Second MEI Revolution Series Volume Available

The second volume in MEI's Viewpoints series of publications on the Arab revolutions is now available.: "Revolution and Political Transformation in the Middle East: Volume II: Government Action and Response," with articles by five contributors. The link is to the informational page; thefull text is here (PDF)..

 

See here for Volume I.

Yemen Forces Itself Back Into World's Consciousness

At least 50 demonstrators have died in violent clashes in Yemen in just two days. Though Yemen has been at a boil for months, the Libyan civil war, transition issues in Egypt, international pressures on Syria, and preoccupation with the Palestinian issue at the United Nations have competed for attention in a news cycle with limited interest int he Middle East, and generally won. Now Yemen is forcing itself back into the forefront.

Al Jazeera English on the latest violence here,and their live blog onYemen here. Marc Lynch on "The Costs of Ignoring Yemen," at Foreign Policy. A similar warning here, and a sounding-the-alarm statement from Amnesty International here.

Or take a look at the ongoing tweets from Freelance Journalist Tom Finn in Yemen.

Salih's on-again, off-again game playing with the GCC transition plan has played the GCC for the better part of the year now. Yet many of the press reports make it sound as if it's still likely to happen. Nothing about the regime forces' behavior in Sana‘a in the past couple of days suggests that.a transition is imminent. The world has been far more reactive to brutal repression in Libya and Syria. A cynic would suggest that Libya's oil and Syria's geopolitical position between Israel and Iran are the reason we aren't paying more attention to Yemen. But as the links above and others are increasingly echoing, Yemen is desccending into a bloody chaos from which no good will come. Even if it is only the presence of Al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula that caputres the world's attention, it's time to pay attention to Yemen again.

Senator Charles H. Percy, 1919-2011

Senator Charles H. "Chuck" Percy, onetime Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a major figure in Washington in the 1970s, died Saturday at the age of 91.

His New York Times obituary does not even mention the Middle East. Wikipedia does note that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in The Israel Lobby claim that his 1984 defeat by Paul Simon was a result of AIPAC's lobbying, as if this was their discovery. Let me assure you that it was widely recognized at the time, not least by Senator Percy, and some in AIPAC actually claimed they were responsible for the victory of Simon, bringing down the powerful Foreign Relations Committee chair. (The Senate was then in Republican hands.)

Percy was no rabid Arabist; he sought a balanced approach to Arab-Israeli issues, at a time when that was rare. He was a liberal Republican, a species extinct today outside of New England, where even there the faintest whiff of national Republican ambitions turns them conservative. (See Romney, Mitt.) He was also a Republican willing, on occasion and by no means as some kind of crusade, to criticize Israel. He became more outspoken out of office, as others have as well.

It's Edward William Lane's Birthday Again: Happy 210th!

Edward William Lane

Tomorrow, September 17, marks Edward William Lane's birthday yet again. This time it will be his 210th. As I've noted each year, I'm lucky enough as a fan of Egypt and Cairo to share a birthday with the author of The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, a translation if the Arabian Nights, and more. (I am not, however, 210, though I will admit I'll be playing one particular track by Lennon and McCartney from the Sergeant Pepper album more than usual.)

For more on Lane, see the link above (noted again last year) and my comments on the Lane corpus (including his sister's and nephew's books) in my recent post on Cairo in the 19th century.

One of the more famous sections of Manners and Customs  is Lane's description of the ghawazi (he spells it Ghawazee) or class of dancing girls (seen by some as the ancestors of the belly dance) whose immoral (his characterization) performances he describes in sufficient detail to suggest that, despite his expressed distaste for their behavior, he studied them closely out of his devotion to anthropological knowledge, so I'll celebrate with his image of their dance. Happy 210th, Ed:

Tantawi Leads Khalid Nasser Funeral

Supreme Council of the Armed Forces leader Field Marshal Tantawi has led the funeral of Khalid Abdel Nasser, who died yesterday.

No, the effective ruler of Egypt does not attend the funeral of every civil engineering professor who dies, especially those once tried for sedition. But at a time when the military is under a lot of criticism, evoking the Nasser era may be a tactical move. Note this photo of the funeral from The Daily News Egypt:

Though I'll admit, there aren't that many young people in the crowd.

And note that while the last couple of days have had a lot of Egypt posts, I think we're all going to be looking at Palestinian issues a lot next week. The UN will be everybody's focus.

