مدونة د. منصور عمر الكيخيا * Dr. Mansour Omar El-Kikhia Blog

Republican pundits and spin-masters never cease to amaze me.

It wasn’t too far back when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. During that time, Republicans did not stop once to ask the Democrats for input. Shunning bipartisanship, Republican leaders in Congress shamelessly used every nasty trick in the book to eliminate Democrats from all positions of influence and rammed through redistricting policies at the state level, hoping to ensure that the Democratic Party never recovered the seat of power in the United States.

The mess America and the world find themselves in is the direct result of Republican policies, and it is now a fact that the Republican “Contract with America” has proven to be a catastrophic failure.

It is not a coincidence, and Americans must never forget that. GOP policies resulted in the Great Depression; Americans punished the party by denying it a majority in both chambers of Congress for many years. Time to do that again.

I understand what President Barack Obama is trying to do, but I don’t agree with him. The majority of Republicans in Congress are nasty fanatics whose view of the world is extremely narrow and dogmatic. Nothing Obama does will please them because they don’tRead more

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Categories: Articles 2009 |

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For the second time, the Bush administration has replaced the term “immediate” with “durable and sustainable,” and has done so in support of Israeli military attacks against Arabs.

In both instances, the administration gave Israel a free rein to inflict destruction in Lebanon and Palestine, hoping that Hezbollah and Hamas, two Arab Islamic organizations that refuse to recognize Israel, would be brought to their knees.

The administration’s gamble failed in Lebanon and, based on unfolding events, will meet the same fate in Palestine. Both organizations are more popular and more determined than ever. More important, the United States has, in their view and the view of most Arabs and Muslims, become irrelevant.

Of the many lessons to be derived from Israel’s latest adventure, four have most attracted my attention.

First, embedded logic dictates that the 3,000 rockets lobbed on Israel since 2003 have caused negligible damage to life and property. Yet Israel’s leaders and America’s media continue the tempest in the teacup to justify the murder of Palestinians.

Truth is irrelevant because in the words of Dr. James Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, Israel’s goal is to define the terms of the debate. Hamas was stupid to fire those effete duds becausRead more

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Categories: Articles 2009 | Tags:Articles 2009

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Drop 100 tons of high explosives on one of the most densely populated slums in the world and what will be the result?

The Israeli Defense Forces provided the answer to that question last week when 60 American-made F-16s laid waste to Gaza. In response to rocket attacks by Palestinians, the initial IDF air strike succeeded in killing hundreds of Palestinians and injuring many more. The final tally is yet to come when the Israelis decide to end their assault on an area a quarter the size of San Antonio, with 1.5 million people living in misery for the past six decades.

Watching the carnage unfold over satellite was simply bewildering. I was shocked by reporters flung in the air like dolls by shock waves of exploding missiles and dismembered bodies lined up in the courtyard of what was once a school.

In Gaza, the Palestinians have been living in a virtual prison for many years. With limited electricity, food and other basics, they sought help from the international community in lifting the Israeli siege, but as usual, beyond soothing words of “we understand and sympathize with your predicament,” no help came. The United Nation

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Categories: Articles 2009 | Tags:Articles 2009

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Last week, some readers asked me what I plan to write about after Mr. Bush leaves office, and my answer was that there is plenty to write about in the aftermath of Mr. Bush. The mess the world finds itself in is not about to disappear anytime soon. I honestly believe that the current president has been insignificant in the scheme of things, and my pieces over the last five years have reflected that.

In my mind, the problem has not been with Mr. Bush per se for, after all, he remains a simple man, who in spite of graduate degrees from Ivy League institutions, has not demonstrated a profound understanding of politics, economics or culture. And what he did know was so narrowly defined by religious constraints that it was for all intents and purposes quite obsolete.

My gripe has been with the Republican Party for permitting itself to be hijacked by so-called neo-conservatives. Politically born in the ‘70s during the Nixon administration, the neo-cons emerged during the tenure of Mr. Reagan and George H.W. Bush. However, much of their plans met with only partial successes due to the unwillingness of the latter two presi

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Categories: Articles 2008 | Tags:Articles 2008

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Last week’s shoe attack by Muntadar al-Zeidi, an Iraqi reporter, on President Bush got me thinking about the contradictory nature of Middle Eastern politics, and I was not pleased with my conclusions.

Each community in the region has its own particular insulting gestures, but there are also common gestures involving footwear that are considered insulting to all Arabs. Assaulting anyone with shoes is considered insulting by any standard in Arab society. Also insulting is displaying shoe soles, as some are prone to do when they put their feet on a table, desk, chair, or sometimes even while sitting on the ground.

Usually, when entering an Arab or Muslim home, one is expected to take off footwear before entering carpeted or covered areas of the dwelling. Muslims in particular do not enter mosques or pray with their shoes on.

Unlike many across the globe, I found the attack on President Bush offensive — and neither heroic nor amusing. And, in spite of the fact that Mr. Bush’s policies have been a disaster for Iraq on one level, they have, on another level, been a blessing. Iraqi democracy is one of those unintended consequences of the Bush blunder, and even though it came at a great cost, Iraqis are in a better position today than at any time in the

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Categories: Articles 2008 | Tags:Articles 2008

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Can anyone tell me where President Bush is? Not that I miss him, even though I should, given that I made a career of critiquing his policies. I am just curious how an individual, let alone a president, can become so irrelevant so fast. It seems that Americans are inviting him to hurry up and leave the White House before he causes any more mischief.

I was surprised at the audacity of Condoleezza Rice’s invitation to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to resign and leave office.

