The Corrupting Influence Of Oil Money
By Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel
The world has never looked better for the Big Five oil companies. This morning, Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, announced its "second-quarter profit rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, the highest-ever profit by an American company.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20391.htm
Thursday, July 31, 2008
On Joe Klein and the Jewish Neoconservatives by Daniel Levy, Huffington Post
Daniel Levy
On Joe Klein and the Jewish Neoconservatives
July 31, 2008 The Huffington Post
You may have missed it, but renowned Time columnist Joe Klein and the Jewish neoconservative blogosphere are at war with one another. The reason this is more important than an argument on who sits where in shul is that Klein has refused to cower, and as a respected member of the mainstream media is pushing back against one of the uglier and more debate-restricting phenomena of recent years. Here is what Joe had to say on 'Swampland', his blog on the Time website
There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003... Happily, these people represent a very small sliver of the Jewish population in this country...I remain proud of my Jewish heritage, a strong supporter of Israel...But I am not willing to grant these ideologues the anonymity they seek...I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America's long-term interests and because they believe Israel's existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I'm not going to be intimidated by them.
It came in response to the latest outburst from Podhoretz Jr. at the Commentary blog: "As for his [Klein] use of classic anti-Semitic canards, I am happy to report that the Jewish people will long survive Joe Klein". Mazal Tov, Joe, you have became a thing that the Jewish people will survive, no less.
All of this came on the heels of an earlier and none-too-friendly exchange of letters between Klein and the Anti-Defamation League, when the latter saw fit to attack Klein over his characterization of the role of the Jewish neoconservatives in the run-up to the Iraq War. Joe stood his ground then, too, effectively dismissing the claim of anti-Semitism and explaining that "most Jews disagree with their [the Jewish neocons] politics and many Jews are disgusted with their behavior."
I would suggest that this is not just Klein's private kerfuffle: it matters to Jewish America, to America and Israel too, and to being able to have a more serious conversation about anti-Semitism in the future.
The Klein thesis shared by a great many commentators and analysts (this writer included) goes something like this: Bush administration policies in the Middle East have had disastrous consequences for the US; Israel too is in a less secure and worse place as a result of these policies; ultimate responsibility for all this lies with the president himself and his hawkish and close group of senior aides--principal among them Veep Cheney; the neoconservatives played an important role in providing an ideological framing for these policies; within that neoconservative world there operates a prominent and tight-knit group of Jewish neocons who are ideologically driven in part by an old school Likudist view of Israeli interests.
Were the Jewish neocons in control and did they make the fatal decisions? No. Are all Jews neoconservatives or are all neoconservatives Jews? Please! Are the Jews or Israel to blame for the Bush Middle East debacle? Get outta here.
Something did happen though -- there was a failure within the mainstream, Jewish and non-Jewish, to identify the existence of a particular Jewish neoconservative narrative and then to challenge that narrative as being fundamentally flawed in its reading of both American and Israeli interests. One of the causes of that vacuum was the abuse and cheapening of the term anti-Semitism as it was hurled at many who went after Podhoretz, Perle, Feith, and co. They tried, and sadly rather successfully, built a wall of untouchability. Klein is taking his shofar or trumpet to that wall, as many have done before, but Joe is particularly MSM, and therefore important.
Too many Jewish communal leaders and institutions made the mistake of not standing up and speaking out more against the right-wing excesses of a small minority of their co-religionists. Some even embraced and feted the neocons -- a mistake AIPAC particularly excelled in and something I get the impression that AIPAC is at least partially trying to walk itself back from. Israeli leaders, interestingly enough, appear to be less enthusiastic -- there is evidence that Prime Minister Sharon thought the Iraq War not to be a good idea and outgoing Prime Minister Olmert has begun proximity talks with the Syrians.
Similar mistakes are being made with the far-right Christian Evangelical Zionists, and John Hagee's group CUFI. Can there be a more vile poster-boy for Israel than Hagee?!
Polls consistently show that American Jewish opinion is in a very different place. Over a decade ago, J.J. Goldberg described how what he called the "new Jews", who were out of sync with the majority, assumed the mantle of leadership in the American Jewish community. In his book Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, Goldberg claimed that a set of facts had emerged by the mid-1970s that transformed organized Jewry, based around the 1967 Israeli military victory, the role of the Soviet Jewry campaign in Soviet-US relations, and the belated rise of popular Holocaust awareness with its attendant "never again" maxim. This created the counter-revolution of the "new Jews" -- a passionate minority of defensive nationalists, driven by a terrible vision, living amidst an overwhelming majority of still optimistic Jewish liberals. To quote J.J. Goldberg, "their defiance was so strident, and their anger so intense, that the rest of the Jewish community respectfully stood back and let the new Jews take the lead."
The "new Jews" of Goldberg's 1997 book are today's Jewish neoconservatives, and the reason this is so important right now is the issue raised by Joe Klein -- their aggressive advocacy of a military strike against Iran, a position that again places them out of step with the majority of American Jews. There have been a series of articles advocating such military action. It is true that such voices are also heard in Israel (and some even appear in the New York Times op-ed page, most notably this truly horrific and pathetically argued piece by Benny Morris).
I would argue that Israel has made a strategic mistake in making the gevalt approach so central in its response to suspected Iranian nuclear ambitions. Israel is stronger than that and it also has the capacity to deter Iran. It also has U.S. support. It is worth remembering that Israel, evidently, has not attacked Iran, so in practice, at least so far, the military is not the preferred option. In their declarations, Israeli leaders express a preference for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear question. And prominent ex- and even current officials have endorsed American engagement with Iran as the best option, including ex-Mossad chief Efraim Halevy and ex-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. In private, Israeli leaders are apparently more circumspect. This report appeared some time ago in Haaretz about Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel...Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.
I will not go too deeply into the Iran policy debate, but a more compelling case than that of Podhoretz and co. is that military action would be a disaster for Israel, for America, and for the American Jewish community, too.
The problem for the American Jewish community would not seem to be with exposing the objectionable positions of Jewish neoconservatives and then having a debate. The danger is in the opposite approach -- in creating the impression that the Jewish neoconservative voice is the Jewish voice, or that of the "pro-Israel" lobby, and in drowning out, or more accurately, suppressing the voice of the majority. That would be a way to not only increase the risk of an extremely dangerous policy being pursued and to make support for Israel the partisan domain of the far-right bomb-bomb-bomb Iran crowd, but it would also cede the ground to those who are emptying the charge of anti-Semitism of all meaning. And those are good enough reasons for Joe Klein's cause to be our cause too.
On Joe Klein and the Jewish Neoconservatives
July 31, 2008 The Huffington Post
You may have missed it, but renowned Time columnist Joe Klein and the Jewish neoconservative blogosphere are at war with one another. The reason this is more important than an argument on who sits where in shul is that Klein has refused to cower, and as a respected member of the mainstream media is pushing back against one of the uglier and more debate-restricting phenomena of recent years. Here is what Joe had to say on 'Swampland', his blog on the Time website
There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003... Happily, these people represent a very small sliver of the Jewish population in this country...I remain proud of my Jewish heritage, a strong supporter of Israel...But I am not willing to grant these ideologues the anonymity they seek...I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America's long-term interests and because they believe Israel's existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I'm not going to be intimidated by them.
It came in response to the latest outburst from Podhoretz Jr. at the Commentary blog: "As for his [Klein] use of classic anti-Semitic canards, I am happy to report that the Jewish people will long survive Joe Klein". Mazal Tov, Joe, you have became a thing that the Jewish people will survive, no less.
All of this came on the heels of an earlier and none-too-friendly exchange of letters between Klein and the Anti-Defamation League, when the latter saw fit to attack Klein over his characterization of the role of the Jewish neoconservatives in the run-up to the Iraq War. Joe stood his ground then, too, effectively dismissing the claim of anti-Semitism and explaining that "most Jews disagree with their [the Jewish neocons] politics and many Jews are disgusted with their behavior."
I would suggest that this is not just Klein's private kerfuffle: it matters to Jewish America, to America and Israel too, and to being able to have a more serious conversation about anti-Semitism in the future.
The Klein thesis shared by a great many commentators and analysts (this writer included) goes something like this: Bush administration policies in the Middle East have had disastrous consequences for the US; Israel too is in a less secure and worse place as a result of these policies; ultimate responsibility for all this lies with the president himself and his hawkish and close group of senior aides--principal among them Veep Cheney; the neoconservatives played an important role in providing an ideological framing for these policies; within that neoconservative world there operates a prominent and tight-knit group of Jewish neocons who are ideologically driven in part by an old school Likudist view of Israeli interests.
Were the Jewish neocons in control and did they make the fatal decisions? No. Are all Jews neoconservatives or are all neoconservatives Jews? Please! Are the Jews or Israel to blame for the Bush Middle East debacle? Get outta here.
Something did happen though -- there was a failure within the mainstream, Jewish and non-Jewish, to identify the existence of a particular Jewish neoconservative narrative and then to challenge that narrative as being fundamentally flawed in its reading of both American and Israeli interests. One of the causes of that vacuum was the abuse and cheapening of the term anti-Semitism as it was hurled at many who went after Podhoretz, Perle, Feith, and co. They tried, and sadly rather successfully, built a wall of untouchability. Klein is taking his shofar or trumpet to that wall, as many have done before, but Joe is particularly MSM, and therefore important.
Too many Jewish communal leaders and institutions made the mistake of not standing up and speaking out more against the right-wing excesses of a small minority of their co-religionists. Some even embraced and feted the neocons -- a mistake AIPAC particularly excelled in and something I get the impression that AIPAC is at least partially trying to walk itself back from. Israeli leaders, interestingly enough, appear to be less enthusiastic -- there is evidence that Prime Minister Sharon thought the Iraq War not to be a good idea and outgoing Prime Minister Olmert has begun proximity talks with the Syrians.
Similar mistakes are being made with the far-right Christian Evangelical Zionists, and John Hagee's group CUFI. Can there be a more vile poster-boy for Israel than Hagee?!
Polls consistently show that American Jewish opinion is in a very different place. Over a decade ago, J.J. Goldberg described how what he called the "new Jews", who were out of sync with the majority, assumed the mantle of leadership in the American Jewish community. In his book Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, Goldberg claimed that a set of facts had emerged by the mid-1970s that transformed organized Jewry, based around the 1967 Israeli military victory, the role of the Soviet Jewry campaign in Soviet-US relations, and the belated rise of popular Holocaust awareness with its attendant "never again" maxim. This created the counter-revolution of the "new Jews" -- a passionate minority of defensive nationalists, driven by a terrible vision, living amidst an overwhelming majority of still optimistic Jewish liberals. To quote J.J. Goldberg, "their defiance was so strident, and their anger so intense, that the rest of the Jewish community respectfully stood back and let the new Jews take the lead."
The "new Jews" of Goldberg's 1997 book are today's Jewish neoconservatives, and the reason this is so important right now is the issue raised by Joe Klein -- their aggressive advocacy of a military strike against Iran, a position that again places them out of step with the majority of American Jews. There have been a series of articles advocating such military action. It is true that such voices are also heard in Israel (and some even appear in the New York Times op-ed page, most notably this truly horrific and pathetically argued piece by Benny Morris).
I would argue that Israel has made a strategic mistake in making the gevalt approach so central in its response to suspected Iranian nuclear ambitions. Israel is stronger than that and it also has the capacity to deter Iran. It also has U.S. support. It is worth remembering that Israel, evidently, has not attacked Iran, so in practice, at least so far, the military is not the preferred option. In their declarations, Israeli leaders express a preference for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear question. And prominent ex- and even current officials have endorsed American engagement with Iran as the best option, including ex-Mossad chief Efraim Halevy and ex-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. In private, Israeli leaders are apparently more circumspect. This report appeared some time ago in Haaretz about Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel...Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.
I will not go too deeply into the Iran policy debate, but a more compelling case than that of Podhoretz and co. is that military action would be a disaster for Israel, for America, and for the American Jewish community, too.
The problem for the American Jewish community would not seem to be with exposing the objectionable positions of Jewish neoconservatives and then having a debate. The danger is in the opposite approach -- in creating the impression that the Jewish neoconservative voice is the Jewish voice, or that of the "pro-Israel" lobby, and in drowning out, or more accurately, suppressing the voice of the majority. That would be a way to not only increase the risk of an extremely dangerous policy being pursued and to make support for Israel the partisan domain of the far-right bomb-bomb-bomb Iran crowd, but it would also cede the ground to those who are emptying the charge of anti-Semitism of all meaning. And those are good enough reasons for Joe Klein's cause to be our cause too.
A Thought Experiment Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan?
With both presidential candidates anxious to increase the US military presence on the ground and in the air in Afghanistan, the Washington community would appear to have achieved a consensus. Perhaps, but that does not mean it's a good idea. Pentagon insider Franklin ("Chuck") Spinney, now sort of retired and at sea in the Mediterranean, fully explains.
This article appeared in CounterPunch on July 30 and can be found at http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney07302008.html and below.
A Thought Experiment
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan?
By CHUCK SPINNEY
In a recent essay, entitled "Obama's Politics of Change: Afghanistan & Gore's Transformative Vision," I noted in respect to the early phase of our war against the Taliban that --
"In the fall of 2001, intel reports said there were between 40-60,000 Taliban, but when we quickly "defeated" them, the intel folks could only account for 6-8000 captured, wounded or killed. Nevertheless, the Pentagon brass and Bush quickly declared victory, even though it was clear at the time that the Taliban headed for the hills in classical guerrilla/Sun Tzu fashion -- when faced with superior force, disperse! That's a no-brainer in some circles but not those inside the Beltway. Now we are saying the Taliban are "regrouping" when is not clear they ever degrouped."
Some people objected to my characterization of of the Afghan Was as being a loser, saying the Afghan war is a morally good that must be prosecuted to a victorious end. While tautological reasoning may be comforting, particularly when it is other people's blood that is being spilt, it is important to ask oneself how a victory might be achieved. Is this merely a question of throwing more troops and bombs at at the problem, or is there more to it than that?
This article references two documents which may help the committed escalator determine whether it is a good idea to ramp up our efforts in Afghanistan with more troops, more military force, more "precision" bombing, which means more collateral damage, including more innocent civilian deaths, and is likely to breed more resentment, and more radicalization. Or whether the inept Mr. Bush and his neocon henchmen have created the conditions for another classical guerrilla war in Afghanistan, not unlike that created by the Soviets in the early 1980s which created misery for them in the late 1980s.
In this regard, readers would do well to remember that (1) Soviets had an easy ride for the first few years, while the Afghan guerrillas leaned how to fight them through a process of trial and error; and (2), that the Soviets reached a point where it became clear that pouring in more Soviet troops and increasing the firepower created more problems than it solved. Which begs the question: Is escalating the war in Afghanistan becoming a yawning trap, into which Mr. Obama and the Democrats seem eager to plunge?
At the heart of this question is the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, specifically the question of whether or not it has mutated into something that is more akin to a classical guerrilla war as opposed to being part of a Fourth Generation War against al Quaeda. The two attachments below may help the reader to appreciate the different dimensions of this consideration.
A recent report in Newseek entitled "The Taliban's Baghdad Strategy," offerss a well-informed description of the Taliban's approach to the conflict in Afghanistan. It describes how the Taliban are pursuing a strategy to systematically undermine the authority of the government of Mr Karsai, a man who, it should be remembered, the West, particularly the United States, put into place as the President of Afghanistan, and who, according to some reports, might be receiving financial support from Pakistan's rival India. Is this Taliban strategy something new and peculiar to the so-called Global War on Terror -- a war that Mr. Bush, the Pentagon, and now apparently many of Obama's defense advisors, seem to think they can prosecute successfully by relying on more boots on the ground coupled to more "precision firepower?"
Or is the Afghan War more in the nature of a modern guerrilla war, wherein a government established and propped up by unwanted outsiders with their own agendas usually becomes a critical losing vulnerability?
I have also attached below portions of a briefing that may help some of us to understand these latter questions. It contains three slides #91, #92, & #108 from the late Colonel John R. Boyd's legendary briefing of the philosophy and conduct of war, Patterns of Conflict, which was written well before the Taliban even existed. Boyd's aim in Patterns of Conflict was to synthesize a unified understanding of the fundamental nature conflict by examining the history regular and irregular war. Boyd was not a warmonger, but he recognized war is often unavoidable, and his aim was to understand it in a way that it could be prosecuted successfully at the lowest possible cost to society and in a way that reduced the possibility of future conflict. The three slides of his 193-slide briefing describe part of his understanding of the nature of modern guerrilla warfare (i.e., #91 & #92) as well as the nature of a successful counter guerrilla operations (i.e., #108). I picked them because they are the most pertinent to the simple exercise described below.
I want readers to perform a little thought experiment by comparing the information in Newsweek article to that in Boyd's Boyd's generic observations about the conduct of a guerrilla campaign in Slides #91 and #92. If you agree that the information in the Newsweek report mesh at least enough with the ideas in these slides to warrant further thinking, then ask yourself if Mr. Obama and the Democrats, together with their Afghan and Nato allies and the American public are willing and capable of undertaking the kind of counter-guerrilla campaign that meets ALL of the conditions of Boyd's Slide #108?
And if the answer is NO in either of these two steps, maybe it is time for the US to leave. BUT if you still want to escalate the war and the hemorrhage of blood and treasure in Afghanistan, then you owe it to yourself to come up with some more realistic ideas than those in Slide #108 about how to successfully escalate this war. Simply saying it is a GOOD war may be comforting but it is not enough. Simply saying it is a question of WILL may work as a substitute for thought, but it is no strategy. If staying the course is your choice, then what is needed is a strategy that will work in the real world.
There is one point in this simple exercise that serious readers ought to bear in mind: While these three slides give the essential gist of Boyd's understanding of the guerrilla warfare, he would be the first to warn that one must be very careful not to think of them as an isolated modules or checklists -- they exist in a larger strategic and grand strategic fabric, but I think they are sufficient to get this thought experiment going, at least as a first cut. The venturesome, particularly those who answered NO to the comparisons of this thought experiment, can download Patterns of Conflict in its entirety here.
Franklin "Chuck" Spinney (born 1945, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio) is an American former military analyst for the Pentagon who became famous in the early 1980s for what became known as the "Spinney Report", criticizing what he described as the reckless pursuit of costly complex weapon systems by the Pentagon, with disregard to budgetary consequences. Despite attempts by the his superiors to bury the controversial report, it eventually was exposed during a United States Senate Budget Committee on Defense hearing, which though scheduled to go unnoticed, made the cover of Time Magazine March 7, 1983. Chuck Spinney retired from the Pentagon after 33 years and currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean.
Slides 90, 91, and #108 of John Boyd's Patterns of Conflict]---------
Slide 90: MODERN GUERRILLIA CAMPAIGN
Action
· Capitalize on discontent and mistrust generated by corruption (real or imagined), exploitation, oppression, incompetence, and unwanted presence of existing regime to evolve a common cause or unifying theme as basis to organize and maintain mass popular support through a militant political program.
· Set-up administrative and military organization, sanctuary, and communications network under the control of the guerrilla political leadership without arousing regime's intelligence and security apparatus. Build-up a shadow government, with "parallel hierarchies", in localities and regions that can be made ripe for insurrection/revolution by infiltrating cadres (vanguards) who can not only subvert existing authority but also convert leaders and people to guerrilla cause and organizational way.
· Exploit subversion of government and conversion of people to guerrilla cause to create an alien atmosphere of security and intelligence in order to "blind" regime to guerrilla plans, operations, and organization yet make "visible" regime's strengths, weaknesses, moves, and intentions.
· Shape propaganda, foment civil disorders (such as rallies, demonstrations, strikes, and riots), use selected terrorism, perform sabotage, and exploit resulting misinformation to expand mistrust and sow discord thereby magnify the appearance of corruption, incompetence, etc., and the inability of regime to govern.
· Employ tiny cohesive bands for surprise hit-and-run raids against lines of communications to gain arms and supplies as well as disrupt government communication, coordination, and movement. Retreat and melt into environment when faced by superior police and armed forces.
· Disperse or scatter tiny guerrilla bands to arouse the people (and gain recruits) as well as harass, wear-out, and spread-out government forces while larger bands, or mobile formations, concentrate to wipe-out his dispersed, isolated, and relatively weak fractions by sudden ambush or sneak attack.
· Play upon the grievances and obsessions of people (via propaganda, re-education, and selected successes) as well as encourage government to indiscriminately take harsh reprisal measures against them in order to connect the government with expanding climate of mistrust, discord, and moral disintegration. Simultaneously, show (by contrast) that guerrillas exhibit moral authority, offer competence, and provide desired benefits in order to further erode government influence, gain more recruits, multiply base areas, and increase political infrastructure hence expand guerrilla influence/control over population and countryside.
· Demonstrate disintegration of regime by striking Cheng/Ch'i fashion, with small fluid bands and ever larger mobile formations, to split-up, envelop, and annihilate fractions of major enemy forces.
Idea
· Defeat existing regime politically by showing they have neither the moral right nor demonstrated ability to govern and militarily by continuously using stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of small bands and larger units in cooperation with political "agitprop" (agitation/propaganda) teams as basis to harass, confuse and ultimately destroy the will or capacity to resist.
Slide 91: MODERN GUERRILLA CAMPAIGN
Essence
· Capitalize on corruption, injustice, incompetence, etc., (or their appearances) as basis to generate atmosphere of mistrust and discord in order to sever moral bonds that bind people to existing regime.
Simultaneously,
· Share existing burdens with people and work with them to root out and punish corruption, remove injustice, eliminate grievances, etc., as basis to form moral bonds between people and guerrillas in order to bind people to guerrilla philosophy and ideals.
Intent
· Shape and exploit crises environment that permits guerrilla vanguards or cadres to pure-up guerrilla resolve, attract the uncommitted, and drain-away adversary resolve as foundation to replace existing regime with guerrilla regime.
Implication
· Guerrillas, by being able to penetrate the very essence of their adversary's moral-mental-physical being, generate many moral-mental-physical non-cooperative (or isolated) centers of gravity, as well as subvert or seize those centers of gravity that adversary regime must depend upon, in order to magnify friction, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse.
Yet,
· Guerrillas shape or influence moral-mental-physical atmosphere so that potential adversaries, as well as the uncommitted, are drawn toward guerrilla philosophy and are empathetic toward guerrilla success.
Slide #108: COUNTER-GUERRILLA CAMPAIGN
Action
· Undermine guerrilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of people--rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite. *
· Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots. *
· Infiltrate guerrilla movement as well as employ population for intelligence about guerrilla plans, operations, and organization.
· Seal-off guerrilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies as well as by disrupting or straddling communications that connect these regions with outside world.
· Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerrilla teams into affected localities and regions to: inhibit guerrilla communication, coordination and movement; minimize guerrilla contact with local inhabitants; isolate their ruling cadres; and destroy their infrastructure.
· Exploit presence of above teams to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security in order to protect people from the persuasion and coercion efforts of the guerrilla cadres and their fighting units.
· Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerrilla controlled regions. Employ (guerrillas' own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make base areas untenable, and disrupt communication with outside world.
· Expand these complementary security/penetration efforts into affected region after affected region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerrilla influence with government influence and control.
· Visibly link these efforts with local political/economic/social reform in order to connect central government with hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.
Idea
· Break guerrillas' moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.
____________
· * If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides!
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
winslowwheeler@msn.com
1 301 791-2397 (office)
301 221-3897 (cell)
This article appeared in CounterPunch on July 30 and can be found at http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney07302008.html and below.
A Thought Experiment
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan?
By CHUCK SPINNEY
In a recent essay, entitled "Obama's Politics of Change: Afghanistan & Gore's Transformative Vision," I noted in respect to the early phase of our war against the Taliban that --
"In the fall of 2001, intel reports said there were between 40-60,000 Taliban, but when we quickly "defeated" them, the intel folks could only account for 6-8000 captured, wounded or killed. Nevertheless, the Pentagon brass and Bush quickly declared victory, even though it was clear at the time that the Taliban headed for the hills in classical guerrilla/Sun Tzu fashion -- when faced with superior force, disperse! That's a no-brainer in some circles but not those inside the Beltway. Now we are saying the Taliban are "regrouping" when is not clear they ever degrouped."
Some people objected to my characterization of of the Afghan Was as being a loser, saying the Afghan war is a morally good that must be prosecuted to a victorious end. While tautological reasoning may be comforting, particularly when it is other people's blood that is being spilt, it is important to ask oneself how a victory might be achieved. Is this merely a question of throwing more troops and bombs at at the problem, or is there more to it than that?
This article references two documents which may help the committed escalator determine whether it is a good idea to ramp up our efforts in Afghanistan with more troops, more military force, more "precision" bombing, which means more collateral damage, including more innocent civilian deaths, and is likely to breed more resentment, and more radicalization. Or whether the inept Mr. Bush and his neocon henchmen have created the conditions for another classical guerrilla war in Afghanistan, not unlike that created by the Soviets in the early 1980s which created misery for them in the late 1980s.
In this regard, readers would do well to remember that (1) Soviets had an easy ride for the first few years, while the Afghan guerrillas leaned how to fight them through a process of trial and error; and (2), that the Soviets reached a point where it became clear that pouring in more Soviet troops and increasing the firepower created more problems than it solved. Which begs the question: Is escalating the war in Afghanistan becoming a yawning trap, into which Mr. Obama and the Democrats seem eager to plunge?
At the heart of this question is the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, specifically the question of whether or not it has mutated into something that is more akin to a classical guerrilla war as opposed to being part of a Fourth Generation War against al Quaeda. The two attachments below may help the reader to appreciate the different dimensions of this consideration.
