Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja

The Girl Who Did Her Cause No Favors

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I almost feel guilty saying this, but as yet, I have no strong view on climate change. I more or less defer to expert opinion on the subject, which as I understand it holds that the planet is on fire, that it’s our fault, and in consequence that we should shop less and recycle more. At least half of that message is music to my ears: I find shopping a bore, and often think the planet deserves to be burned down. The other half I find unobjectionable: it wouldn’t surprise me if the planet’s demise were our fault (given my estimation of the people who inhabit it), and at this point, I’ve been married often enough to have internalized recycling. So I’m down with the whole climate change agenda.

I’m less down with Greta Thunberg, whom I find problematic. Or rather, not with Greta the person, but Greta the media phenomenon. Unlike many of Greta’s critics (and yes, I’m going to call her that), I don’t dislike Greta the person. I like her. Not only do I like her, but I like the very things about her that her critics so intensely dislike. She’s a hectoring, fanatical, self-righteous prig. A kindred spirit, in short. Continue reading →

War with Iran (14): When Proxy Wars Attack

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In an earlier post, I insisted that “our” war with Iran was not yet over. And it isn’t. You may have forgotten all about the war we started with them. But rest assured, they haven’t.

Exhibit A: Saturday’s missile attack on a government military base in Yemen. The New York Times, a bit behind the times in this case, lists the casualties as rising “to at least 76.” That was yesterday. Seven hours ago, it was 111. I’m guessing it’ll go up. Continue reading →

MLK: “Believe Women,” Rape, and the Worst-Case Scenario

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Yesterday, I wrote a post arguing that the supposedly woke slogan “Believe Women” has some odd implications for the recent Sanders-Warren controversy. It implies that we should believe Elizabeth Warren’s accusation that Sanders is a sexist, or at least presume his guilt until he can conclusively prove his innocence. Because I take this consequence to be a reductio, I take “Believe Women” to be an absurdity. Put charitably, the original, unqualified version of the slogan has to be modified. Put uncharitably, it has to be rejected. To split the difference, it requires a bit of both. Continue reading →

“Believe Women Except When…”

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So whatever happened to the “Believe Women” mantra, brought to us care of #MeToo? Yesterday’s unqualified axiom seems to have been washed away by today’s intra-progressive controversy. The reasoning here seems to be: Elizabeth Warren accused Bernie Sanders of sexism. But Bernie is more progressive than Liz. So the accusation can’t possibly be true, because if it were true, its truth would ruin the most progressive mainstream candidate’s shot at the presidency. Hence the accusation must be false, and Elizabeth Warren is a bit of a bitch for making it. From which it follows that the “Believe Women” axiom must also be false, though we’re not to say so out loud.

Gee, that was easy. Who knew that moralized axioms could so lightly be adopted, and so lightly be cast aside?  Continue reading →

Logistical Nightmare

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It’s 4 am. I just woke up from the weirdest dream.

Dreamt that I’d wanted to go to Baghdad, so I’d booked a cheap flight via Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania, thinking to drive the rest of the way. But I’d somehow forgotten to book a rental, had underestimated the distance, and had forgotten about the problems posed by the existence of international borders and the Red Sea. As I belatedly made this realization, the cab showed up to take me to the airport–but I’d forgotten my flight information. So I went to my computer to refresh my memory, but inexplicably found myself in a public Internet cafe in Manhattan, able to remember but unable to type my password. When the guy next to me asked what was wrong, I explained the problem to him by bursting into tears, and then spelled my password out to everyone within hearing. Continue reading →

War with Iran (12): Imminent Threats and Moral Blackmail

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This abstract presents a slightly more formal, structured version of the argument I gave in the second installment in this series. Comments welcome.]

The Iran War of January 2020 (hereafter, “the War”) was widely justified by way of the following morally loaded question, addressed primarily to an American audience:

(Q1) If you had certain intelligence of an imminent threat to American lives, would you use military force to stop the person responsible for that threat?

Typically, an interlocutor hoping to defend the War would pose Q1, demand an unqualified “yes or no” answer to it, and take the “yes or no” to be an exclusive disjunction. Continue reading →

War with Iran (11): Protest at Hinds Plaza, Princeton

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A couple of shots from an anti-war protest I attended this past Saturday in Hinds Plaza, Princeton, New Jersey, sponsored by the Coalition for Peace Action and Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice. An earnest, upbeat, sedately (almost stereotypically) suburban college-town crowd of about 300. Outstanding speeches by Zia Mian and Lukata Mjumbe. Irene Etkin Goldman read a poem of Yehuda Amichai’s, and Sadaf Jaffer (a distant acquaintance of mine) read one by Aga Shahid Ali. Both poems are now reproduced in the comments below.  (I missed two speakers’ names in the original post: Nassau County Democratic Vice Chairman Ali Mirza and Sadim Lone, a former UN official). Personally, I did nothing but attend, clap, and pretend to sing Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” but I was proud to be there.

Continue reading →

Roger Scruton (1944-2020), RIP

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It’s considered disrespectful to speak ill of the just-deceased, so I hope this post will be read in a spirit of candor rather than ill-will. But the truth is, I’ve always had mixed feelings about Roger Scruton, who’s just passed away. On the one hand, it was impossible not to admire the sheer breadth of his interests and learning, and impossible not to be awed or intimidated by his sheer output. He seemed in so many ways to embody the ideal of The Public Philosopher: clear, erudite, iconoclastic, occasionally brilliant, capable of technical sophistication, but also capable of writing for a wide audience. That said, I hated his politics and a lot of his cultural grandstanding, and often found myself wondering how a man as intelligent as Scruton could come up with views as dumb as the ones he sometimes put into print. Continue reading →

War with Iran (10): Militarism, Trust, and Character-Based Voting

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Back in 1950, during the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur was famously (“famously”) invited by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to give a speech at one of their annual conventions. Given the exigencies of war, MacArthur was unable to attend, but accepted the invitation and sent the VFW the text–we’d call it a “hard copy”–of his speech. The speech, an instance of saber-rattling of the kind for which MacArthur was famous (and is still admired today, at least by conservatives), flatly, obviously, and  deliberately contradicted the official policy of the U.S. government at the time on Formosa (Taiwan). MacArthur sent it to the VFW as a kind of provocation, and succeeded in his aim, putting Truman in a quandary about how to respond. Continue reading →