March 24, 2008 Issue Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
The Right Choice?
The conservative case for Barack Obama by Andrew J. Bacevich
Barack Obama is no conservative. Yet if he wins the Democratic nomination come November, principled conservatives may well find themselves voting for the senator from Illinois. Given the alternatives— and the state of the conservative movement— they could do worse. Granted, when it comes to defining exactly what authentic conservatism entails, considerable disagreement exists even (or especially) among conservatives themselves. My own definition emphasizes the following:
• a commitment to individual liberty, tempered by the conviction that genuine freedom entails more than simply an absence of restraint;
• a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the rule of law;
• veneration for our cultural inheritance combined with a sense of stewardship for Creation;
• a reluctance to discard or tamper with traditional social arrangements;
• respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on humane values;
• a deep suspicion of utopian promises, rooted in an appreciation of the sinfulness of man and the recalcitrance of history.
Accept that definition and it quickly becomes apparent that the Republican Party does not represent conservative principles. The conservative ascendancy that began with the election of Ronald Reagan has been largely an illusion. During the period since 1980, certain faux conservatives— especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire— have prospered. But conservatism as such has not. The presidency of George W. Bush illustrates the point. In 2001, President Bush took command of a massive, inefficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, he has substantially increased the size of that apparatus, which during his tenure has displayed breathtaking ineptitude both at home and abroad. Over the course of Bush’s two terms in office, federal spending has increased 50 percent to $3 trillion per year. Disregarding any obligation to balance the budget, Bush has allowed the national debt to balloon from $5.7 to $9.4 trillion. Worse, under the guise of keeping Americans “safe,” he has arrogated to the executive branch unprecedented powers, thereby subverting the Constitution.
Whatever else may be said about this record of achievement, it does not accord with conservative principles. As with every Republican leader since Reagan, President Bush has routinely expressed his support for traditional values. He portrays himself as pro-life and pro-family. He offers testimonials to old-fashioned civic virtues. Yet apart from sporting an American flag lapel-pin, he has done little to promote these values. If anything, the reverse is true. In the defining moment of his presidency, rather than summoning Americans to rally to their country, he validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship.
Should conservatives hold President Bush accountable for the nation’s cultural crisis? Of course not. The pursuit of instant gratification, the compulsion to accumulate, and the exaltation of celebrity that have become central to the American way of life predate this administration and derive from forces that lie far beyond the control of any president. Yet conservatives should fault the president and his party for pretending that they are seriously committed to curbing or reversing such tendencies. They might also blame themselves for failing to see the GOP’s cultural agenda as contrived and cynical.
Finally, there is President Bush’s misguided approach to foreign policy, based on expectations of deploying American military might to eliminate tyranny, transform the Greater Middle East, and expunge evil from the face of the earth. The result has been the very inverse of conservatism. For Bush, in the wake of 9/11, ideology supplanted statecraft. As a result, his administration has squandered American lives and treasure in the pursuit of objectives that make little strategic sense.
For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it is. Social conservatives counting on McCain to return the nation to the path of righteousness are kidding themselves. Within this camp, abortion has long been the flagship issue. Yet only a naïf would believe that today’s Republican Party has any real interest in overturning Roe v. Wade or that doing so now would contribute in any meaningful way to the restoration of “family values.” GOP support for such values is akin to the Democratic Party’s professed devotion to the “working poor”: each is a ploy to get votes, trotted out seasonally, quickly forgotten once the polls close.
Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation. The essential point is this: conservatives intent on voting in November for a candidate who shares their views might as well plan on spending Election Day at home. The Republican Party of Bush, Cheney, and McCain no longer accommodates such a candidate.
So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival. To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war. Yet the ripples from this small war will extend far into the future, with remembrance of the event likely to have greater significance than the event itself. How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation’s historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course.
The neoconservatives understand this. If history renders a negative verdict on Iraq, that judgment will discredit the doctrine of preventive war. The “freedom agenda” will command as much authority as the domino theory. Advocates of “World War IV” will be treated with the derision they deserve. The claim that open-ended “global war” offers the proper antidote to Islamic radicalism will become subject to long overdue reconsideration. Give the neocons this much: they appreciate the stakes. This explains the intensity with which they proclaim that, even with the fighting in Iraq entering its sixth year, we are now “winning” —as if war were an athletic contest in which nothing matters except the final score.
The neoconservatives brazenly ignore or minimize all that we have flung away in lives, dollars, political influence, moral standing, and lost opportunities. They have to: once acknowledged, those costs make the folly of the entire neoconservative project apparent. All those confident manifestos calling for the United States to liberate the world’s oppressed, exercise benign global hegemony, and extend forever the “unipolar moment” end up getting filed under dumb ideas. Yet history’s judgment of the Iraq War will affect matters well beyond the realm of foreign policy. As was true over 40 years ago when the issue was Vietnam, how we remember Iraq will have large political and even cultural implications.
As part of the larger global war on terrorism, Iraq has provided a pretext for expanding further the already bloated prerogatives of the presidency. To see the Iraq War as anything but misguided, unnecessary, and an abject failure is to play into the hands of the fear-mongers who insist that when it comes to national security all Americans (members of Congress included) should defer to the judgment of the executive branch. Only the president, we are told, can “keep us safe.” Seeing the war as the debacle it has become refutes that notion and provides a first step toward restoring a semblance of balance among the three branches of government. Above all, there is this: the Iraq War represents the ultimate manifestation of the American expectation that the exercise of power abroad offers a corrective to whatever ailments afflict us at home. Rather than setting our own house in order, we insist on the world accommodating itself to our requirements. The problem is not that we are profligate or self-absorbed; it is that others are obstinate and bigoted. Therefore, they must change so that our own habits will remain beyond scrutiny. Of all the obstacles to a revival of genuine conservatism, this absence of self-awareness constitutes the greatest. As long as we refuse to see ourselves as we really are, the status quo will persist, and conservative values will continue to be marginalized.
Here, too, recognition that the Iraq War has been a fool’s errand— that cheap oil, the essential lubricant of the American way of life, is gone for good— may have a salutary effect. Acknowledging failure just might open the door to self-reflection. None of these concerns number among those that inspired Barack Obama’s run for the White House. When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s habit of spouting internationalist bromides suggests little affinity for serious realism. His views are those of a conventional liberal. Nor has Obama expressed any interest in shrinking the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions. He does not cite Calvin Coolidge among his role models. And however inspiring, Obama’s speeches are unlikely to make much of a dent in the culture. The next generation will continue to take its cues from Hollywood rather than from the Oval Office. Yet if Obama does become the nation’s 44th president, his election will constitute something approaching a definitive judgment of the Iraq War. As such, his ascent to the presidency will implicitly call into question the habits and expectations that propelled the United States into that war in the first place. Matters hitherto consigned to the political margin will become subject to close examination. Here, rather than in Obama’s age or race, lies the possibility of his being a truly transformative presidency.
Whether conservatives will be able to seize the opportunities created by his ascent remains to be seen. Theirs will not be the only ideas on offer. A repudiation of the Iraq War and all that it signifies will rejuvenate the far Left as well. In the ensuing clash of visions, there is no guaranteeing that the conservative critique will prevail. But this much we can say for certain: electing John McCain guarantees the perpetuation of war. The nation’s heedless march toward empire will continue. So, too, inevitably, will its embrace of Leviathan. Whether snoozing in front of their TVs or cheering on the troops, the American people will remain oblivious to the fate that awaits them. For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.
_________________________________
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His next book, The Limits of Power, will be published in August.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Mangled rationale for bigger defense budget by Winslow Wheeler
The New York Post has re-run an argument in the Washington Times from the Heritage Foundation's James Carafano that argues we should increase the defense budget because modern defense technology - like civilian technology - brings vast performance improvements. He argues we should expect to pay more for military hardware, just as we do for civilian technology, such as entertainment electronics. It is a superficially facile argument based on misinformation that so easily passes in Washington DC as informed insight. In this case, it's a double barrel of ignorance: both on economics and technology. A commentary I wrote after this pained logic appeared in the Washington Times was today released by Defense News, just in time to address the re-run in the New York Post.
This commentary "Getting What We Pay For? Mangled Technology at Gigantic Cost" can be found at http://defensenews.va.newsmemory.com/default.php?type=&token=e88c12e66111e7ec1d5c5631645fed36&, or just below.
The Pentagon's budget is now bigger than at any point since World War II as measured in constant 2008 dollars.
Nonetheless, some want more stuffing. They want the money not for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the so-called baseline, non-war budget.
Some adopt arguments that destroy their own case. Examining them explains how the Pentagon fails to give us a war-winning, combat-ready military. James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued Feb. 21 in the Washington Times , "In Defense of Defense Spending," that "Comparing the cost of today's military to what America spent to equip and deploy GIs against the Nazis is like comparing today's home entertainment center — plasma-screen, surround-sound HDTV with PlayStation 3 and Wii — to Harry Truman's Philco Radio. Sure, to day's system costs a lot more. But look what you're getting." A typical example is the F-22 fighter. It may cost more, but it is also a superb fighter, the argument goes.
According to Wikipedia, Harry Truman's Philco radio console "ran into the $500-$800 range." Today, at Circuit City, a top-of-the-line HDTV runs about $3,800; a good surround-sound, about $1,800. The PlayStation 3 and Wii are $400 and $250 respectively.
Add a DVD player and a year of broadband TV service for $200 and $600, respectively.
That makes $7,050 for the "lot more" cost of the superb, modern home theater compared with Harry Truman's dowdy Philco console.
According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to compensate for the change in the value of the dollar from 1945 to today, the 1945 price should be multiplied by 11.9. That "$500-$800 range" for Harry Truman's Philco calculates to $6,000-$9,500 today.
In other words, if we adjust for inflation, weapons today should cost — very roughly — what they cost in 1945, at most 30 percent more. Of course, the advance in technology should bring a vast improvement in performance.
Now, let's run the price comparison for fighter aircraft. The newest thing in 1945 was the Lockheed P-80 jet, the most expensive fighter Harry Truman could buy. In 1945, the P-80 cost $110,000. Using the OMB index to convert the dollars, we get $1,309,000.
Today's F-22 is a little pricier.
The 184 F-22s the Air Force is now buying will cost $65.3 billion in contemporary dollars. That's $355 million per copy. That's not exactly in the price neighborhood of the inflation-adjusted P-80. In fact, it's in a whole different universe. It's a multiple of 273.
We should not pretend that free market inflation and technology improvement is an excuse for today's huge defense budgets. While commercial prices have barely grown in inflation-adjusted terms and brought gigantic performance improvements, military prices have grown astronomically.
A defense process so grossly inefficient that it can run up weapon costs 273 times faster than inflation reeks not of the commercial market but of socialism and bureaucracies that breed incestuously ad infinitum.
And what about performance improvements? Does the cost of the F-22, even if astronomical, really help the Air Force win? A 273fold improvement in capability is unreasonable to expect, but is it worth buying?
On the purely technical level, the F-22 can fly more than three times the speed of the P-80 and almost twice as high. It has other special characteristics (a reduced signature against some radars at some angles and long-range sensors and missiles, and more) that the P-80's creators were incapable of designing.
However, there are consequences to the gigantic price.
The F-22 force is too small. Even if the Air Force gets the additional 200 it wants, the United States will have the smallest tactical fighter inventory since World War II.
The F-22 makes our fighter force too old. When the last F-22 is bought, our shriveled fighter inventory will be — on average — older than at any previous point in history.
F-22 costs are strangling pilot training. Combat data repeatedly demonstrate that pilot skill is much more important than technical differences in fighters to determine who lives and who dies in an aerial fight. To help pay for the F-22's gigantic cost, the Air Force has shrunk its own training budget. F-22 pilots now get a totally inadequate 10 to 12 hours of air combat training per month.
Twice that amount would be barely sufficient.
But even worse, the technology in the F-22 may be more analogous to 8-track audiotapes. It depends on the efficacy of a technological road that has not proved itself in real war.
The beyond-visual-range, radar-based air war the F-22 is built to fight has not been proved effective in actual combat involving more than a very few aircraft. Moreover, some serious experts, including the designers of the highly successful F-15, F-16 and A-10, argue that the F-22 is a huge performance disappointment.
The thinking behind the F-22 gives us massive problems and a bloated budget. Spending more will only make things worse. We need to demand a less bloated budget, and more importantly, radically new thinking about how it all goes together. ■
By Winslow Wheeler , director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, Washington, and the co-author of "Military Reform."
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
301 791-2397
winslowwheeler@msn.com
This commentary "Getting What We Pay For? Mangled Technology at Gigantic Cost" can be found at http://defensenews.va.newsmemory.com/default.php?type=&token=e88c12e66111e7ec1d5c5631645fed36&, or just below.
The Pentagon's budget is now bigger than at any point since World War II as measured in constant 2008 dollars.
Nonetheless, some want more stuffing. They want the money not for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the so-called baseline, non-war budget.
Some adopt arguments that destroy their own case. Examining them explains how the Pentagon fails to give us a war-winning, combat-ready military. James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued Feb. 21 in the Washington Times , "In Defense of Defense Spending," that "Comparing the cost of today's military to what America spent to equip and deploy GIs against the Nazis is like comparing today's home entertainment center — plasma-screen, surround-sound HDTV with PlayStation 3 and Wii — to Harry Truman's Philco Radio. Sure, to day's system costs a lot more. But look what you're getting." A typical example is the F-22 fighter. It may cost more, but it is also a superb fighter, the argument goes.
According to Wikipedia, Harry Truman's Philco radio console "ran into the $500-$800 range." Today, at Circuit City, a top-of-the-line HDTV runs about $3,800; a good surround-sound, about $1,800. The PlayStation 3 and Wii are $400 and $250 respectively.
Add a DVD player and a year of broadband TV service for $200 and $600, respectively.
That makes $7,050 for the "lot more" cost of the superb, modern home theater compared with Harry Truman's dowdy Philco console.
According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to compensate for the change in the value of the dollar from 1945 to today, the 1945 price should be multiplied by 11.9. That "$500-$800 range" for Harry Truman's Philco calculates to $6,000-$9,500 today.
In other words, if we adjust for inflation, weapons today should cost — very roughly — what they cost in 1945, at most 30 percent more. Of course, the advance in technology should bring a vast improvement in performance.
Now, let's run the price comparison for fighter aircraft. The newest thing in 1945 was the Lockheed P-80 jet, the most expensive fighter Harry Truman could buy. In 1945, the P-80 cost $110,000. Using the OMB index to convert the dollars, we get $1,309,000.
Today's F-22 is a little pricier.
The 184 F-22s the Air Force is now buying will cost $65.3 billion in contemporary dollars. That's $355 million per copy. That's not exactly in the price neighborhood of the inflation-adjusted P-80. In fact, it's in a whole different universe. It's a multiple of 273.
We should not pretend that free market inflation and technology improvement is an excuse for today's huge defense budgets. While commercial prices have barely grown in inflation-adjusted terms and brought gigantic performance improvements, military prices have grown astronomically.
A defense process so grossly inefficient that it can run up weapon costs 273 times faster than inflation reeks not of the commercial market but of socialism and bureaucracies that breed incestuously ad infinitum.
And what about performance improvements? Does the cost of the F-22, even if astronomical, really help the Air Force win? A 273fold improvement in capability is unreasonable to expect, but is it worth buying?
On the purely technical level, the F-22 can fly more than three times the speed of the P-80 and almost twice as high. It has other special characteristics (a reduced signature against some radars at some angles and long-range sensors and missiles, and more) that the P-80's creators were incapable of designing.
However, there are consequences to the gigantic price.
The F-22 force is too small. Even if the Air Force gets the additional 200 it wants, the United States will have the smallest tactical fighter inventory since World War II.
The F-22 makes our fighter force too old. When the last F-22 is bought, our shriveled fighter inventory will be — on average — older than at any previous point in history.
F-22 costs are strangling pilot training. Combat data repeatedly demonstrate that pilot skill is much more important than technical differences in fighters to determine who lives and who dies in an aerial fight. To help pay for the F-22's gigantic cost, the Air Force has shrunk its own training budget. F-22 pilots now get a totally inadequate 10 to 12 hours of air combat training per month.
Twice that amount would be barely sufficient.
But even worse, the technology in the F-22 may be more analogous to 8-track audiotapes. It depends on the efficacy of a technological road that has not proved itself in real war.
The beyond-visual-range, radar-based air war the F-22 is built to fight has not been proved effective in actual combat involving more than a very few aircraft. Moreover, some serious experts, including the designers of the highly successful F-15, F-16 and A-10, argue that the F-22 is a huge performance disappointment.
The thinking behind the F-22 gives us massive problems and a bloated budget. Spending more will only make things worse. We need to demand a less bloated budget, and more importantly, radically new thinking about how it all goes together. ■
By Winslow Wheeler , director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, Washington, and the co-author of "Military Reform."
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
301 791-2397
winslowwheeler@msn.com
Russia challenges US in the Islamic world by M K Bhadrakumar
Russia chalenges US in the Islamic world
For the second year in a row, Russia this month attended the annual summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference as an observer. This signals Moscow's active extension of its involvement in the Middle East by directly challenging the US's traditional dominance of the region. The "peace dividend" of this growing friendship with the Islamic world also translates into hard dollars - from mega projects in Egypt and Saudi Arabia - under the US's nose - to renewed oil interests in Iraq. - M K Bhadrakumar (Mar 28, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JC29Ag01.html
For the second year in a row, Russia this month attended the annual summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference as an observer. This signals Moscow's active extension of its involvement in the Middle East by directly challenging the US's traditional dominance of the region. The "peace dividend" of this growing friendship with the Islamic world also translates into hard dollars - from mega projects in Egypt and Saudi Arabia - under the US's nose - to renewed oil interests in Iraq. - M K Bhadrakumar (Mar 28, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JC29Ag01.html
Sunday, March 30, 2008
U.N. Taps American Jewish Critic of Israel as Rights Expert
http://www.forward.com/articles/13037
U.N. Taps American Jewish Critic of Israel as Rights Expert
By Marc Perelman
Thu. Mar 27, 2008
As if relations between Israel and the United Nations had not deteriorated enough, a new cause for strain arose this week when a prominent American Jewish law professor, who accuses Israel of genocidal policies in the Palestinian territories, was named by the world body's top human rights entity to monitor the situation in the Palestinian territories.
Richard Falk, an emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, was appointed on March 26 by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council to become the next special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. He will replace South Africa's John Dugard, a staunch critic of Israel whose six-year term is about to end. On the same day, the council elected another departing special rapporteur — and nemesis of the Israeli government — Switzerland's Jean Ziegler, to an advisory position.
Pro-Israel advocates have for years criticized the human rights apparatus of the U.N. for its perceived anti-Israel bias, and the latest nominations are likely to fuel their disenchantment with the U.N.'s recent vows to become more even-handed. That effort appeared to take a step forward with the creation in 2006 of the Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, but the new appointments are seen as a step in the other direction.
"Unfortunately it seems that right now, the council is not missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity," said Sybil Kessler, director of U.N. affairs for B'nai B'rith International. "Change on the margins feels ever more challenging when member states select and promote experts with obviously biased views toward Israel…. The struggle for change has just gotten that much harder, I am sad to say."
Falk's appointment was reached by a consensus of the Human Rights Council's 47 members, despite efforts by Jewish groups to have Canada and the European Union publicly oppose his nomination. The E.U. remained silent, and Canada did not block the consensus, choosing instead to issue a statement dissociating itself from the choice. The United States, which is not a member of the council, also took the floor to criticize Falk's published writings.
The terms of Falk's position, which was created in 1993, are to investigate "Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law" while excluding Palestinian actions. No such mandate exists to examine Palestinian violations.
Falk, who is also a visiting professor at the University of California, has an extensive written record on the Israel-Palestinian issue, most of it critical of Jerusalem's policies over the past 40 years. A recent article that has particularly irked his pro-Israeli critics is titled "Slouching Towards a Palestinian Holocaust."
In it, Falk writes that "it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as 'holocaust.'"
After describing the Nazi horrors, he asked: "Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty."
The Human Rights Council overwhelmingly elected Ziegler, a Swiss socialist and university professor, to its 18-member advisory committee. He garnered 40 out of 47 votes. As the U.N. expert on the right to food for the past seven years, Ziegler was a fierce critic of Israel and the United States, prompting several Jewish groups to call for his resignation.
U.N. Taps American Jewish Critic of Israel as Rights Expert
By Marc Perelman
Thu. Mar 27, 2008
As if relations between Israel and the United Nations had not deteriorated enough, a new cause for strain arose this week when a prominent American Jewish law professor, who accuses Israel of genocidal policies in the Palestinian territories, was named by the world body's top human rights entity to monitor the situation in the Palestinian territories.
Richard Falk, an emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, was appointed on March 26 by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council to become the next special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. He will replace South Africa's John Dugard, a staunch critic of Israel whose six-year term is about to end. On the same day, the council elected another departing special rapporteur — and nemesis of the Israeli government — Switzerland's Jean Ziegler, to an advisory position.
Pro-Israel advocates have for years criticized the human rights apparatus of the U.N. for its perceived anti-Israel bias, and the latest nominations are likely to fuel their disenchantment with the U.N.'s recent vows to become more even-handed. That effort appeared to take a step forward with the creation in 2006 of the Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, but the new appointments are seen as a step in the other direction.
"Unfortunately it seems that right now, the council is not missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity," said Sybil Kessler, director of U.N. affairs for B'nai B'rith International. "Change on the margins feels ever more challenging when member states select and promote experts with obviously biased views toward Israel…. The struggle for change has just gotten that much harder, I am sad to say."
Falk's appointment was reached by a consensus of the Human Rights Council's 47 members, despite efforts by Jewish groups to have Canada and the European Union publicly oppose his nomination. The E.U. remained silent, and Canada did not block the consensus, choosing instead to issue a statement dissociating itself from the choice. The United States, which is not a member of the council, also took the floor to criticize Falk's published writings.
The terms of Falk's position, which was created in 1993, are to investigate "Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law" while excluding Palestinian actions. No such mandate exists to examine Palestinian violations.
Falk, who is also a visiting professor at the University of California, has an extensive written record on the Israel-Palestinian issue, most of it critical of Jerusalem's policies over the past 40 years. A recent article that has particularly irked his pro-Israeli critics is titled "Slouching Towards a Palestinian Holocaust."
In it, Falk writes that "it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as 'holocaust.'"
After describing the Nazi horrors, he asked: "Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty."
The Human Rights Council overwhelmingly elected Ziegler, a Swiss socialist and university professor, to its 18-member advisory committee. He garnered 40 out of 47 votes. As the U.N. expert on the right to food for the past seven years, Ziegler was a fierce critic of Israel and the United States, prompting several Jewish groups to call for his resignation.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Right Choice? The Conservative case for Barack Obama by Andrew Bacevich
The American Conservative
The Right Choice?
The conservative case for Barack Obama
by Andrew J. Bacevich
Barack Obama is no conservative. Yet if he wins the Democratic nomination, come November principled conservatives may well find themselves voting for the senator from Illinois. Given the alternatives—and the state of the conservative movement—they could do worse.
Granted, when it comes to defining exactly what authentic conservatism entails, considerable disagreement exists even (or especially) among conservatives themselves. My own definition emphasizes the following:
* a commitment to individual liberty, tempered by the conviction that genuine freedom entails more than simply an absence of restraint;
* a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the rule of law;
* veneration for our cultural inheritance combined with a sense of stewardship for Creation;
* a reluctance to discard or tamper with traditional social arrangements;
* respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on humane values;
* a deep suspicion of utopian promises, rooted in an appreciation of the sinfulness of man and the recalcitrance of history.
Accept that definition and it quickly becomes apparent that the Republican Party does not represent conservative principles. The conservative ascendancy that began with the election of Ronald Reagan has been largely an illusion. During the period since 1980, certain faux conservatives—especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire—have prospered. But conservatism as such has not.
The presidency of George W. Bush illustrates the point. In 2001, President Bush took command of a massive, inefficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, he has substantially increased the size of that apparatus, which during his tenure has displayed breathtaking ineptitude both at home and abroad. Over the course of Bush’s two terms in office, federal spending has increased 50 percent to $3 trillion per year. Disregarding any obligation to balance the budget, Bush has allowed the national debt to balloon from $5.7 to $9.4 trillion. Worse, under the guise of keeping Americans “safe,” he has arrogated to the executive branch unprecedented powers, thereby subverting the Constitution. Whatever else may be said about this record of achievement, it does not accord with conservative principles.
As with every Republican leader since Reagan, President Bush has routinely expressed his support for traditional values. He portrays himself as pro-life and pro-family. He offers testimonials to old-fashioned civic virtues. Yet apart from sporting an American flag lapel-pin, he has done little to promote these values. If anything, the reverse is true. In the defining moment of his presidency, rather than summoning Americans to rally to their country, he validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship.
Should conservatives hold President Bush accountable for the nation’s cultural crisis? Of course not. The pursuit of instant gratification, the compulsion to accumulate, and the exaltation of celebrity that have become central to the American way of life predate this administration and derive from forces that lie far beyond the control of any president. Yet conservatives should fault the president and his party for pretending that they are seriously committed to curbing or reversing such tendencies. They might also blame themselves for failing to see the GOP’s cultural agenda as contrived and cynical.
Finally, there is President Bush’s misguided approach to foreign policy, based on expectations of deploying American military might to eliminate tyranny, transform the Greater Middle East, and expunge evil from the face of the earth. The result has been the very inverse of conservatism. For Bush, in the wake of 9/11, ideology supplanted statecraft. As a result, his administration has squandered American lives and treasure in the pursuit of objectives that make little strategic sense.
For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it is.
Social conservatives counting on McCain to return the nation to the path of righteousness are kidding themselves. Within this camp, abortion has long been the flagship issue. Yet only a naïf would believe that today’s Republican Party has any real interest in overturning Roe v. Wade or that doing so now would contribute in any meaningful way to the restoration of “family values.” GOP support for such values is akin to the Democratic Party’s professed devotion to the “working poor”: each is a ploy to get votes, trotted out seasonally, quickly forgotten once the polls close.
Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation.
The essential point is this: conservatives intent on voting in November for a candidate who shares their views might as well plan on spending Election Day at home. The Republican Party of Bush, Cheney, and McCain no longer accommodates such a candidate.
So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival.
To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war. Yet the ripples from this small war will extend far into the future, with remembrance of the event likely to have greater significance than the event itself. How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation’s historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course.
The neoconservatives understand this. If history renders a negative verdict on Iraq, that judgment will discredit the doctrine of preventive war. The “freedom agenda” will command as much authority as the domino theory. Advocates of “World War IV” will be treated with the derision they deserve. The claim that open-ended “global war” offers the proper antidote to Islamic radicalism will become subject to long overdue reconsideration.
Give the neocons this much: they appreciate the stakes. This explains the intensity with which they proclaim that, even with the fighting in Iraq entering its sixth year, we are now “winning”—as if war were an athletic contest in which nothing matters except the final score. The neoconservatives brazenly ignore or minimize all that we have flung away in lives, dollars, political influence, moral standing, and lost opportunities. They have to: once acknowledged, those costs make the folly of the entire neoconservative project apparent. All those confident manifestos calling for the United States to liberate the world’s oppressed, exercise benign global hegemony, and extend forever the “unipolar moment” end up getting filed under dumb ideas.
Yet history’s judgment of the Iraq War will affect matters well beyond the realm of foreign policy. As was true over 40 years ago when the issue was Vietnam, how we remember Iraq will have large political and even cultural implications.
As part of the larger global war on terrorism, Iraq has provided a pretext for expanding further the already bloated prerogatives of the presidency. To see the Iraq War as anything but misguided, unnecessary, and an abject failure is to play into the hands of the fear-mongers who insist that when it comes to national security all Americans (members of Congress included) should defer to the judgment of the executive branch. Only the president, we are told, can “keep us safe.” Seeing the war as the debacle it has become refutes that notion and provides a first step toward restoring a semblance of balance among the three branches of government.
Above all, there is this: the Iraq War represents the ultimate manifestation of the American expectation that the exercise of power abroad offers a corrective to whatever ailments afflict us at home. Rather than setting our own house in order, we insist on the world accommodating itself to our requirements. The problem is not that we are profligate or self-absorbed; it is that others are obstinate and bigoted. Therefore, they must change so that our own habits will remain beyond scrutiny.
Of all the obstacles to a revival of genuine conservatism, this absence of self-awareness constitutes the greatest. As long as we refuse to see ourselves as we really are, the status quo will persist, and conservative values will continue to be marginalized. Here, too, recognition that the Iraq War has been a fool’s errand—that cheap oil, the essential lubricant of the American way of life, is gone for good—may have a salutary effect. Acknowledging failure just might open the door to self-reflection.
None of these concerns number among those that inspired Barack Obama’s run for the White House. When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s habit of spouting internationalist bromides suggests little affinity for serious realism. His views are those of a conventional liberal. Nor has Obama expressed any interest in shrinking the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions. He does not cite Calvin Coolidge among his role models. And however inspiring, Obama’s speeches are unlikely to make much of a dent in the culture. The next generation will continue to take its cues from Hollywood rather than from the Oval Office.
Yet if Obama does become the nation’s 44th president, his election will constitute something approaching a definitive judgment of the Iraq War. As such, his ascent to the presidency will implicitly call into question the habits and expectations that propelled the United States into that war in the first place. Matters hitherto consigned to the political margin will become subject to close examination. Here, rather than in Obama’s age or race, lies the possibility of his being a truly transformative presidency.
Whether conservatives will be able to seize the opportunities created by his ascent remains to be seen. Theirs will not be the only ideas on offer. A repudiation of the Iraq War and all that it signifies will rejuvenate the far Left as well. In the ensuing clash of visions, there is no guaranteeing that the conservative critique will prevail.
But this much we can say for certain: electing John McCain guarantees the perpetuation of war. The nation’s heedless march toward empire will continue. So, too, inevitably, will its embrace of Leviathan. Whether snoozing in front of their TVs or cheering on the troops, the American people will remain oblivious to the fate that awaits them.
For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.
_________________________________
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His next book, The Limits of Power, will be published in August.
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_24/article.html
The Right Choice?
The conservative case for Barack Obama
by Andrew J. Bacevich
Barack Obama is no conservative. Yet if he wins the Democratic nomination, come November principled conservatives may well find themselves voting for the senator from Illinois. Given the alternatives—and the state of the conservative movement—they could do worse.
Granted, when it comes to defining exactly what authentic conservatism entails, considerable disagreement exists even (or especially) among conservatives themselves. My own definition emphasizes the following:
* a commitment to individual liberty, tempered by the conviction that genuine freedom entails more than simply an absence of restraint;
* a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the rule of law;
* veneration for our cultural inheritance combined with a sense of stewardship for Creation;
* a reluctance to discard or tamper with traditional social arrangements;
* respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on humane values;
* a deep suspicion of utopian promises, rooted in an appreciation of the sinfulness of man and the recalcitrance of history.
Accept that definition and it quickly becomes apparent that the Republican Party does not represent conservative principles. The conservative ascendancy that began with the election of Ronald Reagan has been largely an illusion. During the period since 1980, certain faux conservatives—especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire—have prospered. But conservatism as such has not.
The presidency of George W. Bush illustrates the point. In 2001, President Bush took command of a massive, inefficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, he has substantially increased the size of that apparatus, which during his tenure has displayed breathtaking ineptitude both at home and abroad. Over the course of Bush’s two terms in office, federal spending has increased 50 percent to $3 trillion per year. Disregarding any obligation to balance the budget, Bush has allowed the national debt to balloon from $5.7 to $9.4 trillion. Worse, under the guise of keeping Americans “safe,” he has arrogated to the executive branch unprecedented powers, thereby subverting the Constitution. Whatever else may be said about this record of achievement, it does not accord with conservative principles.
As with every Republican leader since Reagan, President Bush has routinely expressed his support for traditional values. He portrays himself as pro-life and pro-family. He offers testimonials to old-fashioned civic virtues. Yet apart from sporting an American flag lapel-pin, he has done little to promote these values. If anything, the reverse is true. In the defining moment of his presidency, rather than summoning Americans to rally to their country, he validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship.
Should conservatives hold President Bush accountable for the nation’s cultural crisis? Of course not. The pursuit of instant gratification, the compulsion to accumulate, and the exaltation of celebrity that have become central to the American way of life predate this administration and derive from forces that lie far beyond the control of any president. Yet conservatives should fault the president and his party for pretending that they are seriously committed to curbing or reversing such tendencies. They might also blame themselves for failing to see the GOP’s cultural agenda as contrived and cynical.
Finally, there is President Bush’s misguided approach to foreign policy, based on expectations of deploying American military might to eliminate tyranny, transform the Greater Middle East, and expunge evil from the face of the earth. The result has been the very inverse of conservatism. For Bush, in the wake of 9/11, ideology supplanted statecraft. As a result, his administration has squandered American lives and treasure in the pursuit of objectives that make little strategic sense.
For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it is.
Social conservatives counting on McCain to return the nation to the path of righteousness are kidding themselves. Within this camp, abortion has long been the flagship issue. Yet only a naïf would believe that today’s Republican Party has any real interest in overturning Roe v. Wade or that doing so now would contribute in any meaningful way to the restoration of “family values.” GOP support for such values is akin to the Democratic Party’s professed devotion to the “working poor”: each is a ploy to get votes, trotted out seasonally, quickly forgotten once the polls close.
Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation.
The essential point is this: conservatives intent on voting in November for a candidate who shares their views might as well plan on spending Election Day at home. The Republican Party of Bush, Cheney, and McCain no longer accommodates such a candidate.
So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival.
To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war. Yet the ripples from this small war will extend far into the future, with remembrance of the event likely to have greater significance than the event itself. How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation’s historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course.
The neoconservatives understand this. If history renders a negative verdict on Iraq, that judgment will discredit the doctrine of preventive war. The “freedom agenda” will command as much authority as the domino theory. Advocates of “World War IV” will be treated with the derision they deserve. The claim that open-ended “global war” offers the proper antidote to Islamic radicalism will become subject to long overdue reconsideration.
Give the neocons this much: they appreciate the stakes. This explains the intensity with which they proclaim that, even with the fighting in Iraq entering its sixth year, we are now “winning”—as if war were an athletic contest in which nothing matters except the final score. The neoconservatives brazenly ignore or minimize all that we have flung away in lives, dollars, political influence, moral standing, and lost opportunities. They have to: once acknowledged, those costs make the folly of the entire neoconservative project apparent. All those confident manifestos calling for the United States to liberate the world’s oppressed, exercise benign global hegemony, and extend forever the “unipolar moment” end up getting filed under dumb ideas.
Yet history’s judgment of the Iraq War will affect matters well beyond the realm of foreign policy. As was true over 40 years ago when the issue was Vietnam, how we remember Iraq will have large political and even cultural implications.
As part of the larger global war on terrorism, Iraq has provided a pretext for expanding further the already bloated prerogatives of the presidency. To see the Iraq War as anything but misguided, unnecessary, and an abject failure is to play into the hands of the fear-mongers who insist that when it comes to national security all Americans (members of Congress included) should defer to the judgment of the executive branch. Only the president, we are told, can “keep us safe.” Seeing the war as the debacle it has become refutes that notion and provides a first step toward restoring a semblance of balance among the three branches of government.
Above all, there is this: the Iraq War represents the ultimate manifestation of the American expectation that the exercise of power abroad offers a corrective to whatever ailments afflict us at home. Rather than setting our own house in order, we insist on the world accommodating itself to our requirements. The problem is not that we are profligate or self-absorbed; it is that others are obstinate and bigoted. Therefore, they must change so that our own habits will remain beyond scrutiny.
Of all the obstacles to a revival of genuine conservatism, this absence of self-awareness constitutes the greatest. As long as we refuse to see ourselves as we really are, the status quo will persist, and conservative values will continue to be marginalized. Here, too, recognition that the Iraq War has been a fool’s errand—that cheap oil, the essential lubricant of the American way of life, is gone for good—may have a salutary effect. Acknowledging failure just might open the door to self-reflection.
None of these concerns number among those that inspired Barack Obama’s run for the White House. When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s habit of spouting internationalist bromides suggests little affinity for serious realism. His views are those of a conventional liberal. Nor has Obama expressed any interest in shrinking the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions. He does not cite Calvin Coolidge among his role models. And however inspiring, Obama’s speeches are unlikely to make much of a dent in the culture. The next generation will continue to take its cues from Hollywood rather than from the Oval Office.
Yet if Obama does become the nation’s 44th president, his election will constitute something approaching a definitive judgment of the Iraq War. As such, his ascent to the presidency will implicitly call into question the habits and expectations that propelled the United States into that war in the first place. Matters hitherto consigned to the political margin will become subject to close examination. Here, rather than in Obama’s age or race, lies the possibility of his being a truly transformative presidency.
Whether conservatives will be able to seize the opportunities created by his ascent remains to be seen. Theirs will not be the only ideas on offer. A repudiation of the Iraq War and all that it signifies will rejuvenate the far Left as well. In the ensuing clash of visions, there is no guaranteeing that the conservative critique will prevail.
But this much we can say for certain: electing John McCain guarantees the perpetuation of war. The nation’s heedless march toward empire will continue. So, too, inevitably, will its embrace of Leviathan. Whether snoozing in front of their TVs or cheering on the troops, the American people will remain oblivious to the fate that awaits them.
For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.
_________________________________
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His next book, The Limits of Power, will be published in August.
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_24/article.html
How to End the War by Zbigniew Brzezinski
A preview of a sage article by Dr Brzezinski on Iraq to appear in this Sunday's WP
washingtonpost.com
How to End the War
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Sunday, March 30, 2008; B03
Both Democratic presidential candidates agree that the United States should end its combat mission in Iraq within 12 to 16 months of their inauguration. The Republican candidate has spoken of continuing the war, even for a hundred years, until "victory." The core issue of this campaign is thus a basic disagreement over the merits of the war and the benefits and costs of continuing it.
The case for U.S. disengagement from combat is compelling in its own right. But it must be matched by a comprehensive political and diplomatic effort to mitigate the destabilizing regional consequences of a war that the outgoing Bush administration started deliberately, justified demagogically and waged badly. (I write, of course, as a Democrat; while I prefer Sen. Barack Obama, I speak here for myself.)
The contrast between the Democratic argument for ending the war and the Republican argument for continuing is sharp and dramatic. The case for terminating the war is based on its prohibitive and tangible costs, while the case for "staying the course" draws heavily on shadowy fears of the unknown and relies on worst-case scenarios. President Bush's and Sen. John McCain's forecasts of regional catastrophe are quite reminiscent of the predictions of "falling dominoes" that were used to justify continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Neither has provided any real evidence that ending the war would mean disaster, but their fear-mongering makes prolonging it easier.
Nonetheless, if the American people had been asked more than five years ago whether Bush's obsessions with the removal of Saddam Hussein were worth 4,000 American lives, almost 30,000 wounded Americans and several trillion dollars -- not to mention the less precisely measurable damage to the United States' world-wide credibility, legitimacy and moral standing -- the answer would have been an unequivocal "no."
Nor do the costs of this fiasco end there. The war has inflamed anti-American passions in the Middle East and South Asia while fragmenting Iraqi society and increasing the influence of Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Baghdad offers ample testimony that even the U.S.-installed government in Iraq is becoming susceptible to Iranian blandishments.
In brief, the war has become a national tragedy, an economic catastrophe, a regional disaster and a global boomerang for the United States. Ending the war is thus in the highest national interest.
Terminating U.S. combat operations will take more than a military decision. It will require arrangements with Iraqi leaders for a continued, residual U.S. capacity to provide emergency assistance in the event of an external threat (e.g., from Iran); it will also mean finding ways to provide continued U.S. support for the Iraqi armed forces as they cope with the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The decision to militarily disengage will also have to be accompanied by political and regional initiatives designed to guard against potential risks. We should fully discuss our decisions with Iraqi leaders, including those not residing in Baghdad's Green Zone, and we should hold talks on regional stability with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran.
Contrary to Republican claims that our departure will mean calamity, a sensibly conducted disengagement will actually make Iraq more stable over the long term. The impasse in Shiite-Sunni relations is in large part the sour byproduct of the destructive U.S. occupation, which breeds Iraqi dependency even as it shatters Iraqi society. In this context, so highly reminiscent of the British colonial era, the longer we stay in Iraq, the less incentive various contending groups will have to compromise and the more reason simply to sit back. A serious dialogue with the Iraqi leaders about the forthcoming U.S. disengagement would shake them out of their stupor.
Terminating the U.S. war effort entails some risks, of course, but they are inescapable at this late date. Parts of Iraq are already self-governing, including Kurdistan, part of the Shiite south and some tribal areas in the Sunni center. U.S. military disengagement will accelerate Iraqi competition to more effectively control their territory, which may produce a phase of intensified inter-Iraqi conflicts. But that hazard is the unavoidable consequence of the prolonged U.S. occupation. The longer it lasts, the more difficult will it be for a viable Iraqi state ever to reemerge.
It is also important to recognize that most of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq has not been inspired by al-Qaeda. Locally based jihadist groups have gained strength only insofar as they have been able to identify themselves with the fight against a hated foreign occupier. As the occupation winds down and Iraqis take responsibility for internal security, al-Qaeda in Iraq will be left more isolated and less able to sustain itself. The end of the occupation will thus be a boon for the war on al-Qaeda, bringing to an end a misguided adventure that not only precipitated the appearance of al-Qaeda in Iraq but also diverted the United States from Afghanistan, where the original al-Qaeda threat grew and still persists.
Ending the U.S. military effort would also smooth the way for a broad U.S. initiative addressed to all of Iraq's neighbors. Some will remain reluctant to engage in any discussion as long as Washington appears determined to maintain indefinitely its occupation of Iraq. Therefore, at some stage in 2009, after the decision to disengage has been announced, a regional conference should be convened to promote regional stability, border control and other security arrangements, as well as regional economic development -- all of which would help mitigate the unavoidable risks connected with U.S. disengagement.
Since Iraq's neighbors are vulnerable to intensified ethnic and religious conflicts spilling over from Iraq, all of them -- albeit for different reasons -- are likely to be interested. More distant Arab states such as Egypt, Morocco or Algeria might also take part, and some of them might be willing to provide peacekeeping forces to Iraq once it is free of foreign occupation. In addition, we should consider a regional rehabilitation program designed to help Iraq recover and to relieve the burdens that Jordan and Syria, in particular, have shouldered by hosting more than 2 million Iraqi refugees.
The overall goal of a comprehensive U.S. strategy to undo the errors of recent years should be cooling down the Middle East, instead of heating it up. The "unipolar moment" that the Bush administration's zealots touted after the collapse of the Soviet Union has been squandered to generate a policy based on the unilateral use of force, military threats and occupation masquerading as democratization -- all of which pointlessly heated up tensions, fueled anti-colonial resentments and bred religious fanaticism. The long-range stability of the Middle East has been placed in increasing jeopardy.
Terminating the war in Iraq is the necessary first step to calming the Middle East, but other measures will be needed. It is in the U.S. interest to engage Iran in serious negotiations -- on both regional security and the nuclear challenge it poses. But such negotiations are unlikely as long as Washington's price of participation is unreciprocated concessions from Tehran. Threats to use force on Iran are also counterproductive since they tend to fuse Iranian nationalism with religious fanaticism.
Real progress in the badly stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process would also help soothe the region's religious and nationalist passions. But for such progress to take place, the United States must vigorously help the two sides start making the mutual concessions without which an historic compromise cannot be achieved. Peace between Israel and Palestine would be a giant step toward greater regional stability, and it would finally let both Israelis and Palestinians benefit from the Middle East's growing wealth.
We started this war rashly, but we must end our involvement responsibly. And end it we must. The alternative is a fear-driven policy paralysis that perpetuates the war -- to America's historic detriment.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. His most recent book is "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032702405_pf.html
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
How to End the War
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Sunday, March 30, 2008; B03
Both Democratic presidential candidates agree that the United States should end its combat mission in Iraq within 12 to 16 months of their inauguration. The Republican candidate has spoken of continuing the war, even for a hundred years, until "victory." The core issue of this campaign is thus a basic disagreement over the merits of the war and the benefits and costs of continuing it.
The case for U.S. disengagement from combat is compelling in its own right. But it must be matched by a comprehensive political and diplomatic effort to mitigate the destabilizing regional consequences of a war that the outgoing Bush administration started deliberately, justified demagogically and waged badly. (I write, of course, as a Democrat; while I prefer Sen. Barack Obama, I speak here for myself.)
The contrast between the Democratic argument for ending the war and the Republican argument for continuing is sharp and dramatic. The case for terminating the war is based on its prohibitive and tangible costs, while the case for "staying the course" draws heavily on shadowy fears of the unknown and relies on worst-case scenarios. President Bush's and Sen. John McCain's forecasts of regional catastrophe are quite reminiscent of the predictions of "falling dominoes" that were used to justify continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Neither has provided any real evidence that ending the war would mean disaster, but their fear-mongering makes prolonging it easier.
Nonetheless, if the American people had been asked more than five years ago whether Bush's obsessions with the removal of Saddam Hussein were worth 4,000 American lives, almost 30,000 wounded Americans and several trillion dollars -- not to mention the less precisely measurable damage to the United States' world-wide credibility, legitimacy and moral standing -- the answer would have been an unequivocal "no."
Nor do the costs of this fiasco end there. The war has inflamed anti-American passions in the Middle East and South Asia while fragmenting Iraqi society and increasing the influence of Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Baghdad offers ample testimony that even the U.S.-installed government in Iraq is becoming susceptible to Iranian blandishments.
In brief, the war has become a national tragedy, an economic catastrophe, a regional disaster and a global boomerang for the United States. Ending the war is thus in the highest national interest.
Terminating U.S. combat operations will take more than a military decision. It will require arrangements with Iraqi leaders for a continued, residual U.S. capacity to provide emergency assistance in the event of an external threat (e.g., from Iran); it will also mean finding ways to provide continued U.S. support for the Iraqi armed forces as they cope with the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The decision to militarily disengage will also have to be accompanied by political and regional initiatives designed to guard against potential risks. We should fully discuss our decisions with Iraqi leaders, including those not residing in Baghdad's Green Zone, and we should hold talks on regional stability with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran.
Contrary to Republican claims that our departure will mean calamity, a sensibly conducted disengagement will actually make Iraq more stable over the long term. The impasse in Shiite-Sunni relations is in large part the sour byproduct of the destructive U.S. occupation, which breeds Iraqi dependency even as it shatters Iraqi society. In this context, so highly reminiscent of the British colonial era, the longer we stay in Iraq, the less incentive various contending groups will have to compromise and the more reason simply to sit back. A serious dialogue with the Iraqi leaders about the forthcoming U.S. disengagement would shake them out of their stupor.
Terminating the U.S. war effort entails some risks, of course, but they are inescapable at this late date. Parts of Iraq are already self-governing, including Kurdistan, part of the Shiite south and some tribal areas in the Sunni center. U.S. military disengagement will accelerate Iraqi competition to more effectively control their territory, which may produce a phase of intensified inter-Iraqi conflicts. But that hazard is the unavoidable consequence of the prolonged U.S. occupation. The longer it lasts, the more difficult will it be for a viable Iraqi state ever to reemerge.
It is also important to recognize that most of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq has not been inspired by al-Qaeda. Locally based jihadist groups have gained strength only insofar as they have been able to identify themselves with the fight against a hated foreign occupier. As the occupation winds down and Iraqis take responsibility for internal security, al-Qaeda in Iraq will be left more isolated and less able to sustain itself. The end of the occupation will thus be a boon for the war on al-Qaeda, bringing to an end a misguided adventure that not only precipitated the appearance of al-Qaeda in Iraq but also diverted the United States from Afghanistan, where the original al-Qaeda threat grew and still persists.
Ending the U.S. military effort would also smooth the way for a broad U.S. initiative addressed to all of Iraq's neighbors. Some will remain reluctant to engage in any discussion as long as Washington appears determined to maintain indefinitely its occupation of Iraq. Therefore, at some stage in 2009, after the decision to disengage has been announced, a regional conference should be convened to promote regional stability, border control and other security arrangements, as well as regional economic development -- all of which would help mitigate the unavoidable risks connected with U.S. disengagement.
Since Iraq's neighbors are vulnerable to intensified ethnic and religious conflicts spilling over from Iraq, all of them -- albeit for different reasons -- are likely to be interested. More distant Arab states such as Egypt, Morocco or Algeria might also take part, and some of them might be willing to provide peacekeeping forces to Iraq once it is free of foreign occupation. In addition, we should consider a regional rehabilitation program designed to help Iraq recover and to relieve the burdens that Jordan and Syria, in particular, have shouldered by hosting more than 2 million Iraqi refugees.
The overall goal of a comprehensive U.S. strategy to undo the errors of recent years should be cooling down the Middle East, instead of heating it up. The "unipolar moment" that the Bush administration's zealots touted after the collapse of the Soviet Union has been squandered to generate a policy based on the unilateral use of force, military threats and occupation masquerading as democratization -- all of which pointlessly heated up tensions, fueled anti-colonial resentments and bred religious fanaticism. The long-range stability of the Middle East has been placed in increasing jeopardy.
Terminating the war in Iraq is the necessary first step to calming the Middle East, but other measures will be needed. It is in the U.S. interest to engage Iran in serious negotiations -- on both regional security and the nuclear challenge it poses. But such negotiations are unlikely as long as Washington's price of participation is unreciprocated concessions from Tehran. Threats to use force on Iran are also counterproductive since they tend to fuse Iranian nationalism with religious fanaticism.
Real progress in the badly stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process would also help soothe the region's religious and nationalist passions. But for such progress to take place, the United States must vigorously help the two sides start making the mutual concessions without which an historic compromise cannot be achieved. Peace between Israel and Palestine would be a giant step toward greater regional stability, and it would finally let both Israelis and Palestinians benefit from the Middle East's growing wealth.
We started this war rashly, but we must end our involvement responsibly. And end it we must. The alternative is a fear-driven policy paralysis that perpetuates the war -- to America's historic detriment.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. His most recent book is "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032702405_pf.html
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
Friday, March 28, 2008
Hothead McCain by Robert Dreyfuss
Hothead McCain
Robert Dreyfuss
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/dreyfuss
If you've followed Senator John McCain at all, you've heard about his tendency to, well, explode. He's erupted at numerous Senate colleagues, including many Republicans, at the slightest provocation. "The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me," wrote Republican Senator Thad Cochran, shortly before endorsing McCain.
You've heard about his penchant for bellicose rhetoric, whether appropriating a Beach Boys song in threatening to bomb Iran or telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that he doesn't care what he thinks about American plans to install missiles in Eastern Europe.
And you've heard, no doubt, about McCain's stubbornness. "No dissent, no opinion to the contrary, however reasonable, will be entertained," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aide. "Hardheaded is another way to say it. Arrogant is another way to say it. Hubristic is another way to say it. Too proud for his own good is another way to say it. It's a quality about him that disturbs me."
But what you may not have heard is an extended critique of the kind of Commander in Chief that Captain McCain might be. To combat what he likes to call "the transcendent challenge [of] radical Islamic extremism," McCain is drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions, from a potent covert operations unit to a "League of Democracies" that can bypass the balky United Nations, from an expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to a revived US unilateralism that will engage in "rogue state rollback" against his version of the "axis of evil." In all, it's a new apparatus designed to carry the "war on terror" deep into the twenty-first century.
"We created a number of institutions in the wake of World War II to deal with the situation," says Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top adviser on foreign policy. "And what Senator McCain wants to begin a dialogue about is, Do we need new structures and new institutions, both internally, in the US government, and externally, to recognize that the situation we face now is very, very different than the one we faced during the cold war?" Joining Scheunemann, a veteran neoconservative strategist and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, are a panoply of like-minded neocons who've gathered to advise McCain, including Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Gary Schmitt and Maj. Ralph Peters. "There are some who've moved into his camp who scare me," Wilkerson says. "Scare me."
If McCain intends to be a shoot first, ask questions later President, consider a couple of the new institutions he's outlined, which seem designed to facilitate an unencumbered, interventionist foreign policy.
First is an unnamed "new agency patterned after the...Office of Strategic Services," the rambunctious, often out-of-control World War II-era covert-ops team. "A modern day OSS could draw together specialists in unconventional warfare; covert action operators; and experts in anthropology, advertising, and other relevant disciplines," wrote McCain in Foreign Affairs. "Like the original OSS, this would be a small, nimble, can-do organization" that would "fight terrorist subversion [and] take risks." It's clear that McCain wants to set up an agency to conduct paramilitary operations, covert action and psy-ops.
This idea is McCain's response to a longstanding critique of the CIA by neoconservatives such as Richard Perle, who have accused the agency of being "risk averse." Since 2001 the CIA has engaged in a bitter battle with the White House and the Pentagon on issues that include the Iraq War and Iran's nuclear weapons program. The agency lost a major skirmish with the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which put the White House more directly in charge of the intelligence community. And now McCain wants to put the final nail in the CIA's coffin by creating a gung-ho operations force. Scheunemann, who credits Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations with the idea, says the new agency is urgently needed to "meet the threats of the twenty-first century in a time of war, much as the OSS was created in a time of war." And he disparages the CIA as a bunch of has-beens. The new agency would eclipse "an organization created to meet the needs of the cold war and hang out in embassies and try to recruit a major or two or deal with walk-in defectors," Scheunemann told The Nation.
But John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA who retired in 2004, is more than skeptical, and he worries that McCain doesn't understand the need for Congressional controls over spy agencies. "You need to have Congressional oversight and transparency," he says. "I would not recommend a new agency that is set up parallel to the CIA.... All of those things can be done within the boundaries of the CIA." Told about McLaughlin's comments, Scheunemann says, "Anyone who thinks that the agency today is a nimble, can-do organization has a different view than Senator McCain does."
The UN, too, would be shunted aside to make room for McCain's new League of Democracies. Though the concept is couched in soothing rhetoric, the "league" would provide an alternate way of legitimizing foreign interventions by the United States when the UN Security Council won't authorize force. Five years ago, on the eve of the Iraq War, McCain said bluntly before the European Parliament that if Security Council members resisted the use of force, or if China opposed US action against North Korea, "the United States will do whatever it must to guarantee the security of the American people." Among the targets McCain cites for his plan to short-circuit the UN are Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Serbia, Ukraine and, of course, Iran--and he has already referred to "wackos" in Venezuela. According to Scheunemann, it's an idea that bubbled up from some of McCain's advisers, including Peters and Kagan, but it alarms analysts from the realist-Republican school of foreign policy. "They're talking about a body that essentially would circumvent the UN and would take authority to act in the name of the international community, sometimes using force," says a veteran GOP strategist who knows McCain well and who insisted on anonymity. "Well, it's very easy to predict that the Russians and Chinese would view this as a threat."
McCain seems almost gleeful about provoking Russia. At first blush, you'd think he'd be more nuanced, since many of the foreign policy gurus he says he talks to emanate from the old-school Nixon-Kissinger circle of détente-niks, including Henry Kissinger himself, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft. Their collective attitude is that as long as Moscow doesn't threaten US interests, we can do business with it. But there is little evidence of their views in McCain's policy toward Putin's Russia. "I think it's fair to assume that he's most influenced by his neoconservative advisers," says the GOP strategist.
"We need a new Western approach to...revanchist Russia," wrote McCain in Foreign Affairs. He says he will expel Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrial states, a flagrant and dangerous insult, one likely to draw stiff opposition from other members of the G-8. He refuses to ease Russian concerns about the deployment of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, saying, "The first thing I would do is make sure we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia [sic] and Poland, and I don't care what [Putin's] objections are to it." And he's all for rapid expansion of NATO, to include even the former Soviet republic of Georgia--and not just Georgia but also the rebellious Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since Kosovo's declaration of independence on February 17, which was opposed by Russia, Moscow has said it intends to support independence of the two Georgian regions, making McCain's goal of expanding NATO provocative, to say the least. "McCain says [NATO] ought to include Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are not under the control of the current Georgian government," says a conservative critic of the Arizona senator. "Which, if not a prescription for war with Russia, is at least a prescription for conflict with Russia."
Earlier in his Congressional career, McCain was reluctant to engage in overseas adventures unless American interests were directly threatened. He opposed US involvement in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and in Haiti and the Balkan conflicts in the early 1990s. But as the post-cold war environment seemed increasingly to promise unchallenged American hegemony, McCain took up the neocons' call for interventionism. His views crystallized in a 1999 speech, when he called for the United States to use tough sanctions and other pressure to roll back "rogue states" like Iraq and North Korea, adding, "We must be prepared to back up these measures with American military force if the existence of such rogue states threatens America's interests and values." In referring to "values," McCain indicates his support for the notion that a selective crusade allegedly on behalf of freedom and democracy can provide a rationale for an aggressive new foreign policy outlook.
"He's the true neocon," says the Brookings Institution's Ivo Daalder, a liberal interventionist who conceived the idea of a League of Democracies with Robert Kagan. "He does believe, in a way that George W. Bush never really did, in the use of power, military power above all, to change the world in America's image. If you thought George Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait till you see John McCain.... He believes this. His advisers believe this. He's surrounded himself with people who believe it. And I'll take him at his word."
Not surprisingly, the center of McCain's foreign policy is the Middle East. "He's bought into the completely fallacious notion that we're in a global struggle of us-versus-them. He calls it the 'transcendental threat...of extreme Islam," says Daalder. "But it's a silly argument to think that this is either an ideological or a material struggle on a par with [the ones against] Nazi Germany or Soviet Communism." For McCain, the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, the Arab-Israeli dispute, the war in Afghanistan, the Pakistani crisis and the lack of democracy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are all rolled up into one "transcendent" ball of wax.
More than any other politician, McCain is identified with the Iraq War. From the mid-1990s on, he and his advisers were staunch supporters of "regime change." Scheunemann helped write the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, which funded Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress; joined Bill Kristol's Project for the New American Century; and helped create the neoconservative Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002, with White House support. Together with Joe Lieberman, Sam Brownback and a handful of other senators, McCain emerged as a major cheerleader for the war. Like his fellow neocons, McCain touted what proved to be faked intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq. Echoing Vice President Cheney, McCain said on the eve of the war, "There's no doubt in my mind, once [Saddam] is gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators." He pooh-poohed critics who argued that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's war plan was too reliant on technology and too light on troops, saying, "I don't think you're going to have to see the scale of numbers of troops that we saw...back in 1991." When Gen. Eric Shinseki warned, a month before the war started, that occupying Iraq would require far more troops, McCain was mute.
Today McCain portrays himself as a critic of how the war was fought, but his criticism did not emerge until long after it was clear that the United States faced a grueling insurgency. From the fall of 2003 onward, against a growing chorus of critics who called for US forces to withdraw, McCain repeatedly called for more troops to secure "victory." By late 2006, when the bipartisan Iraq Study Group called for pulling out all combat brigades within fifteen months, McCain, Lieberman and a hardy band of neocons, led by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and joined by Cheney, persuaded Bush to escalate the war instead. Asked if McCain directly lobbied Bush to reject the ISG's recommendations, a McCain aide says, "There were many encounters with the President's senior advisers and with the President on this issue." Fred Kagan, the surge's author and Robert Kagan's brother, told McClatchy Newspapers, "It was a very lonely time. He went out there for us."
In January McCain famously said US forces might end up staying in Iraq for a hundred years. It's clear that for McCain the occupation is not just about winning the war but about turning Iraq into a regional base for extending US influence throughout the region. According to the original neocon conception of the war, as promoted by people like Perle and Michael Ledeen, Iraq was only a first step in redrawing the Middle East map. Gen. Wesley Clark said recently that on the eve of the war he was shown a Pentagon document that portrayed Iraq as the first in a series of operations to change regimes in Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Lebanon.
When The Nation asked Scheunemann why US forces would have to stay in Iraq so long, he explicitly linked their presence to the entire Middle East. "Iraq might be stable, but what about the region?" he responded. "Other countries could be in turmoil; other countries could be threatening Iraq. It could be an external threat that we need to have troops there for, à la South Korea, à la Japan." He added, "I understand your readers may think it's some sort of malevolent imperialist conspiracy." Conspiracy or not, it's clear that McCain sees our presence in Iraq as a permanent extension of US power in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
CONTINUED BELOW
McCain has made no secret of his belief that using force against Iran is the only way to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. "There is only one thing worse than a military solution, and that, my friends, is a nuclear-armed Iran," McCain said. "The regime must understand that they cannot win a showdown with the world." He supports tougher sanctions against Tehran, but critics note that implementing them would require Russia's consent. McCain's provocative anti-Russia stand, though, makes such a deal less than likely. And he rejects direct US-Iran talks.
In the end, McCain seems almost reflexively to favor the use of America's armed might. "He would employ military force to the exclusion of other options," says Larry Korb, a former Reagan Administration defense official. Scion of admirals (his father and grandfather), a combat pilot in Vietnam who continued to believe long after that war that it might have been won if the US military had been allowed free rein, McCain presents the image of a warrior itching for battle. He is the candidate of those Americans whose chief goal is an endless war against radical Islam and who'd like nothing more than for the Arizona senator to clamber figuratively into the cockpit once more. Like his former aide Marshall Wittman, currently a top aide to Senator Lieberman, McCain sees Theodore Roosevelt, the Bull Moose interventionist President of the early twentieth century, as his role model. And that attracts neoconservatives.
"I'm an old-fashioned, Scoop Jackson--I guess you'd now say Joe Lieberman--Democrat, and he's a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, and they're pretty close in their views, so substantively there's a lot of overlap between us," says James Woolsey, a former CIA director who's endorsed McCain and has campaigned with him this year. "I think John's style is very TR-like. It's very much about speaking softly but carrying a big stick."
We're still waiting for the "speaking softly" part. "There's going to be other wars," McCain warns. "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars."
Robert Dreyfuss
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/dreyfuss
If you've followed Senator John McCain at all, you've heard about his tendency to, well, explode. He's erupted at numerous Senate colleagues, including many Republicans, at the slightest provocation. "The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me," wrote Republican Senator Thad Cochran, shortly before endorsing McCain.
You've heard about his penchant for bellicose rhetoric, whether appropriating a Beach Boys song in threatening to bomb Iran or telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that he doesn't care what he thinks about American plans to install missiles in Eastern Europe.
And you've heard, no doubt, about McCain's stubbornness. "No dissent, no opinion to the contrary, however reasonable, will be entertained," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aide. "Hardheaded is another way to say it. Arrogant is another way to say it. Hubristic is another way to say it. Too proud for his own good is another way to say it. It's a quality about him that disturbs me."
But what you may not have heard is an extended critique of the kind of Commander in Chief that Captain McCain might be. To combat what he likes to call "the transcendent challenge [of] radical Islamic extremism," McCain is drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions, from a potent covert operations unit to a "League of Democracies" that can bypass the balky United Nations, from an expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to a revived US unilateralism that will engage in "rogue state rollback" against his version of the "axis of evil." In all, it's a new apparatus designed to carry the "war on terror" deep into the twenty-first century.
"We created a number of institutions in the wake of World War II to deal with the situation," says Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top adviser on foreign policy. "And what Senator McCain wants to begin a dialogue about is, Do we need new structures and new institutions, both internally, in the US government, and externally, to recognize that the situation we face now is very, very different than the one we faced during the cold war?" Joining Scheunemann, a veteran neoconservative strategist and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, are a panoply of like-minded neocons who've gathered to advise McCain, including Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Gary Schmitt and Maj. Ralph Peters. "There are some who've moved into his camp who scare me," Wilkerson says. "Scare me."
If McCain intends to be a shoot first, ask questions later President, consider a couple of the new institutions he's outlined, which seem designed to facilitate an unencumbered, interventionist foreign policy.
First is an unnamed "new agency patterned after the...Office of Strategic Services," the rambunctious, often out-of-control World War II-era covert-ops team. "A modern day OSS could draw together specialists in unconventional warfare; covert action operators; and experts in anthropology, advertising, and other relevant disciplines," wrote McCain in Foreign Affairs. "Like the original OSS, this would be a small, nimble, can-do organization" that would "fight terrorist subversion [and] take risks." It's clear that McCain wants to set up an agency to conduct paramilitary operations, covert action and psy-ops.
This idea is McCain's response to a longstanding critique of the CIA by neoconservatives such as Richard Perle, who have accused the agency of being "risk averse." Since 2001 the CIA has engaged in a bitter battle with the White House and the Pentagon on issues that include the Iraq War and Iran's nuclear weapons program. The agency lost a major skirmish with the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which put the White House more directly in charge of the intelligence community. And now McCain wants to put the final nail in the CIA's coffin by creating a gung-ho operations force. Scheunemann, who credits Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations with the idea, says the new agency is urgently needed to "meet the threats of the twenty-first century in a time of war, much as the OSS was created in a time of war." And he disparages the CIA as a bunch of has-beens. The new agency would eclipse "an organization created to meet the needs of the cold war and hang out in embassies and try to recruit a major or two or deal with walk-in defectors," Scheunemann told The Nation.
But John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA who retired in 2004, is more than skeptical, and he worries that McCain doesn't understand the need for Congressional controls over spy agencies. "You need to have Congressional oversight and transparency," he says. "I would not recommend a new agency that is set up parallel to the CIA.... All of those things can be done within the boundaries of the CIA." Told about McLaughlin's comments, Scheunemann says, "Anyone who thinks that the agency today is a nimble, can-do organization has a different view than Senator McCain does."
The UN, too, would be shunted aside to make room for McCain's new League of Democracies. Though the concept is couched in soothing rhetoric, the "league" would provide an alternate way of legitimizing foreign interventions by the United States when the UN Security Council won't authorize force. Five years ago, on the eve of the Iraq War, McCain said bluntly before the European Parliament that if Security Council members resisted the use of force, or if China opposed US action against North Korea, "the United States will do whatever it must to guarantee the security of the American people." Among the targets McCain cites for his plan to short-circuit the UN are Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Serbia, Ukraine and, of course, Iran--and he has already referred to "wackos" in Venezuela. According to Scheunemann, it's an idea that bubbled up from some of McCain's advisers, including Peters and Kagan, but it alarms analysts from the realist-Republican school of foreign policy. "They're talking about a body that essentially would circumvent the UN and would take authority to act in the name of the international community, sometimes using force," says a veteran GOP strategist who knows McCain well and who insisted on anonymity. "Well, it's very easy to predict that the Russians and Chinese would view this as a threat."
McCain seems almost gleeful about provoking Russia. At first blush, you'd think he'd be more nuanced, since many of the foreign policy gurus he says he talks to emanate from the old-school Nixon-Kissinger circle of détente-niks, including Henry Kissinger himself, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft. Their collective attitude is that as long as Moscow doesn't threaten US interests, we can do business with it. But there is little evidence of their views in McCain's policy toward Putin's Russia. "I think it's fair to assume that he's most influenced by his neoconservative advisers," says the GOP strategist.
"We need a new Western approach to...revanchist Russia," wrote McCain in Foreign Affairs. He says he will expel Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrial states, a flagrant and dangerous insult, one likely to draw stiff opposition from other members of the G-8. He refuses to ease Russian concerns about the deployment of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, saying, "The first thing I would do is make sure we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia [sic] and Poland, and I don't care what [Putin's] objections are to it." And he's all for rapid expansion of NATO, to include even the former Soviet republic of Georgia--and not just Georgia but also the rebellious Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since Kosovo's declaration of independence on February 17, which was opposed by Russia, Moscow has said it intends to support independence of the two Georgian regions, making McCain's goal of expanding NATO provocative, to say the least. "McCain says [NATO] ought to include Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are not under the control of the current Georgian government," says a conservative critic of the Arizona senator. "Which, if not a prescription for war with Russia, is at least a prescription for conflict with Russia."
Earlier in his Congressional career, McCain was reluctant to engage in overseas adventures unless American interests were directly threatened. He opposed US involvement in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and in Haiti and the Balkan conflicts in the early 1990s. But as the post-cold war environment seemed increasingly to promise unchallenged American hegemony, McCain took up the neocons' call for interventionism. His views crystallized in a 1999 speech, when he called for the United States to use tough sanctions and other pressure to roll back "rogue states" like Iraq and North Korea, adding, "We must be prepared to back up these measures with American military force if the existence of such rogue states threatens America's interests and values." In referring to "values," McCain indicates his support for the notion that a selective crusade allegedly on behalf of freedom and democracy can provide a rationale for an aggressive new foreign policy outlook.
"He's the true neocon," says the Brookings Institution's Ivo Daalder, a liberal interventionist who conceived the idea of a League of Democracies with Robert Kagan. "He does believe, in a way that George W. Bush never really did, in the use of power, military power above all, to change the world in America's image. If you thought George Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait till you see John McCain.... He believes this. His advisers believe this. He's surrounded himself with people who believe it. And I'll take him at his word."