A recent report in Newseek entitled "The Taliban's Baghdad Strategy," offerss a well-informed description of the Taliban's approach to the conflict in Afghanistan. It describes how the Taliban are pursuing a strategy to systematically undermine the authority of the government of Mr Karsai, a man who, it should be remembered, the West, particularly the United States, put into place as the President of Afghanistan, and who, according to some reports, might be receiving financial support from Pakistan's rival India. Is this Taliban strategy something new and peculiar to the so-called Global War on Terror -- a war that Mr. Bush, the Pentagon, and now apparently many of Obama's defense advisors, seem to think they can prosecute successfully by relying on more boots on the ground coupled to more "precision firepower?"
Or is the Afghan War more in the nature of a modern guerrilla war, wherein a government established and propped up by unwanted outsiders with their own agendas usually becomes a critical losing vulnerability?
I have also attached below portions of a briefing that may help some of us to understand these latter questions. It contains three slides #91, #92, & #108 from the late Colonel John R. Boyd's legendary briefing of the philosophy and conduct of war, Patterns of Conflict, which was written well before the Taliban even existed. Boyd's aim in Patterns of Conflict was to synthesize a unified understanding of the fundamental nature conflict by examining the history regular and irregular war. Boyd was not a warmonger, but he recognized war is often unavoidable, and his aim was to understand it in a way that it could be prosecuted successfully at the lowest possible cost to society and in a way that reduced the possibility of future conflict. The three slides of his 193-slide briefing describe part of his understanding of the nature of modern guerrilla warfare (i.e., #91 & #92) as well as the nature of a successful counter guerrilla operations (i.e., #108). I picked them because they are the most pertinent to the simple exercise described below.
I want readers to perform a little thought experiment by comparing the information in Newsweek article to that in Boyd's Boyd's generic observations about the conduct of a guerrilla campaign in Slides #91 and #92. If you agree that the information in the Newsweek report mesh at least enough with the ideas in these slides to warrant further thinking, then ask yourself if Mr. Obama and the Democrats, together with their Afghan and Nato allies and the American public are willing and capable of undertaking the kind of counter-guerrilla campaign that meets ALL of the conditions of Boyd's Slide #108?
And if the answer is NO in either of these two steps, maybe it is time for the US to leave. BUT if you still want to escalate the war and the hemorrhage of blood and treasure in Afghanistan, then you owe it to yourself to come up with some more realistic ideas than those in Slide #108 about how to successfully escalate this war. Simply saying it is a GOOD war may be comforting but it is not enough. Simply saying it is a question of WILL may work as a substitute for thought, but it is no strategy. If staying the course is your choice, then what is needed is a strategy that will work in the real world.
There is one point in this simple exercise that serious readers ought to bear in mind: While these three slides give the essential gist of Boyd's understanding of the guerrilla warfare, he would be the first to warn that one must be very careful not to think of them as an isolated modules or checklists -- they exist in a larger strategic and grand strategic fabric, but I think they are sufficient to get this thought experiment going, at least as a first cut. The venturesome, particularly those who answered NO to the comparisons of this thought experiment, can download Patterns of Conflict in its entirety here.
Franklin "Chuck" Spinney (born 1945, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio) is an American former military analyst for the Pentagon who became famous in the early 1980s for what became known as the "Spinney Report", criticizing what he described as the reckless pursuit of costly complex weapon systems by the Pentagon, with disregard to budgetary consequences. Despite attempts by the his superiors to bury the controversial report, it eventually was exposed during a United States Senate Budget Committee on Defense hearing, which though scheduled to go unnoticed, made the cover of Time Magazine March 7, 1983. Chuck Spinney retired from the Pentagon after 33 years and currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean.
Slides 90, 91, and #108 of John Boyd's Patterns of Conflict]---------
Slide 90: MODERN GUERRILLIA CAMPAIGN
Action
· Capitalize on discontent and mistrust generated by corruption (real or imagined), exploitation, oppression, incompetence, and unwanted presence of existing regime to evolve a common cause or unifying theme as basis to organize and maintain mass popular support through a militant political program.
· Set-up administrative and military organization, sanctuary, and communications network under the control of the guerrilla political leadership without arousing regime's intelligence and security apparatus. Build-up a shadow government, with "parallel hierarchies", in localities and regions that can be made ripe for insurrection/revolution by infiltrating cadres (vanguards) who can not only subvert existing authority but also convert leaders and people to guerrilla cause and organizational way.
· Exploit subversion of government and conversion of people to guerrilla cause to create an alien atmosphere of security and intelligence in order to "blind" regime to guerrilla plans, operations, and organization yet make "visible" regime's strengths, weaknesses, moves, and intentions.
· Shape propaganda, foment civil disorders (such as rallies, demonstrations, strikes, and riots), use selected terrorism, perform sabotage, and exploit resulting misinformation to expand mistrust and sow discord thereby magnify the appearance of corruption, incompetence, etc., and the inability of regime to govern.
· Employ tiny cohesive bands for surprise hit-and-run raids against lines of communications to gain arms and supplies as well as disrupt government communication, coordination, and movement. Retreat and melt into environment when faced by superior police and armed forces.
· Disperse or scatter tiny guerrilla bands to arouse the people (and gain recruits) as well as harass, wear-out, and spread-out government forces while larger bands, or mobile formations, concentrate to wipe-out his dispersed, isolated, and relatively weak fractions by sudden ambush or sneak attack.
· Play upon the grievances and obsessions of people (via propaganda, re-education, and selected successes) as well as encourage government to indiscriminately take harsh reprisal measures against them in order to connect the government with expanding climate of mistrust, discord, and moral disintegration. Simultaneously, show (by contrast) that guerrillas exhibit moral authority, offer competence, and provide desired benefits in order to further erode government influence, gain more recruits, multiply base areas, and increase political infrastructure hence expand guerrilla influence/control over population and countryside.
· Demonstrate disintegration of regime by striking Cheng/Ch'i fashion, with small fluid bands and ever larger mobile formations, to split-up, envelop, and annihilate fractions of major enemy forces.
Idea
· Defeat existing regime politically by showing they have neither the moral right nor demonstrated ability to govern and militarily by continuously using stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of small bands and larger units in cooperation with political "agitprop" (agitation/propaganda) teams as basis to harass, confuse and ultimately destroy the will or capacity to resist.
Slide 91: MODERN GUERRILLA CAMPAIGN
Essence
· Capitalize on corruption, injustice, incompetence, etc., (or their appearances) as basis to generate atmosphere of mistrust and discord in order to sever moral bonds that bind people to existing regime.
Simultaneously,
· Share existing burdens with people and work with them to root out and punish corruption, remove injustice, eliminate grievances, etc., as basis to form moral bonds between people and guerrillas in order to bind people to guerrilla philosophy and ideals.
Intent
· Shape and exploit crises environment that permits guerrilla vanguards or cadres to pure-up guerrilla resolve, attract the uncommitted, and drain-away adversary resolve as foundation to replace existing regime with guerrilla regime.
Implication
· Guerrillas, by being able to penetrate the very essence of their adversary's moral-mental-physical being, generate many moral-mental-physical non-cooperative (or isolated) centers of gravity, as well as subvert or seize those centers of gravity that adversary regime must depend upon, in order to magnify friction, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse.
Yet,
· Guerrillas shape or influence moral-mental-physical atmosphere so that potential adversaries, as well as the uncommitted, are drawn toward guerrilla philosophy and are empathetic toward guerrilla success.
Slide #108: COUNTER-GUERRILLA CAMPAIGN
Action
· Undermine guerrilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of people--rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite. *
· Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots. *
· Infiltrate guerrilla movement as well as employ population for intelligence about guerrilla plans, operations, and organization.
· Seal-off guerrilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies as well as by disrupting or straddling communications that connect these regions with outside world.
· Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerrilla teams into affected localities and regions to: inhibit guerrilla communication, coordination and movement; minimize guerrilla contact with local inhabitants; isolate their ruling cadres; and destroy their infrastructure.
· Exploit presence of above teams to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security in order to protect people from the persuasion and coercion efforts of the guerrilla cadres and their fighting units.
· Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerrilla controlled regions. Employ (guerrillas' own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make base areas untenable, and disrupt communication with outside world.
· Expand these complementary security/penetration efforts into affected region after affected region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerrilla influence with government influence and control.
· Visibly link these efforts with local political/economic/social reform in order to connect central government with hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.
Idea
· Break guerrillas' moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.
____________
· * If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides!
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
winslowwheeler@msn.com
1 301 791-2397 (office)
301 221-3897 (cell)
Moscow Advances Military and Economic Ties with Tehran - by Aleksei Matveyev - 2008-07-31
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9718
Moscow Advances Military and Economic Ties with Tehran
- by Aleksei Matveyev - 2008-07-31
Moscow Advances Military and Economic Ties with Tehran
- by Aleksei Matveyev - 2008-07-31
U.S. is on brink of survival crisis, according to Moscow - 2008-07-29
U.S. is on brink of survival crisis, according to Moscow
- 2008-07-29
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9704
- 2008-07-29
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9704
Mike Whitney What's Going on in Afghanistan
Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07312008.html
What's Going on in Afghanistan
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07312008.html
GOIN NUKE: 25 nuclear countries could become nuclear in future as Non-Proliferation Treaty fails
GOIN NUKE: 25 nuclear countries could become nuclear in future as Non-Proliferation Treaty fails Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution, says if the unraveling of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty continues, it may be because of the Indian exception to the NPT and could lead to the development of 25 nuclear states. He notes that five countries with nuclear weapons were grandfathered into the treaty. US, UK, Russia, France, China. Now there are nine. Add India, Pakistan, N. Korea, and Israel.
Bitter Lemons Middle East Roundtable July 31, 2008: Iraq: Stabilizing? Normalizing?
bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 30 Volume 6 - July 31, 2008
Iraq: Stabilizing? Normalizing?
• Implications of the security improvement in Iraq - Ghassan Attiyah
The Iraqi arena remains preoccupied with the American-Iranian conflict.
• Iraqi developments are inextricably linked to Turkish security - Ahmet O. Evin
Developments in Iraq bring to mind Humpty Dumpty.
• Iran is part of the solution, not the problem - Reza Molavi and Ariabarzan Mohammadighalehtaki
Iran believes that the presence of Arab embassies in Baghdad will not pose a threat to its interests.
• Amman worried by Iraq's mountain of problems - Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
Jordanian circles feel the American military assessment is exaggerated and self-flattering.
Implications of the security improvement in Iraq
Ghassan Attiyah
In the past few months, Iraq has witnessed developments that point to a relative improvement in the security situation and a transformation toward greater regional political openness.
The security improvement manifested itself in the Iraqi army operations against al-Sadr militias, especially the Mahdi army and the so-called Special Groups, which reduced their presence in regions that had previously been strongholds, especially in Basra and Sadr City. The government has stressed on more than one occasion that the Sadr wing as a whole is not targeted, and on the ground the military command was the main target. Later, the military campaign moved to Amara close to the Iranian border, which is considered the most important Iranian entry point to Iraq for smuggling.
It was striking that the halt to fighting came after Iranian mediation, which raises the question of Iran's role and the nature of its alliances with Shi'ite forces in Iraq. It is well known that all Islamic Shi'ite parties have relations--to varying degrees--with Iran, especially with the Jerusalem Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards that is headed by General Suleimani, Iran's strongman in Iraq. Iranian mediation was decisive in ending the Shi'ite-Shi'ite fighting as Iran sees itself as standing to lose the most from such fighting. Shi'ite-Shi'ite conflict may force some to choose between the American ally or the Iranian friend and this is something Iran does not want at present.
The initiative of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to act against the Mahdi army came about without complete coordination with the Americans. Only when the campaign faced difficulties did American and British troops intervene--especially when more than 1,000 soldiers from the Iraqi forces in Basra had to give up their positions to Sadr's forces. American and British intervention played a decisive role when more than 800 soldiers joined the British base near Basra airport and planes and helicopters were deployed to assist government troops. This effective US and British intervention reflected back on Iran, which felt it was not ready for a full confrontation with the US. The end of the fighting thus came as an Iranian necessity.
The measures that were taken in Basra may not have been well planned, according to American sources, but the results benefited the government in surprising ways, contributing to a change of perception of the government on the Iraqi street. After the chaos of the militias, the military victory was welcomed by the masses, showing the government as a non-sectarian party. This in turn had a positive impact on persuading Sunni parties, who supported the government's actions, to re-engage and has led to talk of the return of Sunni parties to government. Meanwhile, the mistakes of the Sadr wing--which lacks effective control and command--caused revulsion among its popular base in the same way that the behavior of al-Qaeda has repulsed many Sunni forces, making room for them to join al-Sahwa (the awakening) factions.
The fact that the Iraqi government stands before district council elections next October places the government's military measures in a completely different political context. The Sadr wing is considered real competition to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC, formerly SCIRI) headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and the Da'wa Party headed by al-Maliki. It is worth noting that the Sadr wing did not participate in past local elections, handing SIIC complete control, and its decision to contest these elections made the Sadr wing a target. Reducing its influence will serve the SIIC.
Indeed, all parties in the Iraqi government approved the strikes against the Sadr wing for their own reasons: the Kurds wants to get rid of any party that rejects the concept of federation while the Sunni party (al-Tawafuq) suffered from the sectarian cleansing policy of Sadrists.
The crackdown on the Sadr wing and the accompanying public criticism of Iran's role were also welcomed by Arab governments, who have been under US pressure to open up to Baghdad as a reward and to show encouragement. The United Arab Emirates' foreign minister visited Iraq, followed by al-Maliki's visit to the UAE and Jordan. It was also announced that the king of Jordan would visit. Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and the UAE announced that they would appoint ambassadors to Baghdad. Finally, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came.
All of this serves to support the Iraqi government, which has suffered isolation from its Arab neighbors. However, there hasn't been a unified strategic Arab change and doubts will remain until additional steps are taken that will clarify the Iraqi government's position vis-a-vis Iran.
Iraqis do not doubt the security improvement but are suspicious about its sustainability. The sectarian split between Shi'ites and Sunnis is still deep and can explode at any moment, and some of the security improvement is due to the sectarian separation through walls and mutual displacement. Meanwhile, the armed resistance continues. Al-Qaeda is regrouping after it avoided clashes with Iraqi and American troops in Mosul and is settled now in Diala and other areas. The al-Sahwa factions still harbor doubts over the ruling Shi'ite parties and might act against them. Kurdish fears are mounting as the Iraqi parliament fails to solve any of their outstanding concerns. The local elections law has not been ratified yet, nor have the major issues of oil and Kirkuk been addressed. UN efforts on these matters have not been successful so far in face of the Kurdish resolve regarding the disputed regions.
Still, the Iraqi arena remains preoccupied with the American-Iranian conflict, which has become something of a chess game (a game invented in Iran) with each party trying to score points off the opponent. Thus the reduction in influence of the Mahdi army was balanced by Iran's success in mobilizing Shi'ite parties against the security agreement with the US.
Iran feels it does not need to rush any decisions on Iraq because it is waiting for the results of the next US presidential elections and will wait to deal with a new president. It is hoping to deal with Barack Obama, who affirmed his commitment to withdraw American troops from Iraq in 16 months and expressed a readiness to hold unconditional negotiations with Iran.
American weariness in Iraq and Afghanistan might help Iran reach an agreement with the US administration whereby Washington's approval of the Iranian role in Iraq is traded for Iranian support for America in Afghanistan.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Ghassan Attiyah is the director of the Baghdad-based Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, which he founded in August 2003.
Iraqi developments are inextricably linked to Turkish security
Ahmet O. Evin
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the Turkish parliament's March 1, 2003, vote that disallowed American troops to move through southeastern Turkey and open a second front of attack from the north on Iraq. Washington's frustration and anger over that vote have gradually subsided and the differences over Iraq between Turkey and the US appear to have been bridged. Both Washington and Ankara insist that there is significant and visible improvement in Iraq's security situation. Both governments utilize, as if to convince skeptics, the same mildly optimistic tone in emphasizing their overriding objective to see Iraq stabilized.
Who doesn't? Not a minute should be lost in putting an end to Iraq's painful humanitarian crisis as well as to the prevailing chaos there that continues to pose a serious security threat to the region and beyond. But the task is not easily accomplished and, despite arguments to the contrary, there is room for skepticism regarding the prospects of achieving stability in Iraq. Just as these lines are being written, a suicide bombing took place in Kirkuk that killed 35 people and wounded over 200. Is the violence spreading north, as some fear in the wake of these developments?
Violence on the same scale as witnessed in Baghdad, central provinces or south in Basra is highly unlikely to occur in the north because of topographic (mountains) and demographic (size and concentration of population in urban areas) reasons. Moreover, ethnic and confessional cleavages pose far less of a threat in the north because of solidarity among the Kurds, who represent an overwhelming majority of the population there. Nevertheless, neither the existence of a comparatively less violent province, nor statistics of decreasing casualties in the capital and surrounding provinces, nor the apparent success of the Iraqi security forces' operation last March in Basra can be said to constitute convincing evidence of increasing stability. Sadly, developments in Iraq bring to mind Humpty Dumpty; immensely difficult challenges will have to be met before the country can be put back together again.
Among the internal challenges, the most important one is to reestablish the armed forces as a credible, coherent, professional institution of the state that commands loyalty and respect. Legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament on January 12, 2008, to allow former Baath members to return to government service is a step in the right direction for both reconciliation and strengthening government by bringing back experienced cadres. But it will take time to get back on duty a critical mass of former officials and then to integrate them into the new environment.
The political arena, including particularly the relationship between central and regional administration, is likely to be affected in the foreseeable future by the tensions and polarization across the country. The party-slate system adopted for national elections has resulted, not unexpectedly, in a race to win favor from party leaders, thus deflecting attention from pressing issues of national concern. Ideological polarization (along ethnic or sectarian lines) is a collateral damage of the party-slate choice that puts party loyalty before representation. Although the legislation governing provincial administration, passed last spring, aims to curb the power of national government over local communities, it remains to be seen whether representation at the local level will help to solve problems of particular communities or add strains to the relationship between green zone politicians and local administrators.
Moreover, an overriding emphasis on elections as the sole indicator of democratic development (thus also reflecting a conceptual confusion of democracy with elections, which constitute a necessary procedure for the maintenance of an established democratic system that is characterized by sustainable institutions) has deflected attention from the way in which decisions are made and consensus achieved in tribal societies. It is the culture of tribal consultation, shared by all ethnic and sectarian groups, that is likely to facilitate the acceptance and implementation of political decisions countrywide.
As far as the neighborhood is concerned, Iraq's stability is essentially linked to Turkey's own security interests. Turkey has been actively contributing to Iraq's reconstruction and security by means of investments, trade, technical assistance and training of Iraqi security forces. It was instrumental in establishing recently a Strategic High Level Council, co-chaired by the prime ministers of the two countries, with the objective of enhancing cooperation on concrete projects. Also, increased cooperation with Iraq's Kurdish leadership has followed US-Turkey cooperation in intelligence exchange that has allowed the Turkish armed forces to accurately target PKK hideouts in northern Iraq. During his visit to Turkey last March, President Talabani identified the PKK as a common threat to both Iraq's and Turkey's national security. Ankara has welcomed Iraq's provincial elections and has begun communicating directly with Massoud Barzani as the leader of the local administration. Despite occasional disruptions, Kirkuk oil is now flowing to the Ceyhan terminal at the rate of 800,000 bbd.
All of these positive developments are consistent with Turkey's aim to achieve regional cooperation by means of having "zero problems" with neighbors. But Iraq is more than a mere neighbor: developments there are related inextricably to Turkey's domestic security as well as its transatlantic relations. Also, Turkey's ability to support Iraq is necessarily limited, given the enormous challenges the country faces. Sharpened sectarian divisions, moreover, have resulted in substantially increased Iranian influence among the Shi'ite communities in Iraq. Though both Ankara and the Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq may see a window of opportunity for future cooperation, how Iran might shape its policies toward the north remains to be seen. In any case, the Iran factor is likely to pose yet another difficult challenge to achieving stability in Iraq and the region.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org.
Ahmet O. Evin is founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University. He is a professor of political science at Sabanci and is a member of the board of directors of Istanbul Policy Center.
Iran is part of the solution, not the problem
Reza Molavi and Ariabarzan Mohammadighalehtaki
Britain withdrew from the Persian Gulf in 1971, leaving behind a security vacuum that only the Shah could fill. With America's support, Iran under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became the policeman of the Persian Gulf. But with the advent of the Islamic Revolution, power in the Gulf region was dispersed among the United States, Iraq, Iran and to some degree Saudi Arabia.
More recently, the removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq as the strategic counterweight to Iran has changed this dynamic entirely; the Islamic Republic of Iran has been able to expand its influence in the Middle East, Africa, Transcaucasia and beyond. The United States and the European Union now face the question of how they can mitigate potential threats to their interests if Iran succeeds in consolidating its new position as the leading power in the region.
For Iran, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was "a miracle come true". Not only was Iran's sworn enemy (Saddam Hussein) removed, but the very Shi'ite and Kurdish groups that sided with Iran during its eight-year war with Iraq have become the main players on the Iraqi political scene.
Iran was the first country to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council that was established under the US occupation in 2003. Iran has continued its support to embrace the new Iraqi government of 2006. The al-Dawa party to whom current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs had its headquarters based in Tehran during Saddam's rule of terror. The same is true for the departed Ayatollah Hakim and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), currently known as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
The Iraqi Kurds have a long history of proximity to Iran. When the Iraqi government used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988, Jalal Talabani (currently president of Iraq, then head of PUK) sought safety in Iran. In 1991, when a popular uprising liberated almost all of Kurdistan including Kirkuk and the Iraqi army retaliated with an iron fist, Kurds in massive numbers fled to Iran and Turkey, but it was only the government of Iran that kept its borders open against all uncertainties and hazards.
Tehran's regime has no interest in undermining the current government of Iraq. In fact, Iran's constructive role in Iraq has gone beyond the new Iraqi government to include the new Iraqi army as well. SCIRI, for instance, asked its members to enter the new Iraqi army and police force. This was a positive step and Iranians deserve credit for it.
There are three reasons for the recent calm and stability in Iraq, one of them less well-known. The two obvious explanations are the Americans' 2007 surge, which even the Democrats now concede was a success, and the establishment of the Sahwa (awakening) forces. The third, less discussed reason is the fact that Iran did its best to help the Iraqi government in its effort to stabilize the situation in Iraq. It was Iran that advised Muqtada al-Sadr to dissolve the Mahdi army, thereby preventing a major clash between it and the Iraqi armed forces. Later, when the Baghdad operation took place and supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr refused to give up their guns, once again it was Iranian mediation efforts that saved the day and stopped escalation of the conflict in Sadr City.
Normalization in Iraq will clearly take time and patience; currently it is at the beginning phase of a long journey. One positive development that took place recently and further enhanced efforts at normalization and stabilization in Iraq was the visit of high-ranking Arab delegations followed by the promise of reopening Arab embassies in Baghdad. Other visits by dignitaries such as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were equally important.
In contradiction to the line take by the Arab media, Iran actually praises the normalization of relations between Iraq and its Arab neighbors. This position does not derive from sheer benevolence; rather, it is anchored in national interests. First, Iran, which until recently was the only Shi'ite country in the world, is "over the moon" to see the predominantly Sunni governments of the Arab states recognizing the Shi'ite government of Iraq. Previously, Iranians did not dare dream of a day when countries such as Egypt and the UAE would be ready to recognize a Shi'ite Iraq.
Second, Iran believes that the presence of Arab embassies in Baghdad will not pose any threat to its interests in the region. The Iranian regime is under the impression that the Arab states are too unpopular with their citizens to be able to challenge its influence. Even when an immense influx of money from rich Arab states was invested in Iraqi Sunni militia groups, Iran argues, they could not turn the tide in their own favor.
In conclusion, Iran is part of the solution in Iraq, not the problem. Iran seeks stabilization in Iraq as a long-term strategy. Naturally, the Iranians have influence in Iraq and, like any other country involved in Iraq, they wish to maintain it.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Reza Molavi is executive director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at Durham University, UK. He is also senior research associate at The Centre for Strategic Research, a unit of the Expediency Council of Iran. Ariabarzan Mohammadighalehtaki is a PhD student at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, UK.
Amman worried by Iraq's mountain of problems
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
King Abdullah of Jordan abruptly postponed a visit to Baghdad in early July without clear explanation. His trip is still on, Jordanian officials say, but they want to keep its timing secret to ensure the personal security of a king whose country, because of its cozy ties with Washington, is an avowed enemy of al-Qaeda. Jordanian intelligence gathering led to the killing of an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq last year.
No Sunni Arab head of state has visited Baghdad since the US toppled Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in 2003, allowing Iran to spread its radical version of political Islam across Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, rattling moderate countries like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Jordan is keen to see Iraq stabilize and does not support any hasty withdrawal of US forces. It is following the efforts of Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is trying to strike a balance between Washington and Tehran while reconciling with aloof Arab neighbors and curbing sectarian tension.
Amman does not trust him or his political intentions. But it says it wants to give him the benefit of the doubt until early 2009. Many officials fear Maliki wants to ensure his political survival beyond elections next year by recalibrating his divisive dependence on Iran while maximizing gains from an unpopular strategic security pact that his country is negotiating with Washington. For this, he needs to make regional diplomatic gains and win over Sunni powerhouses like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Amman was among the first Sunni Arab capitals to appoint a new ambassador to Iraq several weeks ago in a clear sign that it wanted better ties with its eastern neighbor, once a major trade partner and full oil supplier at below-market prices. This flexibility allowed Iraq to renew an agreement to sell oil to Jordan at discount rates and eased Washington's pressure on Iraq's neighbors to support Maliki through renewing diplomatic ties and scrapping debts.
