Dr. Gary Leupp, Ordinarily I don't pay attention to Baathist propagandists but your CounterPunch article today was so over the top and so screaming out for a rebuttal that I decided to take a few minutes to respond. I can only say that as a tenured professor at Tufts University, you show a blatant disregard for serious and thoughtful analysis based on the facts--probably a function of a hangover from your youthful Maoist past.
Your article relies heavily on the word of one Brad Hoff, an ex-Marine who is the editor of something called LevantReport.org that tells its readers that the "Arab Spring" was a myth and that it was really a secret plot by Washington to foster al-Qaeda type groups in the Middle East. Well, well. Hoff's article is an unabashed defense of the "good old days" in Syria when he was able to see "mostly unveiled women wearing European fashions and sporting bright makeup — many of them wearing blue jeans and tight fitting clothes that would be commonplace in American shopping malls on a summer day." He also was impressed with the "number of restaurant bars and alcohol kiosks clustered around the many city squares" and his ability to "get two varieties of Syrian-made beer, or a few international selections like Heineken or Amstel, with relative ease." Frankly, this sounds like the sort of item one would read in the Sunday NY Times Travel section but let's leave it at that. Once you get past the babes and booze nostalgia, you offer up the Leupp history of the Middle East that is basically a sort of mish-mosh of Bill Maher and vulgar Marxism with repeated denunciations of Washington's opposition to "secularist" governments in Iraq and Syria. It can all be reduced to your "what if" question: "What if a series of U.S. administrations (influenced to say the least by Israel and its powerful Lobby) hadn’t come to view Baathism as a greater enemy than Islamic fanaticism?" What you don't seem to grasp is that both Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad were not quite the secularists you make them out to be. In 1993 Iraq embarked on something called "The Return to Faith Campaign" that promoted Islamic fundamentalism--this was long before George W. Bush's invasion. As wikipedia reports, "The selling and consumption of alcohol was curtailed by the state" and "Prostitution was deemed illegal and punishable by death." The Fedayeen Saddam, Iraq's morality police, were infamous for beheading prostitutes. So much for the babes and booze in the good old days. Syria was about the same. Statistically speaking, Hafez al-Assad and his homicidal ophthalmologist son built more mosques than cultural centers, cinemas, and theaters. This is not to speak of the homicidal son releasing the men from prison who would go on to form the backbone of the jihadist militias that are terrorizing Christians and anybody else with a fondness for babes and booze. I hope that this helps clarify your understanding. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