The AUC Strike

Today's theme at Midan al-Tahrir in Cairo was supposed to be a demand to end the State of Emergency, which instead was extended and strengthened a week ago after last Friday's violence and the attack on the Israeli Embassy. By most accounts, the turnout has been disappointingly low, perhaps due to fears of a crackdown.

Much of the twitter chatter among Egypt's young revolutionaries has been focused instead on events which occurred yesterday at the American University in Cairo (AUC). For some time now, students have been protesting high fees, and university workers have been protesting low wages; for the last few days AUC has been on strike. Yesterday two events drew considerable attention: University President Lisa Anderson walked away from a meeting with students that apparently turned confrontational, and protestors lowered an American flag. This apparently happened at the old campus on Tahrir Square, where the administration is, rather than at the new campus in New Cairo.

As some of the protestors have noted, these two events have perhaps been blown out of proportion, making the protests sound more anti-American and less about treatment of workers than they actually are. Many Egyptians see AUC as an elite school, which it certainly is, as well as a symbol of the US, but that really isn't apparently the core of these  protests. The students aren't taking a political stand but supporting university workers.

I have a certain fondness for AUC, having both studied there and, on one stay in Egypt, lived across the street from it, and I have little direct knowledge of the present protests. But it is one more indication that, whatever the next few months may bring in Egypt, the country remains a cauldron of shifting forces and new empowerment, which will be a challenge to the SCAF or any elected leadership.

On the AUC strike:  The Guardian has a piece here; Al-Masry Al-Youm here; and Zeinobia blogs her own useful perspective here, with many pictures. Activist Hossam al-Hamalawy collects links here, and this video comes via his site:

Khalid Gamal Abdel Nasser Dies at 62

Khalid Gamal Abdel Nasser, the eldest son of the late President of Egypt, has died in Cairo today. He was only 62 and had been in a coma.

After his father's death, the younger Nasser broke with Anwar Sadat, criticized the peace treaty with Israel, and in 1988 was charged with belonging to a revolutionary organization. He was acquitted. In addition to his career as a civil engineer and professor, he remained a vocal critic of Sadat and Mubarak, andf earlier this year joined the demonstrators in Tahrir.

Erdogan's Rock-Star Tour of Egypt

 From the way it's looked the past three days, I think we now know who the favorite is for next President of Egypt: Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish Prime Minister was mobbed on his arrival. cheered most places he went, signed a lot of cooperation agreements with Egypt, spoke to the Arab League and a wide range of Egyptian institutions, met with Presidential candidates and revolutionary youth. Though the Muslim Brotherhood at first turned out to cheer him, he told them Egypt should be secular (they, in turn. warned Turkey against any regional ambitions). He criticized Israel, promised close ties with Egypt, and seems to have been treated like a rock star. Examples of reporting  from the visit here and here and here and here.

And it's just the first stop on his "Arab Spring" tour.

18 Years After Oslo, Is It Time to Reshuffle the Deck?

The iconic moment at left took place 18 years ago yesterday. There were moments in the 1990s, when Yitzhak Rabin was still alive, that a real peace seemed possible. Both sides bear some of the responsibility for its failure, and so does the man in the middle, who pushed Camp David II before he had a real breakthrough in place. For all his posing as a freedom fighter, Arafat was a horribly cautious man. Mahmoud Abbas is nowhere near as charismatic as Arafat, but he does seem more willing to take risks. Arafat knew when to hold 'em and knew when to fold 'em, but wasn't the sort to raise the ante when he wasn't holding a good hand. Is Abbas? It's starting to look like it: or maybe he's holding a better hand than his opponents think.

On October 6, 1973, Anwar Sadat sent Egyptian forces across the Suez Canal. For the first time in an Arab-Israeli war, there was virtually none of the "drive Israel into the sea" sort of rhetoric and a lot of rhetoric about recovering Sinai.  In most military senses the Egyptians ended that war on the losing side: they had a whole Field Army surrounded and cut off from Cairo by an Israeli strike force west of the Canal. But Sadat was able to reopen the Canal and get parts of Sinai back because Henry Kissinger started his shuttle diplomacy. Sadat won a diplomatic, not a conventional military, victory, because he'd had the daring to reshuffle the deck, and also to introduce wild cards (throwing the Russians out: tilting toward the Americans.) (Okay; I'll try hard to refrain from further poker metaphors in the rest of this post.)