A stable and unified Iraq means a lot to Jordan, which does not want to grapple with the possibility of Iraq exporting Shi'ite extremist groups and al-Qaeda fighters, of the kind who staged Amman's first suicide bombings in November 2005.
Iraq's stability will also curtail the power of Iran and encourage the repatriation of over 550,000 Iraqis who have fled to Jordan since 2003, taking some pressure off the fragile demographic balance, security and strained public services. A serious Iraq reconstruction effort will benefit the Jordanian economy, facing a global energy and food crisis.
Jordanian officials and commentators say the security environment in Iraq continues to improve, thanks in part to a surge of 30,000 additional US troops in 2007 under a controversial strategy approved by US President George W. Bush. Major violence indicators have been reduced by between 40 and 80 percent from pre-surge levels, according to the twelfth quarterly report in June measuring stability and security in Iraq. The extra combat power has largely been withdrawn as Washington looks set to announce further cuts in its 147,000-strong force this year.
Total security incidents have fallen to their lowest levels in four years. Coalition and Iraqi forces' operations against al-Qaeda have degraded its ability to attack and terrorize the population. Maliki's government succeeded in Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City against Shi'ite militias, particularly the Mahdi army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iranian-supported Special Groups. The revitalization of sectors of the Iraqi economy and local reconciliation efforts has also helped.
But Iraq still faces a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shi'ite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, endemic corruption and organizing provincial elections as early as October. Any of those could rekindle widespread fighting that is not over yet.
The underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up US military hopes for an early exit shortly after the fall of Baghdad might have changed in important ways in recent months, say several Jordanian officials, strategists and commentators. But this does not mean they share the optimistic assessment repeatedly cited by Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq who is seen as the main architect of the surge policy.
These circles feel the American military assessment is exaggerated and self-flattering as it glosses over many realities on the ground. Hence, it should not be openly applauded. True, the systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital. Yet this is largely due to tight security and a strategy of walling off entire areas purged of minorities in 2006. A fatwa issued by Sadr last summer banning sectarian killings has restrained his followers. But the Sadrists are in hibernating mode, waiting for re-activation orders from Iran.
"Al-Qaeda received several painful blows over the past months that have impacted its influence," says one Arab official. But this could only be temporarily. "The terror group has not been dismantled since it was able to regroup its fighters, to continue recruitment of new followers and to enjoy safe supply routes vital for sustaining its operations," he said.
Al-Qaeda's Iraqi fighters were instructed to relocate to safer areas within Iraq, while many of the foreign fighters were told to move to Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan and the Maghreb. This could be a major reason for increasing violence in Afghanistan, for a series of suicide attacks that ripped through northern Africa several months ago and for Monday's deadliest suicide attack in Baghdad in months.
But for now, Maliki, Iran and the US have a stake in stabilizing Iraq. More domestic quiet in Iraq will increase prospects of elections that could guarantee the future of Iranian influence under Maliki.
And President Bush does not want more trouble in Iraq to play in favor of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who wants to pull all US troops out of Iraq by 2010 to focus on the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is an independent journalist and former chief editor of the Jordan Times.
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 30 Volume 6 - July 31, 2008
Iraq: Stabilizing? Normalizing?
• Implications of the security improvement in Iraq - Ghassan Attiyah
The Iraqi arena remains preoccupied with the American-Iranian conflict.
• Iraqi developments are inextricably linked to Turkish security - Ahmet O. Evin
Developments in Iraq bring to mind Humpty Dumpty.
• Iran is part of the solution, not the problem - Reza Molavi and Ariabarzan Mohammadighalehtaki
Iran believes that the presence of Arab embassies in Baghdad will not pose a threat to its interests.
• Amman worried by Iraq's mountain of problems - Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
Jordanian circles feel the American military assessment is exaggerated and self-flattering.
Implications of the security improvement in Iraq
Ghassan Attiyah
In the past few months, Iraq has witnessed developments that point to a relative improvement in the security situation and a transformation toward greater regional political openness.
The security improvement manifested itself in the Iraqi army operations against al-Sadr militias, especially the Mahdi army and the so-called Special Groups, which reduced their presence in regions that had previously been strongholds, especially in Basra and Sadr City. The government has stressed on more than one occasion that the Sadr wing as a whole is not targeted, and on the ground the military command was the main target. Later, the military campaign moved to Amara close to the Iranian border, which is considered the most important Iranian entry point to Iraq for smuggling.
It was striking that the halt to fighting came after Iranian mediation, which raises the question of Iran's role and the nature of its alliances with Shi'ite forces in Iraq. It is well known that all Islamic Shi'ite parties have relations--to varying degrees--with Iran, especially with the Jerusalem Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards that is headed by General Suleimani, Iran's strongman in Iraq. Iranian mediation was decisive in ending the Shi'ite-Shi'ite fighting as Iran sees itself as standing to lose the most from such fighting. Shi'ite-Shi'ite conflict may force some to choose between the American ally or the Iranian friend and this is something Iran does not want at present.
The initiative of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to act against the Mahdi army came about without complete coordination with the Americans. Only when the campaign faced difficulties did American and British troops intervene--especially when more than 1,000 soldiers from the Iraqi forces in Basra had to give up their positions to Sadr's forces. American and British intervention played a decisive role when more than 800 soldiers joined the British base near Basra airport and planes and helicopters were deployed to assist government troops. This effective US and British intervention reflected back on Iran, which felt it was not ready for a full confrontation with the US. The end of the fighting thus came as an Iranian necessity.
The measures that were taken in Basra may not have been well planned, according to American sources, but the results benefited the government in surprising ways, contributing to a change of perception of the government on the Iraqi street. After the chaos of the militias, the military victory was welcomed by the masses, showing the government as a non-sectarian party. This in turn had a positive impact on persuading Sunni parties, who supported the government's actions, to re-engage and has led to talk of the return of Sunni parties to government. Meanwhile, the mistakes of the Sadr wing--which lacks effective control and command--caused revulsion among its popular base in the same way that the behavior of al-Qaeda has repulsed many Sunni forces, making room for them to join al-Sahwa (the awakening) factions.
The fact that the Iraqi government stands before district council elections next October places the government's military measures in a completely different political context. The Sadr wing is considered real competition to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC, formerly SCIRI) headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and the Da'wa Party headed by al-Maliki. It is worth noting that the Sadr wing did not participate in past local elections, handing SIIC complete control, and its decision to contest these elections made the Sadr wing a target. Reducing its influence will serve the SIIC.
Indeed, all parties in the Iraqi government approved the strikes against the Sadr wing for their own reasons: the Kurds wants to get rid of any party that rejects the concept of federation while the Sunni party (al-Tawafuq) suffered from the sectarian cleansing policy of Sadrists.
The crackdown on the Sadr wing and the accompanying public criticism of Iran's role were also welcomed by Arab governments, who have been under US pressure to open up to Baghdad as a reward and to show encouragement. The United Arab Emirates' foreign minister visited Iraq, followed by al-Maliki's visit to the UAE and Jordan. It was also announced that the king of Jordan would visit. Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and the UAE announced that they would appoint ambassadors to Baghdad. Finally, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came.
All of this serves to support the Iraqi government, which has suffered isolation from its Arab neighbors. However, there hasn't been a unified strategic Arab change and doubts will remain until additional steps are taken that will clarify the Iraqi government's position vis-a-vis Iran.
Iraqis do not doubt the security improvement but are suspicious about its sustainability. The sectarian split between Shi'ites and Sunnis is still deep and can explode at any moment, and some of the security improvement is due to the sectarian separation through walls and mutual displacement. Meanwhile, the armed resistance continues. Al-Qaeda is regrouping after it avoided clashes with Iraqi and American troops in Mosul and is settled now in Diala and other areas. The al-Sahwa factions still harbor doubts over the ruling Shi'ite parties and might act against them. Kurdish fears are mounting as the Iraqi parliament fails to solve any of their outstanding concerns. The local elections law has not been ratified yet, nor have the major issues of oil and Kirkuk been addressed. UN efforts on these matters have not been successful so far in face of the Kurdish resolve regarding the disputed regions.
Still, the Iraqi arena remains preoccupied with the American-Iranian conflict, which has become something of a chess game (a game invented in Iran) with each party trying to score points off the opponent. Thus the reduction in influence of the Mahdi army was balanced by Iran's success in mobilizing Shi'ite parties against the security agreement with the US.
Iran feels it does not need to rush any decisions on Iraq because it is waiting for the results of the next US presidential elections and will wait to deal with a new president. It is hoping to deal with Barack Obama, who affirmed his commitment to withdraw American troops from Iraq in 16 months and expressed a readiness to hold unconditional negotiations with Iran.
American weariness in Iraq and Afghanistan might help Iran reach an agreement with the US administration whereby Washington's approval of the Iranian role in Iraq is traded for Iranian support for America in Afghanistan.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Ghassan Attiyah is the director of the Baghdad-based Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, which he founded in August 2003.
Iraqi developments are inextricably linked to Turkish security
Ahmet O. Evin
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the Turkish parliament's March 1, 2003, vote that disallowed American troops to move through southeastern Turkey and open a second front of attack from the north on Iraq. Washington's frustration and anger over that vote have gradually subsided and the differences over Iraq between Turkey and the US appear to have been bridged. Both Washington and Ankara insist that there is significant and visible improvement in Iraq's security situation. Both governments utilize, as if to convince skeptics, the same mildly optimistic tone in emphasizing their overriding objective to see Iraq stabilized.
Who doesn't? Not a minute should be lost in putting an end to Iraq's painful humanitarian crisis as well as to the prevailing chaos there that continues to pose a serious security threat to the region and beyond. But the task is not easily accomplished and, despite arguments to the contrary, there is room for skepticism regarding the prospects of achieving stability in Iraq. Just as these lines are being written, a suicide bombing took place in Kirkuk that killed 35 people and wounded over 200. Is the violence spreading north, as some fear in the wake of these developments?
Violence on the same scale as witnessed in Baghdad, central provinces or south in Basra is highly unlikely to occur in the north because of topographic (mountains) and demographic (size and concentration of population in urban areas) reasons. Moreover, ethnic and confessional cleavages pose far less of a threat in the north because of solidarity among the Kurds, who represent an overwhelming majority of the population there. Nevertheless, neither the existence of a comparatively less violent province, nor statistics of decreasing casualties in the capital and surrounding provinces, nor the apparent success of the Iraqi security forces' operation last March in Basra can be said to constitute convincing evidence of increasing stability. Sadly, developments in Iraq bring to mind Humpty Dumpty; immensely difficult challenges will have to be met before the country can be put back together again.
Among the internal challenges, the most important one is to reestablish the armed forces as a credible, coherent, professional institution of the state that commands loyalty and respect. Legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament on January 12, 2008, to allow former Baath members to return to government service is a step in the right direction for both reconciliation and strengthening government by bringing back experienced cadres. But it will take time to get back on duty a critical mass of former officials and then to integrate them into the new environment.
The political arena, including particularly the relationship between central and regional administration, is likely to be affected in the foreseeable future by the tensions and polarization across the country. The party-slate system adopted for national elections has resulted, not unexpectedly, in a race to win favor from party leaders, thus deflecting attention from pressing issues of national concern. Ideological polarization (along ethnic or sectarian lines) is a collateral damage of the party-slate choice that puts party loyalty before representation. Although the legislation governing provincial administration, passed last spring, aims to curb the power of national government over local communities, it remains to be seen whether representation at the local level will help to solve problems of particular communities or add strains to the relationship between green zone politicians and local administrators.
Moreover, an overriding emphasis on elections as the sole indicator of democratic development (thus also reflecting a conceptual confusion of democracy with elections, which constitute a necessary procedure for the maintenance of an established democratic system that is characterized by sustainable institutions) has deflected attention from the way in which decisions are made and consensus achieved in tribal societies. It is the culture of tribal consultation, shared by all ethnic and sectarian groups, that is likely to facilitate the acceptance and implementation of political decisions countrywide.
As far as the neighborhood is concerned, Iraq's stability is essentially linked to Turkey's own security interests. Turkey has been actively contributing to Iraq's reconstruction and security by means of investments, trade, technical assistance and training of Iraqi security forces. It was instrumental in establishing recently a Strategic High Level Council, co-chaired by the prime ministers of the two countries, with the objective of enhancing cooperation on concrete projects. Also, increased cooperation with Iraq's Kurdish leadership has followed US-Turkey cooperation in intelligence exchange that has allowed the Turkish armed forces to accurately target PKK hideouts in northern Iraq. During his visit to Turkey last March, President Talabani identified the PKK as a common threat to both Iraq's and Turkey's national security. Ankara has welcomed Iraq's provincial elections and has begun communicating directly with Massoud Barzani as the leader of the local administration. Despite occasional disruptions, Kirkuk oil is now flowing to the Ceyhan terminal at the rate of 800,000 bbd.
All of these positive developments are consistent with Turkey's aim to achieve regional cooperation by means of having "zero problems" with neighbors. But Iraq is more than a mere neighbor: developments there are related inextricably to Turkey's domestic security as well as its transatlantic relations. Also, Turkey's ability to support Iraq is necessarily limited, given the enormous challenges the country faces. Sharpened sectarian divisions, moreover, have resulted in substantially increased Iranian influence among the Shi'ite communities in Iraq. Though both Ankara and the Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq may see a window of opportunity for future cooperation, how Iran might shape its policies toward the north remains to be seen. In any case, the Iran factor is likely to pose yet another difficult challenge to achieving stability in Iraq and the region.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org.
Ahmet O. Evin is founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University. He is a professor of political science at Sabanci and is a member of the board of directors of Istanbul Policy Center.
Iran is part of the solution, not the problem
Reza Molavi and Ariabarzan Mohammadighalehtaki
Britain withdrew from the Persian Gulf in 1971, leaving behind a security vacuum that only the Shah could fill. With America's support, Iran under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became the policeman of the Persian Gulf. But with the advent of the Islamic Revolution, power in the Gulf region was dispersed among the United States, Iraq, Iran and to some degree Saudi Arabia.
More recently, the removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq as the strategic counterweight to Iran has changed this dynamic entirely; the Islamic Republic of Iran has been able to expand its influence in the Middle East, Africa, Transcaucasia and beyond. The United States and the European Union now face the question of how they can mitigate potential threats to their interests if Iran succeeds in consolidating its new position as the leading power in the region.
For Iran, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was "a miracle come true". Not only was Iran's sworn enemy (Saddam Hussein) removed, but the very Shi'ite and Kurdish groups that sided with Iran during its eight-year war with Iraq have become the main players on the Iraqi political scene.
Iran was the first country to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council that was established under the US occupation in 2003. Iran has continued its support to embrace the new Iraqi government of 2006. The al-Dawa party to whom current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs had its headquarters based in Tehran during Saddam's rule of terror. The same is true for the departed Ayatollah Hakim and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), currently known as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
The Iraqi Kurds have a long history of proximity to Iran. When the Iraqi government used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988, Jalal Talabani (currently president of Iraq, then head of PUK) sought safety in Iran. In 1991, when a popular uprising liberated almost all of Kurdistan including Kirkuk and the Iraqi army retaliated with an iron fist, Kurds in massive numbers fled to Iran and Turkey, but it was only the government of Iran that kept its borders open against all uncertainties and hazards.
Tehran's regime has no interest in undermining the current government of Iraq. In fact, Iran's constructive role in Iraq has gone beyond the new Iraqi government to include the new Iraqi army as well. SCIRI, for instance, asked its members to enter the new Iraqi army and police force. This was a positive step and Iranians deserve credit for it.
There are three reasons for the recent calm and stability in Iraq, one of them less well-known. The two obvious explanations are the Americans' 2007 surge, which even the Democrats now concede was a success, and the establishment of the Sahwa (awakening) forces. The third, less discussed reason is the fact that Iran did its best to help the Iraqi government in its effort to stabilize the situation in Iraq. It was Iran that advised Muqtada al-Sadr to dissolve the Mahdi army, thereby preventing a major clash between it and the Iraqi armed forces. Later, when the Baghdad operation took place and supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr refused to give up their guns, once again it was Iranian mediation efforts that saved the day and stopped escalation of the conflict in Sadr City.
Normalization in Iraq will clearly take time and patience; currently it is at the beginning phase of a long journey. One positive development that took place recently and further enhanced efforts at normalization and stabilization in Iraq was the visit of high-ranking Arab delegations followed by the promise of reopening Arab embassies in Baghdad. Other visits by dignitaries such as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were equally important.
In contradiction to the line take by the Arab media, Iran actually praises the normalization of relations between Iraq and its Arab neighbors. This position does not derive from sheer benevolence; rather, it is anchored in national interests. First, Iran, which until recently was the only Shi'ite country in the world, is "over the moon" to see the predominantly Sunni governments of the Arab states recognizing the Shi'ite government of Iraq. Previously, Iranians did not dare dream of a day when countries such as Egypt and the UAE would be ready to recognize a Shi'ite Iraq.
Second, Iran believes that the presence of Arab embassies in Baghdad will not pose any threat to its interests in the region. The Iranian regime is under the impression that the Arab states are too unpopular with their citizens to be able to challenge its influence. Even when an immense influx of money from rich Arab states was invested in Iraqi Sunni militia groups, Iran argues, they could not turn the tide in their own favor.
In conclusion, Iran is part of the solution in Iraq, not the problem. Iran seeks stabilization in Iraq as a long-term strategy. Naturally, the Iranians have influence in Iraq and, like any other country involved in Iraq, they wish to maintain it.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Reza Molavi is executive director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at Durham University, UK. He is also senior research associate at The Centre for Strategic Research, a unit of the Expediency Council of Iran. Ariabarzan Mohammadighalehtaki is a PhD student at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, UK.
Amman worried by Iraq's mountain of problems
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
King Abdullah of Jordan abruptly postponed a visit to Baghdad in early July without clear explanation. His trip is still on, Jordanian officials say, but they want to keep its timing secret to ensure the personal security of a king whose country, because of its cozy ties with Washington, is an avowed enemy of al-Qaeda. Jordanian intelligence gathering led to the killing of an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq last year.
No Sunni Arab head of state has visited Baghdad since the US toppled Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in 2003, allowing Iran to spread its radical version of political Islam across Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, rattling moderate countries like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Jordan is keen to see Iraq stabilize and does not support any hasty withdrawal of US forces. It is following the efforts of Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is trying to strike a balance between Washington and Tehran while reconciling with aloof Arab neighbors and curbing sectarian tension.
Amman does not trust him or his political intentions. But it says it wants to give him the benefit of the doubt until early 2009. Many officials fear Maliki wants to ensure his political survival beyond elections next year by recalibrating his divisive dependence on Iran while maximizing gains from an unpopular strategic security pact that his country is negotiating with Washington. For this, he needs to make regional diplomatic gains and win over Sunni powerhouses like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Amman was among the first Sunni Arab capitals to appoint a new ambassador to Iraq several weeks ago in a clear sign that it wanted better ties with its eastern neighbor, once a major trade partner and full oil supplier at below-market prices. This flexibility allowed Iraq to renew an agreement to sell oil to Jordan at discount rates and eased Washington's pressure on Iraq's neighbors to support Maliki through renewing diplomatic ties and scrapping debts.
A stable and unified Iraq means a lot to Jordan, which does not want to grapple with the possibility of Iraq exporting Shi'ite extremist groups and al-Qaeda fighters, of the kind who staged Amman's first suicide bombings in November 2005.
Iraq's stability will also curtail the power of Iran and encourage the repatriation of over 550,000 Iraqis who have fled to Jordan since 2003, taking some pressure off the fragile demographic balance, security and strained public services. A serious Iraq reconstruction effort will benefit the Jordanian economy, facing a global energy and food crisis.
Jordanian officials and commentators say the security environment in Iraq continues to improve, thanks in part to a surge of 30,000 additional US troops in 2007 under a controversial strategy approved by US President George W. Bush. Major violence indicators have been reduced by between 40 and 80 percent from pre-surge levels, according to the twelfth quarterly report in June measuring stability and security in Iraq. The extra combat power has largely been withdrawn as Washington looks set to announce further cuts in its 147,000-strong force this year.
Total security incidents have fallen to their lowest levels in four years. Coalition and Iraqi forces' operations against al-Qaeda have degraded its ability to attack and terrorize the population. Maliki's government succeeded in Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City against Shi'ite militias, particularly the Mahdi army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iranian-supported Special Groups. The revitalization of sectors of the Iraqi economy and local reconciliation efforts has also helped.
But Iraq still faces a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shi'ite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, endemic corruption and organizing provincial elections as early as October. Any of those could rekindle widespread fighting that is not over yet.
The underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up US military hopes for an early exit shortly after the fall of Baghdad might have changed in important ways in recent months, say several Jordanian officials, strategists and commentators. But this does not mean they share the optimistic assessment repeatedly cited by Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq who is seen as the main architect of the surge policy.
These circles feel the American military assessment is exaggerated and self-flattering as it glosses over many realities on the ground. Hence, it should not be openly applauded. True, the systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital. Yet this is largely due to tight security and a strategy of walling off entire areas purged of minorities in 2006. A fatwa issued by Sadr last summer banning sectarian killings has restrained his followers. But the Sadrists are in hibernating mode, waiting for re-activation orders from Iran.
"Al-Qaeda received several painful blows over the past months that have impacted its influence," says one Arab official. But this could only be temporarily. "The terror group has not been dismantled since it was able to regroup its fighters, to continue recruitment of new followers and to enjoy safe supply routes vital for sustaining its operations," he said.
Al-Qaeda's Iraqi fighters were instructed to relocate to safer areas within Iraq, while many of the foreign fighters were told to move to Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan and the Maghreb. This could be a major reason for increasing violence in Afghanistan, for a series of suicide attacks that ripped through northern Africa several months ago and for Monday's deadliest suicide attack in Baghdad in months.
But for now, Maliki, Iran and the US have a stake in stabilizing Iraq. More domestic quiet in Iraq will increase prospects of elections that could guarantee the future of Iranian influence under Maliki.
And President Bush does not want more trouble in Iraq to play in favor of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who wants to pull all US troops out of Iraq by 2010 to focus on the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.- Published 31/7/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is an independent journalist and former chief editor of the Jordan Times.
The bad side to the 'good war'
The bad side to the 'good war'
From the outset in 2001, the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan has been the "good war", fought against the Taliban and their al-Qaeda guests. This belief prevailed, even as the war in Iraq turned "bad". Now, the weight of occupation and the rising number of civilian deaths is shifting the resistance toward a war of national liberation, and no foreign power has ever won that battle in Afghanistan. - Conn Hallinan (Jul 31, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH01Df02.html
From the outset in 2001, the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan has been the "good war", fought against the Taliban and their al-Qaeda guests. This belief prevailed, even as the war in Iraq turned "bad". Now, the weight of occupation and the rising number of civilian deaths is shifting the resistance toward a war of national liberation, and no foreign power has ever won that battle in Afghanistan. - Conn Hallinan (Jul 31, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH01Df02.html
Neo-Cons Make Their War Aims in Iraq Clearer
LOBELOG.COM
7/29/08
Neo-Cons Make Their War Aims in Iraq Clearer
Jim Lobe
Since the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began making increasingly clear that it wanted a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, neo-conservatives have been making increasingly clear that they want none of it, and that their hope all along was to establish a permanent military presence to assert U.S. power in the heart of the Middle East.
Their position has become more explicit over the course of the last three weeks as Maliki, combined with McCain's attacks on Obama's withdrawal plan, effectively moved the debate over how long U.S. troops would stay in Iraq — and for what purpose — in a direction that is causing growing unease among the hawks inside the administration and out. Since then, not only has the Bush administration signed on to a "time horizon" demanded by Maliki, but Maliki himself effectively endorsed Sen. Obama's proposed timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops by mid-2010. Finally, Sen. McCain, the neo-cons' candidate, allowed (however cluelessly and however much he has since tried to confuse the issue) that the 2010 timetable was "pretty good", subject, of course, to "conditions on the ground."
This evolution appears to be deeply troubling to the neo-cons, not so much for the reasons they most often cite — that a democratic transition in Iraq is too fragile to endure the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and/or that a resurgence of sectarian violence and even civil war would deal a devastating blow to U.S. (already severely diminished) credibility and influence in the region (although that is indeed a major neo-con worry) — as for the concern that Washington will lose Iraq as a base from which to project its military power in the region, particularly against Iran.
Consider the way the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers reacted after Maliki first suggested during a visit to the United Arab Emirates on July 7 that his goal was "terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty [to Iraq]."
"Our view is that Iraq and Mr. Maliki would benefit from striking a security agreement this year while Mr. Bush is still in office. Despite Iraq's impressive security gains, Iran can still do plenty of mischief through its 'special group' surrogates. The U.S. can help deter Iranian trouble, especially with Iraq elections scheduled for this year and next.
"Inside Iraq, a significant long-term U.S. presence would also increase the confidence of Iraq's various factions to make political compromises. And outside, it would improve regional stability by giving the U.S. a presence in the heart of the Middle East that would deter foreign intervention [Emphasis added, but not the unintended irony.] This is the kind of strategic benefit that the next Administration should try to consolidate in Iraq after the hard-earned progress of the last year."
The Journal went on to suggest that all of the talk about withdrawal emanating from Iraq is just a lot of nonsense and bluff anyway. "Our sense is that, with the exception of the Sadrists, all of Iraq's main political factions want the U.S. to remain in some significant force," it claimed.
Writing one day later, on July 10, in Commentary's Contentions blog, Max Boot repeated some of the same talking points.