Not surprisingly, the center of McCain's foreign policy is the Middle East. "He's bought into the completely fallacious notion that we're in a global struggle of us-versus-them. He calls it the 'transcendental threat...of extreme Islam," says Daalder. "But it's a silly argument to think that this is either an ideological or a material struggle on a par with [the ones against] Nazi Germany or Soviet Communism." For McCain, the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, the Arab-Israeli dispute, the war in Afghanistan, the Pakistani crisis and the lack of democracy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are all rolled up into one "transcendent" ball of wax.
More than any other politician, McCain is identified with the Iraq War. From the mid-1990s on, he and his advisers were staunch supporters of "regime change." Scheunemann helped write the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, which funded Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress; joined Bill Kristol's Project for the New American Century; and helped create the neoconservative Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002, with White House support. Together with Joe Lieberman, Sam Brownback and a handful of other senators, McCain emerged as a major cheerleader for the war. Like his fellow neocons, McCain touted what proved to be faked intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq. Echoing Vice President Cheney, McCain said on the eve of the war, "There's no doubt in my mind, once [Saddam] is gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators." He pooh-poohed critics who argued that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's war plan was too reliant on technology and too light on troops, saying, "I don't think you're going to have to see the scale of numbers of troops that we saw...back in 1991." When Gen. Eric Shinseki warned, a month before the war started, that occupying Iraq would require far more troops, McCain was mute.
Today McCain portrays himself as a critic of how the war was fought, but his criticism did not emerge until long after it was clear that the United States faced a grueling insurgency. From the fall of 2003 onward, against a growing chorus of critics who called for US forces to withdraw, McCain repeatedly called for more troops to secure "victory." By late 2006, when the bipartisan Iraq Study Group called for pulling out all combat brigades within fifteen months, McCain, Lieberman and a hardy band of neocons, led by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and joined by Cheney, persuaded Bush to escalate the war instead. Asked if McCain directly lobbied Bush to reject the ISG's recommendations, a McCain aide says, "There were many encounters with the President's senior advisers and with the President on this issue." Fred Kagan, the surge's author and Robert Kagan's brother, told McClatchy Newspapers, "It was a very lonely time. He went out there for us."
In January McCain famously said US forces might end up staying in Iraq for a hundred years. It's clear that for McCain the occupation is not just about winning the war but about turning Iraq into a regional base for extending US influence throughout the region. According to the original neocon conception of the war, as promoted by people like Perle and Michael Ledeen, Iraq was only a first step in redrawing the Middle East map. Gen. Wesley Clark said recently that on the eve of the war he was shown a Pentagon document that portrayed Iraq as the first in a series of operations to change regimes in Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Lebanon.
When The Nation asked Scheunemann why US forces would have to stay in Iraq so long, he explicitly linked their presence to the entire Middle East. "Iraq might be stable, but what about the region?" he responded. "Other countries could be in turmoil; other countries could be threatening Iraq. It could be an external threat that we need to have troops there for, à la South Korea, à la Japan." He added, "I understand your readers may think it's some sort of malevolent imperialist conspiracy." Conspiracy or not, it's clear that McCain sees our presence in Iraq as a permanent extension of US power in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
CONTINUED BELOW
McCain has made no secret of his belief that using force against Iran is the only way to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. "There is only one thing worse than a military solution, and that, my friends, is a nuclear-armed Iran," McCain said. "The regime must understand that they cannot win a showdown with the world." He supports tougher sanctions against Tehran, but critics note that implementing them would require Russia's consent. McCain's provocative anti-Russia stand, though, makes such a deal less than likely. And he rejects direct US-Iran talks.
In the end, McCain seems almost reflexively to favor the use of America's armed might. "He would employ military force to the exclusion of other options," says Larry Korb, a former Reagan Administration defense official. Scion of admirals (his father and grandfather), a combat pilot in Vietnam who continued to believe long after that war that it might have been won if the US military had been allowed free rein, McCain presents the image of a warrior itching for battle. He is the candidate of those Americans whose chief goal is an endless war against radical Islam and who'd like nothing more than for the Arizona senator to clamber figuratively into the cockpit once more. Like his former aide Marshall Wittman, currently a top aide to Senator Lieberman, McCain sees Theodore Roosevelt, the Bull Moose interventionist President of the early twentieth century, as his role model. And that attracts neoconservatives.
"I'm an old-fashioned, Scoop Jackson--I guess you'd now say Joe Lieberman--Democrat, and he's a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, and they're pretty close in their views, so substantively there's a lot of overlap between us," says James Woolsey, a former CIA director who's endorsed McCain and has campaigned with him this year. "I think John's style is very TR-like. It's very much about speaking softly but carrying a big stick."
We're still waiting for the "speaking softly" part. "There's going to be other wars," McCain warns. "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars."
The Education of a 9/11 Reporter. The inside drama behind the Times' warrantless wiretapping story
The Education of a 9/11 ReporterThe inside drama behind the Times' warrantless wiretapping story.
http://www.slate.com/id/2187498/pagenum/all/#page_start
By Eric Lichtblau
Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008, at 7:08 PM ET
This article is adapted from Eric Lichtblau's upcoming book, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice, to be published next Tuesday, April 1, by Pantheon. He and fellow New York Times reporter James Risen won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the National Security Agency's wiretapping program.
For 13 long months, we'd held off on publicizing one of the Bush administration's biggest secrets. Finally, one afternoon in December 2005, as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House, we were again about to let President Bush's top aides plead their case: why our newspaper shouldn't let the public know that the president had authorized the National Security Agency, in apparent contravention of federal wiretapping law, to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants. As New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman, and I awaited our meeting, we still weren't sure who would make the pitch for the president. Dick Cheney had thought about coming to the meeting but figured his own tense relations with the newspaper might actually hinder the White House's efforts to stop publication. (He was probably right.) As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.
For more than an hour, we told Bush's aides what we knew about the wiretapping program, and they in turn told us why it would do grave harm to national security to let anyone else in on the secret. Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored. If the terrorists knew about the wiretapping program, it would be rendered useless and would have to be shut down immediately, another official urged: "It's all the marbles." The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.
More than two years later, the Times' decision to publish the story—a decision that was once so controversial—has been largely overshadowed by all the other political and legal clamor surrounding President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program: the dozens of civil lawsuits; the ongoing government investigations; the raging congressional debate; and the still-unresolved question, which Congress will take up again next week, of whether phone companies should be given legal immunity for their cooperation in the program. Amid the din, it's easy to forget the hits that the newspaper took in the first place: criticism from the political left over the decision to hold the story for more than a year and from the right over the decision to publish it at all. But the episode was critical in reflecting the media's shifting attitudes toward matters of national security—from believing the government to believing it less.
After all, the fear and trauma that gripped the country in the months and years after 9/11 gripped the media, too; the country's outrage was our outrage. Coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath consumed all else for reporters in Washington. As federal officials scrambled to avert the much-feared "second wave" of attacks, reporters likewise scrambled to follow any hint of the next possible attack and to put it on the front page—from scuba divers off the coast of Southern California to hazmat trucks in the Midwest and tourist helicopters in New York City. One example of the shift: On Sept. 12, 2001, another major newspaper was set to run a story on the extraordinary diplomatic maneuverings the U.S. Secret Service had arranged with their Mexican counterparts to allow Jenna Bush, then 19, to make a barhopping trip south of the border. (She had just been charged with underage drinking in Texas.) A few days earlier, a scoop about a presidential daughter's barhopping trip getting special dispensation from the Secret Service and a foreign government might have gotten heavy treatment. But the story never ran, and the Secret Service's maneuverings remained a secret until now. In the weeks and months after 9/11, there was no longer an appetite for such stories.
At the same time, in the first few years after 9/11, stories that have now become frequent front-page fodder—about water-boarding of terrorism detainees and other aggressive interrogations tactics, about CIA "black site" prisons overseas, or about covert eavesdropping or other surveillance programs that stretched the limits of the law—simply didn't get written by most of the mainstream media. If we had known about them, which in most cases we didn't, there would have been a reluctance to publicize them in those early days of the war on terror.
I wasn't immune to the shifting in attitudes after 9/11. In early 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared at a congressional hearing I was covering and announced, with dramatic aplomb, the unsealing of indictments against two Yemeni men, including a radical cleric accused of personally delivering $20 million to Osama Bin Laden. There was more: The cleric, Ashcroft revealed, said he had received money for jihad from collection at the notorious al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. I didn't wait for a break to rush out the door of the hearing room and call our assignment editor, who would soon be preparing the story list for the next day's front page. "This is big," I told the editor. "Ashcroft says Bin Laden was getting money from a mosque in Brooklyn."
Sure enough, the story ran at the top of the front page of the next day's paper. But among my colleagues in the paper's New York metro section, there was much less enthusiasm: The story, our Brooklyn reporter thought, was overblown, the evidence of an actual link between the Brooklyn mosque and al-Qaida thin. His skepticism was borne out: While the Yemeni cleric was ultimately sentenced to 75 years in prison on terrorism charges related to his support of Hamas, the sensational charge that the Brooklyn mosque was used to raise money for al-Qaida and Bin Laden had melted away to all but nothing by the time the case concluded.
For me, the story about the Brooklyn mosque, along with others, like the justice department's wobbly case against "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, were eye-openers. By 2004, I had gained a reputation, deservedly or not, as one of the administration's toughest critics in the Justice Department press corps; the department even confiscated my press pass briefly after I wrote an unpopular story about the FBI's interest in collecting intelligence on anti-Iraq war demonstrations in the United States. To John Ashcroft and his aides, my coverage reflected a bias. To me, it reflected a healthy, essential skepticism—the kind that was missing from much of the media's early reporting after 9/11, both at home in the administration's war on terror and abroad in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
That shared skepticism would prove essential in the Times' decision to run the story about Bush's NSA wiretapping program. On that December afternoon in the White House, the gathered officials attacked on several fronts. There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush's advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.
All these assertions, as my partner Jim Risen and I would learn in our reporting, turned out to be largely untrue. Jim and I had already learned about much of the internal angst within the administration over the legality of the NSA program at the outset of our reporting, more than a year earlier in the fall of 2004. Still, the editors were not persuaded we had enough for a story—not enough, at least, to outweigh the White House's strenuous arguments that running the piece would cripple a vital and perfectly legal national-security program. It was a difficult decision for everyone. I went back to writing about more mundane terrorism and law-enforcement matters, poking around discreetly to find out what had happened to the NSA's eavesdropping program. Risen went on sabbatical to write a book about intelligence matters. Then, one night in the spring of 2005, he called me out to his home in suburban Maryland and sat me down at his computer. There on the computer screen was a draft of a chapter called simply "The Program." It was about the NSA's wiretapping operation. "I'm thinking of putting this in the book," he said. I sat and stared at the screen in silence. "You sure you know what you're doing?" I asked finally. He shrugged.
Risen spoke with our editors about what he was contemplating, and so began weeks of discussions between him and the editors that ultimately helped to set the story back on track. Risen's book was a trigger, but we realized we weren't in the paper yet. We still had to persuade the editors that the reasons to run the story clearly outweighed the reasons to keep it secret. We went back to old sources and tried new ones. Our reporting brought into sharper focus what had already started to become clear a year earlier: The concerns about the program—in both its legal underpinnings and its operations—reached the highest levels of the Bush administration. There were deep concerns within the administration that the president had authorized what amounted to an illegal usurpation of power. The image of a united front we'd been presented a year earlier in meetings with the administration—with unflinching support for the program and its legality—was largely a façade. The administration, it seemed clear to me, had lied to us. And we were coming closer to understanding the cracks. By the time we met with White House officials in December 2005, Keller had all but made up his mind: The legal concerns about the program were too great to justify keeping it out of public view. The only real question now was not whether the story would run, but when.
That decision was helped along by a chance conversation I had soon after our White House meeting. The administration, I was told, had considered seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction to block publication of the story. The tidbit was a bombshell. Few episodes in the history of the Times—or, for that matter, in all of journalism—had left as indelible a mark as the courtroom battle over the Pentagon Papers, and now we were learning that the Bush White House had dusted off a Nixon-era relic to consider coming after us again. The editors in New York had already decided they would probably print the story in the newspaper for that Friday, Dec. 16, 2005, but when word of the Pentagon Papers tip reached them, they decided they would also post it on the Internet the night before. That wasn't routinely done at that time on "exclusive" stories because we would risk losing the scoop to our competitors, but the editors felt it was worth the risk. The administration might be able to stop the presses with an injunction, but they couldn't stop the Internet.
Phil Taubman called us into his office to hear the official word: We were publishing the story, Keller told us. Smiles washed over the room. Rebecca Corbett, who edited the story and had been a strong champion of it, inquired about the play it would get. There'd been talk of a modest one-column headline on the front page. She wanted to know whether we might be able to get two columns, maybe even three. This seemed like a story that would have legs. Keller demurred. He wanted the story to speak for itself; we would be discreet without looking as if we were poking the White House in the eye with a big, screaming headline about NSA spying. This wasn't the moment to quibble over the size of the headline. After all this time, after all the White House's efforts to derail it, we were happy to see the story in the paper at all; in the back of the A section, among the bra ads, would have been fine.
http://www.slate.com/id/2187498/pagenum/all/#page_start
By Eric Lichtblau
Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008, at 7:08 PM ET
This article is adapted from Eric Lichtblau's upcoming book, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice, to be published next Tuesday, April 1, by Pantheon. He and fellow New York Times reporter James Risen won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the National Security Agency's wiretapping program.
For 13 long months, we'd held off on publicizing one of the Bush administration's biggest secrets. Finally, one afternoon in December 2005, as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House, we were again about to let President Bush's top aides plead their case: why our newspaper shouldn't let the public know that the president had authorized the National Security Agency, in apparent contravention of federal wiretapping law, to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants. As New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman, and I awaited our meeting, we still weren't sure who would make the pitch for the president. Dick Cheney had thought about coming to the meeting but figured his own tense relations with the newspaper might actually hinder the White House's efforts to stop publication. (He was probably right.) As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.
For more than an hour, we told Bush's aides what we knew about the wiretapping program, and they in turn told us why it would do grave harm to national security to let anyone else in on the secret. Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored. If the terrorists knew about the wiretapping program, it would be rendered useless and would have to be shut down immediately, another official urged: "It's all the marbles." The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.
More than two years later, the Times' decision to publish the story—a decision that was once so controversial—has been largely overshadowed by all the other political and legal clamor surrounding President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program: the dozens of civil lawsuits; the ongoing government investigations; the raging congressional debate; and the still-unresolved question, which Congress will take up again next week, of whether phone companies should be given legal immunity for their cooperation in the program. Amid the din, it's easy to forget the hits that the newspaper took in the first place: criticism from the political left over the decision to hold the story for more than a year and from the right over the decision to publish it at all. But the episode was critical in reflecting the media's shifting attitudes toward matters of national security—from believing the government to believing it less.
After all, the fear and trauma that gripped the country in the months and years after 9/11 gripped the media, too; the country's outrage was our outrage. Coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath consumed all else for reporters in Washington. As federal officials scrambled to avert the much-feared "second wave" of attacks, reporters likewise scrambled to follow any hint of the next possible attack and to put it on the front page—from scuba divers off the coast of Southern California to hazmat trucks in the Midwest and tourist helicopters in New York City. One example of the shift: On Sept. 12, 2001, another major newspaper was set to run a story on the extraordinary diplomatic maneuverings the U.S. Secret Service had arranged with their Mexican counterparts to allow Jenna Bush, then 19, to make a barhopping trip south of the border. (She had just been charged with underage drinking in Texas.) A few days earlier, a scoop about a presidential daughter's barhopping trip getting special dispensation from the Secret Service and a foreign government might have gotten heavy treatment. But the story never ran, and the Secret Service's maneuverings remained a secret until now. In the weeks and months after 9/11, there was no longer an appetite for such stories.
At the same time, in the first few years after 9/11, stories that have now become frequent front-page fodder—about water-boarding of terrorism detainees and other aggressive interrogations tactics, about CIA "black site" prisons overseas, or about covert eavesdropping or other surveillance programs that stretched the limits of the law—simply didn't get written by most of the mainstream media. If we had known about them, which in most cases we didn't, there would have been a reluctance to publicize them in those early days of the war on terror.
I wasn't immune to the shifting in attitudes after 9/11. In early 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared at a congressional hearing I was covering and announced, with dramatic aplomb, the unsealing of indictments against two Yemeni men, including a radical cleric accused of personally delivering $20 million to Osama Bin Laden. There was more: The cleric, Ashcroft revealed, said he had received money for jihad from collection at the notorious al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. I didn't wait for a break to rush out the door of the hearing room and call our assignment editor, who would soon be preparing the story list for the next day's front page. "This is big," I told the editor. "Ashcroft says Bin Laden was getting money from a mosque in Brooklyn."
Sure enough, the story ran at the top of the front page of the next day's paper. But among my colleagues in the paper's New York metro section, there was much less enthusiasm: The story, our Brooklyn reporter thought, was overblown, the evidence of an actual link between the Brooklyn mosque and al-Qaida thin. His skepticism was borne out: While the Yemeni cleric was ultimately sentenced to 75 years in prison on terrorism charges related to his support of Hamas, the sensational charge that the Brooklyn mosque was used to raise money for al-Qaida and Bin Laden had melted away to all but nothing by the time the case concluded.
For me, the story about the Brooklyn mosque, along with others, like the justice department's wobbly case against "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, were eye-openers. By 2004, I had gained a reputation, deservedly or not, as one of the administration's toughest critics in the Justice Department press corps; the department even confiscated my press pass briefly after I wrote an unpopular story about the FBI's interest in collecting intelligence on anti-Iraq war demonstrations in the United States. To John Ashcroft and his aides, my coverage reflected a bias. To me, it reflected a healthy, essential skepticism—the kind that was missing from much of the media's early reporting after 9/11, both at home in the administration's war on terror and abroad in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
That shared skepticism would prove essential in the Times' decision to run the story about Bush's NSA wiretapping program. On that December afternoon in the White House, the gathered officials attacked on several fronts. There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush's advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.
All these assertions, as my partner Jim Risen and I would learn in our reporting, turned out to be largely untrue. Jim and I had already learned about much of the internal angst within the administration over the legality of the NSA program at the outset of our reporting, more than a year earlier in the fall of 2004. Still, the editors were not persuaded we had enough for a story—not enough, at least, to outweigh the White House's strenuous arguments that running the piece would cripple a vital and perfectly legal national-security program. It was a difficult decision for everyone. I went back to writing about more mundane terrorism and law-enforcement matters, poking around discreetly to find out what had happened to the NSA's eavesdropping program. Risen went on sabbatical to write a book about intelligence matters. Then, one night in the spring of 2005, he called me out to his home in suburban Maryland and sat me down at his computer. There on the computer screen was a draft of a chapter called simply "The Program." It was about the NSA's wiretapping operation. "I'm thinking of putting this in the book," he said. I sat and stared at the screen in silence. "You sure you know what you're doing?" I asked finally. He shrugged.
Risen spoke with our editors about what he was contemplating, and so began weeks of discussions between him and the editors that ultimately helped to set the story back on track. Risen's book was a trigger, but we realized we weren't in the paper yet. We still had to persuade the editors that the reasons to run the story clearly outweighed the reasons to keep it secret. We went back to old sources and tried new ones. Our reporting brought into sharper focus what had already started to become clear a year earlier: The concerns about the program—in both its legal underpinnings and its operations—reached the highest levels of the Bush administration. There were deep concerns within the administration that the president had authorized what amounted to an illegal usurpation of power. The image of a united front we'd been presented a year earlier in meetings with the administration—with unflinching support for the program and its legality—was largely a façade. The administration, it seemed clear to me, had lied to us. And we were coming closer to understanding the cracks. By the time we met with White House officials in December 2005, Keller had all but made up his mind: The legal concerns about the program were too great to justify keeping it out of public view. The only real question now was not whether the story would run, but when.
That decision was helped along by a chance conversation I had soon after our White House meeting. The administration, I was told, had considered seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction to block publication of the story. The tidbit was a bombshell. Few episodes in the history of the Times—or, for that matter, in all of journalism—had left as indelible a mark as the courtroom battle over the Pentagon Papers, and now we were learning that the Bush White House had dusted off a Nixon-era relic to consider coming after us again. The editors in New York had already decided they would probably print the story in the newspaper for that Friday, Dec. 16, 2005, but when word of the Pentagon Papers tip reached them, they decided they would also post it on the Internet the night before. That wasn't routinely done at that time on "exclusive" stories because we would risk losing the scoop to our competitors, but the editors felt it was worth the risk. The administration might be able to stop the presses with an injunction, but they couldn't stop the Internet.
Phil Taubman called us into his office to hear the official word: We were publishing the story, Keller told us. Smiles washed over the room. Rebecca Corbett, who edited the story and had been a strong champion of it, inquired about the play it would get. There'd been talk of a modest one-column headline on the front page. She wanted to know whether we might be able to get two columns, maybe even three. This seemed like a story that would have legs. Keller demurred. He wanted the story to speak for itself; we would be discreet without looking as if we were poking the White House in the eye with a big, screaming headline about NSA spying. This wasn't the moment to quibble over the size of the headline. After all this time, after all the White House's efforts to derail it, we were happy to see the story in the paper at all; in the back of the A section, among the bra ads, would have been fine.
The Mystery of American Foreign Policy
March 28, 2008
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12596
The Mystery of American Foreign Policy
Why are we propping up the pro-Iranian Maliki faction in Iraq?
by Justin Raimondo
The recent increase in fighting around Basra, which is rapidly spreading to Baghdad, has the punditariat in a lather. Their sacred Surge has turned into a mere splurge – of resources, lives, and misplaced hope. Well, I could have told you that, and, indeed, I did. But never mind the chattering classes, their delusions of American omnipotence, and my own unfortunate penchant for self-congratulation. What's really fascinating about this story is how it underscores the central mystery of our Iraq war policy: why in the name of all that's holy are we supporting the pro-Iranian parties and factions in the Iraqi government, whilst Our Glorious Leader is coupling Tehran and al-Qaeda as "twin" evils to be fought and defeated in Iraq?
We have placed our chips on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose party, Da'wa (Islamic Call), in alliance with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), now known as ISCI, was one of the few Iraqi resistance groups to refuse all U.S. aid in the run-up to the invasion, and wasn't all that cooperative as the occupation regime was established. Together with their partners in government, the Da'wa Party, SCIRI/ISCI took refuge in Iran during the Ba'athist era and received military aid and training from Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The extension of Iranian influence into Iraq was a direct consequence of the Iraq war, and the recent visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Baghdad has underscored this and provided plenty of grist for those who are pointing at the so-called Shia Crescent with alarm.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. The original plan of the neocons was to install Ahmed Chalabi, their own personal Iraqi puppet, but that soon fell through – and Chalabi, it turned out, had strong links to Iranian intelligence agencies. Accused of divulging American secrets to Tehran, Chalabi had his Iraq headquarters raided by Iraqi and U.S. personnel. Unfortunately, the horse was already out of the barn.
In any case, what the neocons – who knew (and know) nothing about Iraq or the Middle East – didn't anticipate was the awakening of the Shi'ite giant, whose rising took the form of Iranian-born Shi'ite religious leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'ite version of the pope. It was he who scuttled the neocon-devised "caucus" system, which would have convoked assemblies of handpicked U.S. stooges in the provinces, who would, in turn have elected a national constituent assembly, with the result easily manipulated by Washington's expert ventriloquists. Sistani called his followers out into the streets, and that's when things really started to veer out of Washington's control.
When Chalabi's shenanigans were exposed to the light of day, and his extensive interactions with the Iranians were revealed, a theory was floated by several in the intelligence community that we were basically suckered into the Iraq war by its chief beneficiaries, the Iranians. Using their chief asset, the double agent Chalabi, they and their neocon allies fed us ersatz "intelligence" via the various Iraqi "defectors" rounded up by the Iraqi National Congress and paraded across the front page of the New York Times by Judith Miller and her editors.
"One of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history" is how one intelligence officer described the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to a Newsday reporter. Looked at this way, U.S. policy in Iraq begins to make a kind of twisted, Bizarro World sense.
Pre-Order this Book
From the very beginning, U.S. policymakers were determined to go after militant Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the son of a prominent cleric, whose Mahdi Army is the only significant indigenous opposition to the pro-Iranian militias and the Tehran-influenced central government. Sadr is critical of both the U.S. and the Iranians, and, as such, represents a direct threat to the occupation and the Iraqi status quo. U.S. efforts to paint the Sadrists as tools of Tehran backfired for lack of evidence, and are, in any case, counterintuitive – as Sadr is an ardent Iraqi nationalist who decries the country's breakup and opposes all foreign influence.
The consolidation of a strong Iraqi state is the last thing the Americans want, for that would threaten their occupation and lead to their swift exit from the country. It is also in the Iranian interest to keep Iraq divided and stop the nationalist Sadr and his brutal militia from taking power in Baghdad. And, as Robert Parry points out, another factor played a key role in tricking us into war:
"Israeli governments have long made a high priority out of forging alliances with countries like Iran on the periphery of the Arab world to divert Arab antipathy that otherwise could be concentrated on Israel. Plus, Israel and Iran had an important enemy in common: Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Both Israel and Iran had a lot to gain by convincing the United States to remove their hated adversary."
As Parry notes – and professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt showed in their trailblazing book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy – the neoconservatives, strategically positioned inside the national security bureaucracy, and the Lobby pushed this agenda, touted Chalabi, and relentlessly campaigned for war with Iraq. Parry's review of the long-standing ties between the Israelis and the Iranians is quite educational, and it explains a lot about what is happening in Iraq today – and, perhaps, what will happen tomorrow.
I think I pretty much summed up here the scenario that is now unfolding:
"I have to laugh when I hear criticisms from the Democrats and the growing number of antiwar Republicans in Congress who complain that we don't belong in Iraq any longer because, you know, it's a civil war. This is largely seen as an unintended consequence of the American invasion – but what if it was intended?
"It would, after all, make perfect Bizarro 'sense.' If, instead of trying to build a stable, democratic Iraq, you're trying to wreak as much destruction as possible and turn Arab against Arab, Muslim against Muslim, and the Kurds against everyone else, then the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the right thing to do."
That was last May, when the Surge was being hailed as the solution to all our problems in Iraq, and it's little wonder that this strategy is now being pronounced a failure. What you have to understand, dear reader, is that, in the Bizarro World alternate universe we seemed to have slipped into, failure is success.
At the end of John McCain's Hundred-Year War, when whoever is president declares "victory" and hightails it out of Iraq, some subversive soul will remind us of King Pyrrhus' lament:
"Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12596
The Mystery of American Foreign Policy
Why are we propping up the pro-Iranian Maliki faction in Iraq?
by Justin Raimondo
The recent increase in fighting around Basra, which is rapidly spreading to Baghdad, has the punditariat in a lather. Their sacred Surge has turned into a mere splurge – of resources, lives, and misplaced hope. Well, I could have told you that, and, indeed, I did. But never mind the chattering classes, their delusions of American omnipotence, and my own unfortunate penchant for self-congratulation. What's really fascinating about this story is how it underscores the central mystery of our Iraq war policy: why in the name of all that's holy are we supporting the pro-Iranian parties and factions in the Iraqi government, whilst Our Glorious Leader is coupling Tehran and al-Qaeda as "twin" evils to be fought and defeated in Iraq?
We have placed our chips on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose party, Da'wa (Islamic Call), in alliance with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), now known as ISCI, was one of the few Iraqi resistance groups to refuse all U.S. aid in the run-up to the invasion, and wasn't all that cooperative as the occupation regime was established. Together with their partners in government, the Da'wa Party, SCIRI/ISCI took refuge in Iran during the Ba'athist era and received military aid and training from Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The extension of Iranian influence into Iraq was a direct consequence of the Iraq war, and the recent visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Baghdad has underscored this and provided plenty of grist for those who are pointing at the so-called Shia Crescent with alarm.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. The original plan of the neocons was to install Ahmed Chalabi, their own personal Iraqi puppet, but that soon fell through – and Chalabi, it turned out, had strong links to Iranian intelligence agencies. Accused of divulging American secrets to Tehran, Chalabi had his Iraq headquarters raided by Iraqi and U.S. personnel. Unfortunately, the horse was already out of the barn.
In any case, what the neocons – who knew (and know) nothing about Iraq or the Middle East – didn't anticipate was the awakening of the Shi'ite giant, whose rising took the form of Iranian-born Shi'ite religious leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'ite version of the pope. It was he who scuttled the neocon-devised "caucus" system, which would have convoked assemblies of handpicked U.S. stooges in the provinces, who would, in turn have elected a national constituent assembly, with the result easily manipulated by Washington's expert ventriloquists. Sistani called his followers out into the streets, and that's when things really started to veer out of Washington's control.
When Chalabi's shenanigans were exposed to the light of day, and his extensive interactions with the Iranians were revealed, a theory was floated by several in the intelligence community that we were basically suckered into the Iraq war by its chief beneficiaries, the Iranians. Using their chief asset, the double agent Chalabi, they and their neocon allies fed us ersatz "intelligence" via the various Iraqi "defectors" rounded up by the Iraqi National Congress and paraded across the front page of the New York Times by Judith Miller and her editors.
"One of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history" is how one intelligence officer described the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to a Newsday reporter. Looked at this way, U.S. policy in Iraq begins to make a kind of twisted, Bizarro World sense.
Pre-Order this Book
From the very beginning, U.S. policymakers were determined to go after militant Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the son of a prominent cleric, whose Mahdi Army is the only significant indigenous opposition to the pro-Iranian militias and the Tehran-influenced central government. Sadr is critical of both the U.S. and the Iranians, and, as such, represents a direct threat to the occupation and the Iraqi status quo. U.S. efforts to paint the Sadrists as tools of Tehran backfired for lack of evidence, and are, in any case, counterintuitive – as Sadr is an ardent Iraqi nationalist who decries the country's breakup and opposes all foreign influence.
The consolidation of a strong Iraqi state is the last thing the Americans want, for that would threaten their occupation and lead to their swift exit from the country. It is also in the Iranian interest to keep Iraq divided and stop the nationalist Sadr and his brutal militia from taking power in Baghdad. And, as Robert Parry points out, another factor played a key role in tricking us into war:
"Israeli governments have long made a high priority out of forging alliances with countries like Iran on the periphery of the Arab world to divert Arab antipathy that otherwise could be concentrated on Israel. Plus, Israel and Iran had an important enemy in common: Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Both Israel and Iran had a lot to gain by convincing the United States to remove their hated adversary."
As Parry notes – and professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt showed in their trailblazing book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy – the neoconservatives, strategically positioned inside the national security bureaucracy, and the Lobby pushed this agenda, touted Chalabi, and relentlessly campaigned for war with Iraq. Parry's review of the long-standing ties between the Israelis and the Iranians is quite educational, and it explains a lot about what is happening in Iraq today – and, perhaps, what will happen tomorrow.
I think I pretty much summed up here the scenario that is now unfolding:
"I have to laugh when I hear criticisms from the Democrats and the growing number of antiwar Republicans in Congress who complain that we don't belong in Iraq any longer because, you know, it's a civil war. This is largely seen as an unintended consequence of the American invasion – but what if it was intended?
"It would, after all, make perfect Bizarro 'sense.' If, instead of trying to build a stable, democratic Iraq, you're trying to wreak as much destruction as possible and turn Arab against Arab, Muslim against Muslim, and the Kurds against everyone else, then the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the right thing to do."
That was last May, when the Surge was being hailed as the solution to all our problems in Iraq, and it's little wonder that this strategy is now being pronounced a failure. What you have to understand, dear reader, is that, in the Bizarro World alternate universe we seemed to have slipped into, failure is success.
At the end of John McCain's Hundred-Year War, when whoever is president declares "victory" and hightails it out of Iraq, some subversive soul will remind us of King Pyrrhus' lament:
"Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone."
Why Not Try Diplomacy? by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Why Not Try Diplomacy?
Remarks to the University Continuing Education Association
March 28, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
I want to speak to you this afternoon about diplomacy as an element of statecraft. By now most Americans recognize that we are in a bit of trouble both at home and abroad. What is to be done? Is diplomacy a better answer than the use of force?
The late Arthur Goldberg, who was both a Justice of our Supreme Court and Ambassador to the United Nations, observed that "diplomats approach every issue with an open ... mouth." A colleague and friend of mine, who served as Ambassador to China, once told me that "a diplomat is someone who thinks twice – before saying nothing." They set a high bar for a public speaker on diplomacy as an alternative to militarism, but I am willing to attempt it.
Americans believe in military power, and the United States has never spent so much on it. Internationally, given our diminished political standing and the collapse of the dollar, military prowess may be our only remaining comparative advantage. We certainly behave as though we think it is.
In current dollars, we are spending about 28 percent more on our military each year than we did during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and over one-third more than at the height of the Reagan defense build-up against the late, unlamented Soviet Union. We are spending considerably more on military power than the rest of the world put together – three and a half times as much as the highest estimate for China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea combined; and at least 12,000 times as much as Al Qaeda and all other terrorist groups with global reach. It is not clear what enemies justify all this money. Whoever they are, if military expenditures are the key to national security, we've got them where we want them.
In the first ten years of this century, US defense outlays will total about five and one-quarter trillion dollars. Military-related outlays in other parts of the federal budget – like homeland security, veterans affairs, and interest payments on war debt – will add another $2 trillion or so to this, for a cumulative total of something well over $7 trillion in military and military-related spending. Our defense budget, including supplementals to pay for offensive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, is now about 5 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). Counting military-related outlays in other budgets, the percentage of our economy devoted to defense is around 7 percent. We have a huge economy and, in absolute terms, that is a lot of military spending.
We need a strong military even though we're not really worried about an invasion from Jamaica or Canada or Mexico or even Cuba or Iran. Unlike other nations' armed forces, what ours do is mostly not defense against foreign invasion or attacks on the homeland. Our military is configured for offensive deployment in support of foreign policy. It does deterrence, punishment, and conquest of real and potential foreign enemies. That is why our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are in Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Bosnia and dozens of other places around the world that have neither the intent nor the capability to attack us. It took 9/11 and its demonstration that we had no military means of preventing foreign attack on US civilians to get us to worry about the possibility that such attacks might occur. We now have a separate department of government focused on that.
Somehow, however, despite all the money we've spent, the debt we've accumulated, and the sacrifices patriotic Americans have made in distant foreign lands, our leaders tell us that we have never been so threatened. Given all the enemies we have been making recently, they may be right. There is, of course, a time-tested political axiom in Washington that if something isn't working the answer is to add money and do more of it. So our president and the three major candidates vying to succeed him join in promising further increases in defense spending – without providing any indication of how these increases would buy us greater security. It's enough to make one wonder whether President Eisenhower wasn't onto something when he warned Americans against the danger of nurturing a "military-industrial complex" that would give us a vested interest in military spending, regardless of the nature and level of the threat to our nation.
Massive military spending has, in fact, become an indispensable part of our political-economy. In addition to buying remarkably capable and costly weapons systems, it feeds hordes of consultants and contractors and houses legions of academic specialists. These are very bright people who labor to develop theories of how military coercion might control foreign behavior. They produce threat analyses to justify continuing US military build-up. They consider how best to apply our military might abroad, and they work out the force packages and weapons system specifications to do it. The intellectual energy that massive spending has focused on these topics – as opposed to means of influence that do not rely on the threat or use of force – has revolutionized the American approach to foreign policy. One should never underestimate the impact of either federal spending or the resulting focus of the academy!
And one should never underestimate the ability of politicians to ignore millennia of human experience and to aspire to expediency if the academy gives them an opening to do so. Most of our leaders, in both major political parties, now espouse a reversal of the longstanding American view that coercion, especially through military means, is a last resort to be brought into play only when diplomacy – in the form of persuasion, diplomatic bargaining, alliance-building, and other measures short of war – has failed. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the sequence approved on both sides of the aisle was to shoot first, then send in the diplomats to mop up. Since this hasn't worked out too well, there is now a lot of talk about how to recruit more diplomats and buy more mops. That's probably a good idea, but it might be more effective and cheaper to involve the diplomats at the outset and avoid creating such a mess in the first place.
It used to be thought that the purpose of war is to secure a more perfect peace. That is an objective that invokes diplomacy to translate military triumph into new arrangements acceptable to both victor and vanquished. It implies war planning focused on the question: "and then what?" and the conduct of war in accordance with a strategy that unites political, economic, informational, and intelligence measures with military actions and a well-crafted plan for war termination. In Iraq, a brilliant general has belatedly come up with a credible campaign plan but his plan is still unconnected to a strategy. Our plan to end the fighting is apparently to hang around until the Iraqis decide to make peace with each other. That might take a while. In the strategy-free zone that is contemporary Washington, no one wants to second-guess a celebrity general, but any reading of David Petraeus' manual on counter-insurgency must lead to the conclusion that, in Iraq, "victory" remains undefined and missing in action.
Sadly, theories of coercion and plans to use military means to impose our will on other nations have for some time squeezed out serious consideration of diplomacy as an alternative to the use of force. Diplomacy is more than saying "nice doggie," till you can find a rock. Weapons are tools to change men's minds but they are far from the only means of doing so. As we are learning from our misadventures in the Middle East, they are also seldom the most reliable or least expensive. The weapons of diplomats are words and their power is their persuasiveness. Talk is cheaper than firepower and does less collateral damage, so it makes sense to try it before blazing away at the adversary.
There is another reason to regard force as a last resort. It creates ruins that cannot easily be rebuilt and resentments that cannot be easily be overcome. War is a form of demolition; its results are messy and its effects on those it touches are uncertain. In the age of globalization, moreover, military invasion is as likely to incubate terrorists with global reach as it is to overthrow governments and seize terrain. It makes sense to exhaust diplomatic remedies first, not to follow a script of "Ready! Fire! Diplomacy!"
Diplomacy is the art of pursuing the internationally possible. Its main drawback is that it involves the unpleasant task of interacting persuasively with usually disagreeable adversaries and sometimes tedious friends. Despite the example of useful, wide-ranging dialog with our Soviet enemies (conducted on the sound theory that one should never lose contact with the enemy diplomatically or militarily), a generation of American leaders seems to have concluded that we shouldn't talk to people who disagree with us till they come out with their hands up. But not talking to those with whom one disagrees is the diplomatic equivalent of unilateral disarmament.
Figuring out why others are doing things and explaining to them why Americans disagree with this and why they should, in their own interest, do things our way is the opposite of appeasement. And it is more likely to achieve results than ducking such encounters while loudly proclaiming that those we disdain to speak with already know what they need to do to appease us, so we don't need to reason with them. Substituting reliance on the intuition of our adversaries for diplomatic communication with them leaves few options. We can live with a surging mess or we can slap on some sanctions. When these fail, as they inevitably do, we can send in the B-2s and Abrams tanks. These are not good choices. The approach they impose creates more problems than it solves.
Our next president will inherit a daunting list of challenges: apparently interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; withering alliances; diminished international prestige and deference to our leadership; deepening estrangement between the United States and the Islamic world, a mounting threat to our homeland from the growing ranks of anti-American jihadis; a war-fatigued, equipment-depleted, disenchanted, and still untransformed US military; an increasingly lawless world order; and the emergence of a widening range of regional challenges to US influence and interests from the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez Frías, and Vladimir Putin.
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He or she will have to deal with all these issues while wrestling with a budget and economy in chronic deficit; mounting national debt amidst a credit crisis; recession; inflation; insolvent pension systems; decaying infrastructure – complete with collapsing bridges, pot-holes, and gridlock; a medical system that extracts rapidly inflating payments from middle class Americans without caring for the poor, sick, and destitute among us; and other developments that, collectively, undermine America as a model that other nations wish to emulate. It is tempting to conclude that anyone who wants to be president under these circumstances is prima facie mentally defective and unfit for the office. Still, some poor soul will be inaugurated next January 20 and will have to deal with all these issues and then some.
The new president might start by shaking off the constipated notion that diplomacy is, like military posturing, just a way of conveying menace or containing or deterring threats. These things are, of course, part of diplomacy. And it's true, as Al Capone once sagely remarked, that "you will get farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." Diplomacy is largely about adding the strength of others to one's own, but its greater mission is to take the political offensive by transcending the conventional wisdom and identifying or creating opportunities, and seizing them to the national advantage. That is what Truman did with the Marshall Plan and the formation of NATO. It is what Nixon did with his opening to China. It is what Carter did at Camp David. It is what Reagan did with Gorbachev at Reykjavik. The next president should look into how to restore our atrophied diplomatic capabilities so as to lift us from the mire into which we have sunk.
Resorting to diplomacy will not be as easy as it may sound. Secretary of Defense Gates has recently begun to speak to the lopsided priorities apparent in our budget, which underfunds diplomacy and forces the US military to do all sorts of things that would be more appropriately and better done by civilian foreign affairs personnel. Gates points out that there are fewer professional diplomats in our Foreign Service than there are personnel in military bands or a single carrier battle group. What our country spends on a year's diplomatic and consular operations worldwide is less than what we spend in six days of military operations in Iraq..
You get what you pay for. In this case, that's a superbly professional and supremely lethal military and an anemically staffed and undertrained diplomatic service led by inexperienced political appointees on sabbatical from high incomes. As one of the last century's greatest diplomats, Israel's Abba Eban, said of this peculiarly American practice,
"The bizarre notion that any citizen, especially if he is rich, is fit for the representation of his country abroad has taken some hard blows through empirical evidence. But it has not been discarded."
It has been 196 years since an amateur general – Andrew Jackson – last commanded US troops in battle --not far from here. But to lead our diplomatic work abroad, especially in countries where the standard of living is high and the danger of anti-American violence is low, we still depend on amateurs who must learn on the job, hoping that their experienced subordinates will help them overcome their ignorance of the local language, paper over embarrassing gaffes, and avoid catastrophic mistakes. And in Washington, where Iraq has just reminded us how dangerous it can be to allow civilian armchair generals to substitute their military judgments for those of military professionals, we now staff our foreign policy apparatus almost entirely with people with no diplomatic experience. No other country in the world so values ideological reliability and party loyalty over professional knowledge and expertise. Only in America....
I am reminded of the story of a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Mac Toon, a crusty career diplomat who went aboard an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean for a meeting with the admiral who commanded its battle group. At the end of their discussion, the admiral leaned over to ask, "what's it like being an ambassador? I've always thought that after I retire I might want to try it." Ambassador Toon replied, "that's funny. I've always thought that, when I retire, I might try my hand at running a carrier battle group." The admiral said, "That's ridiculous. A naval command requires years of training and experience." But so do the management of foreign policy and diplomacy, if the ship of state is not to be sailed onto the rocks or beached in the desert.
It is a truism that skilled work requires skilled workmen. Americans are now without peer in the military arts. To prevail against our current enemies, we must attain equal excellence in diplomacy. We do not have the margin for error we once did. But even if we devote the equivalent of a whole week's worth of the Pentagon budget to the arts of peace – rather than the three days or so we now do – fixing our Foreign Service will take time. As our military know better than anyone, it takes decades to train, exercise, and professionalize personnel. After years of overemphasis on military means of conducting our foreign relations, getting up to diplomatic snuff will also require a serious investment in intellectual infrastructure comparable to that we have devoted to the military arts.
If we build a diplomatic capability to match our military prowess, we will gain a key building block of national strategy. But a bigger, better Foreign Service will not in itself create such a strategy. Nor will it solve the underlying problem of national strategic illiteracy. We suffer from what one of our most sophisticated foreign policy practitioners, Chester Crocker, has called a "statecraft deficit." It is inspiring to observe the professionalism of our military, which is the most competent in history. It is painful to observe the extent to which military requests for direction from the civilians whose control they are taught to revere go unanswered. The fact is that we – and those we elect and appoint to lead us – are remarkably poorly prepared for the preeminent role in world affairs we now play.
Our educational system bears major responsibility for this. Most Americans can't find Louisiana, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan, on the map. Many are unversed in history, still less diplomatic history. Few have been exposed to any instruction in how to reason about foreign affairs or statecraft and its diplomatic, intelligence, and military tools. Almost none have been tutored in strategy. This is understandable. It is largely a reflection of two factors, both of which have changed.
First, until recently, the American homeland was apparently invulnerable, and the United States was the leader in most fields of human endeavor. Foreign policy was therefore something we inflicted on others without fear of reprisal, not something they did unto us. And we didn't think we had much to learn from foreigners. Foreign affairs and national security didn't seem like anything the average American citizen had to worry about. But 9/11 changed that forever.
And, second, the formative influences of the Cold War, during which the United States led half the world against Soviet communism, are still with us. Then, the capacity of the Soviet Union to annihilate us imperiled our very existence. Its predatory ideology menaced our values; its imperial ambitions threatened our interests and those of many other nations.. The threats to both values and interests became so thoroughly merged that we forgot how to distinguish the two, though they are very different in their functions and import.
Attempts at historical revisionism by the proponents of militarism notwithstanding, the fact is that we won the Cold War by patient adherence to a strategy of containment, not by butting heads on a battlefield. Containment relied on diplomacy – on measures short of war – to build and sustain alliances backed by the deterrent power of great military strength. Some may profess to regret that we did not join in battle with the Soviet Union to roll back its empire. I am glad we substituted patience for belligerence. Our strategy did not vary over forty years. It formed the foreign policy outlook of three generations We did not have to think about strategy. In many ways, we appear to have forgotten how to do so.
We now face a world in which our personal security and that of our communities is threatened, but our national existence is not. As a people and as a nation, we are challenged from many directions and in many ways, not by a single "evil empire" that we can count upon to rot away from within. To secure our domestic tranquility against foreign assault and to lead the 21st Century as we did the last one will demand of us a higher level of strategic conceptual ability and civic literacy than we have had to demonstrate for decades. And it will require instruments of statecraft adequate to the task – diplomatic, informational, and intelligence capabilities of the first order, backed by military power without peer and a prosperous, attractive, and open society.
Two millennia ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca advised the Emperor Nero of the vital importance of setting objectives. "If a man does not know to what port he steers, no wind is favorable," he pointed out. It was good advice, even if Nero didn't take it. It is worth pondering in our current circumstances. Our debate about the challenges before us is almost entirely tactical not strategic; cast in terms of our politics rather than external realities; and focused on preventing change rather than turning it to our advantage.
Yet, for example, we risk reaping the whirlwind if we simply leave Iraq. We cannot do so safely and responsibly without defining realistic objectives and using our withdrawal to advance toward them. If we continue to aid and abet counterproductive behavior by all sides in the Middle East, we should not be surprised when they turn on us. If we do not define a feasible end-game in Afghanistan, we will just incubate more anti-American terrorists while expanding the world's heroin supply.
If we cannot decide what sort of international monetary reserve system should replace the currently collapsing one and persuade other stakeholders to act with us to fix it, we will drift into increasing economic misery. We must develop a plan to reunite the Atlantic region behind the rule of law and other Western values or see these eclipsed by ideas from other regions of the world that are rising to new prominence. Without a vision of mutually beneficial coexistence in our hemisphere, events and the anti-American dreams of others will bring needless trouble right up to our borders. If we are not positioned to help as Cuba, North Korea, Burma, and other troubled nations enter periods of transition, we must expect that they will change in ways that create new problems for us and their neighbors. If we have no positive agenda for enlisting Chinese and Indian power in common causes, they may well apply their power in ways that undercut ours, annoy us, or even injure us.
It has been a long time since Americans had a positive vision or clear objectives for these and many other pressing issues. I could go on, but the afternoon advances, and New Orleans beckons. Let me close with the obvious point that we cannot hope to appeal to the conscience of humankind if we do not continue to embody its aspirations. If we do not restore our country's good name, others will not follow when we lead or share the burdens we take up. To regain the cooperation of allies and friends, we must rediscover how to listen, how to persuade, how to be a team player, and how to follow the rules we demand others follow.
We must do this because we Americans cannot successfully address the problems we confront on our own. Our need for foreign partners has never been greater. Fortunately, the world's desire for partnership with America has not really gone away. Beneath the layers of resentment and animosity laid down by our recent behavior, there is still much goodwill toward the United States. This "fossil friendship" will not last forever. For now, however, it is a resource that American diplomacy can mine to rebuild the respect of allies and friends for our leadership and to unite them behind an American vision of a better world. A return to diplomacy, not threats and the use of force, is the surest path to the reassertion of American leadership. It is time to rediscover and explore that path.
Remarks to the University Continuing Education Association
March 28, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
I want to speak to you this afternoon about diplomacy as an element of statecraft. By now most Americans recognize that we are in a bit of trouble both at home and abroad. What is to be done? Is diplomacy a better answer than the use of force?
The late Arthur Goldberg, who was both a Justice of our Supreme Court and Ambassador to the United Nations, observed that "diplomats approach every issue with an open ... mouth." A colleague and friend of mine, who served as Ambassador to China, once told me that "a diplomat is someone who thinks twice – before saying nothing." They set a high bar for a public speaker on diplomacy as an alternative to militarism, but I am willing to attempt it.
Americans believe in military power, and the United States has never spent so much on it. Internationally, given our diminished political standing and the collapse of the dollar, military prowess may be our only remaining comparative advantage. We certainly behave as though we think it is.
In current dollars, we are spending about 28 percent more on our military each year than we did during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and over one-third more than at the height of the Reagan defense build-up against the late, unlamented Soviet Union. We are spending considerably more on military power than the rest of the world put together – three and a half times as much as the highest estimate for China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea combined; and at least 12,000 times as much as Al Qaeda and all other terrorist groups with global reach. It is not clear what enemies justify all this money. Whoever they are, if military expenditures are the key to national security, we've got them where we want them.
In the first ten years of this century, US defense outlays will total about five and one-quarter trillion dollars. Military-related outlays in other parts of the federal budget – like homeland security, veterans affairs, and interest payments on war debt – will add another $2 trillion or so to this, for a cumulative total of something well over $7 trillion in military and military-related spending. Our defense budget, including supplementals to pay for offensive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, is now about 5 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). Counting military-related outlays in other budgets, the percentage of our economy devoted to defense is around 7 percent. We have a huge economy and, in absolute terms, that is a lot of military spending.
We need a strong military even though we're not really worried about an invasion from Jamaica or Canada or Mexico or even Cuba or Iran. Unlike other nations' armed forces, what ours do is mostly not defense against foreign invasion or attacks on the homeland. Our military is configured for offensive deployment in support of foreign policy. It does deterrence, punishment, and conquest of real and potential foreign enemies. That is why our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are in Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Bosnia and dozens of other places around the world that have neither the intent nor the capability to attack us. It took 9/11 and its demonstration that we had no military means of preventing foreign attack on US civilians to get us to worry about the possibility that such attacks might occur. We now have a separate department of government focused on that.
Somehow, however, despite all the money we've spent, the debt we've accumulated, and the sacrifices patriotic Americans have made in distant foreign lands, our leaders tell us that we have never been so threatened. Given all the enemies we have been making recently, they may be right. There is, of course, a time-tested political axiom in Washington that if something isn't working the answer is to add money and do more of it. So our president and the three major candidates vying to succeed him join in promising further increases in defense spending – without providing any indication of how these increases would buy us greater security. It's enough to make one wonder whether President Eisenhower wasn't onto something when he warned Americans against the danger of nurturing a "military-industrial complex" that would give us a vested interest in military spending, regardless of the nature and level of the threat to our nation.
Massive military spending has, in fact, become an indispensable part of our political-economy. In addition to buying remarkably capable and costly weapons systems, it feeds hordes of consultants and contractors and houses legions of academic specialists. These are very bright people who labor to develop theories of how military coercion might control foreign behavior. They produce threat analyses to justify continuing US military build-up. They consider how best to apply our military might abroad, and they work out the force packages and weapons system specifications to do it. The intellectual energy that massive spending has focused on these topics – as opposed to means of influence that do not rely on the threat or use of force – has revolutionized the American approach to foreign policy. One should never underestimate the impact of either federal spending or the resulting focus of the academy!
And one should never underestimate the ability of politicians to ignore millennia of human experience and to aspire to expediency if the academy gives them an opening to do so. Most of our leaders, in both major political parties, now espouse a reversal of the longstanding American view that coercion, especially through military means, is a last resort to be brought into play only when diplomacy – in the form of persuasion, diplomatic bargaining, alliance-building, and other measures short of war – has failed. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the sequence approved on both sides of the aisle was to shoot first, then send in the diplomats to mop up. Since this hasn't worked out too well, there is now a lot of talk about how to recruit more diplomats and buy more mops. That's probably a good idea, but it might be more effective and cheaper to involve the diplomats at the outset and avoid creating such a mess in the first place.
It used to be thought that the purpose of war is to secure a more perfect peace. That is an objective that invokes diplomacy to translate military triumph into new arrangements acceptable to both victor and vanquished. It implies war planning focused on the question: "and then what?" and the conduct of war in accordance with a strategy that unites political, economic, informational, and intelligence measures with military actions and a well-crafted plan for war termination. In Iraq, a brilliant general has belatedly come up with a credible campaign plan but his plan is still unconnected to a strategy. Our plan to end the fighting is apparently to hang around until the Iraqis decide to make peace with each other. That might take a while. In the strategy-free zone that is contemporary Washington, no one wants to second-guess a celebrity general, but any reading of David Petraeus' manual on counter-insurgency must lead to the conclusion that, in Iraq, "victory" remains undefined and missing in action.
Sadly, theories of coercion and plans to use military means to impose our will on other nations have for some time squeezed out serious consideration of diplomacy as an alternative to the use of force. Diplomacy is more than saying "nice doggie," till you can find a rock. Weapons are tools to change men's minds but they are far from the only means of doing so. As we are learning from our misadventures in the Middle East, they are also seldom the most reliable or least expensive. The weapons of diplomats are words and their power is their persuasiveness. Talk is cheaper than firepower and does less collateral damage, so it makes sense to try it before blazing away at the adversary.
There is another reason to regard force as a last resort. It creates ruins that cannot easily be rebuilt and resentments that cannot be easily be overcome. War is a form of demolition; its results are messy and its effects on those it touches are uncertain. In the age of globalization, moreover, military invasion is as likely to incubate terrorists with global reach as it is to overthrow governments and seize terrain. It makes sense to exhaust diplomatic remedies first, not to follow a script of "Ready! Fire! Diplomacy!"
Diplomacy is the art of pursuing the internationally possible. Its main drawback is that it involves the unpleasant task of interacting persuasively with usually disagreeable adversaries and sometimes tedious friends. Despite the example of useful, wide-ranging dialog with our Soviet enemies (conducted on the sound theory that one should never lose contact with the enemy diplomatically or militarily), a generation of American leaders seems to have concluded that we shouldn't talk to people who disagree with us till they come out with their hands up. But not talking to those with whom one disagrees is the diplomatic equivalent of unilateral disarmament.
Figuring out why others are doing things and explaining to them why Americans disagree with this and why they should, in their own interest, do things our way is the opposite of appeasement. And it is more likely to achieve results than ducking such encounters while loudly proclaiming that those we disdain to speak with already know what they need to do to appease us, so we don't need to reason with them. Substituting reliance on the intuition of our adversaries for diplomatic communication with them leaves few options. We can live with a surging mess or we can slap on some sanctions. When these fail, as they inevitably do, we can send in the B-2s and Abrams tanks. These are not good choices. The approach they impose creates more problems than it solves.
Our next president will inherit a daunting list of challenges: apparently interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; withering alliances; diminished international prestige and deference to our leadership; deepening estrangement between the United States and the Islamic world, a mounting threat to our homeland from the growing ranks of anti-American jihadis; a war-fatigued, equipment-depleted, disenchanted, and still untransformed US military; an increasingly lawless world order; and the emergence of a widening range of regional challenges to US influence and interests from the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez Frías, and Vladimir Putin.
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He or she will have to deal with all these issues while wrestling with a budget and economy in chronic deficit; mounting national debt amidst a credit crisis; recession; inflation; insolvent pension systems; decaying infrastructure – complete with collapsing bridges, pot-holes, and gridlock; a medical system that extracts rapidly inflating payments from middle class Americans without caring for the poor, sick, and destitute among us; and other developments that, collectively, undermine America as a model that other nations wish to emulate. It is tempting to conclude that anyone who wants to be president under these circumstances is prima facie mentally defective and unfit for the office. Still, some poor soul will be inaugurated next January 20 and will have to deal with all these issues and then some.
The new president might start by shaking off the constipated notion that diplomacy is, like military posturing, just a way of conveying menace or containing or deterring threats. These things are, of course, part of diplomacy. And it's true, as Al Capone once sagely remarked, that "you will get farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." Diplomacy is largely about adding the strength of others to one's own, but its greater mission is to take the political offensive by transcending the conventional wisdom and identifying or creating opportunities, and seizing them to the national advantage. That is what Truman did with the Marshall Plan and the formation of NATO. It is what Nixon did with his opening to China. It is what Carter did at Camp David. It is what Reagan did with Gorbachev at Reykjavik. The next president should look into how to restore our atrophied diplomatic capabilities so as to lift us from the mire into which we have sunk.
Resorting to diplomacy will not be as easy as it may sound. Secretary of Defense Gates has recently begun to speak to the lopsided priorities apparent in our budget, which underfunds diplomacy and forces the US military to do all sorts of things that would be more appropriately and better done by civilian foreign affairs personnel. Gates points out that there are fewer professional diplomats in our Foreign Service than there are personnel in military bands or a single carrier battle group. What our country spends on a year's diplomatic and consular operations worldwide is less than what we spend in six days of military operations in Iraq..
You get what you pay for. In this case, that's a superbly professional and supremely lethal military and an anemically staffed and undertrained diplomatic service led by inexperienced political appointees on sabbatical from high incomes. As one of the last century's greatest diplomats, Israel's Abba Eban, said of this peculiarly American practice,
"The bizarre notion that any citizen, especially if he is rich, is fit for the representation of his country abroad has taken some hard blows through empirical evidence. But it has not been discarded."
It has been 196 years since an amateur general – Andrew Jackson – last commanded US troops in battle --not far from here. But to lead our diplomatic work abroad, especially in countries where the standard of living is high and the danger of anti-American violence is low, we still depend on amateurs who must learn on the job, hoping that their experienced subordinates will help them overcome their ignorance of the local language, paper over embarrassing gaffes, and avoid catastrophic mistakes. And in Washington, where Iraq has just reminded us how dangerous it can be to allow civilian armchair generals to substitute their military judgments for those of military professionals, we now staff our foreign policy apparatus almost entirely with people with no diplomatic experience. No other country in the world so values ideological reliability and party loyalty over professional knowledge and expertise. Only in America....
I am reminded of the story of a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Mac Toon, a crusty career diplomat who went aboard an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean for a meeting with the admiral who commanded its battle group. At the end of their discussion, the admiral leaned over to ask, "what's it like being an ambassador? I've always thought that after I retire I might want to try it." Ambassador Toon replied, "that's funny. I've always thought that, when I retire, I might try my hand at running a carrier battle group." The admiral said, "That's ridiculous. A naval command requires years of training and experience." But so do the management of foreign policy and diplomacy, if the ship of state is not to be sailed onto the rocks or beached in the desert.
It is a truism that skilled work requires skilled workmen. Americans are now without peer in the military arts. To prevail against our current enemies, we must attain equal excellence in diplomacy. We do not have the margin for error we once did. But even if we devote the equivalent of a whole week's worth of the Pentagon budget to the arts of peace – rather than the three days or so we now do – fixing our Foreign Service will take time. As our military know better than anyone, it takes decades to train, exercise, and professionalize personnel. After years of overemphasis on military means of conducting our foreign relations, getting up to diplomatic snuff will also require a serious investment in intellectual infrastructure comparable to that we have devoted to the military arts.
If we build a diplomatic capability to match our military prowess, we will gain a key building block of national strategy. But a bigger, better Foreign Service will not in itself create such a strategy. Nor will it solve the underlying problem of national strategic illiteracy. We suffer from what one of our most sophisticated foreign policy practitioners, Chester Crocker, has called a "statecraft deficit." It is inspiring to observe the professionalism of our military, which is the most competent in history. It is painful to observe the extent to which military requests for direction from the civilians whose control they are taught to revere go unanswered. The fact is that we – and those we elect and appoint to lead us – are remarkably poorly prepared for the preeminent role in world affairs we now play.
Our educational system bears major responsibility for this. Most Americans can't find Louisiana, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan, on the map. Many are unversed in history, still less diplomatic history. Few have been exposed to any instruction in how to reason about foreign affairs or statecraft and its diplomatic, intelligence, and military tools. Almost none have been tutored in strategy. This is understandable. It is largely a reflection of two factors, both of which have changed.
First, until recently, the American homeland was apparently invulnerable, and the United States was the leader in most fields of human endeavor. Foreign policy was therefore something we inflicted on others without fear of reprisal, not something they did unto us. And we didn't think we had much to learn from foreigners. Foreign affairs and national security didn't seem like anything the average American citizen had to worry about. But 9/11 changed that forever.
And, second, the formative influences of the Cold War, during which the United States led half the world against Soviet communism, are still with us. Then, the capacity of the Soviet Union to annihilate us imperiled our very existence. Its predatory ideology menaced our values; its imperial ambitions threatened our interests and those of many other nations.. The threats to both values and interests became so thoroughly merged that we forgot how to distinguish the two, though they are very different in their functions and import.
Attempts at historical revisionism by the proponents of militarism notwithstanding, the fact is that we won the Cold War by patient adherence to a strategy of containment, not by butting heads on a battlefield. Containment relied on diplomacy – on measures short of war – to build and sustain alliances backed by the deterrent power of great military strength. Some may profess to regret that we did not join in battle with the Soviet Union to roll back its empire. I am glad we substituted patience for belligerence. Our strategy did not vary over forty years. It formed the foreign policy outlook of three generations We did not have to think about strategy. In many ways, we appear to have forgotten how to do so.
We now face a world in which our personal security and that of our communities is threatened, but our national existence is not. As a people and as a nation, we are challenged from many directions and in many ways, not by a single "evil empire" that we can count upon to rot away from within. To secure our domestic tranquility against foreign assault and to lead the 21st Century as we did the last one will demand of us a higher level of strategic conceptual ability and civic literacy than we have had to demonstrate for decades. And it will require instruments of statecraft adequate to the task – diplomatic, informational, and intelligence capabilities of the first order, backed by military power without peer and a prosperous, attractive, and open society.
Two millennia ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca advised the Emperor Nero of the vital importance of setting objectives. "If a man does not know to what port he steers, no wind is favorable," he pointed out. It was good advice, even if Nero didn't take it. It is worth pondering in our current circumstances. Our debate about the challenges before us is almost entirely tactical not strategic; cast in terms of our politics rather than external realities; and focused on preventing change rather than turning it to our advantage.
Yet, for example, we risk reaping the whirlwind if we simply leave Iraq. We cannot do so safely and responsibly without defining realistic objectives and using our withdrawal to advance toward them. If we continue to aid and abet counterproductive behavior by all sides in the Middle East, we should not be surprised when they turn on us. If we do not define a feasible end-game in Afghanistan, we will just incubate more anti-American terrorists while expanding the world's heroin supply.
If we cannot decide what sort of international monetary reserve system should replace the currently collapsing one and persuade other stakeholders to act with us to fix it, we will drift into increasing economic misery. We must develop a plan to reunite the Atlantic region behind the rule of law and other Western values or see these eclipsed by ideas from other regions of the world that are rising to new prominence. Without a vision of mutually beneficial coexistence in our hemisphere, events and the anti-American dreams of others will bring needless trouble right up to our borders. If we are not positioned to help as Cuba, North Korea, Burma, and other troubled nations enter periods of transition, we must expect that they will change in ways that create new problems for us and their neighbors. If we have no positive agenda for enlisting Chinese and Indian power in common causes, they may well apply their power in ways that undercut ours, annoy us, or even injure us.
It has been a long time since Americans had a positive vision or clear objectives for these and many other pressing issues. I could go on, but the afternoon advances, and New Orleans beckons. Let me close with the obvious point that we cannot hope to appeal to the conscience of humankind if we do not continue to embody its aspirations. If we do not restore our country's good name, others will not follow when we lead or share the burdens we take up. To regain the cooperation of allies and friends, we must rediscover how to listen, how to persuade, how to be a team player, and how to follow the rules we demand others follow.
We must do this because we Americans cannot successfully address the problems we confront on our own. Our need for foreign partners has never been greater. Fortunately, the world's desire for partnership with America has not really gone away. Beneath the layers of resentment and animosity laid down by our recent behavior, there is still much goodwill toward the United States. This "fossil friendship" will not last forever. For now, however, it is a resource that American diplomacy can mine to rebuild the respect of allies and friends for our leadership and to unite them behind an American vision of a better world. A return to diplomacy, not threats and the use of force, is the surest path to the reassertion of American leadership. It is time to rediscover and explore that path.
Afghan Lament b y Arnaud de Borchgrave
Afghan lament
Published: March 28, 2008
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- "I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters -- China and Russia.
Most of the European members of NATO, while professing solidarity with the United States and NATO over Afghanistan and conceding that it's a make-or-break issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance, are not prepared to stay more than another two years, maximum three. Supplying their, at best, weak troop commitments stationed in the quieter parts of Afghanistan (where there is little Taliban guerrilla activity) is more costly than anticipated. Countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy have limited airlift capacity, and their military transport aircraft are stretched to the breaking point. EU countries that are also members of NATO allowed their defenses to run down since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and money saved went into the gargantuan appetites of welfare states.
Most European "statesmen/women" concede the need to become more engaged in Afghanistan, but the man/woman-in-the-street questions the need to expend resources in a country that is still hovering between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Taliban was there before we came, argue most Europeans, and will be back even before we leave. With luck, they add, what will follow our withdrawal will accept the education of girls that the Taliban had rejected and ruthlessly stamped out when it ruled the roost between 1996 and 2001.
Afghan's opium poppy crop has grown steadily larger (now 8,300 tons a year, representing two-thirds of the Afghan gross domestic product) since the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled Taliban's Torquemada, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The one-eyed enforcer of religious fanaticism is still burrowed in the mountain fastness of the Hindu Kush and from time to time still manages to get pronouncements onto the world's satellite TV networks.
Speaking not for attribution about the Afghan narcotics crisis, an Afghan "strategic thinker" said recently the situation was under control and getting better from year to year -- whereupon he was interrupted by a journalist who said he had heard from the intelligence community that almost every minister in President Hamid Karzai's government was "on the take, and if not the minister, his No. 2 or 3 on the minister's behalf, and that ministers were careful to keep their U.S. visas up-to-date in case a hurried exit was suddenly required." The nonplused Afghan smiled, then said, "I thought this was on the record." Advised that it was "off the record," he confirmed everything the journalist had just said.
The high geopolitical stakes and lack of European resolve is NATO's existential crisis. Five former top-ranking military leaders have produced a new NATO "Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World -- Renewing the Trans-Atlantic Partnership," hoping this would discourage heads of government from kicking the Afghan can down the road one more time at the Bucharest, Romania, summit April 2-4. NATO's former uniformed chiefs (Britain's Field Marshal Lord Inge, France's Adm. Jacques Lanxade, Germany's Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili and Holland's Gen. Henk van den Bremen) say experiences gained in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that crisis management in the alliance is obsolete and needs an urgent update. This would have to include everything from prevention to stabilization -- "smart power" in the new geopolitical vernacular.
Unveiling their new strategic document at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the five military brains concluded there is no single organization capable of dealing with NATO's "out-of-theater" operations. The combined efforts of NATO, the United Nations and the European Union should be brought to bear. NATO needs EU support for its non-military capabilities, while the EU needs NATO for armed forces capable of managing a serious crisis. The United Nations, for its part, lacks the kind of heft that makes national entities pay attention to international political management. So the three entities should conjugate their efforts.
But what the five strategic thinkers skirted was (1) how to motivate awareness among European public opinion of current and future challenges and (2) how to spark political awareness of current and future challenges and political resolve to implement recommendations.
France, now half-in-half-out but more in than out, is banking on the ratification of a new European treaty that would give the EU the means to see itself as a coequal player with the United States, China and Russia. Hopefully, say Europe's strategic thinkers, this would give the EU a permanent president, a common foreign minister authorized to implement a single foreign policy. Common defense would take much longer. Small neighboring countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have separate procurement programs for their armies, navies and air forces. Until last week Belgium was without a government for the past nine months as its two principal ethnic groups -- hard-working, Dutch-speaking Flemish and welfare-dependent, not so hard-working, French-speaking Walloons -- argued over frayed constitutional links. Hardly a promising harbinger for the EU as a global superpower.
In any event, this could not be achieved in time to influence events in Afghanistan, where the clock is running out. The Taliban cannot win militarily. Nor can NATO. But could NATO, the EU and the United Nations build a viable state with modern infrastructure? Certainly not over the next three years. Hence, Carlucci's admonition to stick it out for 10 to 20 years if necessary. Chances of this happening? Slim to none.
© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
Published: March 28, 2008
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- "I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters -- China and Russia.
