December 20th, 2007 — al Qaeda
An Al Qaeda “theologian” has changed his mind about jihad, reports the New York Sun:
One of Al Qaeda’s senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a “catastrophe for all Muslims.”
In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.
Andrew Sullivan links to this same article and advises his readers to “know hope.”
It seems like a big deal to me and hugely encouraging in the effort to expose and defang the credibility of al Qaeda among many Muslims. …
There are times when the best strategy is to give the Jihadists enough rope to hang themselves in the Arab-Muslim world. Know hope.
I must assume that Sullivan didn’t actually read the article to find out how this miraculous conversion of an Al Qaeda “theologian” came about—namely, through torture:
Last month, in a video produced by Al Qaeda’s production company, Mr. Zawahri said the latest recantations from his one time friend were the result of torture …
On Monday, an American intelligence official familiar with the interrogation of Mr. Sharif said that in 2004 the Al Qaeda cleric was tortured. “All I am saying is that screw drivers were involved,” this official, who asked to be anonymous, said.
n.b.: I am not supporting the use of torture. I am saying that Andrew Sullivan is incoherent on this subject.
December 20th, 2007 — books, publishing
I love GalleyCat, but the whiny editors and agents who’ve been writing in to bitch and moan about the publishing business haven’t taught me (or GalleyCat blogger Ron Hogan, as he notes) a thing. Anyone who’s really interested and has a good half hour or so to devote to the subject can delve deep into the reeds by reading recent interviews with two very knowledgeable players.
First up, Andrew Wylie, profiled in Portfolio:
New York literary agent Andrew Wylie seems perfectly happy to be known as “the Jackal”—the nickname that sticks even though he obtained it years ago in Britain during a publishing dustup whose baroque details have largely faded from memory. He’s equally unruffled when book editors and rival agents call him an “evil madman,” a “cold-eyed predator,” and a “monster.”
Much more interesting, detailed, and revealing is this interview with longtime agent Lynn Nesbit. Here are a few highlights:
On book people:
So you miss the personalities
Yes. I miss the fun. I tell Tina [Bennett] and Eric [Simonoff], “You missed the good days.” When I worked for Sterling Lord, I had a loft, a sort of duplex loft apartment on Barrow Street. And Michael Sissons, who’s now the head of Fraser & Dunlop, and Peter Matson, who’s also an agent, used to give these parties at my house. They would make these drinks of half brandy and half champagne, and people got so drunk. One night Rosalyn Drexler, the lady wrestler and the novelist, picked up Walter Minton and just threw him against the wall. I’ll never forget that. There was just more of a sense of fun.
So why was that lost?
It’s the corporate thing. People are too scared. It doesn’t attract eccentrics anymore.
On competition:
You represent so many of the original New Journalists. What was it like to be at the center of a movement like that?
When I first represented Tom Wolfe, I was younger than Tom. I was a kid. And when I went to sell Tom’s first book, his editor, Clay Felker, was the most important magazine editor in New York. I sent Tom’s book out for auction. Viking, with whom Clay had an arrangement as sort of editor at large, brought Tom in for a meeting with Tom Guinzburg. But on the auction day, Viking didn’t bid. So I thought that was curious. But they didn’t, and the book went to FSG.
A few days later I went to this big literary party at Rust Hills’s. I will never forget walking in. It was jammed with every writer and editor in New York. Clay was then dating Gloria Steinem, and Clay walked right over to me—this is like two days after the Tom thing—and he said, “You fucking cunt.” …
On editorial intervention:
How do you see your principal roles and responsibilities as an agent? Have they changed over time?
You are part of a writer’s support system—a very important part. The role of the agent is more important today than it was when I was starting out. Because the publishing world is so corporate, and editors move around so much, you are increasingly the only fixed point for the writer. That’s one way it’s changed. Another thing that I notice here, with younger agents like Tina and Eric, is that they do a lot of editing, and we didn’t do that when we were young. I think it’s partly because of the editors. There is such pressure on editors to come in with something that’s almost ready to go that the agents are assuming part of what the editors used to do.
When did you start to recognize that as a phenomenon?