"Despite recent gains in security," he wrote, "the situation remains fragile and U.S. forces will need to remain in Iraq for years to nurture this embattled democracy — and not so incidentally to protect our own interests in the region." [Emphasis added.] At the time, Boot worried that Maliki's rhetoric — this was even before Maliki endorsed Obama's proposal — might have serious implications for the U.S. presidential campaign. "The danger is that rhetoric intended for domestic political consumption in Iraq will warp our own political discussion by providing fodder for those who, like Obama, are now citing the success of U.S. forces, as they once cited their failure, as evidence that we can pull out safely."
It's obvious that Boot was prescient, at least on that point, as he felt compelled to go after Maliki hammer and tongs after the prime minister endorsed Obama's 2010 timetable. In a Washington Post op-ed July 23 entitled "Behind Maliki's Games," he expressed his fury, accusing the premier essentially of being anti-American and hypocritical ("hardly an unwavering friend of the United States — at least in public. …[H]e was not a proponent of the U.S.-led invasion"); serial ingratitude ("Even now, when the success of the surge is undeniable, Maliki won't give U.S. troops their due"); cluelessness when it comes to military matters ("Keep in mind also that Maliki has no military experience and that he has been trapped in the Green Zone, relatively isolated from day-to-day life. For these reasons, he has been a consistent font of misguided predictions about how quickly U.S. forces could leave"); and lacking in any real authority ("Of course, if the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we will have to leave. But, the prime minister's ambiguous comments notwithstanding, the Iraqi government is saying no such thing…").
But it fell to Charles Krauthammer, presuming to know the private thoughts of both McCain and George W. Bush, to return to the theme of why the U.S. needs to have a military base in Iraq in a July 25 op-ed entitled "Maliki Votes for Obama" shortly after Maliki blessed Obama's plan.
"McCain, like George Bush, envisions the United States seizing the fruits of victory from a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
"For example, we might want to retain an air base to deter Iran, protect regional allies and relieve our naval forces, which today carry much of the burden of protecting the Persian Gulf region, thus allowing redeployment elsewhere."[Emphasis added]
Now, of all of these guys, Krauthammer is, of course, the most direct, and even he, like the others, suggests that the U.S. military presence would be for deterrence only. (The American Enterprise Institute put out a press release Friday in which it announced Fred Kagan's assessment that "America can best avoid a conflict with Iran by maintaining a strong force in Iraq.") But, of course, neo-cons have long distrusted deterrence as a strategic doctrine, particularly as it relates to the "mad mullahs." (It was, after all, the Journal's same editorial board that, among many other hysterical pieces over the last few years, published Bernard Lewis' apocalyptic op-ed nearly two years ago that predicted a nuclear strike on Israel for August 22, 2006, because President Ahmadinejad believed that was the date of the 12th Imam's return.) Thus, one might assume that, at least for the neo-cons, the purpose of such a long-term presence may be for more than just deterrence, despite the fact that all of the major actors inside Iraq (with the possible exception, I suppose, of the former Sunni insurgents who enlisted in the Awakenings movement) are clearly dead-set against the U.S. using Iraqi territory as a launching pad for military adventures against their neighbors, particularly Iran.
But Krauthammer's language is particularly revealing, especially for a self-described "democratic realist", for the contempt it shows for Iraqi public opinion. His talk of "seizing the fruits of victory" by "mak[ing] the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror" and his notion that the U.S. "might want to retain an air base…" suggests, let us say, a rather imperial state of mind, something that belongs more to the 19th century than the 21st. Indeed, in reading Boot, the Journal's editorial and op-ed pages, and other neo-con writings, one can't help but get the impression that, for them, decolonization never happened. (Boot deserves credit for conceding the U.S. would have to go if the Iraqi government tells it to do so, but remember that his book, "Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power," was a paean to the early days of American imperialism.) Neo-con efforts to discredit Maliki by arguing that he's only bluffing, that he doesn't have any idea of what is best for Iraq, that he has consistently overestimated Iraqi military capabilities, and/or that he is trying to manipulate U.S. public opinion in order to ensure the election of a candidate that will be more "pliable" in future negotiations should all be seen in this light. And while they sometimes concede that Maliki could be be playing to growing nationalism and popular resentment of the U.S. occupation that may actually reflect the views of a strong majority of the Iraqi population, it really doesn't make a great deal of difference . Hence, the patronizing language of the Journal, in particular, whose editorial board clearly believes that it knows better than the Iraqis what is good for them.
This imperial attitude — it's worth remembering that the 92-year-old Lewis, from whom many neo-cons derive their (usually extremely limited) knowledge about the Arab world, is a product of the British Empire — was particularly in evidence last Friday in the person of Kimberly Kagan at a very interesting forum (which I also attended) at the U.S. Institute for Peace, as noted by two Middle East experts, Helena Cobban and Marc Lynch, whose blogs, www.justworldnews.org and www.abuaardvark.org, respectively, are widely read by regional specialists here in Washington. In her blog, Cobban quotes Kagan as repeatedly insisting that it's really up to the U.S. to decide what it wants to do in Iraq. Lynch noted the same on his blog:
"Kim Kagan shocked me with a comment made forcefully, twice, once towards the end of her prepared remarks and again at the opening of her closing remarks: the future of Iraq depends primarily on American decisions, not Iraqi decisions. I found this extraordinarily revealing: for her it really is all about us. This infantalizes Iraqis - and, as [Colin] Kahl would surely note, demands nothing of them, since it is American decisions and will which matter and not theirs. Such a world-view, characteristic of so much neoconservative foreign policy thinking, explains a great deal. How could one possibly contemplate drawing down American forces, after all, if American actions are the only actions that matter, American power the only power which matters, American decisions the only decisions which matter? Why would it matter what Maliki says, or what Iraqi politicians or public opinion polls say, if what really matters is only ultimately us?"
He wrote it better than I could.
7/29/08
Neo-Cons Make Their War Aims in Iraq Clearer
Jim Lobe
Since the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began making increasingly clear that it wanted a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, neo-conservatives have been making increasingly clear that they want none of it, and that their hope all along was to establish a permanent military presence to assert U.S. power in the heart of the Middle East.
Their position has become more explicit over the course of the last three weeks as Maliki, combined with McCain's attacks on Obama's withdrawal plan, effectively moved the debate over how long U.S. troops would stay in Iraq — and for what purpose — in a direction that is causing growing unease among the hawks inside the administration and out. Since then, not only has the Bush administration signed on to a "time horizon" demanded by Maliki, but Maliki himself effectively endorsed Sen. Obama's proposed timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops by mid-2010. Finally, Sen. McCain, the neo-cons' candidate, allowed (however cluelessly and however much he has since tried to confuse the issue) that the 2010 timetable was "pretty good", subject, of course, to "conditions on the ground."
This evolution appears to be deeply troubling to the neo-cons, not so much for the reasons they most often cite — that a democratic transition in Iraq is too fragile to endure the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and/or that a resurgence of sectarian violence and even civil war would deal a devastating blow to U.S. (already severely diminished) credibility and influence in the region (although that is indeed a major neo-con worry) — as for the concern that Washington will lose Iraq as a base from which to project its military power in the region, particularly against Iran.
Consider the way the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers reacted after Maliki first suggested during a visit to the United Arab Emirates on July 7 that his goal was "terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty [to Iraq]."
"Our view is that Iraq and Mr. Maliki would benefit from striking a security agreement this year while Mr. Bush is still in office. Despite Iraq's impressive security gains, Iran can still do plenty of mischief through its 'special group' surrogates. The U.S. can help deter Iranian trouble, especially with Iraq elections scheduled for this year and next.
"Inside Iraq, a significant long-term U.S. presence would also increase the confidence of Iraq's various factions to make political compromises. And outside, it would improve regional stability by giving the U.S. a presence in the heart of the Middle East that would deter foreign intervention [Emphasis added, but not the unintended irony.] This is the kind of strategic benefit that the next Administration should try to consolidate in Iraq after the hard-earned progress of the last year."
The Journal went on to suggest that all of the talk about withdrawal emanating from Iraq is just a lot of nonsense and bluff anyway. "Our sense is that, with the exception of the Sadrists, all of Iraq's main political factions want the U.S. to remain in some significant force," it claimed.
Writing one day later, on July 10, in Commentary's Contentions blog, Max Boot repeated some of the same talking points.
"Despite recent gains in security," he wrote, "the situation remains fragile and U.S. forces will need to remain in Iraq for years to nurture this embattled democracy — and not so incidentally to protect our own interests in the region." [Emphasis added.] At the time, Boot worried that Maliki's rhetoric — this was even before Maliki endorsed Obama's proposal — might have serious implications for the U.S. presidential campaign. "The danger is that rhetoric intended for domestic political consumption in Iraq will warp our own political discussion by providing fodder for those who, like Obama, are now citing the success of U.S. forces, as they once cited their failure, as evidence that we can pull out safely."
It's obvious that Boot was prescient, at least on that point, as he felt compelled to go after Maliki hammer and tongs after the prime minister endorsed Obama's 2010 timetable. In a Washington Post op-ed July 23 entitled "Behind Maliki's Games," he expressed his fury, accusing the premier essentially of being anti-American and hypocritical ("hardly an unwavering friend of the United States — at least in public. …[H]e was not a proponent of the U.S.-led invasion"); serial ingratitude ("Even now, when the success of the surge is undeniable, Maliki won't give U.S. troops their due"); cluelessness when it comes to military matters ("Keep in mind also that Maliki has no military experience and that he has been trapped in the Green Zone, relatively isolated from day-to-day life. For these reasons, he has been a consistent font of misguided predictions about how quickly U.S. forces could leave"); and lacking in any real authority ("Of course, if the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we will have to leave. But, the prime minister's ambiguous comments notwithstanding, the Iraqi government is saying no such thing…").
But it fell to Charles Krauthammer, presuming to know the private thoughts of both McCain and George W. Bush, to return to the theme of why the U.S. needs to have a military base in Iraq in a July 25 op-ed entitled "Maliki Votes for Obama" shortly after Maliki blessed Obama's plan.
"McCain, like George Bush, envisions the United States seizing the fruits of victory from a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
"For example, we might want to retain an air base to deter Iran, protect regional allies and relieve our naval forces, which today carry much of the burden of protecting the Persian Gulf region, thus allowing redeployment elsewhere."[Emphasis added]
Now, of all of these guys, Krauthammer is, of course, the most direct, and even he, like the others, suggests that the U.S. military presence would be for deterrence only. (The American Enterprise Institute put out a press release Friday in which it announced Fred Kagan's assessment that "America can best avoid a conflict with Iran by maintaining a strong force in Iraq.") But, of course, neo-cons have long distrusted deterrence as a strategic doctrine, particularly as it relates to the "mad mullahs." (It was, after all, the Journal's same editorial board that, among many other hysterical pieces over the last few years, published Bernard Lewis' apocalyptic op-ed nearly two years ago that predicted a nuclear strike on Israel for August 22, 2006, because President Ahmadinejad believed that was the date of the 12th Imam's return.) Thus, one might assume that, at least for the neo-cons, the purpose of such a long-term presence may be for more than just deterrence, despite the fact that all of the major actors inside Iraq (with the possible exception, I suppose, of the former Sunni insurgents who enlisted in the Awakenings movement) are clearly dead-set against the U.S. using Iraqi territory as a launching pad for military adventures against their neighbors, particularly Iran.
But Krauthammer's language is particularly revealing, especially for a self-described "democratic realist", for the contempt it shows for Iraqi public opinion. His talk of "seizing the fruits of victory" by "mak[ing] the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror" and his notion that the U.S. "might want to retain an air base…" suggests, let us say, a rather imperial state of mind, something that belongs more to the 19th century than the 21st. Indeed, in reading Boot, the Journal's editorial and op-ed pages, and other neo-con writings, one can't help but get the impression that, for them, decolonization never happened. (Boot deserves credit for conceding the U.S. would have to go if the Iraqi government tells it to do so, but remember that his book, "Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power," was a paean to the early days of American imperialism.) Neo-con efforts to discredit Maliki by arguing that he's only bluffing, that he doesn't have any idea of what is best for Iraq, that he has consistently overestimated Iraqi military capabilities, and/or that he is trying to manipulate U.S. public opinion in order to ensure the election of a candidate that will be more "pliable" in future negotiations should all be seen in this light. And while they sometimes concede that Maliki could be be playing to growing nationalism and popular resentment of the U.S. occupation that may actually reflect the views of a strong majority of the Iraqi population, it really doesn't make a great deal of difference . Hence, the patronizing language of the Journal, in particular, whose editorial board clearly believes that it knows better than the Iraqis what is good for them.
This imperial attitude — it's worth remembering that the 92-year-old Lewis, from whom many neo-cons derive their (usually extremely limited) knowledge about the Arab world, is a product of the British Empire — was particularly in evidence last Friday in the person of Kimberly Kagan at a very interesting forum (which I also attended) at the U.S. Institute for Peace, as noted by two Middle East experts, Helena Cobban and Marc Lynch, whose blogs, www.justworldnews.org and www.abuaardvark.org, respectively, are widely read by regional specialists here in Washington. In her blog, Cobban quotes Kagan as repeatedly insisting that it's really up to the U.S. to decide what it wants to do in Iraq. Lynch noted the same on his blog:
"Kim Kagan shocked me with a comment made forcefully, twice, once towards the end of her prepared remarks and again at the opening of her closing remarks: the future of Iraq depends primarily on American decisions, not Iraqi decisions. I found this extraordinarily revealing: for her it really is all about us. This infantalizes Iraqis - and, as [Colin] Kahl would surely note, demands nothing of them, since it is American decisions and will which matter and not theirs. Such a world-view, characteristic of so much neoconservative foreign policy thinking, explains a great deal. How could one possibly contemplate drawing down American forces, after all, if American actions are the only actions that matter, American power the only power which matters, American decisions the only decisions which matter? Why would it matter what Maliki says, or what Iraqi politicians or public opinion polls say, if what really matters is only ultimately us?"
He wrote it better than I could.
Al-Qaeda hails 'revival' in Afghanistan
Al-Qaeda hails 'revival' in Afghanistan
Oozing confidence, al-Qaeda's operations commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu-al-Yazid, talks of the progress al-Qaeda is making in consolidating its position in Afghanistan and in attracting foreign jihadis to join the Taliban-led struggle against "infidel" invaders. Abu-Yazid's assessment is backed by Pakistan's eroding commitment to battle Afghan and Pakistani insurgents, to the extent that Islamabad is expected to redeploy troops to the Pakistan-India border. - Michael Scheuer (Jul 31, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH01Df01.html
Oozing confidence, al-Qaeda's operations commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu-al-Yazid, talks of the progress al-Qaeda is making in consolidating its position in Afghanistan and in attracting foreign jihadis to join the Taliban-led struggle against "infidel" invaders. Abu-Yazid's assessment is backed by Pakistan's eroding commitment to battle Afghan and Pakistani insurgents, to the extent that Islamabad is expected to redeploy troops to the Pakistan-India border. - Michael Scheuer (Jul 31, '08)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH01Df01.html
Strike on Iran still possible, U.S. tells Israel:
LOS ANGELES TIMES
7/30/08
Strike on Iran still possible, U.S. tells Israel: Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense chief, is visiting as Washington is perceived to be softening its stance toward Tehran.
Paul Richter and Julian E. Barnes
WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.
In meetings Monday and Tuesday, administration officials told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the option of attacking Iran over its nuclear program remains on the table, though U.S. officials are primarily seeking a diplomatic solution.At the same time, U.S. officials acknowledged that there is a rare divergence in the U.S. and Israeli approaches, with Israelis emphasizing the possibility of a military response out of concern that Tehran may soon have the know-how for building a nuclear bomb.
"Is there a difference of emphasis? It certainly looks as though there is," said a senior American Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the sensitive talks.
U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is enriching uranium with the aim of building nuclear weapons.
Tehran says that it is engaged in a peaceful enrichment program for civilian energy purposes.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said in an interview that U.S. officials have often made it clear to Israeli officials that Washington prefers to try to mitigate the threat from Tehran by applying economic pressure.
"The military option, although always available, is not our preferred route," Morrell said.
"We have made that point clear to them and the world in our public statements and private meetings."
Barak left Israel for Washington amid reports in the Israeli press that he would try to talk the Bush administration out of what many Israelis perceive as a more conciliatory policy toward Iran.
On Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Ministry released a statement saying that Barak had told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that "a policy that consists of keeping all options on the table must be maintained."
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Barak said that there remains time for "accelerated sanctions" to try to persuade Iran to abandon the nuclear program.
Israeli officials were concerned in December when a key U.S. intelligence report concluded that Iran had abandoned an effort to build a nuclear bomb. They also have noted with concern comments this month by Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that an Israeli airstrike on Iran would further destabilize the Middle East and compound the strain on overworked U.S. forces.
Also this month, in a rare move toward engagement with Tehran, a senior U.S. diplomat took part in international talks in Geneva about the nuclear program.
And U.S. officials have floated a proposal for opening a low-level diplomatic office in Tehran.
These gestures have taken place at a time of intensifying discussion in Israel about the wisdom of an Israeli military attack on Iran before the Bush administration leaves office.
A senior State Department official said Tuesday that Israel "is a sovereign state and we understand that they view this as an existential threat. And we take the threat that's posed by Iran seriously as well."
But the official, who asked to remain unidentified in keeping with diplomatic rules, said the administration is "pursuing the strategy we believe is the right one."
Gates, in an hourlong meeting with Barak, told the minister that the United States intends to consider providing radar to Israel that can detect ballistic missiles launched from Iran and supplying weapons to counter rocket attacks from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, according to a senior Defense official.
7/30/08
Strike on Iran still possible, U.S. tells Israel: Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense chief, is visiting as Washington is perceived to be softening its stance toward Tehran.
Paul Richter and Julian E. Barnes
WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.
In meetings Monday and Tuesday, administration officials told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the option of attacking Iran over its nuclear program remains on the table, though U.S. officials are primarily seeking a diplomatic solution.At the same time, U.S. officials acknowledged that there is a rare divergence in the U.S. and Israeli approaches, with Israelis emphasizing the possibility of a military response out of concern that Tehran may soon have the know-how for building a nuclear bomb.
"Is there a difference of emphasis? It certainly looks as though there is," said a senior American Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the sensitive talks.
U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is enriching uranium with the aim of building nuclear weapons.
Tehran says that it is engaged in a peaceful enrichment program for civilian energy purposes.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said in an interview that U.S. officials have often made it clear to Israeli officials that Washington prefers to try to mitigate the threat from Tehran by applying economic pressure.
"The military option, although always available, is not our preferred route," Morrell said.
"We have made that point clear to them and the world in our public statements and private meetings."
Barak left Israel for Washington amid reports in the Israeli press that he would try to talk the Bush administration out of what many Israelis perceive as a more conciliatory policy toward Iran.
On Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Ministry released a statement saying that Barak had told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that "a policy that consists of keeping all options on the table must be maintained."
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Barak said that there remains time for "accelerated sanctions" to try to persuade Iran to abandon the nuclear program.
Israeli officials were concerned in December when a key U.S. intelligence report concluded that Iran had abandoned an effort to build a nuclear bomb. They also have noted with concern comments this month by Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that an Israeli airstrike on Iran would further destabilize the Middle East and compound the strain on overworked U.S. forces.
Also this month, in a rare move toward engagement with Tehran, a senior U.S. diplomat took part in international talks in Geneva about the nuclear program.
And U.S. officials have floated a proposal for opening a low-level diplomatic office in Tehran.
These gestures have taken place at a time of intensifying discussion in Israel about the wisdom of an Israeli military attack on Iran before the Bush administration leaves office.
A senior State Department official said Tuesday that Israel "is a sovereign state and we understand that they view this as an existential threat. And we take the threat that's posed by Iran seriously as well."
But the official, who asked to remain unidentified in keeping with diplomatic rules, said the administration is "pursuing the strategy we believe is the right one."
Gates, in an hourlong meeting with Barak, told the minister that the United States intends to consider providing radar to Israel that can detect ballistic missiles launched from Iran and supplying weapons to counter rocket attacks from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, according to a senior Defense official.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Unhappy America
America
The Economist
Leader
Unhappy America
Jul 24th 2008
If America can learn from its problems, instead of blaming others, it will
come back stronger
NATIONS, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United
States, normally the world's most self-confident place, is glum. Eight out
of ten Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction. The
hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this: his approval ratings are now
sub-Nixonian. But many are concerned not so much about a failed president as
about a flailing nation.
One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism (see article).
The "Washington consensus" told the world that open markets and
deregulation would solve its problems. Yet American house prices are falling
faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are
collapsing, the euro is kicking sand in the dollar's face, credit is scarce,
recession and inflation both threaten the economy, consumer confidence is an
oxymoron and Belgians have just bought Budweiser, "America's beer".
And it's not just the downturn that has caused this discontent. Many
Americans feel as if they missed the boom. Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes
of 99% rose by an average of 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose
by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Mr Bush's
presidency went to that top 1%. Economic envy, once seen as a European vice,
is now rife. The rich appear in Barack Obama's speeches not as entrepreneurial
role models but as modern versions of the "malefactors of great wealth"
denounced by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago: this lot, rather than building trusts,
avoid taxes and ship jobs to Mexico. Globalisation is under fire: free trade is
less popular in the United States than in any other developed country, and a
nation built on immigrants is building a fence to keep them out. People
mutter about nation-building beginning at home: why, many wonder, should
American children do worse at reading than Polish ones and at maths than Lithuanians?
The dragon's breath on your shoulder
Abroad, America has spent vast amounts of blood and treasure, to little
purpose. In Iraq, finding an acceptable exit will look like success;
Afghanistan is slipping. America's claim to be a beacon of freedom in a dark world has
been dimmed by Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the flouting of the Geneva
Conventions amid the panicky "unipolar" posturing in the aftermath of
September 11th.
Now the world seems very multipolar. Europeans no longer worry about
American ascendancy. The French, some say, understood the Arab world rather
better than the neoconservatives did. Russia, the Gulf Arabs and the rising powers
of Asia scoff openly at the Washington consensus. China in particular spooks
America-and may do so even more over the next few weeks of Olympic
medal-gathering. Americans are discussing the rise of China and their
consequent relative decline; measuring when China's economy will be bigger and counting its
missiles and submarines has become a popular pastime in Washington. A few
years ago, no politician would have been seen with a book called "The
Post-American World". Mr Obama has been conspicuously reading Fareed Zakaria's recent
volume.
America has got into funks before now. In the 1950s it went into a
Sputnik-driven spin about Soviet power; in the 1970s there was Watergate,
Vietnam and the oil shocks; in the late 1980s Japan seemed to be buying up America. Each
time, the United States rebounded, because the country is good at fixing
itself. Just as American capitalism allows companies to die, and to be
created, quickly, so its political system reacts fast. In Europe, political leaders
emerge slowly, through party hierarchies; in America, the primaries permit
inspirational unknowns to burst into the public consciousness from nowhere.
Still, countries, like people, behave dangerously when their mood turns
dark. If America fails to distinguish between what it needs to change and
what it needs to accept, it risks hurting not just allies and trading partners, but
also itself.
The Asian scapegoat
There are certainly areas where change is needed. The credit crunch is in
part the consequence of a flawed regulatory system. Lax monetary policy
allowed Americans to build up debts and fuelled a housing bubble that had to burst
eventually. Lessons need to be learnt from both of those mistakes; as they do
from widespread concerns about the state of education and health care.
Over-unionised and unaccountable, America's school system needs the same
sort of competition that makes its universities the envy of the world. American
health care, which manages to be the most expensive on the planet even though it
fails properly to care for the tens of millions of people, badly needs reform.
There have been plenty of mistakes abroad, too. Waging a war on terror was
always going to be like pinning jelly to a wall. As for Guantánamo Bay, it
is the most profoundly un-American place on the planet: rejoice when it is shut.
In such areas America is already showing its genius for reinvention. Both
the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates promise to close
Guantánamo. As his second term ticks down, even Mr Bush has begun to see the
limits of unilateralism. Instead of just denouncing and threatening the "axis of
evil" he is working more closely with allies (and non-allies) in Asia to calm
down North Korea. For the first time he has just let American officials join
in the negotiations with Iran about its fishy nuclear programme (see article).
That America is beginning to correct its mistakes is good; and there's
plenty more of that to be done. But one source of angst demands a change in
attitude rather than a drive to restore the status quo: America's relative
decline, especially compared with Asia in general and China in particular.
The economic gap between America and a rising Asia has certainly narrowed;
but worrying about it is wrong for two reasons. First, even at its present
growth rate, China's GDP will take a quarter of a century to catch up with
America's; and the internal tensions that China's rapidly changing
economy has caused may well lead it to stumble before then. Second, even if Asia's rise
continues unabated, it is wrong-and profoundly unAmerican-to regard this
as a problem. Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster
China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming
largely because they have adopted America's ideas. America should regard
their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it.
Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a
scapegoat for America's self-made problems too often point the finger at
the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American
jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies. But if America
reacts by turning in on itself-raising trade barriers and rejecting foreign
investors-it risks exacerbating the economic troubles that lie behind its current funk.
Everybody goes through bad times. Some learn from the problems they have
caused themselves, and come back stronger. Some blame others, lash out and
damage themselves further. America has had the wisdom to take the first
course many times before. Let's hope it does so again.
The Economist
Leader
Unhappy America
Jul 24th 2008
If America can learn from its problems, instead of blaming others, it will
come back stronger
NATIONS, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United
States, normally the world's most self-confident place, is glum. Eight out
of ten Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction. The
hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this: his approval ratings are now
sub-Nixonian. But many are concerned not so much about a failed president as
about a flailing nation.