An interesting number of people in the blogosphere and media are asking what would be so disastrous if the United States, which claims to want a two-state solution, accepted a United Nations recognition of Palestine. It would be hard, though I'm sure they'd find a way, for Israel to claim that the UN has no right to do that since, well, Israel was created directly through United Nations action. For political reasons and others, the US  will veto any Security Council resolution, but if Palestine wins a big General Assembly vote, the calculus will change.

The US would indeed further isolate itself, as Prince Turki al-Faisal has noted in the NYT, in what seems to be a nearly open Saudi threat to break with the US on this.  Even peace-leaning Israeli commentators are expressing the wish that Israel had sought to constructively engage (and perhaps even forestall) a UN vote, rather than simply throw down the gauntlet of defiance.

I don't really expect the US Administration, beleaguered by economic difficulties and political attacks, to go out on a limb. And I don't expect an Israel under Netanyahu and Lieberman to take daring risks. But neither we nor Israel may be in the driver's seat here. And perhaps we should at least ask ourselves: would s dramatic change in the status quo be a disaster, or perhaps create an opportunity for new thinking.

One last poker image: is it time not just to up the ante, but to kick over the card table and see who's holding what when you pick it up again? It worked for Sadat in 1973.

Wael Ghonim: A Letter to Tantawi

At a moment many see as a low point in Egypt's democratic struggle, Wael Ghonim, one of the figures who came to prominence during the revolution, writes an online letter to Field Marshal Tantawi.

Ahram Online: Eyewitness to Embassy Storming

Not sure how many parts there may be, but here are Ahram Online's  Part I and Part II of an eyewitness account of the storming of the Israeli Embassy.

Lameen Souag vs. Wikileaks on "Algeria's Language Crisis"

Less than two weeks ago I was delighted to note that the Algerian SOAS linguist Lameen Souag, who studies Berber and Saharan African linguistics, had returned from a hiatus (including getting married, apparently) to return to his blog Jabal al-Lughat (Arabic for "the mountain of languages"). As it happens, I'm linking to him yet again.

Scholars, bloggers, and the just plain curious have been struggling to cope with the mountain of document dumps Wikileaks dumped because its password protection had been compromised. The people who have time to comb through this stuff have a lot more time on their hands than I do, so I hope to always credit them when I use something they've found. He's noted a Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Algiers, dated 2008, entitled "Trilingual Illiterates: Algeria's Language Crisis."

He has done a careful deconstruction of the cable, which deserves your close attention, since the cable itself seems based on misinformation and misconceptions.

Regular readers know I'm interested in language issues in our region, in Arabic itself and the whole issue of diglossia, the distinction between spoken Arabic dialects and the literary/written language; as well as minority languages, such as the Tamazight spoken by the North African Berber population. So this memo is irresistible to me, but unlike Lameen Souag, who's an Algerian linguist, I've never even  set foot in Algeria. Nor do I want to pile on in criticizing American diplomats' linguistic naivete: a very old friend of mine whose Arabic, in classical and multiple dialects, is superb and who also can speak in scholarly terms about comparative Semitics (now his main focus in retirement), once served as Public Affairs Officer at the US Embassy in Algeria. Not, however, as late as 2008; the linguistic generalizations in this memo suggest a rather superficial understanding he would never have conveyed.

First, read the memo linked above; then, read Lameen Souag's excellent deconstruction. What follows are my own thoughts: again, I've never even visited the country, though there are similar issues in Morocco and Tunisia, which I know.

I was struck by this:

Algeria's language crisis is unique in the Arab world, given the country's turbulent history and the existence of an entire generation fluent only in a linguistic collage known as "Algerian." Diplomats coming to Algeria after serving elsewhere in the region are amazed that Algerians rarely finish a sentence in the same language they started it in. 

As Lameen notes, this is not only an issue in most of the Francophone Arab world (I once heard a Lebanese get three languages into four words — "Pourquois are you za‘lan?" — but that's hardly news); it also profoundly misunderstands what "Algerian," apparently meaning the spoken language of daily life, actually is. Assuming he means darja, spoken Algerian, it is no more a "collage" than spoken Egyptian, or Moroccan, or Iraqi, or (perhaps most relevant), Lebanese. As Lameen notes:

The idea that Darja is "useless" I already addressed above: how can the primary language you need for everyday life almost everywhere in the country be dismissed as "useless"! Darja itself, in general, is not a particularly mixed language: it's a coherent Arabic dialect with an unusual number of words taken from French, but with its grammar essentially unchanged from the dialect of Arabic already spoken in Algeria before the French arrived. If it's a "linguistic collage", what are we to say of English, more than half of whose vocabulary derives from French or Latin?