Most of the European members of NATO, while professing solidarity with the United States and NATO over Afghanistan and conceding that it's a make-or-break issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance, are not prepared to stay more than another two years, maximum three. Supplying their, at best, weak troop commitments stationed in the quieter parts of Afghanistan (where there is little Taliban guerrilla activity) is more costly than anticipated. Countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy have limited airlift capacity, and their military transport aircraft are stretched to the breaking point. EU countries that are also members of NATO allowed their defenses to run down since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and money saved went into the gargantuan appetites of welfare states.
Most European "statesmen/women" concede the need to become more engaged in Afghanistan, but the man/woman-in-the-street questions the need to expend resources in a country that is still hovering between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Taliban was there before we came, argue most Europeans, and will be back even before we leave. With luck, they add, what will follow our withdrawal will accept the education of girls that the Taliban had rejected and ruthlessly stamped out when it ruled the roost between 1996 and 2001.
Afghan's opium poppy crop has grown steadily larger (now 8,300 tons a year, representing two-thirds of the Afghan gross domestic product) since the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled Taliban's Torquemada, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The one-eyed enforcer of religious fanaticism is still burrowed in the mountain fastness of the Hindu Kush and from time to time still manages to get pronouncements onto the world's satellite TV networks.
Speaking not for attribution about the Afghan narcotics crisis, an Afghan "strategic thinker" said recently the situation was under control and getting better from year to year -- whereupon he was interrupted by a journalist who said he had heard from the intelligence community that almost every minister in President Hamid Karzai's government was "on the take, and if not the minister, his No. 2 or 3 on the minister's behalf, and that ministers were careful to keep their U.S. visas up-to-date in case a hurried exit was suddenly required." The nonplused Afghan smiled, then said, "I thought this was on the record." Advised that it was "off the record," he confirmed everything the journalist had just said.
The high geopolitical stakes and lack of European resolve is NATO's existential crisis. Five former top-ranking military leaders have produced a new NATO "Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World -- Renewing the Trans-Atlantic Partnership," hoping this would discourage heads of government from kicking the Afghan can down the road one more time at the Bucharest, Romania, summit April 2-4. NATO's former uniformed chiefs (Britain's Field Marshal Lord Inge, France's Adm. Jacques Lanxade, Germany's Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili and Holland's Gen. Henk van den Bremen) say experiences gained in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that crisis management in the alliance is obsolete and needs an urgent update. This would have to include everything from prevention to stabilization -- "smart power" in the new geopolitical vernacular.
Unveiling their new strategic document at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the five military brains concluded there is no single organization capable of dealing with NATO's "out-of-theater" operations. The combined efforts of NATO, the United Nations and the European Union should be brought to bear. NATO needs EU support for its non-military capabilities, while the EU needs NATO for armed forces capable of managing a serious crisis. The United Nations, for its part, lacks the kind of heft that makes national entities pay attention to international political management. So the three entities should conjugate their efforts.
But what the five strategic thinkers skirted was (1) how to motivate awareness among European public opinion of current and future challenges and (2) how to spark political awareness of current and future challenges and political resolve to implement recommendations.
France, now half-in-half-out but more in than out, is banking on the ratification of a new European treaty that would give the EU the means to see itself as a coequal player with the United States, China and Russia. Hopefully, say Europe's strategic thinkers, this would give the EU a permanent president, a common foreign minister authorized to implement a single foreign policy. Common defense would take much longer. Small neighboring countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have separate procurement programs for their armies, navies and air forces. Until last week Belgium was without a government for the past nine months as its two principal ethnic groups -- hard-working, Dutch-speaking Flemish and welfare-dependent, not so hard-working, French-speaking Walloons -- argued over frayed constitutional links. Hardly a promising harbinger for the EU as a global superpower.
In any event, this could not be achieved in time to influence events in Afghanistan, where the clock is running out. The Taliban cannot win militarily. Nor can NATO. But could NATO, the EU and the United Nations build a viable state with modern infrastructure? Certainly not over the next three years. Hence, Carlucci's admonition to stick it out for 10 to 20 years if necessary. Chances of this happening? Slim to none.
© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
Death of the two state solution by Patrick Seale
Death of the Two-State Solution
by Patrick Seale
Released: 28 Mar 2008
http://www.patrickseale.com/
It is now clear beyond reasonable dispute that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has passed into the realm of fiction. The project -- if it ever was a real project -- is stone dead.
Some Western politicians, U.S. President George W. Bush among them, continue to pay lip service to the notion of an independent and viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. But their actions belie their words.
There is today no effective pressure on Israel -- either from the United States, or Europe, or indeed from the Arab states themselves -- to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, halt its settlement expansion, or agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. In the absence of such pressure -- and it would have to be severe -- Israel will not comply.
Ever since its emergence on the ruins of Arab Palestine six decades ago, Israel has sought to crush any resurgence of Palestinian nationalism. That determination is as real today as it was then. Israel continues to be driven by the belief that any concession to the Palestinians -- and any recognition of its responsibility for their dispossession -- would undermine Israel's own legitimacy.
Mention of a Palestinian state is, therefore, a cruel charade -- whether the words are uttered by George W. Bush, or France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, or any other leader. When Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert utters the words, they are a blatant exercise in cynicism and hypocrisy.
Already, forty percent of the West Bank has been eaten up by Israeli settlements, closed military areas, nature reserves, Israeli-only roads and the separation barrier, built deep inside Palestinian territory. The rest is fragmented by hundreds of checkpoints. Arab East Jerusalem, the heart of Arab Palestine, is now almost entirely cut off from what remains of the West Bank by a ring of Jewish settlements.
When UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency) first began operations in May 1950, it had some 900,000 destitute Palestinian refugees on its books. Today, there are around 4.5 million in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza have been reduced by Israel's siege to begging for their bread. They are kept alive only by UNWRA food packets.
How long can this outrage continue? Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, but the world looks the other way. It is easier to condemn China over Tibet.
The current situation in the Palestinian territories raises two stark questions. The first is a question of finance. Can UNWRA raise the $750m it needs this year for its General Fund and its Emergency Appeal? The answer is probably yes. To ease its conscience, and to compensate for its inability to influence Israeli behavior, the international community is likely to pay up -- if reluctantly and late.
The second question is more thought-provoking. How long will the Palestinians endure their present horrific conditions of life -- and the end of their dream of statehood -- before exploding? The polls point to a sharp radicalization of Palestinian society, as the realization sinks in that Israel will yield nothing by negotiation. Certainly, Olmert's desultory talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas have got nowhere -- and will get nowhere.
Some observers predict the outbreak of a third Intifada, more violent than the two previous ones, which erupted respectively in 1987 and 2000. Other observers believe, however, that there is little fight left in the Palestinians. They have been greatly -- and deliberately -- enfeebled by unemployment, malnutrition, a collapsed economy, severe restrictions on movement, not to mention Israel's frequent raids, targeted assassinations, and the incarceration in harsh conditions of over 10,000 Palestinians.
This repression may not, of course, be able to prevent all attacks on Israeli targets, whether inside Israel or abroad. But occasional outbursts of Palestinian violence will immediately be condemned as 'terrorism', and will win Israel international sympathy.
Some would even go so far as to argue that the occupied Palestinian territories are the Israeli equivalent of the rebellious banlieues on the outskirts of French cities. Just as these suburbs erupt angrily from time to time, and are put down, so Israel will not find it beyond its means to keep the territories reasonably quiet, even if it means killing a few hundred people each year.
Hamas and Hizbullah, on Israel's Gaza and Lebanon borders, provide more of a challenge because they seek to acquire a deterrent capability by establishing a "balance of terror" with Israel. But they are essentially little more than self-defense resistance movements, profoundly irritating to the powerful Jewish state, but posing no existential threat to it.
In any event, Israel's leaders seem to think that a little Arab violence -- and the constant security vigilance required to keep it within bounds -- are a price well worth paying for the control and gradual takeover of the whole of historic Palestine.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, is said to have shed bitter tears that the opportunity to seize the entire West Bank and expel the rest of its Arab population was missed in 1948, when the Arab states were routed. Evidently, his successors have by no means given up the goal. Not for nothing have Israel's borders remained undefined to this day.
As the ultra-nationalist religious right steadily gains ground, holding the Israeli government hostage with its claim that the whole of the "Land of Israel" is God-given and cannot be surrendered, it is not surprising that Ehud Olmert has been unable to dismantle a single illegal outpost, in spite of his promise to George W. Bush.
When was the dream of a Palestinian state finally put to rest? Future historians will probably blame the seven years of neglect under George W. Bush, as well as the great influence on his administration of the pro-Israeli neocons, totally opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Any role the European Union could have played to advance Arab-Israeli peace was abdicated when Tony Blair, Britain's former prime minister, split Europe by allying himself with the American neocons in the war against Iraq. In any event, the Israeli-Arab conflict is a subject that divides rather than unites Europe. Still atoning for its Nazi past, Germany cannot bring itself to put any pressure on Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.
On her recent visit to Jerusalem, Germany's Angela Merkel scarcely mentioned the suffering Palestinians at all, except to condemn Hamas' "terror attacks." Israel's security, she said, was Germany's responsibility. "Threats to you are threats to us."
As usual, the Palestinians have been their own worst enemies. They have been plagued by factionalism for most of their modern history, ever since they quarreled over how best to resist the flood of Jewish immigration into Palestine between the world wars. Today, the violent clash between Fatah and Hamas has come at just the wrong moment for Palestinian fortunes.
If, under Yemeni mediation, they manage to patch up their quarrel and reform a National Palestinian Government, Israel will immediately seize on the inclusion of Hamas to suspend the peace talks. For those who do not want peace, any pretext will do.
Little wonder, therefore, that the choice for the Palestinians is between abject surrender and armed resistance. Either way, the future is bleak. Palestinian statehood has become a mirage, fading away into the distance whenever it is approached.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
by Patrick Seale
Released: 28 Mar 2008
http://www.patrickseale.com/
It is now clear beyond reasonable dispute that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has passed into the realm of fiction. The project -- if it ever was a real project -- is stone dead.
Some Western politicians, U.S. President George W. Bush among them, continue to pay lip service to the notion of an independent and viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. But their actions belie their words.
There is today no effective pressure on Israel -- either from the United States, or Europe, or indeed from the Arab states themselves -- to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, halt its settlement expansion, or agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. In the absence of such pressure -- and it would have to be severe -- Israel will not comply.
Ever since its emergence on the ruins of Arab Palestine six decades ago, Israel has sought to crush any resurgence of Palestinian nationalism. That determination is as real today as it was then. Israel continues to be driven by the belief that any concession to the Palestinians -- and any recognition of its responsibility for their dispossession -- would undermine Israel's own legitimacy.
Mention of a Palestinian state is, therefore, a cruel charade -- whether the words are uttered by George W. Bush, or France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, or any other leader. When Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert utters the words, they are a blatant exercise in cynicism and hypocrisy.
Already, forty percent of the West Bank has been eaten up by Israeli settlements, closed military areas, nature reserves, Israeli-only roads and the separation barrier, built deep inside Palestinian territory. The rest is fragmented by hundreds of checkpoints. Arab East Jerusalem, the heart of Arab Palestine, is now almost entirely cut off from what remains of the West Bank by a ring of Jewish settlements.
When UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency) first began operations in May 1950, it had some 900,000 destitute Palestinian refugees on its books. Today, there are around 4.5 million in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza have been reduced by Israel's siege to begging for their bread. They are kept alive only by UNWRA food packets.
How long can this outrage continue? Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, but the world looks the other way. It is easier to condemn China over Tibet.
The current situation in the Palestinian territories raises two stark questions. The first is a question of finance. Can UNWRA raise the $750m it needs this year for its General Fund and its Emergency Appeal? The answer is probably yes. To ease its conscience, and to compensate for its inability to influence Israeli behavior, the international community is likely to pay up -- if reluctantly and late.
The second question is more thought-provoking. How long will the Palestinians endure their present horrific conditions of life -- and the end of their dream of statehood -- before exploding? The polls point to a sharp radicalization of Palestinian society, as the realization sinks in that Israel will yield nothing by negotiation. Certainly, Olmert's desultory talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas have got nowhere -- and will get nowhere.
Some observers predict the outbreak of a third Intifada, more violent than the two previous ones, which erupted respectively in 1987 and 2000. Other observers believe, however, that there is little fight left in the Palestinians. They have been greatly -- and deliberately -- enfeebled by unemployment, malnutrition, a collapsed economy, severe restrictions on movement, not to mention Israel's frequent raids, targeted assassinations, and the incarceration in harsh conditions of over 10,000 Palestinians.
This repression may not, of course, be able to prevent all attacks on Israeli targets, whether inside Israel or abroad. But occasional outbursts of Palestinian violence will immediately be condemned as 'terrorism', and will win Israel international sympathy.
Some would even go so far as to argue that the occupied Palestinian territories are the Israeli equivalent of the rebellious banlieues on the outskirts of French cities. Just as these suburbs erupt angrily from time to time, and are put down, so Israel will not find it beyond its means to keep the territories reasonably quiet, even if it means killing a few hundred people each year.
Hamas and Hizbullah, on Israel's Gaza and Lebanon borders, provide more of a challenge because they seek to acquire a deterrent capability by establishing a "balance of terror" with Israel. But they are essentially little more than self-defense resistance movements, profoundly irritating to the powerful Jewish state, but posing no existential threat to it.
In any event, Israel's leaders seem to think that a little Arab violence -- and the constant security vigilance required to keep it within bounds -- are a price well worth paying for the control and gradual takeover of the whole of historic Palestine.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, is said to have shed bitter tears that the opportunity to seize the entire West Bank and expel the rest of its Arab population was missed in 1948, when the Arab states were routed. Evidently, his successors have by no means given up the goal. Not for nothing have Israel's borders remained undefined to this day.
As the ultra-nationalist religious right steadily gains ground, holding the Israeli government hostage with its claim that the whole of the "Land of Israel" is God-given and cannot be surrendered, it is not surprising that Ehud Olmert has been unable to dismantle a single illegal outpost, in spite of his promise to George W. Bush.
When was the dream of a Palestinian state finally put to rest? Future historians will probably blame the seven years of neglect under George W. Bush, as well as the great influence on his administration of the pro-Israeli neocons, totally opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Any role the European Union could have played to advance Arab-Israeli peace was abdicated when Tony Blair, Britain's former prime minister, split Europe by allying himself with the American neocons in the war against Iraq. In any event, the Israeli-Arab conflict is a subject that divides rather than unites Europe. Still atoning for its Nazi past, Germany cannot bring itself to put any pressure on Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.
On her recent visit to Jerusalem, Germany's Angela Merkel scarcely mentioned the suffering Palestinians at all, except to condemn Hamas' "terror attacks." Israel's security, she said, was Germany's responsibility. "Threats to you are threats to us."
As usual, the Palestinians have been their own worst enemies. They have been plagued by factionalism for most of their modern history, ever since they quarreled over how best to resist the flood of Jewish immigration into Palestine between the world wars. Today, the violent clash between Fatah and Hamas has come at just the wrong moment for Palestinian fortunes.
If, under Yemeni mediation, they manage to patch up their quarrel and reform a National Palestinian Government, Israel will immediately seize on the inclusion of Hamas to suspend the peace talks. For those who do not want peace, any pretext will do.
Little wonder, therefore, that the choice for the Palestinians is between abject surrender and armed resistance. Either way, the future is bleak. Palestinian statehood has become a mirage, fading away into the distance whenever it is approached.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
Bitter Lemons Middle East Roundtable March 27, 2008: America and Iraq: the next five years
bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 13 Volume 6 - March 27, 2008
America and Iraq: the next five years
• No more than a gamble - Safa A. Hussein
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007.
• The US army belongs to Iraq - Lawrence Kaplan
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance".
• Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US - Mustafa Kibaroglu
US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of Turkey.
• A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers - Mohammad K. Shiyyab
The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations.
No more than a gamble
Safa A. Hussein
In the last seven years, I have become more reluctant to make predictions about the future of Iraq because of the bitter experience of making a series of wrong assessments. First, against all expectations I witnessed the end of Saddam Hussein and his regime when, for ambiguous reasons, the United States decided to invade Iraq. Also, the war was unexpectedly short and did not destroy Baghdad and its infrastructure. The scale of looting and burning of many state-owned institutions was another unexpected surprise.
Shortly after the war, I expected Iraq to rise again like post-war Japan and Germany. But a few months later, huge unemployment caused by the mistakes of the Coalition Provisional Authority, coupled with the emergence of the insurgency and the rise of al-Qaeda, clearly indicated that Iraq was taking another path.
Again I made a mistaken assessment that within two years, progress in the political process and the build-up of Iraqi forces would lead to the defeat of both the insurgency and al-Qaeda. Yet the year 2005 witnessed deterioration in stability and signs of sectarian violence that increased rapidly in 2006. More than one million Iraqis were displaced either by force for sectarian reasons or because of insecurity and chaos. In the beginning of 2007, when the famous "Fardh al-Kanoon" security plan was announced, realistic expectations were for slow and modest improvements in security. Yet for various unanticipated reasons, the end of 2007 witnessed an improvement in security that challenged all expectations.
In view of all this experience, predicting what might happen in Iraq over the next five years may be no more than a gamble. But it is a challenge that is difficult to resist.
There are many reasons to believe that al-Qaeda will continue to retreat. By 2009, it may lose its bases in Diala and Mosul provinces, and by 2012 it may become a marginal terrorist group based in remote areas along the borders of Diala, Kirkuk and Mosul provinces. However, before the next provincial elections that are planned for the end of this year we may witness a new type of violence: Shi'ite against Shi'ite in the southern provinces and Sunni against Sunni in Anbar and the northern provinces. These struggles may be settled more rapidly in the Sunni provinces than in the South, largely because there are more resources to fight over in the latter.
These struggles will also divert the focus of the local population to the provinces rather than to Baghdad and this may eventually weaken the insurgency. It would then be up to the central government to choose whether to play the role of arbitrator between competing groups or support specific factions and thereby create a new insurgency.
On the national level, it is difficult to see a boost in reconciliation or in government activities, whether in providing basic services or realizing economic growth. The current political system, based on ethnic/sectarian political parties that share power, makes government decision-making and reform difficult. The main political blocs benefit from the existing system. Thus only partial reform is envisioned, and one may anticipate painfully slow progress in all directions: national reconciliation, basic services, economic growth, fighting corruption, etc. Such slow progress will impact hoped-for security gains, and a certain level of tension and violence may continue delaying the return of displaced people.
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007. Thus, during the next five years we may witness a "new normality" where some of the things that used to be possible, like freedom of movement, are no longer available, but the danger level drops and everyday concerns replace the obsession with mere survival.
A slow withdrawal of American forces may be carried out during the next five years. This may not impact security negatively, because it will be compensated partially by the growth of the Iraqi forces and, more important, it will improve the Iraqi government's standing both inside and outside Iraq. Even if a new Democratic president is elected in the US, he/she will come under pressure to sustain the US military commitment to Iraq, perhaps with some modifications.
On the other hand, pressure from Iraqi refugees on the European Union countries may continue, especially from the more than one million Iraqis already resident in Syria and Jordan. The EU may be required to do more about this humanitarian crisis.
The Arab countries, impacted by the changing nature of the internal Iraqi conflict from inter-sectarian to intra-sectarian, may slowly shift from inflaming the sectarian insurgency to a passive monitoring role. After the next Iraqi elections, they may become convinced that the new political system in Iraq has prevailed and that it is better to live with it. This may move them toward a more positive role.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Safa A. Hussein is a former deputy member of the dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. Prior to joining the Transitional Government he served as a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and worked in the military industry as director of a research and development center. Currently he works in the Iraqi National Security Council.
The US army belongs to Iraq
Lawrence Kaplan
US General David Petraeus elicited a few chuckles when, testifying before the US Congress last September, he inadvertently referred to Iraq as "home". But in the constellation of American bases that loop around the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, in the spectacle of young Americans knowing Iraqi neighborhoods as well as they know their own, in the profound and sometimes disquieting sense of ownership the US army has about this war--in all of these things there is evidence that Petraeus meant exactly what he said.
Over the years, I've watched the same scene in western and southern Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi, Sinjar and Tall Afar: American units slowly melt into the landscape, becoming in effect the most powerful of their area's tribes. Absent a functioning government, the US army administers nearly every visible facet of the state, above all the role of honest broker.
Not unlike the Americans in Vietnam and in the Philippines a century ago, the US army in Iraq has even acquired the flavor of its surroundings. This is not the army that resides in the city-states otherwise known as Forward Operating Bases, with their Pizza Huts, traffic cops and morgues. Officers in the "Grand Army of the Tigris", as one of its senior officers calls the American force, dine with local elders at "goat grabs", greet them with "man-kisses" and routinely punctuate their own conversations with the casual "inshallah". The vernacular has even followed the American army home: In the halls of the Pentagon, where nearly every army officer has served at least two tours in Iraq, officers ask whether this or that official has "wasta"--Iraqi shorthand for "influence" or "pull", though with a slightly more corrupt tinge.
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance", as US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey put it, and is too fixated on counterinsurgency. But there is another way to view this: Just as the US army that punched through Germany in 1945 bore slight resemblance to the amateurish force routed in North Africa three years before, the hardened units that America fields in Iraq today know the terrain in a way the army of 2003 and 2004 never did.
Whether measured in terms of tactics and techniques improved, operational schemes perfected or the clan loyalties of every house on every street catalogued and memorized, the accumulation of experience counts for everything in this war. In Iraq, roughly half of all casualties tend to be suffered during the first three months of a unit's deployment. What is true in microcosm is also true writ large. In a war where it's nearly impossible to detect intellectual coherence, the Army's learning curve tells a clear story.
In 2005, with other brigades either bulldozing through towns or hunkering down on their outskirts, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment literally "went native", fanning out across the city of Tal Afar and planting itself in the midst of a once-hostile population center. In 2006, the First Armored Division's First Brigade Combat Team borrowed and improved the template by establishing its own outposts across the brutal city of Ramadi and "flipping" the local tribes. The "surge" brigades then purposefully applied the examples of both cities to Baghdad. Perhaps too late for the home front, but Gen. Petraeus has enshrined the lessons of these places in a theater-wide strategy that is generating undeniable results.
There is, of course, an obvious downside to having an army that all but qualifies for Iraqi citizenship, even apart from the tally in dead and wounded. If the well-worn cliche that the US Army inhabits a different universe from the Iraqis around it is no longer quite true, the reverse certainly is: not even seven thousand miles can fully measure the US army's remove from American society. Having bled so much in Iraq, the officer corps has very little use for the prospect that it may "have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain", as Centurion Marcus Flavius predicted in his famous letter back to Rome. Five years on, the US army belongs to Iraq.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Lawrence Kaplan is editor of World Affairs.
Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US
Mustafa Kibaroglu
Five years of US occupation in Iraq have had two major effects on Turkey: a deterioration in Turkish-American relations and the transformation, rather than abolition, of perceived threats from Iraq. Their common denominator is Turkey's serious concerns about the aspirations of Iraqi Kurds to independence. From Turkey's perspective, the next five years will to a great extent be shaped by the pace of events on these issues.
The failure of the Turkish parliament on March 1, 2003 to pass a resolution that would allow the stationing of some 60,000 US troops on Turkish territory--which was said to constitute the crux of US strategy in its war on Iraq--demoted Turkey in the eyes of the Bush administration. Furthermore, the development provided justification for the US to elevate the status of the Kurds in northern Iraq to that of "strategic partner" in the region.
Indeed, US interest in the Kurds had already taken a dramatic turn with the 1991 Gulf war at the end of which the "no-fly-zone" imposed by the US sowed the seeds of an autonomous, if not independent, Kurdish entity in northern Iraq. Hence, over the next five years the degree of commitment the US shows in fulfilling the expectations of the Kurds in Iraq and in neighboring countries such as Iran, Syria and Turkey will determine the scope and content of Turkish-American relations and the nature of the threat perceived by Turkey from Iraq.
Until now, and in spite of sporadic and short-term improvements in relations between Turkey and the US, especially at times of high level visits, US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of its long-time NATO ally. This suggests that the general nature of Turkish-US bilateral relations will not improve and might even become worse.
An example of this was the unanticipated and much resented attitude of the US during Turkey's recent ground operation against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq. Even though the White House and the Pentagon were in advance provided with detailed information about the scale and purpose of the operation, the undiplomatic statements of US President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "the Turks should get out" once again underlined the fact that Washington considers the Kurds in northern Iraq as its primary strategic ally at present and in the future.
The value of the Kurds to the US emanates from a number of factors. First, the Kurds are key to Iraqi integration or indeed disintegration. If the US wants to "transform the greater Middle East", it has to be successful in Iraq so as to set a precedent for the rest of the region. Without the consent of the Kurds, Iraq will not stay united (even if it has already in fact disintegrated).
Second, the Kurds control large oil and gas fields, especially in and around the Kirkuk and Mosul districts that are likely to be exploited by American companies. Third, the Kurds are among the most secular groups in the entire Islamic world. As such, in the age of America's "global war on terror" that is based on the neo-conservative belief that Islamic radicalism feeds terrorism around the world, a Muslim Kurdish community that can ally itself with the West becomes indispensable.
Fourth, the geographical location of Kurdish northern Iraq provides Israel with a "forward defense capability" against threats from Iran and potentially from Pakistan, who have long-range missiles that may carry warheads with weapons of mass destruction. Fifth, Kurdish northern Iraq also lies between Turkey's relatively rich water resources, namely the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, and US allies in the region including Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.
The impact on Turkey of developments in Iraq over the next five years will be mainly determined by the extent to which the US is willing and able to mitigate Turkish fears vis-a-vis a possible declaration of independence by Kurds in Iraq. If the next US administration is able to take a wider perspective on world affairs and see where Turkey fits into its strategic calculations, attaining the level of strategic partnership may again be possible and rewarding for both parties.
If not, Turkey's attempts to prevent certain developments in Iraq may well lead to confrontation with the US that will delay America's attempt at building a new Iraqi state and thus "bringing democracy to the Middle East".- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Mustafa Kibaroglu is the coordinator of the Eurasian and Atlantic Security Studies Program in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers
Mohammad K. Shiyyab
It is now five years after America's "shock and awe" operation in Iraq, and the US, as much as anyone else, is still in shock from a seemingly endless war with all its consequences. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the US administration in Iraq ousted the government there, dismantled all Iraqi security agencies including the army, destroyed the country's infrastructure and occupied the country. To most analysts, this was a strategic blunder--unless the "classified" US strategy called for creating a chaotic situation to justify a long-term occupation of Iraq.
The war on Iraq has caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life, especially among Iraqis. Conservative estimates put the number of Iraqi casualties at no less than one million, most of them civilian. Many of these casualties were the result of internal disputes. The war also contributed to regional instability; five million Iraqis had to flee their country in search of safe sanctuary and four more million are displaced within Iraq itself.
In US President George W. Bush's own words "the war has been longer, harder and more costly than anticipated". To date, over 4,000 Americans have been killed and over 25,000 injured. New figures also indicate the high financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (see a recent book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" by economist and Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, which he co-authored with Harvard University Professor Linda Bilmes).
Furthermore, the war has resulted in two major transnational challenges--the containment of terrorism and the security of oil supplies--though one should not lose sight of the risk of nuclear proliferation. Terrorists operate in political voids, or weak or failing states. Such was the case with al-Qaeda's emergence in Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan. An obvious target for terrorism is oil-producing states and transit networks. Instability alone will spike oil prices even without a disruption in production or shipping. In extreme cases of "spillover" from major civil wars, civil strife in one state can cause civil strife in another. The loss of oil production from Iraq would be an irritant to the global economy; the loss of another nation's production, such as Saudi Arabia's, would be a catastrophe.
Regionally, humanitarian tragedies have massive security implications. The situation inside Iraq enabled militias to further entrench themselves as ruling bodies and make Iraq more susceptible to terrorist and extremist ideologies. As refugees flow into the region (Jordan hosts about 700,000 refugees), both insurgents and terrorists will move across borders to re-supply, recruit new members and destabilize neighboring states. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others have already been targeted by terrorists.
Iran has realized its ambition in Iraq of a Shi'ite-led government and has exercised its influence through its support for Shi'ite political factions and militias and its religious ties. Indirectly, Iran is strengthened in its regional and international ambitions through US humiliation. A weaker US also gives Iran space to support its regional clients. All of these factors complicate efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program. Iran knows that it has leverage and influence in the region, that the US is in trouble and that it can make things worse for American troops in Iraq.
Bush's strategy in Iraq is to prevent defeat and to hand the problem off to his successor. As a result, more and more Americans understandably want a rapid withdrawal, even at the risk of trading a dictator for chaos and a civil war that could become a regional war. Washington, therefore, needs to formulate a viable exit strategy to end the war. In this context, a declaration of principles regarding American intentions in Iraq and a timetable for the reduction of forces or total withdrawal would be an important stabilizing factor.
While a withdrawal of US troops would precipitate short-term violence, a continued presence would further increase regional tensions. The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations. A further deterioration in the stability of Iraq would no doubt compound the chaos in the Middle East.
Some practical hope for salvation lies with Iraqis themselves. Iraqis must take charge of their future. Iraq's neighbors as well as the international community must now search for a genuine political solution that factors in regional interests.
Three important issues are of major concern to the Iraqi Sunni population: political power sharing, control of oil revenues and the role of Islam in a new government. These major concerns have to be addressed. The Kurds are systematically increasing their control over Kirkuk, a center of oil wealth, which will provoke another source of conflict with Sunnis and perhaps with Shi'ites. However, this could be mitigated if the Kurds agree to oil revenue sharing.
What Iraq needs is a strong central government to manage the greater Baghdad area and to be in charge of foreign policy, defense and oil production. Further, we need a solid security environment, sustained by the presence of adequate Iraqi security forces, to facilitate governance and economic activity. Political agreements need to address grievances between fighting factions in order to build trust and achieve a longer-term solution. A federal Iraq should not be based on ethnic or religious grounds. The US and Iraq's neighbors must press the Kurds to accept such a proposition.
Last but not least, an enhanced role for the United Nations in Iraq might be a step in the right direction and could be kick-started by convening a regional security conference under the auspices of the UN where Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, pledge to support an Iraqi power sharing agreement and respect Iraq's borders.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
General (rtd) Mohammad K. Shiyyab is director of the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Amman. He is a former deputy commander of the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 13 Volume 6 - March 27, 2008
America and Iraq: the next five years
• No more than a gamble - Safa A. Hussein
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007.
• The US army belongs to Iraq - Lawrence Kaplan
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance".
• Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US - Mustafa Kibaroglu
US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of Turkey.
• A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers - Mohammad K. Shiyyab
The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations.
No more than a gamble
Safa A. Hussein
In the last seven years, I have become more reluctant to make predictions about the future of Iraq because of the bitter experience of making a series of wrong assessments. First, against all expectations I witnessed the end of Saddam Hussein and his regime when, for ambiguous reasons, the United States decided to invade Iraq. Also, the war was unexpectedly short and did not destroy Baghdad and its infrastructure. The scale of looting and burning of many state-owned institutions was another unexpected surprise.
Shortly after the war, I expected Iraq to rise again like post-war Japan and Germany. But a few months later, huge unemployment caused by the mistakes of the Coalition Provisional Authority, coupled with the emergence of the insurgency and the rise of al-Qaeda, clearly indicated that Iraq was taking another path.
Again I made a mistaken assessment that within two years, progress in the political process and the build-up of Iraqi forces would lead to the defeat of both the insurgency and al-Qaeda. Yet the year 2005 witnessed deterioration in stability and signs of sectarian violence that increased rapidly in 2006. More than one million Iraqis were displaced either by force for sectarian reasons or because of insecurity and chaos. In the beginning of 2007, when the famous "Fardh al-Kanoon" security plan was announced, realistic expectations were for slow and modest improvements in security. Yet for various unanticipated reasons, the end of 2007 witnessed an improvement in security that challenged all expectations.
In view of all this experience, predicting what might happen in Iraq over the next five years may be no more than a gamble. But it is a challenge that is difficult to resist.
There are many reasons to believe that al-Qaeda will continue to retreat. By 2009, it may lose its bases in Diala and Mosul provinces, and by 2012 it may become a marginal terrorist group based in remote areas along the borders of Diala, Kirkuk and Mosul provinces. However, before the next provincial elections that are planned for the end of this year we may witness a new type of violence: Shi'ite against Shi'ite in the southern provinces and Sunni against Sunni in Anbar and the northern provinces. These struggles may be settled more rapidly in the Sunni provinces than in the South, largely because there are more resources to fight over in the latter.
These struggles will also divert the focus of the local population to the provinces rather than to Baghdad and this may eventually weaken the insurgency. It would then be up to the central government to choose whether to play the role of arbitrator between competing groups or support specific factions and thereby create a new insurgency.
On the national level, it is difficult to see a boost in reconciliation or in government activities, whether in providing basic services or realizing economic growth. The current political system, based on ethnic/sectarian political parties that share power, makes government decision-making and reform difficult. The main political blocs benefit from the existing system. Thus only partial reform is envisioned, and one may anticipate painfully slow progress in all directions: national reconciliation, basic services, economic growth, fighting corruption, etc. Such slow progress will impact hoped-for security gains, and a certain level of tension and violence may continue delaying the return of displaced people.
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007. Thus, during the next five years we may witness a "new normality" where some of the things that used to be possible, like freedom of movement, are no longer available, but the danger level drops and everyday concerns replace the obsession with mere survival.
A slow withdrawal of American forces may be carried out during the next five years. This may not impact security negatively, because it will be compensated partially by the growth of the Iraqi forces and, more important, it will improve the Iraqi government's standing both inside and outside Iraq. Even if a new Democratic president is elected in the US, he/she will come under pressure to sustain the US military commitment to Iraq, perhaps with some modifications.
On the other hand, pressure from Iraqi refugees on the European Union countries may continue, especially from the more than one million Iraqis already resident in Syria and Jordan. The EU may be required to do more about this humanitarian crisis.
The Arab countries, impacted by the changing nature of the internal Iraqi conflict from inter-sectarian to intra-sectarian, may slowly shift from inflaming the sectarian insurgency to a passive monitoring role. After the next Iraqi elections, they may become convinced that the new political system in Iraq has prevailed and that it is better to live with it. This may move them toward a more positive role.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Safa A. Hussein is a former deputy member of the dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. Prior to joining the Transitional Government he served as a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and worked in the military industry as director of a research and development center. Currently he works in the Iraqi National Security Council.
The US army belongs to Iraq
Lawrence Kaplan
US General David Petraeus elicited a few chuckles when, testifying before the US Congress last September, he inadvertently referred to Iraq as "home". But in the constellation of American bases that loop around the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, in the spectacle of young Americans knowing Iraqi neighborhoods as well as they know their own, in the profound and sometimes disquieting sense of ownership the US army has about this war--in all of these things there is evidence that Petraeus meant exactly what he said.
Over the years, I've watched the same scene in western and southern Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi, Sinjar and Tall Afar: American units slowly melt into the landscape, becoming in effect the most powerful of their area's tribes. Absent a functioning government, the US army administers nearly every visible facet of the state, above all the role of honest broker.
Not unlike the Americans in Vietnam and in the Philippines a century ago, the US army in Iraq has even acquired the flavor of its surroundings. This is not the army that resides in the city-states otherwise known as Forward Operating Bases, with their Pizza Huts, traffic cops and morgues. Officers in the "Grand Army of the Tigris", as one of its senior officers calls the American force, dine with local elders at "goat grabs", greet them with "man-kisses" and routinely punctuate their own conversations with the casual "inshallah". The vernacular has even followed the American army home: In the halls of the Pentagon, where nearly every army officer has served at least two tours in Iraq, officers ask whether this or that official has "wasta"--Iraqi shorthand for "influence" or "pull", though with a slightly more corrupt tinge.
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance", as US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey put it, and is too fixated on counterinsurgency. But there is another way to view this: Just as the US army that punched through Germany in 1945 bore slight resemblance to the amateurish force routed in North Africa three years before, the hardened units that America fields in Iraq today know the terrain in a way the army of 2003 and 2004 never did.
Whether measured in terms of tactics and techniques improved, operational schemes perfected or the clan loyalties of every house on every street catalogued and memorized, the accumulation of experience counts for everything in this war. In Iraq, roughly half of all casualties tend to be suffered during the first three months of a unit's deployment. What is true in microcosm is also true writ large. In a war where it's nearly impossible to detect intellectual coherence, the Army's learning curve tells a clear story.
In 2005, with other brigades either bulldozing through towns or hunkering down on their outskirts, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment literally "went native", fanning out across the city of Tal Afar and planting itself in the midst of a once-hostile population center. In 2006, the First Armored Division's First Brigade Combat Team borrowed and improved the template by establishing its own outposts across the brutal city of Ramadi and "flipping" the local tribes. The "surge" brigades then purposefully applied the examples of both cities to Baghdad. Perhaps too late for the home front, but Gen. Petraeus has enshrined the lessons of these places in a theater-wide strategy that is generating undeniable results.
There is, of course, an obvious downside to having an army that all but qualifies for Iraqi citizenship, even apart from the tally in dead and wounded. If the well-worn cliche that the US Army inhabits a different universe from the Iraqis around it is no longer quite true, the reverse certainly is: not even seven thousand miles can fully measure the US army's remove from American society. Having bled so much in Iraq, the officer corps has very little use for the prospect that it may "have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain", as Centurion Marcus Flavius predicted in his famous letter back to Rome. Five years on, the US army belongs to Iraq.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Lawrence Kaplan is editor of World Affairs.
Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US
Mustafa Kibaroglu
Five years of US occupation in Iraq have had two major effects on Turkey: a deterioration in Turkish-American relations and the transformation, rather than abolition, of perceived threats from Iraq. Their common denominator is Turkey's serious concerns about the aspirations of Iraqi Kurds to independence. From Turkey's perspective, the next five years will to a great extent be shaped by the pace of events on these issues.
The failure of the Turkish parliament on March 1, 2003 to pass a resolution that would allow the stationing of some 60,000 US troops on Turkish territory--which was said to constitute the crux of US strategy in its war on Iraq--demoted Turkey in the eyes of the Bush administration. Furthermore, the development provided justification for the US to elevate the status of the Kurds in northern Iraq to that of "strategic partner" in the region.
Indeed, US interest in the Kurds had already taken a dramatic turn with the 1991 Gulf war at the end of which the "no-fly-zone" imposed by the US sowed the seeds of an autonomous, if not independent, Kurdish entity in northern Iraq. Hence, over the next five years the degree of commitment the US shows in fulfilling the expectations of the Kurds in Iraq and in neighboring countries such as Iran, Syria and Turkey will determine the scope and content of Turkish-American relations and the nature of the threat perceived by Turkey from Iraq.
Until now, and in spite of sporadic and short-term improvements in relations between Turkey and the US, especially at times of high level visits, US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of its long-time NATO ally. This suggests that the general nature of Turkish-US bilateral relations will not improve and might even become worse.
An example of this was the unanticipated and much resented attitude of the US during Turkey's recent ground operation against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq. Even though the White House and the Pentagon were in advance provided with detailed information about the scale and purpose of the operation, the undiplomatic statements of US President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "the Turks should get out" once again underlined the fact that Washington considers the Kurds in northern Iraq as its primary strategic ally at present and in the future.
The value of the Kurds to the US emanates from a number of factors. First, the Kurds are key to Iraqi integration or indeed disintegration. If the US wants to "transform the greater Middle East", it has to be successful in Iraq so as to set a precedent for the rest of the region. Without the consent of the Kurds, Iraq will not stay united (even if it has already in fact disintegrated).
Second, the Kurds control large oil and gas fields, especially in and around the Kirkuk and Mosul districts that are likely to be exploited by American companies. Third, the Kurds are among the most secular groups in the entire Islamic world. As such, in the age of America's "global war on terror" that is based on the neo-conservative belief that Islamic radicalism feeds terrorism around the world, a Muslim Kurdish community that can ally itself with the West becomes indispensable.
Fourth, the geographical location of Kurdish northern Iraq provides Israel with a "forward defense capability" against threats from Iran and potentially from Pakistan, who have long-range missiles that may carry warheads with weapons of mass destruction. Fifth, Kurdish northern Iraq also lies between Turkey's relatively rich water resources, namely the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, and US allies in the region including Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.
The impact on Turkey of developments in Iraq over the next five years will be mainly determined by the extent to which the US is willing and able to mitigate Turkish fears vis-a-vis a possible declaration of independence by Kurds in Iraq. If the next US administration is able to take a wider perspective on world affairs and see where Turkey fits into its strategic calculations, attaining the level of strategic partnership may again be possible and rewarding for both parties.
If not, Turkey's attempts to prevent certain developments in Iraq may well lead to confrontation with the US that will delay America's attempt at building a new Iraqi state and thus "bringing democracy to the Middle East".- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Mustafa Kibaroglu is the coordinator of the Eurasian and Atlantic Security Studies Program in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers
Mohammad K. Shiyyab
It is now five years after America's "shock and awe" operation in Iraq, and the US, as much as anyone else, is still in shock from a seemingly endless war with all its consequences. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the US administration in Iraq ousted the government there, dismantled all Iraqi security agencies including the army, destroyed the country's infrastructure and occupied the country. To most analysts, this was a strategic blunder--unless the "classified" US strategy called for creating a chaotic situation to justify a long-term occupation of Iraq.
The war on Iraq has caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life, especially among Iraqis. Conservative estimates put the number of Iraqi casualties at no less than one million, most of them civilian. Many of these casualties were the result of internal disputes. The war also contributed to regional instability; five million Iraqis had to flee their country in search of safe sanctuary and four more million are displaced within Iraq itself.
In US President George W. Bush's own words "the war has been longer, harder and more costly than anticipated". To date, over 4,000 Americans have been killed and over 25,000 injured. New figures also indicate the high financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (see a recent book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" by economist and Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, which he co-authored with Harvard University Professor Linda Bilmes).
Furthermore, the war has resulted in two major transnational challenges--the containment of terrorism and the security of oil supplies--though one should not lose sight of the risk of nuclear proliferation. Terrorists operate in political voids, or weak or failing states. Such was the case with al-Qaeda's emergence in Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan. An obvious target for terrorism is oil-producing states and transit networks. Instability alone will spike oil prices even without a disruption in production or shipping. In extreme cases of "spillover" from major civil wars, civil strife in one state can cause civil strife in another. The loss of oil production from Iraq would be an irritant to the global economy; the loss of another nation's production, such as Saudi Arabia's, would be a catastrophe.
Regionally, humanitarian tragedies have massive security implications. The situation inside Iraq enabled militias to further entrench themselves as ruling bodies and make Iraq more susceptible to terrorist and extremist ideologies. As refugees flow into the region (Jordan hosts about 700,000 refugees), both insurgents and terrorists will move across borders to re-supply, recruit new members and destabilize neighboring states. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others have already been targeted by terrorists.
Iran has realized its ambition in Iraq of a Shi'ite-led government and has exercised its influence through its support for Shi'ite political factions and militias and its religious ties. Indirectly, Iran is strengthened in its regional and international ambitions through US humiliation. A weaker US also gives Iran space to support its regional clients. All of these factors complicate efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program. Iran knows that it has leverage and influence in the region, that the US is in trouble and that it can make things worse for American troops in Iraq.
Bush's strategy in Iraq is to prevent defeat and to hand the problem off to his successor. As a result, more and more Americans understandably want a rapid withdrawal, even at the risk of trading a dictator for chaos and a civil war that could become a regional war. Washington, therefore, needs to formulate a viable exit strategy to end the war. In this context, a declaration of principles regarding American intentions in Iraq and a timetable for the reduction of forces or total withdrawal would be an important stabilizing factor.
While a withdrawal of US troops would precipitate short-term violence, a continued presence would further increase regional tensions. The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations. A further deterioration in the stability of Iraq would no doubt compound the chaos in the Middle East.
Some practical hope for salvation lies with Iraqis themselves. Iraqis must take charge of their future. Iraq's neighbors as well as the international community must now search for a genuine political solution that factors in regional interests.
Three important issues are of major concern to the Iraqi Sunni population: political power sharing, control of oil revenues and the role of Islam in a new government. These major concerns have to be addressed. The Kurds are systematically increasing their control over Kirkuk, a center of oil wealth, which will provoke another source of conflict with Sunnis and perhaps with Shi'ites. However, this could be mitigated if the Kurds agree to oil revenue sharing.
What Iraq needs is a strong central government to manage the greater Baghdad area and to be in charge of foreign policy, defense and oil production. Further, we need a solid security environment, sustained by the presence of adequate Iraqi security forces, to facilitate governance and economic activity. Political agreements need to address grievances between fighting factions in order to build trust and achieve a longer-term solution. A federal Iraq should not be based on ethnic or religious grounds. The US and Iraq's neighbors must press the Kurds to accept such a proposition.
Last but not least, an enhanced role for the United Nations in Iraq might be a step in the right direction and could be kick-started by convening a regional security conference under the auspices of the UN where Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, pledge to support an Iraqi power sharing agreement and respect Iraq's borders.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
General (rtd) Mohammad K. Shiyyab is director of the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Amman. He is a former deputy commander of the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
DECLARATIOMS: Getting Mrs. Clinton by Peggy Noonan
DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN
Getting Mrs. Clinton
March 28, 2008
I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.
That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).
[Getting Mrs. Clinton]
AP
But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.
Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.
Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.
It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.
I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.
The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.
* * *
You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness.
On Wednesday a group of Mrs. Clinton's top donors sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, warning her in language that they no doubt thought subtle but that reflected a kind of incompetent menace, that her statements on the presidential campaign may result in less money for Democratic candidates for the House. Ms. Pelosi had said that in her view the superdelegates should support the presidential candidate who wins the most pledged delegates in state contests. The letter urged her to "clarify" her position, which is "clearly untenable" and "runs counter" to the superdelegates' right to make "an informed, individual decision" about "who would be the party's strongest nominee." The signers, noting their past and huge financial support, suggested that Ms. Pelosi "reflect" on her comments and amend them to reflect "a more open view."
Barack Obama's campaign called it inappropriate and said Mrs. Clinton should "reject the insinuation." But why would she? All she has now is bluster. Her supporters put their threat in a letter, not in a private meeting. By threatening Ms. Pelosi publicly, they robbed her of room to maneuver. She has to defy them or back down. She has always struck me as rather grittier than her chic suits, high heels and unhidden enthusiasm may suggest. We'll see.
What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)
She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.
* * *
What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."
Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, "I get it."
By PEGGY NOONAN
Getting Mrs. Clinton
March 28, 2008
I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.
That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).
[Getting Mrs. Clinton]
AP
But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.
Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.
Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.
It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.
I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.
The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.
* * *
You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness.
On Wednesday a group of Mrs. Clinton's top donors sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, warning her in language that they no doubt thought subtle but that reflected a kind of incompetent menace, that her statements on the presidential campaign may result in less money for Democratic candidates for the House. Ms. Pelosi had said that in her view the superdelegates should support the presidential candidate who wins the most pledged delegates in state contests. The letter urged her to "clarify" her position, which is "clearly untenable" and "runs counter" to the superdelegates' right to make "an informed, individual decision" about "who would be the party's strongest nominee." The signers, noting their past and huge financial support, suggested that Ms. Pelosi "reflect" on her comments and amend them to reflect "a more open view."
Barack Obama's campaign called it inappropriate and said Mrs. Clinton should "reject the insinuation." But why would she? All she has now is bluster. Her supporters put their threat in a letter, not in a private meeting. By threatening Ms. Pelosi publicly, they robbed her of room to maneuver. She has to defy them or back down. She has always struck me as rather grittier than her chic suits, high heels and unhidden enthusiasm may suggest. We'll see.
What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)
She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.
* * *
What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."
Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, "I get it."
The Strange Case of Robert Malley
The Strange Case Of Robert Malley
By Gershom Gorenberg
In The American Prospect , Opinion
March 27, 2008
Of all the recent efforts to smear Barack Obama, none strikes me as stranger than the claims that one of his informal advisers on foreign affairs, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel. This, in turn, is supposed to prove that as president, Obama is liable to institute dangerous changes in U.S. policy toward Israel.
As a campaign trope, the calumny may have begun with Ed Lasky, news editor of the right-wing Web site The American Thinker, who posted a fervid attack on Malley in January. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has taken time off from its hawkish media-bashing to post a blast at Malley on its Web site. Journalists regularly speculate on whether the Malley connection will hurt Obama among Jewish voters, though there's no evidence of that. Meanwhile, Malley's diplomatic colleagues -- including Sandy Berger, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk -- have issued an open letter defending him.
There's more at work here than the usual, nearly boring, attempts to slime a liberal candidate as anti-Israel for the "sin" of supporting what Israel needs most -- determined diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Lurking in the background is another of the battles over how Israel-Palestinian history is told. In that fight, the original furious critic of Barack Obama's adviser is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. There's also a lesson about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Besides settling the practical questions, it requires resolving the conflicting narratives about the past. To approach this task, the next president will need not just hard work but a gift with rhetoric, with words.
The Malley story actually goes back to 2001, when the former Clinton foreign-policy staffer began writing about what went wrong at the Camp David summit the summer before. First in The New York Times, then in a joint article with Hussein Agha in The New York Review of Books, Malley described mistakes made by Israel and the United States, not just by the Palestinians, that led to the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs, Malley was part of the American negotiating team at Camp David. Today he is the Middle East director for the International Crisis Group and one of many informal advisers to the Obama campaign. Though it should not be necessary to mention this, he is Jewish. Agha, his frequent co-author, is an expert on Palestinian affairs, today at Oxford.
As Malley wrote in the Times, by 2001 the accepted story of the long summit was that "Camp David is said to have been a test that Mr. Barak passed and Mr. Arafat failed." While rejecting that simplistic account, he and Agha did not spare criticism of the Palestinian side. "The Palestinians' principal failing is that they were unable either to say yes to the American ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own," they wrote in their detailed New York Review article. Even more telling is their assertion that for the Palestinians "Oslo ... was not about negotiating peace terms but terms of surrender." This was hardly an attitude likely to lead to creative diplomacy.
But Malley and Agha also described the mistakes of Clinton and, particularly, of Barak. As prime minister, Barak first tried to negotiate with Syria, treating the Palestinians as second priority. More concerned with not upsetting Israeli settlers than with addressing Palestinian concerns, he allowed rapid settlement construction to continue. He prevented any progress in preliminary negotiations, insisting that a peace deal would have to be put together at the conclusive summit. To the Palestinians, these moves radiated arrogance and were an attempt to force them into a corner. Once at Camp David, Barak did go beyond what Israel had offered earlier yet kept his position ambiguous. The Palestinians did make concessions, but neither side went far enough to bridge the chasm between their positions. As for Clinton, his errors began with pushing Arafat into an ill-prepared summit.
No one answered Malley with more outrage than Barak. Barak, once intent on making peace, was trying to salvage his own reputation after the collapse of the process and of his premiership. To do that, he was willing to reinforce a narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has deep resonance for many Israelis and Diaspora Jews -- but that warps history, harms peace efforts, and ultimately hurts Israel itself.
Barak delivered his response to Malley and Agha in The New York Review of Books nearly a year later, in an interview with Benny Morris. This in itself was deeply ironic: Among Israeli historians, Morris has been the most insistent that interviews are to be mistrusted, that history can only be constructed through documents. In Morris' description, "Barak continuously shifts between charging Arafat with 'lacking the character or will' to make a historic compromise ... and accusing him of secretly planning Israel's demise." Arafat's plan, he said, was to establish a state only as a step toward gaining all of Palestine. As Morris hints, this is indeed a contradiction, because if Arafat had really regarded any deal as temporary, he could have settled for less.
Barak also asserted an essentialist cultural divide that made agreement impossible: The Palestinians "are products of a culture in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture," he told Morris. To explain why he had not succeeded, he argued that success was impossible -- a description that offered much comfort to hawks who had once opposed him.
It will be many years before documents are available to reconstruct what happened at Camp David. In the meantime, Malley and Agha's version rings true for several reasons. Diplomacy is complex, rife with misunderstandings. New York Times correspondent Deborah Sontag, in an extensively researched article, reached a similar picture (also enraging Barak).
My own journalistic experience with Barak suggests that he approached diplomacy belligerently. I interviewed him for The New Republic in 1997, just after he was chosen as leader of the Labor party. When I put my tape recorder down on his desk at the start of the conversation, a Barak aide demonstratively put down another recorder, as if to tell me: "We're keeping track of you." I've never met that gesture of suspicion from any other politician. In the interview, he compared peace negotiations to Greco-Roman wrestling -- "a form of struggle with agreed rules." It makes more sense to accept Barak's a priori description of his negotiating philosophy than his ex post facto explanations. Going to Camp David, Barak was brave in seeking an agreement but was also tragically unsuited by temperament to achieve what he wanted.
What's interesting is how tenaciously Barak's version has been accepted by many supporters of Israel. The reason, I'd suggest, can be found in a superb recent book by Bryn Mawr political scientist Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflicts. (Disclosure: Ross and I have cooperated professionally in the past, and I'm in his acknowledgments.) Ross doesn't deal specifically with Camp David. But he describes the historical narratives that ethnic groups build to explain their past, their present, and their relation to their opponents. The narratives are "compelling, coherent" and link "specific events to that group's general understandings." They are also selective and inaccurate. Disagreement with a group's memory is often perceived as an attack on its identity, if not its existence.
The most common versions of the Israeli and Palestinian narrative share this: Each side perceives the other as wanting to push it out of the land through both aggression and artifice. Those stories helped foil the talks at Camp David. They also shape the post mortems. The story told by Barak, erstwhile peacemaker, reinforces the old story of conflict. Malley's account -- a careful, scholarly telling by a diplomat committed to Israel's future -- is met with ferocious emotion by those who misperceive it as an assault on Israel's very existence. The reaction becomes another obstacle to understanding of the past and to future compromise.
There's two implications here: Precisely because he is committed to Israel's well-being, Barack Obama will do well to listen to Robert Malley's analysis of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. But if he has the opportunity, beginning next January, to renew diplomatic efforts, he will need to do more than reconcile conflicting interests. He will have to look for ways to reconcile the conflicting stories. The right choice of words will be critical. It's said that Obama has some skill in that realm.
=
By Gershom Gorenberg
In The American Prospect , Opinion
March 27, 2008
Of all the recent efforts to smear Barack Obama, none strikes me as stranger than the claims that one of his informal advisers on foreign affairs, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel. This, in turn, is supposed to prove that as president, Obama is liable to institute dangerous changes in U.S. policy toward Israel.
As a campaign trope, the calumny may have begun with Ed Lasky, news editor of the right-wing Web site The American Thinker, who posted a fervid attack on Malley in January. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has taken time off from its hawkish media-bashing to post a blast at Malley on its Web site. Journalists regularly speculate on whether the Malley connection will hurt Obama among Jewish voters, though there's no evidence of that. Meanwhile, Malley's diplomatic colleagues -- including Sandy Berger, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk -- have issued an open letter defending him.
There's more at work here than the usual, nearly boring, attempts to slime a liberal candidate as anti-Israel for the "sin" of supporting what Israel needs most -- determined diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Lurking in the background is another of the battles over how Israel-Palestinian history is told. In that fight, the original furious critic of Barack Obama's adviser is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. There's also a lesson about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Besides settling the practical questions, it requires resolving the conflicting narratives about the past. To approach this task, the next president will need not just hard work but a gift with rhetoric, with words.
The Malley story actually goes back to 2001, when the former Clinton foreign-policy staffer began writing about what went wrong at the Camp David summit the summer before. First in The New York Times, then in a joint article with Hussein Agha in The New York Review of Books, Malley described mistakes made by Israel and the United States, not just by the Palestinians, that led to the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs, Malley was part of the American negotiating team at Camp David. Today he is the Middle East director for the International Crisis Group and one of many informal advisers to the Obama campaign. Though it should not be necessary to mention this, he is Jewish. Agha, his frequent co-author, is an expert on Palestinian affairs, today at Oxford.
As Malley wrote in the Times, by 2001 the accepted story of the long summit was that "Camp David is said to have been a test that Mr. Barak passed and Mr. Arafat failed." While rejecting that simplistic account, he and Agha did not spare criticism of the Palestinian side. "The Palestinians' principal failing is that they were unable either to say yes to the American ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own," they wrote in their detailed New York Review article. Even more telling is their assertion that for the Palestinians "Oslo ... was not about negotiating peace terms but terms of surrender." This was hardly an attitude likely to lead to creative diplomacy.
But Malley and Agha also described the mistakes of Clinton and, particularly, of Barak. As prime minister, Barak first tried to negotiate with Syria, treating the Palestinians as second priority. More concerned with not upsetting Israeli settlers than with addressing Palestinian concerns, he allowed rapid settlement construction to continue. He prevented any progress in preliminary negotiations, insisting that a peace deal would have to be put together at the conclusive summit. To the Palestinians, these moves radiated arrogance and were an attempt to force them into a corner. Once at Camp David, Barak did go beyond what Israel had offered earlier yet kept his position ambiguous. The Palestinians did make concessions, but neither side went far enough to bridge the chasm between their positions. As for Clinton, his errors began with pushing Arafat into an ill-prepared summit.
No one answered Malley with more outrage than Barak. Barak, once intent on making peace, was trying to salvage his own reputation after the collapse of the process and of his premiership. To do that, he was willing to reinforce a narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has deep resonance for many Israelis and Diaspora Jews -- but that warps history, harms peace efforts, and ultimately hurts Israel itself.
Barak delivered his response to Malley and Agha in The New York Review of Books nearly a year later, in an interview with Benny Morris. This in itself was deeply ironic: Among Israeli historians, Morris has been the most insistent that interviews are to be mistrusted, that history can only be constructed through documents. In Morris' description, "Barak continuously shifts between charging Arafat with 'lacking the character or will' to make a historic compromise ... and accusing him of secretly planning Israel's demise." Arafat's plan, he said, was to establish a state only as a step toward gaining all of Palestine. As Morris hints, this is indeed a contradiction, because if Arafat had really regarded any deal as temporary, he could have settled for less.
Barak also asserted an essentialist cultural divide that made agreement impossible: The Palestinians "are products of a culture in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture," he told Morris. To explain why he had not succeeded, he argued that success was impossible -- a description that offered much comfort to hawks who had once opposed him.
It will be many years before documents are available to reconstruct what happened at Camp David. In the meantime, Malley and Agha's version rings true for several reasons. Diplomacy is complex, rife with misunderstandings. New York Times correspondent Deborah Sontag, in an extensively researched article, reached a similar picture (also enraging Barak).
My own journalistic experience with Barak suggests that he approached diplomacy belligerently. I interviewed him for The New Republic in 1997, just after he was chosen as leader of the Labor party. When I put my tape recorder down on his desk at the start of the conversation, a Barak aide demonstratively put down another recorder, as if to tell me: "We're keeping track of you." I've never met that gesture of suspicion from any other politician. In the interview, he compared peace negotiations to Greco-Roman wrestling -- "a form of struggle with agreed rules." It makes more sense to accept Barak's a priori description of his negotiating philosophy than his ex post facto explanations. Going to Camp David, Barak was brave in seeking an agreement but was also tragically unsuited by temperament to achieve what he wanted.
What's interesting is how tenaciously Barak's version has been accepted by many supporters of Israel. The reason, I'd suggest, can be found in a superb recent book by Bryn Mawr political scientist Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflicts. (Disclosure: Ross and I have cooperated professionally in the past, and I'm in his acknowledgments.) Ross doesn't deal specifically with Camp David. But he describes the historical narratives that ethnic groups build to explain their past, their present, and their relation to their opponents. The narratives are "compelling, coherent" and link "specific events to that group's general understandings." They are also selective and inaccurate. Disagreement with a group's memory is often perceived as an attack on its identity, if not its existence.
The most common versions of the Israeli and Palestinian narrative share this: Each side perceives the other as wanting to push it out of the land through both aggression and artifice. Those stories helped foil the talks at Camp David. They also shape the post mortems. The story told by Barak, erstwhile peacemaker, reinforces the old story of conflict. Malley's account -- a careful, scholarly telling by a diplomat committed to Israel's future -- is met with ferocious emotion by those who misperceive it as an assault on Israel's very existence. The reaction becomes another obstacle to understanding of the past and to future compromise.
There's two implications here: Precisely because he is committed to Israel's well-being, Barack Obama will do well to listen to Robert Malley's analysis of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. But if he has the opportunity, beginning next January, to renew diplomatic efforts, he will need to do more than reconcile conflicting interests. He will have to look for ways to reconcile the conflicting stories. The right choice of words will be critical. It's said that Obama has some skill in that realm.
=
What does Bush mean by "Victory in Iraq"?
SLATE
3/25/08
What Does Bush Mean by "Victory in Iraq"?
His grandiose definition makes defeat almost inevitable.
Fred Kaplan
As the toll of Americans killed in Iraq topped 4,000 this week, President Bush publicly vowed "to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain"—that the war's outcome "will merit the sacrifice" and that "our strategy going forward" will be to "achieve victory."
We all wish that this were so. But what does he mean by "victory"?
The definition has evolved, or devolved, in the five years that this war has been raging. Originally, victory was conceived in grandiose terms. The defeat of Saddam Hussein's army and the toppling of his regime would spawn a new democratic Iraq, the example of which would ignite the flames of freedom across the Middle East.
Bush scaled back the standard in a November 2005 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy titled "A Strategy for Victory." This victory will come, he said, "when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe-haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."
In January 2007, the National Security Council formalized the concept in a document titled "The Iraq Strategy Review," which stated that the "strategic goal" was "a unified democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror."
Bush and others have heralded much progress in the past year, as the troop surge went into effect and as Gen. David Petraeus devised new tactics based on counterinsurgency principles. Casualties have gone down, in some areas dramatically. The Iraqi army and police have grown in size.
However, by the Bush administration's own standards of success, laid out in the president's speech and the NSC's strategy review, we are no closer to victory now than we were when those documents were drafted. Iraq is not unified, it is only superficially democratic, it cannot govern itself, its security forces cannot provide for the safety of its citizens, and it remains more of a haven for terrorists than an ally in the war against them.
Gen. Petraeus has said many times that there is no strictly military victory to be had in Iraq. The goal of the surge—and, at this point, of the U.S. military presence generally—is to provide enough security, especially in Baghdad, to let the Iraqi factions settle their sectarian disputes and form a unified government. If this political goal isn't achieved, then the surge will have been for naught. And lately, Petraeus has expressed disappointment that the Iraqis have made so little progress on that path.
The instances of progress, especially the reduced casualties (among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians), are valuable for their own sake. But body counts have never proved much. When Americans killed more guerrillas in Vietnam, it didn't mean that we were closer to winning that war. And when insurgents are killing fewer Americans in Iraq today, it doesn't mean that we're closer to winning this war, either. (If you think that it does, you would have to conclude that we're closer to losing the war this month than we were last month because casualties have gone back up.)
The troop surge has been one of several factors that have made life a little less treacherous in Iraq this past year. Another is the "Sunni Awakening," the alliances of convenience between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents against the common enemy of al-Qaida in Iraq—alliances that were initiated by the Sunnis before the surge began. Still another is the moratorium on violence called by the leading Shiite militia leader, Muqtada Sadr.
But look at what is happening. First, the surge is ending this July, not because it has been successful (as Bush has sometimes claimed) but because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July; the final brigade will go home; and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them. To the extent that the surge has improved life in Baghdad, the end of the surge (the timing of which is inexorable) may make life worse.
Second, the Sunni Awakening is showing its frays. Some of these militias haven't been paid for months, and they're going on strike, refusing to man their checkpoints and battle stations. They are also frustrated by the Shiite-led government's refusal, despite earlier promises, to let them join the Iraqi national army and police force. This is another consequence of the sectarian leaders' failure to settle their disputes and form a unified government.
Finally, the Shiite militias have resumed attacks in southern Iraq, a sign either that Sadr is losing control over his men or that he himself is backing away from the moratorium. In either case, it's unlikely that many Sunni militias—especially given the training and reinforcements they've received from U.S. armed forces—will stand by as the Shiite militias start fighting again.
By the administration's own measures, then, victory in Iraq is not in sight, nor is there much evidence that the road we are treading will lead us toward that destiny.
And yet our president still seems to have little comprehension of what the war that he has spawned is all about.
A White House "fact sheet" titled "Five Years Later: New Strategy Improving Security in Iraq," posted on the occasion of the invasion's fifth anniversary, states:
Defeating the enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home. The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad also want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities.
And so, once again, President Bush tries to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11. Once again, he pretends (or does he somehow believe?) that al-Qaida is "the enemy in Iraq." Would that things there were so clear-cut. One big difficulty about fighting in Iraq is that there is no single enemy. The overarching problems are disorder, sectarian strife, a weak central authority, and the absence of legitimate politics in the provinces. AQI is a menacing force, but it is also a small one. If it were destroyed tomorrow, Iraq would be only slightly less messy. (In one way, it might be more messy, at least in the short-run, as the Sunni insurgents who are now our allies would be expected to resume their fight against us after our common enemy is vanquished.)
Just as Bush mistakenly treats Iraq's myriad insurgencies as if they were one—thus making them appear (and perhaps making their warriors feel) mightier than they really are—so he also elevates the stakes of the war, and the requirements of victory, above and beyond any prospect that's feasible.
In his speech at the State Department on Monday, where he restated his goal of achieving "victory," he also said of the fallen soldiers in Iraq that "one day people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.' "
A wartime president who has no real allies and whose own military is too small to achieve such lofty goals should begin to scale back his rhetoric so that it has at least a patina of plausibility. By defining victory in Iraq as an outcome that lays "the foundations for peace for generations to come," George W. Bush ensures that defeat is nearly inevitable.W
"
3/25/08
What Does Bush Mean by "Victory in Iraq"?
His grandiose definition makes defeat almost inevitable.
Fred Kaplan
As the toll of Americans killed in Iraq topped 4,000 this week, President Bush publicly vowed "to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain"—that the war's outcome "will merit the sacrifice" and that "our strategy going forward" will be to "achieve victory."
We all wish that this were so. But what does he mean by "victory"?
The definition has evolved, or devolved, in the five years that this war has been raging. Originally, victory was conceived in grandiose terms. The defeat of Saddam Hussein's army and the toppling of his regime would spawn a new democratic Iraq, the example of which would ignite the flames of freedom across the Middle East.
Bush scaled back the standard in a November 2005 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy titled "A Strategy for Victory." This victory will come, he said, "when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe-haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."
In January 2007, the National Security Council formalized the concept in a document titled "The Iraq Strategy Review," which stated that the "strategic goal" was "a unified democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror."
Bush and others have heralded much progress in the past year, as the troop surge went into effect and as Gen. David Petraeus devised new tactics based on counterinsurgency principles. Casualties have gone down, in some areas dramatically. The Iraqi army and police have grown in size.
However, by the Bush administration's own standards of success, laid out in the president's speech and the NSC's strategy review, we are no closer to victory now than we were when those documents were drafted. Iraq is not unified, it is only superficially democratic, it cannot govern itself, its security forces cannot provide for the safety of its citizens, and it remains more of a haven for terrorists than an ally in the war against them.
Gen. Petraeus has said many times that there is no strictly military victory to be had in Iraq. The goal of the surge—and, at this point, of the U.S. military presence generally—is to provide enough security, especially in Baghdad, to let the Iraqi factions settle their sectarian disputes and form a unified government. If this political goal isn't achieved, then the surge will have been for naught. And lately, Petraeus has expressed disappointment that the Iraqis have made so little progress on that path.
The instances of progress, especially the reduced casualties (among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians), are valuable for their own sake. But body counts have never proved much. When Americans killed more guerrillas in Vietnam, it didn't mean that we were closer to winning that war. And when insurgents are killing fewer Americans in Iraq today, it doesn't mean that we're closer to winning this war, either. (If you think that it does, you would have to conclude that we're closer to losing the war this month than we were last month because casualties have gone back up.)
The troop surge has been one of several factors that have made life a little less treacherous in Iraq this past year. Another is the "Sunni Awakening," the alliances of convenience between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents against the common enemy of al-Qaida in Iraq—alliances that were initiated by the Sunnis before the surge began. Still another is the moratorium on violence called by the leading Shiite militia leader, Muqtada Sadr.
But look at what is happening. First, the surge is ending this July, not because it has been successful (as Bush has sometimes claimed) but because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July; the final brigade will go home; and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them. To the extent that the surge has improved life in Baghdad, the end of the surge (the timing of which is inexorable) may make life worse.
Second, the Sunni Awakening is showing its frays. Some of these militias haven't been paid for months, and they're going on strike, refusing to man their checkpoints and battle stations. They are also frustrated by the Shiite-led government's refusal, despite earlier promises, to let them join the Iraqi national army and police force. This is another consequence of the sectarian leaders' failure to settle their disputes and form a unified government.