One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism (see article).
The "Washington consensus" told the world that open markets and
deregulation would solve its problems. Yet American house prices are falling
faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are
collapsing, the euro is kicking sand in the dollar's face, credit is scarce,
recession and inflation both threaten the economy, consumer confidence is an
oxymoron and Belgians have just bought Budweiser, "America's beer".
And it's not just the downturn that has caused this discontent. Many
Americans feel as if they missed the boom. Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes
of 99% rose by an average of 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose
by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Mr Bush's
presidency went to that top 1%. Economic envy, once seen as a European vice,
is now rife. The rich appear in Barack Obama's speeches not as entrepreneurial
role models but as modern versions of the "malefactors of great wealth"
denounced by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago: this lot, rather than building trusts,
avoid taxes and ship jobs to Mexico. Globalisation is under fire: free trade is
less popular in the United States than in any other developed country, and a
nation built on immigrants is building a fence to keep them out. People
mutter about nation-building beginning at home: why, many wonder, should
American children do worse at reading than Polish ones and at maths than Lithuanians?
The dragon's breath on your shoulder
Abroad, America has spent vast amounts of blood and treasure, to little
purpose. In Iraq, finding an acceptable exit will look like success;
Afghanistan is slipping. America's claim to be a beacon of freedom in a dark world has
been dimmed by Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the flouting of the Geneva
Conventions amid the panicky "unipolar" posturing in the aftermath of
September 11th.
Now the world seems very multipolar. Europeans no longer worry about
American ascendancy. The French, some say, understood the Arab world rather
better than the neoconservatives did. Russia, the Gulf Arabs and the rising powers
of Asia scoff openly at the Washington consensus. China in particular spooks
America-and may do so even more over the next few weeks of Olympic
medal-gathering. Americans are discussing the rise of China and their
consequent relative decline; measuring when China's economy will be bigger and counting its
missiles and submarines has become a popular pastime in Washington. A few
years ago, no politician would have been seen with a book called "The
Post-American World". Mr Obama has been conspicuously reading Fareed Zakaria's recent
volume.
America has got into funks before now. In the 1950s it went into a
Sputnik-driven spin about Soviet power; in the 1970s there was Watergate,
Vietnam and the oil shocks; in the late 1980s Japan seemed to be buying up America. Each
time, the United States rebounded, because the country is good at fixing
itself. Just as American capitalism allows companies to die, and to be
created, quickly, so its political system reacts fast. In Europe, political leaders
emerge slowly, through party hierarchies; in America, the primaries permit
inspirational unknowns to burst into the public consciousness from nowhere.
Still, countries, like people, behave dangerously when their mood turns
dark. If America fails to distinguish between what it needs to change and
what it needs to accept, it risks hurting not just allies and trading partners, but
also itself.
The Asian scapegoat
There are certainly areas where change is needed. The credit crunch is in
part the consequence of a flawed regulatory system. Lax monetary policy
allowed Americans to build up debts and fuelled a housing bubble that had to burst
eventually. Lessons need to be learnt from both of those mistakes; as they do
from widespread concerns about the state of education and health care.
Over-unionised and unaccountable, America's school system needs the same
sort of competition that makes its universities the envy of the world. American
health care, which manages to be the most expensive on the planet even though it
fails properly to care for the tens of millions of people, badly needs reform.
There have been plenty of mistakes abroad, too. Waging a war on terror was
always going to be like pinning jelly to a wall. As for Guantánamo Bay, it
is the most profoundly un-American place on the planet: rejoice when it is shut.
In such areas America is already showing its genius for reinvention. Both
the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates promise to close
Guantánamo. As his second term ticks down, even Mr Bush has begun to see the
limits of unilateralism. Instead of just denouncing and threatening the "axis of
evil" he is working more closely with allies (and non-allies) in Asia to calm
down North Korea. For the first time he has just let American officials join
in the negotiations with Iran about its fishy nuclear programme (see article).
That America is beginning to correct its mistakes is good; and there's
plenty more of that to be done. But one source of angst demands a change in
attitude rather than a drive to restore the status quo: America's relative
decline, especially compared with Asia in general and China in particular.
The economic gap between America and a rising Asia has certainly narrowed;
but worrying about it is wrong for two reasons. First, even at its present
growth rate, China's GDP will take a quarter of a century to catch up with
America's; and the internal tensions that China's rapidly changing
economy has caused may well lead it to stumble before then. Second, even if Asia's rise
continues unabated, it is wrong-and profoundly unAmerican-to regard this
as a problem. Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster
China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming
largely because they have adopted America's ideas. America should regard
their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it.
Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a
scapegoat for America's self-made problems too often point the finger at
the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American
jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies. But if America
reacts by turning in on itself-raising trade barriers and rejecting foreign
investors-it risks exacerbating the economic troubles that lie behind its current funk.
Everybody goes through bad times. Some learn from the problems they have
caused themselves, and come back stronger. Some blame others, lash out and
damage themselves further. America has had the wisdom to take the first
course many times before. Let's hope it does so again.
Forget the Surge - Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective
Forget the Surge - Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective
Juan Cole, Alternet, July 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/93081/
I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the "surge" "worked." The New York Times reports:
McCain bristled in an interview with the CBS Evening News on (July 22) when asked about Obama's contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had helped, including the Sunni Awakening movement, in which thousands of Sunnis were enlisted to patrol neighborhoods and fight the insurgency, and the Iraqi government's crackdown on Shiite militias.
"I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened," McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.
"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others," McCain said. "And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."
The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge.
The only evidence presented for the thesis that the "surge" "worked" is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop escalation are too laughable to command real respect.
Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra U.S. troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation that began in the winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.
...
As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65 percent Shiite to at least 75 percent Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the United States inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.
Juan Cole, Alternet, July 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/93081/
I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the "surge" "worked." The New York Times reports:
McCain bristled in an interview with the CBS Evening News on (July 22) when asked about Obama's contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had helped, including the Sunni Awakening movement, in which thousands of Sunnis were enlisted to patrol neighborhoods and fight the insurgency, and the Iraqi government's crackdown on Shiite militias.
"I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened," McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.
"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others," McCain said. "And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."
The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge.
The only evidence presented for the thesis that the "surge" "worked" is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop escalation are too laughable to command real respect.
Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra U.S. troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation that began in the winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.
...
As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65 percent Shiite to at least 75 percent Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the United States inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.
Will Petraeus Impose the Iraq Template on Afghanistan?
Will Petraeus Impose the Iraq Template on Afghanistan?
Assessing the Surge
By BRIAN M. DOWNING
General Petraeus's surge is widely credited with bringing down violence in Iraq to a level that allows for political development and the withdrawal of some US troops. The impact of the surge has recently entered into the presidential campaign, but the matter should not be another partisan issue debated with slogans. It is central to understanding developments in Iraq and expectations in Afghanistan, where the principles of the surge are likely to be put into practice. US officials think that they have written the pages of recent Iraqi history, but important passages have been written with Saudi and Persian pens.
The surge increased US troop levels in the Sunni center in order to begin a counterinsurgency program. Based on British and French experiences late in the colonial era, it sought to rid a small area of insurgents through military force then win over local support by providing government services and stimulating economic development. Upon consolidation in one locale, the cycle would be repeated in surrounding areas, spreading out gradually across the country in a manner that counterinsurgency advocates liken to an oil spot spreading across water. Looking at the political and military dynamics reverberating through Iraq over the last two years or so, one can see other forces at work that reduced violence – forces unrelated to the surge and the counterinsurgency principles upon which it rests.
A considerable portion of the violence in Iraq over the last several years did not stem from the insurgency or al Qaeda, rather it stemmed from animosities between the Sunnis and Shi'as. Those animosities developed into internecine sectarian fighting, triggered in part by spectacular al Qaeda bombings of Shi'a shrines and neighborhoods. Sectarian fighting led to Sunni emigrations into adjacent countries and to Sunnis and Shi'as abandoning mixed neighborhoods in favor of homogeneous ones guarded by local militias. These population shifts made sectarian violence less likely, and provided a breathing space during which both sides could ponder where civil war was taking them. This internal Iraqi dynamic accounts for a considerable amount of the decline in violence, especially in Baghdad.
The Sunni Arab tribes of Anbar and Diyala provinces shifted away from being important parts of the insurgency to partnering with the US against al Qaeda. It is difficult to link these events in Anbar and Diyala to the surge. There was no cycle of security-services-expansion as in counterinsurgency programs; instead, whole regions quickly and unexpectedly turned on al Qaeda. More importantly, the Sunni tribes began their cooperation with the US several months before the surge began. Al Qaeda's operations in those provinces and nearby Baghdad caused large numbers of Sunni casualties; and its personnel demonstrated little respect for the customs of local tribes. Tribal leaders approached US officers in the region and forged various local working relationships to expel al Qaeda, first in Anbar and later in Diyala.
There was an external dynamic in turning the Sunnis against al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia warned the US long ago that ousting Saddam Hussein would destabilize the region and open it up to Shi'a and Iranian influence if not domination. Wishing to stabilize a neighboring country and turn it into a new obstacle to Shi'ism and Iran, the Saudis used tribal diplomacy and monetary inducements (the two go hand in hand) with the elders of the Dulayim tribe, whose domain sprawls throughout Anbar and across the frontier into Saudi Arabia. Subsequent US inducements and counterinsurgency programs have sustained the working relationships, but the change was well underway and nicely funded beforehand. Perhaps at some later date we will be able to discern which was more important in the turnabout: US troops, who alternately use heavy-handed and benign methods; or the Saudis, who have long practice in dealing with coreligionists and tribal leaders.
Over sixty percent of Iraqis are Shi'a, most of whom live in the south – a region that has not had a significant US presence. The south was left to the British whose practices, after many arduous years in Northern Ireland, drew from counterinsurgency programs and placed emphasis on respecting the local population and avoiding insensitive uses of firepower – principles not always foremost in the minds of American troops until recently.
Furthermore, the Shi'a regions are greatly influenced by Iran, which of course follows the same branch of Islam. Key Shi'a political groups and their associated militias were formed in Iran during the long war between the two states; others were formed later under similar tutelage. Most if not all continue to obtain money from Iran. Since Saddam's ouster in 2003, trade has thrived between the two former enemies. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has long been conducting its own systematic policies to expand Iranian influence in southern Iraq. IRGC officers train and advise Shi'a militias; political cadres work with locals on development projects. In many ways, the US counterinsurgency effort parallels the IRGC program, which of course had been in effect for several years before the US program began in early 2007.
Iranian influence has kept disparate Shi'a factions, whose inclination is to settle matters through violence, reasonably in line – considering the chaos brought on in 2003. This has helped Prime Minister Maliki's frail government navigate through several political tempests. The IRGC has brokered ends to fighting between warring Shi'a militias and also between the Sadrists and the mainly Shi'a army, nominally under Maliki. Though no US official will ever admit it in public, it is clear that Iran has played a vital and unappreciated role in reducing violence and setting the stage for political development.
This represents a shift in Tehran's approach to bringing about a US departure from Iraq. No longer does Iran seek to oust the US by supplying weapons to militias and encouraging them to attrit American forces until the US public forced withdrawal. That approach was obviated by tepid opposition to the war in the US, the astonishing cohesion of US combat units, the decline of the Sunni insurgency, and the threat of devastating US air strikes. Iran now seeks to bring about as much stability in Iraq as possible and then to encourage the Shi'a parties to press for the US's departure.
Attention on the surge over the last eighteen months has entailed several costs. Various arrangements between US troops and tribal groups in the Sunni center have largely circumvented Sunni political parties, which were never as coherent as Shi'a counterparts. It might be quickly added, however, that the Shi'a parties are understandably wary of a strong Sunni region, and that they might find a fractured though reasonably stable Sunni region to be less threatening than a more or less unitary one after elections are held in the fall.
Concentrating on the Sunni region has come at the expense of allowing Iran to expand its influence with Shi'a parties and militias. Perhaps most importantly, fixation on the surge has rendered events in Afghanistan, at least until recently, into secondary if not tertiary issues. Meanwhile, the Taliban and al Qaeda have consolidated sanctuaries along the Pakistani frontier that are more formidable than anything the North Vietnamese had in Cambodia and Laos. From those sanctuaries, they have expanded their control of the Pashtun countryside in the south and enclaves in the north.
Events in Iraq are bewildering complex. When this is combined with personal vanity and bureaucratic parochialism, which typically overstate the influence of prized projects, administrative officials and key commanders might fail to grasp just what has happened in Iraq over the last two years. The fog of war and official mindsets are not conducive to understanding complex events, and the surge's impact on reducing violence is greatly inflated in Washington and the Green Zone alike. Similarly, much of the American public subscribes to this attractive storyline, resonant as it is with popular views of the resourcefulness and determination of their military. To paraphrase the venerable caution on simple causality: Post Petraeum, ergo propter Petraeum.
A likely though possibly harmful consequence of this is that General Petraeus, on becoming CENTCOM commander this fall, will confidently use the surge play book in Afghanistan, where the important if not decisive attendant dynamics might not be present.
Brian M. Downing is a veteran of the Vietnam War and author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at: brianmdowning@gmail.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/downing07302008.html
Assessing the Surge
By BRIAN M. DOWNING
General Petraeus's surge is widely credited with bringing down violence in Iraq to a level that allows for political development and the withdrawal of some US troops. The impact of the surge has recently entered into the presidential campaign, but the matter should not be another partisan issue debated with slogans. It is central to understanding developments in Iraq and expectations in Afghanistan, where the principles of the surge are likely to be put into practice. US officials think that they have written the pages of recent Iraqi history, but important passages have been written with Saudi and Persian pens.
The surge increased US troop levels in the Sunni center in order to begin a counterinsurgency program. Based on British and French experiences late in the colonial era, it sought to rid a small area of insurgents through military force then win over local support by providing government services and stimulating economic development. Upon consolidation in one locale, the cycle would be repeated in surrounding areas, spreading out gradually across the country in a manner that counterinsurgency advocates liken to an oil spot spreading across water. Looking at the political and military dynamics reverberating through Iraq over the last two years or so, one can see other forces at work that reduced violence – forces unrelated to the surge and the counterinsurgency principles upon which it rests.
A considerable portion of the violence in Iraq over the last several years did not stem from the insurgency or al Qaeda, rather it stemmed from animosities between the Sunnis and Shi'as. Those animosities developed into internecine sectarian fighting, triggered in part by spectacular al Qaeda bombings of Shi'a shrines and neighborhoods. Sectarian fighting led to Sunni emigrations into adjacent countries and to Sunnis and Shi'as abandoning mixed neighborhoods in favor of homogeneous ones guarded by local militias. These population shifts made sectarian violence less likely, and provided a breathing space during which both sides could ponder where civil war was taking them. This internal Iraqi dynamic accounts for a considerable amount of the decline in violence, especially in Baghdad.
The Sunni Arab tribes of Anbar and Diyala provinces shifted away from being important parts of the insurgency to partnering with the US against al Qaeda. It is difficult to link these events in Anbar and Diyala to the surge. There was no cycle of security-services-expansion as in counterinsurgency programs; instead, whole regions quickly and unexpectedly turned on al Qaeda. More importantly, the Sunni tribes began their cooperation with the US several months before the surge began. Al Qaeda's operations in those provinces and nearby Baghdad caused large numbers of Sunni casualties; and its personnel demonstrated little respect for the customs of local tribes. Tribal leaders approached US officers in the region and forged various local working relationships to expel al Qaeda, first in Anbar and later in Diyala.
There was an external dynamic in turning the Sunnis against al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia warned the US long ago that ousting Saddam Hussein would destabilize the region and open it up to Shi'a and Iranian influence if not domination. Wishing to stabilize a neighboring country and turn it into a new obstacle to Shi'ism and Iran, the Saudis used tribal diplomacy and monetary inducements (the two go hand in hand) with the elders of the Dulayim tribe, whose domain sprawls throughout Anbar and across the frontier into Saudi Arabia. Subsequent US inducements and counterinsurgency programs have sustained the working relationships, but the change was well underway and nicely funded beforehand. Perhaps at some later date we will be able to discern which was more important in the turnabout: US troops, who alternately use heavy-handed and benign methods; or the Saudis, who have long practice in dealing with coreligionists and tribal leaders.
Over sixty percent of Iraqis are Shi'a, most of whom live in the south – a region that has not had a significant US presence. The south was left to the British whose practices, after many arduous years in Northern Ireland, drew from counterinsurgency programs and placed emphasis on respecting the local population and avoiding insensitive uses of firepower – principles not always foremost in the minds of American troops until recently.
Furthermore, the Shi'a regions are greatly influenced by Iran, which of course follows the same branch of Islam. Key Shi'a political groups and their associated militias were formed in Iran during the long war between the two states; others were formed later under similar tutelage. Most if not all continue to obtain money from Iran. Since Saddam's ouster in 2003, trade has thrived between the two former enemies. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has long been conducting its own systematic policies to expand Iranian influence in southern Iraq. IRGC officers train and advise Shi'a militias; political cadres work with locals on development projects. In many ways, the US counterinsurgency effort parallels the IRGC program, which of course had been in effect for several years before the US program began in early 2007.
Iranian influence has kept disparate Shi'a factions, whose inclination is to settle matters through violence, reasonably in line – considering the chaos brought on in 2003. This has helped Prime Minister Maliki's frail government navigate through several political tempests. The IRGC has brokered ends to fighting between warring Shi'a militias and also between the Sadrists and the mainly Shi'a army, nominally under Maliki. Though no US official will ever admit it in public, it is clear that Iran has played a vital and unappreciated role in reducing violence and setting the stage for political development.
This represents a shift in Tehran's approach to bringing about a US departure from Iraq. No longer does Iran seek to oust the US by supplying weapons to militias and encouraging them to attrit American forces until the US public forced withdrawal. That approach was obviated by tepid opposition to the war in the US, the astonishing cohesion of US combat units, the decline of the Sunni insurgency, and the threat of devastating US air strikes. Iran now seeks to bring about as much stability in Iraq as possible and then to encourage the Shi'a parties to press for the US's departure.
Attention on the surge over the last eighteen months has entailed several costs. Various arrangements between US troops and tribal groups in the Sunni center have largely circumvented Sunni political parties, which were never as coherent as Shi'a counterparts. It might be quickly added, however, that the Shi'a parties are understandably wary of a strong Sunni region, and that they might find a fractured though reasonably stable Sunni region to be less threatening than a more or less unitary one after elections are held in the fall.
Concentrating on the Sunni region has come at the expense of allowing Iran to expand its influence with Shi'a parties and militias. Perhaps most importantly, fixation on the surge has rendered events in Afghanistan, at least until recently, into secondary if not tertiary issues. Meanwhile, the Taliban and al Qaeda have consolidated sanctuaries along the Pakistani frontier that are more formidable than anything the North Vietnamese had in Cambodia and Laos. From those sanctuaries, they have expanded their control of the Pashtun countryside in the south and enclaves in the north.
Events in Iraq are bewildering complex. When this is combined with personal vanity and bureaucratic parochialism, which typically overstate the influence of prized projects, administrative officials and key commanders might fail to grasp just what has happened in Iraq over the last two years. The fog of war and official mindsets are not conducive to understanding complex events, and the surge's impact on reducing violence is greatly inflated in Washington and the Green Zone alike. Similarly, much of the American public subscribes to this attractive storyline, resonant as it is with popular views of the resourcefulness and determination of their military. To paraphrase the venerable caution on simple causality: Post Petraeum, ergo propter Petraeum.
A likely though possibly harmful consequence of this is that General Petraeus, on becoming CENTCOM commander this fall, will confidently use the surge play book in Afghanistan, where the important if not decisive attendant dynamics might not be present.
Brian M. Downing is a veteran of the Vietnam War and author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at: brianmdowning@gmail.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/downing07302008.html
The End of Neo-liberalism by Joseph Stiglitz
The End of Neo-liberalism
Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
21 July 2008 - Issue : 791
Joseph E. Stiglitz
NEW YORK – The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called "Washington Consensus" in favor of privatization, liberalization, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.
For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.
Though neo-liberals do not want to admit it, their ideology also failed another test. No one can claim that financial markets did a stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990's, with 97 percent of investments in fiber optics taking years to see any light. But at least that mistake had an unintended benefit: as costs of communication were driven down, India and China became more integrated into the global economy.
But it is hard to see such benefits to the massive misallocation of resources to housing. The newly constructed homes built for families that could not afford them get trashed and gutted as millions of families are forced out of their homes, in some communities, government has finally stepped in – to remove the remains. In others, the blight spreads. So even those who have been model citizens, borrowing prudently and maintaining their homes, now find that markets have driven down the value of their homes beyond their worst nightmares. To be sure, there were some short-term benefits from the excess investment in real estate: some Americans (perhaps only for a few months) enjoyed the pleasures of home ownership and living in a bigger home than they otherwise would have. But at what a cost to themselves and the world economy! Millions will lose their life savings as they lose their homes. And the housing foreclosures have precipitated a global slowdown.
There is an increasing consensus on the prognosis: this downturn will be prolonged and widespread.
Nor did markets prepare us well for soaring oil and food prices. Of course, neither sector is an example of freemarket economics, but that is partly the point: free-market rhetoric has been used selectively – embraced when it serves special interests and discarded when it does not. Perhaps one of the few virtues of George W. Bush's administration is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is narrower than it was under Ronald Reagan. For all Reagan's free-trade rhetoric, he freely imposed trade restrictions, including the notorious "voluntary" export restraints on automobiles. Bush's policies have been worse, but the extent to which he has openly served America's military-industrial complex has been more naked. The only time that the Bush administration turned green was when it came to ethanol subsidies, whose environmental benefits are dubious. Distortions in the energy market (especially through the tax system) continue, and if Bush could have gotten away with it, matters would have been worse.
This mixture of free-market rhetoric and government intervention has worked particularly badly for developing countries. They were told to stop intervening in agriculture, thereby exposing their farmers to devastating competition from the United States and Europe. Their farmers might have been able to compete with American and European farmers, but they could not compete with US and European Union subsidies. Not surprisingly, investments in agriculture in developing countries faded, and a food gap widened.
Those who promulgated this mistaken advice do not have to worry about carrying malpractice insurance. The costs will be borne by those in developing countries, especially the poor. This year will see a large rise in poverty, especially if we measure it correctly. Simply put, in a world of plenty, millions in the developing world still cannot afford the minimum nutritional requirements. In many countries, increases in food and energy prices will have a particularly devastating effect on the poor, because these items constitute a larger share of their expenditures.
The anger around the world is palpable. Speculators, not surprisingly, have borne more than a little of the wrath. The speculators argue: we are not the cause of the problem; we are simply engaged in "price discovery" – in other words, discovering – a little late to do much about the problem this year – that there is scarcity. But that answer is disingenuous. Expectations of rising and volatile prices encourage hundreds of millions of farmers to take precautions. They might make more money if they hoard a little of their grain today and sell it later; and if they do not, they won't be able to afford it if next year's crop is smaller than hoped. A little grain taken off the market by hundreds of millions of farmers around the world adds up. Defenders of market fundamentalism want to shift the blame from market failure to government failure.
One senior Chinese official was quoted as saying that the problem was that the US government should have done more to help low-income Americans with their housing. I agree. But that does not change the facts: US banks mismanaged risk on a colossal scale, with global consequences, while those running these institutions have walked away with billions of dollars in compensation.
Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns. Unless they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well. Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. He is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict
From New Europe -- http://www.neurope.eu/articles/88894.php
______________________________________________
Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
21 July 2008 - Issue : 791
Joseph E. Stiglitz
NEW YORK – The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called "Washington Consensus" in favor of privatization, liberalization, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.
For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.
Though neo-liberals do not want to admit it, their ideology also failed another test. No one can claim that financial markets did a stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990's, with 97 percent of investments in fiber optics taking years to see any light. But at least that mistake had an unintended benefit: as costs of communication were driven down, India and China became more integrated into the global economy.
But it is hard to see such benefits to the massive misallocation of resources to housing. The newly constructed homes built for families that could not afford them get trashed and gutted as millions of families are forced out of their homes, in some communities, government has finally stepped in – to remove the remains. In others, the blight spreads. So even those who have been model citizens, borrowing prudently and maintaining their homes, now find that markets have driven down the value of their homes beyond their worst nightmares. To be sure, there were some short-term benefits from the excess investment in real estate: some Americans (perhaps only for a few months) enjoyed the pleasures of home ownership and living in a bigger home than they otherwise would have. But at what a cost to themselves and the world economy! Millions will lose their life savings as they lose their homes. And the housing foreclosures have precipitated a global slowdown.
There is an increasing consensus on the prognosis: this downturn will be prolonged and widespread.
Nor did markets prepare us well for soaring oil and food prices. Of course, neither sector is an example of freemarket economics, but that is partly the point: free-market rhetoric has been used selectively – embraced when it serves special interests and discarded when it does not. Perhaps one of the few virtues of George W. Bush's administration is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is narrower than it was under Ronald Reagan. For all Reagan's free-trade rhetoric, he freely imposed trade restrictions, including the notorious "voluntary" export restraints on automobiles. Bush's policies have been worse, but the extent to which he has openly served America's military-industrial complex has been more naked. The only time that the Bush administration turned green was when it came to ethanol subsidies, whose environmental benefits are dubious. Distortions in the energy market (especially through the tax system) continue, and if Bush could have gotten away with it, matters would have been worse.