However, there are some parts of Algeria - mainly Algiers and its surroundings - where many people commonly practise code-switching and code-mixing, ie the incorporation of whole phrases and sentences from French into a conversation whose main language is Darja. I personally find this practice irritating, and inconsiderate when directed towards strangers: you can usually take it for granted that another Algerian will be fluent in Darja, but many Algerians speak French haltingly or not at all, and peppering your speech with French phrases tends to make them feel unwelcome. But it's certainly not "useless" from an educational perspective; to the contrary, it causes Algerois who would otherwise have little occasion to use French to maintain a fairly high level of conversational fluency in it, and keeps them in practice. Nor is it "useless" from a practical perspective: being able to comprehend this mix is a fairly essential skill in Algiers, as important in commercial contexts as in social encounters. And, in my experience, the most persistent language-mixers aren't the uneducated at all: they're the ones who speak the best French, and either find it easier to express some thoughts in French or want to make very sure you don't take them for country bumpkins. It's also worth emphasising that code-switching isn't some kind of uniquely Algerian pathology: it happens in almost every genuinely bilingual society, all over the world.

Adding to the seeming lack of understanding of the role of colloquial Arabic (darja or darija in North Africa; lahja or ‘amiyya farther east) is the cable's conclusion: the need to teach everybody English. The Maghreb as a whole would open new vistas for business an tourism, but is adding a "fourth" language the real solution to "trilingual illiterates"?

And I must comment on this passage in the cable:

Over an iftar dinner at the Ambassador's residence towards the end of Ramadan, several Algerian business representatives lamented what they called the "lost generation" of Algerian workers, who are left out largely because of their inability to function at a professional level in any single language. Ameziane Ait Ahcene, Northrup Grumman's deputy director for Algeria, complained that he had to recruit in francophone Europe to find skilled accountants and engineers who were fluent in spoken and written French.

My first note is that a US diplomat seems (unless the typo is Wikileaks') to not know how to spell Northrop Grumman.

My second is to note that, 1) of course, the business community is going to want better French, even in a country like Tunisia that hasn't downplayed its role so much; and 2) "Ameziane Ait Ahcene" might strike even a non-Arabist as not looking very Arabic. That's because all three parts of the name are Berber. (Though I think Ahcene may be related to Ihsan.) And Berbers have always resisted the Arabization program and clung to French. As I've noted multiple times, I've never set foot in Algeria and I knew that immediately. Did the author of this cable?

Blind Lead Blind; Sensationally Unreliable Quote Sensationally Unreliable

Here's an opportunity to link to two sites I never link to, mostly because I'll bet they've never linked to each other before. But it's fun to see the sensational propagandists of utterly different ideologies quoting one another. One is the Israeli site DEBKA, which purports to convey inside intelligence information about the Middle East. It's often sensational; more to the point it's quite frequently dead wrong. They even have a subscription service, but don't bother: if Israeli intelligence was this bad they'd be out of business. Recently they had a piece about how Qadhafi is still in charge pretty much everywhere except in Tripoli and Benghazi, and how he has the solid support of the Tuareg (a small minority now fleeing into Niger and Algeria). Not, in short, what the international TV crews are seeing on the ground.


Well, now a website known as Mathaba has picked up and reproduced the story as "Gaddafi in Full Control — Has Support of Saharan and Tuareg tribes.".

While acknowledging DEBKA as the source, they don't identify its Israeli identity. And who is "Mathaba.net"? As they put it:

MATHABA is the world's leading independent news agency and a major online news network. We have the most advanced and effective news distribution . . . Founded in 1999, MATHABA became the first stateless news organization in history. 

Really?  Oh, and they too have a paid service available. A little searching finds a reference to them at greencharters.com which oddly enough also offers on its website a work known as The Green Book (hint: it's not about environmentalism). (If you've never read it go ahead and click. It's about to be a historical artifact anyway.)

Yes indeed. the last-ditch Qadhafi website is quoting a hardline rightwing Israeli propaganda website.

