War Post

 With more than 200 schools in at least 44 states already participating, "Guantánamo: How Should We Respond?” is an unprecedented collaborative effort of academia, journalism, religion, medicine and even the military in exploring the Government’s detention policy and practices in the “war on terror.” On October 5th, Seton Hall will host an all-day conference available at academic institutions across the United States to study the national and international implications of indefinitely detaining hundreds of individuals deemed "enemy combatants."

"Guantánamo: How Should We Respond?” has taken on increased importance since President George W. Bush’s announcement on September 6 that fourteen suspected terrorist previously held in secret United States facilities abroad will be transferred for trial by military commission at Guantánamo. This decision casts into question both what it means to have a fair trial in such a setting and the failure of the Government even to bring charges against the vast majority of the present detainees.

The Guantánamo Teach-in will offer participants incisive analysis with diverse perspectives. Across America, from Maine to New Mexico, from Florida to Hawaii, and from Texas to Montana, law schools, colleges, universities, community colleges and seminaries will be linked in a national dialogue on the lessons of Guantánamo, sparked by, but not limited to, the broadcast presentations.

War Post has lagged a little since August - I’ve moved to Cairo for the year to study at AUC, mostly Middle Eastern history, improving my fu’usa and learning Egyptian colloquial. I’m taking three history classes: State & Society, the Ottoman Empire: 1699-1914; After Empire: Nationalism and Social Movements in the ME, 1914-present; and a seminar focused on Jordan and the Palestinians, which is so far a history of tribes in what became Transjordan. We’re reading conflicting accounts of the creation of Transjordan — Abdullah was a miracle from the Hijaz; Abdulla was just lucky; Abdullah was a dolt and a spendthrift — which opens the class to the field of Jordanian history-making. Much of the class ethos, perhaps, centers around Andrew Shryock’s Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, a book that seek to bring oral histories out from under their textual authoritities. Specifically, Shyrock wants to recognize the oral histories of the Adwan and the Bani Sakhr tribes alongside the written-down, national narrative of Hashemite Jordan to form a new understanding of the modern state and a new model of how we measure histories as accurate, "authentic" and influential.

I’m waiting on the Imperial War Museum to see if I can post some of their archived sources here. Andrew Carroll gratiously passed along information on a few Mesopotamian letters at the museum as he tours America for Operation Homecoming. In the meantime, I continue to record bits of life in Egypt on my other blog, while still keeping War Post updated.

The photo is an aerial shot of the Giza Plateau during World War I. I don’t know the date, but if it’s after 1920, maybe we can see Winston Churchill below, sketching the Pyramids between treaties. Here is an except of a British soldier’s stop-over in Cairo, before joining General Allenby’s army to take Palestine.  

In my new unit, U.U. Cable Section, I found a couple of enquiringly minded fellows, and we spent many evenings exploring native Cairo. We met with far more courtesy than hostility.

One evening we found ourselves in a kind of courtyard where men were sitting smoking, and where children were playing.  In a corner were three or four not-too-fat cats.  Dusty - so called because his name was Miller - bought a piastre worth of meat at a little shop and we cut this up with jack-knives and fed the cats.

This caused quite a stir.  The men made friendly noises, and a number of them offered us sweetmeats.  Afterwards in that quarter we were always greeted as "The askaris who fed pussini".

Sapper H. P. Bonser, Royal Engineers (Signals), February 1916 to July 1919.  Foreign service units: 74th Divisional Signal Company, Egypt, Southern Palestine; Detached Duty, Fayoum Area; U.U. Cable Section.  Royal Engineers, Egypt, Palestine, Syria.

First published in Everyman at War (1930), edited by C. B. Purdom. Via First World War.com

Today the Washinton Post reports:

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Bilal Hussein, 35, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions, according to military officials. Hussein, 35, was detained April 12.

Read the rest here.  

A reader recently commented on Lynn Chu’s poem, and it’s appropriateness here. As I explained, I intially read "Why I Continue to Believe" too forgivinginly, maybe, or at least with an idea that the author was trying to be Harold Pinter. I think I was wrong, but now there’s a more interesting question: how does one person’s reaction to war rhetoric differ from another’s, and what do those discrepancies suggest? So far, I can find three reactions to this poem: outrage, as in the comment; satisfaction, as on the milblog that linked to the poem from here and called it a "good read"; and my own reaction. I wasn’t reading Chu and getting outraged or satisfied, instead thinking that this kind of language, in the form of a poem, could only be deliberatly and supremely scathing — it was war critique through war rhetoric. Even if I was wrong and Chu means to be staight-and-narrow Administration, the poem shows it can move and be read as a pro-war rally or as a sarcastic exposé on the rally.

Andy Carroll passed along some information about Imperial War Museum letters that I can hopefully coax into appearing on this site. In an email he included the following except, from the British edition of his book Behind the Lines

It is a serious experience to be in occupied territory. Immediately the country falls to our arms, we set about establishing a state of just government, order, security and well being. This is no easy job. There are lots of hostile influences at work. The Arab is divided in his allegiance. He will know that any encouragement he gives to us will be repaid by merciless punishment if a turn in fortunes of war should reinstate the Turk. Then again, the Turk is a hard taskmaster but he is a Moslem. Religion has a great influence over the Arab; but our policy is right and must win in the long run. The Turk’s plan was to destroy both life and property. Ours is to build up and as time goes on and freedom and security and prosperity are firmly established the old prejudices will die a natural death.
— Robert Stewart Campbell, an officer with the British Royal Engineers, writing home to his family in 1917 from Mesopotamia