On Monday, August 6, 2007, Dennis Perrin, a participant in YearlyKos’ Middle East forum posted this reminiscience, Kos It Was There. I left off Perrin’s initial impressions and interactions with Kos attendees, but it is recommended if you are a Kucinich fan, which I am.
Emails to Dennis Perrin about videos of the forum brought this response: “There was someone vid-taping our panel, but he stopped about midway thru and left. Wonder why?” A response from Juan Cole indicated that he had no recall of anyone videoing the forum, but it was also the circumstance that Cole got stuck with moderating the forum. Kos apparently forgot to assign someone to this task or, considering Kos’ recent stanting toward right wing Zionism, he intentionally forgot. Even more insulting, the members of the forum were required to bus their podium tables in order to clear up the mess made by participants of the previous forum. Well, once an invitation is made it is difficult to withdraw. Right Kos?
Take a meander through Perrin’s YearlyKos experience by clicking on this link: http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/
Then read the substance of the forum on the Middle East, which is quoted below:
(Our) panel (the Middle East panel) seemed pushed to the side, an afterthought to the grander Kos netroots stages. The panel before us bled into our time, forcing us to start late. Then we discovered we had no moderator, so Juan assumed that role, and he and I essentially bussed the panel table, clearly away used water cups and coffee containers. There was no fresh water for us; we had to make do with what was left over from the previous panel. It was a disheveled start, but the audience quickly filed in and filled up the seats, with more standing in the back and to the side. Once things settled down, Juan welcomed everyone, and the panel kicked off, with us speaking in alphabetical order.
Pakistan
Manan Ahmed got the party started with a direct, detailed critique of Barack Obama’s statements about bombing Pakistan. Manan gave a meticulous power point presentation illustrating just how craven and idiotic Obama’s remarks were. Unlike the fantasy Pakistan that Obama depicted, where President Pervez Musharraf is dragging his heels on fighting extremism, and it might take US air strikes to focus his attention, the Pakistani army is currently battling extremists in the North Waziristan region, fighting that is comparable to what’s happening in Iraq. Also, US has already hit Pakistan, on November 10, 2006, shelling a madrassa in Bajaur which resulted in zero al-Qaeda dead, but did manage to kill some of the seminary’s children.
Manan’s presentation made those wearing Obama buttons shift a bit in their seats and look down to the floor. I thought there might be some audible disagreement from them, given that we were on Dem party turf, and Obama love was all over the Kos convention. But they said nothing. Not a murmur that I could hear, anyway. Manan so thoroughly dismantled Obama’s speech that his supporters had no real come back to it. I doubt they know much more about Pakistan than does their hero, but after Manan’s talk, they should have a better idea now. Sometimes, learning can be a painful experience, but in the end, we’re all winners.
Iraq
Juan took the podium next, and gave a very animated, at times funny, talk about what possibly lies ahead in Iraq. Juan insists, and I largely disagree with him, that US troops will be withdrawn by ’09 at the latest, leaving Iraq to whatever fate then befalls it. In Juan’s view, the Sunnis, after a bloodbath, will once again control Baghdad, and that a new Ba’ath Party will most likely be created. The Shias will retreat to the south, and the Kurds will go about their business in the north, ready to fight should the Sunnis attempt any incursion on their turf. In other words, Iraq will roughly be what it more or less was after the first Gulf War, minus Saddam and his sons, of course. I don’t think that a Hillary Clinton administration would oversee such a pull-out, given Hillary’s past militarist posturing. She may now say that the war should end, but this, as the New York Times reported on Saturday, is a calculated rhetorical shift to pull in the more “liberal” members of the Dem party, many of whom were at YearlyKos. Should she be elected, I trust that a different, more “pragmatic” strategy will suddenly emerge. We’ll see.
Israel-Palestine
John Mearsheimer followed Juan, and his presentation, about the four possible roads Israel can take with regards to the Palestinians, was extremely sensible to the point of being predictable. John has received acres of abuse since his and Stephen Walt’s paper on the Israeli lobby was released, but in person, John’s a very polite, friendly, down-to-earth guy. You’d half expect to meet a fire-breathing Jew-hater given some of the attacks he’s endured, but as is usually the case in this area, the sliming has little-to-nothing to do with the actual person. If anything, John’s too cautious and conservative, for my taste. When he said that of the remaining options left to Israel, the most likely one would be some form of apartheid for the Palestinians, I wanted to interrupt him by saying that this pretty much already happened. But I’m a team player when it comes to panels, and besides, it might come up during Q&A.