Finally, the Shiite militias have resumed attacks in southern Iraq, a sign either that Sadr is losing control over his men or that he himself is backing away from the moratorium. In either case, it's unlikely that many Sunni militias—especially given the training and reinforcements they've received from U.S. armed forces—will stand by as the Shiite militias start fighting again.
By the administration's own measures, then, victory in Iraq is not in sight, nor is there much evidence that the road we are treading will lead us toward that destiny.
And yet our president still seems to have little comprehension of what the war that he has spawned is all about.
A White House "fact sheet" titled "Five Years Later: New Strategy Improving Security in Iraq," posted on the occasion of the invasion's fifth anniversary, states:
Defeating the enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home. The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad also want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities.
And so, once again, President Bush tries to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11. Once again, he pretends (or does he somehow believe?) that al-Qaida is "the enemy in Iraq." Would that things there were so clear-cut. One big difficulty about fighting in Iraq is that there is no single enemy. The overarching problems are disorder, sectarian strife, a weak central authority, and the absence of legitimate politics in the provinces. AQI is a menacing force, but it is also a small one. If it were destroyed tomorrow, Iraq would be only slightly less messy. (In one way, it might be more messy, at least in the short-run, as the Sunni insurgents who are now our allies would be expected to resume their fight against us after our common enemy is vanquished.)
Just as Bush mistakenly treats Iraq's myriad insurgencies as if they were one—thus making them appear (and perhaps making their warriors feel) mightier than they really are—so he also elevates the stakes of the war, and the requirements of victory, above and beyond any prospect that's feasible.
In his speech at the State Department on Monday, where he restated his goal of achieving "victory," he also said of the fallen soldiers in Iraq that "one day people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.' "
A wartime president who has no real allies and whose own military is too small to achieve such lofty goals should begin to scale back his rhetoric so that it has at least a patina of plausibility. By defining victory in Iraq as an outcome that lays "the foundations for peace for generations to come," George W. Bush ensures that defeat is nearly inevitable.W
"
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Pakistani Negotiation with the Islamists by William Pfaff
Pakistani Negotiation with the Islamists
William Pfaff
Paris, March 25, 2008 – The worst current news about Pakistan comes from Washington, criticizing the reported intention of Pakistan's new coalition government to negotiate with the militants responsible for recent bombings in that country.
Washington objects to negotiations, saying – as it always does when it comes to talking with enemies – that negotiations would be a signal of weakness, "encouraging" Islamic militants. Encouraging them, one supposes, in what Washington contends is their program to take over Pakistan, Afghanistan, and then the world.
Bush government policy has only one mode: toughness, intimidation and threat, despite the demonstrated failure of this to defeat the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan or to influence domestic disorder and violence inside Pakistan (or for that matter, in Iraq). A recent Washington report on anti-terrorist policy as a whole said that officials are considering fundamental policy change, since after six and a half years "they now recognize that threats to kill terrorist leaders may never be enough to keep America safe."
The news of the new Islamabad government's shift in stance has come at a time when American officials had begun to exploit the freer hand granted them by President Pervez Musharraf for direct operations against Islamist leaders inside Pakistan, particularly by unmanned rocket-launching CIA drones, operating on what, on more than one occasion, has proven disastrously bad intelligence. This is how the Israelis operate in the Palestinian territories and Gaza, but one would think that no recommendation.
Enlarging the American role in Pakistan has invited popular hostility.
One reason for the fall of General Musharraf was that he had come to be seen as the agent of American policy rather than a defender of Pakistan's own interests.
When the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, took office this week, it was not an intelligent decision for Washington to send both Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher to confer with Musharraf as well as other officials, inviting Pakistani press comment that they had come to put pressure on the new government.
Thought also has been given in Washington to the feasibility of cultivating Musharraf's successor as commander of the Pakistani army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, as a possible successor strongman, should the civilian coalition government prove uncooperative. However General Kayani gives sign of wanting to keep the army out of further interference in politics. Renewed collaboration with the Bush administration is not likely to be a smart career move.
The new Pakistani government intends to take a new look at its cooperation with the U.S. in waging NATO and Washington's war against the Taliban. Washington should listen, because the war currently is futile. Both NATO and U.S. officers say that the Taliban cannot be defeated in the field so long as their bases inside Pakistan are secure and the Afghan peasantry remains alienated from the U.S.-supported government in Kabul.
The argument that the struggle with the Taliban has to be won in Pakistan is reasonable, but "winning" is an ambiguous term in these circumstances. The notion that western forces could be any more effective in the badlands of tribal Pakistan than they are inside Afghanistan, trying to win hearts and minds with artillery and air strikes, is absurd. The Pakistanis are not going to do the job for NATO -- against their own countrymen.
The Taliban threat to Afghanistan can only be countered with political measures, and that is what the new Pakistan government is proposing. This is good news, not bad.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the other major figure in the new government, has said that the army is the "wrong instrument" for dealing with the situation. He has made the interesting comment that Pakistan should have less U.S. aid, which undermines Pakistan's own initiatives, and should use its own resources to support its own policy. He says that Pakistan's security should not be sacrificed "to protect other countries." Fair enough. He expects an "exhaustive" debate by the new parliament on how to respond to the Islamist threat.
The recent Pakistan national election resulted in a remarkable success by secular forces over the religious parties, contrary to ingrained American fears about the ascendance of the Islamic movement. In an important article in the current New York Review of Books, the historian William Dalrymple (who writes from Pakistan and lives in New Delhi) describes the elections as having been a triumph by the urban middle classes (from which the lawyers came, whose protests had so much to do with Musharraf's fall) against a rural vote controlled by feudal landowners. He judges the elections "free and fair" and an unequivocal vote for "moderate, secular democracy."
The new government offers the possibility of a constructive approach to dealing with the Islamists. Let it try. What Washington and NATO are now doing in Afghanistan is unmistakably headed for failure.
© Copyright by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
William Pfaff
Paris, March 25, 2008 – The worst current news about Pakistan comes from Washington, criticizing the reported intention of Pakistan's new coalition government to negotiate with the militants responsible for recent bombings in that country.
Washington objects to negotiations, saying – as it always does when it comes to talking with enemies – that negotiations would be a signal of weakness, "encouraging" Islamic militants. Encouraging them, one supposes, in what Washington contends is their program to take over Pakistan, Afghanistan, and then the world.
Bush government policy has only one mode: toughness, intimidation and threat, despite the demonstrated failure of this to defeat the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan or to influence domestic disorder and violence inside Pakistan (or for that matter, in Iraq). A recent Washington report on anti-terrorist policy as a whole said that officials are considering fundamental policy change, since after six and a half years "they now recognize that threats to kill terrorist leaders may never be enough to keep America safe."
The news of the new Islamabad government's shift in stance has come at a time when American officials had begun to exploit the freer hand granted them by President Pervez Musharraf for direct operations against Islamist leaders inside Pakistan, particularly by unmanned rocket-launching CIA drones, operating on what, on more than one occasion, has proven disastrously bad intelligence. This is how the Israelis operate in the Palestinian territories and Gaza, but one would think that no recommendation.
Enlarging the American role in Pakistan has invited popular hostility.
One reason for the fall of General Musharraf was that he had come to be seen as the agent of American policy rather than a defender of Pakistan's own interests.
When the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, took office this week, it was not an intelligent decision for Washington to send both Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher to confer with Musharraf as well as other officials, inviting Pakistani press comment that they had come to put pressure on the new government.
Thought also has been given in Washington to the feasibility of cultivating Musharraf's successor as commander of the Pakistani army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, as a possible successor strongman, should the civilian coalition government prove uncooperative. However General Kayani gives sign of wanting to keep the army out of further interference in politics. Renewed collaboration with the Bush administration is not likely to be a smart career move.
The new Pakistani government intends to take a new look at its cooperation with the U.S. in waging NATO and Washington's war against the Taliban. Washington should listen, because the war currently is futile. Both NATO and U.S. officers say that the Taliban cannot be defeated in the field so long as their bases inside Pakistan are secure and the Afghan peasantry remains alienated from the U.S.-supported government in Kabul.
The argument that the struggle with the Taliban has to be won in Pakistan is reasonable, but "winning" is an ambiguous term in these circumstances. The notion that western forces could be any more effective in the badlands of tribal Pakistan than they are inside Afghanistan, trying to win hearts and minds with artillery and air strikes, is absurd. The Pakistanis are not going to do the job for NATO -- against their own countrymen.
The Taliban threat to Afghanistan can only be countered with political measures, and that is what the new Pakistan government is proposing. This is good news, not bad.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the other major figure in the new government, has said that the army is the "wrong instrument" for dealing with the situation. He has made the interesting comment that Pakistan should have less U.S. aid, which undermines Pakistan's own initiatives, and should use its own resources to support its own policy. He says that Pakistan's security should not be sacrificed "to protect other countries." Fair enough. He expects an "exhaustive" debate by the new parliament on how to respond to the Islamist threat.
The recent Pakistan national election resulted in a remarkable success by secular forces over the religious parties, contrary to ingrained American fears about the ascendance of the Islamic movement. In an important article in the current New York Review of Books, the historian William Dalrymple (who writes from Pakistan and lives in New Delhi) describes the elections as having been a triumph by the urban middle classes (from which the lawyers came, whose protests had so much to do with Musharraf's fall) against a rural vote controlled by feudal landowners. He judges the elections "free and fair" and an unequivocal vote for "moderate, secular democracy."
The new government offers the possibility of a constructive approach to dealing with the Islamists. Let it try. What Washington and NATO are now doing in Afghanistan is unmistakably headed for failure.
© Copyright by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
Book Review: No Time to Declare Independence by William Tucker: Gusher of Lies by Robert Bryce
WALL STREET JOURNAL
3/26/08
BOOK REVIEW
No Time to Declare Independence
WILLIAM TUCKER
Gusher of Lies
By Robert Bryce
(Public Affairs, 371 pages, $26.95)
When it comes to "energy independence," American politics has discovered a new spirit of bipartisanship. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain all call for it, in one form or another -- in the name of fighting global terrorism, global warming or merely global price spikes at the pump. And of course the phrase is a cliché outside the world of politics, too, showing up in earnest op-eds and green-shaded pronouncements. Well, Robert Bryce is having none of it.
In "Gusher of Lies," Mr. Bryce declares that "energy independence is hogwash." There is not a chance in the world, he says, that we're going to kick our "oil addiction." Our economy runs on oil and will continue to do so for a long time to come. There are no "Manhattan Projects" on the horizon. Not even the big bad oil companies are "energy independent" anymore. Mr. Bryce notes that oil companies now own only 10% of the world's oil reserves. Everything else is claimed by national governments.
And trends don't favor an American version of energy independence anyway. As U.S. onshore production has slowly played out, the western Gulf of Mexico has been punctured like a pincushion. And yet the eastern Gulf (i.e., Florida) and the East and West coasts won't let drilling rigs anywhere near their waters. And don't even mention the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, still untouchable.
No, the gushers are elsewhere these days. America's oil production peaked in 1970; non-OPEC oil production peaked about five years ago. Oil power is shifting even more toward the Persian Gulf. Jubail (a port in Saudi Arabia) and Dubai (in the United Arab Emirates) are fast becoming industrial and financial centers on a scale to defy the Western imagination. Halliburton moved its top executives to Dubai in 2007, and little wonder.
What about the imperatives that are so often evoked on behalf of "energy independence"? On global warming, Mr. Bryce is an agnostic, but he notes that, with China adding the equivalent of France to its electrical grid every year -- 90% of it in coal -- talk about reducing global carbon emissions is just prattle. As for the geopolitical aspect of energy independence -- starving bad regimes into reform -- Mr. Bryce believes it to be wishful thinking. We're never going to isolate Iran, he argues. The Iranians are building pipelines to Pakistan and India and signing multibillion-dollar natural-gas deals with China. "The one being isolated on the energy front isn't Iran," he argues; "it's the U.S." If by some miracle oil prices were to plunge dramatically (the result of energy independence and a drop in demand), "there's no evidence -- none -- to support the assertion," Mr. Bryce claims, "that an oil price crash will lead to reform" in troublesome Islamic countries.
Instead we should be thinking of energy "interdependence" in a world where we, quite properly, export what we have in abundance and import what we can't produce for ourselves. The search for "alternative" fuels is, in Mr. Bryce's view, a costly byway. He saves particular scorn for ethanol, "the largest scam in our nation's history," assembling 50 pages of evidence to show that, if anything, the energy-intensive effort to distill ethanol out of the nation's corn crop diminishes our energy supply. Yet ethanol production has become entangled with that other impossible-to-repeal boondoggle, agricultural subsidies.
For all his confidence and expertise, Mr. Bryce can be a little weak in some areas. He rightly notes that both American and Canadian natural-gas production has peaked, but then he talks casually about importing vast quantities from Russia and Iran. Bringing this gas across the oceans, however, will involve liquefying it, adding a huge price premium -- if we ever get the receiving terminals built in the first place. Even with "energy interdependence," natural gas is going to be much more expensive in the future. On nuclear energy, Mr. Bryce is even weaker. At one point he refers to uranium as a "fossil fuel"; and he doesn't seem to grasp nuclear's greater-by-orders-of-magnitude energy potential.
Mr. Bryce's ultimate counsel -- that we should forget about what Arab countries are doing with their petrodollars and learn to get along -- is also hard to accept. It ignores all those stories about the third cousins of oil sheiks showing up in al Qaeda training camps with suitcases full of cash. But it's hard to ignore Mr. Bryce's main point -- that politicians and pundits are woefully uninformed about energy. When you hear a presidential candidate or a TV talking head calling for energy independence, or claiming that we can reduce carbon emissions by 60% or 70%, or pointing to windmills, ethanol and solar panels as the energy future of the American economy, you can be fairly certain that they are wasting their own energy on false promises and futile schemes.
Mr. Tucker's "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet" will be published in August by Bartleby Press.
3/26/08
BOOK REVIEW
No Time to Declare Independence
WILLIAM TUCKER
Gusher of Lies
By Robert Bryce
(Public Affairs, 371 pages, $26.95)
When it comes to "energy independence," American politics has discovered a new spirit of bipartisanship. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain all call for it, in one form or another -- in the name of fighting global terrorism, global warming or merely global price spikes at the pump. And of course the phrase is a cliché outside the world of politics, too, showing up in earnest op-eds and green-shaded pronouncements. Well, Robert Bryce is having none of it.
In "Gusher of Lies," Mr. Bryce declares that "energy independence is hogwash." There is not a chance in the world, he says, that we're going to kick our "oil addiction." Our economy runs on oil and will continue to do so for a long time to come. There are no "Manhattan Projects" on the horizon. Not even the big bad oil companies are "energy independent" anymore. Mr. Bryce notes that oil companies now own only 10% of the world's oil reserves. Everything else is claimed by national governments.
And trends don't favor an American version of energy independence anyway. As U.S. onshore production has slowly played out, the western Gulf of Mexico has been punctured like a pincushion. And yet the eastern Gulf (i.e., Florida) and the East and West coasts won't let drilling rigs anywhere near their waters. And don't even mention the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, still untouchable.
No, the gushers are elsewhere these days. America's oil production peaked in 1970; non-OPEC oil production peaked about five years ago. Oil power is shifting even more toward the Persian Gulf. Jubail (a port in Saudi Arabia) and Dubai (in the United Arab Emirates) are fast becoming industrial and financial centers on a scale to defy the Western imagination. Halliburton moved its top executives to Dubai in 2007, and little wonder.
What about the imperatives that are so often evoked on behalf of "energy independence"? On global warming, Mr. Bryce is an agnostic, but he notes that, with China adding the equivalent of France to its electrical grid every year -- 90% of it in coal -- talk about reducing global carbon emissions is just prattle. As for the geopolitical aspect of energy independence -- starving bad regimes into reform -- Mr. Bryce believes it to be wishful thinking. We're never going to isolate Iran, he argues. The Iranians are building pipelines to Pakistan and India and signing multibillion-dollar natural-gas deals with China. "The one being isolated on the energy front isn't Iran," he argues; "it's the U.S." If by some miracle oil prices were to plunge dramatically (the result of energy independence and a drop in demand), "there's no evidence -- none -- to support the assertion," Mr. Bryce claims, "that an oil price crash will lead to reform" in troublesome Islamic countries.
Instead we should be thinking of energy "interdependence" in a world where we, quite properly, export what we have in abundance and import what we can't produce for ourselves. The search for "alternative" fuels is, in Mr. Bryce's view, a costly byway. He saves particular scorn for ethanol, "the largest scam in our nation's history," assembling 50 pages of evidence to show that, if anything, the energy-intensive effort to distill ethanol out of the nation's corn crop diminishes our energy supply. Yet ethanol production has become entangled with that other impossible-to-repeal boondoggle, agricultural subsidies.
For all his confidence and expertise, Mr. Bryce can be a little weak in some areas. He rightly notes that both American and Canadian natural-gas production has peaked, but then he talks casually about importing vast quantities from Russia and Iran. Bringing this gas across the oceans, however, will involve liquefying it, adding a huge price premium -- if we ever get the receiving terminals built in the first place. Even with "energy interdependence," natural gas is going to be much more expensive in the future. On nuclear energy, Mr. Bryce is even weaker. At one point he refers to uranium as a "fossil fuel"; and he doesn't seem to grasp nuclear's greater-by-orders-of-magnitude energy potential.
Mr. Bryce's ultimate counsel -- that we should forget about what Arab countries are doing with their petrodollars and learn to get along -- is also hard to accept. It ignores all those stories about the third cousins of oil sheiks showing up in al Qaeda training camps with suitcases full of cash. But it's hard to ignore Mr. Bryce's main point -- that politicians and pundits are woefully uninformed about energy. When you hear a presidential candidate or a TV talking head calling for energy independence, or claiming that we can reduce carbon emissions by 60% or 70%, or pointing to windmills, ethanol and solar panels as the energy future of the American economy, you can be fairly certain that they are wasting their own energy on false promises and futile schemes.
Mr. Tucker's "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet" will be published in August by Bartleby Press.
Palestinians Need a Powerful Advocate by Linda Heard
Palestinians Need a Powerful Advocate
Arab News, Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
The concept of America as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict is obsolete. The US was never an honest broker, but it doesn't even bother pretending any more. Dick Cheney recently told the Israeli premier the US commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable and warned the Palestinians that violence against Israel would kill their hopes of a state. And while it's true that the current administration will shortly be emptying their desks, the three presidential hopefuls sound as though they're singing from the Bush administration's hymn sheet.
Democratic front-runner Barack Obama had this to say on peace in the Middle East: "That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel — our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point".
His rival Hillary Clinton, who backs a US Embassy in Jerusalem, has said she would cut off aid to Palestinians should they unilaterally declare an independent state, while Republican nominee John McCain has characterized Israel's enemies as "evil".
I could list the candidates' regular junkets to Tel Aviv and pilgrimages to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but I won't bore you. You get the point. Everybody with half a brain gets the point. So, in this case, why are Palestinian leaders relying on the good offices of the US to get them a state?
To give this premise context, say, you had a business partner who embezzled your company and left you with nothing but debts. Would you hire his lawyer, who also happened to be his best buddy, to represent you in court? Of course not! And neither would you enlist your mother-in-law to save your crumbling marriage if you had any sense.
Yet this is exactly what the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is doing. It seems that, on Washington's instructions, he manipulated a breach with Hamas — as we know from leaked State Department memos — and he's now asking Washington to become more proactive as a broker. And, let's face it: They've had little success at the job throughout the past decades. Any firm with their record of failure would surely have been sacked an age ago.
Even if by some miracle the Annapolis meeting actually produced the required goods in the long run, a US-brokered Palestinian state would consist of nothing more than crumbs from Israel's table, which I fear the beleaguered Palestinian leadership would be pressured to accept as a better than nothing option.
Where does all this leave the Palestinian people? Precisely nowhere!
When they fight back, which as an occupied people is their right under international law, they are labeled terrorists. When they organize peaceful demonstrations, nobody takes any notice. When they invoke a slew of UN resolutions passed in their favor, all they get are yawns from the international community in return. Israel has killed thousands, imprisoned tens of thousands and is incarcerating 1.5 million Palestinians in the world's largest open-air jail, Gaza, yet, as far as Washington is concerned, Israel remains the victim/hero.
If there is ever to be a viable Palestinian state, a new paradigm is needed. Instead of one powerful so-called "honest broker", each side in the conflict should have its own powerful advocate.
The idea that Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate one-on-one, as George W. Bush has suggested on more than one occasion, won't work in this case simply because one side has military clout and the other hasn't. This is akin to a deer negotiating with a leopard over the menu of the day when, of course, the deer will end up as lunch.
So who might be up for the job of Palestinian advocate?
Forget the EU for a start. Its major players talk a good talk, but, when push comes to shove, they'll fall in behind the US. China has got the muscle and the independence, but the Middle East is traditionally outside its geopolitical sphere of influence. Looks hopeless, doesn't it? But wait, there is one candidate itching for the job: Russia. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been canvassing regional support for his country's potential role as mediator during his visit, last week, to Israel, Syria and the West Bank. Russia has called for an end to Israel's settlement expansion and also offered to host a peace conference later this year to reinforce Annapolis.
Naturally, Israel is less than enthusiastic. Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has publicly welcomed Russia's involvement. Provided Moscow is seriously committed to finding a solution rather than posturing for effect, President Abbas should consider the following.
First, he should patch up relations with Hamas in the spirit of last week's Yemeni-brokered reconciliation agreement. A divided Palestine is a weak Palestine.
Second, he should refuse to negotiate directly with Israel or to show up for smiley photo-ops with visiting American politicians.
Third, as with most disputes, he should simply tell the other side, "Talk to my lawyer".
If Russia is willing to take on the job, then it should be supported and offered incentives by every single member of the Arab League as well as sympathetic OIC members.
Whatever happens, the Palestinians must quit putting their faith in duplicitous Uncle Sam and seek a new plan with a new partner, one that would have their interests rather than those of their enemy at heart.
Arab News, Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
The concept of America as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict is obsolete. The US was never an honest broker, but it doesn't even bother pretending any more. Dick Cheney recently told the Israeli premier the US commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable and warned the Palestinians that violence against Israel would kill their hopes of a state. And while it's true that the current administration will shortly be emptying their desks, the three presidential hopefuls sound as though they're singing from the Bush administration's hymn sheet.
Democratic front-runner Barack Obama had this to say on peace in the Middle East: "That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel — our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point".
His rival Hillary Clinton, who backs a US Embassy in Jerusalem, has said she would cut off aid to Palestinians should they unilaterally declare an independent state, while Republican nominee John McCain has characterized Israel's enemies as "evil".
I could list the candidates' regular junkets to Tel Aviv and pilgrimages to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but I won't bore you. You get the point. Everybody with half a brain gets the point. So, in this case, why are Palestinian leaders relying on the good offices of the US to get them a state?
To give this premise context, say, you had a business partner who embezzled your company and left you with nothing but debts. Would you hire his lawyer, who also happened to be his best buddy, to represent you in court? Of course not! And neither would you enlist your mother-in-law to save your crumbling marriage if you had any sense.
Yet this is exactly what the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is doing. It seems that, on Washington's instructions, he manipulated a breach with Hamas — as we know from leaked State Department memos — and he's now asking Washington to become more proactive as a broker. And, let's face it: They've had little success at the job throughout the past decades. Any firm with their record of failure would surely have been sacked an age ago.
Even if by some miracle the Annapolis meeting actually produced the required goods in the long run, a US-brokered Palestinian state would consist of nothing more than crumbs from Israel's table, which I fear the beleaguered Palestinian leadership would be pressured to accept as a better than nothing option.
Where does all this leave the Palestinian people? Precisely nowhere!
When they fight back, which as an occupied people is their right under international law, they are labeled terrorists. When they organize peaceful demonstrations, nobody takes any notice. When they invoke a slew of UN resolutions passed in their favor, all they get are yawns from the international community in return. Israel has killed thousands, imprisoned tens of thousands and is incarcerating 1.5 million Palestinians in the world's largest open-air jail, Gaza, yet, as far as Washington is concerned, Israel remains the victim/hero.
If there is ever to be a viable Palestinian state, a new paradigm is needed. Instead of one powerful so-called "honest broker", each side in the conflict should have its own powerful advocate.
The idea that Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate one-on-one, as George W. Bush has suggested on more than one occasion, won't work in this case simply because one side has military clout and the other hasn't. This is akin to a deer negotiating with a leopard over the menu of the day when, of course, the deer will end up as lunch.
So who might be up for the job of Palestinian advocate?
Forget the EU for a start. Its major players talk a good talk, but, when push comes to shove, they'll fall in behind the US. China has got the muscle and the independence, but the Middle East is traditionally outside its geopolitical sphere of influence. Looks hopeless, doesn't it? But wait, there is one candidate itching for the job: Russia. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been canvassing regional support for his country's potential role as mediator during his visit, last week, to Israel, Syria and the West Bank. Russia has called for an end to Israel's settlement expansion and also offered to host a peace conference later this year to reinforce Annapolis.
Naturally, Israel is less than enthusiastic. Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has publicly welcomed Russia's involvement. Provided Moscow is seriously committed to finding a solution rather than posturing for effect, President Abbas should consider the following.
First, he should patch up relations with Hamas in the spirit of last week's Yemeni-brokered reconciliation agreement. A divided Palestine is a weak Palestine.
Second, he should refuse to negotiate directly with Israel or to show up for smiley photo-ops with visiting American politicians.
Third, as with most disputes, he should simply tell the other side, "Talk to my lawyer".
If Russia is willing to take on the job, then it should be supported and offered incentives by every single member of the Arab League as well as sympathetic OIC members.
Whatever happens, the Palestinians must quit putting their faith in duplicitous Uncle Sam and seek a new plan with a new partner, one that would have their interests rather than those of their enemy at heart.
John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech
March 26, 2008
Transcript from the New York Times
John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech
The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator John McCain's speech on foreign policy to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as provided by his presidential campaign.
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well. I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.
President Harry Truman once said of America, "God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose." In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn. We face a new set of opportunities, and also new dangers. The developments of science and technology have brought us untold prosperity, eradicated disease, and reduced the suffering of millions. We have a chance in our lifetime to raise the world to a new standard of human existence. Yet these same technologies have produced grave new risks, arming a few zealots with the ability to murder millions of innocents, and producing a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.
To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman's day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.
In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today's world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.
One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.
At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.
Four and a half decades ago, John Kennedy described the people of Latin America as our "firm and ancient friends, united by history and experience and by our determination to advance the values of American civilization." With globalization, our hemisphere has grown closer, more integrated, and more interdependent. Latin America today is increasingly vital to the fortunes of the United States. Americans north and south share a common geography and a common destiny. The countries of Latin America are the natural partners of the United States, and our northern neighbor Canada.
Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery. The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that. I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South. Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.
Power in the world today is moving east; the Asia-Pacific region is on the rise. Together with our democratic partner of many decades, Japan, we can grasp the opportunities present in the unfolding world and this century can become safe -- both American and Asian, both prosperous and free. Asia has made enormous strides in recent decades. Its economic achievements are well known; less known is that more people live under democratic rule in Asia than in any other region of the world.
Dealing with a rising China will be a central challenge for the next American president. Recent prosperity in China has brought more people out of poverty faster than during any other time in human history. China's newfound power implies responsibilities. China could bolster its claim that it is "peacefully rising" by being more transparent about its significant military buildup, by working with the world to isolate pariah states such as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and by ceasing its efforts to establish regional forums and economic arrangements designed to exclude America from Asia.
China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries. We have numerous overlapping interests and hope to see our relationship evolve in a manner that benefits both countries and, in turn, the Asia-Pacific region and the world. But until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values.
The United States did not single-handedly win the Cold War; the transatlantic alliance did, in concert with partners around the world. The bonds we share with Europe in terms of history, values, and interests are unique. Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union as we continue to support a strong NATO. The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, addressing the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.
We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.
While Africa's problems -- poverty, corruption, disease, and instability -- are well known, we must refocus on the bright promise offered by many countries on that continent. We must strongly engage on a political, economic, and security level with friendly governments across Africa, but insist on improvements in transparency and the rule of law. Many African nations will not reach their true potential without external assistance to combat entrenched problems, such as HIV/AIDS, that afflict Africans disproportionately. I will establish the goal of eradicating malaria on the continent -- the number one killer of African children under the age of five. In addition to saving millions of lives in the world's poorest regions, such a campaign would do much to add luster to America's image in the world.
We also share an obligation with the world's other great powers to halt and reverse the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The United States and the international community must work together and do all in our power to contain and reverse North Korea's nuclear weapons program and to prevent Iran -- a nation whose President has repeatedly expressed a desire to wipe Israel from the face of the earth -- from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own. Forty years ago, the five declared nuclear powers came together in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged to end the arms race and move toward nuclear disarmament. The time has come to renew that commitment. We do not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal. The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace.
If we are successful in pulling together a global coalition for peace and freedom -- if we lead by shouldering our international responsibilities and pointing the way to a better and safer future for humanity, I believe we will gain tangible benefits as a nation.
It will strengthen us to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. This challenge is transcendent not because it is the only one we face. There are many dangers in today's world, and our foreign policy must be agile and effective at dealing with all of them. But the threat posed by the terrorists is unique. They alone devote all their energies and indeed their very lives to murdering innocent men, women, and children. They alone seek nuclear weapons and other tools of mass destruction not to defend themselves or to enhance their prestige or to give them a stronger hand in world affairs but to use against us wherever and whenever they can. Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House, for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has -- to protect the lives of the American people.
We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.
Prevailing in this struggle will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. I have called for major changes in how our government faces the challenge of radical Islamic extremism by much greater resources for and integration of civilian efforts to prevent conflict and to address post-conflict challenges. Our goal must be to win the "hearts and minds" of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.
We also need to build the international structures for a durable peace in which the radical extremists are gradually eclipsed by the more powerful forces of freedom and tolerance. Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are critical in this respect and cannot be viewed in isolation from our broader strategy. In the troubled and often dangerous region they occupy, these two nations can either be sources of extremism and instability or they can in time become pillars of stability, tolerance, and democracy.
For decades in the greater Middle East, we had a strategy of relying on autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family, and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein. In the late 1970s that strategy began to unravel. The Shah was overthrown by the radical Islamic revolution that now rules in Tehran. The ensuing ferment in the Muslim world produced increasing instability. The autocrats clamped down with ever greater repression, while also surreptitiously aiding Islamic radicalism abroad in the hopes that they would not become its victims. It was a toxic and explosive mixture. The oppression of the autocrats blended with the radical Islamists' dogmatic theology to produce a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred.
We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these out-dated autocracies is the safest bet. They no longer provide lasting stability, only the illusion of it. We must not act rashly or demand change overnight. But neither can we pretend the status quo is sustainable, stable, or in our interests. Change is occurring whether we want it or not. The only question for us is whether we shape this change in ways that benefit humanity or let our enemies seize it for their hateful purposes. We must help expand the power and reach of freedom, using all our many strengths as a free people. This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia. Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region. And whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well. That is the broad strategic perspective through which to view our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong, just as they were wrong a year ago when they declared the war in Iraq already lost. Since June 2007 sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq has been reduced by 90 percent. Overall civilian deaths have been reduced by more than 70 percent. Deaths of coalition forces have fallen by 70 percent. The dramatic reduction in violence has opened the way for a return to something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi. People are going back to work. Markets are open. Oil revenues are climbing. Inflation is down. Iraq's economy is expected to grown by roughly 7 percent in 2008. Political reconciliation is occurring across Iraq at the local and provincial grassroots level. Sunni and Shi'a chased from their homes by terrorist and sectarian violence are returning. Political progress at the national level has been far too slow, but there is progress.
Critics say that the "surge" of troops isn't a solution in itself, that we must make progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency. I agree. Iraqis themselves must increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and they must become responsible political actors. It does not follow from this, however, that we should now recklessly retreat from Iraq regardless of the consequences. We must take the course of prudence and responsibility, and help Iraqis move closer to the day when they no longer need our help.
That is the route of responsible statesmanship. We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal. Our critics say America needs to repair its image in the world. How can they argue at the same time for the morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq?
Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight Al Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake. Whether they were there before is immaterial, al Qaeda is in Iraq now, as it is in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Indonesia. If we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, as various factions of Sunni and Shi'a have yet to move beyond their ancient hatreds, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. I believe a reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly. These consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for it, as both Democratic candidates do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date. I do not argue against withdrawal, any more than I argued several years ago for the change in tactics and additional forces that are now succeeding in Iraq, because I am somehow indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later.
I run for President because I want to keep the country I love and have served all my life safe, and to rise to the challenges of our times, as generations before us rose to theirs. I run for President because I know it is incumbent on America, more than any other nation on earth, to lead in building the foundations for a stable and enduring peace, a peace built on the strength of our commitment to it, on the transformative ideals on which we were founded, on our ability to see around the corner of history, and on our courage and wisdom to make hard choices. I run because I believe, as strongly as I ever have, that it is within our power to make in our time another, better world than we inherited.
Thank you.
Transcript from the New York Times
John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech
The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator John McCain's speech on foreign policy to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as provided by his presidential campaign.
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well. I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.
President Harry Truman once said of America, "God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose." In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn. We face a new set of opportunities, and also new dangers. The developments of science and technology have brought us untold prosperity, eradicated disease, and reduced the suffering of millions. We have a chance in our lifetime to raise the world to a new standard of human existence. Yet these same technologies have produced grave new risks, arming a few zealots with the ability to murder millions of innocents, and producing a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.
To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman's day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.
In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today's world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.
One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.
At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.
Four and a half decades ago, John Kennedy described the people of Latin America as our "firm and ancient friends, united by history and experience and by our determination to advance the values of American civilization." With globalization, our hemisphere has grown closer, more integrated, and more interdependent. Latin America today is increasingly vital to the fortunes of the United States. Americans north and south share a common geography and a common destiny. The countries of Latin America are the natural partners of the United States, and our northern neighbor Canada.
Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery. The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that. I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South. Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.
Power in the world today is moving east; the Asia-Pacific region is on the rise. Together with our democratic partner of many decades, Japan, we can grasp the opportunities present in the unfolding world and this century can become safe -- both American and Asian, both prosperous and free. Asia has made enormous strides in recent decades. Its economic achievements are well known; less known is that more people live under democratic rule in Asia than in any other region of the world.
Dealing with a rising China will be a central challenge for the next American president. Recent prosperity in China has brought more people out of poverty faster than during any other time in human history. China's newfound power implies responsibilities. China could bolster its claim that it is "peacefully rising" by being more transparent about its significant military buildup, by working with the world to isolate pariah states such as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and by ceasing its efforts to establish regional forums and economic arrangements designed to exclude America from Asia.
China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries. We have numerous overlapping interests and hope to see our relationship evolve in a manner that benefits both countries and, in turn, the Asia-Pacific region and the world. But until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values.
The United States did not single-handedly win the Cold War; the transatlantic alliance did, in concert with partners around the world. The bonds we share with Europe in terms of history, values, and interests are unique. Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union as we continue to support a strong NATO. The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, addressing the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.
We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.
While Africa's problems -- poverty, corruption, disease, and instability -- are well known, we must refocus on the bright promise offered by many countries on that continent. We must strongly engage on a political, economic, and security level with friendly governments across Africa, but insist on improvements in transparency and the rule of law. Many African nations will not reach their true potential without external assistance to combat entrenched problems, such as HIV/AIDS, that afflict Africans disproportionately. I will establish the goal of eradicating malaria on the continent -- the number one killer of African children under the age of five. In addition to saving millions of lives in the world's poorest regions, such a campaign would do much to add luster to America's image in the world.
We also share an obligation with the world's other great powers to halt and reverse the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The United States and the international community must work together and do all in our power to contain and reverse North Korea's nuclear weapons program and to prevent Iran -- a nation whose President has repeatedly expressed a desire to wipe Israel from the face of the earth -- from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own. Forty years ago, the five declared nuclear powers came together in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged to end the arms race and move toward nuclear disarmament. The time has come to renew that commitment. We do not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal. The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace.
If we are successful in pulling together a global coalition for peace and freedom -- if we lead by shouldering our international responsibilities and pointing the way to a better and safer future for humanity, I believe we will gain tangible benefits as a nation.
It will strengthen us to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. This challenge is transcendent not because it is the only one we face. There are many dangers in today's world, and our foreign policy must be agile and effective at dealing with all of them. But the threat posed by the terrorists is unique. They alone devote all their energies and indeed their very lives to murdering innocent men, women, and children. They alone seek nuclear weapons and other tools of mass destruction not to defend themselves or to enhance their prestige or to give them a stronger hand in world affairs but to use against us wherever and whenever they can. Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House, for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has -- to protect the lives of the American people.
We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.
Prevailing in this struggle will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. I have called for major changes in how our government faces the challenge of radical Islamic extremism by much greater resources for and integration of civilian efforts to prevent conflict and to address post-conflict challenges. Our goal must be to win the "hearts and minds" of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.
We also need to build the international structures for a durable peace in which the radical extremists are gradually eclipsed by the more powerful forces of freedom and tolerance. Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are critical in this respect and cannot be viewed in isolation from our broader strategy. In the troubled and often dangerous region they occupy, these two nations can either be sources of extremism and instability or they can in time become pillars of stability, tolerance, and democracy.
For decades in the greater Middle East, we had a strategy of relying on autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family, and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein. In the late 1970s that strategy began to unravel. The Shah was overthrown by the radical Islamic revolution that now rules in Tehran. The ensuing ferment in the Muslim world produced increasing instability. The autocrats clamped down with ever greater repression, while also surreptitiously aiding Islamic radicalism abroad in the hopes that they would not become its victims. It was a toxic and explosive mixture. The oppression of the autocrats blended with the radical Islamists' dogmatic theology to produce a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred.
We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these out-dated autocracies is the safest bet. They no longer provide lasting stability, only the illusion of it. We must not act rashly or demand change overnight. But neither can we pretend the status quo is sustainable, stable, or in our interests. Change is occurring whether we want it or not. The only question for us is whether we shape this change in ways that benefit humanity or let our enemies seize it for their hateful purposes. We must help expand the power and reach of freedom, using all our many strengths as a free people. This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia. Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region. And whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well. That is the broad strategic perspective through which to view our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong, just as they were wrong a year ago when they declared the war in Iraq already lost. Since June 2007 sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq has been reduced by 90 percent. Overall civilian deaths have been reduced by more than 70 percent. Deaths of coalition forces have fallen by 70 percent. The dramatic reduction in violence has opened the way for a return to something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi. People are going back to work. Markets are open. Oil revenues are climbing. Inflation is down. Iraq's economy is expected to grown by roughly 7 percent in 2008. Political reconciliation is occurring across Iraq at the local and provincial grassroots level. Sunni and Shi'a chased from their homes by terrorist and sectarian violence are returning. Political progress at the national level has been far too slow, but there is progress.
Critics say that the "surge" of troops isn't a solution in itself, that we must make progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency. I agree. Iraqis themselves must increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and they must become responsible political actors. It does not follow from this, however, that we should now recklessly retreat from Iraq regardless of the consequences. We must take the course of prudence and responsibility, and help Iraqis move closer to the day when they no longer need our help.
That is the route of responsible statesmanship. We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal. Our critics say America needs to repair its image in the world. How can they argue at the same time for the morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq?
Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight Al Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake. Whether they were there before is immaterial, al Qaeda is in Iraq now, as it is in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Indonesia. If we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, as various factions of Sunni and Shi'a have yet to move beyond their ancient hatreds, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. I believe a reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly. These consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for it, as both Democratic candidates do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date. I do not argue against withdrawal, any more than I argued several years ago for the change in tactics and additional forces that are now succeeding in Iraq, because I am somehow indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later.
I run for President because I want to keep the country I love and have served all my life safe, and to rise to the challenges of our times, as generations before us rose to theirs. I run for President because I know it is incumbent on America, more than any other nation on earth, to lead in building the foundations for a stable and enduring peace, a peace built on the strength of our commitment to it, on the transformative ideals on which we were founded, on our ability to see around the corner of history, and on our courage and wisdom to make hard choices. I run because I believe, as strongly as I ever have, that it is within our power to make in our time another, better world than we inherited.
Thank you.
Punishing Hamas Has Backfired
csmonitor.com - The Christian Science Monitor Online
from the March 27, 2008 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p09s02-coop.html
Punishing Hamas has backfired
Want leverage? Then engage the Islamist regime.
By Gareth Evans
Brussels
The policy of isolating Hamas and applying sanctions to Gaza has been a predictable failure. Violence to both Gazans and Israelis is rising. Economic conditions are ruinous, generating anger and despair. The credibility of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other pragmatic forces has been grievously damaged. The peace process is in tatters.
Meanwhile, Hamas's hold on the Gaza Strip, purportedly the principal target of the policy, has been strengthened. Since Hamas assumed full control in June 2007 the already-tight sanctions, imposed following the Islamists' January 2006 electoral victory, have been tightened further. Israel – upon which Gazans depend almost entirely for relations with the outside world – even curtailed cross-border passenger and goods traffic.
Israel has hardly been alone. The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, seeking to undermine Hamas's standing, has done its part to cut off Gaza and prevent the normal functioning of government. Feeble protests aside, the international community has at best been a model of passivity.
The logic behind the policy was that by putting pressure on Hamas, they could prevent rocket launches into Israel. This would demonstrate to the Palestinian people that Hamas could not deliver and ought not be trusted. The hope was that the West Bank, buoyed by economic growth, a loosening of Israeli security measures, not to mention a revived peace process, would serve as an attractive countermodel. But the theory has not delivered on any of these counts.
Within Gaza the debate about whether the sanctions have helped or hurt Hamas's efforts to consolidate power is, for all intents and purposes, over. The Islamist movement has come close to establishing an effective monopoly on the use of force and a near-monopoly on open political activity. It has refashioned the legal and legislative systems. And it enjoys freer rein to shape society through management of the health, education, and religious sectors.
By boycotting the security, judicial, and other government sectors, the Palestinian Authority turned an intended punitive measure into an unintentional gift, creating a vacuum that Hamas has filled. The absence of any international involvement has meant the absence of leverage. The closure of the crossings has caused the private sector to collapse, eroding ordinary citizens' traditional coping mechanisms, increasing their dependence on those who govern, and weakening a constituency traditionally loyal to the Palestinian Authority.
Some will argue that the isolation policy is working because Hamas has lost popularity, which even its leaders acknowledge. But intense public frustration in the Gaza Strip cannot be the measure of success. Gazans may not be satisfied with Hamas, but their anger continues to be directed at Israel and the West, as well as at Fatah, which many see as complicit in the siege.
As the sanctions hit the most vulnerable, Hamas finds ways to finance its rule and invokes the siege to justify its more ruthless practices. Growing poverty and hopelessness are boosting the appeal of jihadi groups, particularly among Gazans under 16 years old, who make up half the population.
It's time to stop digging this hole. Maintaining extreme pressure on Hamas in the hope of undermining its rule or stopping the rockets has gone nowhere. A new direction is needed – one that attempts to stabilize the situation by engaging the movement with the immediate goal of reaching a mutual cease-fire and the opening of Gaza's border crossings.
Of course, Israel has legitimate concerns about a cease-fire, as does the Palestinian Authority about how a shift of direction would affect its credibility. Hamas will not accept an end to hostilities if the closures remain in place. To address these competing interests, the cease-fire should entail reciprocal commitments to stop all attacks, an opening of the crossings that recognizes Hamas's role while restoring a Palestinian Authority presence in Gaza, and a credible international monitoring effort to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.
While the continuation of the current policy may be easier to envision, so are its consequences. The status quo is untenable. Israel cannot be expected to accept rockets targeting its civilians. Hamas will not sit idly by as Gaza is choked.
If current trends continue, we will see increased attacks against Israeli towns and cities as well as the resumption of bombings and attacks inside Israel, like the recent ghastly murder of the eight yeshiva students. Israel will intensify its military incursions, targeted assassinations, and attacks on key installations. And the peace process will vanish entirely, discrediting pragmatic Palestinian leaders. The conflict could then spread to the West Bank or even Lebanon.
Avoiding that worst-case scenario means sharply changing policy course. Engaging Hamas may provide the Islamists with greater international recognition, but acknowledging its role also could mean increasing leverage on it. As it stands, Hamas has nothing to lose. Not surprisingly, it is behaving that way.
• Gareth Evans is president of the International Crisis Group. It's recent report on Gaza and Hamas can be found at www.crisisgroup.org .
from the March 27, 2008 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p09s02-coop.html
Punishing Hamas has backfired
Want leverage? Then engage the Islamist regime.
By Gareth Evans
Brussels
The policy of isolating Hamas and applying sanctions to Gaza has been a predictable failure. Violence to both Gazans and Israelis is rising. Economic conditions are ruinous, generating anger and despair. The credibility of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other pragmatic forces has been grievously damaged. The peace process is in tatters.
Meanwhile, Hamas's hold on the Gaza Strip, purportedly the principal target of the policy, has been strengthened. Since Hamas assumed full control in June 2007 the already-tight sanctions, imposed following the Islamists' January 2006 electoral victory, have been tightened further. Israel – upon which Gazans depend almost entirely for relations with the outside world – even curtailed cross-border passenger and goods traffic.
Israel has hardly been alone. The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, seeking to undermine Hamas's standing, has done its part to cut off Gaza and prevent the normal functioning of government. Feeble protests aside, the international community has at best been a model of passivity.
The logic behind the policy was that by putting pressure on Hamas, they could prevent rocket launches into Israel. This would demonstrate to the Palestinian people that Hamas could not deliver and ought not be trusted. The hope was that the West Bank, buoyed by economic growth, a loosening of Israeli security measures, not to mention a revived peace process, would serve as an attractive countermodel. But the theory has not delivered on any of these counts.
Within Gaza the debate about whether the sanctions have helped or hurt Hamas's efforts to consolidate power is, for all intents and purposes, over. The Islamist movement has come close to establishing an effective monopoly on the use of force and a near-monopoly on open political activity. It has refashioned the legal and legislative systems. And it enjoys freer rein to shape society through management of the health, education, and religious sectors.
By boycotting the security, judicial, and other government sectors, the Palestinian Authority turned an intended punitive measure into an unintentional gift, creating a vacuum that Hamas has filled. The absence of any international involvement has meant the absence of leverage. The closure of the crossings has caused the private sector to collapse, eroding ordinary citizens' traditional coping mechanisms, increasing their dependence on those who govern, and weakening a constituency traditionally loyal to the Palestinian Authority.
Some will argue that the isolation policy is working because Hamas has lost popularity, which even its leaders acknowledge. But intense public frustration in the Gaza Strip cannot be the measure of success. Gazans may not be satisfied with Hamas, but their anger continues to be directed at Israel and the West, as well as at Fatah, which many see as complicit in the siege.
As the sanctions hit the most vulnerable, Hamas finds ways to finance its rule and invokes the siege to justify its more ruthless practices. Growing poverty and hopelessness are boosting the appeal of jihadi groups, particularly among Gazans under 16 years old, who make up half the population.
It's time to stop digging this hole. Maintaining extreme pressure on Hamas in the hope of undermining its rule or stopping the rockets has gone nowhere. A new direction is needed – one that attempts to stabilize the situation by engaging the movement with the immediate goal of reaching a mutual cease-fire and the opening of Gaza's border crossings.
Of course, Israel has legitimate concerns about a cease-fire, as does the Palestinian Authority about how a shift of direction would affect its credibility. Hamas will not accept an end to hostilities if the closures remain in place. To address these competing interests, the cease-fire should entail reciprocal commitments to stop all attacks, an opening of the crossings that recognizes Hamas's role while restoring a Palestinian Authority presence in Gaza, and a credible international monitoring effort to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.
While the continuation of the current policy may be easier to envision, so are its consequences. The status quo is untenable. Israel cannot be expected to accept rockets targeting its civilians. Hamas will not sit idly by as Gaza is choked.
If current trends continue, we will see increased attacks against Israeli towns and cities as well as the resumption of bombings and attacks inside Israel, like the recent ghastly murder of the eight yeshiva students. Israel will intensify its military incursions, targeted assassinations, and attacks on key installations. And the peace process will vanish entirely, discrediting pragmatic Palestinian leaders. The conflict could then spread to the West Bank or even Lebanon.
Avoiding that worst-case scenario means sharply changing policy course. Engaging Hamas may provide the Islamists with greater international recognition, but acknowledging its role also could mean increasing leverage on it. As it stands, Hamas has nothing to lose. Not surprisingly, it is behaving that way.
• Gareth Evans is president of the International Crisis Group. It's recent report on Gaza and Hamas can be found at www.crisisgroup.org .
Two Americas by Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery Two Americas
"WAR IS much too serious a thing to be left to military men," in Talleyrand's memorable words. In the same spirit, one could say: The American presidential elections are much too serious to be left to the Americans.
The US is now the only super-power on earth. It will remain so for quite some time to come. The decisions of the President of the United States affect every human being on this planet.
Unfortunately, the citizens of the world have no part in these elections. But they may, at least, voice an opinion.
Availing myself of this right I say: I am for Barack Obama.
FIRST OF ALL I must confess: my attitude towards the US is one of unrequited love. In my youth I was a great admirer. Like many others of my generation, I grew up on the legend of the new, idealistic country of pioneers, the world's torch of freedom. I admired Abe Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who hastened to the rescue of besieged Britain, when it stood alone against the Nazi monster, and who entered World War II at the decisive moment. I grew up on Wild West movies.
Gradually, I lost my illusions. Joe McCarthy helped me along the way. I learned that with depressing regularity, the US is seized by some hysteria or other. But every time, just before the brink of the abyss, it draws back.
During the Vietnam War I took part in demonstrations. I happened to be in America in 1967, and participated in the legendary march of the half million to the Pentagon. I reached the entrance of the building and saw before me a line of cold-eyed soldiers who seemed to be just itching to open fire. At the last moment it occurred to me that it would be unseemly for an Israeli Member of the Knesset to be implicated, so I jumped from the ledge of the entrance and twisted my ankle.
Somehow I got on the CIA (or was it the FBI?) black list. I managed to obtain a visa only with great difficulty, and was struck forever from the list of invitees to the American embassy parties in Tel Aviv. I don't know if this happened because of those protests, or because of my friendship with Henri Curiel, a Jewish-Egyptian revolutionary who helped us in our contacts with the PLO. The Americans held him, quite mistakenly, to be a KGB agent.
At the same time, my name was struck by the Soviets from every list of people invited from Israel. Perhaps they considered me a CIA agent (as I was called in the Israeli Communist party paper). So I was one of the few people in the world who appeared simultaneously on the black lists of both the USA and the Soviet Union - a source of moderate pride to me.
My friend Afif Safieh, now the chief PLO representative in the US, argues that there are two Americas: the America which exterminated the Native Americans and enslaved the blacks, the America of Hiroshima and McCarthy, and the other America, the America of the Declaration of Independence, of Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt.
In these terms, George Bush belongs to the first. Obama, his opposite in almost every respect, represents the second.
ONE CAN arrive at Obama by a process of elimination.
John McCain is a continuation of Bush. More attractive, probably more intelligent (which doesn't mean much). But he is more of the same. The same policy - a dangerous mix of intoxication with power and simple-mindedness. The same world of the Wild West myth, of Good Guys (Americans and their stooges) and Bad Guys (everybody else). A macho world of sham masculinity, where everything is seen through the sights of a gun.
McCain will go on with the wars, and may start new ones. His economic agenda is the same "swinish capitalism" (Shimon Peres' phrase), which has now brought disaster on the economy of the US, and the economy of all of us.
Eight years of Bush are enough for us. Thank you.
Hillary? True, there is something very positive in the fact that a woman is a potential candidate for the leadership of the most powerful country in the world. As the old Jewish blessing has it: Blessed art thou, the Lord, our God, who let us live to see this day. I believe that the feminist revolution was by far the most important one of the 20th Century, since it overturns the social patterns of thousands of years, and perhaps also the biological patterns of million of years. This revolution is still going on, and the election of a woman president would be a milestone.
But it is not enough that it be a woman. It is also important which woman it is.
I spent some years struggling against Golda Meir, the worst Prime Minister Israel ever had. Almost all recent female leaders of countries have started wars: Margaret Thatcher started the Falklands War, Golda Meir bears the responsibility for the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Indira Gandhi made war on Pakistan, the current presidents of the Philippines and Sri Lanka are conducting internal wars.
The usual explanation is that in order to prevail in a man's world, a woman politician has to prove that she is at least as tough as the men are. When she comes to power, she wants to show that she, too, can make war and command armies. Hillary has already acted tough by voting for the disastrous Iraq war.
(Years ago, when she came out for a Palestinian state, Gush Shalom demonstrated in her honor in front of the US embassy in Tel Aviv. We wanted to present her with a bunch of flowers. The embassy people treated us as enemies and refused to accept the flowers. Since then, Hillary has not uttered another word in favor of the Palestinians.)
I don't know how much she was a partner to her husband's decisions in the White House. The President's wife may be closest to his ear - and the President's husband will probably be closest to her ear. Anyhow, in the eight years of Bill Clinton nothing good for Israeli-Palestinian peace happened. In his "peace team" there were a lot of American Jews, but not a single American Arab. He was totally subservient to the Israel lobby, and on his watch the number of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territories more than doubled.
Israel doesn't really need another term of Billary.
Hillary is a run of the mill politician. If McCain is a continuation of Bush, Hillary is an extension of the entire present American political system, the present policy and the present routine. But the world needs another America.
THE NAME of another America is Obama. Full name: Barack Hussein Obama.
The very fact that this person can be a serious contender for the presidency at all restores my faith in the possibilities inherent in America. After the excesses of Senator Joe McCarthy there was President John Kennedy. After Bush there can be Obama. Only in America.
The great message of Obama is Obama himself. A person who has roots in three continents (and another half: Hawaii). A person whose education spans the wide world. A person who can see reality from the viewpoints of America, Africa and Asia. A person who is both black and white. A new kind of American, an American of the 21st Century.
I am not as naļve as I sound. I realize that in his speeches there is more enthusiasm than content. We can't know what he will do once elected president. President Obama may disappoint us. But I prefer to take a risk with a man like this than to know in advance what the two routine politicians, his competitors, will do.
I am not overly impressed by election speeches. I have conducted four election campaigns myself and I know that there are things one has to say and things one must not say. It's all with limited liability. But beyond all the speechifying, one fact is more important than a million words: Obama opposed the Iraq invasion from the start, when this took integrity and a lot of courage. Hillary voted for the war and changed her position only when public opinion had changed. McCain supports the war even now.
We in Israel know the huge difference between opposing a war in its first, decisive hour, and opposing it after a month, a year or five years.
On the other hand, perhaps this very fact - more even than the color of his skin, his middle name and his "lack of experience" - will work against him. The voters do not like a person who was right when they were wrong. It's like admitting: he was wise and we were stupid. When a politician wants to be elected, he would be well advised to hide the fact that he was right.
A personal note: as an optimist from birth, I like Obama's optimism. I prefer a candidate who brings hope over one destroying hope. Optimism spurs to action, pessimism produces nothing but despair.
America needs a complete overhaul. Not just a wash, not just a wax job, not just a new coat of paint. It needs a new motor, a change of the entire leadership, a reappraisal of its position in the world, a change of values.
Can Obama do this? I hope so. I am not sure. But I am quite sure that the other two will not.
HERE A JEW will pop the classic question: Is it good for the Jews?
The people who claim to speak for the American Jews, the "leaders" who were not elected by anyone, the chiefs of the fetid "organizations", are conducting a dirty campaign of defamation and sly hints against him. If his middle name is Hussein and he is black, he must be an "Arab-lover". Also, he did not distance himself enough from the anti-Semite Louis Farakhan.
The same "leaders" are in bed with the most loathsome racists in the US, obscurantist fundamentalists and blood-stained neo-cons. But most American Jews know that their place is not there. The unholy alliance with those types will inevitably come home to roost. The Jews have to be where they have always been: in the progressive camp, striving for equality and the separation between state and religion.
IT MUST be asked: Is it good for Israel?
All three candidates have groveled at the feet of AIPAC. The fawning of all three before the Israeli leadership is disgusting. They all show a lack of integrity. But I know that they have no choice. That's how it is in the USA.
In spite of this, Obama succeeded in getting out one courageous sentence. Speaking before a mainly Jewish audience in Cleveland, he said: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."
I hope that the American Barack (blessed, in Arabic), if elected, will not turn into a replica of the Israeli Barak (lightning, in Hebrew).
Real friendship means: when you see that your friend is drunk, you don't encourage him to drive. You offer to take him home. I am longing for an American president who will have the courage and the honesty to tell our leaders: Dear friends, you are drunk with power! You are speeding along a highway that leads to an abyss!
Perhaps Barack Obama will be such a friend. This would be a blessing for us, too.
"WAR IS much too serious a thing to be left to military men," in Talleyrand's memorable words. In the same spirit, one could say: The American presidential elections are much too serious to be left to the Americans.
The US is now the only super-power on earth. It will remain so for quite some time to come. The decisions of the President of the United States affect every human being on this planet.
Unfortunately, the citizens of the world have no part in these elections. But they may, at least, voice an opinion.
Availing myself of this right I say: I am for Barack Obama.
FIRST OF ALL I must confess: my attitude towards the US is one of unrequited love. In my youth I was a great admirer. Like many others of my generation, I grew up on the legend of the new, idealistic country of pioneers, the world's torch of freedom. I admired Abe Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who hastened to the rescue of besieged Britain, when it stood alone against the Nazi monster, and who entered World War II at the decisive moment. I grew up on Wild West movies.
Gradually, I lost my illusions. Joe McCarthy helped me along the way. I learned that with depressing regularity, the US is seized by some hysteria or other. But every time, just before the brink of the abyss, it draws back.
During the Vietnam War I took part in demonstrations. I happened to be in America in 1967, and participated in the legendary march of the half million to the Pentagon. I reached the entrance of the building and saw before me a line of cold-eyed soldiers who seemed to be just itching to open fire. At the last moment it occurred to me that it would be unseemly for an Israeli Member of the Knesset to be implicated, so I jumped from the ledge of the entrance and twisted my ankle.
Somehow I got on the CIA (or was it the FBI?) black list. I managed to obtain a visa only with great difficulty, and was struck forever from the list of invitees to the American embassy parties in Tel Aviv. I don't know if this happened because of those protests, or because of my friendship with Henri Curiel, a Jewish-Egyptian revolutionary who helped us in our contacts with the PLO. The Americans held him, quite mistakenly, to be a KGB agent.
At the same time, my name was struck by the Soviets from every list of people invited from Israel. Perhaps they considered me a CIA agent (as I was called in the Israeli Communist party paper). So I was one of the few people in the world who appeared simultaneously on the black lists of both the USA and the Soviet Union - a source of moderate pride to me.
My friend Afif Safieh, now the chief PLO representative in the US, argues that there are two Americas: the America which exterminated the Native Americans and enslaved the blacks, the America of Hiroshima and McCarthy, and the other America, the America of the Declaration of Independence, of Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt.
In these terms, George Bush belongs to the first. Obama, his opposite in almost every respect, represents the second.
ONE CAN arrive at Obama by a process of elimination.
John McCain is a continuation of Bush. More attractive, probably more intelligent (which doesn't mean much). But he is more of the same. The same policy - a dangerous mix of intoxication with power and simple-mindedness. The same world of the Wild West myth, of Good Guys (Americans and their stooges) and Bad Guys (everybody else). A macho world of sham masculinity, where everything is seen through the sights of a gun.
McCain will go on with the wars, and may start new ones. His economic agenda is the same "swinish capitalism" (Shimon Peres' phrase), which has now brought disaster on the economy of the US, and the economy of all of us.
Eight years of Bush are enough for us. Thank you.
Hillary? True, there is something very positive in the fact that a woman is a potential candidate for the leadership of the most powerful country in the world. As the old Jewish blessing has it: Blessed art thou, the Lord, our God, who let us live to see this day. I believe that the feminist revolution was by far the most important one of the 20th Century, since it overturns the social patterns of thousands of years, and perhaps also the biological patterns of million of years. This revolution is still going on, and the election of a woman president would be a milestone.
But it is not enough that it be a woman. It is also important which woman it is.
I spent some years struggling against Golda Meir, the worst Prime Minister Israel ever had. Almost all recent female leaders of countries have started wars: Margaret Thatcher started the Falklands War, Golda Meir bears the responsibility for the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Indira Gandhi made war on Pakistan, the current presidents of the Philippines and Sri Lanka are conducting internal wars.
The usual explanation is that in order to prevail in a man's world, a woman politician has to prove that she is at least as tough as the men are. When she comes to power, she wants to show that she, too, can make war and command armies. Hillary has already acted tough by voting for the disastrous Iraq war.
(Years ago, when she came out for a Palestinian state, Gush Shalom demonstrated in her honor in front of the US embassy in Tel Aviv. We wanted to present her with a bunch of flowers. The embassy people treated us as enemies and refused to accept the flowers. Since then, Hillary has not uttered another word in favor of the Palestinians.)
I don't know how much she was a partner to her husband's decisions in the White House. The President's wife may be closest to his ear - and the President's husband will probably be closest to her ear. Anyhow, in the eight years of Bill Clinton nothing good for Israeli-Palestinian peace happened. In his "peace team" there were a lot of American Jews, but not a single American Arab. He was totally subservient to the Israel lobby, and on his watch the number of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territories more than doubled.
Israel doesn't really need another term of Billary.
Hillary is a run of the mill politician. If McCain is a continuation of Bush, Hillary is an extension of the entire present American political system, the present policy and the present routine. But the world needs another America.
THE NAME of another America is Obama. Full name: Barack Hussein Obama.
The very fact that this person can be a serious contender for the presidency at all restores my faith in the possibilities inherent in America. After the excesses of Senator Joe McCarthy there was President John Kennedy. After Bush there can be Obama. Only in America.
The great message of Obama is Obama himself. A person who has roots in three continents (and another half: Hawaii). A person whose education spans the wide world. A person who can see reality from the viewpoints of America, Africa and Asia. A person who is both black and white. A new kind of American, an American of the 21st Century.
I am not as naļve as I sound. I realize that in his speeches there is more enthusiasm than content. We can't know what he will do once elected president. President Obama may disappoint us. But I prefer to take a risk with a man like this than to know in advance what the two routine politicians, his competitors, will do.
I am not overly impressed by election speeches. I have conducted four election campaigns myself and I know that there are things one has to say and things one must not say. It's all with limited liability. But beyond all the speechifying, one fact is more important than a million words: Obama opposed the Iraq invasion from the start, when this took integrity and a lot of courage. Hillary voted for the war and changed her position only when public opinion had changed. McCain supports the war even now.
We in Israel know the huge difference between opposing a war in its first, decisive hour, and opposing it after a month, a year or five years.
On the other hand, perhaps this very fact - more even than the color of his skin, his middle name and his "lack of experience" - will work against him. The voters do not like a person who was right when they were wrong. It's like admitting: he was wise and we were stupid. When a politician wants to be elected, he would be well advised to hide the fact that he was right.
A personal note: as an optimist from birth, I like Obama's optimism. I prefer a candidate who brings hope over one destroying hope. Optimism spurs to action, pessimism produces nothing but despair.
America needs a complete overhaul. Not just a wash, not just a wax job, not just a new coat of paint. It needs a new motor, a change of the entire leadership, a reappraisal of its position in the world, a change of values.
Can Obama do this? I hope so. I am not sure. But I am quite sure that the other two will not.
HERE A JEW will pop the classic question: Is it good for the Jews?
The people who claim to speak for the American Jews, the "leaders" who were not elected by anyone, the chiefs of the fetid "organizations", are conducting a dirty campaign of defamation and sly hints against him. If his middle name is Hussein and he is black, he must be an "Arab-lover". Also, he did not distance himself enough from the anti-Semite Louis Farakhan.
The same "leaders" are in bed with the most loathsome racists in the US, obscurantist fundamentalists and blood-stained neo-cons. But most American Jews know that their place is not there. The unholy alliance with those types will inevitably come home to roost. The Jews have to be where they have always been: in the progressive camp, striving for equality and the separation between state and religion.
IT MUST be asked: Is it good for Israel?
All three candidates have groveled at the feet of AIPAC. The fawning of all three before the Israeli leadership is disgusting. They all show a lack of integrity. But I know that they have no choice. That's how it is in the USA.
In spite of this, Obama succeeded in getting out one courageous sentence. Speaking before a mainly Jewish audience in Cleveland, he said: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."
I hope that the American Barack (blessed, in Arabic), if elected, will not turn into a replica of the Israeli Barak (lightning, in Hebrew).
Real friendship means: when you see that your friend is drunk, you don't encourage him to drive. You offer to take him home. I am longing for an American president who will have the courage and the honesty to tell our leaders: Dear friends, you are drunk with power! You are speeding along a highway that leads to an abyss!
Perhaps Barack Obama will be such a friend. This would be a blessing for us, too.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Why we should fear a McCain presidency by Anatol Lieven
The article appears in today's FT.
Why we should fear a McCain presidency
By Anatol Lieven
Published: March 24 2008 19:12 | Last updated: March 24 2008 19:12
It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.
Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.
The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.
Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called “national greatness conservatism”. In 1999, Mr McCain declared: “The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history . . . We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”
Mr McCain’s promises, during last week’s visit to London, to listen more to America’s European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe’s request.
Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback’. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.” Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
Mr McCain suffers from more than the usual degree of US establishment hatred of Russia, coupled with a particular degree of sympathy for Georgia and the restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He advocates the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations and, like Mr Scheunemann, is a strong supporter of early Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Scheunemann has accused even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, of “appeasement” of Russia. Nato expansion exemplifies the potential of a McCain presidency. Apart from the threat of Russian reprisals, if the Georgians thought that in a war they could rely on US support, they might be tempted to start one. A McCain presidency would give them good reason to have faith in US support.
Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”
For all his bellicosity, President George W. Bush has known how to deal cautiously and diplomatically with China and even Russia. Could we rely on Mr McCain to do the same?
Mr McCain exemplifies “Jacksonian nationalism” – after Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century Indian-fighter and president – and the Scots-Irish military tradition from which both men sprung. As Mr McCain’s superb courage in North Vietnamese captivity and his honourable opposition to torture by US forces demonstrate, he also possesses the virtues of that tradition. Then again, some of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by brave, honourable men with a passionate sense of national mission.
Not just US voters, but European governments, should use the next nine months to ponder the consequences if Mr McCain is elected and how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagrations.
The writer is a professor at King’s College, Cambridge, and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation. His book, America Right or Wrong, analyses US nationalism
Why we should fear a McCain presidency
By Anatol Lieven
Published: March 24 2008 19:12 | Last updated: March 24 2008 19:12
It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.
Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.
The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.
Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called “national greatness conservatism”. In 1999, Mr McCain declared: “The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history . . . We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”
Mr McCain’s promises, during last week’s visit to London, to listen more to America’s European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe’s request.
Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback’. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.” Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
Mr McCain suffers from more than the usual degree of US establishment hatred of Russia, coupled with a particular degree of sympathy for Georgia and the restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He advocates the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations and, like Mr Scheunemann, is a strong supporter of early Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Scheunemann has accused even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, of “appeasement” of Russia. Nato expansion exemplifies the potential of a McCain presidency. Apart from the threat of Russian reprisals, if the Georgians thought that in a war they could rely on US support, they might be tempted to start one. A McCain presidency would give them good reason to have faith in US support.
Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”
For all his bellicosity, President George W. Bush has known how to deal cautiously and diplomatically with China and even Russia. Could we rely on Mr McCain to do the same?
Mr McCain exemplifies “Jacksonian nationalism” – after Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century Indian-fighter and president – and the Scots-Irish military tradition from which both men sprung. As Mr McCain’s superb courage in North Vietnamese captivity and his honourable opposition to torture by US forces demonstrate, he also possesses the virtues of that tradition. Then again, some of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by brave, honourable men with a passionate sense of national mission.
Not just US voters, but European governments, should use the next nine months to ponder the consequences if Mr McCain is elected and how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagrations.
The writer is a professor at King’s College, Cambridge, and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation. His book, America Right or Wrong, analyses US nationalism
Thursday, March 20, 2008
White House Sets Long View on Oil - Administration Says Prices to Stay High; Growing Demand
WALL STREET JOURNAL
3/20/08
White House Sets Long View on Oil
Administration Says Prices to Stay High; Growing Demand
NEIL KING JR.
WASHINGTON -- With the debate raging over why oil has risen past $100 a barrel, the Bush administration has joined a growing camp that says an unusually tight market could keep prices high well into the future, with no easy fix in sight.
Big producers within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with some analysts, say oil is soaring largely because of financial speculators and a falling dollar. Implicit in that view: What goes up can just as easily come down.
Indeed, oil yesterday declined $4.94 a barrel -- its largest drop, in dollar terms, in 17 years -- to $104.48 a barrel as investors fled commodities in general.