This mixture of free-market rhetoric and government intervention has worked particularly badly for developing countries. They were told to stop intervening in agriculture, thereby exposing their farmers to devastating competition from the United States and Europe. Their farmers might have been able to compete with American and European farmers, but they could not compete with US and European Union subsidies. Not surprisingly, investments in agriculture in developing countries faded, and a food gap widened.
Those who promulgated this mistaken advice do not have to worry about carrying malpractice insurance. The costs will be borne by those in developing countries, especially the poor. This year will see a large rise in poverty, especially if we measure it correctly. Simply put, in a world of plenty, millions in the developing world still cannot afford the minimum nutritional requirements. In many countries, increases in food and energy prices will have a particularly devastating effect on the poor, because these items constitute a larger share of their expenditures.
The anger around the world is palpable. Speculators, not surprisingly, have borne more than a little of the wrath. The speculators argue: we are not the cause of the problem; we are simply engaged in "price discovery" – in other words, discovering – a little late to do much about the problem this year – that there is scarcity. But that answer is disingenuous. Expectations of rising and volatile prices encourage hundreds of millions of farmers to take precautions. They might make more money if they hoard a little of their grain today and sell it later; and if they do not, they won't be able to afford it if next year's crop is smaller than hoped. A little grain taken off the market by hundreds of millions of farmers around the world adds up. Defenders of market fundamentalism want to shift the blame from market failure to government failure.
One senior Chinese official was quoted as saying that the problem was that the US government should have done more to help low-income Americans with their housing. I agree. But that does not change the facts: US banks mismanaged risk on a colossal scale, with global consequences, while those running these institutions have walked away with billions of dollars in compensation.
Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns. Unless they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well. Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. He is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict
From New Europe -- http://www.neurope.eu/articles/88894.php
______________________________________________
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
No Flip-Flopper: Obama Has Always Been Belligerent on Iran
No Flip-Flopper: Obama Has Always Been Belligerent on Iran
by Richard Lightner
John Pilger and Joshua Frank have written on Obama's centrist positions and I would like to add my supporting views. Senator Obama's views of late toward Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict are not shifts to the center or flip-flopping in his policies. The senator has always viewed Iran as a threat to world peace and has always supported Israel and current Israeli policy toward the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Now, he merely expands on his already expressed beliefs that somehow were ignored or forgotten by his die-hard supporters. He is also on track with the Democratic Party leadership in Congress. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published two articles in the New Yorker magazine which laid out the collusion of both Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate, and the fact that they are aware of current military action against Iran.
In his book, Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, Senator Obama wrote, "Our dependence on oil... undermines our national security. A large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes – Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and, indirectly at least, Iran... We need to maintain a strategic force posture that allows us to manage threats posed by rogue nations like North Korea and Iran... and to meet the challenges presented by potential rivals like China."
In a March 2007 speech to the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), Obama blamed Hezbollah for the violence in Lebanon and, in turn, blamed Iran for supplying Hezbollah; claiming Iran is a major threat to world peace.
Then, in October 2007, Senator Obama criticized Senator Hillary Clinton voting in favor of a resolution to allow President Bush a "blank check" to attack Iran. Obama opposed the resolution which called an Iranian military unit a terrorist organization. He nevertheless views Iran as a threat to world peace.
In his June 4, 2008 speech before AIPAC, he continued the claim that, "Iran's President Ahmadinejad's regime is a threat to all of us... The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat... Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. But that only makes diplomacy more important."
He continued to describe himself as a "friend of Israel" and a supporter of AIPAC. He proclaimed a bond between the United States and Israel that is "rooted in the shared values" of the two nations. His concerns extended to Holocaust deniers, such as President Ahmadinejad of Iran and "terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel's destruction... Those who threaten Israel threaten us," Obama stated. He will make sure Israel is armed to deal with any "threat."
These views parallel the mainstream of Democratic Party thinking. So, rather than surprise, it is important that critics realize that Obama is merely expanding on his statements and has always held a centrist policy with regards to Iran.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lightner.php?articleid=13223
by Richard Lightner
John Pilger and Joshua Frank have written on Obama's centrist positions and I would like to add my supporting views. Senator Obama's views of late toward Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict are not shifts to the center or flip-flopping in his policies. The senator has always viewed Iran as a threat to world peace and has always supported Israel and current Israeli policy toward the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Now, he merely expands on his already expressed beliefs that somehow were ignored or forgotten by his die-hard supporters. He is also on track with the Democratic Party leadership in Congress. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published two articles in the New Yorker magazine which laid out the collusion of both Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate, and the fact that they are aware of current military action against Iran.
In his book, Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, Senator Obama wrote, "Our dependence on oil... undermines our national security. A large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes – Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and, indirectly at least, Iran... We need to maintain a strategic force posture that allows us to manage threats posed by rogue nations like North Korea and Iran... and to meet the challenges presented by potential rivals like China."
In a March 2007 speech to the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), Obama blamed Hezbollah for the violence in Lebanon and, in turn, blamed Iran for supplying Hezbollah; claiming Iran is a major threat to world peace.
Then, in October 2007, Senator Obama criticized Senator Hillary Clinton voting in favor of a resolution to allow President Bush a "blank check" to attack Iran. Obama opposed the resolution which called an Iranian military unit a terrorist organization. He nevertheless views Iran as a threat to world peace.
In his June 4, 2008 speech before AIPAC, he continued the claim that, "Iran's President Ahmadinejad's regime is a threat to all of us... The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat... Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. But that only makes diplomacy more important."
He continued to describe himself as a "friend of Israel" and a supporter of AIPAC. He proclaimed a bond between the United States and Israel that is "rooted in the shared values" of the two nations. His concerns extended to Holocaust deniers, such as President Ahmadinejad of Iran and "terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel's destruction... Those who threaten Israel threaten us," Obama stated. He will make sure Israel is armed to deal with any "threat."
These views parallel the mainstream of Democratic Party thinking. So, rather than surprise, it is important that critics realize that Obama is merely expanding on his statements and has always held a centrist policy with regards to Iran.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lightner.php?articleid=13223
Is the Surge Working? No, but the propaganda touting it sure is.
Is the Surge Working?
No, but the propaganda touting it sure is.
by Justin Raimondo
Barack Obama is getting plenty of flak for not acknowledging that he was wrong about the "surge," i.e. the wisdom of escalating a war we should never have started in the first place – and this is being compared to John McCain's stubborn refusal to admit that we need to get out (although it appears McCain isn't against timetables anymore …). In any case, the whole question of the "surge" is really just another one of those exercises in irrelevance that the American media use to fill the vast void of the cable news universe. As Obama points out, anyone could have predicted that the sudden infusion of large numbers of American troops would reduce violence, albeit temporarily. So where does that leave us?
Well, as Antiwar.com reported yesterday (Monday): "87 Iraqis Killed, 288 Wounded." Okay, so that was an unusual day, in which four suicide bombers – all of them, interestingly enough, female – took the opportunity to strike at majority Shi'ite targets, and one Kurdish site in the northern city of Kirkuk. Yet if you examine the pattern of the ongoing conflict – as painstakingly compiled and written up by the invaluable Margaret Griffis – large-scale explosions of violence aren't all that rare. Indeed, they occur with clock-like regularity, usually a week or two after relative quiet in which the daily toll amounts to two or three Iraqis killed and/or wounded.
Yes, but you have to admit – avers my imaginary interlocutor, the skeptical reader – that the situation on the ground has gotten better.
Well, no, I don't admit any such thing, because one has to ask: better than what? Better than before the war? Surely not – and that's the only standard that has real meaning to the Iraqis. More than anything, they want a return to normalcy – and a low-level civil war punctuated by eruptions of shocking violence is anything but normal.
Alright then, my skeptical reader persists, but face facts: the level of violence has been reduced from the bloody chaos of last year. There is no civil war, the Sadrists have retreated, and it's all because of the surge.
It's the surge-ists who have to face the fact that ethnic and religious violence in Iraq fluctuates like a flame feeding on underground gases: at times it burns low, and at other times it flares up, but is never quite extinguished. The earth, it seems, has an inexhaustible supply of vapors to ignite these mystic beacons, and Iraq's sectarian ferment – like Lebanon's – is similar: perpetually simmering and always threatening to boil over.
The flame is burning low, at the moment, perhaps because the various sectarian groupings have each been driven into their own corners: once mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, for example, are now exclusively Shi'ite, while, in the Sunni triangle, nary a Shi'ite dares raise his or her head. This marks a lull before the storm, not an endpoint. The sectarian passions unleashed by the fall of the Ba'athist regime are akin to those that bedevil the former Soviet Union in their intractability: US intervention has exacerbated rather than calmed the troubled waters, and rising tensions between the US and Iran have brought them to the surface.
If and when the US leaves Iraq, the American legacy won't be "democracy," or "liberation" – it will be the so-called Awakening of the Sunni tribes and clans succored by American arms and aid. These groupings are a ticking time bomb that will explode soon after the American presence is reduced significantly, a booby-trap set by the "liberators" to explode in the faces of the "liberated."
The whole aim of the surge has been obscured by the apparent stalling of the rush to confront Tehran, for that was its real purpose, and the real aim of the war itself, which was more war – this time with Iran.
I say apparent stalling because a slowdown is not a breakdown, and it makes good sense for the War Party to lay low at this point. Not that they're keeping quiet – far from it – but the Bush administration, for its part, is making noises about negotiations, just like they did in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Why, we've even announced that we're re-establishing the American embassy in Tehran. Peace seems to be breaking out all over – and yet, not so fast ….
To begin with, the situation remains very precarious, with hundreds of possible flashpoints of conflict along Iran's border with Iraq, and an ongoing destabilization campaign carried out by Washington and several covertly-funded terrorist groups, mostly Kurds (Pejak) and al Qaeda-like groupings in the wilder eastern section of the country.
Secondly, think how easy it would be for a "rogue" group of "extremists" to take over the newly-established American embassy in Tehran, for example: we'd be in for a replay of the Iranian hostage crisis. Or how about a replay of the more recent capture of that British Navy patrol, only this time with Americans held captive and paraded before the television cameras?
In short, it would take very little for the War Party to reassert its position of dominance and reprise its all-too-familiar narrative of "war before dishonor." John McCain would jump on this so quickly that it would make the Obama's head spin – and how, pray tell, would the Hopeful One respond? This is one of those "hypotheticals" that Obama tends to shy away from, but it isn't hard to imagine he wouldn't be talking about negotiating with the Iranian leadership.
I have to say, at this point, that the War Party isn't above engineering just such a provocation: the phrase "War Party" is short-hand for a variegated bunch, including US neoconservatives, the arms industry, Joe Lieberman, and at least one foreign nation – Israel. The Israelis have been urging Washington to attack Iran for months, if not years, and anyone who thinks they wouldn't dare undertake a false flag operation doesn't know the story of the Lavon Affair.
The conquest and occupation of Iraq was never about oil, just as it was never about "liberation," "democracy," or any of the other rhetorical flourishes so beloved by the President's speechwriters. It was and is an attempt to establish a forward base from which to launch further attacks on Muslim nations in the Middle East and Central Asia – and so it remains.
Obama, who is no dummy, never brings this up, because his position on Iran is deliberately vague, and a sore point with his backers and handlers: his antiwar base naturally opposes war with Iran, but his campaign – and, seemingly, he himself – is ambivalent.
On the one hand, Obama wants to negotiate directly with the Iranians – a bold proposal in Washington, which Pat Buchanan accurately describes as "Israeli-occupied territory." On the other hand he keeps talking about "big sticks" and how we can't rule anything out. Iran, he intones, is "the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation."
Gee, what happened to the threat from al Qaeda, which supposedly has taken over half of Pakistan, at least if we take what Obama and his surrogates say at face value? Remember that, according to Obama, the invasion of Iraq diverted us away from the real threat, embodied by bin Laden and his followers: how come they aren't "the greatest challenge to the United States in the region in a generation"?
As always, the question of war and peace – of whether we are going to launch an attack on the biggest, most powerful country in the Middle East on Israel's behalf – is going to be decided, not by conditions on the ground, but by political considerations on the home front.
If neither major presidential candidate is opposed to the War Party's ultimate aims and purposes, and if the American people have no say and no voice in determining the foreign policy of this country – that is, if things continue as they have been going – then peace is not anywhere on the horizon, and the surge surges forward … all the way to Tehran.
~ Justin Raimondo
No, but the propaganda touting it sure is.
by Justin Raimondo
Barack Obama is getting plenty of flak for not acknowledging that he was wrong about the "surge," i.e. the wisdom of escalating a war we should never have started in the first place – and this is being compared to John McCain's stubborn refusal to admit that we need to get out (although it appears McCain isn't against timetables anymore …). In any case, the whole question of the "surge" is really just another one of those exercises in irrelevance that the American media use to fill the vast void of the cable news universe. As Obama points out, anyone could have predicted that the sudden infusion of large numbers of American troops would reduce violence, albeit temporarily. So where does that leave us?
Well, as Antiwar.com reported yesterday (Monday): "87 Iraqis Killed, 288 Wounded." Okay, so that was an unusual day, in which four suicide bombers – all of them, interestingly enough, female – took the opportunity to strike at majority Shi'ite targets, and one Kurdish site in the northern city of Kirkuk. Yet if you examine the pattern of the ongoing conflict – as painstakingly compiled and written up by the invaluable Margaret Griffis – large-scale explosions of violence aren't all that rare. Indeed, they occur with clock-like regularity, usually a week or two after relative quiet in which the daily toll amounts to two or three Iraqis killed and/or wounded.
Yes, but you have to admit – avers my imaginary interlocutor, the skeptical reader – that the situation on the ground has gotten better.
Well, no, I don't admit any such thing, because one has to ask: better than what? Better than before the war? Surely not – and that's the only standard that has real meaning to the Iraqis. More than anything, they want a return to normalcy – and a low-level civil war punctuated by eruptions of shocking violence is anything but normal.
Alright then, my skeptical reader persists, but face facts: the level of violence has been reduced from the bloody chaos of last year. There is no civil war, the Sadrists have retreated, and it's all because of the surge.
It's the surge-ists who have to face the fact that ethnic and religious violence in Iraq fluctuates like a flame feeding on underground gases: at times it burns low, and at other times it flares up, but is never quite extinguished. The earth, it seems, has an inexhaustible supply of vapors to ignite these mystic beacons, and Iraq's sectarian ferment – like Lebanon's – is similar: perpetually simmering and always threatening to boil over.
The flame is burning low, at the moment, perhaps because the various sectarian groupings have each been driven into their own corners: once mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, for example, are now exclusively Shi'ite, while, in the Sunni triangle, nary a Shi'ite dares raise his or her head. This marks a lull before the storm, not an endpoint. The sectarian passions unleashed by the fall of the Ba'athist regime are akin to those that bedevil the former Soviet Union in their intractability: US intervention has exacerbated rather than calmed the troubled waters, and rising tensions between the US and Iran have brought them to the surface.
If and when the US leaves Iraq, the American legacy won't be "democracy," or "liberation" – it will be the so-called Awakening of the Sunni tribes and clans succored by American arms and aid. These groupings are a ticking time bomb that will explode soon after the American presence is reduced significantly, a booby-trap set by the "liberators" to explode in the faces of the "liberated."
The whole aim of the surge has been obscured by the apparent stalling of the rush to confront Tehran, for that was its real purpose, and the real aim of the war itself, which was more war – this time with Iran.
I say apparent stalling because a slowdown is not a breakdown, and it makes good sense for the War Party to lay low at this point. Not that they're keeping quiet – far from it – but the Bush administration, for its part, is making noises about negotiations, just like they did in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Why, we've even announced that we're re-establishing the American embassy in Tehran. Peace seems to be breaking out all over – and yet, not so fast ….
To begin with, the situation remains very precarious, with hundreds of possible flashpoints of conflict along Iran's border with Iraq, and an ongoing destabilization campaign carried out by Washington and several covertly-funded terrorist groups, mostly Kurds (Pejak) and al Qaeda-like groupings in the wilder eastern section of the country.
Secondly, think how easy it would be for a "rogue" group of "extremists" to take over the newly-established American embassy in Tehran, for example: we'd be in for a replay of the Iranian hostage crisis. Or how about a replay of the more recent capture of that British Navy patrol, only this time with Americans held captive and paraded before the television cameras?
In short, it would take very little for the War Party to reassert its position of dominance and reprise its all-too-familiar narrative of "war before dishonor." John McCain would jump on this so quickly that it would make the Obama's head spin – and how, pray tell, would the Hopeful One respond? This is one of those "hypotheticals" that Obama tends to shy away from, but it isn't hard to imagine he wouldn't be talking about negotiating with the Iranian leadership.
I have to say, at this point, that the War Party isn't above engineering just such a provocation: the phrase "War Party" is short-hand for a variegated bunch, including US neoconservatives, the arms industry, Joe Lieberman, and at least one foreign nation – Israel. The Israelis have been urging Washington to attack Iran for months, if not years, and anyone who thinks they wouldn't dare undertake a false flag operation doesn't know the story of the Lavon Affair.
The conquest and occupation of Iraq was never about oil, just as it was never about "liberation," "democracy," or any of the other rhetorical flourishes so beloved by the President's speechwriters. It was and is an attempt to establish a forward base from which to launch further attacks on Muslim nations in the Middle East and Central Asia – and so it remains.
Obama, who is no dummy, never brings this up, because his position on Iran is deliberately vague, and a sore point with his backers and handlers: his antiwar base naturally opposes war with Iran, but his campaign – and, seemingly, he himself – is ambivalent.
On the one hand, Obama wants to negotiate directly with the Iranians – a bold proposal in Washington, which Pat Buchanan accurately describes as "Israeli-occupied territory." On the other hand he keeps talking about "big sticks" and how we can't rule anything out. Iran, he intones, is "the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation."
Gee, what happened to the threat from al Qaeda, which supposedly has taken over half of Pakistan, at least if we take what Obama and his surrogates say at face value? Remember that, according to Obama, the invasion of Iraq diverted us away from the real threat, embodied by bin Laden and his followers: how come they aren't "the greatest challenge to the United States in the region in a generation"?
As always, the question of war and peace – of whether we are going to launch an attack on the biggest, most powerful country in the Middle East on Israel's behalf – is going to be decided, not by conditions on the ground, but by political considerations on the home front.
If neither major presidential candidate is opposed to the War Party's ultimate aims and purposes, and if the American people have no say and no voice in determining the foreign policy of this country – that is, if things continue as they have been going – then peace is not anywhere on the horizon, and the surge surges forward … all the way to Tehran.
~ Justin Raimondo
Opium in Afghanistan
Opium in Afghanistan
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/opium/index.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/opium/index.html
Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?
Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27AFGHAN-t.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27AFGHAN-t.html
Plan Facts About Iran's Military
Plan Facts About Iran's Military
By Eric Margolis
29/07/08 " -- -The intensifying saber rattling and war of words between the US and Israel, on one hand, and Iran have generated a great deal of hysteria, war fever and confusion.
Senior Israeli cabinet members have threatened nuclear war against Iran. The western media has given the erroneous impression that Iran is poised to wipe Israel off the map. Some understanding of the military issues involved is badly needed.
First, missiles. Iran announced its Shahab-III missile is ready to retaliate against any Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities. This missile is not long-ranged, as media wrongly claims, but a medium-ranged. Iran says it can deliver a two ton warhead over 2,000 km. But Israeli and US sources say Shahab’s maximum range is around 1,200 km, which puts much of Israel out of its range.
This obsolescent missile is highly inaccurate, particularly at maximum range. It is liquid fueled, meaning it is very vulnerable to air and missile strikes while being prepared to fire. Israel has developed tactics using aircraft, missiles and drones to attack enemy missiles in pre-launch phase. Iran has an estimated 24 Shabab-III’s.
The other missiles Iran fired this week were short ranged models of no strategic value. Tehran was even caught doctoring the pictures it issued of the multiple missile launch to cover up the failure of one of the missiles to fly. This embarrassment reinforced the view that Tehran is trying to hide its military weakness behind a lot of chest-pounding and missile theatrics.
Israel, by contrast, has around 50 Jericho-II nuclear-armed missiles with a range from 900-2,700 miles, putting every Mideast capital and parts of Russia, Pakistan, and Europe within range. Each Jericho-II carries a warhead that can destroy a major city.
Medium-ranged missiles are almost useless without nuclear warheads. Iran has no nuclear weapons, and even if it did manage to develop them, it would be many years before a compact warhead could be developed that could be carried atop a missiles and withstand heavy G-forces. Until Iran has nuclear warheads, Iran’s Shabab’s will be more for show than military utility.
*Other systems - Israel has an indestructible nuclear triad. In addition to the Jerichos, which are housed in caves and mobile, Israel has one of the world’s top air forces with long-ranged US-supplied F-15I’s and F-16’s that can deliver nuclear weapons to Iran. Germany provided Israel with three Dolphin-class subs that are said to be armed with nuclear cruise missiles. At least one sub is always on station off Iran’s coast. In addition, Israel new Ofek-3 military satellite provides full coverage of Iran and surrounding region. Israel also shares US satellite and other sensor data in real time.
Israel has probably the world’s second or third most potent air force, with around 400 state of the art, US-supplied combat aircraft and among the world’s most skilled pilots. The IAF is supported by a galaxy of electronic warfare systems, drones, and long-range recon. Israel’s Arrow is the world’s most advanced operational anti-ballistic missiles system and is expected to down over 85% of any incoming missiles.
Iran’s Air Force has only about 165 airworthy combat aircraft, mostly of 1960’s and 70’s vintage. The only aircraft it has that can reach Israel are 18-20 Soviet-era SU-24’s, and a handful of decrepit 40-year old, US-supplied F-4 Phantoms and F-14’s dating from the Shah’s day.
Thanks to unlimited US support, Israel is two full military generations ahead of its enemies, and even further advanced in electronic warfare and command and control.
A single nuclear weapon would destroy Israel, as its partisans warn. But this is also true of Egypt, where a single nuke on the Aswan Dam would inundate the nation and kill millions. It also applies to the Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf Emirates, Jordan, and Iraq. Only Saudi Arabia and Iran have strategic space. Even so, one nuclear strike on Tehran would cripple Iran for years.
Thanks to its strategic triad, Israel’s nuclear forces are indestructible, hence capable of devastating retaliation against any enemy nuclear strike. The Bush administration has vowed nuclear retaliation against any nation that attacks Israel with nuclear weapons.
Given these facts, we can see how false are claims trumpeted by the west that Iran is a dangerous military power that is about to eradicate Israel. The facts are quite the reverse.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20376.htm
By Eric Margolis
29/07/08 " -- -The intensifying saber rattling and war of words between the US and Israel, on one hand, and Iran have generated a great deal of hysteria, war fever and confusion.
Senior Israeli cabinet members have threatened nuclear war against Iran. The western media has given the erroneous impression that Iran is poised to wipe Israel off the map. Some understanding of the military issues involved is badly needed.
First, missiles. Iran announced its Shahab-III missile is ready to retaliate against any Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities. This missile is not long-ranged, as media wrongly claims, but a medium-ranged. Iran says it can deliver a two ton warhead over 2,000 km. But Israeli and US sources say Shahab’s maximum range is around 1,200 km, which puts much of Israel out of its range.
This obsolescent missile is highly inaccurate, particularly at maximum range. It is liquid fueled, meaning it is very vulnerable to air and missile strikes while being prepared to fire. Israel has developed tactics using aircraft, missiles and drones to attack enemy missiles in pre-launch phase. Iran has an estimated 24 Shabab-III’s.
The other missiles Iran fired this week were short ranged models of no strategic value. Tehran was even caught doctoring the pictures it issued of the multiple missile launch to cover up the failure of one of the missiles to fly. This embarrassment reinforced the view that Tehran is trying to hide its military weakness behind a lot of chest-pounding and missile theatrics.
Israel, by contrast, has around 50 Jericho-II nuclear-armed missiles with a range from 900-2,700 miles, putting every Mideast capital and parts of Russia, Pakistan, and Europe within range. Each Jericho-II carries a warhead that can destroy a major city.
Medium-ranged missiles are almost useless without nuclear warheads. Iran has no nuclear weapons, and even if it did manage to develop them, it would be many years before a compact warhead could be developed that could be carried atop a missiles and withstand heavy G-forces. Until Iran has nuclear warheads, Iran’s Shabab’s will be more for show than military utility.
*Other systems - Israel has an indestructible nuclear triad. In addition to the Jerichos, which are housed in caves and mobile, Israel has one of the world’s top air forces with long-ranged US-supplied F-15I’s and F-16’s that can deliver nuclear weapons to Iran. Germany provided Israel with three Dolphin-class subs that are said to be armed with nuclear cruise missiles. At least one sub is always on station off Iran’s coast. In addition, Israel new Ofek-3 military satellite provides full coverage of Iran and surrounding region. Israel also shares US satellite and other sensor data in real time.
Israel has probably the world’s second or third most potent air force, with around 400 state of the art, US-supplied combat aircraft and among the world’s most skilled pilots. The IAF is supported by a galaxy of electronic warfare systems, drones, and long-range recon. Israel’s Arrow is the world’s most advanced operational anti-ballistic missiles system and is expected to down over 85% of any incoming missiles.
Iran’s Air Force has only about 165 airworthy combat aircraft, mostly of 1960’s and 70’s vintage. The only aircraft it has that can reach Israel are 18-20 Soviet-era SU-24’s, and a handful of decrepit 40-year old, US-supplied F-4 Phantoms and F-14’s dating from the Shah’s day.
Thanks to unlimited US support, Israel is two full military generations ahead of its enemies, and even further advanced in electronic warfare and command and control.