Everything that's loony must converge.

On the other hand, I think the "Gaddafi in Full Control" headline requires, as I would tell an author whose article I was editing, rather better sourcing.

Egypt: Emergency Law Extended to Mid-2012

 Earlier I noted the growing security crackdown in Egypt; Marc Lynch has also written about the dangers that the disorders could be very bad news for the Egyptian revolution. As part of the current security crackdown, the Military Council has said that the Emergency Law, which has also been amended, will be extended to at least mid-2012.

Of course if everything goes according to the alleged schedule, a new Parliament and President should be in place before then, Earlier pledges to end the Emergency Law as soon as possible are now off the table, and it doesn't sound as if the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces plans to just go away after elections.

And of course, that raises the question of what exactly is going to happen with the elections. Tunisia is on track to begin its campaign for a constituent assembly, and Egypt still seems to be thinking about what happens next.

Most of the agenda of the Friday demonstrations had to do with getting the process back on track, but the violence against the Israeli Embassy has sidetracked that and discredited many of the demonstrators. (An attempt was also made to storm the Saudi Embassy, which failed and thus got little attention.) It could prove to be a rather unfortunate tipping point.

To end on a positive note, however, I'd refer you to this post of Sandmonkey's; it was posted before Friday's violence,  but its message is an encouraging one: the real achievement of the revolution is the realization that the people can bring about change. That won't go away even if there are setbacks on the road.

Are We Facing a Gathering "Perfect Storm" in the Region?

A week ago IDF Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg, the Home Front Commander, made headlines for saying that Arab Spring could lead to an increase in the chances of a regional war. Other Israeli officials backpedaled quickly, but in the wake of the deepening crisis between Israel and Turkey and now the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Egypt, there seems to be a growing sense of tightening siege in Israel. (I know, of course, that residents of Gaza would find it ironic that Israel feels besieged when they are far more literally so, but the fact is that when Israel feels threatened — justifiably or not — it has often resorted to military action. Two of Israel's once dependable allies, Turkey and Egypt, are no longer so dependable for quite different reasons. And the United Nations debate on recognizing the Palestinian Authority as an independent state is looming, with many members of the European Union likely to support the Palestinian effort, despite US and Israeli opposition. If Israel feels that it is increasingly isolated, again rightly or wrongly, the dangers of conflict do escalate.

That this is a dangerous time is indisputable. I may be grasping at straws, but I do find it encouraging that there really doesn't seemto be any party that wants a \war, regional or limited. Some Israelis might welcome another round in Gaza or against Hizbullah, but probably not just now. While some in Egypt might welcome a distraction, no one, not even the Islamists, wants a war. The Palestinian Authority wants legitimacy, not war. Whether the UN ploy brings that closer or makes it more remote is certainly debatable, and since it's being discussed so many places I haven't felt eager to get into it here. It is, however, going to be a rough ride, given so many converging uncertainties. One should hope for cool heads and cautious diplomacy, with revolutions still simmering and Israel jittery. 

The Embassy Attack: a Rorschach Test for Commentators

 The Friday night/Saturday morning assault on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo has provoked not only the expected international reactions (alarm in Israel, expressions of concern in Washington), but has also has proven to be a sort of Rorschach test for commentators. Israelis and strong supporters of Israel see it as a sign that the "Arab Spring" marks a radicalization of the Arab world and is to be lamented; secularists worry that it suggests a victory for radical Islam (though most of the demonstrators were football support groups, the Ahly "Ultras" and Zamalek White Knights, who are sports enthusiasts rather than Islamists); many young revolutionaries suspect the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces allowed it to happen in order to spread a sense of growing disorder, thus justifying continued military rule and a postponement of elections.

So far, the worst prognostications have not been borne out; Egyptian-Israeli relations are at a low ebb, but neither side seems eager to terminate them. Whether the SCAF really is allowing increasing \clashes to occur for its own ends or due to its own haplessness is a matter of opinion. Here's a selection of English-language commentary from a variety of Egyptian and Israeli sources.

First, a Video from Al-Masry Al-Youm:



A timeline of the events here, from the Jerusalem Post.

A claim that Egypt had asked Israel to have its Ambassador take a holiday from Ahram Online here; and an Israeli take on that report at Haaretz here; Details of the continuing arrests here,  the Muslim Brotherhood's official response, which devotes only a couple of lines to the Israeli embassy but condemns the violence overall; and a Salafi reaction here (it works in favor of Israel and "was not well thought out."