But senior Bush officials have taken a longer-term, grimmer position, one that is increasingly prevalent within the industry. In their view, prices will remain buoyant well after speculative investors head elsewhere, as the cost of finding new sources of oil continues to soar and demand in Asia and the Middle East climbs.
As a result, Bush aides argue that only longer-term efforts will drive oil prices down significantly.
The administration's stance shows how much has changed since 2000, when skyrocketing crude prices had the Clinton administration jumping through political hoops during a similarly heated election year. When crude prices shot to the then-startling height of more than $34 a barrel in February 2000, President Clinton sent his energy secretary, Bill Richardson, on a six-nation tour through the oil patch, begging everyone to pump more oil. OPEC came through with an increase of 1.7 million barrels a day. Lawmakers then demanded Mr. Clinton tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- salt caverns holding several months of supply -- which he did just weeks before the presidential election.
Bush aides counter that the Clinton efforts then were mainly theater -- and don't apply today. World-wide demand for oil has risen nearly 15% since then, to 87 million barrels a day. More critically, the world now has about two million barrels a day in excess capacity to tap in case of emergency, compared with about 3.1 million barrels in 2000.
"Fundamentally, if one looks at the oil market today or at the futures market six months or a year or more beyond, these prices...are being driven by underlying considerations of supply and demand," says Reuben Jeffery, the administration's new coordinator for international energy affairs within the State Department.
"We think about it the way most economists think about it," says Edward Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "Commodity prices are driven over time by changes in supply and demand." Sustained demand growth for oil, he says, "is here to stay and will be around for a very long time to come until we find significant ways to conserve."
As oil has soared, President Bush has urged OPEC members to raise production, but he has done it with a streak of fatalism. When in Riyadh in January, he asked Saudi Arabia to consider boosting production, but while questioning its ability to do so.
The main goal, Mr. Bush said this month, is for the U.S. to "get off oil."
Bush aides contend that Saudi Arabia, with the world's only significant excess capacity, could help drive down prices if it put more oil on the market -- a move the Saudis aren't keen to make.
Significant relief, administration officials say, will take much longer. On the supply side, the White House puts big faith in breakthroughs in ethanol and other biofuels, an area that critics say is fraught with challenges. The administration is more pessimistic about putting a dent in demand, even with newly approved higher efficiency standards for cars.
"The new variable is alternative fuels," Mr. Lazear says. "It will take seven to 10 years to know whether it will really pan out."
Bush advisers say Democrats will have to budge at some point on opening up more of Alaska to oil exploration, as well as the U.S. continental shelf. "We could have been thinking about all of this 10 or 15 years ago when it comes to alternatives or new exploration, and we weren't," Mr. Lazear says.
Critics, though, say President Bush is overlooking small steps that could drive prices down swiftly and ease pressures on U.S. consumers. Heating-oil price increases in the U.S. have outpaced the record jumps in gasoline prices at the pump, prompting some to call for the government to release the two million barrels of heating oil it holds in reserve in the Northeast -- a stash the Clinton administration created in 2000.
There are also loud demands for the Department of Energy to stop siphoning off 70,000 barrels a day of oil to build up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The DOE's czar for renewable energy, Assistant Energy Secretary Alexander Karsner, is stark in his view on why oil prices are soaring. "The places where oil can be found and extracted and brought to bear in the world are decreasing," he says. "It will get harder, and demand will outstrip supply for probably the rest of my lifetime."
3/20/08
White House Sets Long View on Oil
Administration Says Prices to Stay High; Growing Demand
NEIL KING JR.
WASHINGTON -- With the debate raging over why oil has risen past $100 a barrel, the Bush administration has joined a growing camp that says an unusually tight market could keep prices high well into the future, with no easy fix in sight.
Big producers within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with some analysts, say oil is soaring largely because of financial speculators and a falling dollar. Implicit in that view: What goes up can just as easily come down.
Indeed, oil yesterday declined $4.94 a barrel -- its largest drop, in dollar terms, in 17 years -- to $104.48 a barrel as investors fled commodities in general.
But senior Bush officials have taken a longer-term, grimmer position, one that is increasingly prevalent within the industry. In their view, prices will remain buoyant well after speculative investors head elsewhere, as the cost of finding new sources of oil continues to soar and demand in Asia and the Middle East climbs.
As a result, Bush aides argue that only longer-term efforts will drive oil prices down significantly.
The administration's stance shows how much has changed since 2000, when skyrocketing crude prices had the Clinton administration jumping through political hoops during a similarly heated election year. When crude prices shot to the then-startling height of more than $34 a barrel in February 2000, President Clinton sent his energy secretary, Bill Richardson, on a six-nation tour through the oil patch, begging everyone to pump more oil. OPEC came through with an increase of 1.7 million barrels a day. Lawmakers then demanded Mr. Clinton tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- salt caverns holding several months of supply -- which he did just weeks before the presidential election.
Bush aides counter that the Clinton efforts then were mainly theater -- and don't apply today. World-wide demand for oil has risen nearly 15% since then, to 87 million barrels a day. More critically, the world now has about two million barrels a day in excess capacity to tap in case of emergency, compared with about 3.1 million barrels in 2000.
"Fundamentally, if one looks at the oil market today or at the futures market six months or a year or more beyond, these prices...are being driven by underlying considerations of supply and demand," says Reuben Jeffery, the administration's new coordinator for international energy affairs within the State Department.
"We think about it the way most economists think about it," says Edward Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "Commodity prices are driven over time by changes in supply and demand." Sustained demand growth for oil, he says, "is here to stay and will be around for a very long time to come until we find significant ways to conserve."
As oil has soared, President Bush has urged OPEC members to raise production, but he has done it with a streak of fatalism. When in Riyadh in January, he asked Saudi Arabia to consider boosting production, but while questioning its ability to do so.
The main goal, Mr. Bush said this month, is for the U.S. to "get off oil."
Bush aides contend that Saudi Arabia, with the world's only significant excess capacity, could help drive down prices if it put more oil on the market -- a move the Saudis aren't keen to make.
Significant relief, administration officials say, will take much longer. On the supply side, the White House puts big faith in breakthroughs in ethanol and other biofuels, an area that critics say is fraught with challenges. The administration is more pessimistic about putting a dent in demand, even with newly approved higher efficiency standards for cars.
"The new variable is alternative fuels," Mr. Lazear says. "It will take seven to 10 years to know whether it will really pan out."
Bush advisers say Democrats will have to budge at some point on opening up more of Alaska to oil exploration, as well as the U.S. continental shelf. "We could have been thinking about all of this 10 or 15 years ago when it comes to alternatives or new exploration, and we weren't," Mr. Lazear says.
Critics, though, say President Bush is overlooking small steps that could drive prices down swiftly and ease pressures on U.S. consumers. Heating-oil price increases in the U.S. have outpaced the record jumps in gasoline prices at the pump, prompting some to call for the government to release the two million barrels of heating oil it holds in reserve in the Northeast -- a stash the Clinton administration created in 2000.
There are also loud demands for the Department of Energy to stop siphoning off 70,000 barrels a day of oil to build up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The DOE's czar for renewable energy, Assistant Energy Secretary Alexander Karsner, is stark in his view on why oil prices are soaring. "The places where oil can be found and extracted and brought to bear in the world are decreasing," he says. "It will get harder, and demand will outstrip supply for probably the rest of my lifetime."
Same game, new rules in Afghanistan
Same game, new rules in Afghanistan
Obituaries for the Taliban's spring offensive are premature, though instead of trying to engage opposition forces head-on, the Taliban will open up new fronts in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In return, North Atlantic Treaty Organization and United States-led troops will target the Taliban's safe havens straddling the border with Pakistan. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Mar 20, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JC21Df01.html
Obituaries for the Taliban's spring offensive are premature, though instead of trying to engage opposition forces head-on, the Taliban will open up new fronts in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In return, North Atlantic Treaty Organization and United States-led troops will target the Taliban's safe havens straddling the border with Pakistan. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Mar 20, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JC21Df01.html
Bitter Lemons Middle East Roundtable March 20, 2008: The Damascus Arab Summit
bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable
We wish our Christian readers a Happy Easter!
Edition 12 Volume 6 - March 20, 2008
The Damascus Arab summit
• Getting through Damascus - Mohamed Abdel Salam
The hope is that the Damascus summit becomes just another summit and not an end to all summits.
• Success measured by attendance - Rime Allaf
A summit should be the perfect setting for reaching regional solutions, but pan-Arab politics have rarely followed such logic.
• Everyone can brag, nothing will be done - Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
The yearly ritual has been secured, but nothing will come of it.
• The summit and Lebanon's political future - Oussama Safa
Whatever Lebanon ends up doing about the summit, its presence at the table is essential.
Getting through Damascus
Mohamed Abdel Salam
Ever since 2001, when Arab countries decided to hold a "leaders' summit" regularly, nearly no summit has taken place without problems. Even before then, Arab summits were not an easy affair: Arab countries disagreed regarding the necessity of some meetings and the content of resolutions adopted, there were personal problems among some of the leaders scheduled to participate, and there were sensitivities regarding the role of the host, convener or chairman vis-a-vis the other leaders. With few exceptions, Arab public opinion was not satisfied with the resolutions issued by the summits. Almost all summits witnessed problems at the level of representation, agenda, management of the sessions and final decisions. For decades, the "summit institution" was too crisis-ridden to be turned into a regular meeting.
These problems were merely exacerbated when the summit became an annual event. The problems began with a new factor: the venue of the summit. It was agreed that the summits be convened consecutively in the Arab capitals according to alphabetical order. Every capital destined to host the meeting began to dump its regional problems on the summit. This is currently happening with Damascus.
The venue issue has caused additional problems. There are capitals like Baghdad that will not host a summit in the foreseeable future. Differences among some of the capitals have led many leaders to stay away from participation. In addition, other complications have led most of the Gulf capitals to waive their role in hosting the summit for the benefit of the next on the list. A Saudi proposal appeared in 2007 to establish a permanent headquarters for holding the summit in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh, precisely in order to avoid these problems.
But before anything could change, the process reached Damascus, the self-styled heart of Arabism. It has been understood since the close of the Riyadh summit last year that Damascus would not be one of the easier Arab stations. At that time, the possibility was broached to waive Damascus in favor of the next capital. The issue was not related to the fact that the president of the host country becomes chairman of the summit or that the host capital dominates the meeting and invitation arrangements and usually seeks to determine many of the items on the agenda. Rather, it touched on the more serious issues of Damascus' policies and the attitude of the key Arab countries toward them.
Syria has turned away from its traditional alliance with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to become party to a coalition with Iran, Hizballah and Hamas. The two alliances are waging a genuine cold war in the Middle East arena. This war has turned Lebanon into a time bomb, worsened the situation in the Gaza Strip, strained relations between Damascus and Riyadh and generated an unprecedented stalemate in relations between Damascus and Cairo. The Damascus summit has to address these open files in such a way that the summit does not end in a failure to resolve any issue at all, or at least makes it possible for the leaders to shake hands for the media, thereby avoiding an obvious farce.
Egypt, aware of the dangers of Syria's behavior, has traditionally sought to prevent Syria from moving in directions that Damascus might regret. It appears from published reports about contacts between them that Egypt has tried to exploit the Damascus summit as a real opportunity to maneuver Syria back into the so-called "Arab ranks". Even when this appeared to be impractical, Damascus was asked to submit something that might reflect an interest in the success of the summit, at least with respect to facilitating the task of electing a president in Lebanon. This would have constituted a first step toward alleviating radical Saudi-Syrian tensions.
Yet Damascus seems to be thinking in an entirely different direction. It is not ready at all to be flexible regarding the problems it faces even if this means the summit's failure. Indeed, Syria appears more willing to forego its Arab relations in favor of inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad to be present and adopting an agenda, alarming to the other participants, that includes a critical approach to the Arab peace initiative. Damascus claims it has based these proposals on the legacy of previous summits and appears to be uninterested in amending them.
Syria's tactics were clear from the outset. It wants to convert the Damascus summit from a source of pressure to a bargaining chip. Thus, in order to avoid complete isolation and ensure the summit is held as scheduled, it has begun to signal a more cooperative attitude by keeping Iran away from the summit and sending an invitation--without solving the problem--to Lebanon. It also expressed its willingness to discuss policy differences--but during rather than before the summit, even though this contradicts the Arab summit tradition. There is still no specific understanding as to how the summit will be conducted once Arab delegations reach Damascus.
The Syrian capital has dumped all its problems on the summit. The summit has led to an opening of the files of Syria's policies in the region, yet without registering progress in resolving the problems generated by these policies. Now it appears that the opportunity to do so has been lost, and the direction of Syrian policies will be maintained during the post-summit period. For a country like Egypt, the challenge is to ensure that Syria is no better off after the summit than before it, and to enable the Arab summit institution to emerge intact from Damascus and move to another capital next year. Thus the hope is that the Damascus summit becomes just another summit and not an end to all summits.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mohamed Abdel Salam heads the Regional Security Program at Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Success measured by attendance
Rime Allaf
Despite their proven futility, Arab League summits have always managed to create a modicum of expectation over the last couple of decades, with several big events shaking the Arab world to its core. But apart from the few exceptions when actionable resolutions were adopted, like the expulsion of Egypt at the 1979 Baghdad summit (following its peace agreement with Israel) or the emergency Cairo summit of 1990 in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (where a leaked recording exposed Arab leaders disgracefully shouting insults across the table), Arab League summits have mostly been opportunities to prove the cliche that "Arabs agree to disagree".
With such low expectations and no likely achievements, the region now mostly plays a different summit game: how will turnout be? Which of the big names will skip and who will strive to steal the headlines by arriving late? The scrutiny continues during the summit: who will be merely civil to whom, who will show effusive appreciation of whom and whose brotherly kisses and hugs will provide the best photo-op?
The upcoming Damascus summit suffers from these usual afflictions, but there are additional issues raising the stakes. For one, past thorny summits were held on relatively neutral ground, either in countries not directly implicated in the crisis du jour or in Arab League headquarters. In contrast, the Damascus summit will convene in the country most at odds with its co-members and under the auspices of a rather controversial regime whose relations with other states have deteriorated over one of the trickiest problems facing the region in recent years: Lebanon's presidential crisis is blamed on Damascus alone.
One other novelty is the extent of pre-conditions other regimes have imposed, or tried to impose, on their host--conditions that reveal the lack of faith summit participants themselves have in the potential value of such gatherings. Instead of proposing to use the summit to resolve the Lebanese problem, countries with rival positions have hinted that their participation depends precisely on the election of a president after 16 attempts; a seventeenth failure, they warn, would doom the summit to low-level (if any) representation.
Syria is anxious to avoid a humiliating no-show from the big names. Repeatedly trying, and repeatedly failing, to secure Saudi approval for a visit by Foreign Minister Walid Muallem to deliver the official summit invitation, Syria finally resigned itself to send it at a much lower level, illustrating the depth of the gulf between Riyadh and Damascus. It will not have helped, of course, that Lebanon was the last of 22 countries to be invited to the summit, in a manner defying protocol and typical of Syrian "diplomacy": handed to a resigned minister of the Lebanese cabinet by an official of the Syrian foreign ministry, the invitation wasn't even signed by the host, but by the Syrian prime minister.
Such moves do nothing to endear the Syrian regime to its critics, and Muallem's claim that this summit will have the highest level of attendance of any summit remains to be seen. It is not clear whether he counts one of the confirmed attendees, the Iranian foreign minister, in his tally, but unless other friendly neighbors (such as Turkey) also make an appearance, the Iranian representative may find himself the sole non-Arab at the table among irate participants finding yet another point of contention with the host.
But Damascus is also subject to unprecedented third party interference, a phenomenon not experienced by other summit organizers. With the American president arrogantly preaching to Arabs about attendance, and with even the usually diplomatic head of EU diplomacy, Javier Solana, opining that key Arab leaders should not go if a Lebanese counterpart is not among them, Syria's own meddling begins to appear pertinent.
A summit should be the perfect setting for reaching regional solutions, but pan-Arab politics have rarely followed such logic and we are left measuring success by attendance rather than achievement. Thus, even the 2002 Beirut summit's major accomplishment (the adoption of the Arab peace initiative) was overshadowed by the absence of half the heads of state and the deliberate snub of besieged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's televised address to his fellow leaders, when the host, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, interrupted Arafat's broadcast as it began from Ramallah and declared it was time for lunch.
The current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will be unenthusiastic about making a personal appearance in the capital where his biggest enemy (Hamas) holds political court, but is unable to skip the summit given the tragic situation in Gaza. Likewise, the Lebanese will be damned if they come (which some would consider a show of weakness before Syria) and damned if they don't (which could be interpreted as unwillingness to trust pan-Arab diplomacy). Current heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia will also be torn between attending to impose their presence and sitting out to register their opposition to Syrian actions and thus cause summit failure.
But Syrian-Saudi relations, currently at an all-time low, have overcome greater challenges. While many believe that King Abdullah has not forgiven, or forgotten, Syrian slights he felt were directed at his person after the Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006, this didn't stop him from embracing and meeting with the Syrian president at the last summit in Riyadh. This shows that summits do little to change political situations, and the Damascus summit will be just as inconsequential as its precursors.
Still, the Syrian regime is hoping that the regional situation, recently stirred even more by Israel, the United States and various other incendiary meddlers, will Arab leaders them toward participation, and that their presence in the self-proclaimed "beating heart of Arabism" will allow for a whirlwind persuasive demonstration of its leadership in the sacrosanct Arab struggle--a task made more difficult, if not moot, by the presence of Iran.
To paraphrase Fontenelle, a great obstacle to success is the expectation of too much success. Despite Syrian hype around the summit, success measured by attendance merely increases the possibility of failure in such unfavorable circumstances.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rime Allaf is associate fellow at Chatham House.
Everyone can brag, nothing will be done
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
The troubled Arab League summit is finally going ahead in Syria later this month. But the wrangling between Saudi Arabia and Syria over Lebanon that preceded the summit is likely to continue after the meeting as the rift between the pro and anti-western Arab states over Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine deepens.
The divisions fall between two axes: the Iranian-led hardliners grouping Syria, local allies Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine on the one hand, and the so-called "Arab moderates" or allies of Washington, on the other side. Neither front is willing to lose the battle.
"The Arabs have all lost control over their region and its political crises," a senior Jordanian official told this writer. "The decision is no longer in our hands: some are taking the cue from Iran, others are taking it from America.... A solution for these interconnected crises will continue to stagger, until America and Iran settle their differences over Tehran's nuclear file and re-draw the map of the new Middle East, exactly like World War I victors Britain and France divided the remains of the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence."
The run up to the summit has been dramatic--reflecting an ongoing battle among most Arabs against Iran's growing influence in the region. For weeks, regional political heavyweight Riyadh insisted it would boycott the March 29-30 summit if Damascus does not facilitate the election of a new Lebanese president by then. Not all the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were on board.
Egypt opted for another approach: Arabs should take part in the summit and spell out what Arabs require from Syria.
"You go to a summit to solve your problems instead of insisting to settle them in advance. You give Syria the 'Arab option' instead of pushing it further into Iran's lap," said an Egyptian diplomat. "You bluntly tell Syria it needs to facilitate the election of Lebanon's president, to support Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the peace process and to ensure national reconciliation by stopping Hamas' spoiling role," he said. "And you ask it to help stabilize Iraq, where Iran now has the upper hand."
Jordan, which mended fences with Syria in November after a four year hiatus, opted for a middle ground: maintaining close political coordination with Cairo and Riyadh while trying but failing to ease Saudi-Syrian tension. This balancing act, however, proved difficult. Riyadh, Amman's key Arab bankroller and strategic political ally, and Washington got sensitive.
Syria, for its part, did not show any signs it would be willing to concede on Lebanon for the sake of holding a high-level Arab summit that is not expected to further its strategic interests. The noise coming out of Damascus was defiant; the summit would be convened on time with "whoever attends", to gain some of the prestige it is aching for to counter US isolation and western pressure on its ruling elite in connection with a UN tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
The trial will start in June, leading the regime and its ally Hizballah to use brinkmanship and a tacit threat of civil was as a means of destabilizing the pro-US government.
Saudi Arabia then tried another diplomatic tactic. It lobbied for the convening of an eight-way meeting with Egypt, Jordan and its GCC allies to demand a summit delay or change of venue to Egypt, to embarrass Syria over Lebanon. In parallel, Washington pressured its Arab allies to snub the Syria summit. But the ensuing Israeli military offensive in Gaza inflamed Arab public anger and further isolated moderate voices pushing for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians under the Arab peace initiative re-launched at the 2007 Arab League summit in Riyadh.
Once again, Syria stole the show, prodding hundreds of thousands to march through the capital's streets while Arab moderates issued shy condemnations. Syrian media orchestrated an aggressive campaign equating the latest killings in Gaza to the Nazi-run Holocaust. An embarrassed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas briefly called off peace talks with Israel before Egypt brokered an informal truce between Hamas and Israel.
Days into March, Arab diplomacy finally saved the day. Arab foreign ministers held marathon talks in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia announced it would attend the Damascus summit. Together with Egypt and Jordan, Riyadh will send low-level representation, at ambassadorial or ministerial level. This is a sufficient rebuke to the Syrian regime while bringing less harm to the already diminished Arab League.
Syria accepted to send an invitation to Lebanon, but said it would leave it up to the country's feuding politicians to decide who will lead the delegation to the summit if no president is elected by March 25.
"The Arab ritual of holding a regular summit has been secured," said an Arab official. "Once again, however, Arabs will fail to agree on anything major, opting for flexible, minimum consensus and meaningless resolutions to take back home."
Syria will use the summit to embarrass Washington's allies. It has invited Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to attend the summit's opening. Khaled Mishaal, the Damascus-based political leader of Hamas, and a rival of President Abbas, is likely to sit next to Mottaki. President Bashar Assad will play the "Palestinian card" and use other tactics to counter Riyadh's rebuke over Lebanon, where the presidential impasse is likely to continue for months.
Damascus and a few low-profile Arab supporters will insist on reviewing the failed peace process, including pushing for other alternatives such as retreating from the Arab peace initiative because of Israel's continued building of West Bank settlements, a practice the US-mediated Annapolis accord was supposed to forbid. Moderate Arabs will fight back. They will push to stabilize the situation in Gaza. And in the absence of other Arab strategic alternatives to peace, they will focus on the continuation of Palestinian-Israeli talks to secure a peace deal before the end of US President George Bush's term in office.
As a compromise, the summit will form a ministerial committee to monitor the process and to reconsider future options within a set period of time if the talks go nowhere.
"Everyone will leave Damascus with something to brag about. The biggest losers will be Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine while post-summit Arab political intrigue and bickering will continue well into the next Arab League summit," said an Arab official.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is an independent journalist and former chief editor of The Jordan Times.
The summit and Lebanon's political future
Oussama Safa
Waiting for Godot in Lebanon nowadays seems more fruitful than anticipating a political breakthrough in the near future. The hopes that a consensus president will be elected before the upcoming Arab summit in Damascus are quickly evaporating, to be replaced by renewed pessimism about the future of politics in the country. The triumph of Syrian diplomacy in securing an acceptable showing of Arab officials at the scheduled summit on March 28 will be another missed opportunity for an all-out Arab effort to prevail on Damascus to facilitate the election of a Lebanese president. The Israeli attacks on Gaza have served the Syrians well by overshadowing the Lebanese crisis and making the Palestinian issue the priority agenda for the summiteers in Damascus. Arab leaders now find it increasingly difficult to boycott the gathering in Syria.
The pessimism about Lebanon's future is not entirely misplaced. While moderate Arab states had hoped for a quick resolution to the political crisis before the summit, a gradual escalation in rhetoric and organized violence by the opposition in Beirut accompanied the preparations for the summit and indicated there was no Syrian appetite for a thaw. Most ominous were the riots that pitted the Lebanese army against demonstrators and resulted in seven dead civilians on January 27 this year. The riots were intended as a bloody message to the Arab foreign ministers who were gathering in Cairo that day, but also carried an intentional embarrassment for presidential hopeful Michel Suleiman, the army commander-in-chief. His chances of getting elected soon seem to have subsided after the riots and the humiliating ensuing investigation and subsequent suspension of seven military officers and soldiers.
Regionally, Syrian-Saudi relations took a turn for the worse. The Arab League initiative brokered by the Saudi and Egyptian foreign ministers in Cairo deadlocked in Beirut, mostly due to the opposition's ever changing demands. The recent victory by the conservatives in Iran will undoubtedly embolden President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's position in the region, particularly with Hizballah in Lebanon. The latter is involved in a covert war with Israel following the assassination of its senior military leader, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus.
It remains to be seen whether the killing of Mughniyeh is the start of new forms of pressure against Damascus or just a settling of scores that happened to take place in Syria. While it is highly likely that covert confrontation between Israel and Hizballah will be the new face of war between them, the political scene in Beirut seems to be in a deep freeze.
Hopes are pinned on the revival of the Arab League initiative, though all indications are that the initiative is dead. As the Lebanese have grown accustomed to waiting for regional rapprochement of powers before they can expect a political deal, the upcoming Arab summit seems to be only the next disappointment in this regard. Depending on the summit's closing communique and the tone with which it deals with standing political crises in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, the aftermath of the summit is a period to watch carefully in Lebanon. Syria will soon host the summit leadership for the upcoming year, which means that joint Arab diplomacy will be based in Damascus for the next several months. This will inevitably break Damascus' isolation from the Arab fold and give it a much needed breather to expand its spectrum of regional and international diplomacy.
The summit's communique is also expected to deal with the six-year-old Arab peace initiative that until today remains intransigently rejected by Israel. Any move led by Damascus to alter the initiative will most likely provoke Saudi resistance and might entail even further worsening of relations between the two countries. At the same time, a low-key showing at the summit by the Saudis or any attempts by the latter to steal the thunder of the Damascus gathering will push Syria to retaliate in Lebanon. This might take several forms, including new levels of street violence between supporters of the opposition and loyalists, increased pressure on the loyalist government coalition or a new wave of car bombs and assassinations. The recent urgent warning to Saudi citizens to leave Beirut is an indication that the kingdom is bracing itself for a confrontation at the summit and in its aftermath.
Lebanon's late invitation to the summit has opened the door to various speculations as to whether it will be present at the Damascus meeting. While the government is undecided, the issue has become a subject of political controversy, with much of the opposition pushing for the country's representation at the summit. Whatever Lebanon ends up doing about the summit, its presence at the table is essential. The late Turkish President Turgut Ozal once opined about Turkey's role in redrawing the map of Iraq after the first Gulf war that "he'd rather be a guest at the table than an item on the menu." By not showing up at the summit, Lebanon risks becoming a forgotten hors d'oeuvre on the menu.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Oussama Safa is general director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Middle East Roundtable
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Edition 12 Volume 6 - March 20, 2008
The Damascus Arab summit
• Getting through Damascus - Mohamed Abdel Salam
The hope is that the Damascus summit becomes just another summit and not an end to all summits.
• Success measured by attendance - Rime Allaf
A summit should be the perfect setting for reaching regional solutions, but pan-Arab politics have rarely followed such logic.
• Everyone can brag, nothing will be done - Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
The yearly ritual has been secured, but nothing will come of it.
• The summit and Lebanon's political future - Oussama Safa
Whatever Lebanon ends up doing about the summit, its presence at the table is essential.
Getting through Damascus
Mohamed Abdel Salam
Ever since 2001, when Arab countries decided to hold a "leaders' summit" regularly, nearly no summit has taken place without problems. Even before then, Arab summits were not an easy affair: Arab countries disagreed regarding the necessity of some meetings and the content of resolutions adopted, there were personal problems among some of the leaders scheduled to participate, and there were sensitivities regarding the role of the host, convener or chairman vis-a-vis the other leaders. With few exceptions, Arab public opinion was not satisfied with the resolutions issued by the summits. Almost all summits witnessed problems at the level of representation, agenda, management of the sessions and final decisions. For decades, the "summit institution" was too crisis-ridden to be turned into a regular meeting.
These problems were merely exacerbated when the summit became an annual event. The problems began with a new factor: the venue of the summit. It was agreed that the summits be convened consecutively in the Arab capitals according to alphabetical order. Every capital destined to host the meeting began to dump its regional problems on the summit. This is currently happening with Damascus.
The venue issue has caused additional problems. There are capitals like Baghdad that will not host a summit in the foreseeable future. Differences among some of the capitals have led many leaders to stay away from participation. In addition, other complications have led most of the Gulf capitals to waive their role in hosting the summit for the benefit of the next on the list. A Saudi proposal appeared in 2007 to establish a permanent headquarters for holding the summit in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh, precisely in order to avoid these problems.
But before anything could change, the process reached Damascus, the self-styled heart of Arabism. It has been understood since the close of the Riyadh summit last year that Damascus would not be one of the easier Arab stations. At that time, the possibility was broached to waive Damascus in favor of the next capital. The issue was not related to the fact that the president of the host country becomes chairman of the summit or that the host capital dominates the meeting and invitation arrangements and usually seeks to determine many of the items on the agenda. Rather, it touched on the more serious issues of Damascus' policies and the attitude of the key Arab countries toward them.
Syria has turned away from its traditional alliance with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to become party to a coalition with Iran, Hizballah and Hamas. The two alliances are waging a genuine cold war in the Middle East arena. This war has turned Lebanon into a time bomb, worsened the situation in the Gaza Strip, strained relations between Damascus and Riyadh and generated an unprecedented stalemate in relations between Damascus and Cairo. The Damascus summit has to address these open files in such a way that the summit does not end in a failure to resolve any issue at all, or at least makes it possible for the leaders to shake hands for the media, thereby avoiding an obvious farce.
Egypt, aware of the dangers of Syria's behavior, has traditionally sought to prevent Syria from moving in directions that Damascus might regret. It appears from published reports about contacts between them that Egypt has tried to exploit the Damascus summit as a real opportunity to maneuver Syria back into the so-called "Arab ranks". Even when this appeared to be impractical, Damascus was asked to submit something that might reflect an interest in the success of the summit, at least with respect to facilitating the task of electing a president in Lebanon. This would have constituted a first step toward alleviating radical Saudi-Syrian tensions.
Yet Damascus seems to be thinking in an entirely different direction. It is not ready at all to be flexible regarding the problems it faces even if this means the summit's failure. Indeed, Syria appears more willing to forego its Arab relations in favor of inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad to be present and adopting an agenda, alarming to the other participants, that includes a critical approach to the Arab peace initiative. Damascus claims it has based these proposals on the legacy of previous summits and appears to be uninterested in amending them.
Syria's tactics were clear from the outset. It wants to convert the Damascus summit from a source of pressure to a bargaining chip. Thus, in order to avoid complete isolation and ensure the summit is held as scheduled, it has begun to signal a more cooperative attitude by keeping Iran away from the summit and sending an invitation--without solving the problem--to Lebanon. It also expressed its willingness to discuss policy differences--but during rather than before the summit, even though this contradicts the Arab summit tradition. There is still no specific understanding as to how the summit will be conducted once Arab delegations reach Damascus.
The Syrian capital has dumped all its problems on the summit. The summit has led to an opening of the files of Syria's policies in the region, yet without registering progress in resolving the problems generated by these policies. Now it appears that the opportunity to do so has been lost, and the direction of Syrian policies will be maintained during the post-summit period. For a country like Egypt, the challenge is to ensure that Syria is no better off after the summit than before it, and to enable the Arab summit institution to emerge intact from Damascus and move to another capital next year. Thus the hope is that the Damascus summit becomes just another summit and not an end to all summits.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mohamed Abdel Salam heads the Regional Security Program at Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Success measured by attendance
Rime Allaf
Despite their proven futility, Arab League summits have always managed to create a modicum of expectation over the last couple of decades, with several big events shaking the Arab world to its core. But apart from the few exceptions when actionable resolutions were adopted, like the expulsion of Egypt at the 1979 Baghdad summit (following its peace agreement with Israel) or the emergency Cairo summit of 1990 in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (where a leaked recording exposed Arab leaders disgracefully shouting insults across the table), Arab League summits have mostly been opportunities to prove the cliche that "Arabs agree to disagree".
With such low expectations and no likely achievements, the region now mostly plays a different summit game: how will turnout be? Which of the big names will skip and who will strive to steal the headlines by arriving late? The scrutiny continues during the summit: who will be merely civil to whom, who will show effusive appreciation of whom and whose brotherly kisses and hugs will provide the best photo-op?
The upcoming Damascus summit suffers from these usual afflictions, but there are additional issues raising the stakes. For one, past thorny summits were held on relatively neutral ground, either in countries not directly implicated in the crisis du jour or in Arab League headquarters. In contrast, the Damascus summit will convene in the country most at odds with its co-members and under the auspices of a rather controversial regime whose relations with other states have deteriorated over one of the trickiest problems facing the region in recent years: Lebanon's presidential crisis is blamed on Damascus alone.
One other novelty is the extent of pre-conditions other regimes have imposed, or tried to impose, on their host--conditions that reveal the lack of faith summit participants themselves have in the potential value of such gatherings. Instead of proposing to use the summit to resolve the Lebanese problem, countries with rival positions have hinted that their participation depends precisely on the election of a president after 16 attempts; a seventeenth failure, they warn, would doom the summit to low-level (if any) representation.
Syria is anxious to avoid a humiliating no-show from the big names. Repeatedly trying, and repeatedly failing, to secure Saudi approval for a visit by Foreign Minister Walid Muallem to deliver the official summit invitation, Syria finally resigned itself to send it at a much lower level, illustrating the depth of the gulf between Riyadh and Damascus. It will not have helped, of course, that Lebanon was the last of 22 countries to be invited to the summit, in a manner defying protocol and typical of Syrian "diplomacy": handed to a resigned minister of the Lebanese cabinet by an official of the Syrian foreign ministry, the invitation wasn't even signed by the host, but by the Syrian prime minister.
Such moves do nothing to endear the Syrian regime to its critics, and Muallem's claim that this summit will have the highest level of attendance of any summit remains to be seen. It is not clear whether he counts one of the confirmed attendees, the Iranian foreign minister, in his tally, but unless other friendly neighbors (such as Turkey) also make an appearance, the Iranian representative may find himself the sole non-Arab at the table among irate participants finding yet another point of contention with the host.
But Damascus is also subject to unprecedented third party interference, a phenomenon not experienced by other summit organizers. With the American president arrogantly preaching to Arabs about attendance, and with even the usually diplomatic head of EU diplomacy, Javier Solana, opining that key Arab leaders should not go if a Lebanese counterpart is not among them, Syria's own meddling begins to appear pertinent.
A summit should be the perfect setting for reaching regional solutions, but pan-Arab politics have rarely followed such logic and we are left measuring success by attendance rather than achievement. Thus, even the 2002 Beirut summit's major accomplishment (the adoption of the Arab peace initiative) was overshadowed by the absence of half the heads of state and the deliberate snub of besieged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's televised address to his fellow leaders, when the host, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, interrupted Arafat's broadcast as it began from Ramallah and declared it was time for lunch.
The current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will be unenthusiastic about making a personal appearance in the capital where his biggest enemy (Hamas) holds political court, but is unable to skip the summit given the tragic situation in Gaza. Likewise, the Lebanese will be damned if they come (which some would consider a show of weakness before Syria) and damned if they don't (which could be interpreted as unwillingness to trust pan-Arab diplomacy). Current heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia will also be torn between attending to impose their presence and sitting out to register their opposition to Syrian actions and thus cause summit failure.
But Syrian-Saudi relations, currently at an all-time low, have overcome greater challenges. While many believe that King Abdullah has not forgiven, or forgotten, Syrian slights he felt were directed at his person after the Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006, this didn't stop him from embracing and meeting with the Syrian president at the last summit in Riyadh. This shows that summits do little to change political situations, and the Damascus summit will be just as inconsequential as its precursors.
Still, the Syrian regime is hoping that the regional situation, recently stirred even more by Israel, the United States and various other incendiary meddlers, will Arab leaders them toward participation, and that their presence in the self-proclaimed "beating heart of Arabism" will allow for a whirlwind persuasive demonstration of its leadership in the sacrosanct Arab struggle--a task made more difficult, if not moot, by the presence of Iran.
To paraphrase Fontenelle, a great obstacle to success is the expectation of too much success. Despite Syrian hype around the summit, success measured by attendance merely increases the possibility of failure in such unfavorable circumstances.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rime Allaf is associate fellow at Chatham House.
Everyone can brag, nothing will be done
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
The troubled Arab League summit is finally going ahead in Syria later this month. But the wrangling between Saudi Arabia and Syria over Lebanon that preceded the summit is likely to continue after the meeting as the rift between the pro and anti-western Arab states over Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine deepens.
The divisions fall between two axes: the Iranian-led hardliners grouping Syria, local allies Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine on the one hand, and the so-called "Arab moderates" or allies of Washington, on the other side. Neither front is willing to lose the battle.
"The Arabs have all lost control over their region and its political crises," a senior Jordanian official told this writer. "The decision is no longer in our hands: some are taking the cue from Iran, others are taking it from America.... A solution for these interconnected crises will continue to stagger, until America and Iran settle their differences over Tehran's nuclear file and re-draw the map of the new Middle East, exactly like World War I victors Britain and France divided the remains of the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence."
The run up to the summit has been dramatic--reflecting an ongoing battle among most Arabs against Iran's growing influence in the region. For weeks, regional political heavyweight Riyadh insisted it would boycott the March 29-30 summit if Damascus does not facilitate the election of a new Lebanese president by then. Not all the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were on board.
Egypt opted for another approach: Arabs should take part in the summit and spell out what Arabs require from Syria.
"You go to a summit to solve your problems instead of insisting to settle them in advance. You give Syria the 'Arab option' instead of pushing it further into Iran's lap," said an Egyptian diplomat. "You bluntly tell Syria it needs to facilitate the election of Lebanon's president, to support Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the peace process and to ensure national reconciliation by stopping Hamas' spoiling role," he said. "And you ask it to help stabilize Iraq, where Iran now has the upper hand."
Jordan, which mended fences with Syria in November after a four year hiatus, opted for a middle ground: maintaining close political coordination with Cairo and Riyadh while trying but failing to ease Saudi-Syrian tension. This balancing act, however, proved difficult. Riyadh, Amman's key Arab bankroller and strategic political ally, and Washington got sensitive.
Syria, for its part, did not show any signs it would be willing to concede on Lebanon for the sake of holding a high-level Arab summit that is not expected to further its strategic interests. The noise coming out of Damascus was defiant; the summit would be convened on time with "whoever attends", to gain some of the prestige it is aching for to counter US isolation and western pressure on its ruling elite in connection with a UN tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
The trial will start in June, leading the regime and its ally Hizballah to use brinkmanship and a tacit threat of civil was as a means of destabilizing the pro-US government.
Saudi Arabia then tried another diplomatic tactic. It lobbied for the convening of an eight-way meeting with Egypt, Jordan and its GCC allies to demand a summit delay or change of venue to Egypt, to embarrass Syria over Lebanon. In parallel, Washington pressured its Arab allies to snub the Syria summit. But the ensuing Israeli military offensive in Gaza inflamed Arab public anger and further isolated moderate voices pushing for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians under the Arab peace initiative re-launched at the 2007 Arab League summit in Riyadh.
Once again, Syria stole the show, prodding hundreds of thousands to march through the capital's streets while Arab moderates issued shy condemnations. Syrian media orchestrated an aggressive campaign equating the latest killings in Gaza to the Nazi-run Holocaust. An embarrassed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas briefly called off peace talks with Israel before Egypt brokered an informal truce between Hamas and Israel.
Days into March, Arab diplomacy finally saved the day. Arab foreign ministers held marathon talks in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia announced it would attend the Damascus summit. Together with Egypt and Jordan, Riyadh will send low-level representation, at ambassadorial or ministerial level. This is a sufficient rebuke to the Syrian regime while bringing less harm to the already diminished Arab League.
Syria accepted to send an invitation to Lebanon, but said it would leave it up to the country's feuding politicians to decide who will lead the delegation to the summit if no president is elected by March 25.
"The Arab ritual of holding a regular summit has been secured," said an Arab official. "Once again, however, Arabs will fail to agree on anything major, opting for flexible, minimum consensus and meaningless resolutions to take back home."
Syria will use the summit to embarrass Washington's allies. It has invited Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to attend the summit's opening. Khaled Mishaal, the Damascus-based political leader of Hamas, and a rival of President Abbas, is likely to sit next to Mottaki. President Bashar Assad will play the "Palestinian card" and use other tactics to counter Riyadh's rebuke over Lebanon, where the presidential impasse is likely to continue for months.
Damascus and a few low-profile Arab supporters will insist on reviewing the failed peace process, including pushing for other alternatives such as retreating from the Arab peace initiative because of Israel's continued building of West Bank settlements, a practice the US-mediated Annapolis accord was supposed to forbid. Moderate Arabs will fight back. They will push to stabilize the situation in Gaza. And in the absence of other Arab strategic alternatives to peace, they will focus on the continuation of Palestinian-Israeli talks to secure a peace deal before the end of US President George Bush's term in office.
As a compromise, the summit will form a ministerial committee to monitor the process and to reconsider future options within a set period of time if the talks go nowhere.
"Everyone will leave Damascus with something to brag about. The biggest losers will be Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine while post-summit Arab political intrigue and bickering will continue well into the next Arab League summit," said an Arab official.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is an independent journalist and former chief editor of The Jordan Times.
The summit and Lebanon's political future
Oussama Safa
Waiting for Godot in Lebanon nowadays seems more fruitful than anticipating a political breakthrough in the near future. The hopes that a consensus president will be elected before the upcoming Arab summit in Damascus are quickly evaporating, to be replaced by renewed pessimism about the future of politics in the country. The triumph of Syrian diplomacy in securing an acceptable showing of Arab officials at the scheduled summit on March 28 will be another missed opportunity for an all-out Arab effort to prevail on Damascus to facilitate the election of a Lebanese president. The Israeli attacks on Gaza have served the Syrians well by overshadowing the Lebanese crisis and making the Palestinian issue the priority agenda for the summiteers in Damascus. Arab leaders now find it increasingly difficult to boycott the gathering in Syria.
The pessimism about Lebanon's future is not entirely misplaced. While moderate Arab states had hoped for a quick resolution to the political crisis before the summit, a gradual escalation in rhetoric and organized violence by the opposition in Beirut accompanied the preparations for the summit and indicated there was no Syrian appetite for a thaw. Most ominous were the riots that pitted the Lebanese army against demonstrators and resulted in seven dead civilians on January 27 this year. The riots were intended as a bloody message to the Arab foreign ministers who were gathering in Cairo that day, but also carried an intentional embarrassment for presidential hopeful Michel Suleiman, the army commander-in-chief. His chances of getting elected soon seem to have subsided after the riots and the humiliating ensuing investigation and subsequent suspension of seven military officers and soldiers.
Regionally, Syrian-Saudi relations took a turn for the worse. The Arab League initiative brokered by the Saudi and Egyptian foreign ministers in Cairo deadlocked in Beirut, mostly due to the opposition's ever changing demands. The recent victory by the conservatives in Iran will undoubtedly embolden President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's position in the region, particularly with Hizballah in Lebanon. The latter is involved in a covert war with Israel following the assassination of its senior military leader, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus.
It remains to be seen whether the killing of Mughniyeh is the start of new forms of pressure against Damascus or just a settling of scores that happened to take place in Syria. While it is highly likely that covert confrontation between Israel and Hizballah will be the new face of war between them, the political scene in Beirut seems to be in a deep freeze.
Hopes are pinned on the revival of the Arab League initiative, though all indications are that the initiative is dead. As the Lebanese have grown accustomed to waiting for regional rapprochement of powers before they can expect a political deal, the upcoming Arab summit seems to be only the next disappointment in this regard. Depending on the summit's closing communique and the tone with which it deals with standing political crises in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, the aftermath of the summit is a period to watch carefully in Lebanon. Syria will soon host the summit leadership for the upcoming year, which means that joint Arab diplomacy will be based in Damascus for the next several months. This will inevitably break Damascus' isolation from the Arab fold and give it a much needed breather to expand its spectrum of regional and international diplomacy.
The summit's communique is also expected to deal with the six-year-old Arab peace initiative that until today remains intransigently rejected by Israel. Any move led by Damascus to alter the initiative will most likely provoke Saudi resistance and might entail even further worsening of relations between the two countries. At the same time, a low-key showing at the summit by the Saudis or any attempts by the latter to steal the thunder of the Damascus gathering will push Syria to retaliate in Lebanon. This might take several forms, including new levels of street violence between supporters of the opposition and loyalists, increased pressure on the loyalist government coalition or a new wave of car bombs and assassinations. The recent urgent warning to Saudi citizens to leave Beirut is an indication that the kingdom is bracing itself for a confrontation at the summit and in its aftermath.
Lebanon's late invitation to the summit has opened the door to various speculations as to whether it will be present at the Damascus meeting. While the government is undecided, the issue has become a subject of political controversy, with much of the opposition pushing for the country's representation at the summit. Whatever Lebanon ends up doing about the summit, its presence at the table is essential. The late Turkish President Turgut Ozal once opined about Turkey's role in redrawing the map of Iraq after the first Gulf war that "he'd rather be a guest at the table than an item on the menu." By not showing up at the summit, Lebanon risks becoming a forgotten hors d'oeuvre on the menu.- Published 20/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Oussama Safa is general director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
How Could So Many People Buy into Bush's "Patriotism Sweepstakes" War? by Robert Parry
How Could So Many People Buy into Bush's "Patriotism Sweepstakes" War?
Robert Parry, Sam Parry, Nat Parry, Consortium News
War on Iraq: The Iraq War represents a systemic failure of American political and journalistic institutions.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/80121/
Robert Parry, Sam Parry, Nat Parry, Consortium News
War on Iraq: The Iraq War represents a systemic failure of American political and journalistic institutions.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/80121/
The Only Lesson We Ever Learn Is That We Never Learn
The Only Lesson We Ever Learn Is That We Never Learn
by Robert Fisk
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-only-lesson-we-ever-learn-is-that-we-never-learn-797816.html
by Robert Fisk
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-only-lesson-we-ever-learn-is-that-we-never-learn-797816.html
Patrick Cockburn: This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie
Patrick Cockburn: This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie
RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.
This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker. The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.
On 7 April, the US Ai r Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad. "I think we did get Saddam Hussein," said the US Vice President, Dick Cheney. "He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn't able to breathe."
Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead. One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed "US resolve and capabilities".
Mr Cheney was back in Baghdad this week, five years later almost to the day, to announce that there has been "phenomenal" improvements in Iraqi security. Within hours, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the Shia holy city of Kerbala, killing at least 40 and wounding 50 people. Often it is difficult to know where the self-deception ends and the deliberate mendacity begins.
The most notorious lie of all was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But critics of the war may have focused too much on WMD and not enough on later distortions.
The event which has done most to shape the present Iraqi political landscape was the savage civil war between Sunni and Shia in Baghdad and central Iraq in 2006-07 when 3,000 civilians a month were being butchered and which was won by the Shia.
The White House and Downing Street blithely denied a civil war was happening – and forced Iraq politicians who said so to recant – to pretend the crisis was less serious than it was.
More often, the lies have been small, designed to make a propaganda point for a day even if they are exposed as untrue a few weeks later. One example of this to shows in detail how propaganda distorts day-to-day reporting in Iraq, but, if the propagandist knows his job, is very difficult to disprove.
On 1 February this year, two suicide bombers, said to be female, blew themselves up in two pet markets in predominantly Shia areas of Baghdad, al Ghazil and al-Jadida, and killed 99 people. Iraqi government officials immediately said the bombers had the chromosonal disorder Down's syndrome, which they could tell this from looking at the severed heads of the bombers. Sadly, horrific bombings in Iraq are so common that they no longer generate much media interest abroad. It was the Down's syndrome angle which made the story front-page news. It showed al-Qa'ida in Iraq was even more inhumanly evil than one had supposed (if that were possible) and it meant, so Iraqi officials said, that al-Qa'ida was running out of volunteers.
The Times splashed on it under the headline, "Down's syndrome bombers kill 91". The story stated firmly that "explosives strapped to two women with Down's syndrome were detonated by remote control in crowded pet markets". Other papers, including The Independent, felt the story had a highly suspicious smell to it. How much could really be told about the mental condition of a woman from a human head shattered by a powerful bomb? Reliable eyewitnesses in suicide bombings are difficult to find because anybody standing close to the bomber is likely to be dead or in hospital.
The US military later supported the Iraqi claim that the bombers had Down's syndrome. On 10 February, they arrested Dr Sahi Aboub, the acting director of the al Rashad mental hospital in east Baghdad, alleging that he had provided mental patients for use by al-Qa'ida. The Iraqi Interior Ministry started rounding up beggars and mentally disturbed people on the grounds that they might be potential bombers.
But on 21 February, an American military spokes-man said there was no evidence the bombers had Down's. Adel Mohsin, a senior official at the Health Ministry in Baghdad, poured scorn on the idea that Dr Aboub could have done business with the Sunni fanatics of al-Qa'ida because he was a Shia and had only been in the job a few weeks.
A second doctor, who did not want to give his name, pointed out that al Rashad hospital is run by the fundamentalist Shia Mehdi Army and asked: "How would it be possible for al-Qa'ida to get in there?"
Few people in Baghdad now care about the exact circumstances of the bird market bombings apart from Dr Aboub, who is still in jail, and the mentally disturbed beggars who were incarcerated. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that al-Qa'ida is not running out of suicide bombers. But it is pieces of propaganda such as this small example, often swallowed whole by the media and a thousand times repeated, which cumulatively mask the terrible reality of Iraq.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-this-is-the-war-that-started-with-lies-and-continues-with-lie-after-lie-after-lie-797788.html
RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.
This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker. The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.
On 7 April, the US Ai r Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad. "I think we did get Saddam Hussein," said the US Vice President, Dick Cheney. "He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn't able to breathe."
Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead. One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed "US resolve and capabilities".
Mr Cheney was back in Baghdad this week, five years later almost to the day, to announce that there has been "phenomenal" improvements in Iraqi security. Within hours, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the Shia holy city of Kerbala, killing at least 40 and wounding 50 people. Often it is difficult to know where the self-deception ends and the deliberate mendacity begins.
The most notorious lie of all was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But critics of the war may have focused too much on WMD and not enough on later distortions.
The event which has done most to shape the present Iraqi political landscape was the savage civil war between Sunni and Shia in Baghdad and central Iraq in 2006-07 when 3,000 civilians a month were being butchered and which was won by the Shia.
The White House and Downing Street blithely denied a civil war was happening – and forced Iraq politicians who said so to recant – to pretend the crisis was less serious than it was.
More often, the lies have been small, designed to make a propaganda point for a day even if they are exposed as untrue a few weeks later. One example of this to shows in detail how propaganda distorts day-to-day reporting in Iraq, but, if the propagandist knows his job, is very difficult to disprove.
On 1 February this year, two suicide bombers, said to be female, blew themselves up in two pet markets in predominantly Shia areas of Baghdad, al Ghazil and al-Jadida, and killed 99 people. Iraqi government officials immediately said the bombers had the chromosonal disorder Down's syndrome, which they could tell this from looking at the severed heads of the bombers. Sadly, horrific bombings in Iraq are so common that they no longer generate much media interest abroad. It was the Down's syndrome angle which made the story front-page news. It showed al-Qa'ida in Iraq was even more inhumanly evil than one had supposed (if that were possible) and it meant, so Iraqi officials said, that al-Qa'ida was running out of volunteers.
The Times splashed on it under the headline, "Down's syndrome bombers kill 91". The story stated firmly that "explosives strapped to two women with Down's syndrome were detonated by remote control in crowded pet markets". Other papers, including The Independent, felt the story had a highly suspicious smell to it. How much could really be told about the mental condition of a woman from a human head shattered by a powerful bomb? Reliable eyewitnesses in suicide bombings are difficult to find because anybody standing close to the bomber is likely to be dead or in hospital.
The US military later supported the Iraqi claim that the bombers had Down's syndrome. On 10 February, they arrested Dr Sahi Aboub, the acting director of the al Rashad mental hospital in east Baghdad, alleging that he had provided mental patients for use by al-Qa'ida. The Iraqi Interior Ministry started rounding up beggars and mentally disturbed people on the grounds that they might be potential bombers.
But on 21 February, an American military spokes-man said there was no evidence the bombers had Down's. Adel Mohsin, a senior official at the Health Ministry in Baghdad, poured scorn on the idea that Dr Aboub could have done business with the Sunni fanatics of al-Qa'ida because he was a Shia and had only been in the job a few weeks.
A second doctor, who did not want to give his name, pointed out that al Rashad hospital is run by the fundamentalist Shia Mehdi Army and asked: "How would it be possible for al-Qa'ida to get in there?"
Few people in Baghdad now care about the exact circumstances of the bird market bombings apart from Dr Aboub, who is still in jail, and the mentally disturbed beggars who were incarcerated. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that al-Qa'ida is not running out of suicide bombers. But it is pieces of propaganda such as this small example, often swallowed whole by the media and a thousand times repeated, which cumulatively mask the terrible reality of Iraq.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-this-is-the-war-that-started-with-lies-and-continues-with-lie-after-lie-after-lie-797788.html
Blood Serbs, UN clash in Kosovo
Blood
Serbs, UN clash in Kosovo
by Nebojsa Malic
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=12551
Serbs, UN clash in Kosovo
by Nebojsa Malic
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=12551
Why Did the US Invade Iraq? by Jim Lobe
Why Did the US Invade Iraq?
by Jim Lobe
So why, exactly, did the US invade Iraq five years ago this week?
The official reasons – the threat posed to the US and its allies by Saddam Hussein's alleged programs of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the possibility that he would pass along those arms to al-Qaeda – have long since been discarded by the overwhelming weight of the evidence, or, more precisely, the lack of evidence that such a threat ever existed.
Liberating Iraq from the tyranny of Hussein's particularly unforgiving and bloodthirsty version of Ba'athism and thus setting an irresistible precedent that would spread throughout the Arab world – a theme pushed by the administration of President George W. Bush mostly after the invasion, as it became clear that the officials reasons could not be justified – appears to have been the guiding obsession of really only one member of the Bush team, and not a particularly influential one at that: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Then there's the theory that Bush – whose enigmatic psychology, particularly his relationship to his father, has already provided grist for several book-publishing mills – wanted to show up his dad for failing to take Baghdad in 1991. Or he sought to "finish the job" that his dad had begun in 1991; and/or avenge his dad for Hussein's alleged (but highly questionable) assassination attempt against Bush I in Kuwait after the war.
Because Bush was the ultimate "Decider," as he himself has put it, and because no one who ever served at top levels in the administration has ever been able to say precisely when (let alone why) the decision was made to invade Iraq, this explanation cannot be entirely dismissed as an answer.
Then there is the question of oil. Was the administration acting on behalf of an oil industry desperate to get its hands on Mesopotamian oil that had long been denied it as a result of UN and unilateral sanctions prohibiting business between US companies and Hussein?
Given both Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's long-standing ties to the industry and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's assertion in his recent memoir that "The Iraq war is largely about oil," this theory has definite appeal – particularly to those on the left who made "No Blood for Oil" a favorite mantra at antiwar protests in the run-up to the invasion, just as they did – with much greater plausibility – before the 1991 Gulf War.
The problem, however, is that there is little or no evidence that Big Oil, an extremely cautious beast in the global corporate menagerie, favored a war, particularly one carried out in a way (unilaterally) that risked destabilizing the world's most oil-rich region, especially Saudi Arabia and the emirates.
On the contrary, the Rice University Institute that bears the name of former Secretary of State James Baker – a man who has both represented and embodied Big Oil throughout his long legal career – publicly warned early on that if Bush absolutely, positively had to invade Iraq for whatever reason, he should not even consider it unless two conditions were met: 1) that the action was authorized by the UN Security Council; and 2) that nothing whatever be done after the invasion to suggest that the motivation had to do with the acquisition by US oil companies of Iraq's oil resources.
That is not to say that oil was irrelevant to the administration's calculations, but perhaps in a different sense than that meant by the "No Blood for Oil" slogan. After all, oil is an absolutely indispensable requirement for running modern economies and militaries. And the invasion was a forceful – indeed, a shock- and awe-some – demonstration to the rest of the world, especially potential strategic rivals like China, Russia, or even the European Union, of Washington's ability to quickly and effectively conquer and control an oil-rich nation in the heart of the energy-rich Middle East/Gulf region any time it wishes, perhaps persuading those lesser powers that challenging the US could well prove counterproductive to long-term interests, if not their supply of energy in the short term.
Indeed, a demonstration of such power could well be the fastest way to formalize a new international order based on the overwhelming military power of the United States, unequaled at least since the Roman Empire. It would be a "unipolar world" of the kind envisaged by the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) commissioned by then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, overseen by Wolfowitz and Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, and contributed to by future ambassador to "liberated" Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad and Bush's deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch.
It was that same vision that formed the inspiration for the 27 charter signatories – a coalition of aggressive nationalists, neoconservatives, and Christian Right leaders that included Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and several other future senior Bush administration national-security officials – of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. It was the same project that began calling for "regime change" in Iraq in 1998 and that, nine days after the 9/11 attack on New York and the Pentagon, publicly warned that any "war on terror" that excluded Hussein's elimination would necessarily be incomplete.
In retrospect, it seems clear that Iraq had long been seen by this group, which became empowered first by Bush's election and then supercharged by 9/11, as the first, easiest and most available step toward achieving a "Pax Americana" that would not only establish the US once and for all as the dominant power in the region, but whose geostrategic implications for aspiring "peer competitors" would be global in scope.
For the neoconservative and the Christian Right members of this group, who were its most eager and ubiquitous war boosters, Israel would also be a major beneficiary of an invasion.
According to a 1996 paper drafted by prominent hard-line neoconservatives – including some, like Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, who would later serve in senior posts in Cheney's office and the Pentagon in the run-up to the invasion – ousting Hussein and installing a pro-Western leader was the key to destabilizing Israel's Arab enemies and/or bending them to its will. This would permit the Jewish state not only to escape the Oslo peace process, but also to secure as much of the occupied Palestinian (and Syrian) territories as it wished.
Indeed, getting rid of Hussein and occupying Iraq would not only tighten Israel's hold on Arab territories, in this view; it could also threaten the survival of the Arab and Islamic worlds' most formidable weapon against Israel – OPEC – by flooding the world market with Iraqi oil and forcing the commodity's price down to historic lows.
That's how it looked five years ago anyway.
(Inter Phttp://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=12552ress Service)
by Jim Lobe
So why, exactly, did the US invade Iraq five years ago this week?
The official reasons – the threat posed to the US and its allies by Saddam Hussein's alleged programs of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the possibility that he would pass along those arms to al-Qaeda – have long since been discarded by the overwhelming weight of the evidence, or, more precisely, the lack of evidence that such a threat ever existed.
Liberating Iraq from the tyranny of Hussein's particularly unforgiving and bloodthirsty version of Ba'athism and thus setting an irresistible precedent that would spread throughout the Arab world – a theme pushed by the administration of President George W. Bush mostly after the invasion, as it became clear that the officials reasons could not be justified – appears to have been the guiding obsession of really only one member of the Bush team, and not a particularly influential one at that: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Then there's the theory that Bush – whose enigmatic psychology, particularly his relationship to his father, has already provided grist for several book-publishing mills – wanted to show up his dad for failing to take Baghdad in 1991. Or he sought to "finish the job" that his dad had begun in 1991; and/or avenge his dad for Hussein's alleged (but highly questionable) assassination attempt against Bush I in Kuwait after the war.
Because Bush was the ultimate "Decider," as he himself has put it, and because no one who ever served at top levels in the administration has ever been able to say precisely when (let alone why) the decision was made to invade Iraq, this explanation cannot be entirely dismissed as an answer.
Then there is the question of oil. Was the administration acting on behalf of an oil industry desperate to get its hands on Mesopotamian oil that had long been denied it as a result of UN and unilateral sanctions prohibiting business between US companies and Hussein?
Given both Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's long-standing ties to the industry and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's assertion in his recent memoir that "The Iraq war is largely about oil," this theory has definite appeal – particularly to those on the left who made "No Blood for Oil" a favorite mantra at antiwar protests in the run-up to the invasion, just as they did – with much greater plausibility – before the 1991 Gulf War.
The problem, however, is that there is little or no evidence that Big Oil, an extremely cautious beast in the global corporate menagerie, favored a war, particularly one carried out in a way (unilaterally) that risked destabilizing the world's most oil-rich region, especially Saudi Arabia and the emirates.
On the contrary, the Rice University Institute that bears the name of former Secretary of State James Baker – a man who has both represented and embodied Big Oil throughout his long legal career – publicly warned early on that if Bush absolutely, positively had to invade Iraq for whatever reason, he should not even consider it unless two conditions were met: 1) that the action was authorized by the UN Security Council; and 2) that nothing whatever be done after the invasion to suggest that the motivation had to do with the acquisition by US oil companies of Iraq's oil resources.
That is not to say that oil was irrelevant to the administration's calculations, but perhaps in a different sense than that meant by the "No Blood for Oil" slogan. After all, oil is an absolutely indispensable requirement for running modern economies and militaries. And the invasion was a forceful – indeed, a shock- and awe-some – demonstration to the rest of the world, especially potential strategic rivals like China, Russia, or even the European Union, of Washington's ability to quickly and effectively conquer and control an oil-rich nation in the heart of the energy-rich Middle East/Gulf region any time it wishes, perhaps persuading those lesser powers that challenging the US could well prove counterproductive to long-term interests, if not their supply of energy in the short term.
Indeed, a demonstration of such power could well be the fastest way to formalize a new international order based on the overwhelming military power of the United States, unequaled at least since the Roman Empire. It would be a "unipolar world" of the kind envisaged by the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) commissioned by then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, overseen by Wolfowitz and Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, and contributed to by future ambassador to "liberated" Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad and Bush's deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch.
It was that same vision that formed the inspiration for the 27 charter signatories – a coalition of aggressive nationalists, neoconservatives, and Christian Right leaders that included Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and several other future senior Bush administration national-security officials – of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. It was the same project that began calling for "regime change" in Iraq in 1998 and that, nine days after the 9/11 attack on New York and the Pentagon, publicly warned that any "war on terror" that excluded Hussein's elimination would necessarily be incomplete.
In retrospect, it seems clear that Iraq had long been seen by this group, which became empowered first by Bush's election and then supercharged by 9/11, as the first, easiest and most available step toward achieving a "Pax Americana" that would not only establish the US once and for all as the dominant power in the region, but whose geostrategic implications for aspiring "peer competitors" would be global in scope.
For the neoconservative and the Christian Right members of this group, who were its most eager and ubiquitous war boosters, Israel would also be a major beneficiary of an invasion.
According to a 1996 paper drafted by prominent hard-line neoconservatives – including some, like Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, who would later serve in senior posts in Cheney's office and the Pentagon in the run-up to the invasion – ousting Hussein and installing a pro-Western leader was the key to destabilizing Israel's Arab enemies and/or bending them to its will. This would permit the Jewish state not only to escape the Oslo peace process, but also to secure as much of the occupied Palestinian (and Syrian) territories as it wished.
Indeed, getting rid of Hussein and occupying Iraq would not only tighten Israel's hold on Arab territories, in this view; it could also threaten the survival of the Arab and Islamic worlds' most formidable weapon against Israel – OPEC – by flooding the world market with Iraqi oil and forcing the commodity's price down to historic lows.
That's how it looked five years ago anyway.
(Inter Phttp://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=12552ress Service)
Jermiah Wright: True and False by David Henderson
Jeremiah Wright: True and False
David R. Henderson
I stayed home Tuesday morning to watch the much-hyped Barack Obama speech on race and Jeremiah Wright. I was glad I did. I'll forgive him his 35-minute, Bill Clinton-style delay before speaking because this speech was obviously one of the most important of his campaign. I had wondered how Obama would both speak to white people who are concerned about the incendiary comments of Obama's mentor, Jeremiah Wright, and, at the same time, not upset black people, many of whom share some or all of Wright's views. Obama did a good job, given the circumstances.
Why "given the circumstances?" Because there was a lot in Jeremiah Wright's speeches that is true or closer to true than many people are willing to countenance. Unfortunately, had Obama tried to defend Wright's true or partly true remarks, he would have been hammered by the media, especially by many of those same commentators who hammered him anyway. Many in the media would have treated Obama as badly as they treated Ron Paul when he raised some of the same issues. It's true that Wright was more incendiary than Ron Paul. But Obama is so smooth that he would not have been more incendiary than Ron Paul and, in fact, would probably have done a better job than Paul of explaining some of Wright's most radical thoughts. Clearly, Obama knew that his candidacy would have been dead had he tried to defend these thoughts. But I'm not running for office. So here goes. And while I'm at it, I'll evaluate some of the things many critics said about Wright and give my own criticism of Obama.
I should preface this by pointing out an interesting definition that journalist Michael Kinsley gave years ago of a gaffe. A gaffe, he wrote, "is when a politician tells the truth." The idea is that the truth is something few people want to hear because it upsets them. My favorite gaffe was that of Senator Bob Dole in 1976, when he ran for Vice President of the United States. In a debate with candidate Walter Mondale, Dole stated, "I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans – enough to fill the city of Detroit". Virtually everyone attacked Dole the next day, but not based on whether what he said was true or false. Did he get the U.S. body count wrong? The critics didn't say, although, as it happens, he got it right. Were the four major U.S. wars of the 20th century up until 1976 – World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War – not Democratic wars? They didn't say, but he got that right also. Democratic presidents made the decision to go to war in all four cases. Maybe, then, Dole had misestimated the population of Detroit? Again the critics didn't say.
And that's the point. In the critics' minds, the truth didn't matter. What mattered is that by talking about uncomfortable issues, Dole violated the code. And the code says that you're either supposed to lie, as long as the lies are generally accepted, or talk about vague things like America's greatness or the audacity of hope. But never, never talk about things that are true and that matter.
Because I think the truth does matter, I want to look at what Wright said. Here's a quote from a sermon that Wright gave shortly after 9/11, a sermon that many people have commented on:
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Wright does make one crucial error in this statement, one that I have harped on again and again in my columns on this site: he uses the word "we." He's wrong. I did none of these things I'm charged with. Did you?
But his use of a pronoun, however crucial that pronoun, was not what angered people. What seemed to upset them was that Wright said this at all. Again, though, if we want to evaluate Wright's statements, we need to check their truth. Assuming that by "we," Wright meant "the U.S. government," let's consider each statement in turn and use the three options I learned in graduate school when answering questions: True, False, or Uncertain.
"We bombed Hiroshima." True.
"We bombed Nagasaki." True.
"We nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon." True.
"We never batted an eye." Uncertain or True, depending on what is meant by "we." Some people batted an eye. But again, if we mean the U.S. government, Truman seemed pretty proud of what he had done. So, True.
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians." True, unless you make it false by assumption – that is, by defining terrorism as something that can never be engaged in by states.
"and black South Africans." False, I believe. I'm not aware of any actions the U.S. government took to sponsor terrorism against black South Africans.
"and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards." True. It is stuff done overseas. It was brought into our front yards, metaphorically speaking. And no one disputes that we, whether you mean the U.S. government or we individuals, were indignant.
"America's chickens are coming home to roost." True. Note here that to judge his statement as true, you don't have to accept the view of University of Chicago scholar Robert Pape that suicide terrorism, even for al-Qaeda, is mainly a response to foreign occupation. You just need to accept as fact that what the U.S. government has done in the world was, on 9/11, done in the U.S. by others.
So there you have it. I've broken down his statement into eight statements, six of which are true, one of which is true or uncertain, and one of which is false. In my class, that would get him a B+. (I'm a tough grader.)
I found this quote from Wright on conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh's web site. Here's what Limbaugh says immediately after playing the Wright excerpt:
"Okay. Now, let's examine this within the context of modern-day politics. We've had people call and they don't hear anything wrong with what the pastor is saying. Ladies and gentlemen, what is the thrust of the Obama foreign policy as stated to date? See, I think because of the way Senator Obama's responding to this bunch of video and audio of his pastor that's out there, gives us an indication what his foreign policy is. What we just heard from Jeremiah Wright is pretty close to what today's Democrat Party believes. All through the past five years during the war in Iraq, what have we heard from various Democrats? That our reputation in the world's gone south, our reputation's horrible, this kind of stuff we've brought on ourself. We deserve this. We gotta go around and we gotta talk, we gotta get a new president, we gotta talk to these people around the world and let them know that we're not the bad apples that they think we are. We've just got one rotten guy, that's Bush – well, two, and Cheney."
Notice something interesting? Limbaugh does examine the quote "within the context of modern-day politics," but he doesn't actually address whether it's true. Moreover, Limbaugh misstates what Wright said. Limbaugh attributes to Wright the view that "this kind of stuff we've brought on ourself [sic]." Wright might believe that, and the "chickens coming to roost" remark could lead someone to think he believes that. But Wright might also think that the 9/11 attacks were a predictable response to U.S. foreign policy, without addressing the issue of whether the attacks were deserved.
