. As far as the commercials, we wanted them to be as non-intrusive as possible, but we do like having sponsors for the podcasts to keep them free to our listeners.
Ditto to Anonymous' comment. As an aside, is it true that everyone comes through Knoxville eventually? I suspect the lure is the Reynolds' family. You should work out discounts with area hotels, restaurants, etc., offering special rates for visiting scholars, students, and fans. While not (yet) Dollywood or Disneyland, your family is fast becoming a Knoxville tourist attraction.
I agree that Michael Totten is a very reasonable interview subject, and a pretty good amateur journalist too. I said recently that Glenn and Helen are also nice people whose decency has been undermined by their political positions, especially in their writing. All of that was on display in this podcast, but what really struck me is that Michael Totten is a very different case. His political thinking is still fully informed by human decency. He understands Arabs, sympathetically, about as well as anybody.
But still, Michael's good interview had some fundamental omissions, and at least one crucial factual error. He said that most of the violence in Iraq is in the Sunni triangle, but the Sunnis are only 20% of the population of Iraq. Both of those are true; however, if you look at a map of the Sunni triangle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sunni_triangle.jpg, it isn't just Sunnis who live there. The Sunni triangle includes the entire Baghdad area; it covers about half of the population of the entire country. The truth is that violence = Sunni triangle = Sunnis is a convenient oversimplification, ultimately a distortion put out by the White House and the Pentagon to downplay a deteriorating situation. The Sunni triangle, as opposed to just the Sunnis, is the heart of Iraq. Violence is destroying the heart of the country.
Meanwhile Michael emphasized the stability of Kurdistan. It's fair enough that that is an important and underreported story. But there is a crucial side to the which Michael himself underreports, even though he has acknowledged it (on his own site, not in this podcast). Namely, the only reason that Kurdistan is stable is that it has effectively seceded from Iraq. It has its own army and it keeps Arabs out. This flatly contradicts American promises of Iraqi unity. These promises exist for a good reason: Even though Kurdistan looks relatively stable now, its secession carries seeds of territorial war with both Turkey and Arab Iraq. But even for now, Kurdistan is sufficiently separate that its stability says very little about whether the war in Iraq is a good idea. (Which is another reason, that Michael didn't acknowledge, that there is less medica coverage there.)
Meanwhile Michael, presumably truthfully, says that Israelis do not respect George Bush and think that the war in Iraq was a colossal error. The message of this is that no public majority in any significant country in the world, other than in the United States, supports the invasion of Iraq. Not even Israelis thinks so. Certainly Iraqis don't think so now; in a State Department poll, 6 in 10 Iraqis support insurgent attacks on American troops.
Michael also said that many Arabs countries go through a 15-30 period of violence to shed Islamist influence. This too doesn't make the war in Iraq look good. The war there has a lot in common with the Algerian civil war, including the syndrome of war in the midst of "democracy". One difference is that the United States is spending $100 billion a year to put a face of victory on the Iraq version. I know that everyone here likes the cliche that "democratization is a process, not an event". But who here has in mind that the US will have to spend $100 billion a year for 30 years, just on Iraq?
I think that it's interesting that Michael Totten can be so level-headed about the Middle East and yet be unthreatening to many right-wing bloggers. But he goes too far. He omits too much, maybe even in his own mind. I hope that he will find time to think through just how terrible things are in the rest of Iraq, the part that he didn't visit. I hope that he will also think through the misrepresentation of this disaster by the American government.
Mike Johnson, you are being rather misleading - the accompanying blurb that goes along with the Wikipedia map specifically states the following:
"The Sunni Triangle refers to a roughly triangular area of Iraq to the northwest of Baghdad. It is inhabited mainly by Sunni Muslim Arabs, the sectarian/ethnic group to which former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and most of his senior lieutenants belonged. Saddam himself was born just outside the town of Tikrit, in the Sunni Triangle. The triangle's three corners are usually said to lie in or around Baghdad (on the east side of the triangle)...",
DRJ,
Thanks for the kind words--maybe Glenn and I can get a grant to pay the way of bloggers and others to be interviewed in Knoxville. Somehow, I don't think that will happen..
Mike Johnson, you are being rather misleading
No, it's not me who is being misleading, it's the Pentagon and the White House. You can put the Sunni triangle wherever you want on the map, but it will not be true that most of the violence is in it unless you include Baghdad. One way or another, Michael Totten's casual inference that most of the violence is Sunni is wrong. Baghdad, which is the capital of the country and by far the largest city, is engulfed in violence.
For that matter, Michael also glossed over the situation with the Shiites, including the situation in Basra, the second-largest city. The Shiite regions are getting more violent too now, and even when it isn't outright war, they are descending into Islamic fundamentalism and deep anti-Americanism. What he said in the podcast was, he saw that Kurdistan is safe, but the press focusses on the Sunnis. He skipped over the fact that the Shiite story is also terrible for Western interests.
