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Shadi Hamid Profile picture
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4 Jun, 4 tweets, 3 min read
This week's Friday Essay just dropped. @dmarusic pulls out the stops. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Like all our Friday Essays at @WCrowdsLive, it's for subscribers only, so do consider joining us if what we're doing catches your interest.
wisdomofcrowds.live/how-liberal-tr…
Here's a teaser. It's not so much the arc of history bending toward justice, but rather an "arc of despair" resigning us to sad fates.

wisdomofcrowds.live/how-liberal-tr… Image
Last week, my Friday Essay provided a counterpoint to @dmarusic's pessimism. In betraying our own ideals, we remind ourselves that we have them in the first place.

wisdomofcrowds.live/why-america-ne… Image
Our Friday Essays, which @dmarusic and I alternate writing each week, are a sort of running, iterative dialogue between two different ways of understanding and applying the American idea abroad.

More than 10 essays are available here: wisdomofcrowds.live/friday_essays/

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More from @shadihamid

Shadi Hamid Profile picture
4 Jun
Fascinating reporting from @SuneEngel in @WSJ on how the Taliban govern, whether they've changed, and what that means for #Afghanistan's future.

Includes some of my thoughts.

wsj.com/articles/the-t…
The tragic reality is that the minority of Islamist groups that use violence can often claim more success than nonviolent ones, whether the Taliban, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, Libyan militants, or even Hamas

wsj.com/articles/the-t…
In areas where chaos and conflict are the norm, militants like the Taliban can come in and dispense rough often brutal justice, particularly when it comes to legal disputes and corruption. This gains them support, however grudging, as @SuneEngel reports.
Read 5 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
31 May
In this week's @WCrowdsLive essay, I make the case for hypocrisy in foreign policy, not because hypocrisy is good but because it is better than the alternative. I wish it were otherwise but apparently it's not. 1/x

wisdomofcrowds.live/why-america-ne…
As I finish a book about rethinking democracy promotion for the post-Trump era, I've been struggling with the question of hypocrisy. It's unavoidable now that the gap between words and deeds has returned with Biden, which is both bad and good. 2/x
The hypocrite has always been a subject of fascination, not merely because he is bad. Mere badness is pedestrian. The hypocrite is different (and worse) because of his ostentatious morality. But should a hatred of hypocrisy be applied to countries and not just individuals? 3/x
Read 7 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
23 May
I largely disagree with this.

But it's a brilliant, tour-de-force of argument. A reminder, if one was needed, of why @dmarusic is one of the most challenging and original American essayists around

wisdomofcrowds.live/the-pointlessn…
This is what I hope we can do more of at @WCrowdsLive—to find new and interesting ways of disagreeing. And use our disagreements to get to the bottom of *why* we disagree. How do we come to believe the things we believe?

When @dmarusic & I get in debates, we often find ourselves ending up at the most foundational question of all: the existence of God, because it is difficult to disentangle morality from the divine. Ostensibly, God shouldn't figure too much into our policy assessments of Gaza...
Read 5 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
20 May
By popular demand, we've decided to un-paywall my piece "I'm Angry About Palestine. Should You Be?" for a day. I didn't really write it for the public, but what the heck.

Sign up for free to get it in your inbox tomorrow morning: wisdomofcrowds.live/signup/
This is a more personal essay on what I was thinking and feeling last week as I was trying to making sense of the news in Gaza. It's as honest a piece as I could have written. I look forward to sharing it with more of you.

wisdomofcrowds.live/im-angry-about…
My piece was inspired in part by two old, estranged friends: Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said. Here, Hitchens' moral clarity cuts through. It's a beautiful passage.

wisdomofcrowds.live/im-angry-about…
Read 4 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
18 May
If you missed it, my new @BrookingsFP piece on how Arab regimes mastered the art of not caring about the Palestinians while pretending to care about them. But this isn't new. Decades ago, Anwar el-Sadat was the pioneer of a separate peace

[Thread]

brookings.edu/blog/order-fro…
The Trump administration was right that Arab nations could be peeled off the Palestinians one by one, but it was building on an old idea with a storied history. Camp David is almost unanimously seen as Carter's great achievement, but there was a dark side.
For the best account on how Camp David was the first, original step in sidelining the Palestinians, see @SethAnziska's brilliant book based on original archival research—'Preventing Palestine': amazon.com/Preventing-Pal…
Read 6 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
17 May
If you missed it, here's my latest in @TheAtlantic. This is my attempt to carefully outline my position on Gaza and lay out the broader context that brought us here. There are two conflicting narratives. I try to make sense of where they diverge.

[Thread]
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
If you look at the Gaza crisis in a vacuum—as if there is no history and as if context is irrelevant, you'll come to certain conclusions, but they will be based on misleading premises. The question has to be: why now? And what are the "sources" of the conflict?
There is a danger in talking about "root causes." People will accuse you of justifying Hamas' actions. But it should be possible to do two things—to believe Hamas is committing war crimes, while also recognizing that the current crisis didn't appear from the sky unannounced.
Read 11 tweets

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