C. Christine Fair is one of the experts in our nation's capital who is hugely credentialed, who has spent her adult life going to school and acquiring numerous degrees and learning foreign languages, and who has even gone to war zones. There's no disputing her capacity. But when I read her Twitter timeline (when I remember to search for it, because I'm blocked now), I have to wonder when and how maturity and good judgement are going to be acquired for such a person to temper knowledge with decency.
Remember when I asked whether Christine Fair should work at the State Department? That was a year ago. She attacked me on Twitter because I had the temerity to call out Joshua Foust's slam of Pussy Riot and cunning defense of the Kremlin as the bad faith it was, and after a bunch of name-calling intoned about me, "She can rumble with the trailer park rabble!" and then called me "cat-hoarding, stalker crazy." I thought that was a horrible way for a future government official to behave -- I'm not sure that she ever got that position, although she might well have - or might not have, for other reasons that unhappiness over her social media outbursts.
Ah well, all in a day's work on Twitter, some of the people are like that in Thinktankistan -- nasty, vicious, snarky, horrid on Twitter -- they cross the street to slam you first, and if you fight back, they then portray you as the problem -- and lob off a bunch of awful insults before they hide behind a block and get all their friends to high-five them for their "troll bashing". Sigh.
So listen -- I'm not for taking food off the table of people over speech issues -- in the phrase of Loren Feldman, who has wonderfully pushed back against Anil Dash's awful and vindictive destruction of the now-former Business Insider CTO -- getting him fired and demolishing his chance's of venture capital funding -- over his tweets in bad taste (misogyny, rape jokes).
I'm not for firing people over Twitter or forcing them to resign. What I am for doing, however, is standing up to bullies and freaks on Twitter who disparage others and questioning whether they are fit for their jobs or desired positions in government in this case - as a means of trying to get some form of accountability from them. It's my hope that asking this compels them or their bosses to bring some moderation of their nastiness.
Of course nothing I say or do will make a bit of difference with a highly-credentialed (and therefore hugely elitist and arrogant personage) like Fair, but still, I think for the sake of decency, for the sake of a more credible think-tank culture and public discourse, I will push back anyway.
Here's Christine this week with an appalling tweet making light of the shooting of 12 people in the Navy Yard by a crazed gunman (!)
For the record, Mr. Alexis (aka The DC Shooter) was smoking hot. Save your howls: I KNOW that's in poor taste. I also thought UBL was hot.
— Christine Fair (@CChristineFair) September 19, 2013
And here she is ranting about people who are religious and believe they have a mandate from God to kill people:
@Rahulein It's not "religions" as much as those whacked adherents who believe their god says that they not only CAN but SHOULD kill folks.
— Christine Fair (@CChristineFair) September 21, 2013
@abdullahlaghari Thank you for stepping up to be Exhibit A of hate mongering. Why do people CARE so much if folks R Ahmedi? @Razarumi
— Christine Fair (@CChristineFair) September 21, 2013
@abdullahlaghari So...calling 4 mass murder is your twitter MO? Unbelievable. Blocking you. @sobiazia @Razarumi
— Christine Fair (@CChristineFair) September 21, 2013
This, from the co-author of Treading Softly on Sacred Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations on Sacred Space edited with Sumit Ganguly (OUP, 2008), a book I haven't read but looks like it takes a very empathetic stance about combat in the land of even religious fanatics like the Taliban or Islamist terrorists in Pakistan and ultimately urges the US military to tready lightly (the word "terrorism" only occurs three times in the main text, and "terrorist" gets about a dozen hits). The book opens with an in-depth discussion of the wrongs of the Pakistani government attacking the Red Mosque -- will it address as well terrorist attacks like the Pakistani Talibani suicide bombing of a mosque of a Muslim minority?
And mind you, I get that these issues are "complicated" and need people with multiple degrees and languages to parse them for us, but I wonder about the product -- if the output tends to be more about how we can empathize better with terrorists and accommodate them, but doesn't in the end provide any context or moral condemnation let alone a path for the West to protect its free civilization from these illiberal fanatics, can't we question the value and values of Thinktankistan?
I put all these tweets next to each other because I think they beg these questions:
1. Why do terrorists who use their religious extremism as a justification to kill people get a Twitter denunciation (rightly!), but an American mass murderer who likely was crazy (and was a symptom of a troubled military over-reliant on contractors) get a creepy joke tweet as if he were sexually desirable? Huh?
2. If Fair feels a great sense of outrage at religious fanatics thinking they have a go-ahead from God to kill people (and we all should), has she in fact put that into her work or is she being overly pre-sympathetic of their religious sensibilities, especially given the propensity for insurgents to mingle with non-combatant worshippers at sacred sites?
I'm quite mindful that the "sacred spaces" in question could be generic sacred spaces for all Muslims that anyone should respect, but I want to put this question. Fair seems to be among those Realists who I find tend to minimize terrorism and work hard to be understand terrorists and Blame America First, judging from her timeline.
So how does that square with her Twitter rant -- and what can we all do about people who think God is telling them to kill people -- either single lunatics hearing voices like Alexis in the Navy Yard, or entire movements like the Taliban who have killed most of the people in the latest 10-year war in Afghanistan from which we're retreating?And I don't blame Twitter here for making it easy for people to spout. I blame a culture of nihilism and flippancy and arrogance in Thinktankistan first.