Several of the regular contributors at The Arabist have offered views:  Issandr El Amrani here; Steve Negus here; and Ursula Lindsey on the role of the Ultras here. Also see Bassem Sabry at Bikya Masr, and the always observant Zeinobia. (And her earlier post here.)

Haaretz on the state of relations here. The Jerusalem Post on reoopening the embassy here.

Related or not, there's a growing crackdown by the government on foreign media, especially satellite TV; Al Jazeera's live channel from Egypt,  Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, has been raided and suspended.

The crackdown may also be why Saudi Arabia is shifting its satellite transmissions from Egypt's Nilesat to the inter-Arab Arabsat.

Certainly the Embassy attack is a serious moment in the history of the Egyptian revolution, or could spell trouble for its future; but the many and varied responses so far suggest the current commentary often has more to do with the preconceptions of the commentators than the actual facts. A dangerous time nonetheless.

New MEI Bulletin

The latest edition of our newsletter, the MEI Bulletin, is now available online. (PDF)

Egypt Visa Decision "Frozen"

This is just to get the day and the week's posts started.  Rest assured I'm preparing a major, and I hope thoughtful, comment and links post on the assault on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo Friday night/Saturday morning. But till that goes up, I though I'd note that, while I'm sure my own derisive comments about Egypt's self-defeating new visa regulations had nothing to do with it,  enough other people recognized the shoot-self-in-foot element that the Egyptian Cabinet has "frozen" the decision to stop issuing visas to tourists from the US and Europe etc. at the airport.

I assume "frozen" in this case means "made to disappear down the memory hole."

Again, I'll be back soon with reflections on the weekend's insanity.

Some Thoughts for the 9/11 Anniversary

 The 10th Anniversary of September 11, 2001, is going to totally dominate US media this weekend. I want to record a few thoughts here. For now, I'm leaving comments open, but if there is too much "Truther" conspiracy commentary, I may have to close comments.

Some of my overseas readers may wonder why Americans have focused so centrally on this event, Part of the answer is that unlike most of the peoples of the Middle East and Europe, we had come to think of ourselves as invulnerable between our two ocean barriers. In World War II, as armies ravaged Europe, the Soviet Union, and China, we suffered only in the far Pacific. As Abraham Lincoln put it in 1838:

How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

Lincoln was making the point that the only threat to the United States came from within. But on September 11 the United States learned that a globalized world meant our imagined invulnerabilities were no more: foreign terrorists could strike at the financial heart of our largest city, and at the Pentagon itself, without warning.  The world had changed.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the latter at least clearly a "war of choice" for the US, also still go on a decade later. The effect of the events of 9/11 on the US image in the world, and particularly the Middle East, is profound; the attitude towards American Muslims in the decade since 9/11 has emphasized one of the darker strains of America's national attitudes.

On that beautiful fall morning a decade ago, I had watched the first plane hit the first tower, and as I was leaving for work watched the second. I noted that there might also be attempts on Washington, and started driving to work. As I was driving on US 50 in Northern Virginia, approaching Fort Myer, I saw a large billowing plume of black smoke, directly ahead of me. The all-news radio was still focused on New York, but I knew the plume was from the direction of the Pentagon, a building I knew well from an earlier incarnation as a writer on defense. Trying to reach my wife by cell phone, I discovered there was no signal (everyone was doing what I was doing), so I turned the car around and headed home. I spent the day with my wife and then-year-old daughter, whom we'd adopted in July of 2001.

When I saw that black plume of smoke — and it was visible for a long while — it reminded me that I had actually seen black smoke rise above Washington, DC once before: on April 5, 1968, when the city was rocked by riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the night before. I  was an undergrad then, and flying out for Easter I had a view of the rising plumes of smoke from National Airport. It's odd that I bracket 1968, a year of profound divisions in the US, with 9/11 in my mind, but I hope I never see another black cloud rising above DC.

Agha and Malley: a Somber Take on Arab Spring

Arab Spring, though it's now moving into Fall, is still a work in progress. Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in the New York Review of Books offer a somber, somewhat pessimistic assessment of where things go from here, calling it "The Arab Counterrevolution." A tip of the hat to The Arabist for the link, and for his comment that he hopes for a more optimistic outcome.