Amer­i­ca’s mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq has had mul­ti­ple costs for the US, with just one being the decline of Amer­i­can moral lead­er­ship on the inter­na­tion­al stage, and par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the Mid­dle East. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, we know that Amer­i­ca’s pres­tige is momen­tar­i­ly shot. But to get a feel for what this means in prac­tice, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view (iTunes — MP3) with Lawrence Pin­tak, who directs the Adham Cen­ter for Elec­tron­ic Jour­nal­ism at The Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo. A long­time observ­er of the Mid­dle East, Pin­tak sees the evo­lu­tion of Amer­i­ca’s image going some­thing like this: Before 9/11, the prover­bial Mid­dle East­ern cab dri­ver expressed deep admi­ra­tion for Amer­i­ca and Amer­i­cans, even while dis­agree­ing with Amer­i­can lead­ers and poli­cies. When the Twin Tow­ers fell, sym­pa­thy for Amer­i­ca was nev­er greater. Now, six years lat­er, it’s all gone awry. The men­tal line that sep­a­rat­ed Amer­i­cans and Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is gone, and the antipa­thy toward Amer­i­ca is fair­ly com­plete.

What part­ly explains this shift is how the war has been refract­ed through the Mid­dle East­ern media. Ever since Al Jazeera start­ed air­ing in 1996 (you can watch it here in Eng­lish), the Mid­dle East has had its own free media and seen events through its own lens. And, in the case of the Iraq war, it has meant see­ing what we don’t see — the unsan­i­tized war, the bod­ies, the lev­eled build­ings, etc. — but also much more mun­dane things that shape over­all impres­sions. It means see­ing, for exam­ple, how tone-deaf US spokes­men in Bagh­dad show up at jour­nal­ist con­fer­ences in Abu Dhabi (a com­plete­ly non-mil­i­tary event out­side of Iraq) in army fatigues, leav­ing essen­tial­ly the impres­sion that the US sees the larg­er Mid­dle East as a mil­i­tary stage.

Pin­tak knows the region well, and he artic­u­lates Amer­i­ca’s per­cep­tion prob­lem in a bal­anced and thought­ful way. Check it out here: (iTunes — MP3) Also, on a relat­ed note, any­one who wants to digg more deeply into Mid­dle East­ern per­spec­tives may want to explore Mosa­ic: World News from the Mid­dle East (iTunes  Feed). This Peabody award-win­ning pod­cast pro­vides a dai­ly com­pi­la­tion of tele­vi­sion news reports from across the Mid­dle East. The news comes from inde­pen­dent and state-run news ser­vices, and it is all trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.

The Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel has post­ed an infor­ma­tive debate over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambi­tions. It fea­tures two major experts — Ken Waltz (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty) and Scott Sagan (Stan­ford) — who have had a long run­ning debate over ways to han­dle nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion in gen­er­al. You can catch the debate here in the fol­low­ing for­mats: MP3 audio — MP4 video — Stream­ing video — iTunes.

Below, you’ll find the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel’s descrip­tion of the debate:

“In 1995, Scott Sagan and Ken­neth Waltz pub­lished their sem­i­nal work, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.” They staked out oppo­site ends of the the­o­ret­i­cal spec­trum with Waltz argu­ing that “more [nuclear armed states] could be bet­ter” and Sagan respond­ing that “more will be worse.”

On Feb­ru­ary 8th, 2007 at SIPA, they updat­ed their famed debate in the con­text of Iran. Will a nuclear-armed Iran be a source of sta­bil­i­ty in the world, or will it bring the Mid­dle East to the brink of dis­as­ter?

Sagan and Waltz debate this ques­tion along with ques­tions on the appro­pri­ate U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy in the Gulf, the effi­ca­cy of sanc­tions in restrain­ing Iran­ian nuclear ambi­tions, the like­ly response of Iran’s neigh­bors and many oth­ers.

Scott Sagan is co-direc­tor of Stan­ford University’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion and served as a spe­cial assis­tant to the direc­tor of the orga­ni­za­tion of the Joint Chief of Staff in the Pen­ta­gon.

Ken­neth Waltz is one of the pil­lars of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sci­ence and co-founder of the struc­tur­al real­ism the­o­ry of inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. He is a Senior Research Schol­ar at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and a Ford pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at UC Berke­ley. ”

Open Source, an always insight­ful pub­lic radio pro­gram, aired last week a show that took a broad look at the win­ners and losers of the Iraq war. Tak­ing up a theme that was also recent­ly explored in an edi­tion of For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine, the host, Christo­pher Lydon, spoke with a pan­el of experts from respect­ed think tanks, uni­ver­si­ties, and news­pa­pers, and, togeth­er, they drew con­clu­sions about win­ners and losers, some of which aren’t so obvi­ous. Here’s a quick recap, but we rec­om­mend giv­ing the show a lis­ten (iTunes — Feed — Mp3) and tak­ing a look at its well-done blog.