Many of the conservative commentators have claimed that Wright's speech was full of hate. Now, it's possible that Wright hates people, but all I could see clearly from reading or listening to his speech is that it was full of anger. Anger does not equal hate. They can go together, but they don't have to. Indeed, I've found that the more clearly I've expressed my anger, the less hate I've had.
I do find fault with Obama's March 18 speech in three ways, though. First, he himself never clearly made the distinction between Wright's anger and his alleged hatred.
Second, Obama also rejected what Wright had said about Israel, but he did it by mischaracterizing what Wright said. Wright said:
"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic."
Again, is this true, false, or uncertain? It's mainly true. The U.S. government (there's that "we" again) has supported Zionism with substantial money from U.S. taxpayers and, while it has not totally ignored the Palestinians, it certainly does not treat them as well as it does Israel's government. Is it true that anybody who speaks out against Zionism is branded as anti-Semitic? Probably not. But is almost everybody who speaks out against Zionism branded as anti-Semitic? Certainly.
But in his speech, Obama referred to Wright's view as:
"...a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
That may be what Wright believes – Obama would know better than I – but that's certainly not what Wright said in the passage I cited.
Third, Obama asks us to get past the race issue and look at the other issues in the campaign. He does so himself. But in doing so, he stirs up resentment against people who are just as innocent as the struggling black man and the struggling white man displaced by affirmative action. Obama states:
"Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed;"
Later, Obama says:
"...the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit."
This is the standard Democratic riff about how nasty corporations have caused a middle class squeeze. How exactly did they do that? By bringing the prices of products down with the massive increases in productivity that they achieved, so that the average American has an array of goods and services that John D. Rockefeller would have envied? (Think penicillin, the Internet, and cheap, quick airline travel.) And while there have been Enrons, is Obama seriously saying that these have been so widespread as to make the middle class worse off?
Finally, if "the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job," where does Obama get off objecting to a corporation that ships a job overseas? Obama overstates the issue: most of the jobs in manufacturing that have disappeared have done so because of increasing productivity. Even China's manufacturing sector is losing jobs for the same reason. But what if Obama were right that a lot of jobs are being shipped overseas? Aren't they then going, largely, to "someone who doesn't look like you?" Does Obama have a double standard: one for Americans and one for everyone else? Does fairness stop at the border, Mr. Obama? Maybe you should consult a spiritual advisor who could educate you about the nastiness of putting "those people" in other countries lower on the scale. Maybe you should have been actually listening to Jeremiah Wright.
Copyright © 2008 by David R. Henderson. Requests for permission to reprint should be directed to the author or Antiwar.com.
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12553
David R. Henderson
I stayed home Tuesday morning to watch the much-hyped Barack Obama speech on race and Jeremiah Wright. I was glad I did. I'll forgive him his 35-minute, Bill Clinton-style delay before speaking because this speech was obviously one of the most important of his campaign. I had wondered how Obama would both speak to white people who are concerned about the incendiary comments of Obama's mentor, Jeremiah Wright, and, at the same time, not upset black people, many of whom share some or all of Wright's views. Obama did a good job, given the circumstances.
Why "given the circumstances?" Because there was a lot in Jeremiah Wright's speeches that is true or closer to true than many people are willing to countenance. Unfortunately, had Obama tried to defend Wright's true or partly true remarks, he would have been hammered by the media, especially by many of those same commentators who hammered him anyway. Many in the media would have treated Obama as badly as they treated Ron Paul when he raised some of the same issues. It's true that Wright was more incendiary than Ron Paul. But Obama is so smooth that he would not have been more incendiary than Ron Paul and, in fact, would probably have done a better job than Paul of explaining some of Wright's most radical thoughts. Clearly, Obama knew that his candidacy would have been dead had he tried to defend these thoughts. But I'm not running for office. So here goes. And while I'm at it, I'll evaluate some of the things many critics said about Wright and give my own criticism of Obama.
I should preface this by pointing out an interesting definition that journalist Michael Kinsley gave years ago of a gaffe. A gaffe, he wrote, "is when a politician tells the truth." The idea is that the truth is something few people want to hear because it upsets them. My favorite gaffe was that of Senator Bob Dole in 1976, when he ran for Vice President of the United States. In a debate with candidate Walter Mondale, Dole stated, "I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans – enough to fill the city of Detroit". Virtually everyone attacked Dole the next day, but not based on whether what he said was true or false. Did he get the U.S. body count wrong? The critics didn't say, although, as it happens, he got it right. Were the four major U.S. wars of the 20th century up until 1976 – World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War – not Democratic wars? They didn't say, but he got that right also. Democratic presidents made the decision to go to war in all four cases. Maybe, then, Dole had misestimated the population of Detroit? Again the critics didn't say.
And that's the point. In the critics' minds, the truth didn't matter. What mattered is that by talking about uncomfortable issues, Dole violated the code. And the code says that you're either supposed to lie, as long as the lies are generally accepted, or talk about vague things like America's greatness or the audacity of hope. But never, never talk about things that are true and that matter.
Because I think the truth does matter, I want to look at what Wright said. Here's a quote from a sermon that Wright gave shortly after 9/11, a sermon that many people have commented on:
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Wright does make one crucial error in this statement, one that I have harped on again and again in my columns on this site: he uses the word "we." He's wrong. I did none of these things I'm charged with. Did you?
But his use of a pronoun, however crucial that pronoun, was not what angered people. What seemed to upset them was that Wright said this at all. Again, though, if we want to evaluate Wright's statements, we need to check their truth. Assuming that by "we," Wright meant "the U.S. government," let's consider each statement in turn and use the three options I learned in graduate school when answering questions: True, False, or Uncertain.
"We bombed Hiroshima." True.
"We bombed Nagasaki." True.
"We nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon." True.
"We never batted an eye." Uncertain or True, depending on what is meant by "we." Some people batted an eye. But again, if we mean the U.S. government, Truman seemed pretty proud of what he had done. So, True.
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians." True, unless you make it false by assumption – that is, by defining terrorism as something that can never be engaged in by states.
"and black South Africans." False, I believe. I'm not aware of any actions the U.S. government took to sponsor terrorism against black South Africans.
"and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards." True. It is stuff done overseas. It was brought into our front yards, metaphorically speaking. And no one disputes that we, whether you mean the U.S. government or we individuals, were indignant.
"America's chickens are coming home to roost." True. Note here that to judge his statement as true, you don't have to accept the view of University of Chicago scholar Robert Pape that suicide terrorism, even for al-Qaeda, is mainly a response to foreign occupation. You just need to accept as fact that what the U.S. government has done in the world was, on 9/11, done in the U.S. by others.
So there you have it. I've broken down his statement into eight statements, six of which are true, one of which is true or uncertain, and one of which is false. In my class, that would get him a B+. (I'm a tough grader.)
I found this quote from Wright on conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh's web site. Here's what Limbaugh says immediately after playing the Wright excerpt:
"Okay. Now, let's examine this within the context of modern-day politics. We've had people call and they don't hear anything wrong with what the pastor is saying. Ladies and gentlemen, what is the thrust of the Obama foreign policy as stated to date? See, I think because of the way Senator Obama's responding to this bunch of video and audio of his pastor that's out there, gives us an indication what his foreign policy is. What we just heard from Jeremiah Wright is pretty close to what today's Democrat Party believes. All through the past five years during the war in Iraq, what have we heard from various Democrats? That our reputation in the world's gone south, our reputation's horrible, this kind of stuff we've brought on ourself. We deserve this. We gotta go around and we gotta talk, we gotta get a new president, we gotta talk to these people around the world and let them know that we're not the bad apples that they think we are. We've just got one rotten guy, that's Bush – well, two, and Cheney."
Notice something interesting? Limbaugh does examine the quote "within the context of modern-day politics," but he doesn't actually address whether it's true. Moreover, Limbaugh misstates what Wright said. Limbaugh attributes to Wright the view that "this kind of stuff we've brought on ourself [sic]." Wright might believe that, and the "chickens coming to roost" remark could lead someone to think he believes that. But Wright might also think that the 9/11 attacks were a predictable response to U.S. foreign policy, without addressing the issue of whether the attacks were deserved.
Many of the conservative commentators have claimed that Wright's speech was full of hate. Now, it's possible that Wright hates people, but all I could see clearly from reading or listening to his speech is that it was full of anger. Anger does not equal hate. They can go together, but they don't have to. Indeed, I've found that the more clearly I've expressed my anger, the less hate I've had.
I do find fault with Obama's March 18 speech in three ways, though. First, he himself never clearly made the distinction between Wright's anger and his alleged hatred.
Second, Obama also rejected what Wright had said about Israel, but he did it by mischaracterizing what Wright said. Wright said:
"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic."
Again, is this true, false, or uncertain? It's mainly true. The U.S. government (there's that "we" again) has supported Zionism with substantial money from U.S. taxpayers and, while it has not totally ignored the Palestinians, it certainly does not treat them as well as it does Israel's government. Is it true that anybody who speaks out against Zionism is branded as anti-Semitic? Probably not. But is almost everybody who speaks out against Zionism branded as anti-Semitic? Certainly.
But in his speech, Obama referred to Wright's view as:
"...a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
That may be what Wright believes – Obama would know better than I – but that's certainly not what Wright said in the passage I cited.
Third, Obama asks us to get past the race issue and look at the other issues in the campaign. He does so himself. But in doing so, he stirs up resentment against people who are just as innocent as the struggling black man and the struggling white man displaced by affirmative action. Obama states:
"Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed;"
Later, Obama says:
"...the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit."
This is the standard Democratic riff about how nasty corporations have caused a middle class squeeze. How exactly did they do that? By bringing the prices of products down with the massive increases in productivity that they achieved, so that the average American has an array of goods and services that John D. Rockefeller would have envied? (Think penicillin, the Internet, and cheap, quick airline travel.) And while there have been Enrons, is Obama seriously saying that these have been so widespread as to make the middle class worse off?
Finally, if "the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job," where does Obama get off objecting to a corporation that ships a job overseas? Obama overstates the issue: most of the jobs in manufacturing that have disappeared have done so because of increasing productivity. Even China's manufacturing sector is losing jobs for the same reason. But what if Obama were right that a lot of jobs are being shipped overseas? Aren't they then going, largely, to "someone who doesn't look like you?" Does Obama have a double standard: one for Americans and one for everyone else? Does fairness stop at the border, Mr. Obama? Maybe you should consult a spiritual advisor who could educate you about the nastiness of putting "those people" in other countries lower on the scale. Maybe you should have been actually listening to Jeremiah Wright.
Copyright © 2008 by David R. Henderson. Requests for permission to reprint should be directed to the author or Antiwar.com.
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12553
Smearing Obama by Ari Berman
Smearing Obama
by Ari Berman
He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the
Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis
Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends
with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.
By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles
about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's
religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and
positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies
from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an
Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black
nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd
be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish
community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and
US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column
in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews
Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack
has been thrust into the mainstream--used as GOP talking points, pushed
by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press
host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence
become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish
Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.
What floods into one's inbox these days bears little or no relation to
Obama's record. "Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came
from the Jewish community in Chicago," he has said. Obama ran for the
Senate promising to help reconstitute the black-Jewish civil rights
coalition. His first foreign policy speech of the campaign was before
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he pledged
"clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." He has
occasionally angered pro-Israel hawks by urging direct negotiations with
Iran and Syria, but Obama's foreign policy record is well within the
Democratic Party mainstream. He's committed to a two-state solution
between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel's incursion into
Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the
presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New
York Sun and The New Republic's Marty Peretz, a noted Israel
hawk. And yet no defense of Israel by Obama--or of Obama by the
pro-Israel establishment--seems to be enough. "When one charge is
disproved, another is leveled," says Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads a
synagogue in Alexandria, Virginia.
It's nearly impossible to decipher where the smears originated [for a
comprehensive account of how such campaigns are generated and spread in
the age of the Internet and e-mail, see Christopher Hayes, "The New Right-Wing
Smear Machine," November 12, 2007]. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
traced one e-mail back 200 people before it stopped with a filmmaker in
Tel Aviv who didn't receive a return address. "No one knows if it's the
Clintons, a rogue agent or a Rove agent," says Congressman Steve Cohen,
a Jewish Obama backer who represents a largely black district in
Memphis. Likely it's a combination of the three.
We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who's amplifying
them. The "Obama is a Muslim" rumor began in the fringe conservative
blogosphere. "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim,"
blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a
history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said
journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006,
"hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake
Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were
somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her
post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington
Times's Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended "a
so-called Madrassa" and was a secret Muslim.
The Christian right is also preoccupied with Obama's religious beliefs.
"Is Obama a Muslim?" the Rev. Rob Schenck, a reform Jew who converted to
Christianity and now calls himself a "missionary to Capitol Hill," asked
in a recent videoblog. "He may be an apostate, he may be an infidel, he
may be a bad Muslim, a very, very bad Muslim, he may be an unfaithful
Muslim." Schenck's videoblog was circulated by the Christian Newswire
and Cross Action News, a self-described "Drudge Report for Christians."
Schenck later concluded that, although not a Muslim, Obama was also "not
a 'Bible Christian'" and did not practice a "confident faith." A
separate report posted on the Christian Newswire recently asked if Obama
was "Wearing a What-Would-Satan-Do Bracelet." And a top figure in the
group Christians United for Israel, Pastor Rod Parsley, a "spiritual
guide" to John McCain, repeatedly referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein
Obama" before campaigning with McCain in Ohio. (Thirteen percent of
registered American voters now incorrectly believe that Obama is a
Muslim, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, up from 8
percent in December. Forty-four percent of respondents are unsure of his
religion or decline to answer; only 37 percent know that he is a
Christian.)
The Muslim rumor was followed by fictions about Obama's actual faith,
Christianity. In February 2007, Erik Rush, a columnist for
WorldNetDaily, a hub of right-wing yellow journalism, called Obama's
Chicago church a "black supremacist" and "separatist" institution. Rush
found a sympathetic audience at Fox News, where he was interviewed by
Sean Hannity. Soon after, another blast of e-mails went out, calling
Obama a racist: "Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should
want to join Obama's church...B-L-A-C-K!!!" Like the Muslim claim, it
was a lie. But screeds about Obama's faith soon gave way to wide-ranging
attacks against his campaign advisers, his positions on the Middle East
and his associations in Chicago.
At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook,
Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have
done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of
respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling
it after Powerline, a popular conservative blog. Before that, he had
frequently written letters to newspapers defending Israel and
criticizing the Palestinians. Though his background remains a mystery,
Lasky didn't hide his neoconservative leanings. He wrote a blog post in
2004 titled "Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush," made three separate
donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to
Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes
since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of
Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close
affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made
Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.
A lengthy article from January 16, "Barack Obama and Israel," put Lasky
on the map. "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack
Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are
anti-Israel advocates," Lasky wrote. To reach that conclusion, Lasky
laughably warped what it meant to be "pro-Israel," criticizing Obama
for, among other things, opposing John Bolton as UN ambassador and
hiring veteran foreign policy hands from the Clinton and Carter
administrations. By Lasky's criteria, every Democrat in the Senate, and
more than a few Republicans, would be considered "anti-Israel." "Lasky's
piece is filled with half-truths, omission of 'inconvenient facts,'
innuendo, deeply flawed logic, undocumented charges, hearsay, and guilt
by distant association," wrote Ira Forman
of the National Jewish Democratic Council in the Philadelphia Jewish
Voice.
Despite--or perhaps because of--its propagandistic nature, Lasky's
column and subsequent follow-ups circulated far and wide. Caroline Glick
of the Jerusalem Post quoted Lasky at length in a January column,
printing his false claims as fact, as did a separate column in the same
paper by Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith (a onetime top
official in the Bush Defense Department) and a top ally of neocon
darling and Iraq War proponent Ahmad Chalabi and co-chairman of
Republicans Abroad in Israel. More surprising, Lasky became a household
name in the mainstream Jewish press, the talk of the town at
synagogues--even liberal ones--and a useful ally for members of the
Clinton campaign, who circulated his articles. Recently he's been
interviewed by mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York
Times, which have labeled Lasky a "critic" of Obama without
explaining his neoconservative sympathies. "I wonder how a tendentiously
argued anti-Obama piece is mass-emailed by so many Jews who should know
better," blogged Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish
News.
Another key purveyor of the smear campaign is Aaron Klein, an Orthodox
Jew who is Jerusalem correspondent for WorldNetDaily. WND is notoriously
disreputable, a sort of National Enquirer for the right (typical
headline: "Sleaze Charge: 'I Took Drugs, Had Homo Sex With Obama'").
Klein made a name for himself by getting terrorists to say nice things
about Democrats and allying himself with extremist elements of the
Israeli right, whom he frequently quotes as sources in his
articles--when he bothers to quote anyone at all. Klein originally
called Hillary Clinton the "jihadist choice for president," but when
Clinton stumbled, he turned his fire to Obama, attempting to expose his
so-called "terrorist connections."
Klein penned two stories in late February wildly distorting Obama's
links, from his days in Chicago, to pro-Palestinian activists like
Rashid Khalidi, a respected professor of Middle East studies at Columbia
University who previously taught at the University of Chicago (hardly a
bastion of left-wing activism). Klein's story goes something like this:
Obama sat on the board of a foundation in Chicago that gave a grant to
the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), run by Khalidi's wife, which
supposedly rejects Israel's existence; and Khalidi directed the PLO's
Beirut press office and is a supporter "for Palestinian terror." (In
fact, the AAAN focuses solely on social service work in Chicago and
takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi says he
was never employed by the PLO; he has been a harsh critic of Palestinian
suicide bombings and a longtime supporter of a two-state solution, and
he has never been an adviser to Obama. As for Obama's past statements,
at least in Chicago, being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian is not
a contradiction in terms.)
Once again, the facts mattered little, and Klein's stories gained an
audience beyond the narrow confines of WND. Christian publicist Maria
Sliwa sent Klein's articles to prominent reporters, the Tennessee GOP
included his claims in a press release titled "Anti-Semites for Obama"
and the Jewish Press, an Orthodox Brooklyn paper, reprinted his
story about Khalidi. His latest article alleges that "terrorists
worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election." As evidence,
Klein quotes Ramadan Adassi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in
the West Bank's Askar refugee camp, who says an Obama victory would be
an "important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and
the conservatives." In previous stories, Klein has quoted Adassi
praising Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn. For a suspected
terrorist, Adassi follows pop culture and US politics remarkably
closely.
Despite Klein's questionable sourcing and scandalous accusations,
mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein's
articles. He also reports for John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio
host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles who has written a series of outlandish
columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events
and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to
an e-mail of Batchelor's obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says
that information about Obama and Khalidi came via "oppo research."
Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the
neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them.
Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about
Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton
fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before
Super Tuesday, with the inscription "Please vote wisely in the
Primaries." Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew
Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a
conference call with Jewish reporters. "I can tell you for a fact people
from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay
attention to things involving Obama and Israel," says Shmuel Rosner,
Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. The
volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the
election calendar--hardly a coincidence.
Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union,
have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they've had little sway over
reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel--including
Jewish hate groups--who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The
website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task
Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel.
(Curiously, John McCain's alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians
United for Israel, a leading proponent of "end times" theology, and his
recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have
received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after
all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't
vote for us anyway.")
Respected news outlets have stoked these smears, even as they attempt to
debunk them. "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" asked an editorial in the
Forward. "Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost
certainly yes." After Obama criticized "a strain within the pro-Israel
community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to
Israel that you're anti-Israel," Rosner of Ha'aretz accused Obama
of "meddling in Israel's internal politics." The Washington Post
noted Obama's "denials" of his Muslim faith, without ever stating that
the rumor was untrue. Post columnist Richard Cohen crassly
connected Obama, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan, a
line of guilt-by-association questioning that Tim Russert aggressively
repeated in the last Obama-Clinton debate.
Among conservatives, Fox News has endlessly amplified such rumors. Karl
Rove, a new hire by the network, recently speculated that Obama would
withdraw funding for Israel. Sean Hannity has asked if Obama has a "race
problem." Fox News radio host Tom Sullivan compared Obama to Hitler.
"Fox News are on to him and all the arguments our 'smear' camping
[sic] is making and for the most part it is running with them,"
right-wing blogger Ted Belman, of Israpundit, wrote in a recent e-mail.
The attacks on Obama reek of racism and Islamophobia but, as John Kerry
learned in 2004, any Democrat should expect such treatment. "If Moses
was the Democratic nominee, he'd still be the victim of this hate mail,"
says Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC. The
right-wing smear machine grinds on, with the mainstream media and rival
campaigns lending a helping hand.
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman
by Ari Berman
He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the
Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis
Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends
with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.
By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles
about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's
religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and
positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies
from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an
Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black
nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd
be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish
community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and
US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column
in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews
Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack
has been thrust into the mainstream--used as GOP talking points, pushed
by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press
host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence
become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish
Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.
What floods into one's inbox these days bears little or no relation to
Obama's record. "Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came
from the Jewish community in Chicago," he has said. Obama ran for the
Senate promising to help reconstitute the black-Jewish civil rights
coalition. His first foreign policy speech of the campaign was before
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he pledged
"clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." He has
occasionally angered pro-Israel hawks by urging direct negotiations with
Iran and Syria, but Obama's foreign policy record is well within the
Democratic Party mainstream. He's committed to a two-state solution
between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel's incursion into
Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the
presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New
York Sun and The New Republic's Marty Peretz, a noted Israel
hawk. And yet no defense of Israel by Obama--or of Obama by the
pro-Israel establishment--seems to be enough. "When one charge is
disproved, another is leveled," says Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads a
synagogue in Alexandria, Virginia.
It's nearly impossible to decipher where the smears originated [for a
comprehensive account of how such campaigns are generated and spread in
the age of the Internet and e-mail, see Christopher Hayes, "The New Right-Wing
Smear Machine," November 12, 2007]. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
traced one e-mail back 200 people before it stopped with a filmmaker in
Tel Aviv who didn't receive a return address. "No one knows if it's the
Clintons, a rogue agent or a Rove agent," says Congressman Steve Cohen,
a Jewish Obama backer who represents a largely black district in
Memphis. Likely it's a combination of the three.
We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who's amplifying
them. The "Obama is a Muslim" rumor began in the fringe conservative
blogosphere. "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim,"
blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a
history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said
journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006,
"hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake
Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were
somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her
post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington
Times's Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended "a
so-called Madrassa" and was a secret Muslim.
The Christian right is also preoccupied with Obama's religious beliefs.
"Is Obama a Muslim?" the Rev. Rob Schenck, a reform Jew who converted to
Christianity and now calls himself a "missionary to Capitol Hill," asked
in a recent videoblog. "He may be an apostate, he may be an infidel, he
may be a bad Muslim, a very, very bad Muslim, he may be an unfaithful
Muslim." Schenck's videoblog was circulated by the Christian Newswire
and Cross Action News, a self-described "Drudge Report for Christians."
Schenck later concluded that, although not a Muslim, Obama was also "not
a 'Bible Christian'" and did not practice a "confident faith." A
separate report posted on the Christian Newswire recently asked if Obama
was "Wearing a What-Would-Satan-Do Bracelet." And a top figure in the
group Christians United for Israel, Pastor Rod Parsley, a "spiritual
guide" to John McCain, repeatedly referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein
Obama" before campaigning with McCain in Ohio. (Thirteen percent of
registered American voters now incorrectly believe that Obama is a
Muslim, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, up from 8
percent in December. Forty-four percent of respondents are unsure of his
religion or decline to answer; only 37 percent know that he is a
Christian.)
The Muslim rumor was followed by fictions about Obama's actual faith,
Christianity. In February 2007, Erik Rush, a columnist for
WorldNetDaily, a hub of right-wing yellow journalism, called Obama's
Chicago church a "black supremacist" and "separatist" institution. Rush
found a sympathetic audience at Fox News, where he was interviewed by
Sean Hannity. Soon after, another blast of e-mails went out, calling
Obama a racist: "Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should
want to join Obama's church...B-L-A-C-K!!!" Like the Muslim claim, it
was a lie. But screeds about Obama's faith soon gave way to wide-ranging
attacks against his campaign advisers, his positions on the Middle East
and his associations in Chicago.
At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook,
Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have
done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of
respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling
it after Powerline, a popular conservative blog. Before that, he had
frequently written letters to newspapers defending Israel and
criticizing the Palestinians. Though his background remains a mystery,
Lasky didn't hide his neoconservative leanings. He wrote a blog post in
2004 titled "Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush," made three separate
donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to
Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes
since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of
Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close
affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made
Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.
A lengthy article from January 16, "Barack Obama and Israel," put Lasky
on the map. "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack
Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are
anti-Israel advocates," Lasky wrote. To reach that conclusion, Lasky
laughably warped what it meant to be "pro-Israel," criticizing Obama
for, among other things, opposing John Bolton as UN ambassador and
hiring veteran foreign policy hands from the Clinton and Carter
administrations. By Lasky's criteria, every Democrat in the Senate, and
more than a few Republicans, would be considered "anti-Israel." "Lasky's
piece is filled with half-truths, omission of 'inconvenient facts,'
innuendo, deeply flawed logic, undocumented charges, hearsay, and guilt
by distant association," wrote Ira Forman
of the National Jewish Democratic Council in the Philadelphia Jewish
Voice.
Despite--or perhaps because of--its propagandistic nature, Lasky's
column and subsequent follow-ups circulated far and wide. Caroline Glick
of the Jerusalem Post quoted Lasky at length in a January column,
printing his false claims as fact, as did a separate column in the same
paper by Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith (a onetime top
official in the Bush Defense Department) and a top ally of neocon
darling and Iraq War proponent Ahmad Chalabi and co-chairman of
Republicans Abroad in Israel. More surprising, Lasky became a household
name in the mainstream Jewish press, the talk of the town at
synagogues--even liberal ones--and a useful ally for members of the
Clinton campaign, who circulated his articles. Recently he's been
interviewed by mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York
Times, which have labeled Lasky a "critic" of Obama without
explaining his neoconservative sympathies. "I wonder how a tendentiously
argued anti-Obama piece is mass-emailed by so many Jews who should know
better," blogged Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish
News.
Another key purveyor of the smear campaign is Aaron Klein, an Orthodox
Jew who is Jerusalem correspondent for WorldNetDaily. WND is notoriously
disreputable, a sort of National Enquirer for the right (typical
headline: "Sleaze Charge: 'I Took Drugs, Had Homo Sex With Obama'").
Klein made a name for himself by getting terrorists to say nice things
about Democrats and allying himself with extremist elements of the
Israeli right, whom he frequently quotes as sources in his
articles--when he bothers to quote anyone at all. Klein originally
called Hillary Clinton the "jihadist choice for president," but when
Clinton stumbled, he turned his fire to Obama, attempting to expose his
so-called "terrorist connections."
Klein penned two stories in late February wildly distorting Obama's
links, from his days in Chicago, to pro-Palestinian activists like
Rashid Khalidi, a respected professor of Middle East studies at Columbia
University who previously taught at the University of Chicago (hardly a
bastion of left-wing activism). Klein's story goes something like this:
Obama sat on the board of a foundation in Chicago that gave a grant to
the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), run by Khalidi's wife, which
supposedly rejects Israel's existence; and Khalidi directed the PLO's
Beirut press office and is a supporter "for Palestinian terror." (In
fact, the AAAN focuses solely on social service work in Chicago and
takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi says he
was never employed by the PLO; he has been a harsh critic of Palestinian
suicide bombings and a longtime supporter of a two-state solution, and
he has never been an adviser to Obama. As for Obama's past statements,
at least in Chicago, being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian is not
a contradiction in terms.)
Once again, the facts mattered little, and Klein's stories gained an
audience beyond the narrow confines of WND. Christian publicist Maria
Sliwa sent Klein's articles to prominent reporters, the Tennessee GOP
included his claims in a press release titled "Anti-Semites for Obama"
and the Jewish Press, an Orthodox Brooklyn paper, reprinted his
story about Khalidi. His latest article alleges that "terrorists
worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election." As evidence,
Klein quotes Ramadan Adassi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in
the West Bank's Askar refugee camp, who says an Obama victory would be
an "important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and
the conservatives." In previous stories, Klein has quoted Adassi
praising Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn. For a suspected
terrorist, Adassi follows pop culture and US politics remarkably
closely.
Despite Klein's questionable sourcing and scandalous accusations,
mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein's
articles. He also reports for John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio
host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles who has written a series of outlandish
columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events
and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to
an e-mail of Batchelor's obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says
that information about Obama and Khalidi came via "oppo research."
Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the
neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them.
Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about
Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton
fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before
Super Tuesday, with the inscription "Please vote wisely in the
Primaries." Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew
Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a
conference call with Jewish reporters. "I can tell you for a fact people
from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay
attention to things involving Obama and Israel," says Shmuel Rosner,
Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. The
volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the
election calendar--hardly a coincidence.
Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union,
have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they've had little sway over
reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel--including
Jewish hate groups--who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The
website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task
Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel.
(Curiously, John McCain's alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians
United for Israel, a leading proponent of "end times" theology, and his
recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have
received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after
all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't
vote for us anyway.")
Respected news outlets have stoked these smears, even as they attempt to
debunk them. "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" asked an editorial in the
Forward. "Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost
certainly yes." After Obama criticized "a strain within the pro-Israel
community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to
Israel that you're anti-Israel," Rosner of Ha'aretz accused Obama
of "meddling in Israel's internal politics." The Washington Post
noted Obama's "denials" of his Muslim faith, without ever stating that
the rumor was untrue. Post columnist Richard Cohen crassly
connected Obama, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan, a
line of guilt-by-association questioning that Tim Russert aggressively
repeated in the last Obama-Clinton debate.
Among conservatives, Fox News has endlessly amplified such rumors. Karl
Rove, a new hire by the network, recently speculated that Obama would
withdraw funding for Israel. Sean Hannity has asked if Obama has a "race
problem." Fox News radio host Tom Sullivan compared Obama to Hitler.
"Fox News are on to him and all the arguments our 'smear' camping
[sic] is making and for the most part it is running with them,"
right-wing blogger Ted Belman, of Israpundit, wrote in a recent e-mail.
The attacks on Obama reek of racism and Islamophobia but, as John Kerry
learned in 2004, any Democrat should expect such treatment. "If Moses
was the Democratic nominee, he'd still be the victim of this hate mail,"
says Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC. The
right-wing smear machine grinds on, with the mainstream media and rival
campaigns lending a helping hand.
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman
First lady records show Clinton promoted NAFTA
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be renegotiated, but newly released records showed on Wednesday she promoted its passage.
The National Archives and the Clinton presidential library jointly released more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's daily schedule as first lady from 1993 to 2001.
The release came in response to charges that she is overly secretive, and also allowed her campaign to promote her argument that she gained valuable White House experience during her years as first lady.
Clinton and Obama are battling to win Pennsylvania on April 22, the next contest in a closely fought campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to face Republican John McCain in the November election.
The documents clearly indicated that Clinton had a powerful role at the White House, frequently meeting foreign leaders and presiding over meetings.
The NAFTA agreement, linking trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, was considered a major accomplishment by President Bill Clinton in 1994.
But now many Americans blame the agreement for the loss of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
NAFTA has become such an issue on the Democratic presidential campaign trail that both Clinton and rival Barack Obama have vowed to renegotiate it.
The former first lady's records showed first lady Clinton worked on behalf of the accord.
Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a November 10, 1993, entry -- a "NAFTA Briefing drop-by," in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media.
Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program.
LEWINSKY, RICH REMINDERS
The documents, while a mundane accounting of Clinton's daily movements, brought back some reminders of the Clintons' White House tenure.
On January 26, 1998, for example, the day Bill Clinton declared "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," Monica Lewinsky, first lady Clinton had a busy day, including a round-table discussion with students from her alma mater, Wellesley College.
Later she went to New York for an education event, and spent the night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The weather forecast on that day's schedule said, "Mostly cloudy. High 37. Low 27.
When Hillary Clinton appeared at a January 1999 event at the Kennedy Center, it was Beth Dozoretz who escorted her to her seat, according to the records.
Dozoretz two years later was reportedly linked to a last-minute drive that succeeded in persuading President Clinton to grant a pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich, a decision that has haunted Clinton in his post-White House days.
The documents also showed the first lady got herself quickly immersed in what would be a failed attempt to revamp the U.S. health care system.
Clinton's first known meeting to discuss health care came just three days after President Clinton's January 20, 1993, inauguration, according to the records.
(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online here
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1933416820080319
The National Archives and the Clinton presidential library jointly released more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's daily schedule as first lady from 1993 to 2001.
The release came in response to charges that she is overly secretive, and also allowed her campaign to promote her argument that she gained valuable White House experience during her years as first lady.
Clinton and Obama are battling to win Pennsylvania on April 22, the next contest in a closely fought campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to face Republican John McCain in the November election.
The documents clearly indicated that Clinton had a powerful role at the White House, frequently meeting foreign leaders and presiding over meetings.
The NAFTA agreement, linking trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, was considered a major accomplishment by President Bill Clinton in 1994.
But now many Americans blame the agreement for the loss of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
NAFTA has become such an issue on the Democratic presidential campaign trail that both Clinton and rival Barack Obama have vowed to renegotiate it.
The former first lady's records showed first lady Clinton worked on behalf of the accord.
Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a November 10, 1993, entry -- a "NAFTA Briefing drop-by," in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media.
Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program.
LEWINSKY, RICH REMINDERS
The documents, while a mundane accounting of Clinton's daily movements, brought back some reminders of the Clintons' White House tenure.
On January 26, 1998, for example, the day Bill Clinton declared "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," Monica Lewinsky, first lady Clinton had a busy day, including a round-table discussion with students from her alma mater, Wellesley College.
Later she went to New York for an education event, and spent the night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The weather forecast on that day's schedule said, "Mostly cloudy. High 37. Low 27.
When Hillary Clinton appeared at a January 1999 event at the Kennedy Center, it was Beth Dozoretz who escorted her to her seat, according to the records.
Dozoretz two years later was reportedly linked to a last-minute drive that succeeded in persuading President Clinton to grant a pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich, a decision that has haunted Clinton in his post-White House days.
The documents also showed the first lady got herself quickly immersed in what would be a failed attempt to revamp the U.S. health care system.
Clinton's first known meeting to discuss health care came just three days after President Clinton's January 20, 1993, inauguration, according to the records.
(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online here
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1933416820080319
The Swindlers by William Pfaff
The Swindlers
William Pfaff
Date 2008/3/19 17:20:00
Paris, March 18, 2008 – The international reaction to the present credit crisis, the most serious since 1929, reveals a curious disposition to accept what has happened as if it were an act of nature, the economic equivalent of a tsunami or typhoon. No one should be blamed. The market did it. No one can really be held accountable.
Those involved were all rational actors devoted to maximizing value, and the invisible hand of the market is already at its corrective work in shaking out the weak players. Some market fundamentalists say the only danger is that frightened politicians may bail out losers, recreating the "moral hazard" that invited the present crash.
Another view is possible.
The best concise description I have seen of what actually has happened appeared under the joint byline of Robert Winnett and John Arlidge in last Saturday's [March 15] London Daily Telegraph, an ancient and reliably conservative newspaper favored by the financial community in the City of London. Allow me to quote a longish bit of what they wrote:
"Unscrupulous lenders in America had lent billions to people with dubious credit records. The mortgages were typically offered at attractive knockdown rates for the first few years, after which the monthly payments rocketed. Tens of thousands of people were [then] unable to repay their mortgages and faced losing their homes...
"The sub-prime mortgages were in effect sold on by the lenders to investment banks that 'repackaged' them into complicated financial products. The poor sub-prime mortgages were split up and merged with other kinds of debt and then repeatedly sold on. A wide array of other financial products was then devised by some of the world's best mathematical brains to profit on slight movements in the price of the bonds and other investment schemes devised by the investment banks.
"The whole system – driven forward by investment bankers competing with their former colleagues who had joined hedge funds – resulted in an arms race to devise the most sophisticated schemes and ways of cutting up the different kinds of debt....[with the result that as the mortgages now fail] no one knows who owns the bad debts, trust is destroyed and even top bankers have to admit that they have no idea exactly how the system works or what they have invested in."
Please note that the crisis arises not from debt, not even bad debt, but from speculation in debt. The original lender in many cases knowingly made the bad loan for the sole purpose of creating debt that could be sold on at a profit.
Bundling this bad debt with "good" (repayable) debt in a new investment instrument was meant to disguise the bad debt, giving it apparent value by mixing it with good debt, but the actual result was to make the new investment instrument itself potentially valueless, since it no longer had appraisable value. (See Gresham's Law: bad currency drives out good.)
To overcome this problem, the holder of the debt went to the credit rating agencies. As has not generally been known, most of these agencies work for the institutions they rate, not the clients who rely on their ratings, and it is possible to shop among agencies for the most satisfactory result. Thus it was that new debt instruments obtained triple A assessments.
They therefore could be sold to customers unaware of their nature, some of whom – such as many municipalities across the world, from Norway to Australia -- are legally required to place municipal funds exclusively in AAA instruments on the assumption that these are totally safe.
Because of the AAA rating these instruments could also be used by hedge funds to leverage further borrowing, for speculative purposes, sometimes by multiples as great as 30, as in the case of the now defunct Carlyle Capital.
It is very hard to see anywhere in this the impartial workings of the market. What one sees is false value deliberately created for speculative purposes. The actual content of the debt instrument created was deliberately dissimulated by the attribution of unjustified ratings. This enabled speculation on an instrument whose only real value was the value for which it could be sold on to someone else, or used for leveraging speculative loans.
There were critics of this speculative boom, but few were taken seriously because it is widely held that a new economy exists that has rendered traditional rules obsolete. Objections were considered evidence of failure to understand the sophisticated refinements being made to a system generating immense and growing international wealth.
Speaking last week [March 13] at the presentation of the President's Working Group financial market recommendations, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson criticized "excesses," weakened underwriting standards, and "complexity," but said new regulation to "catch up" with innovation must not "create new problems [or] make markets less efficient."
The collapse of this house of cards is a crisis of speculation, not of the real economy, and an appalling demonstration of market inefficiency. The imaginative might say that it has all been a version of the 19th century carnival swindle called Bunkum, but one in which those who conducted the game have ended up among the swindled.
© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
William Pfaff
Date 2008/3/19 17:20:00
Paris, March 18, 2008 – The international reaction to the present credit crisis, the most serious since 1929, reveals a curious disposition to accept what has happened as if it were an act of nature, the economic equivalent of a tsunami or typhoon. No one should be blamed. The market did it. No one can really be held accountable.
Those involved were all rational actors devoted to maximizing value, and the invisible hand of the market is already at its corrective work in shaking out the weak players. Some market fundamentalists say the only danger is that frightened politicians may bail out losers, recreating the "moral hazard" that invited the present crash.
Another view is possible.
The best concise description I have seen of what actually has happened appeared under the joint byline of Robert Winnett and John Arlidge in last Saturday's [March 15] London Daily Telegraph, an ancient and reliably conservative newspaper favored by the financial community in the City of London. Allow me to quote a longish bit of what they wrote:
"Unscrupulous lenders in America had lent billions to people with dubious credit records. The mortgages were typically offered at attractive knockdown rates for the first few years, after which the monthly payments rocketed. Tens of thousands of people were [then] unable to repay their mortgages and faced losing their homes...
"The sub-prime mortgages were in effect sold on by the lenders to investment banks that 'repackaged' them into complicated financial products. The poor sub-prime mortgages were split up and merged with other kinds of debt and then repeatedly sold on. A wide array of other financial products was then devised by some of the world's best mathematical brains to profit on slight movements in the price of the bonds and other investment schemes devised by the investment banks.
"The whole system – driven forward by investment bankers competing with their former colleagues who had joined hedge funds – resulted in an arms race to devise the most sophisticated schemes and ways of cutting up the different kinds of debt....[with the result that as the mortgages now fail] no one knows who owns the bad debts, trust is destroyed and even top bankers have to admit that they have no idea exactly how the system works or what they have invested in."
Please note that the crisis arises not from debt, not even bad debt, but from speculation in debt. The original lender in many cases knowingly made the bad loan for the sole purpose of creating debt that could be sold on at a profit.
Bundling this bad debt with "good" (repayable) debt in a new investment instrument was meant to disguise the bad debt, giving it apparent value by mixing it with good debt, but the actual result was to make the new investment instrument itself potentially valueless, since it no longer had appraisable value. (See Gresham's Law: bad currency drives out good.)
To overcome this problem, the holder of the debt went to the credit rating agencies. As has not generally been known, most of these agencies work for the institutions they rate, not the clients who rely on their ratings, and it is possible to shop among agencies for the most satisfactory result. Thus it was that new debt instruments obtained triple A assessments.
They therefore could be sold to customers unaware of their nature, some of whom – such as many municipalities across the world, from Norway to Australia -- are legally required to place municipal funds exclusively in AAA instruments on the assumption that these are totally safe.
Because of the AAA rating these instruments could also be used by hedge funds to leverage further borrowing, for speculative purposes, sometimes by multiples as great as 30, as in the case of the now defunct Carlyle Capital.
It is very hard to see anywhere in this the impartial workings of the market. What one sees is false value deliberately created for speculative purposes. The actual content of the debt instrument created was deliberately dissimulated by the attribution of unjustified ratings. This enabled speculation on an instrument whose only real value was the value for which it could be sold on to someone else, or used for leveraging speculative loans.
There were critics of this speculative boom, but few were taken seriously because it is widely held that a new economy exists that has rendered traditional rules obsolete. Objections were considered evidence of failure to understand the sophisticated refinements being made to a system generating immense and growing international wealth.
Speaking last week [March 13] at the presentation of the President's Working Group financial market recommendations, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson criticized "excesses," weakened underwriting standards, and "complexity," but said new regulation to "catch up" with innovation must not "create new problems [or] make markets less efficient."
The collapse of this house of cards is a crisis of speculation, not of the real economy, and an appalling demonstration of market inefficiency. The imaginative might say that it has all been a version of the 19th century carnival swindle called Bunkum, but one in which those who conducted the game have ended up among the swindled.
© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
I'll just reconcile without you then
ABU AARDVARK
3/19/08
I'll just reconcile without you then
Marc Lynch
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for months been promoting a national reconciliation conference in Baghdad to demonstrate his belief that national reconciliation has already been achieved. About 250 personalities were invited to the conference, which was carefully timed to coincide with the 5th anniversary of the war and with the visits of Cheney and McCain. At the conference, reading easily from the Cheney-McCain stay the course script (while rebuking General Petraeus fairly directly), Maliki declared the political process a success, "telling delegates that Iraq was now healed and the threat of civil war was a thing of the past".
Unfortunately, the Sunni Accordance Front and Iyad Allawi's Iraqi Bloc boycotted, and the Sadrists walked out. All stated, rather forcefully, that they did not see the political process as a success or national reconciliation as achieved. Maliki responded that this draws the line between "friends and enemies", drawing no distinction between his government and Iraq itself. Several leaders of the Anbar Salvation Council did attend, including Ali Hatem and Hamed al-Hayess (suggesting that the arrest warrant on them won't be served any time soon). But Hatem wasn't impressed: "I didn't stay any longer than it took me to smoke my cigarette. It was a total failure, because the Iraqi politicians are a failure." This must be the bottom-up reconciliation I keep hearing about.
I expect that interpretations of this conference will divide along predictable lines. Optimists will say that at least Maliki is trying, and that the inclusion of the ASC folks will build the chances for reconciliation from the bottom up. Pessimists will say that the boycotts and walkouts were the most notable thing about the conference, and that those boycotts happened precisely because Maliki had failed to deliver on the crucial issues for political accomodation.
Meanwhile, the US apparently successfully mediated a week's extension (until March 24) of the deadline imposed by Hatem and Hayess for the Islamic Party to surrender its control of local councils and leave Anbar or be expelled by force. Both the ASC leaders and the IIP are claiming popular support, and each scoffs at the other's demands; the ASC leaders imposed 8 conditions for a reconciliation, while the IIP leaders say that the threats have changed nothing. Observers (including, I suspect, the Americans doing the mediating) might wonder why the Anbar Salvation Council doesn't just cool it until the provincial elections slated for October. If they are so confident of their popular support, why not just wait 6 months and then win power at the ballot box rather than trying to seize it through threats of force?
I expect that interpretations of this course of events will divide along predictable lines. Optimists will point to the growing assertiveness of the ASC as a positive sign of the emergence of new, more representative and more accomodating Sunni elites, and the avoidance of bloodshed (for now) as a sign that the political differences can be managed. Pessimists will point to the ASC's evident disregard for legal niceties and willingness to threaten force to gain power, and worry that the need for the United States to play this direct, heavy-handed mediating role demonstrates how the current U.S. strategy will make it harder, not easier, to disengage any time soon.
And on it goes...
3/19/08
I'll just reconcile without you then
Marc Lynch
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for months been promoting a national reconciliation conference in Baghdad to demonstrate his belief that national reconciliation has already been achieved. About 250 personalities were invited to the conference, which was carefully timed to coincide with the 5th anniversary of the war and with the visits of Cheney and McCain. At the conference, reading easily from the Cheney-McCain stay the course script (while rebuking General Petraeus fairly directly), Maliki declared the political process a success, "telling delegates that Iraq was now healed and the threat of civil war was a thing of the past".
Unfortunately, the Sunni Accordance Front and Iyad Allawi's Iraqi Bloc boycotted, and the Sadrists walked out. All stated, rather forcefully, that they did not see the political process as a success or national reconciliation as achieved. Maliki responded that this draws the line between "friends and enemies", drawing no distinction between his government and Iraq itself. Several leaders of the Anbar Salvation Council did attend, including Ali Hatem and Hamed al-Hayess (suggesting that the arrest warrant on them won't be served any time soon). But Hatem wasn't impressed: "I didn't stay any longer than it took me to smoke my cigarette. It was a total failure, because the Iraqi politicians are a failure." This must be the bottom-up reconciliation I keep hearing about.
I expect that interpretations of this conference will divide along predictable lines. Optimists will say that at least Maliki is trying, and that the inclusion of the ASC folks will build the chances for reconciliation from the bottom up. Pessimists will say that the boycotts and walkouts were the most notable thing about the conference, and that those boycotts happened precisely because Maliki had failed to deliver on the crucial issues for political accomodation.
Meanwhile, the US apparently successfully mediated a week's extension (until March 24) of the deadline imposed by Hatem and Hayess for the Islamic Party to surrender its control of local councils and leave Anbar or be expelled by force. Both the ASC leaders and the IIP are claiming popular support, and each scoffs at the other's demands; the ASC leaders imposed 8 conditions for a reconciliation, while the IIP leaders say that the threats have changed nothing. Observers (including, I suspect, the Americans doing the mediating) might wonder why the Anbar Salvation Council doesn't just cool it until the provincial elections slated for October. If they are so confident of their popular support, why not just wait 6 months and then win power at the ballot box rather than trying to seize it through threats of force?
I expect that interpretations of this course of events will divide along predictable lines. Optimists will point to the growing assertiveness of the ASC as a positive sign of the emergence of new, more representative and more accomodating Sunni elites, and the avoidance of bloodshed (for now) as a sign that the political differences can be managed. Pessimists will point to the ASC's evident disregard for legal niceties and willingness to threaten force to gain power, and worry that the need for the United States to play this direct, heavy-handed mediating role demonstrates how the current U.S. strategy will make it harder, not easier, to disengage any time soon.
And on it goes...
On the Fifth Anniversary, What Could We Cautiously Say About the Iraqi
Links at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/on-the-fifth-anniversary_b_92350.html
On the Fifth Anniversary, What Could We Cautiously Say About the Iraqi
Death Toll?
Today thousands of Americans will gather in hundreds of vigils across
the country sponsored by MoveOn and United for Peace and Justice,
among others, to mark the fifth anniversary of the illegal and unjust
war in Iraq. These vigils will note the 3990 U.S. deaths and 29,314
wounded, and will note the terrible toll the war has taken on Iraq.
But what is a cautious, conservative, responsible thing to say about
the Iraqi death toll? No accurate count can be given, and the question
has been further clouded by poor reporting in the U.S. media, and
misleading commentary by the Bush Administration and its supporters.
There are two scientific studies that have used standard techniques
for estimating the death toll.
The first, generally referred to as the "Lancet study," estimated that
just over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion
as of July 2006.
The second, generally referred to as the WHO study or the Iraq Health
Ministry study, estimated that 151,000 Iraqis had been killed over
essentially the same period. There is some reasonable basis for
questioning whether this study underestimates the death rate - indeed,
some Iraqi officials indicated that they thought that it did - but it
was a scientific study, using generally accepted methods.
If we assume that the tally of deaths reported by Iraq Body Count,
while not giving us an accurate picture of the overall scale of death
(no tally could, in such a situation), does give us an rough picture,
when compared to itself over time, of changes in the death rate, then
we can extrapolate these two numbers forward to the present.
The Lancet study would suggest an Iraqi death toll today of about
1,190,000. This is how we arrive at the Just Foreign Policy estimate
of Iraqi deaths. This is also broadly consistent with the death toll
of 1.2 million estimated by Opinion Research Business in Britain in
September 2007 (as of August 2007).
The WHO/Iraqi Health Ministry Study, based on the same extrapolation,
would suggest a death toll today of about 300,000.
Note that the WHO study also uses Iraq Body Count trends to
extrapolate, suggesting that this is a reasonable approach, in the
absence of better information.
Thus, a cautious, balanced appraisal based on available scientific
information would suggest an Iraqi death toll today of between 300,000
and 1.2 million since March 2003.
Note that, if you look for estimates of war dead in past wars - for
example, Vietnamese dead in the Vietnam War - you will also see what
appears at first to be a wide range. The exact death toll will never
be known. More studies - and certainly such an important question
deserves to be further studied - will give us more information. But as
of today, a responsible, cautious, conservative thing to say is that
between 300,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis have died, and the statement
"hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died" has very strong support.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/on-the-fifth-anniversary_b_92350.html
On the Fifth Anniversary, What Could We Cautiously Say About the Iraqi
Death Toll?
Today thousands of Americans will gather in hundreds of vigils across
the country sponsored by MoveOn and United for Peace and Justice,
among others, to mark the fifth anniversary of the illegal and unjust
war in Iraq. These vigils will note the 3990 U.S. deaths and 29,314
wounded, and will note the terrible toll the war has taken on Iraq.
But what is a cautious, conservative, responsible thing to say about
the Iraqi death toll? No accurate count can be given, and the question
has been further clouded by poor reporting in the U.S. media, and
misleading commentary by the Bush Administration and its supporters.
There are two scientific studies that have used standard techniques
for estimating the death toll.
The first, generally referred to as the "Lancet study," estimated that
just over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion
as of July 2006.
The second, generally referred to as the WHO study or the Iraq Health
Ministry study, estimated that 151,000 Iraqis had been killed over
essentially the same period. There is some reasonable basis for
questioning whether this study underestimates the death rate - indeed,
some Iraqi officials indicated that they thought that it did - but it
was a scientific study, using generally accepted methods.
If we assume that the tally of deaths reported by Iraq Body Count,
while not giving us an accurate picture of the overall scale of death
(no tally could, in such a situation), does give us an rough picture,
when compared to itself over time, of changes in the death rate, then
we can extrapolate these two numbers forward to the present.
The Lancet study would suggest an Iraqi death toll today of about
1,190,000. This is how we arrive at the Just Foreign Policy estimate
of Iraqi deaths. This is also broadly consistent with the death toll
of 1.2 million estimated by Opinion Research Business in Britain in
September 2007 (as of August 2007).
The WHO/Iraqi Health Ministry Study, based on the same extrapolation,
would suggest a death toll today of about 300,000.
Note that the WHO study also uses Iraq Body Count trends to
extrapolate, suggesting that this is a reasonable approach, in the
absence of better information.
Thus, a cautious, balanced appraisal based on available scientific
information would suggest an Iraqi death toll today of between 300,000
and 1.2 million since March 2003.
Note that, if you look for estimates of war dead in past wars - for
example, Vietnamese dead in the Vietnam War - you will also see what
appears at first to be a wide range. The exact death toll will never
be known. More studies - and certainly such an important question
deserves to be further studied - will give us more information. But as
of today, a responsible, cautious, conservative thing to say is that
between 300,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis have died, and the statement
"hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died" has very strong support.
Israel's 'religious right' gains clout, complicating peace with Palestinians
Christian Science Monitor
3/19/08
Israel's 'religious right' gains clout, complicating peace with Palestinians
The Shas Party, a key part of Israel's governing coalition, is pushing settlement growth.
Ilene R. Prusher
Givat Zeev, West Bank
On a hilltop far enough from the existing Israeli settlement of Givat Zeev that one needs directions to get here stands the framework of a settlement meant to house up to 750 families.
Eli Yishai stood on an unfinished balcony of one of the new development's shell homes. He's a key coalition partner of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the leader of the religious party Shas, which is feted by some and decried by others for having broken Israel's "settlement freeze."
"The world might want us to freeze, but there's no doubt that we look at it a bit differently," says Mr. Yishai. "We will make this into a continuous, meaningful block connecting this whole corridor to Jerusalem. I see many possibilities to start building again, according to the demands of natural growth."
A new spate of West Bank settlement construction not only complicates efforts to resume Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but points to a palpable rightward shift in Shas, a party that used to be considered moderate and amenable to the land-for-peace formula on which any solution to the conflict is based.
Israel's announcement last week that it was going to permit the construction of 750 homes here generated criticism from Palestinians and from around the world. The Bush administration reacted by reminding Mr. Olmert that limiting settlement activity is "a road-map obligation" Israel committed itself to as part of the Annapolis Process, referring to last fall's peace talks in Annapolis, Md.
But in what many here say is a move to lure Shas to stay in the governing coalition, which Shas has been threatening on a regular basis to bolt, Olmert decided to remove the barriers to several already-in-the-works settlement projects and to allow Shas to take the credit. If Shas did leave the coalition, the government would lose its majority and fall apart.
The evolution of Shas
Shas's aging spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, once made a ruling that territorial concessions, were they to save lives and lead to true peace between Arabs and Jews, were acceptable under religious law.
Today, however, the young generation of Shas seems to be less concerned with the ideal backdrop for peacemaking and more driven by coalition politics and the demands of their constituents, who will benefit from new homes at relatively inexpensive prices. The neighborhood to be constructed here will be designated for the ultra-Orthodox, who constitute the fastest-growing portion of the West Bank settler population, according to figures from Peace Now and Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.
"There has been a shift, but I think that the main reason is more on the coalition tactical level than the ideological one," says Itzhak Galnoor, a professor of Israeli politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Now Shas is the most right-wing member of the coalition, since Avigdor Lieberman [of Israel Beitainu] left, and it has to justify to its constituency that it stays in the government."
When the first Israeli-Palestinian peace accord was reached nearly 15 years ago, Shas was a coalition partner of the left-leaning Labor Party. They've been a key piece of the multiparty puzzle in every government since, in large part because their flexible outlook on peacemaking made them an attractive partner. The party's main concern was to win support for towns and schools heavily populated by their supporters, Jews of Middle Eastern origin, or Sephardim, who were long neglected and discriminated against by the Ashkenazi (European) establishment.
But over the past decade, following the Al Aqsa intifada and the breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Shas has swung right. This may be in part an effort by Shas to boost its standing among more nationalist Israeli voters, regardless of ethnic origin. This trend suggests that Shas is working to attract supporters away from the right-wing Likud as well as the National Religious Party, both of which have been socked in recent years with a significant loss of Knesset, or parliament, seats and political prestige.
"Shas was centrist and very mild on settlements, and it has moved because of the people who vote for it," Dr. Galnoor notes. "The leadership has always been more dovish. But in the last 10 years, it has moved to the right." Galnoor says that this may be a kind of positioning ahead of the elections, which are scheduled for 2009 but are likely to be called for next year instead. Shas won 10 seats in the last Knesset elections, down from 14.
"They made a decision that this is where the votes could come from ... and that being a little more right wing couldn't hurt them," Galnoor adds. "It's a gamble in a way, to try and get some of the votes that may otherwise go to the Likud," or other religious parties.
Shlomo Ben-Izri, a Knesset member from Shas and former cabinet minister, says that Shas's ideology has not changed, but that times have. "We're not in a great situation anyway. You can't say that these settlements will be a reason for a renewal of terrorism, because there is terrorism anyway," he says, referring to the recent shooting at a Jerusalem seminary by a Palestinian gunman.
"We go by halacha [religious law] and our spiritual leader, Rabbi Yosef. He supported the Oslo Accords, but only if it will bring real peace," says Mr. Ben-Izri. "But today, after what's happening in and around Gaza, and what's happening on the Palestinian side, we don't see any partner. So it's the peace process we must freeze."
The settlement conundrum
It is hard to know to what extent Shas's settlement drive reflects that of the entire Israeli government, which has been sending mixed signals. Olmert said Monday that Israel would not stop building over the Green Line – Israel's pre-1967 boundaries – in and around Jerusalem. "There will be places where there will be construction, or additions to construction, because these places will remain in Israel's hands."
Palestinians are deeply dismayed by the moves. The Jerusalem-based Al Quds newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday that Olmert's statements are "a challenge to the American criticism, and will lead to more complications in the inactive peace process."
Nabil Abu Rudenieh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, said Israel was undermining US efforts. "The situation needs a frank and clear US position against the settlements policy."
In the cluster of new apartments that have just been finished in the past six months, halfway between the existing Givat Zeev settlement and the new 750-unit neighborhood, a few young couples with children have already moved in. Arielle Peretz, who moved here with her husband two months ago, views infrequent bus service as the only drawback.
"I wouldn't have chosen to move here because it's far from the city," she explains, glancing over her new living room, which looks out to the pretty, terraced hillsides tended by Palestinian neighbors across the valley. "We came because it's so much more expensive to buy in Jerusalem. There will never be peace anyway. How many years have we been fighting?"
3/19/08
Israel's 'religious right' gains clout, complicating peace with Palestinians
The Shas Party, a key part of Israel's governing coalition, is pushing settlement growth.
Ilene R. Prusher
Givat Zeev, West Bank
On a hilltop far enough from the existing Israeli settlement of Givat Zeev that one needs directions to get here stands the framework of a settlement meant to house up to 750 families.
Eli Yishai stood on an unfinished balcony of one of the new development's shell homes. He's a key coalition partner of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the leader of the religious party Shas, which is feted by some and decried by others for having broken Israel's "settlement freeze."
"The world might want us to freeze, but there's no doubt that we look at it a bit differently," says Mr. Yishai. "We will make this into a continuous, meaningful block connecting this whole corridor to Jerusalem. I see many possibilities to start building again, according to the demands of natural growth."
A new spate of West Bank settlement construction not only complicates efforts to resume Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but points to a palpable rightward shift in Shas, a party that used to be considered moderate and amenable to the land-for-peace formula on which any solution to the conflict is based.
Israel's announcement last week that it was going to permit the construction of 750 homes here generated criticism from Palestinians and from around the world. The Bush administration reacted by reminding Mr. Olmert that limiting settlement activity is "a road-map obligation" Israel committed itself to as part of the Annapolis Process, referring to last fall's peace talks in Annapolis, Md.
But in what many here say is a move to lure Shas to stay in the governing coalition, which Shas has been threatening on a regular basis to bolt, Olmert decided to remove the barriers to several already-in-the-works settlement projects and to allow Shas to take the credit. If Shas did leave the coalition, the government would lose its majority and fall apart.
The evolution of Shas
Shas's aging spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, once made a ruling that territorial concessions, were they to save lives and lead to true peace between Arabs and Jews, were acceptable under religious law.
Today, however, the young generation of Shas seems to be less concerned with the ideal backdrop for peacemaking and more driven by coalition politics and the demands of their constituents, who will benefit from new homes at relatively inexpensive prices. The neighborhood to be constructed here will be designated for the ultra-Orthodox, who constitute the fastest-growing portion of the West Bank settler population, according to figures from Peace Now and Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.
"There has been a shift, but I think that the main reason is more on the coalition tactical level than the ideological one," says Itzhak Galnoor, a professor of Israeli politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Now Shas is the most right-wing member of the coalition, since Avigdor Lieberman [of Israel Beitainu] left, and it has to justify to its constituency that it stays in the government."
When the first Israeli-Palestinian peace accord was reached nearly 15 years ago, Shas was a coalition partner of the left-leaning Labor Party. They've been a key piece of the multiparty puzzle in every government since, in large part because their flexible outlook on peacemaking made them an attractive partner. The party's main concern was to win support for towns and schools heavily populated by their supporters, Jews of Middle Eastern origin, or Sephardim, who were long neglected and discriminated against by the Ashkenazi (European) establishment.
But over the past decade, following the Al Aqsa intifada and the breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Shas has swung right. This may be in part an effort by Shas to boost its standing among more nationalist Israeli voters, regardless of ethnic origin. This trend suggests that Shas is working to attract supporters away from the right-wing Likud as well as the National Religious Party, both of which have been socked in recent years with a significant loss of Knesset, or parliament, seats and political prestige.
"Shas was centrist and very mild on settlements, and it has moved because of the people who vote for it," Dr. Galnoor notes. "The leadership has always been more dovish. But in the last 10 years, it has moved to the right." Galnoor says that this may be a kind of positioning ahead of the elections, which are scheduled for 2009 but are likely to be called for next year instead. Shas won 10 seats in the last Knesset elections, down from 14.
"They made a decision that this is where the votes could come from ... and that being a little more right wing couldn't hurt them," Galnoor adds. "It's a gamble in a way, to try and get some of the votes that may otherwise go to the Likud," or other religious parties.
Shlomo Ben-Izri, a Knesset member from Shas and former cabinet minister, says that Shas's ideology has not changed, but that times have. "We're not in a great situation anyway. You can't say that these settlements will be a reason for a renewal of terrorism, because there is terrorism anyway," he says, referring to the recent shooting at a Jerusalem seminary by a Palestinian gunman.
"We go by halacha [religious law] and our spiritual leader, Rabbi Yosef. He supported the Oslo Accords, but only if it will bring real peace," says Mr. Ben-Izri. "But today, after what's happening in and around Gaza, and what's happening on the Palestinian side, we don't see any partner. So it's the peace process we must freeze."
The settlement conundrum
It is hard to know to what extent Shas's settlement drive reflects that of the entire Israeli government, which has been sending mixed signals. Olmert said Monday that Israel would not stop building over the Green Line – Israel's pre-1967 boundaries – in and around Jerusalem. "There will be places where there will be construction, or additions to construction, because these places will remain in Israel's hands."
Palestinians are deeply dismayed by the moves. The Jerusalem-based Al Quds newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday that Olmert's statements are "a challenge to the American criticism, and will lead to more complications in the inactive peace process."
Nabil Abu Rudenieh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, said Israel was undermining US efforts. "The situation needs a frank and clear US position against the settlements policy."
In the cluster of new apartments that have just been finished in the past six months, halfway between the existing Givat Zeev settlement and the new 750-unit neighborhood, a few young couples with children have already moved in. Arielle Peretz, who moved here with her husband two months ago, views infrequent bus service as the only drawback.
"I wouldn't have chosen to move here because it's far from the city," she explains, glancing over her new living room, which looks out to the pretty, terraced hillsides tended by Palestinian neighbors across the valley. "We came because it's so much more expensive to buy in Jerusalem. There will never be peace anyway. How many years have we been fighting?"
Greater discipline required on defense spending by Gordon Adams, Finantcial Times
Greater discipline required on defence spending
By Gordon Adams
The Financial Times
March 18 2008
Deep into the election campaign and five years into the war in Iraq, the US national security debate is missing the point. Instead of debating a strategy that engages the world differently after Iraq, the presidential candidates are arguing over the cost of the war, who can be trusted to execute the next war and who can expand the military and raise the defence budget to handle it. This instinctive, mindless focus on expanding the military and its funding may well sink US national security policy in the next administration.
Five years in, the uncertain adventure in Iraq is certainly not cheap. The US has already spent more than $600bn on Iraq and Afghanistan and Congress will consider another $270bn for this year and next year's war budget. But despite (exaggerated) outside estimates of $3,000bn for the war, it does not really matter how much it costs; that is already sunk. We urgently need a debate on a different global strategy.
The phoney election debate over military experience and trustworthiness is also a sideshow. In reality, there is a bizarre Clinton-Obama-McCain consensus that the US military should grow, with bigger budgets. For the Democrats, this proposal is opportunistic and defensive; for John McCain it is based on faith. But none of them justifies this growth in strategic terms.
The candidates are not alone. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is advocating that the Department of Defense budget be guaranteed 4 per cent of US gross domestic product yet has offered no strategic rationale for this demand. Meanwhile, the services are actively expanding training for counterinsurgency warfare, post-conflict reconstruction, training in governance, broadcasting and a host of other non-traditional missions.
Thanks to this strategy-free consensus, the US could spend in excess of $700bn on defence next year, more than double the amount spent in 2001. That represents more than 50 per cent of all global spending on the military and 17 times US spending on diplomacy and foreign aid. US ground forces number more than half a million, yet will grow by 92,500. While some justify this by pointing to the stresses from Iraq, by the time these recruits are ready, in 3-5 years, those pressures will have ebbed.
The absence of real strategic thinking behind this growing military presence will have negative consequences for US national security.
First, by having no guidelines for defence priorities, everything is a priority. Moreover, with 25 per cent of defence department resources now being provided through so-called "emergency supplementals" for the war, the budget receives even less scrutiny, leading to wasteful spending uninfluenced by a set of strategic priorities. Even in Korea and Vietnam, war funding became an integral part of defence planning after a year or two, not a free good outside the regular budget. Future defence needs would be better served if the candidates focused on disciplining the defence budget and abandoning these supplementals, rather than on writing ever bigger cheques.
Second, the toolkit of US statecraft is out of balance. To restore its international leadership, the US needs stronger diplomacy and foreign aid programmes. But funding for these has fallen far behind defence. Instead, the military has become America's "default" tool, taking the lead for missions such as training police, even though it is not especially adapted to this work. Over time the civilian tools are withering. The candidates are aiding and abetting this trend by supporting military expansion without posing harder questions about the strategy that should drive defence planning.
Third, the expansion of US military engagement has a severe impact on the perception of America's intentions. More and more, the public face of American diplomacy wears a uniform. Around the globe, the expansion of the US military is now seen as threatening.
Because the candidates are not offering an alternative strategy using all the tools of statecraft, the US is slouching toward ever higher military budgets, expanding forces, weakened diplomacy and a declining international reputation. The candidates are tiptoeing around this debate for fear of being attacked as weak on defence. Better to be strong on disciplining defence budgets and forcing a strategic rethink. Once in office, they will pay the price of avoiding this debate, inheriting a swelling budget that lacks sufficient oversight and strategic foresight.
The writer is professor of international relations at the School of International Service, American University. From 1993 to 1997, he was the senior White House official for national security budgets
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Gordon Adams
The Financial Times
March 18 2008
Deep into the election campaign and five years into the war in Iraq, the US national security debate is missing the point. Instead of debating a strategy that engages the world differently after Iraq, the presidential candidates are arguing over the cost of the war, who can be trusted to execute the next war and who can expand the military and raise the defence budget to handle it. This instinctive, mindless focus on expanding the military and its funding may well sink US national security policy in the next administration.
Five years in, the uncertain adventure in Iraq is certainly not cheap. The US has already spent more than $600bn on Iraq and Afghanistan and Congress will consider another $270bn for this year and next year's war budget. But despite (exaggerated) outside estimates of $3,000bn for the war, it does not really matter how much it costs; that is already sunk. We urgently need a debate on a different global strategy.
The phoney election debate over military experience and trustworthiness is also a sideshow. In reality, there is a bizarre Clinton-Obama-McCain consensus that the US military should grow, with bigger budgets. For the Democrats, this proposal is opportunistic and defensive; for John McCain it is based on faith. But none of them justifies this growth in strategic terms.
The candidates are not alone. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is advocating that the Department of Defense budget be guaranteed 4 per cent of US gross domestic product yet has offered no strategic rationale for this demand. Meanwhile, the services are actively expanding training for counterinsurgency warfare, post-conflict reconstruction, training in governance, broadcasting and a host of other non-traditional missions.
Thanks to this strategy-free consensus, the US could spend in excess of $700bn on defence next year, more than double the amount spent in 2001. That represents more than 50 per cent of all global spending on the military and 17 times US spending on diplomacy and foreign aid. US ground forces number more than half a million, yet will grow by 92,500. While some justify this by pointing to the stresses from Iraq, by the time these recruits are ready, in 3-5 years, those pressures will have ebbed.
The absence of real strategic thinking behind this growing military presence will have negative consequences for US national security.