A single nuclear weapon would destroy Israel, as its partisans warn. But this is also true of Egypt, where a single nuke on the Aswan Dam would inundate the nation and kill millions. It also applies to the Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf Emirates, Jordan, and Iraq. Only Saudi Arabia and Iran have strategic space. Even so, one nuclear strike on Tehran would cripple Iran for years.
Thanks to its strategic triad, Israel’s nuclear forces are indestructible, hence capable of devastating retaliation against any enemy nuclear strike. The Bush administration has vowed nuclear retaliation against any nation that attacks Israel with nuclear weapons.
Given these facts, we can see how false are claims trumpeted by the west that Iran is a dangerous military power that is about to eradicate Israel. The facts are quite the reverse.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20376.htm
Acts of War by Scott Ritter
Acts of War
By Scott Ritter
29/07/08 " TruthDig" -- - -The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.
Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.
The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.
However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.
It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva conventions. The MEK says that its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.
The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.
Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.
The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.
A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner which results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort which have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.
Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality which long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.
The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which of course has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.
Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done. “This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”
This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.
A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.
I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.
Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.
Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.
Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).
The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation which would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression. One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.
Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20377.htm
By Scott Ritter
29/07/08 " TruthDig" -- - -The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.
Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.
The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.
However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.
It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva conventions. The MEK says that its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.
The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.
Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.
The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.
A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner which results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort which have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.
Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality which long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.
The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which of course has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.
Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done. “This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”
This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.
A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.
I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.
Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.
Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.
Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).
The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation which would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression. One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.
Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20377.htm
Losing Afghanistan by Leon Hadar
Losing Afghanistan
by Leon T. Hadar
Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9569
This article appeared in the American Conservative on July 28, 2008.
Prolonging this war may be worse than persisting in the bad one in Iraq
F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." From that perspective, some of the proud members of Washington's reality-based community exhibit the characteristics of very intelligent super-achievers when they ridicule President George W. Bush's grandiose plans for remaking Iraq—while embracing similarly ambitious designs for nation-building in Afghanistan.
But then, as George Orwell proposed in 1984, "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" amounts to the kind of Doublethink that politicians use to deceive and manipulate their people. Is that what critics of the Freedom Agenda are doing these days when they seem "to use logic against logic" (Orwell's words) in offering conflicting policy recommendations for two regions in the Broader Middle East?
Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.
Realists urge the U.S. to take a cautious approach to achieving ethnic and religious reconciliation in Mesopotamia, pointing to deep-rooted conflicts between Arabs and Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunnis. But these same Realpolitik types become born-again idealists in insisting that American leaders, together with the entire "international community," should help resolve the ancient differences between Pashtun and Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara, and the Aimak and the Turkmen and the Baloch people. You see, the Aimak are not so different from the residents of Chevy Chase, Maryland. They just want to live together in peace with their friendly neighbors, the Baloch, and we have the obligation to help them do that.
Well, forget Fitzgerald and Orwell. Since some of my best friends are Iraq Skeptics and Afghanistan Enthusiasts (IS-AE), I'll try to be somewhat neutral. Embracing the judgment of a value-free social scientist, I propose that my pals are neither super-smart jugglers nor duplicitous propagandists. Rather, they may be suffering from a mild form of cognitive dissonance.
One assumes that rational political players holding two contradictory ideas will try to reduce the dissonance by rejecting one. They could propose that we actually undertake nation-building in both Iraq and Afghanistan or, like other powers (the British Empire, czarist Russia, the Soviet Union) who tried without success to impose their preferred order on Afghanistan, we admit that we will probably not be able to get these many tribes to sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire in Kandahar.
They won't be the last aspiring policymakers to deal with the stress of holding conflicting ideas at the same time. Neoconservatives are finding out that establishing an empire and spreading democracy are mutually contradictory. Since learning that reality the hard way—somewhere on the roads between Baghdad and Beirut and Gaza—they have been trying to minimize their dissonance by denying discomforting evidence like the tendency of free elections in Arab countries to bring anti-Western figures to power.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to pay the costs of juggling imperial imposition and democracy promotion. And contrary to the expectations that many opponents of the neocons have invested in the "antiwar" Democratic presidential candidate, these costs will only rise if President Obama decides to simultaneously play Queen Victoria and Woodrow Wilson. He seems inclined to do just that.
"As president, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO's efforts against the Taliban," candidate Obama promised during a foreign-policy address at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "As we step up our commitment, our European friends must do the same, and without the burdensome restrictions that have hampered NATO's efforts," he explained to members of the foreign-policy establishment who want to see U.S. troops relocated from Iraq to Afghanistan to do nation-building there—and to do it right this time.
John McCain argues that Iraq is more important to long-term American security, but believes that the U.S. should now undertake a surge in Hindu Kush to mathc the one in Mesopotamia. Obama contends that Iraq is a costly diversion from Afghanistan, which he believes is more crucial to winning the war on terror. "We must also put more of an Afghan face on security by improving the training and equipping of the Afghan Army and Police, and including Afghan soldiers in U.S. and NATO operations," he said during his Washington address, insisting, "the solution in Afghanistan is not just military—it is political and economic." As president, he would increase our non-military aid by $1 billion to fund projects at the local level. Sounding like an enthusiastic nation-builder, Obama stressed that "we must seek better performance from the Afghan government, and support that performance through tough anti-corruption safeguards on aid, and increased international support to develop the rule of law across the country."
One could dismiss much of this mumbo-jumbo rhetoric about ambitious plans to rebuild, remake, restructure, reconstruct, and reform the "failed state" of Afghanistan and its mishmash of ethnic, religious, and tribal groups, its underdeveloped economy, nonexistent military, and "civil society"—whatever that is. But notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) the mess in Iraq, Washington continues to be mesmerized by the notion—popularized by chroniclers such as our own Rudyard Kipling for poor people, the travel reporter turned military strategist Robert Kaplan—that Afghanistan could become our last New Frontier. A great cinematic romantic adventure. Another Good War to eclipse the Iraqi bad war.
There in the snowy mountains and green valleys of the Hindu Kush, the exploits of Special Ops hunks and foreign-aid babes—joined by Blackwater professionals and DynCorp contractors delivering "customer-driven solutions"—could make any of us, including our War President, feel a certain "Afghanistan Envy," as Slate's Fred Kaplan put it. "I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush admitted, speaking by video conference from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed," said the ex-National Guard bombardier who passed an opportunity to take part in that great American drama in Southeast Asia. "It must be exciting for you," he continued, "in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks." I suspect very few of these men and women see themselves as indulging in enviable adventures from "The Green Berets" or "Gunga Din," Kaplan noted.
That Bush, Obama, McCain, and the rest of the Washington elites regard Afghanistan as a Good War has to do with the shared narrative about the U.S. military campaign there. Indeed, some of the most vociferous antiwar voices in this country, including contributors to The American Conservative on the Right and The Nation on the Left, supported the launching of that war on Oct. 7, 2001 in response to the terror of Sept. 11, 2001. The war's stated purpose was capturing Osama bin Laden, destroying al-Qaeda, and removing the Taliban regime that had provided support and safe haven to the terrorists. But while President Bush vowed early on that bin Laden would be captured "dead or alive" and made the destruction of al-Qaeda and the Taliban a top priority, he is expected to leave office with most of their leadership, probably including bin Laden, alive and well after relocating from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas.
There is no doubt that bringing to justice those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—or better still, Coalition forces killing bin Laden and his conspirators, Che Guevara-style, on the battlefield—would have provided appropriate closure to the horrific events of 9/11. Like other Afghanistan-centric voices, Obama argues that instead of shifting American intelligence, military, and financial resources to oust Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq, President Bush should have continued to fight the war in Afghanistan to victory.
But how does he define "victory" in Afghanistan? Pursuing al-Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan and completing the nation-building project in "liberated" Afghanistan.
The part where the Afghanistan enthusiasts fantasizing about V-Day get their narrative wrong begins after the devastating American and British aerial bombing campaign in Afghanistan. (Remember the Daisy Cutters?) According to the fairy tale concocted by Washington and popularized by the media, we encouraged a bunch of pro-American Afghan good guys to liberate their country from Islamofascist bad guys and create the conditions for building a democratic and unified nation-state. In this version, the Northern Alliance and their leader, the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, occupy the role of the Free French Forces during the other Good War (assigned to the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi in that bad war). The role of Vichy is played by the Taliban, and the Nazi occupiers are represented by al-Qaeda. Like the World War II allies, we are helping the good guys who control Kabul prevent the bad guys from regaining power over Afghanistan.
What's wrong with this story, and why does it matter? First we need to remember that the outside military and financial backers of the Taliban and by extension al-Qaeda—the only governments to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Kabul—were our staunch allies Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Pakistanis needed an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban's Pashtun fundamentalists to counterbalance the power of India, their regional rival. (The Pashtun are the main ethnic group in Afghanistan and on the other side of the border in Pakistan.) For the Saudis, the Talibs helped spread their anti-Western Muslim doctrine of Wahhabism. Before 9/11, the Northern Alliance was a military-political umbrella organization uniting various Afghan groups otherwise fighting each other to fight the Taliban. It was dominated by the Tajik (who make up 27 percent of Afghanistan's population and are the second largest ethnic group), the Shi'ite Hazara, and the Uzbeks (who each make up about 9 percent of the population), backed by Russia, Iran, Turkey, and India.
To make a long story short, the horrors of 9/11 were perpetrated by the religious, political, and military partners of our Pakistani and Saudi allies. And the defeat of the Taliban was achieved through the help of anti-Western warlords allied with four regional players—an adversary (Iran), a not-so-great-friend (Russia), a friend (Turkey), and an adversary of Pakistan (India). We ended up forming an ad hoc partnership with the Northern Alliance, providing them money and arms while at the same time pressuring the Pakistanis and the Saudis to end their support for groups responsible for the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans. This was an example of a sensible Realpolitik policy—co-operating with a mixed bag of local and regional players to capture our enemies and destroy their military infrastructure. An ideological crusade to bring democracy to Afghanistan wasn't part of the plan.
Pursuing the same kind of realistic approach, we could have encouraged the remnants of the Northern Alliance to work together with their regional backers to co-opt Pakistan and members of Afghanistan's Pashtun majority into an imperfect political settlement that would probably have led to the creation of a loose confederation of ethnic groups, locally controlled and secured by backing from Russia, India, Turkey, Iran—and Pakistan and the U.S.
Instead, we insisted on imposing our man, the Pashtun Hamid Karzai, as head of a central government, while hoping against hope that Pakistan would back this arrangement. In the process, we ended up antagonizing the Indians, the Iranians, and the Russians, and most important, the various gangsters that had helped us "liberate" the country.
To support the fragile balance of power and pursue an ambitious nation-building scheme, we now have two military operations that seek to stabilize Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom is a combat operation led by the United States against al-Qaeda remnants, primarily in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistan border, and consisting of 20,000 troops, including about 18,000 U.S. forces. The second operation is the International Security Assistance Force, established by the international community in 2002 and controlled by NATO. ISAF has about 47,000 troops from 40 countries, including 17,000 American troops. The main problem has been the reluctance of our NATO allies to deploy more troops to take part in combat operations due to strong public opposition at home to fighting what has become an Afghan civil war.
Indeed, the Good War in Afghanistan is not so good anymore. "In a remarkable shift, Afghanistan, where U.S. officials were once confident of victory, is now rivaling Iraq as the biggest cause of concern for American policymakers," according to a recent front-page story in the The Wall Street Journal. In fact, the Pentagon's first assessment of conditions in Afghanistan since the invasion recently acknowledged that Taliban guerrillas have regrouped after their initial fall from power and "coalesced into a resilient insurgency," making Afghanistan now more dangerous for American forces than Iraq. The Pentagon review states that the fledgling national government in Kabul remains incapable of extending its reach beyond the capital or taking effective counter-narcotics measures.
The insurgency that had once been limited to small portions of the country is now spreading to its more stable eastern parts. It carried out a record 2,615 roadside-bomb attacks in 2007, up from 1,931 in 2006. The roadside bombings, along with a wave of suicide and other types of attacks, killed more than 6,500 people in 2007, also a post-invasion record. "The Taliban is likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008," the report stressed. It concluded that "the greatest challenge to long-term security within Afghanistan is the insurgent sanctuary" within the tribal areas of Pakistan—our formal ally in the war on terror and a recipient of billions of U.S. military and economic aid. The document adds that the ceasefire accords between Pakistan and the militants resulted in "substantially" more cross-border attacks.
That so many American realists are clamoring for "victory" in Afghanistan while giving up on Iraq would probably surprise the proverbial man from Mars. Imagine him as Martian von Clausewitz landing in Washington this year. Based on hard-core geostrategic calculations, he would likely argue that the U.S. has more reason to remain engaged in Mesopotamia—including the need to maintain access to the energy resources in the Persian Gulf and to protect key allies in the region from the alleged threat of Iran—than to be drawn into Afghanistan's civil war in the name of nation-building.
"It is a rule in the life of modern nations that nationalism trumps all else," columnist William Pfaff recently wrote. "If the government in Saigon or a government in Baghdad or Kabul, cannot, even with appropriate foreign material assistance, establish and maintain order within its own frontiers and by its own means, armed legions of foreign democracy-teachers, state-builders and winners of hearts and minds cannot do it for them." And as Pfaff suggested, if the Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks do not wish to be ruled by Pashtun religious reactionaries, they should not need thousands of NATO and U.S. troops to defend them. "If they will not defend themselves, there is nothing the foreigners can do to save them from their countrymen," he concluded.
Iraq and Afghanistan skeptics recognize that what is taking place in both countries are civil wars involving tribal forces fighting over territory and resources in order to preserve their power and identity. Their political, economic, and religious interests don't necessarily correspond to or conflict with American interests. After all, in Afghanistan, Pakistan backed al-Qaeda and Iran supported the Northern Alliance. In Iraq, the U.S. has partnered with a Shi'ite movement with ties to Iran.
During the 20th century, the U.S. and its allies had an interest in preventing aggressive global powers from dominating these regions. Such a threat doesn't exist today—unless one considers the mythical Caliphate, the brainchild of the al-Qaeda–neocon coalition. The notion that America will succeed in nation-building through military force in either Iraq or Afghanistan is pure fantasy.
One hopes that Obama and company will resolve their cognitive dissonance by modifying their belief about the moral benefit and policy utility of nation-building. Indeed, the new administration should abandon the fantasies of nation-building and instead embrace a realist policy of working together with regional powers to secure the limited but actual U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the rest of South and Central Asia -- weakening the influence of radical Islam; damaging the infrastructure of terrorist groups; preventing unstable regimes and terrorist organization from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction.
In that context, Washington should no longer depend anymore on Pakistan -- an unreliable client state an unstable regime and ties to radical Islamic groups -- to serve as its strategic ally in the region. Instead, the U.S. should provide incentives to India, which is emerging as a leading economic and military to counter-balance the power of Pakistan as part of an effort backed by Russia and Turkey to reduce the influence of radical Islam in Afghanistan and and the rest of the region. Some remnants of the Taliban are expected to return to Afghanistan, but they should know that if they provide refuge to anti-American terrorists again, they would have another rendevouz with those Daisy Cutters. At the same time, Washington make the capture of Osama bin Ladin and other Al Qaeda terrorists hiding in Pakistan a condition for any improvement in American relationship with Islamabad.
This set of policies may not sound as romantic as nation-building. But a U.S. President that has the gift of a first-rate intelligence and who claims not to using the methods of Doublethink will suffer no dissonance if he decides to pursue them.
by Leon T. Hadar
Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9569
This article appeared in the American Conservative on July 28, 2008.
Prolonging this war may be worse than persisting in the bad one in Iraq
F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." From that perspective, some of the proud members of Washington's reality-based community exhibit the characteristics of very intelligent super-achievers when they ridicule President George W. Bush's grandiose plans for remaking Iraq—while embracing similarly ambitious designs for nation-building in Afghanistan.
But then, as George Orwell proposed in 1984, "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" amounts to the kind of Doublethink that politicians use to deceive and manipulate their people. Is that what critics of the Freedom Agenda are doing these days when they seem "to use logic against logic" (Orwell's words) in offering conflicting policy recommendations for two regions in the Broader Middle East?
Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.
Realists urge the U.S. to take a cautious approach to achieving ethnic and religious reconciliation in Mesopotamia, pointing to deep-rooted conflicts between Arabs and Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunnis. But these same Realpolitik types become born-again idealists in insisting that American leaders, together with the entire "international community," should help resolve the ancient differences between Pashtun and Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara, and the Aimak and the Turkmen and the Baloch people. You see, the Aimak are not so different from the residents of Chevy Chase, Maryland. They just want to live together in peace with their friendly neighbors, the Baloch, and we have the obligation to help them do that.
Well, forget Fitzgerald and Orwell. Since some of my best friends are Iraq Skeptics and Afghanistan Enthusiasts (IS-AE), I'll try to be somewhat neutral. Embracing the judgment of a value-free social scientist, I propose that my pals are neither super-smart jugglers nor duplicitous propagandists. Rather, they may be suffering from a mild form of cognitive dissonance.
One assumes that rational political players holding two contradictory ideas will try to reduce the dissonance by rejecting one. They could propose that we actually undertake nation-building in both Iraq and Afghanistan or, like other powers (the British Empire, czarist Russia, the Soviet Union) who tried without success to impose their preferred order on Afghanistan, we admit that we will probably not be able to get these many tribes to sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire in Kandahar.
They won't be the last aspiring policymakers to deal with the stress of holding conflicting ideas at the same time. Neoconservatives are finding out that establishing an empire and spreading democracy are mutually contradictory. Since learning that reality the hard way—somewhere on the roads between Baghdad and Beirut and Gaza—they have been trying to minimize their dissonance by denying discomforting evidence like the tendency of free elections in Arab countries to bring anti-Western figures to power.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to pay the costs of juggling imperial imposition and democracy promotion. And contrary to the expectations that many opponents of the neocons have invested in the "antiwar" Democratic presidential candidate, these costs will only rise if President Obama decides to simultaneously play Queen Victoria and Woodrow Wilson. He seems inclined to do just that.
"As president, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO's efforts against the Taliban," candidate Obama promised during a foreign-policy address at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "As we step up our commitment, our European friends must do the same, and without the burdensome restrictions that have hampered NATO's efforts," he explained to members of the foreign-policy establishment who want to see U.S. troops relocated from Iraq to Afghanistan to do nation-building there—and to do it right this time.
John McCain argues that Iraq is more important to long-term American security, but believes that the U.S. should now undertake a surge in Hindu Kush to mathc the one in Mesopotamia. Obama contends that Iraq is a costly diversion from Afghanistan, which he believes is more crucial to winning the war on terror. "We must also put more of an Afghan face on security by improving the training and equipping of the Afghan Army and Police, and including Afghan soldiers in U.S. and NATO operations," he said during his Washington address, insisting, "the solution in Afghanistan is not just military—it is political and economic." As president, he would increase our non-military aid by $1 billion to fund projects at the local level. Sounding like an enthusiastic nation-builder, Obama stressed that "we must seek better performance from the Afghan government, and support that performance through tough anti-corruption safeguards on aid, and increased international support to develop the rule of law across the country."
One could dismiss much of this mumbo-jumbo rhetoric about ambitious plans to rebuild, remake, restructure, reconstruct, and reform the "failed state" of Afghanistan and its mishmash of ethnic, religious, and tribal groups, its underdeveloped economy, nonexistent military, and "civil society"—whatever that is. But notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) the mess in Iraq, Washington continues to be mesmerized by the notion—popularized by chroniclers such as our own Rudyard Kipling for poor people, the travel reporter turned military strategist Robert Kaplan—that Afghanistan could become our last New Frontier. A great cinematic romantic adventure. Another Good War to eclipse the Iraqi bad war.
There in the snowy mountains and green valleys of the Hindu Kush, the exploits of Special Ops hunks and foreign-aid babes—joined by Blackwater professionals and DynCorp contractors delivering "customer-driven solutions"—could make any of us, including our War President, feel a certain "Afghanistan Envy," as Slate's Fred Kaplan put it. "I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush admitted, speaking by video conference from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed," said the ex-National Guard bombardier who passed an opportunity to take part in that great American drama in Southeast Asia. "It must be exciting for you," he continued, "in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks." I suspect very few of these men and women see themselves as indulging in enviable adventures from "The Green Berets" or "Gunga Din," Kaplan noted.
That Bush, Obama, McCain, and the rest of the Washington elites regard Afghanistan as a Good War has to do with the shared narrative about the U.S. military campaign there. Indeed, some of the most vociferous antiwar voices in this country, including contributors to The American Conservative on the Right and The Nation on the Left, supported the launching of that war on Oct. 7, 2001 in response to the terror of Sept. 11, 2001. The war's stated purpose was capturing Osama bin Laden, destroying al-Qaeda, and removing the Taliban regime that had provided support and safe haven to the terrorists. But while President Bush vowed early on that bin Laden would be captured "dead or alive" and made the destruction of al-Qaeda and the Taliban a top priority, he is expected to leave office with most of their leadership, probably including bin Laden, alive and well after relocating from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas.
There is no doubt that bringing to justice those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—or better still, Coalition forces killing bin Laden and his conspirators, Che Guevara-style, on the battlefield—would have provided appropriate closure to the horrific events of 9/11. Like other Afghanistan-centric voices, Obama argues that instead of shifting American intelligence, military, and financial resources to oust Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq, President Bush should have continued to fight the war in Afghanistan to victory.
But how does he define "victory" in Afghanistan? Pursuing al-Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan and completing the nation-building project in "liberated" Afghanistan.
The part where the Afghanistan enthusiasts fantasizing about V-Day get their narrative wrong begins after the devastating American and British aerial bombing campaign in Afghanistan. (Remember the Daisy Cutters?) According to the fairy tale concocted by Washington and popularized by the media, we encouraged a bunch of pro-American Afghan good guys to liberate their country from Islamofascist bad guys and create the conditions for building a democratic and unified nation-state. In this version, the Northern Alliance and their leader, the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, occupy the role of the Free French Forces during the other Good War (assigned to the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi in that bad war). The role of Vichy is played by the Taliban, and the Nazi occupiers are represented by al-Qaeda. Like the World War II allies, we are helping the good guys who control Kabul prevent the bad guys from regaining power over Afghanistan.
What's wrong with this story, and why does it matter? First we need to remember that the outside military and financial backers of the Taliban and by extension al-Qaeda—the only governments to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Kabul—were our staunch allies Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Pakistanis needed an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban's Pashtun fundamentalists to counterbalance the power of India, their regional rival. (The Pashtun are the main ethnic group in Afghanistan and on the other side of the border in Pakistan.) For the Saudis, the Talibs helped spread their anti-Western Muslim doctrine of Wahhabism. Before 9/11, the Northern Alliance was a military-political umbrella organization uniting various Afghan groups otherwise fighting each other to fight the Taliban. It was dominated by the Tajik (who make up 27 percent of Afghanistan's population and are the second largest ethnic group), the Shi'ite Hazara, and the Uzbeks (who each make up about 9 percent of the population), backed by Russia, Iran, Turkey, and India.
To make a long story short, the horrors of 9/11 were perpetrated by the religious, political, and military partners of our Pakistani and Saudi allies. And the defeat of the Taliban was achieved through the help of anti-Western warlords allied with four regional players—an adversary (Iran), a not-so-great-friend (Russia), a friend (Turkey), and an adversary of Pakistan (India). We ended up forming an ad hoc partnership with the Northern Alliance, providing them money and arms while at the same time pressuring the Pakistanis and the Saudis to end their support for groups responsible for the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans. This was an example of a sensible Realpolitik policy—co-operating with a mixed bag of local and regional players to capture our enemies and destroy their military infrastructure. An ideological crusade to bring democracy to Afghanistan wasn't part of the plan.
Pursuing the same kind of realistic approach, we could have encouraged the remnants of the Northern Alliance to work together with their regional backers to co-opt Pakistan and members of Afghanistan's Pashtun majority into an imperfect political settlement that would probably have led to the creation of a loose confederation of ethnic groups, locally controlled and secured by backing from Russia, India, Turkey, Iran—and Pakistan and the U.S.
Instead, we insisted on imposing our man, the Pashtun Hamid Karzai, as head of a central government, while hoping against hope that Pakistan would back this arrangement. In the process, we ended up antagonizing the Indians, the Iranians, and the Russians, and most important, the various gangsters that had helped us "liberate" the country.
To support the fragile balance of power and pursue an ambitious nation-building scheme, we now have two military operations that seek to stabilize Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom is a combat operation led by the United States against al-Qaeda remnants, primarily in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistan border, and consisting of 20,000 troops, including about 18,000 U.S. forces. The second operation is the International Security Assistance Force, established by the international community in 2002 and controlled by NATO. ISAF has about 47,000 troops from 40 countries, including 17,000 American troops. The main problem has been the reluctance of our NATO allies to deploy more troops to take part in combat operations due to strong public opposition at home to fighting what has become an Afghan civil war.
Indeed, the Good War in Afghanistan is not so good anymore. "In a remarkable shift, Afghanistan, where U.S. officials were once confident of victory, is now rivaling Iraq as the biggest cause of concern for American policymakers," according to a recent front-page story in the The Wall Street Journal. In fact, the Pentagon's first assessment of conditions in Afghanistan since the invasion recently acknowledged that Taliban guerrillas have regrouped after their initial fall from power and "coalesced into a resilient insurgency," making Afghanistan now more dangerous for American forces than Iraq. The Pentagon review states that the fledgling national government in Kabul remains incapable of extending its reach beyond the capital or taking effective counter-narcotics measures.