Win­ners:

• Iran & Shi­ism: With Iraq, its tra­di­tion­al rival, in chaos, Iran is now free to project its pow­er across the Mid­dle East and tilt the bal­ance of region­al pow­er in favor of Shi­ite Islam. It’s part­ly because Iran is mak­ing such a strong show­ing that the hawks in Wash­ing­ton may feel the strate­gic need to even­tu­al­ly use mil­i­tary force against Iran. In this sense, the US is play­ing out a more extreme ver­sion of the strat­e­gy it used dur­ing the Iran-Iraq War that dragged on through the 1980s. Weak­en one pow­er, then the oth­er.
• Chi­na:  No one is notic­ing it now, but down the road, we might be writ­ing a his­to­ry that talks about how the US adven­ture in Iraq gave Chi­na the room to emerge rapid­ly as a new super­pow­er — a super­pow­er that could plau­si­bly present itself to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as more diplo­mat­ic and peace­ful than the US alter­na­tive.
• al-Qae­da: The Iraq war has helped al-Qaeda’s recruit­ment efforts, pre­cise­ly as many warned, and, if the US even­tu­al­ly aban­dons Iraq, they’ll feel embold­ened no doubt.
• Arab Dic­ta­tors: The heat had been ratch­eted up against many Mid­dle East dic­ta­tors, but with every­one dis­tract­ed by Iraq, they are able to per­pet­u­ate their cor­rupt rule for yet a while longer.
• Mul­ti-Lat­er­al­ism, Old Europe & the UN: They were all dis­missed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion in the run up to the war, but they’re all look­ing bet­ter and more worth­while with each pass­ing day.

Losers:

• Iraq & The Unit­ed States: Two obvi­ous picks.
• Uni­lat­er­al­ism & The Neo-Cons: The neo-con approach has splen­did­ly dis­cred­it­ed itself, but the rub is that neo-cons still sit in pow­er and they may uni­lat­er­al­ly force their way into Iran before the peo­ple get to the bal­lot box again.
• Tony Blair & the Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship between the US and Eng­land: Tony Blair is say­ing his long good­bye. He’ll be gone before too long, and, with him, may go the only oth­er sub­stan­tial mem­ber of the “Coali­tion of the Will­ing.”
• The Price of Oil: It’s a los­er if you’re a con­sumer … but not if you’re an exec­u­tive at Exxon.

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

Sev­er­al months ago, The New York Times ran a rather strik­ing piece
detail­ing how key US lead­ers
— ones play­ing inte­gral roles in the war
on ter­ror and the war in Iraq — could­n’t explain the basic dif­fer­ence between a Shi­ite and a Sun­ni. The dis­clo­sure, how­ev­er, was­n’t ter­ri­bly
sur­pris­ing. We were, after all, already sev­er­al years into fight­ing a war that was premised on see­ing only rosy sce­nar­ios, not incon­ve­nient details or
hard real­i­ties on the ground.

Real­i­ty is nowa­days com­ing back with a vengeance, talk about
civ­il war and a Sun­ni-Shi­ite divide has entered our
polit­i­cal vocab­u­lary, and we’re final­ly doing the home­work that we should
have done years ago. This week, NPR’s Morn­ing Edi­tion has put togeth­er a help­ful five-part series, called “The Par­ti­sans of Ali: A His­to­ry of Shia Faith and Pol­i­tics,”
that explores the his­tor­i­cal divi­sions between Shia and Sun­ni Mus­lims,
giv­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the Shi­ites them­selves. If you haven’t
already, you might as well bone up on this mate­r­i­al, since it will shape our nation­al expe­ri­ence for years to come, regard­less of how
many exit-plans are being drawn up right now. All pro­grams can be
down­loaded as mp3’s. A gen­er­al overview of the series (which has a lot
of good sup­port­ing mate­ri­als) can be found here. Mean­while, you can access the indi­vid­ual dai­ly pro­grams below:

• Mon­day: The Ori­gins of the Shia-Sun­ni Split
• Tues­day: The Shia Rise Amid Cen­tu­ry of Mideast Tur­moil.
• Wednes­day: The Export of Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion Spawns Vio­lence
• Thurs­day: Iraq War Deep­ens Sun­ni-Shia Divide
• Fri­day: The Unit­ed States and The Sec­tar­i­an Divide (Link to come)