First, by having no guidelines for defence priorities, everything is a priority. Moreover, with 25 per cent of defence department resources now being provided through so-called "emergency supplementals" for the war, the budget receives even less scrutiny, leading to wasteful spending uninfluenced by a set of strategic priorities. Even in Korea and Vietnam, war funding became an integral part of defence planning after a year or two, not a free good outside the regular budget. Future defence needs would be better served if the candidates focused on disciplining the defence budget and abandoning these supplementals, rather than on writing ever bigger cheques.
Second, the toolkit of US statecraft is out of balance. To restore its international leadership, the US needs stronger diplomacy and foreign aid programmes. But funding for these has fallen far behind defence. Instead, the military has become America's "default" tool, taking the lead for missions such as training police, even though it is not especially adapted to this work. Over time the civilian tools are withering. The candidates are aiding and abetting this trend by supporting military expansion without posing harder questions about the strategy that should drive defence planning.
Third, the expansion of US military engagement has a severe impact on the perception of America's intentions. More and more, the public face of American diplomacy wears a uniform. Around the globe, the expansion of the US military is now seen as threatening.
Because the candidates are not offering an alternative strategy using all the tools of statecraft, the US is slouching toward ever higher military budgets, expanding forces, weakened diplomacy and a declining international reputation. The candidates are tiptoeing around this debate for fear of being attacked as weak on defence. Better to be strong on disciplining defence budgets and forcing a strategic rethink. Once in office, they will pay the price of avoiding this debate, inheriting a swelling budget that lacks sufficient oversight and strategic foresight.
The writer is professor of international relations at the School of International Service, American University. From 1993 to 1997, he was the senior White House official for national security budgets
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
US pays price in power for Iraq role
US pays price in power for Iraq role
By Daniel Dombey in Washington and Stephen Fidler in London
Published: March 18 2008 19:19 | Last updated: March 18 2008 19:19
US power and prestige around the world continues to suffer from the war in Iraq and its aftermath, and the next president will struggle to repair the damage, many foreign policy specialists argue. But the Bush administration continues to defend its decision to launch the war five years ago on Tuesday, and prominent voices argue that a decision to withdraw US forces soon would send an unfortunate signal to the west's adversaries.
"A rapid withdrawal would be a demonstration in the region of the impotence of western power," Henry Kissinger, the former Republican secretary of state, told Der Spiegel last month. "Hamas, Hizbollah and al-Qaeda would achieve a more dominant role and the ability of western nations to shape events would be sharply reduced," he said.
But as long as more than 100,000 troops remain in Iraq, the US military will remain stretched. "In the short term, there is not a lot of spare capacity," says Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College, London.
Bush administration officials disagree. "We are confident that we have the forces to deal with whatever threats on a global basis may or are likely to arise; we are capable of dealing with Iraq and with the global situation as it presents [itself]," says a top official speaking on condition of anonymity.
But the US has also ceded influence in places where military power would not be contemplated, Sir Lawrence says. "I think they have lost a lot of ground in other parts of the world, certainly in Asia and in Latin America, both of which are as important if not more so than the Middle East."
He says that Washington's focus on Iraq has allowed others, including China, Russia and Iran, America's main strategic adversary in the region, to step into the vacuum – although Russia would have been more assertive and China more influential anyway, even without the Iraq war.
In an assessment last year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded that "the restoration of American strategic authority" lost in the Iraq war and its aftermath would take "much longer than the mere installation of a new [US] president".
Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state under Bill Clinton says: "The global consequences [of the war] certainly include a significant diminution of the trust and confidence and support for US foreign policy around the world and that, I think, is going to take quite some time to repair."
Mr Talbott argued that earlier US presidents had, like Mr Bush, used unilateral American power in dealing with foreign policy challenges but had been "more prudent" in doing so, and had "leveraged" that power by working more extensively with international institutions and generating goodwill for the US. "And this administration failed to do that big time."
The financial burden of the Iraq war – estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost the US government alone $1,300bn-$2,000bn by 2017 – will also constrain foreign policy. "There has always been a correlation between the strength of the American economy and the strength of the US, and that strength has diminished," Mr Talbott says.
The war has also worsened US relations with Turkey, so far failed to "remake" the Middle East in the positive way some proponents imagined, and contributed to higher world oil prices, many experts now say.
But what about Iraq? In 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defence secretary, outlined three reasons for the invasion: "One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people."
But coalition forces found Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, apart from a few aged containers of chemical agent – though US officials still argue that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to develop such weapons and would have done so, given the chance.
On terrorism, an unclassified summary of a recent study of classified Iraqi documents by the US Institute for Defense Analyses "found no 'smoking gun' (ie direct link) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda". It says that the "regime's use of terrorism was standard practice", but that Iraqi citizens were its chief target.
And while Saddam is no longer around to repress his people, the invasion and its aftermath have extracted a heavy human cost. The violence that followed has taken, by conservative estimates, over 100,000 lives.
"The cost has been very high, has been high to Iraqis above all, has been high to US and coalition forces . . . but we believe that the cost of not taking this step had been and would continue to be very high as well," the senior US official said. "The country is on the path to greater stability, greater security, and ultimately [to becoming] an Iraq that does not pose a threat to its neighbours," he added.
It is an assessment that meets less than universal agreement. Mr Talbott says Iraq has "gone from being a unitary state, a grotesque and brutal dictatorship, to teetering on the brink of being a failed state . . . or a power vacuum masquerading as a state or a cluster of would-be states".
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Daniel Dombey in Washington and Stephen Fidler in London
Published: March 18 2008 19:19 | Last updated: March 18 2008 19:19
US power and prestige around the world continues to suffer from the war in Iraq and its aftermath, and the next president will struggle to repair the damage, many foreign policy specialists argue. But the Bush administration continues to defend its decision to launch the war five years ago on Tuesday, and prominent voices argue that a decision to withdraw US forces soon would send an unfortunate signal to the west's adversaries.
"A rapid withdrawal would be a demonstration in the region of the impotence of western power," Henry Kissinger, the former Republican secretary of state, told Der Spiegel last month. "Hamas, Hizbollah and al-Qaeda would achieve a more dominant role and the ability of western nations to shape events would be sharply reduced," he said.
But as long as more than 100,000 troops remain in Iraq, the US military will remain stretched. "In the short term, there is not a lot of spare capacity," says Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College, London.
Bush administration officials disagree. "We are confident that we have the forces to deal with whatever threats on a global basis may or are likely to arise; we are capable of dealing with Iraq and with the global situation as it presents [itself]," says a top official speaking on condition of anonymity.
But the US has also ceded influence in places where military power would not be contemplated, Sir Lawrence says. "I think they have lost a lot of ground in other parts of the world, certainly in Asia and in Latin America, both of which are as important if not more so than the Middle East."
He says that Washington's focus on Iraq has allowed others, including China, Russia and Iran, America's main strategic adversary in the region, to step into the vacuum – although Russia would have been more assertive and China more influential anyway, even without the Iraq war.
In an assessment last year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded that "the restoration of American strategic authority" lost in the Iraq war and its aftermath would take "much longer than the mere installation of a new [US] president".
Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state under Bill Clinton says: "The global consequences [of the war] certainly include a significant diminution of the trust and confidence and support for US foreign policy around the world and that, I think, is going to take quite some time to repair."
Mr Talbott argued that earlier US presidents had, like Mr Bush, used unilateral American power in dealing with foreign policy challenges but had been "more prudent" in doing so, and had "leveraged" that power by working more extensively with international institutions and generating goodwill for the US. "And this administration failed to do that big time."
The financial burden of the Iraq war – estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost the US government alone $1,300bn-$2,000bn by 2017 – will also constrain foreign policy. "There has always been a correlation between the strength of the American economy and the strength of the US, and that strength has diminished," Mr Talbott says.
The war has also worsened US relations with Turkey, so far failed to "remake" the Middle East in the positive way some proponents imagined, and contributed to higher world oil prices, many experts now say.
But what about Iraq? In 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defence secretary, outlined three reasons for the invasion: "One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people."
But coalition forces found Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, apart from a few aged containers of chemical agent – though US officials still argue that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to develop such weapons and would have done so, given the chance.
On terrorism, an unclassified summary of a recent study of classified Iraqi documents by the US Institute for Defense Analyses "found no 'smoking gun' (ie direct link) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda". It says that the "regime's use of terrorism was standard practice", but that Iraqi citizens were its chief target.
And while Saddam is no longer around to repress his people, the invasion and its aftermath have extracted a heavy human cost. The violence that followed has taken, by conservative estimates, over 100,000 lives.
"The cost has been very high, has been high to Iraqis above all, has been high to US and coalition forces . . . but we believe that the cost of not taking this step had been and would continue to be very high as well," the senior US official said. "The country is on the path to greater stability, greater security, and ultimately [to becoming] an Iraq that does not pose a threat to its neighbours," he added.
It is an assessment that meets less than universal agreement. Mr Talbott says Iraq has "gone from being a unitary state, a grotesque and brutal dictatorship, to teetering on the brink of being a failed state . . . or a power vacuum masquerading as a state or a cluster of would-be states".
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Iraq war costs inspire shock and awe
Iraq war costs inspire shock and awe
By Stephen Fidler in London
Published: March 17 2008 17:18 | Last updated: March 17 2008 20:03
Six months before the start of the US led-invasion, Larry Lindsey, then White House economic adviser, estimated that the war in Iraq could cost as much as $200bn.
The claim, which cost Mr Lindsey his job, was dismissed as baloney by Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary whose own estimate was $50bn to $60bn. Andrew Natsios, head of the Agency for International Development, estimated the reconstruction of Iraq would cost the US $1.7bn (€1.1bn, £849m).
These estimates have proved to be what the war's critics say is just one of many grievous miscalculations. The Iraq war will be five years old on Tuesday, and serious estimates suggest it will be, with the exception of the second world war, the most costly in US history. Two academics estimate the government is spending $12bn a month in Iraq, while the Joint Economic Committee of Congress says the war has so far cost a US family of four $16,900, a bill that could rise to $37,000 by 2017.
The most conservative estimate of the war's cost comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, whose remit limits its analysis to US government spending. Up to September 30, the end of the 2007 fiscal year, it says $413bn was spent on Iraq. From then until the end of 2017, it calculates overall spending on Iraq and Afghanistan at $570bn-$1,055bn, depending on how quickly troop numbers are reduced. If three-quarters of the budget is spent on Iraq, the ratio of recent years, future direct budgetary costs would be a further $428bn to $788bn.
Interest payments on debt raised so far and attributable to the Iraq war would cost $290bn up to 2017, with a further $131bn to $218bn covering spending over the next 10 years. This would bring the US government bill until 2017 for Iraq to $1,300bn-$2,000bn.
The JEC, chaired by Democratic senator Charles Schumer of New York, attempts to add economic costs to the US, including the displacement of productive investment, interest paid to foreigners, and oil price increases, which add a further $700bn so far. Until 2017, assuming US troop numbers in Iraq fall to 55,000 by 2013 and stay at that level, the cost grows to $2,800bn in 2007 dollars.
A higher estimate comes in a new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University lecturer who was a senior official during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.
Stiglitz and Bilmes note more soldiers are surviving than in past wars because of better armour and medical care. Some 4,000 soldiers have been killed but another 60,000 have been airlifted home, wounded, injured, or seriously ill. The ratio of combat injuries to combat deaths was 2.6:1 in Vietnam; in Iraq and Afghanistan it is 7:1 and, including non-combat injuries, it rises to 15:1.
The authors project that 791,000 troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will claim disability compensation and benefits, noting that 39 per cent of the 700,000 troops who fought in the (brief) 1991 Gulf war claim disability. They estimate these costs from Iraq alone will be $371bn to $630bn. The extra costs to the defence budget – they estimate from $66bn to $267bn – come from the need to reset and replenish a military in which equipment has been used up at six to 10 times normal rates and human capital has been exhausted.
Their government spending estimate for the war comes to $1,292bn-$2,039bn, rising to $1,754bn-$2,655bn if interest is added.
To this, Stiglitz and Bilmes add social costs not paid by the government, including the loss of productive capacity of those killed or wounded and quality of life impairments. These, they estimate, would amount to $295bn-$415bn for Iraq and Afghanistan
Finally, they add macro-economic costs deriving from higher oil prices and other effects including the impact on the economy of higher interest costs. For both Iraq and Afghanistan, they calculate this would come to between $187bn and $1,900bn. Yet, these estimates do not cover the cost outside the US (including the £20.1bn of budgetary and social costs they estimate will have fallen to the UK up until 2010).
Ms Bilmes, who says the book leaves others to estimate the war's benefits, describes the book's 'three trillion' headline number as very conservative. She notes that the US federal government spent $108m last year on research into autism, a condition affecting one in 150 children. "We spend that in 4½ hours in Iraq. I'm sure, if they knew that, people would say it was wrong."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Stephen Fidler in London
Published: March 17 2008 17:18 | Last updated: March 17 2008 20:03
Six months before the start of the US led-invasion, Larry Lindsey, then White House economic adviser, estimated that the war in Iraq could cost as much as $200bn.
The claim, which cost Mr Lindsey his job, was dismissed as baloney by Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary whose own estimate was $50bn to $60bn. Andrew Natsios, head of the Agency for International Development, estimated the reconstruction of Iraq would cost the US $1.7bn (€1.1bn, £849m).
These estimates have proved to be what the war's critics say is just one of many grievous miscalculations. The Iraq war will be five years old on Tuesday, and serious estimates suggest it will be, with the exception of the second world war, the most costly in US history. Two academics estimate the government is spending $12bn a month in Iraq, while the Joint Economic Committee of Congress says the war has so far cost a US family of four $16,900, a bill that could rise to $37,000 by 2017.
The most conservative estimate of the war's cost comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, whose remit limits its analysis to US government spending. Up to September 30, the end of the 2007 fiscal year, it says $413bn was spent on Iraq. From then until the end of 2017, it calculates overall spending on Iraq and Afghanistan at $570bn-$1,055bn, depending on how quickly troop numbers are reduced. If three-quarters of the budget is spent on Iraq, the ratio of recent years, future direct budgetary costs would be a further $428bn to $788bn.
Interest payments on debt raised so far and attributable to the Iraq war would cost $290bn up to 2017, with a further $131bn to $218bn covering spending over the next 10 years. This would bring the US government bill until 2017 for Iraq to $1,300bn-$2,000bn.
The JEC, chaired by Democratic senator Charles Schumer of New York, attempts to add economic costs to the US, including the displacement of productive investment, interest paid to foreigners, and oil price increases, which add a further $700bn so far. Until 2017, assuming US troop numbers in Iraq fall to 55,000 by 2013 and stay at that level, the cost grows to $2,800bn in 2007 dollars.
A higher estimate comes in a new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University lecturer who was a senior official during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.
Stiglitz and Bilmes note more soldiers are surviving than in past wars because of better armour and medical care. Some 4,000 soldiers have been killed but another 60,000 have been airlifted home, wounded, injured, or seriously ill. The ratio of combat injuries to combat deaths was 2.6:1 in Vietnam; in Iraq and Afghanistan it is 7:1 and, including non-combat injuries, it rises to 15:1.
The authors project that 791,000 troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will claim disability compensation and benefits, noting that 39 per cent of the 700,000 troops who fought in the (brief) 1991 Gulf war claim disability. They estimate these costs from Iraq alone will be $371bn to $630bn. The extra costs to the defence budget – they estimate from $66bn to $267bn – come from the need to reset and replenish a military in which equipment has been used up at six to 10 times normal rates and human capital has been exhausted.
Their government spending estimate for the war comes to $1,292bn-$2,039bn, rising to $1,754bn-$2,655bn if interest is added.
To this, Stiglitz and Bilmes add social costs not paid by the government, including the loss of productive capacity of those killed or wounded and quality of life impairments. These, they estimate, would amount to $295bn-$415bn for Iraq and Afghanistan
Finally, they add macro-economic costs deriving from higher oil prices and other effects including the impact on the economy of higher interest costs. For both Iraq and Afghanistan, they calculate this would come to between $187bn and $1,900bn. Yet, these estimates do not cover the cost outside the US (including the £20.1bn of budgetary and social costs they estimate will have fallen to the UK up until 2010).
Ms Bilmes, who says the book leaves others to estimate the war's benefits, describes the book's 'three trillion' headline number as very conservative. She notes that the US federal government spent $108m last year on research into autism, a condition affecting one in 150 children. "We spend that in 4½ hours in Iraq. I'm sure, if they knew that, people would say it was wrong."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Poll shows Palestinians now favor Hamas over Fatah
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-hamas18mar18,0,877627.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Poll shows Palestinians now favor Hamas over Fatah
The militant group, which opposes peace talks and Israel, has reversed a two-year decline in popularity.
By Richard Boudreaux
March 18, 2008
JERUSALEM — During three months of foundering peace talks overshadowed by violence, the U.S.-backed Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has lost popular support and is now viewed as less legitimate than the Islamist government of rival group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to a poll released Monday.
The survey is the latest sign that the Bush administration's effort to shore up secular Palestinian leaders and isolate Hamas is failing. That effort, part of a strategy to stabilize the Middle East through an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, includes diplomatic support and promises of economic aid to the West Bank.
Polling data collected in the West Bank and Gaza this month show that Hamas, which rejects peace talks and continues to fight Israel, has gained sharply in popularity since December, reversing a two-year decline.
The poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent think tank the administration has cited in the past to make the case that its strategy in the region is working.
According to the poll, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would receive 47% of the vote if the Palestinian Authority held presidential elections today, compared with 46% for the U.S.-backed incumbent, Mahmoud Abbas.
The center's polling in December showed Abbas defeating Haniyeh in such an election by 56% to 37%.
Haniyeh was prime minister in a power-sharing government that Abbas dissolved in June after Hamas gunmen evicted Abbas' Fatah-led security forces from Gaza. Abbas completed the violent split by appointing a West Bank government led by former World Bank economist Salam Fayyad.
Hamas' armed takeover in Gaza badly hurt the movement's popularity. When pollsters asked in December which Palestinian government was the legitimate authority, 38% of the respondents said Fayyad's and 30% said Haniyeh's.
In this month's poll, 34% said Haniyeh's government was the legitimate one; 29% said it was Fayyad's. Nearly one-fourth said both governments were illegitimate.
"This is a major shift in Hamas' favor," said Khalil Shikaki, head of the survey group. "Abbas and Fayyad had a six-month window of opportunity to take advantage of their support. Last summer Hamas was shunned. It had lost the ability to sell its political line. Now it's regaining that ability, at the expense of Abbas and his team."
Shikaki and other Palestinian analysts attributed the turnabout to several factors:
The current peace talks, launched by President Bush in November, have failed to stop Israel's military incursions and airstrikes in Gaza. Nor have they halted the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; eased Israel's security checkpoints there; or made evident progress on the big issues of a final peace accord, such as the borders of an independent Palestinian state and the status of Palestinian refugees.
Meanwhile, Hamas has boldly reasserted itself. In January it demolished parts of a wall along the Gazan-Egyptian border, enabling Palestinians to leave en masse to stock up on goods made scarce by an Israeli blockade of Gaza. Later, Hamas carried out its first suicide attack in Israel in more than three years and stepped up rocket attacks on Israel during a five-day Israeli incursion early this month that left more than 120 Palestinian militants and civilians dead in Gaza.
To Palestinians, "these developments managed to present Hamas as successful in breaking the siege and as a victim of Israeli attacks," the survey's authors wrote. "These also presented . . . Abbas and his Fatah faction as impotent, unable to change the bitter reality in the West Bank" or end the Israeli occupation through diplomacy.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that Israel and the Palestinians had not done "nearly enough" to meet peacemaking obligations.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted Monday that Israel would continue to build Jewish homes in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians, despite Rice's objections to the project as an obstacle to peace talks.
"Abbas' problem is that for him, there is no other path than negotiations with Israel," said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank. "Israel has given him little to show for it, so he is trapped, and Palestinians feel it."
The survey, which queried 1,270 Palestinians in the wake of the fighting early this month, showed Hamas has regained the popular support it had on the eve of winning the 2006 parliamentary elections and steadily lost after forming a government.
In a new parliamentary election, Fatah would defeat Hamas by a margin of 42% to 35%, according to the poll, but the gap is less than half what it was in December.
The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
boudreaux@latimes.com
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.
From the Los Angeles Times
Poll shows Palestinians now favor Hamas over Fatah
The militant group, which opposes peace talks and Israel, has reversed a two-year decline in popularity.
By Richard Boudreaux
March 18, 2008
JERUSALEM — During three months of foundering peace talks overshadowed by violence, the U.S.-backed Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has lost popular support and is now viewed as less legitimate than the Islamist government of rival group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to a poll released Monday.
The survey is the latest sign that the Bush administration's effort to shore up secular Palestinian leaders and isolate Hamas is failing. That effort, part of a strategy to stabilize the Middle East through an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, includes diplomatic support and promises of economic aid to the West Bank.
Polling data collected in the West Bank and Gaza this month show that Hamas, which rejects peace talks and continues to fight Israel, has gained sharply in popularity since December, reversing a two-year decline.
The poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent think tank the administration has cited in the past to make the case that its strategy in the region is working.
According to the poll, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would receive 47% of the vote if the Palestinian Authority held presidential elections today, compared with 46% for the U.S.-backed incumbent, Mahmoud Abbas.
The center's polling in December showed Abbas defeating Haniyeh in such an election by 56% to 37%.
Haniyeh was prime minister in a power-sharing government that Abbas dissolved in June after Hamas gunmen evicted Abbas' Fatah-led security forces from Gaza. Abbas completed the violent split by appointing a West Bank government led by former World Bank economist Salam Fayyad.
Hamas' armed takeover in Gaza badly hurt the movement's popularity. When pollsters asked in December which Palestinian government was the legitimate authority, 38% of the respondents said Fayyad's and 30% said Haniyeh's.
In this month's poll, 34% said Haniyeh's government was the legitimate one; 29% said it was Fayyad's. Nearly one-fourth said both governments were illegitimate.
"This is a major shift in Hamas' favor," said Khalil Shikaki, head of the survey group. "Abbas and Fayyad had a six-month window of opportunity to take advantage of their support. Last summer Hamas was shunned. It had lost the ability to sell its political line. Now it's regaining that ability, at the expense of Abbas and his team."
Shikaki and other Palestinian analysts attributed the turnabout to several factors:
The current peace talks, launched by President Bush in November, have failed to stop Israel's military incursions and airstrikes in Gaza. Nor have they halted the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; eased Israel's security checkpoints there; or made evident progress on the big issues of a final peace accord, such as the borders of an independent Palestinian state and the status of Palestinian refugees.
Meanwhile, Hamas has boldly reasserted itself. In January it demolished parts of a wall along the Gazan-Egyptian border, enabling Palestinians to leave en masse to stock up on goods made scarce by an Israeli blockade of Gaza. Later, Hamas carried out its first suicide attack in Israel in more than three years and stepped up rocket attacks on Israel during a five-day Israeli incursion early this month that left more than 120 Palestinian militants and civilians dead in Gaza.
To Palestinians, "these developments managed to present Hamas as successful in breaking the siege and as a victim of Israeli attacks," the survey's authors wrote. "These also presented . . . Abbas and his Fatah faction as impotent, unable to change the bitter reality in the West Bank" or end the Israeli occupation through diplomacy.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that Israel and the Palestinians had not done "nearly enough" to meet peacemaking obligations.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted Monday that Israel would continue to build Jewish homes in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians, despite Rice's objections to the project as an obstacle to peace talks.
"Abbas' problem is that for him, there is no other path than negotiations with Israel," said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank. "Israel has given him little to show for it, so he is trapped, and Palestinians feel it."
The survey, which queried 1,270 Palestinians in the wake of the fighting early this month, showed Hamas has regained the popular support it had on the eve of winning the 2006 parliamentary elections and steadily lost after forming a government.
In a new parliamentary election, Fatah would defeat Hamas by a margin of 42% to 35%, according to the poll, but the gap is less than half what it was in December.
The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
boudreaux@latimes.com
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.
Clinton seeks to end war 'we cannot win'
Clinton seeks to end war 'we cannot win'
By Joseph Curl and Donald Lambro
March 18, 2008
'WELL WORTH THE EFFORT': Vice President Dick Cheney, who defended the war yesterday, had to leave the protected Green Zone to meet with Shi'ite political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and other officials in Iraq. (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday called for a U.S. troop pullout from a war that "we cannot win," as Sen. John McCain and Vice President Dick Cheney spent the day in Baghdad, touting security improvements and pledging to maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq.
Just days before the five-year anniversary of the war's start, Mrs. Clinton said Mr. McCain and the vice president are responsible for a war that has reduced U.S. military and economic strength, damaged America"s reputation abroad and could ultimately cost more than $1 trillion.
"They both want to keep us tied to another country's civil war, a war we cannot win," the Democratic presidential aspirant said in a speech at George Washington University in the District. "That in a nutshell is the Bush-McCain Iraq policy: Don't learn from your mistakes, repeat them."
The senator from New York said she wants to begin bringing U.S. troops home within 60 days of her taking office in January and took aim at Mr. McCain, who recently said U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for 100 years, just as in South Korea, Japan and Germany.
"Senator McCain and President Bush claim withdrawal is defeat. Well, let's be clear, withdrawal is not defeat. Defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years," she said.
In Baghdad, Mr. McCain ridiculed Mrs. Clinton's 60-day plan as he met with top U.S. military advisers, Iraqi government officials and sectarian leaders: "I just think what that means is al Qaeda wins."
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said the United States must do the exact opposite: maintain its commitment in Iraq, where a U.S.-Iraq military operation is under way to clear al Qaeda from its last urban stronghold of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
"We recognize that al Qaeda is on the run, but they are not defeated," the senator said after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "Al Qaeda continues to pose a great threat to the security and very existence of Iraq as a democracy. So we know there's still a lot more of work to be done."
Mr. McCain touted the dramatic drop in violence since President Bush added 30,000 troops, a plan he staunchly supported. Attacks have fallen by about 60 percent since last February, when the troop surge began, the U.S. military said.
But terror attacks spiked across the country yesterday: A female suicide bomber killed more than 40 people in the holy Shi'ite city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. The capital was also torn by new violence. A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers and a minibus packed with explosives killed three persons and wounded eight others.
Shortly after the vice president's arrival yesterday, explosions went off near the heavily fortified Green Zone. U.S. helicopter gunships circled central Baghdad as Mr. Cheney later traveled outside the secure zone for several meetings.
Like Mr. McCain, Mr. Cheney, who spent last night in Baghdad after he met with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, said it is crucial that "we not quit before the job is done."
"It would be a mistake now to be so eager to draw down the force that we risk putting the outcome in jeopardy," the vice president said. "And I don't think we'll do that."
Mr. Cheney said that because of the surge, Iraqis are beginning to make political progress — a sore point with Gen. Petraeus, who recently complained that Iraqis lacked the political will to move forward.
"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago, and I can sense as a result of the progress that's been made since then that there have been some phenomenal changes, in terms of the overall situation, both with respect to the security situation, where Iraqi and American forces have done some very good work, as well as with respect to political developments here in Iraq," Mr. Cheney said.
He also defended the war, which began March 19, 2003. "If you look back on those five years, it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor ... and it has been well worth the effort," he said.
Mrs. Clinton's Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, was left on the sidelines yesterday but struck back at her from afar. Speaking on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, the Illinois senator called her a "latecomer" to the anti-war movement, noting her vote to authorize the war in 2002.
"It's not enough to stand up five years later in the heat of a campaign and say that you're ready on Day One — you have to be right on Day One. On the war in Iraq, Senator Clinton's judgment was wrong," he said.
But like Mrs. Clinton, he pledged a swift departure from Iraq if elected. "It was an unwise war, which is why I opposed it in 2002 and why I will bring this war to an end in 2009."
Mr. McCain and Mr. Cheney did not cross paths during the day as the vice president held a series of meetings with Iraqi leaders. He traveled outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone in a heavily armored motorcade to visit Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and powerful Shi'ite political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.
Mr. McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, two top supporters of his presidential ambitions. The trio is also stopping in Israel, Jordan, Britain and France.
Mr. Cheney is scheduled to stop in Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, Turkey and Oman on a nine-day tour.
By Joseph Curl and Donald Lambro
March 18, 2008
'WELL WORTH THE EFFORT': Vice President Dick Cheney, who defended the war yesterday, had to leave the protected Green Zone to meet with Shi'ite political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and other officials in Iraq. (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday called for a U.S. troop pullout from a war that "we cannot win," as Sen. John McCain and Vice President Dick Cheney spent the day in Baghdad, touting security improvements and pledging to maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq.
Just days before the five-year anniversary of the war's start, Mrs. Clinton said Mr. McCain and the vice president are responsible for a war that has reduced U.S. military and economic strength, damaged America"s reputation abroad and could ultimately cost more than $1 trillion.
"They both want to keep us tied to another country's civil war, a war we cannot win," the Democratic presidential aspirant said in a speech at George Washington University in the District. "That in a nutshell is the Bush-McCain Iraq policy: Don't learn from your mistakes, repeat them."
The senator from New York said she wants to begin bringing U.S. troops home within 60 days of her taking office in January and took aim at Mr. McCain, who recently said U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for 100 years, just as in South Korea, Japan and Germany.
"Senator McCain and President Bush claim withdrawal is defeat. Well, let's be clear, withdrawal is not defeat. Defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years," she said.
In Baghdad, Mr. McCain ridiculed Mrs. Clinton's 60-day plan as he met with top U.S. military advisers, Iraqi government officials and sectarian leaders: "I just think what that means is al Qaeda wins."
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said the United States must do the exact opposite: maintain its commitment in Iraq, where a U.S.-Iraq military operation is under way to clear al Qaeda from its last urban stronghold of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
"We recognize that al Qaeda is on the run, but they are not defeated," the senator said after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "Al Qaeda continues to pose a great threat to the security and very existence of Iraq as a democracy. So we know there's still a lot more of work to be done."
Mr. McCain touted the dramatic drop in violence since President Bush added 30,000 troops, a plan he staunchly supported. Attacks have fallen by about 60 percent since last February, when the troop surge began, the U.S. military said.
But terror attacks spiked across the country yesterday: A female suicide bomber killed more than 40 people in the holy Shi'ite city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. The capital was also torn by new violence. A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers and a minibus packed with explosives killed three persons and wounded eight others.
Shortly after the vice president's arrival yesterday, explosions went off near the heavily fortified Green Zone. U.S. helicopter gunships circled central Baghdad as Mr. Cheney later traveled outside the secure zone for several meetings.
Like Mr. McCain, Mr. Cheney, who spent last night in Baghdad after he met with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, said it is crucial that "we not quit before the job is done."
"It would be a mistake now to be so eager to draw down the force that we risk putting the outcome in jeopardy," the vice president said. "And I don't think we'll do that."
Mr. Cheney said that because of the surge, Iraqis are beginning to make political progress — a sore point with Gen. Petraeus, who recently complained that Iraqis lacked the political will to move forward.
"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago, and I can sense as a result of the progress that's been made since then that there have been some phenomenal changes, in terms of the overall situation, both with respect to the security situation, where Iraqi and American forces have done some very good work, as well as with respect to political developments here in Iraq," Mr. Cheney said.
He also defended the war, which began March 19, 2003. "If you look back on those five years, it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor ... and it has been well worth the effort," he said.
Mrs. Clinton's Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, was left on the sidelines yesterday but struck back at her from afar. Speaking on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, the Illinois senator called her a "latecomer" to the anti-war movement, noting her vote to authorize the war in 2002.
"It's not enough to stand up five years later in the heat of a campaign and say that you're ready on Day One — you have to be right on Day One. On the war in Iraq, Senator Clinton's judgment was wrong," he said.
But like Mrs. Clinton, he pledged a swift departure from Iraq if elected. "It was an unwise war, which is why I opposed it in 2002 and why I will bring this war to an end in 2009."
Mr. McCain and Mr. Cheney did not cross paths during the day as the vice president held a series of meetings with Iraqi leaders. He traveled outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone in a heavily armored motorcade to visit Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and powerful Shi'ite political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.
Mr. McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, two top supporters of his presidential ambitions. The trio is also stopping in Israel, Jordan, Britain and France.
Mr. Cheney is scheduled to stop in Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, Turkey and Oman on a nine-day tour.
Defense Trade Currents: Clinton legacy of draconian cuts in military force levels continues
Defense Trade Currents
By William R. Hawkins
The Washington Times | 3/18/2008
The legacy of the draconian cuts in military force levels and procurement during the 1990s continues to cast a pall over U.S. national security planning. That American soldiers and Marines have been overstretched by repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan is well-known, and steps are being taken to expand their strength. It is not just the combat forces, however, but the defense industry upon which they depend for arms and equipment, that also needs to be reconstituted.
The "procurement holiday" of the Clinton administration cost the defense industrial base a million jobs. The Pentagon promoted a consolidation of firms and elimination of "excess" capacity. This reform was supposed to improve efficiency but it also reduced domestic competition. Now, to stimulate competition, or even just access sufficient capacity, foreign firms are invited to supply U.S. forces with hardware. The most recent example is the awarding of a $35 billion U.S. Air Force contract for 179 new KC-45A aerial refueling tankers based on the Airbus A330 airliner built by European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). Boeing has built every previous USAF tanker and has won contracts for its KC-767 tankers from Japan and Italy. But it lost the military competition at home to the foreign firm that is also its main global rival in the commercial airliner sector.
The USAF contract comes at a critical time for EADS. Its A380 "superjumbo" airline project is well behind schedule, and there have been problems in the Airbus A350 midsized airliner project (crucial to its future battles with Boeing), and in its A400M military airlifter. EADS is Europe's largest defense contractor yet is much smaller than Boeing because Europe went on an even deeper disarmament slide after the Cold War and has done little to reverse course.
The once-mighty NATO armies deployed to stop a Soviet blitzkrieg across Germany have melted away to where they can hardly maintain a few brigades in Afghanistan to fight lightly armed insurgents. European firms are desperate for American taxpayers to bail them out with military contracts. The question is: Can the United States depend on a steady supply of production, including decades of space parts and upgrades, from foreign industries in decline — and where military investment and research are funded at only a fraction of what America devotes to defense?
Faced with adversity, how defense contracts affect the larger economy is given great attention in Europe. When an American firm sells military equipment in Europe, it must provide "offsets" against the cost of the contract. Such offsets include mandatory co-production, licensed production, subcontractor production, technology transfer, counter trade, and foreign investment.
The object is for the buyer to recoup as much as possible from the seller. According to a December report by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, "During 1993-2006, U.S. companies reported entering into 582 offset agreements with 42 countries related to export sales totaling $84.3 billion. These offset agreements were valued at $60 billion and equaled 71.2 percent of the export contract value." For European countries, the offsets equaled 97.7 percent of contract value.
At an offsets conference I attended in London last year, a Turkish official recounted how, in order to fulfill an offset, Sikorsky set up a joint venture with local partners that became its sole-source supplier of tail rotor assemblies — including for helicopters sold to the U.S. military. Thus, an entire piece of the American defense industrial base was moved overseas.
The Airbus A330 has components built in Britain, Germany, France and Spain, the result of "work sharing" negotiations between the governments. This is not very efficient, but Airbus has received heavy government subsidizes to be more competitive in world markets. The United States is still pursuing action at the World Trade Organization against EADS, alleging illegal export subsidies for its commercial aircraft programs. Yet, the case did not disqualify EADS from the USAF contract.
Boeing will protest the contract award on procedural grounds, but the debate should become broader to include an assessment of how such projects affect the nation's ability to meet military needs securely and reliably.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing March 12, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne conceded that industrial issues had not been taken into account when awarding the bid. "The way our industrial base is shrinking is something the Congress should take a look at," Mr. Wynne said.
There are "Buy America" provisions that apply to this project from which the country benefits. At least 50 percent of the value of the contract must be done in the United States, and EADS had to take an American partner to have any chance of winning the bid. As a result, the KC-45A's European-made airframe will be assembled in Alabama by Northrop-Grumman, its General Electric jet engines will be built in Ohio, and its refueling system in West Virginia.
Domestic content rules are vital to sustaining production capacity and should be expanded. The United States needs to use the leverage of its large market to promote "in-sourcing" by foreign firms to bring capital and technology into the American economy.
William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industrial Council in Washington, D.C.
By William R. Hawkins
The Washington Times | 3/18/2008
The legacy of the draconian cuts in military force levels and procurement during the 1990s continues to cast a pall over U.S. national security planning. That American soldiers and Marines have been overstretched by repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan is well-known, and steps are being taken to expand their strength. It is not just the combat forces, however, but the defense industry upon which they depend for arms and equipment, that also needs to be reconstituted.
The "procurement holiday" of the Clinton administration cost the defense industrial base a million jobs. The Pentagon promoted a consolidation of firms and elimination of "excess" capacity. This reform was supposed to improve efficiency but it also reduced domestic competition. Now, to stimulate competition, or even just access sufficient capacity, foreign firms are invited to supply U.S. forces with hardware. The most recent example is the awarding of a $35 billion U.S. Air Force contract for 179 new KC-45A aerial refueling tankers based on the Airbus A330 airliner built by European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). Boeing has built every previous USAF tanker and has won contracts for its KC-767 tankers from Japan and Italy. But it lost the military competition at home to the foreign firm that is also its main global rival in the commercial airliner sector.
The USAF contract comes at a critical time for EADS. Its A380 "superjumbo" airline project is well behind schedule, and there have been problems in the Airbus A350 midsized airliner project (crucial to its future battles with Boeing), and in its A400M military airlifter. EADS is Europe's largest defense contractor yet is much smaller than Boeing because Europe went on an even deeper disarmament slide after the Cold War and has done little to reverse course.
The once-mighty NATO armies deployed to stop a Soviet blitzkrieg across Germany have melted away to where they can hardly maintain a few brigades in Afghanistan to fight lightly armed insurgents. European firms are desperate for American taxpayers to bail them out with military contracts. The question is: Can the United States depend on a steady supply of production, including decades of space parts and upgrades, from foreign industries in decline — and where military investment and research are funded at only a fraction of what America devotes to defense?
Faced with adversity, how defense contracts affect the larger economy is given great attention in Europe. When an American firm sells military equipment in Europe, it must provide "offsets" against the cost of the contract. Such offsets include mandatory co-production, licensed production, subcontractor production, technology transfer, counter trade, and foreign investment.
The object is for the buyer to recoup as much as possible from the seller. According to a December report by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, "During 1993-2006, U.S. companies reported entering into 582 offset agreements with 42 countries related to export sales totaling $84.3 billion. These offset agreements were valued at $60 billion and equaled 71.2 percent of the export contract value." For European countries, the offsets equaled 97.7 percent of contract value.
At an offsets conference I attended in London last year, a Turkish official recounted how, in order to fulfill an offset, Sikorsky set up a joint venture with local partners that became its sole-source supplier of tail rotor assemblies — including for helicopters sold to the U.S. military. Thus, an entire piece of the American defense industrial base was moved overseas.
The Airbus A330 has components built in Britain, Germany, France and Spain, the result of "work sharing" negotiations between the governments. This is not very efficient, but Airbus has received heavy government subsidizes to be more competitive in world markets. The United States is still pursuing action at the World Trade Organization against EADS, alleging illegal export subsidies for its commercial aircraft programs. Yet, the case did not disqualify EADS from the USAF contract.
Boeing will protest the contract award on procedural grounds, but the debate should become broader to include an assessment of how such projects affect the nation's ability to meet military needs securely and reliably.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing March 12, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne conceded that industrial issues had not been taken into account when awarding the bid. "The way our industrial base is shrinking is something the Congress should take a look at," Mr. Wynne said.
There are "Buy America" provisions that apply to this project from which the country benefits. At least 50 percent of the value of the contract must be done in the United States, and EADS had to take an American partner to have any chance of winning the bid. As a result, the KC-45A's European-made airframe will be assembled in Alabama by Northrop-Grumman, its General Electric jet engines will be built in Ohio, and its refueling system in West Virginia.
Domestic content rules are vital to sustaining production capacity and should be expanded. The United States needs to use the leverage of its large market to promote "in-sourcing" by foreign firms to bring capital and technology into the American economy.
William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industrial Council in Washington, D.C.
Beware an Attack on Iran by Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research, March 17, 2008
Is the Bush administration ramping up for an attack on Iran? The signs seem to point in that direction. On March 11, Navy Adm. William Fallon, commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, retired early because of differences with Washington on Iran policy. And now, Dick Cheney's current Middle East tour may be designed to prepare our Arab allies for an imminent "preemptive" war against Iran.
Bush and Cheney have long been rattling the sabers in Iran's direction. The disaster they created in Iraq isn't going well, no matter how they spin it. They may feel that engaging the United States militarily in Iran would make it harder to elect anyone other than the seasoned military man, John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate just happens to be touring Iraq with Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the strongest advocates of a U.S. military strike on Iran. Lieberman is likely on McCain's short list for a vice-presidential running mate.
Admiral Fallon took early retirement after making comments that contradicted the Bush administration's aggressive stance on Iran. Fallon told the Arab television station Al Jazeera last fall that a "constant drumbeat of conflict" from the administration against Iran was "not helpful and not useful." After Fallon announced his retirement, the New York Times reported a senior administration official as saying Fallon's comments about U.S. Iran policy "left the perception he had a different foreign policy than the president." If Fallon wants to talk to Iran rather than attack it, then his policy differs from Bush's.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, however, has downplayed the significance of Admiral Fallon's abrupt retirement. Admiral Miller proclaimed recently, "In my view, this should not be seen as a sign – at all – towards any kind of conflict with Iran." Perhaps the chairman doth protest too much.
The White House has been spewing pugilistic rhetoric toward Iran. In spite of the unanimous conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran is not developing nukes, Bush immediately declared, "I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE estimate doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world - quite the contrary."
(See http://marjoriecohn.com/2007/12/bush-still-spinning-nukes-in-iran.html).
News reports on Monday announced that Dick Cheney is on a surprise weeklong visit to Iraq, Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Turkey. High on Cheney's agenda is the topic of U.S. policy toward Iran.
Connect the dots. They paint a very frightening picture.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law." Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.
Marjorie Cohn is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Marjorie Cohn
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8371
by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research, March 17, 2008
Is the Bush administration ramping up for an attack on Iran? The signs seem to point in that direction. On March 11, Navy Adm. William Fallon, commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, retired early because of differences with Washington on Iran policy. And now, Dick Cheney's current Middle East tour may be designed to prepare our Arab allies for an imminent "preemptive" war against Iran.
Bush and Cheney have long been rattling the sabers in Iran's direction. The disaster they created in Iraq isn't going well, no matter how they spin it. They may feel that engaging the United States militarily in Iran would make it harder to elect anyone other than the seasoned military man, John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate just happens to be touring Iraq with Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the strongest advocates of a U.S. military strike on Iran. Lieberman is likely on McCain's short list for a vice-presidential running mate.
Admiral Fallon took early retirement after making comments that contradicted the Bush administration's aggressive stance on Iran. Fallon told the Arab television station Al Jazeera last fall that a "constant drumbeat of conflict" from the administration against Iran was "not helpful and not useful." After Fallon announced his retirement, the New York Times reported a senior administration official as saying Fallon's comments about U.S. Iran policy "left the perception he had a different foreign policy than the president." If Fallon wants to talk to Iran rather than attack it, then his policy differs from Bush's.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, however, has downplayed the significance of Admiral Fallon's abrupt retirement. Admiral Miller proclaimed recently, "In my view, this should not be seen as a sign – at all – towards any kind of conflict with Iran." Perhaps the chairman doth protest too much.
The White House has been spewing pugilistic rhetoric toward Iran. In spite of the unanimous conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran is not developing nukes, Bush immediately declared, "I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE estimate doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world - quite the contrary."
(See http://marjoriecohn.com/2007/12/bush-still-spinning-nukes-in-iran.html).
News reports on Monday announced that Dick Cheney is on a surprise weeklong visit to Iraq, Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Turkey. High on Cheney's agenda is the topic of U.S. policy toward Iran.
Connect the dots. They paint a very frightening picture.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law." Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.
Marjorie Cohn is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Marjorie Cohn
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8371
Jihad, Islamism, and Non-Interventionism by Jeffrey Imm
Jihad, Islamism, and Non-Interventionism
By Jeffrey Imm
As seen in two recent books by counterterrorism analysts, the ideology of Non-Interventionism is gaining popularity with a segment of the American public. While Non-Interventionist ideology plays off the frustrations of some of the American public with America's handling of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the wrong answer to the confusion over global Jihad and Islamism. Two recently-released books by counterterrorism analysts offer a panacea of Non-Interventionism ideology: Michael Scheuer's "Marching Toward Hell - America and Islam After Iraq", and Marc Sageman's "Leaderless Jihad". The Non-Interventionist ideology represented by these authors does not critically examine the role of political Islamism in Islamist terrorism; therefore the authors conclude that an appeasement approach towards Islamism will improve American national security.
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In Michael Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he argues that Islamist terrorism is a mere reaction to American foreign policy, and he calls for a vehemently "non-interventionist... non-ideological" approach to Islamist terrorism in the world (p. 263). Mr. Scheuer fails to even acknowledge Islamism as an ideological challenge or threat (or even acknowledge a defined American enemy), arguing basically that Americans should do what Bin Laden tells us to do (pp. 149-150, 154-155), and withdraw our military forces from the Middle East (pp. 149, 232). Mr. Scheuer focuses his Non-Interventionist philosophy on trying to persuade Americans to abandon foreign allies, especially (but not only) Israel (pp. 148-150, 184-185, 217), and to abandon military activities in the Middle East (pp. 149, 232). Mr. Scheuer also throws a red-herring in his book to allow a superficial claim that he is not "totally" Non-Interventionist, by the offering of a scorched earth approach of "savagery" (p. 85-87, 196, 247) as an alternative to his Non-Interventionism ideology (against an enemy he won't define). However, it is clear that Mr. Scheuer's argument is focused specifically on persuading Americans to adopt a Non-Interventionist policy (p. 184-185, 263), which he also calls for in his various Internet postings on the web site AntiWar.com.
In Marc Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad", he argues that "global Islamist terrorism" (p.37) is really now more of a "social movement" (pp. 46, 66-70), rather than the actions of Islamist ideologues to further an ideological cause, and that when the "thrill" (p. 35) of such terrorism passes, the Jihadist threat will too. While Mr. Sageman's book is not as non-interventionist as Mr. Scheuer's, Mr. Sageman sees the "use of military as a last resort" only (pp. 152-153), but the basic message is the same as Mr. Scheuer's - America should mostly mind its own business when it comes to Islamism, for fear of providing fuel to the argument that America is at war with Islam itself (Scheuer pp. 155-157, Sageman pp. 98, 149). Mr. Sageman uses the term "Islamist" (p. 37) without actually defining political Islamism as an ideology or ideologies, and while his book provides a few paragraphs to address the Muslim Brotherhood ideologues and to address takfiri (pp. 37-39), he concludes that we should not "make too much" out of Islamist ideologies as in Mr. Sageman's view "terrorists rarely execute their operations as a direct result of their doctrines" (p.40). In Mr. Sageman's view, Al Qaeda is merely a "social movement" (p. 31, 33, 40).
In their Non-Interventionist arguments, neither Mr. Scheuer or Mr. Sageman draw a clear distinction between political Islamism and Islam; they simply conflate political Islamism and Islam to be the same thing. Therefore, they call for appeasing Islamism as an argument to avoid a war with Islam.
Both Non-Interventionist arguments address public concerns that are the result of failing to identify the enemy and to develop a comprehensive war strategy. As an alternative, Mr. Scheuer and Mr. Sagemen recommend "solutions" for American policy that would result in graver, more serious errors by ignoring the ideology of Islamism and by refusing to acknowledge that the threat of Islamist terrorism will continue, regardless of American foreign policy.
The Non-Interventionists fail to understand that two wrongs don't make a right.
1. America's Confusion over Jihad and Islamism Provides Fuel for Non-Interventionism
One of the great challenges in addressing the Jihadist threat is the ineffectively explained rationale to the American public as to "Why We Fight". Without an official government definition of specific enemies and a strategy to defeat them, individual efforts to define the threats of Jihad and Islamism provide only an educational band-aid, easily forgotten by the public in the endless barrage of news stories on the limited effectiveness of American operational tactics in military theaters. The September 18, 2001 Authorization for Military Force only referenced a reactive military action against those undefined groups responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
The failure to provide a detailed definition of the enemy and a strategy to defeat the enemy, combined with uneven operational tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, has led to a large portion of public calling for change in what it views as an endless reactive quagmire of foreign fighting. With the nation feeling secure from Jihadist terror attacks for over six years, the starkness of the 9/11 attacks has faded, and the lack of effective leadership on larger strategic issues has allowed such extremist positions as Non-Interventionism to be taken seriously by a frustrated public.
Furthermore, the role of Islamism as the root of Islamist terrorism is only addressed once in the 9/11 Commission report. The larger challenge of Islamism has not been addressed by American political leadership in a meaningful way, nor has it been widely recognized that Islamism itself, as an anti-freedom ideology, is a threat to democratic nations.
In the face of the continuing threats of global Islamist terrorism and the challenge of Islamism, the ideology of "Non-Interventionism" is offered by its adherents as a panacea that will provide peace in our time. Instead of defining the enemy and developing a strategy to combat them, Non-Interventionists seek to get Americans to abandon our values, turn on our allies, pretend that the enemy will leave us alone if we merely change our foreign policy, ignore the interconnected nature of modern globalism, and ignore what the enemies of freedom seek to achieve in the world.
2. Defining the Enemy as Fundamental to Addressing the Threat
2.1. The "America First" Denial of a Threat and Identifying a Scapegoat
Non-Interventionists have over time used a propaganda technique that involves dual tactics of denying that America is facing any type of global enemy and identifying a foreign scapegoat to blame for the concerns about any such enemy threats.
Prior to World War II, Charles Lindbergh used such tactics with his Non-Interventionist "America First Committee" organization to convince Americans that there was no threat from Nazi Germany and its fascist allies. On September 11, 1939, Charles Lindbergh sought to convince Americans that there was no fascist global threat that would impact America, stating that in the "European war", "there has been an over-increasing effort to force the United States into the conflict...." which "has been carried on by foreign interests" and the "groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration". In this same September 11, 1939 speech, Charles Lindbergh's scapegoating also included blaming America's concern regarding the war against Nazism on Jewish "ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government".
In our current times, Mr. Scheuer and Mr. Sageman deny the existence of an enemy threat from Islamist terrorism or from Islamist ideology. While Chapter 5 of Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell" is titled "And the Islamists' Fire Quietly Spreads", Mr. Scheuer does not define Islamism as an ideology or as an ideological threat, but rather mocks the "wild-eyed bogeyman of the imminent success of the Islamists' plan to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate" (p. 148) and mocks the "Cold Warriors" "term of choice-Islamofascist" (pp. 148-149). Mr. Sageman similarly questions the idea of any meaningful shared Islamist ideology (p. 40), and specifically warns against finding such an ideology, stating "[a] counterterrorism focus on Islamic ideology is dangerous" (p. 157).
Today's Non-Interventionists have also found a convenient scapegoat in Israel to misdirect Americans from the real threat. In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he picks up the "America First" mantle of Charles Lindbergh, ranting about "Israel-firsters", criticizing a so-called "neoconservative" plot that is a "blood-soaked, imperialist, win-one-for-Israel campaign in the Middle East"... by a "pro-Israel, U.S. governing elite" (Chapter 5, pp 148-149, 154). Per Mr. Scheuer, "U.S. support for Israel is costing blood and treasure" and "is a severe handicap for U.S. national security" (p. 217). On the Bill Maher television show, Mr. Scheuer has stated that regarding Israel, "I just don't think that it is worth an American life or an American dollar". In his February 27, 2008 Antiwar.com blog posting, Mr. Scheuer states that "pro-Israel American campaign funders will demand McCain, Obama, or Clinton defend the Jewish state by staying in Iraq no matter the cost; and each will do so because each operates under the delusion that U.S. and Israeli national-security interests are identical." Mr. Scheuer is convinced of numerous Israeli "clandestine" and "covert" activities within the United States which drives America to war, and claims the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as among such Israeli "clandestine" activities.
While less colorful in his comments, in Mr. Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad", he condemns America for its "sense of moral outrage" (pp. 154-156) against Islamists, and points to America's support of Israel as a "sore that continues to fester", and that "the U.S. government is seen as siding too closely with Israel, and complicit in Israeli operations against the Palestinians" (p. 155). Mr. Sageman also condemns "the Islamophobic press" for reporting when an "imam express[es] sympathy for terrorist aims" (p. 161).
This scapegoating technique by Non-Interventionists is a well-known approach in using misdirection to prevent discussion of an enemy ideology or ideologies. Non-Interventionists require both denial and scapegoating techniques, because the Non-Interventionist ideology is only plausible to the American public when global enemies can be denied and the known information about such enemies blamed on some nefarious scapegoat out to mislead them.
2.2. Relationship between Non-Interventionists and the Enemy
Such efforts at Non-Interventionism in modern America have frequently been supported by anti-freedom organizations with interests hostile to the United States.
In 1938, Nazi Germany awarded Non-Interventionist Charles Lindbergh (along with Henry Ford) the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal awarded by Nazi Germany to foreigners. Charles Lindbergh refused to return the Nazi medal to Germany as he stated that it would be "an unnecessary insult" to the German Nazi government. Moreover, Charles Lindbergh wrote Nazi Hermann Goring to thank him for the medal, asking Goring to convey his thanks to Adolf Hitler. Charles Lindbergh met with Nazi German air minister individuals, and was used to convey propaganda on the invincibility of Hitler's air strength; non-interventionist Lindbergh helped to convince the British government to appease Hitler.
In 2007, Islamist Osama Bin Laden praised Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer for his writings that call for Non-Interventionism against Islamism and changing American foreign policy to address Osama Bin Laden's goals. In his September 7, 2007 message promoting global Islamism, Osama Bin Laden stated: "And if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard." Mr. Scheuer is also enthusiastic in his praise of Islamist Osama Bin Laden as well. In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he lauds Osama Bin Laden's "piety" (p. 165), and refers to Osama Bin Laden as a "political genius" (p. 154), and an "ever-reliable guide" (p. 118).
In the same September 7, 2007 Bin Laden message, Islamist Osama Bin Laden condemns democracy and offers Islamism as an alternative to Americans: "as soon as the warmongering owners of the major corporations realize that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and begun (sic) to search for an alternative, and that this alternative is Islam". In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he similarly mocks offering democracy to Muslims as nothing more than a pointless effort "so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort" (p. 254). Non-Interventionist Scheuer sees Islamist Bin Laden as "urging Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164).
Like Charles Lindbergh before him, Mr. Scheuer seeks to convey his enemy-approved Non-Interventionist propaganda via world television, global Internet, and his books. Mr. Scheuer is a professor at Georgetown University, a news analyst for CBS News, and frequently appears on American national news programs as a commentator on counterterrorism subjects. Mr. Scheuer has recently appeared in Newsweek magazine in a uncritical interview, has appeared recently as a writer in the Washington Post, and has a series of Internet columns for websites such as Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com.
In comparing Michael Scheuer's Non-Interventionism versus Charles Lindbergh's Non-Interventionism, it is slightly unfair to Charles Lindbergh, as Lindbergh did not publicly advocate such Non-Interventionism after the nation was at war, let alone after the United States homeland was actually attacked (as Mr. Scheuer has done).
2.3. Definitions of Islamist Terrorism, Islamism, and the Non-Response by Non-Interventionists
Released in 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report provides a U.S. government official definition of "Islamist Terrorism" in the Report's Notes, Part 12, Note 3, page 562. The 9/11 Commission report states: "Islamist terrorism is an immediate derivative of Islamism. This term distinguishes itself from Islamic by the fact that the latter refers to a religion and culture". In addition, the 9/11 Commission report states that "Islamism is defined as 'an Islamic militant, anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic vision of Islam whose final aim is the restoration of the caliphate.' " This U.S. government commission document provides a specific link between "Islamist Terrorism" and "Islamism" that America's political leadership has since failed to further define, clarify, and develop a strategy to counter.
Non-Interventionists leverage the failure of American political leadership to follow up on the 9/11 Commission Report by misdirecting the public to focus only on American foreign policy issues, and avoiding discussion on Islamism as an ideology. It is not in the interests of Non-Interventionists to allow identification of an enemy ideology, because that would undermine their Non-Interventionist argument.
In the case of Mr. Scheuer, his Non-Interventionist argument is really to define Osama Bin Laden's enemies (in terms of American foreign policy) and so he avoids defining an American enemy. Mr. Scheuer is focused on trying to convince Americans that they need to be focused in distancing themselves from Bin Laden's other enemies (such as Israel) (pp. 250, 261). Mr. Scheuer states that "the United States is not the main enemy of bin Laden and other Islamists", and the Islamists' "primary enemy" is "the Muslim tyrannies that rule much of the Islamic world and Israel" (pp. 250, 261). So with Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist, foreign policy-based argument that Americans only need to care about Bin Laden's "primary" enemies, it is too much of an inconvenient truth for Mr. Scheuer to address the actual ideology of Islamism and its links to Islamist terrorism.
Mr. Sageman's Non-Interventionist argument claims that since Islamist terrorism is based on "social movement" activities, the ideology behind such Islamist acts is not important (pp. 31, 33, 40).
However, the Non-Interventionist arguments and the failure of American political leadership to fully address Islamism do not negate the very real existence of both Islamism and Islamist terrorism, as well as the links between the two. Non-Interventionist arguments don't even take into consideration the concerns of Muslims that reject Sharia, or that Muslims could accept anything other than Islamism. As previously pointed out, Non-Interventionist Scheuer argues that Islamist Bin Laden offers "liberty...in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164).
In October 2007, Wikipedia provided a concise definition for "Islamism" as "a term usually used to denote a set of political ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system and its teachings should be preeminent in all facets of society. It holds that Muslims must return to the original teachings and the early models of Islam, particularly by making Islamic law (sharia) the basis for all statutory law of society and by uniting politically, eventually in one state; and that western military, economic, political, social, or cultural influence in the Muslim world is un-Islamic and should be replaced by purely Islamic influences."
It is important to note that, contrary to popular confusion (included in that definition), Sharia is not the definition for "Islamic law", as it is not "Islamic law" for many Muslims. To many Muslims, Sharia is not "Islamic law" at all. There are many Muslims who oppose and do not recognize Sharia. In a recent article, Alex Alexiev, Vice President of Research at the Center for Security Policy, points out that Sharia law is not "Islamic law", except as interpreted by Islamists. Alex Alexiev states "shariah is mostly a post-Quranic, man-made medieval doctrine that is almost completely at odds with modern norms of human rights, political freedoms and international relations... and [s]hariah doctrine, though claiming to be derived from the Quran, is thus a politicized interpretation of the Muslim scriptures and other non-revealed sources" [Alexiev article, page 3]. Alex Alexiev further points out that "the word shariah is mentioned only once in the Quran, and not at all as a system of jurisprudence, but in its traditional meaning of the 'right path'" [Alexiev article, page 3]. Moreover, Muslim groups such as "Muslims Against Sharia" are advocates against such Islamist Sharia practices.
Islamism's anti-freedom ideology is a continuing threat to Muslims, as demonstrated by the numerous blasphemy laws, and abuses seen in Islamist law and government. The ongoing fighting by Islamists in Iraq underscores how Islamist terrorists have total disregard for the lives and welfare of other Muslims.
In summary, Islamism is a political ideology based on a politicized, theocratic version of Islam, with Sharia law as the basis for all aspects of life, government, and society. It is an "anti-democratic" movement, and it is another of the anti-freedom ideologies that Western society has found itself facing in the past century. Rather than a "nationalist" movement, Islamism seeks the "restoration of the caliphate", and Islamism is an internationalist political ideology. Islamism has numerous branches, as Islam itself has numerous branches; there are branches of Islamist political ideology including groups based on Wahhabism and Salafism (Sunni), Deobandism (Sunni), Muslim Brotherhood philosophies (Sunni), and Khumeinism (Shiite).
There have been some outstanding spokesmen who have made the effort to identify the problem and challenges raised by the Islamist ideology. One of these is Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, the founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Per Dr. Jasser, "This tactic of terror we are fighting will continue to exponentially regenerate itself as long as its fuel remains. The fuel is political Islam - Islamism. Islamism is effectively incubated in a culture like ours in the United States which stubbornly (to our own detriment) refuses to engage political Islam because of its invocation of a faith. The American people need leadership that not only understands the need to bring freedom and liberty to the world, but leadership ready to confront our Islamist enemies with the pathologies of their own ideas - leadership which can separate personal spiritual Islam from political Islam and genuinely engage liberty-minded anti-Islamist Muslims." Non-Interventionists have no intention of listening to the words of anti-Islamist Muslims such as Dr. Jasser. Non-Interventionists like Mr. Scheuer would prefer that Americans accept the Islamist propaganda message of Islamist Osama Bin Laden instead.
However, America is faced with twin challenges on this issue: (1) the unwillingness of American leadership to face up to the global issue of Islamism, and (2) the Non-Interventionist propaganda movement led by Mr. Scheuer and others. The strategic challenge for America remains addressing the impact of political Islamism -- as an overall ideology -- on Islamist terrorism (Jihad) and on our national security. Political Islamists and Islamist terrorist Osama Bin Laden share the same ultimate goal, as stated by Osama Bin Laden on October 22, 2007: "The greater state of Islam from the ocean to the ocean, Allah permitting."
Regarding Islamist terrorism, America's greatest problem has been an inability to see the forest through the trees - due to an endless monofocus on tactics, operations, groups, individuals -- without clearly acknowledging the identity and ideology of our enemy and developing a coherent strategy to defeat them. It is this flurry of confusion in the weeds that is leveraged by the Non-Interventionist appeasement argument. And in doing so, the Non-Interventionists have to convince America that it has no global enemy, despite the reality of the 9/11 attacks that we saw with our own eyes.
2.4. Non-Interventionist Logical Contortions to Avoid Naming an Enemy
Non-Interventionists approach the issue of national defense with a fixed agenda - denying that there is a need for America to have global military or strategic involvement in fighting an enemy. From that fixed position, Non-Interventionists will engage in logical contortions to avoid naming an enemy. So embarrassing contradictions will likely occur in their arguments, but these are readily brushed aside by the Non-Interventionists in the greater cause of avoiding conflict with an enemy.
In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he refers to Islamists, but won't define the Islamist ideology. Mr. Scheuer mocks the idea of an Islamist caliphate as a threat, even though Steven Emerson has pointed out that in a previous book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", that Mr. Scheuer references such Islamist goals for a caliphate as being "found in the annals of Islamic history" (Imperial Hubris, pp. 141-142). In that same book, Mr. Scheuer inadvertently identified an American enemy as "some of Islam" (Imperial Hubris, p. 249). But Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist arguments were intended to ignore such missteps in writing. As his "political genius" Osama Bin Laden has recommended, Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist point and ideology is clearly to avoid recognizing an enemy and threat to America other than American foreign policy actions that may offend Osama Bin Laden and Islamists (Marching Through Hell pp. 148-150).
Similarly, Mr. Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad" recognizes the existence of Islamist ideologies (pp. 37-39), only to tell us to not "make too much" out of these as they do not really affect Islamist terrorists actions (p. 40), and to warn us that "[a] counterterrorism focus on Islamic ideology is dangerous" (p. 157).
To avoid close scrutiny on why such Islamist ideologies should be a concern to America, the Non-Interventionists have a ready argument that all of the problems with Islamism are due to one singular problem: American foreign policy.
3. Non-Interventionism: U.S. Foreign Policy to Blame for Islamist Terrorism
3.1. Occidentalism and Non-Interventionists - Islamist Terrorism as a Reaction to U.S. Foreign Policy
In his book "Marching Toward Hell", Mr. Scheuer mocks those concerned about Islamism as "Cold Warriors" (p. 148), while adopting a Cold War mentality towards Islamism himself. In Mr. Scheuer's efforts to promote Non-Interventionism, his argument is that Islamist terrorism is exclusively a reaction to U.S. foreign policy. Since logical contortion is inconsequential to the larger Non-Interventionist cause of preventing America from recognizing an enemy, Mr. Scheuer does not care that such reactive thinking is indeed a Cold War mentality itself. Contradictions don't matter to the Non-Interventionist ideologue.
The term "occidentalism" is defined as "usually refer[ring] to stereotyped and sometimes dehumanizing views on the so-called Western world, including Europe, the United States, and Australia." In the case of the Non-Interventionist arguments, occidentalism refers to the views that western ideas such as western democracy, pluralism, and secularism are somehow destructive forces in the larger world, as viewed by non-western eyes.
So to understand Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist views on American foreign policy, Mr. Scheuer's occidentalist views on democracy, secularism, and pluralism must also be understood. Non-Interventionist Mr. Scheuer echoes Islamist Osama Bin Laden in regards to his contempt for democracy. As previously stated, in Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he mocks offering democracy to Muslims as nothing more than a pointless effort "so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort" (p. 254), and sees Islamist Bin Laden as "urging Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164). In addition, Mr. Scheuer decries the value of secularism as well, stating "in the Muslim world" (p. 139) that Muslims "regard secularism as inherently inferior to their way of life and an affront to their faith, indeed, as fighting words". (Mr. Scheuer sees no "hubris" himself in his speaking on behalf of "the Muslim world" or for all Muslims on this.) Moreover, Mr. Scheuer states that "[o]nly among the U.S. governing elite is multiculturalism an attainable goal" (p. 140).
With this occidentalist viewpoint, Mr. Scheuer provides a detailed argument that Islamist terrorism is the result of American foreign policy. In "Marching Toward Hell", Mr. Scheuer calls attention to six areas of "indictments" by Islamists regarding America's foreign policy (p. 149-150) that he insists on Americans keep "squarely in view":
"1. The U.S. military and civilian presence in the Arab Peninsula"
"2. Unqualified U.S. support for Israel"
"3. U.S. support for states oppressing Muslims, especially China, India, and Russia"
"4. U.S. exploitation of Muslim oil and suppression of its price"
"5. U.S. military presence in the Islamic world - Arabian Peninsula, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc."
"6. U.S. support, protection, and funding of Arab police states".
The basic thesis of Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist argument is that if America surrenders to Osama Bin Laden's demands on these "indictments", it will be spared from further Islamist terrorism. With such an argument, it is imperative for Mr. Scheuer to first completely deny the existence of any Islamist ideology or objectives, outside of a reaction to U.S. foreign policy, because the obvious question would be asked - what if the U.S. agreed to act on such "indictments", and Islamist terrorism continued and/or increased? Such occidentalist, Cold War thinking by Mr. Scheuer is essential to make such his Non-Interventionist argument sound plausible.
(I address each of these "indictments" in part 3.4.)
Mr. Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad" makes a similar, although far less sweeping Non-Interventionist argument, that Islamist terrorism is the reaction of U.S. foreign policy, by ignoring the impact of Islamism on actual terrorist actions (p. 40), demanding that Americans lose their "sense of moral outrage" against Islamist actions, and insisting on "[w]ithdrawl from Iraq is a necessary condition for diminishing the sense of moral outrage that Muslims feel" (pp. 154-155).
3.2. The Kernel of Truth in the Non-Interventionist Big Lie
American political leadership must never forget the following axiom: "It is never too late to do the right thing." Doing the right thing may be expensive, it may be difficult, it may even be embarrassing, but it still is always the right thing.
The Non-Interventionist argument is totally dependent on the unwillingness and lack of courage of America political leadership to do the right thing when it comes to Islamist terrorism and Islamism.
After the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Military Force and the initial military raids on Taliban and Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the next immediate act of American political leadership should have been to unequivocally identify and define the enemy and its ideology, to further investigate the links between Islamism and Islamist terrorism (per the 9/11 Commission Report), and to develop a comprehensive global blueprint strategy on addressing both Islamist terrorism and Islamism. In recognizing that it was facing a global conflict against this global enemy, all U.S. military, law enforcement, financial, diplomatic, energy resource planning, and communications would be based on such a blueprint strategy to defeat the enemy. Any other military operations, in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, would have to be evaluated and reviewed based on this blueprint strategy to determine if this was the most effective and appropriate use of resources to fight the defined global enemy behind Islamist terrorism.
It is never too late to do the right thing.
The kernel of truth that the Non-Interventionist big lie is dependent on - is the fact that American political leadership has not taken such a blueprint strategy approach to Islamist terrorism and Islamism, but has instead had a series of reactive-only, sometimes contradictory, actions in both military operations and foreign policy. Some of these reactive, operations-centric actions have confused both the American public and our allies. Some of these have created unnecessary foreign hostility. Most damaging of all, without a clearly defined enemy and a strategy towards that enemy, a reactive military and foreign policy approach can, at times, be inexplicable in terms of justification -- because by definition - it is reactive, not strategically based.
