Reply to ‘American Diplomacy at Work’ (I)
Reply to ‘American Diplomacy at Work’ (I)

Summary/Abstract: I am grateful to Gönül Pultar for taking CASAR’s first international conference seriously and for providing her ‘candid impressions’ in the first issue of RIAS. Comparing her report to my own in the March 2006 ASA Newsletter reveals just how divergent experiences and interpretations of the same event can be. It reminds me of the tale of the six blind men who compare the same elephant to a tree, a rope, a snake, a spear, a fan, and a wall. Indeed, my report concluded that ‘the most salient feature of the conference was lack of agreement’ (McGreevy: 15). Yet it is the voices of those with whom we disagree that are most likely to challenge us to re-evaluate our own values, commitments and assumptions. We need each other to even begin see the whole elephant. The feint hope I still feel in Lebanon after the war, is the same I felt at the conclusion of the conference: that we can continue to talk across what many assume are profound fault lines. It may sometimes seem that such conversations take place on a delicate platform suspended above an abyss, but the abyss is in our own vision and of our own making. Why should we even look down?

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