Probably just in the last [eight?] years, or ten years.
Did you ever edit?
Not to the extent that they do.
On replenishing the ranks of book publishing people:
In terms of the book industry itself, what would you say are the most troubling or frustrating changes today?
What worries me is that there aren’t as many younger people who want to become editors as there used to be. Because at a certain point they get frustrated. There’s not enough money to make the job palatable, and they don’t have enough freedom. So they feel that they have this corporate bureaucracy imposed on them and yet they’re not making a decent enough salary. What I see is this flow of young editors becoming agents. There are hundreds of agents. I can’t believe how many there are. When I was starting out, there were agents, but not at the number there are now. Because today they can operate out of their apartments with a telephone. Or they think they can.
On the biggest problem facing the business today:
What is the single biggest problem with the book world today?
Distribution. Especially for smaller books. Because the bookstores won’t take a chance. And if a writer has a not-so-rosy track record, then they won’t order more and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, if the book happens to get good reviews, you’re caught out of print and have to reprint and maybe the books don’t get to the stores fast enough. And distribution is a problem on the other end, too, with books that are overprinted, books that may get on the best-seller list. It may look good to the outside world, but the returns may negate the rosy picture.
On editors’ nerves about buying fiction:
What do you mean exactly by “nervous”?
Nervous that fiction is very difficult to sell. An editor wants to see something that’s more near completion, that the idea or the thrust behind a novel is more fully realized. Twenty-five years ago an editor would say, “Oh, this has promise,” and sign it up. Today, editors want to say no rather than yes. Unless they see it as a big book.
And this is because of corporate pressures? Profit pressures?
Profit pressures. You must know that fiction is very hard to sell. Today it’s almost that fiction needs to seem like it’s going to be an event. It almost has to open like a movie, on the commercial side, or else the editor has to be convinced its going to get such praise, such positive literary acclaim, that even if it doesn’t sell a lot you’re launching a real voice.
On losing readers (as a function of the culture, not as a function of lousy book marketing):
What other changes are you seeing?
I said this earlier as sort of a joke, but I’m beginning to think there are more writers than readers. I get these e-mails pouring in from people who want to write their life stories. It’s because of the memoir. Everybody thinks they have a story. I also feel there are fewer and fewer civilians—I mean people outside of our business—who I meet who have time to read. They all say, “I’d love to read, but I’m just too busy.” What worries me is that people are on blogs, Web sites—there is a lot of that going on—but they aren’t reading books. That phenomenon, to me, is not a product of the industry, it’s a product of how our culture is changing. People’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. And everybody has their specialty. I don’t ever look at blogs or Web sites because I would never get anything done. I’m tempted to because I hear about these great things.
On the future of books [e.a.]:
A lot of people seem to think an iPod-like device will come along for books….
Great. That would be terrific. I have no problem with that. The more forms in which people can read intellectual content, the better. I don’t care if they read it in a real book or on an iPod. If they’re more likely to read it on some device, great. I have no fear about that. I have no idea why people do. It’s the content that matters, the intellectual content. As long as we can keep it copyrighted. I also look forward to books on demand. Jason Epstein*** has been working on this machine for years, and he tells me that other people have been trying to do it too. The modes of distribution are so antiquated.
Epstein also seems to think that publishers are getting too big and will eventually collapse from their own bigness and fracture into smaller shops.
Like what’s happened in Hollywood. I think it will happen. I think it’s happening now, with all these imprints. There are so many imprints. And once they get the distribution figured out…. If these machines really do become effective, and there are more efficient ways of distributing books, then I think there will be more and more independent producers. And independent producers use a distribution outlet. So the publishers will be more like distributors. I think it could happen. I don’t know because this business is so primitive—the publishing business—so unsophisticated. It takes so many years to make a change here …
Well worth reading.
——–
*** Longtime readers will remember that I have written about Jason Epstein and his print-on-demand enterprise several times.