Basra is not in any plausible "Sunni triangle", but I don't see that Michael Totten has any plans to visit it.
Helen -
A very good broadcast... as good as the one with the divorce lawyer (which I believe was your most popular). Someone needs to tell Michael that he has a great voice for radio and is a natural for the medium.
Jake
Helen:
This is the sort of thing I'd like to see you doing more of. Not that you give a damn what I would like. I'm just sayin'.
One question though: As a Jew, why would you NOT want to identify with leftist Europeans? As a Jew, why would you want to identify with rightist Europeans?
Finally, off topic but....
There's been a good deal of publicity lately regarding space tourism. Would Glenn be interested in such a thing? (I know I could just email him but that seems like a pain in the butt.) If so, I'd be willing to donate to a fund to support that dream. I'm sure many others would be willing as well. The price tag for the official government missions might be a bit too hefty, but I believe Richard Branson (not sure if that's the right name, the Virgin Atlantic guy) is close to completing a craft for more reasonably priced space tourism. Just curious.
Andrea
Andrea,
I didn't say anything about identifying with rightist Europeans. Europeans in general hold hostility towards Israel--one poll showed more than 50 percent of respondents (Germans) equating Israel's policies toward the Palestinians with Nazi treatment of the Jews--and a majority of Europeans named Israel as the biggest threat to world peace. It seems to me to be self-destructive for Israelis to identify with such sentiment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46382-2005Jan29.html
Michael Totten explained that many Arab countries embark on a long journey of Islamic fundamentalism, and that it may take decades of violence to put it to an end, even in a country like Algeria that has national elections. As I said, he chose not to apply that insight to Iraq; Iraq seems to be a big blind spot to his otherwise very reasonable thinking about Arabs and Arab countries.
To expand on that further, the previous podcast has this comment from Glenn: "One thing that would help with the war base: 'this maniac Al-Sadr, hanging from a lamppost.' " Yes, it probably would help with the war base in the United States, at least in the short term. It is also true that Moqtada al-Sadr is an Islamic extremist, as fanatical and violent as they come. In the long term, he may prove to be more dangerous to Western interests than either Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.
But it would be nice if Glenn could see the contradictions in the entire American enterprise that are revealed by people like Sadr. Democratization is a journey, not an event, he says. The problem is that it's a journey that is taking Iraq to men like Moqtada al-Sadr. Not only does Sadr control dozens of seats in the Iraqi parliament, he has an 81% approval rating among Iraqi Shiites. (This is according to the same PIPA poll that Glenn called an "interestingly mixed bag.") Admittedly, Sadr's approval rating among Kurds and Sunni Arabs is in the single digits. That's because Sadr doesn't want their approval, he wants to kill them.
While hanging Sadr from a lamppost may be a happy thought for Bush's war base, it would go over in Iraq about as well as hanging Billy Graham from a lamppost would in the United States. You cannot promote democracy in Iraq and then hang a political and religious leader with an 81% approval rating among the religious majority. Sadr's popularity, even more than Sadr himself, goes to show how the war in Iraq is causing every problem that it was supposed to solve.
Are you racist? Why wouldn't Jewish people identify with Europeans, which you identify using the linguistically perverted politically correct designation of "leftist."
Israel is a failed experiment in racism. Its constant terrorism and racism has damaged the image and future of Jews, not just the Zionists, Likidniks, or neocons.
I don't believe that Israel is a failed experiment in racism. That is harshness bordering on libel. It is an experiment in sovereignty, on land that is unfortunately claimed by others and in a region where a non-Arab country is not welcome. There is surely racism in Israel, as there is in the surrounding Arab states, but I think that's in response to a 100-year-old conflict. It's not an intended part of Zionist doctrine, which is about Jewish self-determination.
As for Jews identifying with left-wing Europeans, that's only natural. Until 1967, Israel was supported by "progressive" Europeans and Americans. Most early Zionists were left-wing secularists, apart from Jabotinsky's wing of the movement. In fact, many kibbutzim were frankly Stalinist in their sympathies.
Left-wing thought had not always been sympathetic to Jews. In the 19th century leftists associated the Jews with capitalism, and being socialist and anti-Semitic was totally natural. That changed with the Dreyfus affair in France.
But since the turn of the last century, leftists (at least in theory) supported Jews as an oppressed minority, and a fair number of Jews identified with the left (socialist or communist) as the way toward modernism and away from traditional European anti-Semitic prejudices.
It must be very painful for many left-wing or liberal Israelis and Jews (as it is for me) to see Israel as a pariah among precisely those with whom they would otherwise have much in common.
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