Mamoun Fandy, fresh off of an embarrassing and rather slanderous essay about the Council on Foreign Relations a few days ago, today takes on the "Oil Coupons" story, which he labels Barmilgate (Barrellgate).
In his earlier essay, Fandy accuses the journal Foreign Affairs of killing an essay of his in retaliation for his criticism of Michael Doran's article on Saudi Arabia. This is obviously absurd - as anyone familiar with Foreign Affairs could tell you - and it speaks very poorly for Fandy that he would lash out like this. I hope nobody takes this seriously - an obvious case of sour grapes. Maybe he thought that if he only published it in the Arabic press nobody in New York would notice... but then how could an article he published in the very same newspaper be the cause of his publishing misfortune? What Fandy expects to gain from a self-serving polemic against the Council escapes me, but I doubt he's going to accomplish much more than burning his bridges with American scholars and policymakers.
This time around Fandy argues that the stories about Saddam's payments to Arab journalists is a very serious story, one which tarnishes the reptuation of all Arab journalists, and should be treated as such by all self-respecting journalists who care about the reputation and integrity of the Arab media. Fandy wants it both ways. On the one hand, he says that the number of Arab journalists who would sell out to Saddam is really very small, and he warns against the emerging trend by which everyone attacks their political enemies by accusing them of being on some list of Saddam's payroll. But most of the article goes on at some length about the perfidy of journalists who flew to Baghdad "pretending to care about Iraqi children" while covering up Saddam's crimes - and the number of words he spends on their exploits gives the impression that the number of the guilty is not so small after all. So on the one hand, he wants to assure his colleagues in the Egyptian media specifically, and the Arab media generally, that he doesn't doubt *their* honor, but at the same time he wants to spread the general air of accusation far and wide.
And this reminds me of yet another piece Fandy published - I think in al Sharq al Awsat, but it might have been in al Ahram (he writes for both) - bashing Arab moderates as "the real problem." There seems to be a consistent pattern across these three essays: in each case, Fandy lashes out in a polemic against his own peer group (Foreign Affairs, after all, originally commissioned the article that he's complaining about; he is an Egyptian and Arab journalist; and he is, presumably, an Arab moderate). In each case he seems to want to play it both ways, setting himself up as some kind of arbiter above the fray while settling his personal scores masked (thinly) behind an appeal to higher principle.
Why do I waste everyone's time with Fandy's articles in Arabic, which probably very few readers even saw? Because Fandy was one of the members of the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, and therefore had (and has) a crucial role in something which I consider to be extremely important. What kind of contribution did he make, and will he make in the future, based on these examples of his style of thinking and argument?
I am glad that you finally learned to read arabic and comment on my essays ( I doubt it very much). I hope that you can respond in arabic one day in the same way that I am writing to you in English.
Posted by: Mamoun Fandy | May 01, 2008 at 07:35 AM