December 20th, 2007 — politics, whippersnappers, young 'uns
One of Kevin Drum’s e-mailers writes in to ask whether it isn’t time to rehabilitate Pollack and O’Hanlon:
A member in (extremely good) standing of the VSP community emails to suggest a delicate topic for the liberal blogosphere to take a second look at:
One thing you might write about — if only because nobody else has, I think — is how that whole dust-up over the O’Hanlon/Pollack op-ed looks in retrospect. I mean, clearly they were on to something — the relative quieting down of stuff that has taken place in Iraq over the last several months, etc. Completely debatable whether that was due to the surge, or is sustainable, or is deeply significant, etc. etc., but it’s not like the caricature of them put forth in the blogosphere at the time — as paid lobbyists for the Bushies, reporting back what they were told to after checking out a Potemkin village — holds up, does it?
Hmmm. Yes. Seems like I was pretty skeptical of the O’Hanlon/Pollack report myself.
Let’s just take a walk down memory lane and see what the self-assured whippershapper Matthew Yglesias had to say at the time the op-ed was published:
I think the evidence that O’Hanlon and Pollack are wrong here is fairly overwhelming. Statistics don’t really corroborate what O’Hanlon and Pollack say, there’s no particular reason to privilege “on the ground” knowledge if it was just fed to them by official sources (which appears to be the case), and, most of all, the point of the surge was to change the political situation in Iraq, and they concede it hasn’t done that.
Now, in response, Yglesias concedes nothing except that perhaps he should have been more optimistic that things could get better in Iraq. As for Pollack and O’Hanlon, he suggests they were lying at the time and totally in the tank for Bush:
It remains unclear whether or not they actually visited any portion of Iraq that wasn’t a “Potemkin village” of sorts. For some reason or other, for example, they seem to have not noticed that Baghdad had become a network of walled-off ethnically cleansed cantons.
Clearly, though, the summertime decline in violence has proven more sustainable than I thought it would at the time. Equally clearly, Pollack and O’Hanlon have a good relationship with General Petraeus and came back from Iraq speaking from a set of misleading talking points designed to advance the political sustainability of the Bush administration’s policies.
Only a twentysomething think-tank wonk wannabe would use Middle East-themed buzzwords like “ethnically cleansed” and “cantons” and believe that he was fooling people into thinking that he was making a serious argument.
Drum’s commenters, on the other hand, offer the full spectrum of views on the left—from continued assertions that Pollack and O’Hanlon were tools to more forgiving ones.
The most incisive and intellectually honest assessment is this one:
It was the timimg of the op-ed, coming just a little over two weeks before Petraeus’ report, that helped enable the spin doctors to establish the meme “The surge is working.”
O’Hanlan and Pollack were more cautious in their actual assessment than the ensuing spin, but the combination of suggesting some “success” and being presented as “two prior critics of the war” gave the opening.
Now we’re stuck with military success being the metric for “The surge is working.”
All of this is true. Pollack and O’Hanlon, well-known for their knowledge about Iraq, took a trip to there, met with Petraeus (whom O’Hanlon knew from graduate school), and wrote an op-ed that said, essentially: Things might just work out in Iraq after all.
They didn’t make the most convincing case of it, but they did lay the groundwork for a more hopeful view of the eventual outcome—something that Americans wanted then and still want now, so that our sacrifices will not have been in vain.
At the end of July 2007, the leftosphere was unprepared to hear any Democrat offer even such a weak ray of hope and attacked the messengers, especially their fellows on the left (a favorite pastime ever since there has been a left). Some parts of the leftosphere are still in an unforgiving mood.
I don’t know the ways of Washington in particular, but I like to think that I know a thing or two about the ways of the world. Election 2008 is (incredibly) still a year away. The future is unpredictable. It’s not a good ideas to make enemies for life when you’re in your twenties.
And, electorally speaking, I will repeat what I said during the General Betray-us scandal: If the hard left—accompanied by the bleeding-heart left, whose HQ is in Hollywood—thinks it can win electoral victories by offering a narrative about bad Americans (and an evil American hegemon) not worthy of redemption, it will encounter rough seas ahead.