Mind you, Mugabe is a nasty bit of work, and he should have resigned and left office a long time ago, but where was the courage to tell him to leave or even support a putsch by forces of Zimbabwean democracy against the incompetent dictator?

I would venture that the world has seen more support of dictatorships and human rights abuses around the globe by this administration than any since President Nixon. So why now? Has this administration, like the lion in the Wizard of Oz, found its heart? It seems highly unlikely, if not hypocritical, for an administration that has shown so little respect for the rights of its own citizens to even think about the well-being of citizens of a country half a world away.

Rice’s utterances on Zimbabwe, however, are ins

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Categories: Articles 2008 | Tags:Articles 2008

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Nearly half of what we pay in property taxes in Texas goes towards paying for schools, but that doesn’t seem to be enough.

I will come back to this later, but let me first deal with higher education as it impacts the city of San Antonio, where the problem is even more critical.

First, I think the proliferation of school districts is a curse because it promotes discrimination and uneven opportunity in education.

This is even more serious in the umpteen university systems in Texas. As chairman of the University of Texas Faculty Advisory Council, I believe the University of Texas System to be the only bona fide system in Texas, and it shouldn’t be denied the opportunity and the resources necessary to play that role and fulfill its mission. This need not diminish the importance of other Texas systems.

Second, enough is enough so let’s stop all the talk about the soaring cost of education in Texas. Judging by UTSA, where I serve as chairman of a department, the cost of education is still very reasonable. That’s the case in spite of the fact that state financial support has diminished fro

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Categories: Articles 2008 | Tags:Articles 2008

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Much of the world seems to be pleased with America’s choice for a new president.

There seems to be a global consensus that he be given every opportunity to succeed and reassure the world that even superpowers have their downturns, and they might have to be isolated from the body of nations until they overcome their maladies.

It was a close call, but America is overcoming its illness and is emerging from eight years of schizophrenia and paranoia stronger, wiser and more determined to re-assume its global position of leadership.

It was an awful experience in how not to govern that took a heavy toll on health and wealth, but the body remains sound and a sound body can recover and make even more wealth. And, what has been a bad dream for the country was a nightmare for the world because it reconfirmed that whatever countries might feel about America, their economic and political health is impacted more by the United States than by their own populations.

Americans should be thankful f

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Categories: Articles 2008 | Tags:Articles 2008

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ترجمة: مفتاح السيّد الشريف

في المشرق العربي، أصبح تصنيف الحكومة لاأهميّة له مطلقا. فليس مهما في الحقيقة إذا ما وصفت البلدان نفسها بأنها ممالك أوسلطنات أو مشيخات أو جمهوريات، أو في حالة ليبيا البطّة الغبيّة المسمّاة جماهيريّة، أي دولة الجماهير. إنها ألقاب مختلفة، ولكنها كلها تقريبا تعني نفس الشئ، وتحكم من قبل أفراد أو ورثتهم الذين يبقون في السلطة لفترة طويلة جدا. فهي لا يوجد لديها شيء إسمه الديمقراطية، أوالمشاركة الشعبية، أوتقاسم السلطة، أو إقتصاد وطني جدّي، أو أي معنى حقيقي لما تعارف عليه المجتمع المدني. وفي هذه المجتمعات فالتقدم الفكري للقيادات السياسية الوطنية لا يبدو أنه قد تقدم بعد حقبة الحقّ الإلهي للملوك التي ميزّت تشكيل الدولة القومية في عام 1648. وحتى بعد الإستقلال، عندما أتاحت الفرصة إمكانية اعتماد مفاهيم مثل السيادة الشعبية والمشاركة السياسية، لم يتغيّر الأمر. والقادة قاتلوا بشدّة لمنع إصابة مجتمعاتهم بعدوى هذه المفاهيم الخطيرة. وكانت النتيجة سنوات من المؤسّسات السياسية العقيمة، وحكم ديكتاتوري، وتردّي الأوضاع السياسية والاجتماعية والثقافية والاقتصادية، لم تشهده المنطقة منذ نهب المغول لبغداد في عام 1258.

فمن الناحية الإقتصاديّة أخذت الأنظمة تتخبّط على غير هدى، وتتعيّش طفيليّا على الفرص المتاحة لها من النظام الدّولي، وعلى الموارد الطبيعيّة الوطنيّة التي تمتلكها، هذا إذا اسثنينا واحدا أو إثنين منها. وللأسف، يحدث هذا في وقت ك

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Categories: Articles 2008, Articles about Libya | Tags:Articles 2008, Articles about Libya

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In the Arab East, the classification of government has become quite insignificant. It doesn’t really matter if countries refer to themselves as monarchies, sultanates, sheikdoms, republics, or in the case of Libya’s Daffy Duck a jamahiriya or state of the masses. The names are different, but they are almost all the same and are all ruled by individuals or their heirs who stay in power for a very long time. There is no such thing as democracy, popular participation, shared governance, serious national economy or any real sense of civil society.

In these societies, the intellectual progression of national political leaderships does not appear to have advanced beyond the era of the divine rights of kings, which characterized the formation of the nation state in 1648. And, even after independence, when opportunity presented the possibility of adopting concepts such as popular sovereignty and political participation, none did, and leaders fought vigorously to prevent the infection of their societies by these dangerous concepts. The result has been years of effete political institutions, dictatorial rule and political, social, cultural, and economic regression not witnessed in the region since the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258.

Economically, the regimes chug along aimlessly, surviving parasitically on opportunities afforded them by the international system and, with one or two exceptions, any scarce natural resources they might possess.

Unfortunately, this is happening at a time when many countries are shifting into fifth gear, racing toward fundament

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Categories: Articles 2008, Articles about Libya | Tags:Articles 2008, Articles about Libya

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