Finally, it was me. As I grabbed the podium mike, I said that following three distinguished academics with my more showbiz background left me with only one way to greet the crowd — “Yo yo yo, YearlyKos, whazzzz upppp!” This got a nice laugh, which I built on by quoting Condi Rice’s statement from Ramallah as reported by one of my favorite comedy sources, the New York Times:
“‘We believe strongly in the right of people to express themselves and their desires in elections.’ But, [Rice] added, once elected, ‘you have the obligation to govern responsibly.'”
An even bigger laugh. In comedy, found humor is oftentimes your best friend.
I then delivered the crux of my talk, which I truncated a bit due to time constraints. Essentially, I made two points: 1) Unlike the Vietnam era, where there was an abundance of antiwar satire and comedy, from the National Lampoon to The Committee to The Smothers Brothers (among others), the Iraq era has been satirically deficient, save for a few exceptions like “The Daily Show”, which isn’t all that cutting, given the horror that surrounds us; and 2) You cannot find mainstream American comics and comedy shows that skewer Israelis and Zionists with the same nasty, at times openly racist, routines that are commonly employed against Arabs and Muslims. Judaism and Jewish culture have been sent up by Jewish comics since vaudeville. But where, I asked the audience, do you see satirical assaults on Israeli Zionists?
No one answered, for the simple reason that this kind of comedy scarcely exists. The Onion has done a few funny bits about Israeli aggression, but try getting that on “The Daily Show”, much less “SNL”, Leno, Letterman, or Conan.
About halfway through my talk, my throat suddenly went dry. I could not form saliva, and this strained my voice. Juan poured me a glass of water, but after each sentence, I was bone-dry again. I drank so much water, I should have had a ventriloquist dummy on my lap. I had no idea why this was happening. I wasn’t nervous, since the crowd was with me from the start. Maybe it was the hotel’s air. Later, thinking about this alone, I realized what occurred: the subject matter I was dealing with got to me. I choked up. It was reminiscent of my recent bout with depression, which was connected to all of the crazy shit I’m regularly exposed to. And here it was again, in front of a large audience. This briefly rattled me. But I managed to finish my talk without looking too foolish, then sat down and drank more water.
The Q&A focused mostly on Israel/Palestine, with some bantering about the future of Iraq. Pakistan and Obama did not come up, for obvious reasons, and after a while, Juan specifically asked the crowd for a Pakistan question so Manan could be part of the discussion. One was asked, Manan thoughtfully responded, then it was back to the war and the Israelis and Palestinians.
At one point, both Juan and John agreed that there is no significant counterweight in American politics to that of groups like AIPAC. An older woman from the back began yelling, “That’s not true! That’s not true!” Since our panel was not afforded mike stands in the audience, Juan invited the woman to take the podium and explain herself. She ran down the aisle like it was “The Price Is Right” as the rest of the crowd applauded her. She gave an impassioned speech about how being Jewish, what Israel is ostensibly doing in her name appalled and saddened her. She said she was part of a Jewish peace group, if memory serves is Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, and that they were doing all they could to counter the effects of AIPAC. Another member in the audience added to this, but said that the main problem was money. No one on the panel wanted to rub in the obvious fact that this group realistically has no shot to diminish AIPAC’s political influence, at least not now, and the woman, who engaged a few more people in the audience, eventually went back to her seat.
I thought Juan’s invitation to the woman was very democratic, much unlike the rest of YearlyKos, at least when it came to “expert” panels. Our audience was very opinionated and energetic, but before long, Juan shut the whole thing down, noting that we were going overtime. I felt that since we were the last panel, we should’ve kept going, for at least another half hour. But once Juan made his announcement, the majority of people left. So that was that.
I told Juan that I felt like my talk went off the rails. His eyes widened as he replied, “What? You killed! You had them eating out of your hand.” John Mearsheimer seconded this. They saw nothing wrong, so I suppose it went okay. Besides, I’m usually my own worst critic.
Reprinted with permission.