December 20th, 2007 — America, politics
Whatever you think of Karl Rove, he does explain the problems inherent in the “endless campaign” [e.a.]:
A general election campaign that lasts nine months will bore (even more than it has in the past) the American people. It will certainly work to the disadvantage of the better-known candidate, who could appear as yesterday’s news and uninteresting when compared to a fresh face. Some of the candidates already seem like overly familiar figures — and not a single vote has yet been cast.
The media will be partly to blame. By next spring (at the latest), journalists will have tired of the candidates and their messages and demand they say or do something new, different and controversial, or they will be made to suffer. The result of all this is that we’re putting pressure on candidates to act in ways that have nothing to do with how well they will govern. The purpose of a campaign ought to be the opposite.
Perhaps a campaign ought to be sober, but this is the system we democracy-loving Americans have chaotically devised in our let’s-fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants way.
We Americans hate politicians. If they’re such smarty-pants and so eager to profit from the privileges that come with high office—and so eager to rule over us and enforce what they think is in our best interst—let them make it through the tests we devise. Let them earn our votes.
It’s the American way.
December 20th, 2007 — Israel, Middle East war, Palestine, geopolitics
Below the radar, something is happening on the Israel-Palestine front post-Annapolis. Earlier this week in Europe, Tony Blair succeeded in getting more than $7 billion in (promised) aid for the Palestinians, which will be channeled–if it comes through, and that’s always a big if—through Abbas’s Fatah.
I’m guessing that Hamas wants in. Duh.
Big cheese Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed Palestinian prime minister, is reportedly looking for a truce with Israel, the NYT reports.
A scan of Google News, which lists 1,495 news articles related to this story, indicates the response to Hamas’s offer of a truce:
Peres: Haniyeh trying to divert attention from Hamas crimes
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 19, 2007
COM STAFF AND ELI LESHEM Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s announcement that his group is willing to hold cease-fire negotiations with Israel is a …
Hamas leader’s truce offer dismissed Sydney Morning Herald
Ministers split on ‘hudna’ offer Jerusalem Post
Hamas leader says he’s open to talks CNN
International Herald Tribune - The Associated Press
all 1,495 news articles »
Peres: There’s ‘no need’ for negotiations with Haniyeh
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 19, 2007
I wonder if these headlines from just a few days ago have anything to do with Israel’s coolness toward Hamas’s offer:
Hamas warns of new intifada
Gulf Daily News, Bahrain - Dec 15, 2007
Hamas leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh said the movement was growing more popular because of its stance against the US and Israel. “Today is the day of Jihad, …
Hamas: We’ll never recognize Israel
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 16, 2007
Haniyeh waves a Palestinian flag in front of Hamas supporters during the rally in Gaza City. Photo: AP Tens of thousands of Palestinians participated in a …
On 20th anniversary, Hamas vows never to recognize Israel
Ha’aretz, Israel - Dec 15, 2007
In a fiery speech, Haniyeh cited the achievements of Hamas and “the resistance” throughout the region. He cited Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon in …
Then there was this a few weeks ago:
Haniyeh: Annapolis conference is stillborn
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Nov 22, 2007
By AP Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday called the upcoming US-hosted conference on the Middle East “stillborn,” and predicted it would not bring any …
Haniyeh: Annapolis deal won’t be binding
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Nov 26, 2007
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh: “The people believe that this conference is fruitless.” “Any settlement that does not include the return of the …
There’s more about the Israelis vs. Gaza at Contentions, here and here.
December 20th, 2007 — America, America at war
Some days, my heart just swells with pride for my dumb country.
At Powerline, the subject was Hollywood’s antiwar movies, and a reader wrote in:
I recently returned from a 15 month deployment to Iraq. I was with a combat unit at one of the more austere forward bases. During redeployment, we had to spend a few days at one of the large airbases in Iraq, waiting for our flight out. These bases have all the amenities of home - gyms with new equipment, pools, Burger Kings, and movie theaters. It’s a different world. And what was the movie theater playing? “Rendition”! I kid you not! The AAFES and Morale/Welfare/Recreation folks must have tin ears. If there’s a similar example for going out of the way to demoralize your own troops, I’m not aware of it.
I think it’s a plot to sow hatred for Hollywood among the troops!
