Renegade Rip

Issue date: 10/22/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Joseph Whipkey Diala Gholmakani,21, double major in business and art, gets an autographed book by author Reza Asian.

Cal State University, Bakersfield's Kegley Institute of Ethics held its fourth annual fall lecture on Oct. 15 at the Dore Theatre. Reza Aslan, noted as "one of the nation's most respected experts on Islam and the Middle East," gave a lecture titled after his book "How to Win a Cosmic War: Why We're Losing the War on Terror."
Christopher Meyers, the director of the Kegley Institute, introduced Aslan and said that he had read Aslan's book that he was discussing over the summer. "I enjoyed it immensely," Meyers said. "I found out how ignorant I am on the subject of Islam."
Aslan's lecture, which was directed at clarifying what exactly the "war on terrorism" means to everyone involved, started by talking about a small village in Israel, Umm al-Nasr, that he had recently visited. The village had a sewage pipe that had burst and was slowly leaking up from underground to the surface and would eventually become what The New York Times called a "sewage tsunami."
Aslan explained how, through America's "democratization process," the situation was never dealt with. The U.S. had, in the name of spreading democracy, targeted the regimes in Palestine and forced them to open their societies for elections.
In 2007, Palestinians had the choice to vote for their leader. The election was between Fatah or, as Aslan put it, "anybody else," as Fatah had never been truly concerned with the needs of the people. In this case, Hamas was the other choice.
Unfortunately for Palestine, the U.S. didn't agree with having Hamas in power. (The group is "responsible for countless deaths," according to Aslan, but also "fed people, cleaned the streets, gave scholarships and actually worked for their vote.") In the end, the U.S. decided to shut Hamas down, even though we had promised Palestinians the right to choose.
Gaza was also "cut off from the rest of the world" as we tried to "starve the Palestinians into changing their minds." (Thus creating a prison with 1.5 million "angry, hungry inmates.")
The people of Umm al-Nasr had no one to go to for help regarding the septic problem as a result. After the leaked sewage had become a lake that spanned two acres, the pipe finally gave and caused the "sewage tsunami" on March 27, 2007, killing five people.

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