In Afghanistan, as I have previously addressed, we have had one side of the American government launching military attacks on the Taliban enemy, while we have another side of the same government stating that efforts to mainstream the Taliban into Afghanistan politics would be desirable. We can't effectively fight an enemy without defining the enemy, defining the enemy's ideology, and developing a coherent strategy to defeat the enemy. An operational tactic that views the anti-freedom ideology of Islamism as compatible with democracy simply does not understand either ideology. There is no question that there are plenty of embarrassing tactical and operational activities in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world that provide fodder for the Non-Interventionist ideology.
But it is never too late to do the right thing, and disprove the big lie that the Non-Interventionist ideology is dependent on.
3.3. Churchill's Lessons on Honor in Foreign Policy
The Non-Interventionist argument sums up to a craven "since we can't figure out how to define and fight Islamist terrorism, lets withdraw from the world and make certain we don't do anything to further offend Islamists, and pray they will leave us alone." When facing an unknown Nazi Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had the same idea and concerns in his day. As Neville Chamberlain wrote on September 27, 1938, "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing!" (The Gathering Storm, p. 282).
By being so paralyzed with fear to determine what the right thing was to do, the British government went down a path of appeasement towards Nazi Germany, seeking "peace in our time". As previously mentioned, the British government was in part persuaded by the Non-Interventionist Charles Lindbergh, who attested to false propaganda as to the invincibility of the Nazi air force, convincing the British government that appeasement was necessary, at a minimum to stall for time (The American Axis, pp. 173-176). But even after the disastrous appeasement of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and proved that it is indeed never to late to do the right thing.
In a twisted moment of irony, Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer attempts to hijack the words of Winston Churchill to augment his argument for appeasement towards Islamist terrorism, quoting Churchill in September 1936 that "we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries" (p. 270). Based on this, Mr. Scheuer makes his occidentalist argument that this proves how "American democracy and republicanism are unique and largely nonexportable", why American should take a Non-Interventionist position towards Islamism and Islamist terrorism, and why it should abandon its allies faced with this threat around the world.
In fact, Mr. Scheuer ignores that Winston Churchill actually addressed the challenge that Neville Chamberlain faced between appeasement and confrontation, war and peace, in dealing with the unknowns of such circumstances, and provided a guiding basis for future generations to consider when faced with these challenges.
In his 1948 book "The Gathering Storm" (pp. 286-287), Winston Churchill stated: "[t]here is, however, one helpful guide, namely, for a nation to keep its word and to act in accordance with its treaty obligations to allies. This guide is called honour." Churchill goes on to state that "the moment came when Honour pointed the path of Duty, and when also the right judgment of the facts at that time would have reinforced its dictates."
The Non-Interventionists would have Americans ignore the plain facts presented to us when our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, and would instead try to convince Americans to believe in a Non-Interventionist policy of ignoring enemy anti-freedom ideologies that was craven even on September 11, 1939, when Non-Interventionist Charles Lindbergh tried to sell it. As Neville Chamberlain was paralyzed with fear in the face of what Non-Interventionists claimed was invincible Nazi military power, so Non-Interventionists would have us believe in 2008 that America should retreat in the face of invincible Islamist power.
Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer writes that "[t]he geographical dispersal of our Islamist enemies also poses a daunting and nearly insurmountable obstacle to a U.S. victory", that "America could not field the number of military personnel needed to fight an offensive war in every place in the world troubled by Islamist fighters", that "the Muslim world outnumbers America by nearly five to one", and that "the American governing elite have bitten off far more than the country can chew" (p. 190). In fact, Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist argument keeps inconveniently slipping in the word "enemy" in his writing, when in other paragraphs he keeps insisting that there is no enemy for America to fight.
In the end, a critical examination of Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist argument shows that is reduced to nothing more than a craven appeal for surrender. But Mr. Scheuer does not merely seek America alone to surrender to Islamism and Islamist terrorism. Mr. Scheuer also seeks to get America to abandon its honor, and to abandon its allies around the world to Islamism and Islamist terrorism. Like Charles Lindbergh's well-earned Nazi medal, it is no wonder why Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist propaganda has gained the praise of Islamist Osama Bin Laden.
3.4. Terms of Surrender to Osama Bin Laden's Demands
In his book "Marching Toward Hell", Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer argues in denial of an Islamist enemy to America, and he insists that those Americans concerned about Islamism are seeking "victory over a foe that exists only in [their] mind" (p. xvi). Mr. Scheuer argues that Osama bin Laden's declarations of war (1996 and 1998) against the United States were "a defensive reaction to specific U.S. foreign policies and their impact in the Muslim world" (p. xiv), and America's failure is in not changing its foreign policies to surrender to Osama Bin Laden's demands.
Mr. Scheuer claims on the one hand to be an ultra-nationalist stating "the only country I care about is the United States" (p. 222), while on the other hand "the United States has no more right to exist than does Israel, Palestine, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, or Russia" (p. 28). This careless viewpoint regarding the existence of nations, some of which are American allies, provides Mr. Scheuer with his Non-Interventionist rationale as to why there is no dishonor in abandoning American global allies to fight Islamist terrorism alone. Per Mr. Scheuer, "America is simply in the way of Islamist forces and so prevents the attainment of their goals in the Islamic world; that is, to destroy the family-owned and U.S.-supported Muslim tyrannies that have ruled the region since 1945 and to destroy Israel" (p. 250). Per Mr. Scheuer, "the United States is not the main enemy of bin Laden and other Islamists" (p.250), therefore Mr. Scheuer argues that a Non-Isolationist approach to Islamism, and abandoning American allies, is the best course of action to ensure that Islamist terrorists will leave America alone.
Mr. Scheuer summarizes America's terms of surrender to global Islamism, as America appeasing Osama Bin Laden on six Islamist "indictments": "U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula; military presence in Muslim lands; unqualified support for Israel; support for Russia, China, and India against Muslims; theft of Muslim oil; and protection of Muslim tyrannies" (p. 98). I will disprove each of arguments for these terms of surrender in the following paragraphs.
Regarding "U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula", Mr. Scheuer argues that American efforts to defend its ally Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War with staging of military forces in Saudi Arabia was an unforgivable affront to Islamists, due to defiance of "Muhammad's prohibition against the presence of non-Muslims on the Arabian Peninsula" (p. 41). Mr. Scheuer argues that whenever the U.S. can ignore the needs of an ally nation, on the chance that it might offend any Islamist, the U.S. should choose the dishonorable path of abandoning allies in hopes of Islamist appeasement. The reality is that such an Islamist indictment of Americans on the Arabian Peninsula based on actions in the 1990s is nonsensical. American oil companies have been active, and invited into the Arabian Peninsula since 1938. But Mr. Scheuer would have us believe in the nonsensical argument that defending an ally nation in the 1990s was an unpardonable lack of foresight on America's part in not taking Islamist sensibilities into consideration.
In terms of "military presence in Muslim lands", the fact is that Mr. Scheuer himself sought to provide military presence in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, while he was with the CIA. Mr. Scheuer states that he sought "to do all I could to help the Afghan mujahedin kill as many Soviet military personnel as possible" (p. 57). As a known historical fact, it was precisely because of such American military presence welcomed in Afghanistan that many Jihadists gained military training, which supported the organization of Al-Qaeda's organization. Mr. Scheuer asks Americans to accept an incredulous Islamist "indictment" by Osama Bin Laden that condemns the same "military presence" that benefited his efforts against the Soviet Union 10 years before Bin Laden's initial declaration of war against the United States. Moreover, the "military presence in Muslims lands" totally ignores the historical presence of Axis and pro-Nazi forces in Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc., not to mention efforts by Islamist leaders to create Nazi spy rings in the Middle East. The historical truth is that a foreign "military presence in Muslim lands" has been a reality for over 60 years. Islamists had no complaint or outrage when this military presence benefited them as in Afghanistan, or when they philosophically supported the ideology behind such a foreign military presence as with Nazi Germany. Mr. Scheuer's argument calling for American appeasement on this Islamist so-called "indictment" is clearly, on closer inspection, based on nothing more than a deceit and a fraud.
Regarding "unqualified support for Israel", Mr. Scheuer states that since "Israel's survival is not essential to U.S. security" (p. 56), it would be in America's interest to abandon Israel to appease Islamist goals "to destroy Israel" (p. 250). As Mr. Scheuer believes that the U.S. Holocaust Museum is a "clandestine" Israeli operation, his argument (repeated many times throughout his book) in favor of abandoning Israel is not surprising. Mr. Scheuer views that U.S. ally nation Israel has no "right to exist" (p. 28), and furthermore argues that American acceptance of any nation's "'right to exist' is especially ahistorical when it is advocated by Americans, as it is a 'right' that they have never insisted for their own nation" (p. 28). (Mr. Scheuer conveniently forgets about the July 4, 1776 United States Declaration of Independence.) However, Mr. Scheuer's baseline assumption that the United States provides "unqualified support for Israel" (p. 98) is simply false. This Islamist propaganda talking-point ignores the real facts: the United States has provided untold millions of taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Administration and Palestinians, the United States has provided weapons for Palestinian security (some of which have been reported to be used in Palestinian operations against Israelis), the United States has allowed numerous charities, NGOs, and American groups to provide manpower, education and support for Palestinians, the United States has repeatedly attempted to broker peace efforts between Palestinians and Israelis, the United States has been critical of Israel government actions, and the United States has sought Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas as a "peace partner" - despite his history debating the extent of the Holocaust. The fact is that while Islamist nations and groups raise funds for Palestinians to kill themselves and Israelis, the American taxpayers and untold American charities routinely provide funds for the health, education, and peaceful welfare of Palestinians. How does that translate into "unqualified support for Israel"? It doesn't. What Non-Interventionist appeasers of Islamism seek to target is the fact the United States provides "qualified support for Israel" as an ally nation, the only democracy in the Middle East, as America would historically support any ally nation under attack. Once again, the Non-Interventionists depend on a false argument to appease Islamists.
Mr. Scheuer also parrots the Islamist "indictment" that America provides "support for Russia, China, and India against Muslims". Regarding India, Mr. Scheuer ignores that approximately 3,700 Indians were killed in terrorist attacks between January 2004 and March 2007, and reports of 62,000 Indians killed in terrorist attacks in the 15 year period prior to December 2002. If that is how America provides such "support" to India versus Islamists, one would obviously question what level of support that amounts to. How long would Americans tolerate a fatality rate to terrorism equivalent to the reported 65,000 dead in India? But America's level of "support" to India is clearly way too much here in the eyes of the Non-Interventionists. It isn't enough that India endured a massive, bloody war with Islamists and had to create Pakistan. It isn't enough that India has 20 times the terrorist death toll that America had on 9/11. It isn't enough that barely a month passes without another terror attack taking place or being foiled in India. Clearly that is not enough for the Islamists that we should further appease, according to Non-Interventionists like Mr. Scheuer. He further recognizes that neighboring "Bangladesh is set to become a regional hub for Islamist activities", which he shrugs off as something that "Washington can do little about" (p. 172).
Mr. Scheuer's repetition of the Islamist "indictment" against U.S. foreign policy with Russia - ignores the Islamist terror travesties such as Beslan school massacre. In terms of Russia, and its history of terrorist attacks by Chechen Islamists on its subways, buses, planes, trains, and schools, what level of "support" is the United States providing "against Muslims" in Russia? Would that be the U.S. State Department's complaints to Russia that "Moscow's black-and-white treatment of the conflict" has made cooperation in the war against terrorism more difficult? Beyond the Islamist rhetoric, the fact is that Russia has historically complained about America's handling of Chechen groups and uncooperativeness on the Chechen terror issue. That is a documented, historical fact that Islamist propagandists will continue to ignore. If anything, America should be doing more to help Russia with its Chechen terrorist problem, not less as Mr. Scheuer states. Mr. Scheuer recognizes the continuing threat of North Caucasus including the potential threat of nuclear component smuggling, but once again Mr. Scheuer shrugs off this challenge as "the United States will one day have to deal with a Russia whose diplomatic positions and national interests are defined in increasing measure by the demands of its Muslim peoples" (pp. 169-170). The defeatist nature of this Non-Interventionist ideology when it comes to a nuclear power like Russia is nothing short of suicidal.
Mr. Scheuer also claims that U.S. foreign policy is defective due to the Islamist "indictment" of U.S. "support for China against Muslims" (p. 98) as well as America's "support for the genocides... Beijing's against Uighur Muslims" (p. 231). It is hardly surprising that Mr. Scheuer fails to support such wild claims. Once again, the Non-Interventionist argument is based on a falsehood and an Islamist propaganda talking point. This falsehood would be readily apparent to any American who is aware that Communist China is anything but an ally and a friend of the United States, and that our political relationship with Communist China has long been "strained" at best. While Americans are rightly concerned about Jihadists in any part of the world, the U.S. is not supporting "genocide" against Chinese Uighur Muslims. The facts are that, during American fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S. captured about a dozen Uighur Chinese Jihadists that have since been held at Guantanamo Bay. In 2006, the United States determined that five of these Uighur Chinese individuals were not terrorists, and they were transferred to a U.N. facility in Albania. The United States sent these Uighur Chinese to Albania rather than allow them to be returned to China for fear of their safety. The fact is that the United States repeatedly defied China's request for the return of these Uighur Chinese individuals, and as of November 2007, one of the Uighur Chinese individuals was reunited with his family in Sweden. But the Non-Interventionist argument on U.S. foreign policy denies all of these facts and would have Americans believe the Islamist canard that the U.S. is supporting "genocide" against Uighur Muslims. Like so much of the Non-Interventionist argument, once again it is based on a falsehood.
In Mr. Scheuer's condemnation of U.S. foreign policy based on the Islamist claim of U.S "theft of Muslim oil", Mr. Scheuer defends this argument as "many Muslims entertained visions of what might be possible vis-a-vis their standard of living if a barrel of oil was pegged at bin Laden's goal of at least $100 and the titanic thieving of their government could be reduced to the merely gross" (p. 150). Once again, this is more nonsense. Less than a month after Mr. Scheuer's book was published, the price of a barrel of oil was over $110. Will the high price of oil end Islamist terrorism? Or will it provide more profit to Wahhabists and Khumeinists to fund Islamism around the world? Notably when Wahhabists get such petrodollar-based donations from wealthy Saudi princes, their first instinct is not to improve living conditions for Saudis or improve the standard of living for Saudis; it is used by Wahhabists to further spread Islamism and Islamist terrorism around the world. With all of the petrodollar oil profit that Wahhabists have received from oil buyers around the world, not to mention zakat payments on Islamist finance, such familiar victims recounted by Islamists as the Palestinian people - could have the best schools, the best food, and the best living conditions. The choice of Islamists to invest petrodollar profits in suicide bombs, in propaganda, and in hate-mongering - that is the deliberate choice of Islamists, not the result of unfair oil prices or unfair access to petrodollar profits. Once again, the Non-Interventionist argument is based on another fallacy promoted by Islamists to deceive Americans.
Mr. Scheuer's final Islamist "indictment" in U.S. foreign policy is in regards to the claim of U.S. "protection of Muslim tyrannies". Notably, he leaves such so-called "Islamist republics" like Iran out of this discussion. For an individual who mocks American efforts to spread democracy to Muslims, as nothing more than efforts "so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort" (p. 254), Mr. Scheuer manages to simultaneously condemn America for defending "Muslim tyrannies". Needless to say, Mr. Scheuer sees no logical contradiction in this. Mr. Scheuer also sees nothing but "failure" by the limited efforts at "democracy" in America's defeat of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Yet Mr. Scheuer also argues that America is at fault for defending "Muslim tyrannies", as the American military overthrow (no matter how effective or ineffective) in Afghanistan and Iraq count for nothing towards challenging "Muslim tyrannies". Nor is Mr. Scheuer concerned about were America challenges such "Muslim tyrannies" like in Iran, where freedom is crushed, where women's rights are crushed, where human rights are doled out based on an Islamist Sharia interpretation, and where so-called elections are between anti-freedom Islamists. No, Mr. Scheuer is not concerned about that "Muslim tyranny" either. In Pakistan, the Pakistanis have just completed free elections, while continuing to struggle with Islamism and Islamist terrorism in that country. And certainly no educated individual would argue the prima facie nonsense that the United States is "protecting" Syria.
So this leaves Mr. Scheuer's condemnations about U.S. "protection of Muslim tyrannies" to nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. It is a fact that none of these nations are a democracy. The U.S. government has been urging all of these nations to introduce some level of democratic changes. As shown by Islamist Iran, voting alone is clearly not sufficient for a "democracy"; democratic values and freedoms along with free elections makes a nation a democracy. It is also a fact that in each of these nations, they have struggled with Islamist terrorists in their nations, and particularly in Egypt, it has been active in repressing Islamists from electoral participation. Clearly political Islamism is not an answer to the growth of these nations, and while America has frequently pushed for increased liberties in these nations, it is also cognizant that political Islamism would only replace one "tyranny" with another that is much worse.
However, in Mr. Scheuer's blind recitation of Islamist talking points as an argument for Non-Interventionism, he does not offer an alternative, other than his outrageous statement that Bin Laden's Islamism will "urg[e] Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164). In fact, it precisely that Islamist ideology lauded in Mr. Scheuer's statement which is the greatest threat of "Muslim tyranny" as clearly seen in the so-called "Islamic Republic" of Iran.
The challenge to the Middle East and America is to recognize that political Islamism is the root of such "Muslim tyrannies" and is anything but a solution to non-democratic nations in the Middle East. Not supporting an anti-freedom ideology that seeks to establish a "tyranny", whether it is Islamism, Communism, or Nazism - is not an "indictment" against U.S. foreign policy - it is a definition of who we are as Americans. The final Islamist "indictment" on U.S. foreign policy by Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer is also revealed for the nonsensical falsehood that it is.
3.5. The Non-Interventionist Abandonment of the World to Islamism
But these Islamist terms of surrender from Osama Bin Laden urged on Americans by Non-Interventionists are not enough. It is hardly just Israel that the Non-Interventionists seek America to abandon - it is quite literally the entire world. Mr. Scheuer claims that nothing short of America surrendering its position in addressing Islamism and Islamist terrorism throughout the world will suffice. Clearly his argument of appeasement seeks to proactively negotiate even greater terms of American surrender to Osama Bin Laden and Islamists than even they have demanded.
So Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist guidance on U.S. foreign policy continues to be littered with a series of defeatist recommendations and warnings should America dare to intervene in areas of the world where Islamism is continuing to grow.
In Nigeria, Mr. Scheuer warns that "where U.S. forces may have to intervene to secure oil supplies, the prospect of doing so in the Niger Delta may be the most appallingly difficult and bloody" (p. 174). In effect, Mr. Scheuer warns the U.S. to ignore a nation which has frequently seen Islamist violence, has seen efforts to attempt to institute Sharia law, and which represents a risk to evolve into another Islamist terror base.
In Somalia, Mr. Scheuer complains of how "trying to kill Somali-based al-Qaeda leaders" has been turned "into another casus belli for jihadists by endorsing the Christian Ethiopians' destruction of an Islamist government and subsequent stationing of troops in the country to fight Somali Islamists" (p. 178). Mr. Scheuer apparently seeks to echo Osama Bin Laden's July 2006 warning to America not to send troops to Somalia to fight Islamist terrorists. Moreover, Mr. Scheuer effectively seeks the U.S. to ignore a nation that has had a history of recruiting Islamist terrorists from around the world (including the U.S.) to help expand an Islamist terror base in Somalia.
In Thailand, Mr. Scheuer threatens that should America "be committed to respond positively to a Thai request for military help against the Islamist insurgency", that "even the bare possibility of U.S. involvement in Vietnam-like jungle combat... would in turn draw other regional Islamist fighters to Thailand like a magnet" (p. 176). Once again, any where in the world where Islamist terror is having a significant influence, Mr. Scheuer would have America ignore it. In the past four years, Thailand has seen 2,776 killed as a result of Islamist terrorism in Thailand's southern regions - nearly the same death toll as the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City. Not mentioned in this Thailand terrorist attack death toll is the grisly nature of the endless litany of decapitations, burning victims alive, and deliberate savage attacks on children, schools, elderly, and women. But Mr. Scheuer would have America look the other way regarding the Islamist terrorist crimes against humanity in Thailand.
In Europe, Mr. Scheuer shrugs off the growing Islamist problem as something where there is "very little America can do to help" (p. 179) and asserts that that it is "almost impossible for Americans to help Europe" (p. 180), as "demographic statistics" alone will allow Islamists to conquer Europe. In his defeatist discourse, Mr. Scheuer assails Europeans' "manliness" (p. 179), while he argues for the surrender of the world to Islamism. Europe clearly does have many serious problems with Islamism, and it is well documented as to Europe's demographic problems. But how does acknowledging this justify American abandonment of Europe? It doesn't. America fought two World Wars to help liberate Europe. Apparently, given Mr. Scheuer's philosophical embrace of Charles Lindbergh's Non-Interventionist ideology, he views such past American sacrifices as a waste of time, as he shrugs while recognizing the growing Islamist movement develop in Europe.
Especially in Europe, ignorance of the growing Islamist movement is nothing short of national security suicide for the United States. The facts are that Europe-based Islamist terrorist cells were used in planning the 9/11 terror attacks, and have been used frequently since to try repeated efforts to attack the United States, especially with United Kingdom-based Islamist cells. In August 2006, a plot by British Islamist terrorists to hijack transatlantic jetliners to crash into the United States was foiled; had it succeeded, the loss of lives in the American homeland easily would have been in the tens of thousands if not more. In April 2001, British Islamist terrorists were in the final stages of plots against terrorist attacks in New York City on financial buildings, Jewish targets, and possibly the World Trade Center. In fact, British Islamist terrorists could have been the ones that succeeded in the first major mass-casualty terrorist attacks in the United States homeland, before the 9/11 attacks.
But Mr. Scheuer still makes a Non-Interventionist argument is that America can be secure from Islamist terrorists by appeasing Islamists and allowing their influence to grow around the world. Europe is just as acceptable a loss under such terms of surrender, as the rest of the world is - no matter what the direct consequences are to America's national security.
Certainly, the U.S. has finite resources, which it must delegate based on a clear definition of the enemy and priorities in a coherent strategy to defeat the enemy. Such reality of finite American resources, however, does not justify the Non-Interventionist argument to ignore and abandon every
By Jeffrey Imm
As seen in two recent books by counterterrorism analysts, the ideology of Non-Interventionism is gaining popularity with a segment of the American public. While Non-Interventionist ideology plays off the frustrations of some of the American public with America's handling of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the wrong answer to the confusion over global Jihad and Islamism. Two recently-released books by counterterrorism analysts offer a panacea of Non-Interventionism ideology: Michael Scheuer's "Marching Toward Hell - America and Islam After Iraq", and Marc Sageman's "Leaderless Jihad". The Non-Interventionist ideology represented by these authors does not critically examine the role of political Islamism in Islamist terrorism; therefore the authors conclude that an appeasement approach towards Islamism will improve American national security.
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In Michael Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he argues that Islamist terrorism is a mere reaction to American foreign policy, and he calls for a vehemently "non-interventionist... non-ideological" approach to Islamist terrorism in the world (p. 263). Mr. Scheuer fails to even acknowledge Islamism as an ideological challenge or threat (or even acknowledge a defined American enemy), arguing basically that Americans should do what Bin Laden tells us to do (pp. 149-150, 154-155), and withdraw our military forces from the Middle East (pp. 149, 232). Mr. Scheuer focuses his Non-Interventionist philosophy on trying to persuade Americans to abandon foreign allies, especially (but not only) Israel (pp. 148-150, 184-185, 217), and to abandon military activities in the Middle East (pp. 149, 232). Mr. Scheuer also throws a red-herring in his book to allow a superficial claim that he is not "totally" Non-Interventionist, by the offering of a scorched earth approach of "savagery" (p. 85-87, 196, 247) as an alternative to his Non-Interventionism ideology (against an enemy he won't define). However, it is clear that Mr. Scheuer's argument is focused specifically on persuading Americans to adopt a Non-Interventionist policy (p. 184-185, 263), which he also calls for in his various Internet postings on the web site AntiWar.com.
In Marc Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad", he argues that "global Islamist terrorism" (p.37) is really now more of a "social movement" (pp. 46, 66-70), rather than the actions of Islamist ideologues to further an ideological cause, and that when the "thrill" (p. 35) of such terrorism passes, the Jihadist threat will too. While Mr. Sageman's book is not as non-interventionist as Mr. Scheuer's, Mr. Sageman sees the "use of military as a last resort" only (pp. 152-153), but the basic message is the same as Mr. Scheuer's - America should mostly mind its own business when it comes to Islamism, for fear of providing fuel to the argument that America is at war with Islam itself (Scheuer pp. 155-157, Sageman pp. 98, 149). Mr. Sageman uses the term "Islamist" (p. 37) without actually defining political Islamism as an ideology or ideologies, and while his book provides a few paragraphs to address the Muslim Brotherhood ideologues and to address takfiri (pp. 37-39), he concludes that we should not "make too much" out of Islamist ideologies as in Mr. Sageman's view "terrorists rarely execute their operations as a direct result of their doctrines" (p.40). In Mr. Sageman's view, Al Qaeda is merely a "social movement" (p. 31, 33, 40).
In their Non-Interventionist arguments, neither Mr. Scheuer or Mr. Sageman draw a clear distinction between political Islamism and Islam; they simply conflate political Islamism and Islam to be the same thing. Therefore, they call for appeasing Islamism as an argument to avoid a war with Islam.
Both Non-Interventionist arguments address public concerns that are the result of failing to identify the enemy and to develop a comprehensive war strategy. As an alternative, Mr. Scheuer and Mr. Sagemen recommend "solutions" for American policy that would result in graver, more serious errors by ignoring the ideology of Islamism and by refusing to acknowledge that the threat of Islamist terrorism will continue, regardless of American foreign policy.
The Non-Interventionists fail to understand that two wrongs don't make a right.
1. America's Confusion over Jihad and Islamism Provides Fuel for Non-Interventionism
One of the great challenges in addressing the Jihadist threat is the ineffectively explained rationale to the American public as to "Why We Fight". Without an official government definition of specific enemies and a strategy to defeat them, individual efforts to define the threats of Jihad and Islamism provide only an educational band-aid, easily forgotten by the public in the endless barrage of news stories on the limited effectiveness of American operational tactics in military theaters. The September 18, 2001 Authorization for Military Force only referenced a reactive military action against those undefined groups responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
The failure to provide a detailed definition of the enemy and a strategy to defeat the enemy, combined with uneven operational tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, has led to a large portion of public calling for change in what it views as an endless reactive quagmire of foreign fighting. With the nation feeling secure from Jihadist terror attacks for over six years, the starkness of the 9/11 attacks has faded, and the lack of effective leadership on larger strategic issues has allowed such extremist positions as Non-Interventionism to be taken seriously by a frustrated public.
Furthermore, the role of Islamism as the root of Islamist terrorism is only addressed once in the 9/11 Commission report. The larger challenge of Islamism has not been addressed by American political leadership in a meaningful way, nor has it been widely recognized that Islamism itself, as an anti-freedom ideology, is a threat to democratic nations.
In the face of the continuing threats of global Islamist terrorism and the challenge of Islamism, the ideology of "Non-Interventionism" is offered by its adherents as a panacea that will provide peace in our time. Instead of defining the enemy and developing a strategy to combat them, Non-Interventionists seek to get Americans to abandon our values, turn on our allies, pretend that the enemy will leave us alone if we merely change our foreign policy, ignore the interconnected nature of modern globalism, and ignore what the enemies of freedom seek to achieve in the world.
2. Defining the Enemy as Fundamental to Addressing the Threat
2.1. The "America First" Denial of a Threat and Identifying a Scapegoat
Non-Interventionists have over time used a propaganda technique that involves dual tactics of denying that America is facing any type of global enemy and identifying a foreign scapegoat to blame for the concerns about any such enemy threats.
Prior to World War II, Charles Lindbergh used such tactics with his Non-Interventionist "America First Committee" organization to convince Americans that there was no threat from Nazi Germany and its fascist allies. On September 11, 1939, Charles Lindbergh sought to convince Americans that there was no fascist global threat that would impact America, stating that in the "European war", "there has been an over-increasing effort to force the United States into the conflict...." which "has been carried on by foreign interests" and the "groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration". In this same September 11, 1939 speech, Charles Lindbergh's scapegoating also included blaming America's concern regarding the war against Nazism on Jewish "ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government".
In our current times, Mr. Scheuer and Mr. Sageman deny the existence of an enemy threat from Islamist terrorism or from Islamist ideology. While Chapter 5 of Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell" is titled "And the Islamists' Fire Quietly Spreads", Mr. Scheuer does not define Islamism as an ideology or as an ideological threat, but rather mocks the "wild-eyed bogeyman of the imminent success of the Islamists' plan to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate" (p. 148) and mocks the "Cold Warriors" "term of choice-Islamofascist" (pp. 148-149). Mr. Sageman similarly questions the idea of any meaningful shared Islamist ideology (p. 40), and specifically warns against finding such an ideology, stating "[a] counterterrorism focus on Islamic ideology is dangerous" (p. 157).
Today's Non-Interventionists have also found a convenient scapegoat in Israel to misdirect Americans from the real threat. In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he picks up the "America First" mantle of Charles Lindbergh, ranting about "Israel-firsters", criticizing a so-called "neoconservative" plot that is a "blood-soaked, imperialist, win-one-for-Israel campaign in the Middle East"... by a "pro-Israel, U.S. governing elite" (Chapter 5, pp 148-149, 154). Per Mr. Scheuer, "U.S. support for Israel is costing blood and treasure" and "is a severe handicap for U.S. national security" (p. 217). On the Bill Maher television show, Mr. Scheuer has stated that regarding Israel, "I just don't think that it is worth an American life or an American dollar". In his February 27, 2008 Antiwar.com blog posting, Mr. Scheuer states that "pro-Israel American campaign funders will demand McCain, Obama, or Clinton defend the Jewish state by staying in Iraq no matter the cost; and each will do so because each operates under the delusion that U.S. and Israeli national-security interests are identical." Mr. Scheuer is convinced of numerous Israeli "clandestine" and "covert" activities within the United States which drives America to war, and claims the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as among such Israeli "clandestine" activities.
While less colorful in his comments, in Mr. Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad", he condemns America for its "sense of moral outrage" (pp. 154-156) against Islamists, and points to America's support of Israel as a "sore that continues to fester", and that "the U.S. government is seen as siding too closely with Israel, and complicit in Israeli operations against the Palestinians" (p. 155). Mr. Sageman also condemns "the Islamophobic press" for reporting when an "imam express[es] sympathy for terrorist aims" (p. 161).
This scapegoating technique by Non-Interventionists is a well-known approach in using misdirection to prevent discussion of an enemy ideology or ideologies. Non-Interventionists require both denial and scapegoating techniques, because the Non-Interventionist ideology is only plausible to the American public when global enemies can be denied and the known information about such enemies blamed on some nefarious scapegoat out to mislead them.
2.2. Relationship between Non-Interventionists and the Enemy
Such efforts at Non-Interventionism in modern America have frequently been supported by anti-freedom organizations with interests hostile to the United States.
In 1938, Nazi Germany awarded Non-Interventionist Charles Lindbergh (along with Henry Ford) the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal awarded by Nazi Germany to foreigners. Charles Lindbergh refused to return the Nazi medal to Germany as he stated that it would be "an unnecessary insult" to the German Nazi government. Moreover, Charles Lindbergh wrote Nazi Hermann Goring to thank him for the medal, asking Goring to convey his thanks to Adolf Hitler. Charles Lindbergh met with Nazi German air minister individuals, and was used to convey propaganda on the invincibility of Hitler's air strength; non-interventionist Lindbergh helped to convince the British government to appease Hitler.
In 2007, Islamist Osama Bin Laden praised Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer for his writings that call for Non-Interventionism against Islamism and changing American foreign policy to address Osama Bin Laden's goals. In his September 7, 2007 message promoting global Islamism, Osama Bin Laden stated: "And if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard." Mr. Scheuer is also enthusiastic in his praise of Islamist Osama Bin Laden as well. In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he lauds Osama Bin Laden's "piety" (p. 165), and refers to Osama Bin Laden as a "political genius" (p. 154), and an "ever-reliable guide" (p. 118).
In the same September 7, 2007 Bin Laden message, Islamist Osama Bin Laden condemns democracy and offers Islamism as an alternative to Americans: "as soon as the warmongering owners of the major corporations realize that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and begun (sic) to search for an alternative, and that this alternative is Islam". In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he similarly mocks offering democracy to Muslims as nothing more than a pointless effort "so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort" (p. 254). Non-Interventionist Scheuer sees Islamist Bin Laden as "urging Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164).
Like Charles Lindbergh before him, Mr. Scheuer seeks to convey his enemy-approved Non-Interventionist propaganda via world television, global Internet, and his books. Mr. Scheuer is a professor at Georgetown University, a news analyst for CBS News, and frequently appears on American national news programs as a commentator on counterterrorism subjects. Mr. Scheuer has recently appeared in Newsweek magazine in a uncritical interview, has appeared recently as a writer in the Washington Post, and has a series of Internet columns for websites such as Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com.
In comparing Michael Scheuer's Non-Interventionism versus Charles Lindbergh's Non-Interventionism, it is slightly unfair to Charles Lindbergh, as Lindbergh did not publicly advocate such Non-Interventionism after the nation was at war, let alone after the United States homeland was actually attacked (as Mr. Scheuer has done).
2.3. Definitions of Islamist Terrorism, Islamism, and the Non-Response by Non-Interventionists
Released in 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report provides a U.S. government official definition of "Islamist Terrorism" in the Report's Notes, Part 12, Note 3, page 562. The 9/11 Commission report states: "Islamist terrorism is an immediate derivative of Islamism. This term distinguishes itself from Islamic by the fact that the latter refers to a religion and culture". In addition, the 9/11 Commission report states that "Islamism is defined as 'an Islamic militant, anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic vision of Islam whose final aim is the restoration of the caliphate.' " This U.S. government commission document provides a specific link between "Islamist Terrorism" and "Islamism" that America's political leadership has since failed to further define, clarify, and develop a strategy to counter.
Non-Interventionists leverage the failure of American political leadership to follow up on the 9/11 Commission Report by misdirecting the public to focus only on American foreign policy issues, and avoiding discussion on Islamism as an ideology. It is not in the interests of Non-Interventionists to allow identification of an enemy ideology, because that would undermine their Non-Interventionist argument.
In the case of Mr. Scheuer, his Non-Interventionist argument is really to define Osama Bin Laden's enemies (in terms of American foreign policy) and so he avoids defining an American enemy. Mr. Scheuer is focused on trying to convince Americans that they need to be focused in distancing themselves from Bin Laden's other enemies (such as Israel) (pp. 250, 261). Mr. Scheuer states that "the United States is not the main enemy of bin Laden and other Islamists", and the Islamists' "primary enemy" is "the Muslim tyrannies that rule much of the Islamic world and Israel" (pp. 250, 261). So with Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist, foreign policy-based argument that Americans only need to care about Bin Laden's "primary" enemies, it is too much of an inconvenient truth for Mr. Scheuer to address the actual ideology of Islamism and its links to Islamist terrorism.
Mr. Sageman's Non-Interventionist argument claims that since Islamist terrorism is based on "social movement" activities, the ideology behind such Islamist acts is not important (pp. 31, 33, 40).
However, the Non-Interventionist arguments and the failure of American political leadership to fully address Islamism do not negate the very real existence of both Islamism and Islamist terrorism, as well as the links between the two. Non-Interventionist arguments don't even take into consideration the concerns of Muslims that reject Sharia, or that Muslims could accept anything other than Islamism. As previously pointed out, Non-Interventionist Scheuer argues that Islamist Bin Laden offers "liberty...in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164).
In October 2007, Wikipedia provided a concise definition for "Islamism" as "a term usually used to denote a set of political ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system and its teachings should be preeminent in all facets of society. It holds that Muslims must return to the original teachings and the early models of Islam, particularly by making Islamic law (sharia) the basis for all statutory law of society and by uniting politically, eventually in one state; and that western military, economic, political, social, or cultural influence in the Muslim world is un-Islamic and should be replaced by purely Islamic influences."
It is important to note that, contrary to popular confusion (included in that definition), Sharia is not the definition for "Islamic law", as it is not "Islamic law" for many Muslims. To many Muslims, Sharia is not "Islamic law" at all. There are many Muslims who oppose and do not recognize Sharia. In a recent article, Alex Alexiev, Vice President of Research at the Center for Security Policy, points out that Sharia law is not "Islamic law", except as interpreted by Islamists. Alex Alexiev states "shariah is mostly a post-Quranic, man-made medieval doctrine that is almost completely at odds with modern norms of human rights, political freedoms and international relations... and [s]hariah doctrine, though claiming to be derived from the Quran, is thus a politicized interpretation of the Muslim scriptures and other non-revealed sources" [Alexiev article, page 3]. Alex Alexiev further points out that "the word shariah is mentioned only once in the Quran, and not at all as a system of jurisprudence, but in its traditional meaning of the 'right path'" [Alexiev article, page 3]. Moreover, Muslim groups such as "Muslims Against Sharia" are advocates against such Islamist Sharia practices.
Islamism's anti-freedom ideology is a continuing threat to Muslims, as demonstrated by the numerous blasphemy laws, and abuses seen in Islamist law and government. The ongoing fighting by Islamists in Iraq underscores how Islamist terrorists have total disregard for the lives and welfare of other Muslims.
In summary, Islamism is a political ideology based on a politicized, theocratic version of Islam, with Sharia law as the basis for all aspects of life, government, and society. It is an "anti-democratic" movement, and it is another of the anti-freedom ideologies that Western society has found itself facing in the past century. Rather than a "nationalist" movement, Islamism seeks the "restoration of the caliphate", and Islamism is an internationalist political ideology. Islamism has numerous branches, as Islam itself has numerous branches; there are branches of Islamist political ideology including groups based on Wahhabism and Salafism (Sunni), Deobandism (Sunni), Muslim Brotherhood philosophies (Sunni), and Khumeinism (Shiite).
There have been some outstanding spokesmen who have made the effort to identify the problem and challenges raised by the Islamist ideology. One of these is Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, the founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Per Dr. Jasser, "This tactic of terror we are fighting will continue to exponentially regenerate itself as long as its fuel remains. The fuel is political Islam - Islamism. Islamism is effectively incubated in a culture like ours in the United States which stubbornly (to our own detriment) refuses to engage political Islam because of its invocation of a faith. The American people need leadership that not only understands the need to bring freedom and liberty to the world, but leadership ready to confront our Islamist enemies with the pathologies of their own ideas - leadership which can separate personal spiritual Islam from political Islam and genuinely engage liberty-minded anti-Islamist Muslims." Non-Interventionists have no intention of listening to the words of anti-Islamist Muslims such as Dr. Jasser. Non-Interventionists like Mr. Scheuer would prefer that Americans accept the Islamist propaganda message of Islamist Osama Bin Laden instead.
However, America is faced with twin challenges on this issue: (1) the unwillingness of American leadership to face up to the global issue of Islamism, and (2) the Non-Interventionist propaganda movement led by Mr. Scheuer and others. The strategic challenge for America remains addressing the impact of political Islamism -- as an overall ideology -- on Islamist terrorism (Jihad) and on our national security. Political Islamists and Islamist terrorist Osama Bin Laden share the same ultimate goal, as stated by Osama Bin Laden on October 22, 2007: "The greater state of Islam from the ocean to the ocean, Allah permitting."
Regarding Islamist terrorism, America's greatest problem has been an inability to see the forest through the trees - due to an endless monofocus on tactics, operations, groups, individuals -- without clearly acknowledging the identity and ideology of our enemy and developing a coherent strategy to defeat them. It is this flurry of confusion in the weeds that is leveraged by the Non-Interventionist appeasement argument. And in doing so, the Non-Interventionists have to convince America that it has no global enemy, despite the reality of the 9/11 attacks that we saw with our own eyes.
2.4. Non-Interventionist Logical Contortions to Avoid Naming an Enemy
Non-Interventionists approach the issue of national defense with a fixed agenda - denying that there is a need for America to have global military or strategic involvement in fighting an enemy. From that fixed position, Non-Interventionists will engage in logical contortions to avoid naming an enemy. So embarrassing contradictions will likely occur in their arguments, but these are readily brushed aside by the Non-Interventionists in the greater cause of avoiding conflict with an enemy.
In Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he refers to Islamists, but won't define the Islamist ideology. Mr. Scheuer mocks the idea of an Islamist caliphate as a threat, even though Steven Emerson has pointed out that in a previous book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", that Mr. Scheuer references such Islamist goals for a caliphate as being "found in the annals of Islamic history" (Imperial Hubris, pp. 141-142). In that same book, Mr. Scheuer inadvertently identified an American enemy as "some of Islam" (Imperial Hubris, p. 249). But Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist arguments were intended to ignore such missteps in writing. As his "political genius" Osama Bin Laden has recommended, Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist point and ideology is clearly to avoid recognizing an enemy and threat to America other than American foreign policy actions that may offend Osama Bin Laden and Islamists (Marching Through Hell pp. 148-150).
Similarly, Mr. Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad" recognizes the existence of Islamist ideologies (pp. 37-39), only to tell us to not "make too much" out of these as they do not really affect Islamist terrorists actions (p. 40), and to warn us that "[a] counterterrorism focus on Islamic ideology is dangerous" (p. 157).
To avoid close scrutiny on why such Islamist ideologies should be a concern to America, the Non-Interventionists have a ready argument that all of the problems with Islamism are due to one singular problem: American foreign policy.
3. Non-Interventionism: U.S. Foreign Policy to Blame for Islamist Terrorism
3.1. Occidentalism and Non-Interventionists - Islamist Terrorism as a Reaction to U.S. Foreign Policy
In his book "Marching Toward Hell", Mr. Scheuer mocks those concerned about Islamism as "Cold Warriors" (p. 148), while adopting a Cold War mentality towards Islamism himself. In Mr. Scheuer's efforts to promote Non-Interventionism, his argument is that Islamist terrorism is exclusively a reaction to U.S. foreign policy. Since logical contortion is inconsequential to the larger Non-Interventionist cause of preventing America from recognizing an enemy, Mr. Scheuer does not care that such reactive thinking is indeed a Cold War mentality itself. Contradictions don't matter to the Non-Interventionist ideologue.
The term "occidentalism" is defined as "usually refer[ring] to stereotyped and sometimes dehumanizing views on the so-called Western world, including Europe, the United States, and Australia." In the case of the Non-Interventionist arguments, occidentalism refers to the views that western ideas such as western democracy, pluralism, and secularism are somehow destructive forces in the larger world, as viewed by non-western eyes.
So to understand Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist views on American foreign policy, Mr. Scheuer's occidentalist views on democracy, secularism, and pluralism must also be understood. Non-Interventionist Mr. Scheuer echoes Islamist Osama Bin Laden in regards to his contempt for democracy. As previously stated, in Mr. Scheuer's book "Marching Toward Hell", he mocks offering democracy to Muslims as nothing more than a pointless effort "so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort" (p. 254), and sees Islamist Bin Laden as "urging Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164). In addition, Mr. Scheuer decries the value of secularism as well, stating "in the Muslim world" (p. 139) that Muslims "regard secularism as inherently inferior to their way of life and an affront to their faith, indeed, as fighting words". (Mr. Scheuer sees no "hubris" himself in his speaking on behalf of "the Muslim world" or for all Muslims on this.) Moreover, Mr. Scheuer states that "[o]nly among the U.S. governing elite is multiculturalism an attainable goal" (p. 140).
With this occidentalist viewpoint, Mr. Scheuer provides a detailed argument that Islamist terrorism is the result of American foreign policy. In "Marching Toward Hell", Mr. Scheuer calls attention to six areas of "indictments" by Islamists regarding America's foreign policy (p. 149-150) that he insists on Americans keep "squarely in view":
"1. The U.S. military and civilian presence in the Arab Peninsula"
"2. Unqualified U.S. support for Israel"
"3. U.S. support for states oppressing Muslims, especially China, India, and Russia"
"4. U.S. exploitation of Muslim oil and suppression of its price"
"5. U.S. military presence in the Islamic world - Arabian Peninsula, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc."
"6. U.S. support, protection, and funding of Arab police states".
The basic thesis of Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist argument is that if America surrenders to Osama Bin Laden's demands on these "indictments", it will be spared from further Islamist terrorism. With such an argument, it is imperative for Mr. Scheuer to first completely deny the existence of any Islamist ideology or objectives, outside of a reaction to U.S. foreign policy, because the obvious question would be asked - what if the U.S. agreed to act on such "indictments", and Islamist terrorism continued and/or increased? Such occidentalist, Cold War thinking by Mr. Scheuer is essential to make such his Non-Interventionist argument sound plausible.
(I address each of these "indictments" in part 3.4.)
Mr. Sageman's book "Leaderless Jihad" makes a similar, although far less sweeping Non-Interventionist argument, that Islamist terrorism is the reaction of U.S. foreign policy, by ignoring the impact of Islamism on actual terrorist actions (p. 40), demanding that Americans lose their "sense of moral outrage" against Islamist actions, and insisting on "[w]ithdrawl from Iraq is a necessary condition for diminishing the sense of moral outrage that Muslims feel" (pp. 154-155).
3.2. The Kernel of Truth in the Non-Interventionist Big Lie
American political leadership must never forget the following axiom: "It is never too late to do the right thing." Doing the right thing may be expensive, it may be difficult, it may even be embarrassing, but it still is always the right thing.
The Non-Interventionist argument is totally dependent on the unwillingness and lack of courage of America political leadership to do the right thing when it comes to Islamist terrorism and Islamism.
After the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Military Force and the initial military raids on Taliban and Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the next immediate act of American political leadership should have been to unequivocally identify and define the enemy and its ideology, to further investigate the links between Islamism and Islamist terrorism (per the 9/11 Commission Report), and to develop a comprehensive global blueprint strategy on addressing both Islamist terrorism and Islamism. In recognizing that it was facing a global conflict against this global enemy, all U.S. military, law enforcement, financial, diplomatic, energy resource planning, and communications would be based on such a blueprint strategy to defeat the enemy. Any other military operations, in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, would have to be evaluated and reviewed based on this blueprint strategy to determine if this was the most effective and appropriate use of resources to fight the defined global enemy behind Islamist terrorism.
It is never too late to do the right thing.
The kernel of truth that the Non-Interventionist big lie is dependent on - is the fact that American political leadership has not taken such a blueprint strategy approach to Islamist terrorism and Islamism, but has instead had a series of reactive-only, sometimes contradictory, actions in both military operations and foreign policy. Some of these reactive, operations-centric actions have confused both the American public and our allies. Some of these have created unnecessary foreign hostility. Most damaging of all, without a clearly defined enemy and a strategy towards that enemy, a reactive military and foreign policy approach can, at times, be inexplicable in terms of justification -- because by definition - it is reactive, not strategically based.
In Afghanistan, as I have previously addressed, we have had one side of the American government launching military attacks on the Taliban enemy, while we have another side of the same government stating that efforts to mainstream the Taliban into Afghanistan politics would be desirable. We can't effectively fight an enemy without defining the enemy, defining the enemy's ideology, and developing a coherent strategy to defeat the enemy. An operational tactic that views the anti-freedom ideology of Islamism as compatible with democracy simply does not understand either ideology. There is no question that there are plenty of embarrassing tactical and operational activities in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world that provide fodder for the Non-Interventionist ideology.
But it is never too late to do the right thing, and disprove the big lie that the Non-Interventionist ideology is dependent on.
3.3. Churchill's Lessons on Honor in Foreign Policy
The Non-Interventionist argument sums up to a craven "since we can't figure out how to define and fight Islamist terrorism, lets withdraw from the world and make certain we don't do anything to further offend Islamists, and pray they will leave us alone." When facing an unknown Nazi Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had the same idea and concerns in his day. As Neville Chamberlain wrote on September 27, 1938, "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing!" (The Gathering Storm, p. 282).
By being so paralyzed with fear to determine what the right thing was to do, the British government went down a path of appeasement towards Nazi Germany, seeking "peace in our time". As previously mentioned, the British government was in part persuaded by the Non-Interventionist Charles Lindbergh, who attested to false propaganda as to the invincibility of the Nazi air force, convincing the British government that appeasement was necessary, at a minimum to stall for time (The American Axis, pp. 173-176). But even after the disastrous appeasement of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and proved that it is indeed never to late to do the right thing.
In a twisted moment of irony, Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer attempts to hijack the words of Winston Churchill to augment his argument for appeasement towards Islamist terrorism, quoting Churchill in September 1936 that "we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries" (p. 270). Based on this, Mr. Scheuer makes his occidentalist argument that this proves how "American democracy and republicanism are unique and largely nonexportable", why American should take a Non-Interventionist position towards Islamism and Islamist terrorism, and why it should abandon its allies faced with this threat around the world.
In fact, Mr. Scheuer ignores that Winston Churchill actually addressed the challenge that Neville Chamberlain faced between appeasement and confrontation, war and peace, in dealing with the unknowns of such circumstances, and provided a guiding basis for future generations to consider when faced with these challenges.
In his 1948 book "The Gathering Storm" (pp. 286-287), Winston Churchill stated: "[t]here is, however, one helpful guide, namely, for a nation to keep its word and to act in accordance with its treaty obligations to allies. This guide is called honour." Churchill goes on to state that "the moment came when Honour pointed the path of Duty, and when also the right judgment of the facts at that time would have reinforced its dictates."
The Non-Interventionists would have Americans ignore the plain facts presented to us when our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, and would instead try to convince Americans to believe in a Non-Interventionist policy of ignoring enemy anti-freedom ideologies that was craven even on September 11, 1939, when Non-Interventionist Charles Lindbergh tried to sell it. As Neville Chamberlain was paralyzed with fear in the face of what Non-Interventionists claimed was invincible Nazi military power, so Non-Interventionists would have us believe in 2008 that America should retreat in the face of invincible Islamist power.
Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer writes that "[t]he geographical dispersal of our Islamist enemies also poses a daunting and nearly insurmountable obstacle to a U.S. victory", that "America could not field the number of military personnel needed to fight an offensive war in every place in the world troubled by Islamist fighters", that "the Muslim world outnumbers America by nearly five to one", and that "the American governing elite have bitten off far more than the country can chew" (p. 190). In fact, Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist argument keeps inconveniently slipping in the word "enemy" in his writing, when in other paragraphs he keeps insisting that there is no enemy for America to fight.
In the end, a critical examination of Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist argument shows that is reduced to nothing more than a craven appeal for surrender. But Mr. Scheuer does not merely seek America alone to surrender to Islamism and Islamist terrorism. Mr. Scheuer also seeks to get America to abandon its honor, and to abandon its allies around the world to Islamism and Islamist terrorism. Like Charles Lindbergh's well-earned Nazi medal, it is no wonder why Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist propaganda has gained the praise of Islamist Osama Bin Laden.
3.4. Terms of Surrender to Osama Bin Laden's Demands
In his book "Marching Toward Hell", Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer argues in denial of an Islamist enemy to America, and he insists that those Americans concerned about Islamism are seeking "victory over a foe that exists only in [their] mind" (p. xvi). Mr. Scheuer argues that Osama bin Laden's declarations of war (1996 and 1998) against the United States were "a defensive reaction to specific U.S. foreign policies and their impact in the Muslim world" (p. xiv), and America's failure is in not changing its foreign policies to surrender to Osama Bin Laden's demands.
Mr. Scheuer claims on the one hand to be an ultra-nationalist stating "the only country I care about is the United States" (p. 222), while on the other hand "the United States has no more right to exist than does Israel, Palestine, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, or Russia" (p. 28). This careless viewpoint regarding the existence of nations, some of which are American allies, provides Mr. Scheuer with his Non-Interventionist rationale as to why there is no dishonor in abandoning American global allies to fight Islamist terrorism alone. Per Mr. Scheuer, "America is simply in the way of Islamist forces and so prevents the attainment of their goals in the Islamic world; that is, to destroy the family-owned and U.S.-supported Muslim tyrannies that have ruled the region since 1945 and to destroy Israel" (p. 250). Per Mr. Scheuer, "the United States is not the main enemy of bin Laden and other Islamists" (p.250), therefore Mr. Scheuer argues that a Non-Isolationist approach to Islamism, and abandoning American allies, is the best course of action to ensure that Islamist terrorists will leave America alone.
Mr. Scheuer summarizes America's terms of surrender to global Islamism, as America appeasing Osama Bin Laden on six Islamist "indictments": "U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula; military presence in Muslim lands; unqualified support for Israel; support for Russia, China, and India against Muslims; theft of Muslim oil; and protection of Muslim tyrannies" (p. 98). I will disprove each of arguments for these terms of surrender in the following paragraphs.
Regarding "U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula", Mr. Scheuer argues that American efforts to defend its ally Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War with staging of military forces in Saudi Arabia was an unforgivable affront to Islamists, due to defiance of "Muhammad's prohibition against the presence of non-Muslims on the Arabian Peninsula" (p. 41). Mr. Scheuer argues that whenever the U.S. can ignore the needs of an ally nation, on the chance that it might offend any Islamist, the U.S. should choose the dishonorable path of abandoning allies in hopes of Islamist appeasement. The reality is that such an Islamist indictment of Americans on the Arabian Peninsula based on actions in the 1990s is nonsensical. American oil companies have been active, and invited into the Arabian Peninsula since 1938. But Mr. Scheuer would have us believe in the nonsensical argument that defending an ally nation in the 1990s was an unpardonable lack of foresight on America's part in not taking Islamist sensibilities into consideration.
In terms of "military presence in Muslim lands", the fact is that Mr. Scheuer himself sought to provide military presence in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, while he was with the CIA. Mr. Scheuer states that he sought "to do all I could to help the Afghan mujahedin kill as many Soviet military personnel as possible" (p. 57). As a known historical fact, it was precisely because of such American military presence welcomed in Afghanistan that many Jihadists gained military training, which supported the organization of Al-Qaeda's organization. Mr. Scheuer asks Americans to accept an incredulous Islamist "indictment" by Osama Bin Laden that condemns the same "military presence" that benefited his efforts against the Soviet Union 10 years before Bin Laden's initial declaration of war against the United States. Moreover, the "military presence in Muslims lands" totally ignores the historical presence of Axis and pro-Nazi forces in Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc., not to mention efforts by Islamist leaders to create Nazi spy rings in the Middle East. The historical truth is that a foreign "military presence in Muslim lands" has been a reality for over 60 years. Islamists had no complaint or outrage when this military presence benefited them as in Afghanistan, or when they philosophically supported the ideology behind such a foreign military presence as with Nazi Germany. Mr. Scheuer's argument calling for American appeasement on this Islamist so-called "indictment" is clearly, on closer inspection, based on nothing more than a deceit and a fraud.
Regarding "unqualified support for Israel", Mr. Scheuer states that since "Israel's survival is not essential to U.S. security" (p. 56), it would be in America's interest to abandon Israel to appease Islamist goals "to destroy Israel" (p. 250). As Mr. Scheuer believes that the U.S. Holocaust Museum is a "clandestine" Israeli operation, his argument (repeated many times throughout his book) in favor of abandoning Israel is not surprising. Mr. Scheuer views that U.S. ally nation Israel has no "right to exist" (p. 28), and furthermore argues that American acceptance of any nation's "'right to exist' is especially ahistorical when it is advocated by Americans, as it is a 'right' that they have never insisted for their own nation" (p. 28). (Mr. Scheuer conveniently forgets about the July 4, 1776 United States Declaration of Independence.) However, Mr. Scheuer's baseline assumption that the United States provides "unqualified support for Israel" (p. 98) is simply false. This Islamist propaganda talking-point ignores the real facts: the United States has provided untold millions of taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Administration and Palestinians, the United States has provided weapons for Palestinian security (some of which have been reported to be used in Palestinian operations against Israelis), the United States has allowed numerous charities, NGOs, and American groups to provide manpower, education and support for Palestinians, the United States has repeatedly attempted to broker peace efforts between Palestinians and Israelis, the United States has been critical of Israel government actions, and the United States has sought Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas as a "peace partner" - despite his history debating the extent of the Holocaust. The fact is that while Islamist nations and groups raise funds for Palestinians to kill themselves and Israelis, the American taxpayers and untold American charities routinely provide funds for the health, education, and peaceful welfare of Palestinians. How does that translate into "unqualified support for Israel"? It doesn't. What Non-Interventionist appeasers of Islamism seek to target is the fact the United States provides "qualified support for Israel" as an ally nation, the only democracy in the Middle East, as America would historically support any ally nation under attack. Once again, the Non-Interventionists depend on a false argument to appease Islamists.
Mr. Scheuer also parrots the Islamist "indictment" that America provides "support for Russia, China, and India against Muslims". Regarding India, Mr. Scheuer ignores that approximately 3,700 Indians were killed in terrorist attacks between January 2004 and March 2007, and reports of 62,000 Indians killed in terrorist attacks in the 15 year period prior to December 2002. If that is how America provides such "support" to India versus Islamists, one would obviously question what level of support that amounts to. How long would Americans tolerate a fatality rate to terrorism equivalent to the reported 65,000 dead in India? But America's level of "support" to India is clearly way too much here in the eyes of the Non-Interventionists. It isn't enough that India endured a massive, bloody war with Islamists and had to create Pakistan. It isn't enough that India has 20 times the terrorist death toll that America had on 9/11. It isn't enough that barely a month passes without another terror attack taking place or being foiled in India. Clearly that is not enough for the Islamists that we should further appease, according to Non-Interventionists like Mr. Scheuer. He further recognizes that neighboring "Bangladesh is set to become a regional hub for Islamist activities", which he shrugs off as something that "Washington can do little about" (p. 172).
Mr. Scheuer's repetition of the Islamist "indictment" against U.S. foreign policy with Russia - ignores the Islamist terror travesties such as Beslan school massacre. In terms of Russia, and its history of terrorist attacks by Chechen Islamists on its subways, buses, planes, trains, and schools, what level of "support" is the United States providing "against Muslims" in Russia? Would that be the U.S. State Department's complaints to Russia that "Moscow's black-and-white treatment of the conflict" has made cooperation in the war against terrorism more difficult? Beyond the Islamist rhetoric, the fact is that Russia has historically complained about America's handling of Chechen groups and uncooperativeness on the Chechen terror issue. That is a documented, historical fact that Islamist propagandists will continue to ignore. If anything, America should be doing more to help Russia with its Chechen terrorist problem, not less as Mr. Scheuer states. Mr. Scheuer recognizes the continuing threat of North Caucasus including the potential threat of nuclear component smuggling, but once again Mr. Scheuer shrugs off this challenge as "the United States will one day have to deal with a Russia whose diplomatic positions and national interests are defined in increasing measure by the demands of its Muslim peoples" (pp. 169-170). The defeatist nature of this Non-Interventionist ideology when it comes to a nuclear power like Russia is nothing short of suicidal.
Mr. Scheuer also claims that U.S. foreign policy is defective due to the Islamist "indictment" of U.S. "support for China against Muslims" (p. 98) as well as America's "support for the genocides... Beijing's against Uighur Muslims" (p. 231). It is hardly surprising that Mr. Scheuer fails to support such wild claims. Once again, the Non-Interventionist argument is based on a falsehood and an Islamist propaganda talking point. This falsehood would be readily apparent to any American who is aware that Communist China is anything but an ally and a friend of the United States, and that our political relationship with Communist China has long been "strained" at best. While Americans are rightly concerned about Jihadists in any part of the world, the U.S. is not supporting "genocide" against Chinese Uighur Muslims. The facts are that, during American fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S. captured about a dozen Uighur Chinese Jihadists that have since been held at Guantanamo Bay. In 2006, the United States determined that five of these Uighur Chinese individuals were not terrorists, and they were transferred to a U.N. facility in Albania. The United States sent these Uighur Chinese to Albania rather than allow them to be returned to China for fear of their safety. The fact is that the United States repeatedly defied China's request for the return of these Uighur Chinese individuals, and as of November 2007, one of the Uighur Chinese individuals was reunited with his family in Sweden. But the Non-Interventionist argument on U.S. foreign policy denies all of these facts and would have Americans believe the Islamist canard that the U.S. is supporting "genocide" against Uighur Muslims. Like so much of the Non-Interventionist argument, once again it is based on a falsehood.
In Mr. Scheuer's condemnation of U.S. foreign policy based on the Islamist claim of U.S "theft of Muslim oil", Mr. Scheuer defends this argument as "many Muslims entertained visions of what might be possible vis-a-vis their standard of living if a barrel of oil was pegged at bin Laden's goal of at least $100 and the titanic thieving of their government could be reduced to the merely gross" (p. 150). Once again, this is more nonsense. Less than a month after Mr. Scheuer's book was published, the price of a barrel of oil was over $110. Will the high price of oil end Islamist terrorism? Or will it provide more profit to Wahhabists and Khumeinists to fund Islamism around the world? Notably when Wahhabists get such petrodollar-based donations from wealthy Saudi princes, their first instinct is not to improve living conditions for Saudis or improve the standard of living for Saudis; it is used by Wahhabists to further spread Islamism and Islamist terrorism around the world. With all of the petrodollar oil profit that Wahhabists have received from oil buyers around the world, not to mention zakat payments on Islamist finance, such familiar victims recounted by Islamists as the Palestinian people - could have the best schools, the best food, and the best living conditions. The choice of Islamists to invest petrodollar profits in suicide bombs, in propaganda, and in hate-mongering - that is the deliberate choice of Islamists, not the result of unfair oil prices or unfair access to petrodollar profits. Once again, the Non-Interventionist argument is based on another fallacy promoted by Islamists to deceive Americans.
Mr. Scheuer's final Islamist "indictment" in U.S. foreign policy is in regards to the claim of U.S. "protection of Muslim tyrannies". Notably, he leaves such so-called "Islamist republics" like Iran out of this discussion. For an individual who mocks American efforts to spread democracy to Muslims, as nothing more than efforts "so Mrs. Muhammad can vote, vamp, and abort" (p. 254), Mr. Scheuer manages to simultaneously condemn America for defending "Muslim tyrannies". Needless to say, Mr. Scheuer sees no logical contradiction in this. Mr. Scheuer also sees nothing but "failure" by the limited efforts at "democracy" in America's defeat of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Yet Mr. Scheuer also argues that America is at fault for defending "Muslim tyrannies", as the American military overthrow (no matter how effective or ineffective) in Afghanistan and Iraq count for nothing towards challenging "Muslim tyrannies". Nor is Mr. Scheuer concerned about were America challenges such "Muslim tyrannies" like in Iran, where freedom is crushed, where women's rights are crushed, where human rights are doled out based on an Islamist Sharia interpretation, and where so-called elections are between anti-freedom Islamists. No, Mr. Scheuer is not concerned about that "Muslim tyranny" either. In Pakistan, the Pakistanis have just completed free elections, while continuing to struggle with Islamism and Islamist terrorism in that country. And certainly no educated individual would argue the prima facie nonsense that the United States is "protecting" Syria.
So this leaves Mr. Scheuer's condemnations about U.S. "protection of Muslim tyrannies" to nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. It is a fact that none of these nations are a democracy. The U.S. government has been urging all of these nations to introduce some level of democratic changes. As shown by Islamist Iran, voting alone is clearly not sufficient for a "democracy"; democratic values and freedoms along with free elections makes a nation a democracy. It is also a fact that in each of these nations, they have struggled with Islamist terrorists in their nations, and particularly in Egypt, it has been active in repressing Islamists from electoral participation. Clearly political Islamism is not an answer to the growth of these nations, and while America has frequently pushed for increased liberties in these nations, it is also cognizant that political Islamism would only replace one "tyranny" with another that is much worse.
However, in Mr. Scheuer's blind recitation of Islamist talking points as an argument for Non-Interventionism, he does not offer an alternative, other than his outrageous statement that Bin Laden's Islamism will "urg[e] Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith" (p. 164). In fact, it precisely that Islamist ideology lauded in Mr. Scheuer's statement which is the greatest threat of "Muslim tyranny" as clearly seen in the so-called "Islamic Republic" of Iran.
The challenge to the Middle East and America is to recognize that political Islamism is the root of such "Muslim tyrannies" and is anything but a solution to non-democratic nations in the Middle East. Not supporting an anti-freedom ideology that seeks to establish a "tyranny", whether it is Islamism, Communism, or Nazism - is not an "indictment" against U.S. foreign policy - it is a definition of who we are as Americans. The final Islamist "indictment" on U.S. foreign policy by Non-Interventionist Michael Scheuer is also revealed for the nonsensical falsehood that it is.
3.5. The Non-Interventionist Abandonment of the World to Islamism
But these Islamist terms of surrender from Osama Bin Laden urged on Americans by Non-Interventionists are not enough. It is hardly just Israel that the Non-Interventionists seek America to abandon - it is quite literally the entire world. Mr. Scheuer claims that nothing short of America surrendering its position in addressing Islamism and Islamist terrorism throughout the world will suffice. Clearly his argument of appeasement seeks to proactively negotiate even greater terms of American surrender to Osama Bin Laden and Islamists than even they have demanded.
So Mr. Scheuer's Non-Interventionist guidance on U.S. foreign policy continues to be littered with a series of defeatist recommendations and warnings should America dare to intervene in areas of the world where Islamism is continuing to grow.
In Nigeria, Mr. Scheuer warns that "where U.S. forces may have to intervene to secure oil supplies, the prospect of doing so in the Niger Delta may be the most appallingly difficult and bloody" (p. 174). In effect, Mr. Scheuer warns the U.S. to ignore a nation which has frequently seen Islamist violence, has seen efforts to attempt to institute Sharia law, and which represents a risk to evolve into another Islamist terror base.
In Somalia, Mr. Scheuer complains of how "trying to kill Somali-based al-Qaeda leaders" has been turned "into another casus belli for jihadists by endorsing the Christian Ethiopians' destruction of an Islamist government and subsequent stationing of troops in the country to fight Somali Islamists" (p. 178). Mr. Scheuer apparently seeks to echo Osama Bin Laden's July 2006 warning to America not to send troops to Somalia to fight Islamist terrorists. Moreover, Mr. Scheuer effectively seeks the U.S. to ignore a nation that has had a history of recruiting Islamist terrorists from around the world (including the U.S.) to help expand an Islamist terror base in Somalia.
In Thailand, Mr. Scheuer threatens that should America "be committed to respond positively to a Thai request for military help against the Islamist insurgency", that "even the bare possibility of U.S. involvement in Vietnam-like jungle combat... would in turn draw other regional Islamist fighters to Thailand like a magnet" (p. 176). Once again, any where in the world where Islamist terror is having a significant influence, Mr. Scheuer would have America ignore it. In the past four years, Thailand has seen 2,776 killed as a result of Islamist terrorism in Thailand's southern regions - nearly the same death toll as the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City. Not mentioned in this Thailand terrorist attack death toll is the grisly nature of the endless litany of decapitations, burning victims alive, and deliberate savage attacks on children, schools, elderly, and women. But Mr. Scheuer would have America look the other way regarding the Islamist terrorist crimes against humanity in Thailand.
In Europe, Mr. Scheuer shrugs off the growing Islamist problem as something where there is "very little America can do to help" (p. 179) and asserts that that it is "almost impossible for Americans to help Europe" (p. 180), as "demographic statistics" alone will allow Islamists to conquer Europe. In his defeatist discourse, Mr. Scheuer assails Europeans' "manliness" (p. 179), while he argues for the surrender of the world to Islamism. Europe clearly does have many serious problems with Islamism, and it is well documented as to Europe's demographic problems. But how does acknowledging this justify American abandonment of Europe? It doesn't. America fought two World Wars to help liberate Europe. Apparently, given Mr. Scheuer's philosophical embrace of Charles Lindbergh's Non-Interventionist ideology, he views such past American sacrifices as a waste of time, as he shrugs while recognizing the growing Islamist movement develop in Europe.
Especially in Europe, ignorance of the growing Islamist movement is nothing short of national security suicide for the United States. The facts are that Europe-based Islamist terrorist cells were used in planning the 9/11 terror attacks, and have been used frequently since to try repeated efforts to attack the United States, especially with United Kingdom-based Islamist cells. In August 2006, a plot by British Islamist terrorists to hijack transatlantic jetliners to crash into the United States was foiled; had it succeeded, the loss of lives in the American homeland easily would have been in the tens of thousands if not more. In April 2001, British Islamist terrorists were in the final stages of plots against terrorist attacks in New York City on financial buildings, Jewish targets, and possibly the World Trade Center. In fact, British Islamist terrorists could have been the ones that succeeded in the first major mass-casualty terrorist attacks in the United States homeland, before the 9/11 attacks.
But Mr. Scheuer still makes a Non-Interventionist argument is that America can be secure from Islamist terrorists by appeasing Islamists and allowing their influence to grow around the world. Europe is just as acceptable a loss under such terms of surrender, as the rest of the world is - no matter what the direct consequences are to America's national security.
Certainly, the U.S. has finite resources, which it must delegate based on a clear definition of the enemy and priorities in a coherent strategy to defeat the enemy. Such reality of finite American resources, however, does not justify the Non-Interventionist argument to ignore and abandon every