The insurgency that had once been limited to small portions of the country is now spreading to its more stable eastern parts. It carried out a record 2,615 roadside-bomb attacks in 2007, up from 1,931 in 2006. The roadside bombings, along with a wave of suicide and other types of attacks, killed more than 6,500 people in 2007, also a post-invasion record. "The Taliban is likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008," the report stressed. It concluded that "the greatest challenge to long-term security within Afghanistan is the insurgent sanctuary" within the tribal areas of Pakistan—our formal ally in the war on terror and a recipient of billions of U.S. military and economic aid. The document adds that the ceasefire accords between Pakistan and the militants resulted in "substantially" more cross-border attacks.
That so many American realists are clamoring for "victory" in Afghanistan while giving up on Iraq would probably surprise the proverbial man from Mars. Imagine him as Martian von Clausewitz landing in Washington this year. Based on hard-core geostrategic calculations, he would likely argue that the U.S. has more reason to remain engaged in Mesopotamia—including the need to maintain access to the energy resources in the Persian Gulf and to protect key allies in the region from the alleged threat of Iran—than to be drawn into Afghanistan's civil war in the name of nation-building.
"It is a rule in the life of modern nations that nationalism trumps all else," columnist William Pfaff recently wrote. "If the government in Saigon or a government in Baghdad or Kabul, cannot, even with appropriate foreign material assistance, establish and maintain order within its own frontiers and by its own means, armed legions of foreign democracy-teachers, state-builders and winners of hearts and minds cannot do it for them." And as Pfaff suggested, if the Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks do not wish to be ruled by Pashtun religious reactionaries, they should not need thousands of NATO and U.S. troops to defend them. "If they will not defend themselves, there is nothing the foreigners can do to save them from their countrymen," he concluded.
Iraq and Afghanistan skeptics recognize that what is taking place in both countries are civil wars involving tribal forces fighting over territory and resources in order to preserve their power and identity. Their political, economic, and religious interests don't necessarily correspond to or conflict with American interests. After all, in Afghanistan, Pakistan backed al-Qaeda and Iran supported the Northern Alliance. In Iraq, the U.S. has partnered with a Shi'ite movement with ties to Iran.
During the 20th century, the U.S. and its allies had an interest in preventing aggressive global powers from dominating these regions. Such a threat doesn't exist today—unless one considers the mythical Caliphate, the brainchild of the al-Qaeda–neocon coalition. The notion that America will succeed in nation-building through military force in either Iraq or Afghanistan is pure fantasy.
One hopes that Obama and company will resolve their cognitive dissonance by modifying their belief about the moral benefit and policy utility of nation-building. Indeed, the new administration should abandon the fantasies of nation-building and instead embrace a realist policy of working together with regional powers to secure the limited but actual U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the rest of South and Central Asia -- weakening the influence of radical Islam; damaging the infrastructure of terrorist groups; preventing unstable regimes and terrorist organization from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction.
In that context, Washington should no longer depend anymore on Pakistan -- an unreliable client state an unstable regime and ties to radical Islamic groups -- to serve as its strategic ally in the region. Instead, the U.S. should provide incentives to India, which is emerging as a leading economic and military to counter-balance the power of Pakistan as part of an effort backed by Russia and Turkey to reduce the influence of radical Islam in Afghanistan and and the rest of the region. Some remnants of the Taliban are expected to return to Afghanistan, but they should know that if they provide refuge to anti-American terrorists again, they would have another rendevouz with those Daisy Cutters. At the same time, Washington make the capture of Osama bin Ladin and other Al Qaeda terrorists hiding in Pakistan a condition for any improvement in American relationship with Islamabad.
This set of policies may not sound as romantic as nation-building. But a U.S. President that has the gift of a first-rate intelligence and who claims not to using the methods of Doublethink will suffer no dissonance if he decides to pursue them.
Are 400,000 terrorists, 44 terrorist groups, and five state sponsors of terror trying to attack the United States? By Ivan Eland
Commentary
Are 400,000 terrorists, 44 terrorist groups, and five state sponsors of terror trying to attack the United States?
By Ivan Eland
Online Journal Guest Writer
Jul 24, 2008, 00:15
After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA�s swollen terrorism watch list. Although TSA insists Griffin�s name is not on the list and pooh-poohs any possibility of retaliation for Griffin�s negative reporting, the reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May. The airlines insist that Griffin�s name is on the list. Congress has asked TSA to look into the tribulations of this prominent passenger.
In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, probably responding to the controversy over Griffin, Leonard Boyle, the director of the Terrorist Screening Center, defended the watch list, claiming that because terrorists have multiple aliases, the names on the list boiled down to only about 400,000 actual people. If there are 400,000 terrorists lying in wait to attack the United States, we are all in trouble.
But wait a minute. There has been no major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 -- almost seven years ago. Where are all these nefarious evildoers?
Boyle says 95 percent of these people are not American citizens or legal residents and the vast majority aren�t even in the United States. He rather sheepishly defends the size of the list by writing, �Its size corresponds to the threat. It�s a big world.�
That brings up a very important issue. The U.S. government regularly tries to police the world and combat threats to other nations -- in the process, usually generating more enemies. Examining the 44 organizations on the State Department�s highly politicized list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), one finds that only a very few currently focus their efforts on U.S. targets. And the U.S. government has even flirted with one anti-Iranian group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which was put on the FTO list long ago.
Similarly, the State Department�s list of five state sponsors of terrorism has included Cuba and North Korea -- neither of which has actively participated in terrorist attacks in decades. These two countries continued to be on the list for other reasons -- namely U.S. government aversion to them. On its website, the State Department even admits that, �The Democratic People�s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.� The website also contains an implicit admission that keeping selected countries on the state sponsors list can reap ulterior political benefits for the United States. The website notes that under the umbrella of the Six-Party Talks, the United States intends to remove North Korea from the list as that nation takes actions toward getting rid of its nuclear weapons program. Even the remaining three nations on the list that do sponsor terrorism -- Syria, Iran, and Sudan -- don�t support groups that focus their attacks on the U.S.
Thus, the humongous terrorist watch list for airline travel and the excessively large FTO and state sponsors lists are a few more examples of the United States taking on other nations� security burdens. Trying to be the �big man on (the world) campus,� however, comes at a horrendous cost to American freedom at home.
The terrorist watch list is downright unconstitutional. Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, no warrants shall be issued unless there is probable cause that a crime has been committed. If the government has such probable cause that a passenger is conspiring to commit a terrorist act on an airplane, it should not hassle that person at the airport when trying to fly or ban him or her from flying; it should arrest them. But of course the government does not have the evidence to do that for the vast majority of the 400,000 people on the watch list.
And it�s apparently not easy to get yourself off the list once you are on it. Although Boyle claims that the TSA constantly scrubs the list for possible mistaken identities of people who have frequent �encounters� with the list, even if they don�t file a complaint, Griffin uncovered an innocent passenger with a common name -- James Robinson -- who has complained endlessly and has received no resolution of his case. Senator Edward Kennedy -- also with a common name -- experienced endless hassles and red tape trying to get his name off the list. If such a well-known figure has such problems, the average misidentified traveler is in big trouble.
And as the economists would say, what about opportunity cost to real security? The U.S. government should spend the time it devotes to scrutinizing 400,000 people on the watch list, and the vast majority of the 44 FTOs and all of the five countries who don�t sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism, on the again rising alleged principal threat from Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their tens of hard core al Qaeda followers operating out of Pakistan. The American public would be much safer. As the famous Prussian military ruler Fredrick the Great (and closet economist) said, �To defend everything is to defend nothing.� Moreover, under current government policy, we have neither liberty nor security.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting �Defense� Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Are 400,000 terrorists, 44 terrorist groups, and five state sponsors of terror trying to attack the United States?
By Ivan Eland
Online Journal Guest Writer
Jul 24, 2008, 00:15
After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA�s swollen terrorism watch list. Although TSA insists Griffin�s name is not on the list and pooh-poohs any possibility of retaliation for Griffin�s negative reporting, the reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May. The airlines insist that Griffin�s name is on the list. Congress has asked TSA to look into the tribulations of this prominent passenger.
In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, probably responding to the controversy over Griffin, Leonard Boyle, the director of the Terrorist Screening Center, defended the watch list, claiming that because terrorists have multiple aliases, the names on the list boiled down to only about 400,000 actual people. If there are 400,000 terrorists lying in wait to attack the United States, we are all in trouble.
But wait a minute. There has been no major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 -- almost seven years ago. Where are all these nefarious evildoers?
Boyle says 95 percent of these people are not American citizens or legal residents and the vast majority aren�t even in the United States. He rather sheepishly defends the size of the list by writing, �Its size corresponds to the threat. It�s a big world.�
That brings up a very important issue. The U.S. government regularly tries to police the world and combat threats to other nations -- in the process, usually generating more enemies. Examining the 44 organizations on the State Department�s highly politicized list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), one finds that only a very few currently focus their efforts on U.S. targets. And the U.S. government has even flirted with one anti-Iranian group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which was put on the FTO list long ago.
Similarly, the State Department�s list of five state sponsors of terrorism has included Cuba and North Korea -- neither of which has actively participated in terrorist attacks in decades. These two countries continued to be on the list for other reasons -- namely U.S. government aversion to them. On its website, the State Department even admits that, �The Democratic People�s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.� The website also contains an implicit admission that keeping selected countries on the state sponsors list can reap ulterior political benefits for the United States. The website notes that under the umbrella of the Six-Party Talks, the United States intends to remove North Korea from the list as that nation takes actions toward getting rid of its nuclear weapons program. Even the remaining three nations on the list that do sponsor terrorism -- Syria, Iran, and Sudan -- don�t support groups that focus their attacks on the U.S.
Thus, the humongous terrorist watch list for airline travel and the excessively large FTO and state sponsors lists are a few more examples of the United States taking on other nations� security burdens. Trying to be the �big man on (the world) campus,� however, comes at a horrendous cost to American freedom at home.
The terrorist watch list is downright unconstitutional. Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, no warrants shall be issued unless there is probable cause that a crime has been committed. If the government has such probable cause that a passenger is conspiring to commit a terrorist act on an airplane, it should not hassle that person at the airport when trying to fly or ban him or her from flying; it should arrest them. But of course the government does not have the evidence to do that for the vast majority of the 400,000 people on the watch list.
And it�s apparently not easy to get yourself off the list once you are on it. Although Boyle claims that the TSA constantly scrubs the list for possible mistaken identities of people who have frequent �encounters� with the list, even if they don�t file a complaint, Griffin uncovered an innocent passenger with a common name -- James Robinson -- who has complained endlessly and has received no resolution of his case. Senator Edward Kennedy -- also with a common name -- experienced endless hassles and red tape trying to get his name off the list. If such a well-known figure has such problems, the average misidentified traveler is in big trouble.
And as the economists would say, what about opportunity cost to real security? The U.S. government should spend the time it devotes to scrutinizing 400,000 people on the watch list, and the vast majority of the 44 FTOs and all of the five countries who don�t sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism, on the again rising alleged principal threat from Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their tens of hard core al Qaeda followers operating out of Pakistan. The American public would be much safer. As the famous Prussian military ruler Fredrick the Great (and closet economist) said, �To defend everything is to defend nothing.� Moreover, under current government policy, we have neither liberty nor security.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting �Defense� Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
The militarization of America By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
postgazette_now_logo.png
The militarization of America
The influence of the military is growing but don't worry about a coup d'etat
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Today we are going to explore one of those untouchable subjects that most Americans like to stay miles away from -- the militarization of America.
This subject, with the even more sensitive question inherent in it of whether there is a risk of a military coup d'etat in the United States, is generally the realm of either advanced liberal conspiracy theorists or foreign diplomats.
"Coup possibilities" are, I can tell you, a subject that American embassies in almost every country in the world -- with the exception of most of the European democracies, Australia and New Zealand -- review internally with some regularity.
Here are some facts that support the contention that the American government is militarized, or, put another way, under increasingly substantive control by the U.S. military.
The Department of Defense has benefitted across the past eight years from an increasingly large proportion of the U.S. government budget. The amount has more than doubled from 2001 to what is requested for 2009. A new Northern Command, covering the United States, was created in 2002.
The director of national intelligence is a former military officer. The director of central intelligence is a recently retired general. It is the unanimous assessment of the American intelligence community that defense intelligence bodies have now achieved dominance within that group of agencies, based -- surprise, surprise -- on their superior financial resources.
The vice president of the United States is a former secretary of defense. Before achieving that office he was CEO of an important defense contractor.
Our military is now a professional force, no longer larded with draftees who brought more skepticism and less devotion to the military as an institution than current forces do. The leadership of the armed forces now have served together and maintain much closer lines of personal and professional communication than previous modern officer corps. Tie that to the fact that many of those officers retire from the armed forces to find senior employment with U.S. defense contractors and one has a serving and retired corps of senior officers who have a very large stake in the status quo.
Now, to think like senior foreign diplomats trying to make sense of this country, project that the current administration in Washington, probably the most pro-military, the most prone to seek military solutions to international political problems that the United States has seen in a century and the one that has put the most money in the hands of defense contractors in the history of the country, will be swept from office next year.
Then, to move sharply into the area of conspiracy theory, is there not some means potentially at hand to prevent that occurring, as it would bring the military-defense contractor gravy train to a halt? That's the kind of reasoning that lies at the base of some concerned e-mails I receive.
So, is there something to worry about? Is the military-industrial complex that former president and general Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about thinking about a grab?
It would be in the name of national security. Its chances of acceptance would be enhanced if another war started -- against Iran, with Israel's future at risk, for example. It would not even need to be a naked grab. It could be justified as the November elections being simply postponed, with President Bush remaining in office for a time due to America's heightened vulnerability. Remember that then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried that in 2001 after the 9/11 attack. (It didn't fly.)
Having made the case for how it might happen, I will now tell you why it won't.
The first is the deep attachment of America's military, from the top to the bottom of its hierarchy, to U.S. constitutional government. I had close working relationships with military officers for 38 years, including as the deputy commandant of the U.S. Army War College and vice president of the National Defense University. I do not know a group who are more attached than our officer corps to both the correct functional role of the military in the U.S. constitutional scheme of things nor to the concept of civilian direction of the military.
Recall that a senior Libyan Army officer stood up in an officer's mess in the 1950s to announce a military coup. Another more junior officer went up to him, put his pistol to the senior officer's head and announced that he was arresting him in the name of the Libyan king.
The second constraint, almost as important as the first, is that the power of the purse is tightly held by Congress. The military-industrial complex depends for its functioning on money appropriated by Congress. Cut that off, as Congress would, and the U.S. military grinds to a halt.
The third and perhaps most effective constraint is that most Americans would just laugh if the U.S. military tried to seize power, thus pulling the plug on the whole enterprise.
The militarization of America in recent years is certainly an observable phenomenon, but a threat to U.S. constitutional government it is not, in my view.
First published on July 23, 2008
The militarization of America
The influence of the military is growing but don't worry about a coup d'etat
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Today we are going to explore one of those untouchable subjects that most Americans like to stay miles away from -- the militarization of America.
This subject, with the even more sensitive question inherent in it of whether there is a risk of a military coup d'etat in the United States, is generally the realm of either advanced liberal conspiracy theorists or foreign diplomats.
"Coup possibilities" are, I can tell you, a subject that American embassies in almost every country in the world -- with the exception of most of the European democracies, Australia and New Zealand -- review internally with some regularity.
Here are some facts that support the contention that the American government is militarized, or, put another way, under increasingly substantive control by the U.S. military.
The Department of Defense has benefitted across the past eight years from an increasingly large proportion of the U.S. government budget. The amount has more than doubled from 2001 to what is requested for 2009. A new Northern Command, covering the United States, was created in 2002.
The director of national intelligence is a former military officer. The director of central intelligence is a recently retired general. It is the unanimous assessment of the American intelligence community that defense intelligence bodies have now achieved dominance within that group of agencies, based -- surprise, surprise -- on their superior financial resources.
The vice president of the United States is a former secretary of defense. Before achieving that office he was CEO of an important defense contractor.
Our military is now a professional force, no longer larded with draftees who brought more skepticism and less devotion to the military as an institution than current forces do. The leadership of the armed forces now have served together and maintain much closer lines of personal and professional communication than previous modern officer corps. Tie that to the fact that many of those officers retire from the armed forces to find senior employment with U.S. defense contractors and one has a serving and retired corps of senior officers who have a very large stake in the status quo.
Now, to think like senior foreign diplomats trying to make sense of this country, project that the current administration in Washington, probably the most pro-military, the most prone to seek military solutions to international political problems that the United States has seen in a century and the one that has put the most money in the hands of defense contractors in the history of the country, will be swept from office next year.
Then, to move sharply into the area of conspiracy theory, is there not some means potentially at hand to prevent that occurring, as it would bring the military-defense contractor gravy train to a halt? That's the kind of reasoning that lies at the base of some concerned e-mails I receive.
So, is there something to worry about? Is the military-industrial complex that former president and general Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about thinking about a grab?
It would be in the name of national security. Its chances of acceptance would be enhanced if another war started -- against Iran, with Israel's future at risk, for example. It would not even need to be a naked grab. It could be justified as the November elections being simply postponed, with President Bush remaining in office for a time due to America's heightened vulnerability. Remember that then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried that in 2001 after the 9/11 attack. (It didn't fly.)
Having made the case for how it might happen, I will now tell you why it won't.
The first is the deep attachment of America's military, from the top to the bottom of its hierarchy, to U.S. constitutional government. I had close working relationships with military officers for 38 years, including as the deputy commandant of the U.S. Army War College and vice president of the National Defense University. I do not know a group who are more attached than our officer corps to both the correct functional role of the military in the U.S. constitutional scheme of things nor to the concept of civilian direction of the military.
Recall that a senior Libyan Army officer stood up in an officer's mess in the 1950s to announce a military coup. Another more junior officer went up to him, put his pistol to the senior officer's head and announced that he was arresting him in the name of the Libyan king.
The second constraint, almost as important as the first, is that the power of the purse is tightly held by Congress. The military-industrial complex depends for its functioning on money appropriated by Congress. Cut that off, as Congress would, and the U.S. military grinds to a halt.
The third and perhaps most effective constraint is that most Americans would just laugh if the U.S. military tried to seize power, thus pulling the plug on the whole enterprise.
The militarization of America in recent years is certainly an observable phenomenon, but a threat to U.S. constitutional government it is not, in my view.
First published on July 23, 2008
High-Level Panel Calls for Stronger IAEA
High-Level Panel Calls for Stronger IAEA
Latest ACA Resources
Kyle Fishman
In a May report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, a panel of prominent international leaders recommends that the agency assume additional responsibilities and perhaps double its budget by 2020 in order to ensure a substantial expansion in nuclear power while preventing nuclear weapons proliferation.
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_07-08/IAEA
Less than a year after dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the United States adopted a statute prohibiting the transfer of its nuclear weapons to any other country. It was not until 23 years later, however, that countries began signing an international treaty that prohibited the transfer of nuclear weapons by a country that had them to any other country, indeed “to any recipient whatsoever.”[1] On July 1, 1968, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and many other countries signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) at ceremonies in Washington, Moscow, and London. Subsequently, nearly 190 countries have signed and ratified the treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons from the few countries that then had them to the many that did not and at reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.
The 40th anniversary of the NPT provides an opportunity to re-examine the history of the treaty’s negotiation and ask what lessons it offers for today.
The NPT’s Negotiating History
The NPT’s history really began in 1946. That year, the Department of State and some of the scientists who had made the bomb drew up the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, which, with major revisions, became a formal U.S. proposal to the United Nations known as the Baruch Plan. It proposed that the United States turn over control of all its enriched uranium, including that in any nuclear weapons it had, to a new UN body (over which the United States and the other permanent members of the Security Council would have a veto) and that all countries in the world should be prohibited from possessing their own nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union opposed this plan, and the UN committee created to consider it got nowhere.[2]
The next stab at controlling nuclear weapons proliferation came in 1953 when President Dwight Eisenhower proposed to the UN General Assembly the negotiation of a treaty that would seek to control nuclear activities around the world and prevent, if possible, the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries. This led to negotiations that finally produced a useful treaty, though one that fell short of what Eisenhower had proposed. This treaty, the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of 1956, authorized creation of the IAEA and gave it the responsibility for providing information and assistance to countries seeking to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and for performing inspections of their nuclear facilities to ensure that the operators did not divert from peaceful purposes to weapons production the uranium fuel used to run nuclear reactors and the plutonium that was produced in such reactors.[3]
The NPT negotiations themselves really got started after the unanimous approval of a 1961 UN General Assembly resolution on negotiation of a treaty that would ban countries without nuclear weapons from acquiring them and that would require the inspections that the IAEA treaty only authorized. In particular, the resolution asked the countries “possessing nuclear weapons” to “undertake to refrain from relinquishing control of nuclear weapons and from transmitting information necessary for their manufacture” to nations not possessing nuclear weapons. Second, it recommended that states not possessing nuclear weapons “undertake not to manufacture or otherwise acquire control of such weapons.” It urged nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states to “cooperate to those ends.”[4]
The same year marked another step that had an important but indirect effect on the creation of the NPT. At President John Kennedy’s request, Congress approved legislation establishing the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) to replace the State Department in the research, planning, and negotiation of arms control and disarmament treaties. Soon after the ACDA’s creation, its leaders sought authority from Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Kennedy to negotiate with the Soviets an agreement intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries. This authority was granted after negotiations within the U.S. government and with U.S. allies produced a modified draft treaty.
By forming an institution separate from the State Department that would handle negotiations regarding a treaty such as this, Kennedy also created a means to sidestep opposition in Foggy Bottom to the NPT and win support from others in the executive branch and Congress. The State Department had long supported establishment of a multilateral force (MLF) composed of ships owned by several NATO countries, including the United States, armed with U.S. nuclear weapons and manned by officers and sailors from the United States and other participating NATO countries. Some State Department officials had insisted that U.S. officers and sailors on MLF ships would retain control of the U.S. nuclear weapons. However, other State Department officials and some allies felt that the MLF effort would be endangered if a new treaty prohibited transfer of control of nuclear weapons to any other entity, such as an MLF ship with officers and sailors from countries not having nuclear weapons or that had an MLF “board of directors” that included many allies that did not have nuclear weapons.
In 1962, Rusk showed Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko a simple U.S. draft nonproliferation agreement based on the 1961 General Assembly resolution, which the Soviets had not opposed. The draft did not mention the MLF but would not have prohibited it. Gromyko rejected Rusk’s proposal without even consulting Moscow. How much this action was based on Gromyko’s knowledge that NATO members were considering the MLF proposal was not clear, but there had been many private discussions about the MLF proposal among NATO members. Leaks to representatives of non-NATO countries seemed likely.
At the Disarmament Committee that followed this Rusk-Gromyko meeting, Gromyko focused on a broad Soviet proposal for “general and complete disarmament,” including complete nuclear disarmament, not on the General Assembly nonproliferation resolution.[5] Given Gromyko’s reaction and the interest of West Germany and others in the MLF proposal, negotiations to implement the 1961 General Assembly resolution calling for an NPT stalled for several years, but so did NATO-country negotiations to create an MLF armed with nuclear weapons.
After the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, U.S.-Soviet tensions relaxed somewhat, and serious negotiations to produce a ban on nuclear weapons tests produced U.S.-Soviet agreement on the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 (limited because it did not ban nuclear weapons tests underground). Still, the possibility of a successful negotiation of an MLF agreement with U.S. allies seemed likely to make successful negotiation of an NPT with the Soviets impossible. ACDA officials were concerned that the United States would get neither an MLF nor an NPT unless some way to break this stalemate could be found.
Indeed, it took three years of failure both in the MLF negotiations and the NPT negotiations to produce a U.S. decision to give up on an MLF and pursue an NPT alone. Then, the ACDA was authorized to try to negotiate with the Soviets a draft NPT with a provision prohibiting the five nations then having nuclear weapons (China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) from transferring control over any of their nuclear weapons to anyone. As finally negotiated, this provision also called on these five nations not to “assist, encourage or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear explosive weapons, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.” Moreover, the nations not having nuclear weapons that joined the treaty had to agree not to receive or manufacture or “otherwise acquire nuclear weapons…and not to seek or receive any assistance” in their manufacture.[6]
With this new U.S. formula in hand, U.S.-Soviet negotiations over a draft NPT finally began in earnest in Geneva. Later, Rusk and Gromyko met in New York to discuss further NPT negotiation possibilities, and it became clear that the Soviets were now interested in such talks. In September 1966, a U.S.-Soviet working group, which included one of the authors of this article, came up with three possible drafts of an NPT prohibition on the transfer of nuclear weapons that the Americans and the Soviets could present to their governments.
President Lyndon Johnson also authorized ACDA negotiators to present a draft no-transfer treaty provision to the West German government, probably the most important U.S. ally in Western Europe that the NPT would ban from having nuclear weapons. Johnson had good reason to be concerned about the reaction of the West Germans. They had already done considerable work related to building nuclear power reactors, and some in the West German government appeared to support research into nuclear weapons production, given that U.S. nuclear weapons were stationed with U.S. troops on West German territory. The British and the French already had nuclear weapons and would be accepted as NPT nuclear-weapon states in the U.S.-Soviet staff-proposed drafts. No other U.S. allies then seemed both seriously interested in and clearly capable of making nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, after further prolonged negotiations with the United States as well as with other NATO allies, the West Germans finally came around. They signed the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state, thus obligating themselves not to acquire nuclear weapons. Without West Germany’s NPT promise not to acquire nuclear weapons, the Soviets would not have accepted an NPT. The Soviets had already complained about U.S. nuclear weapons deployed with U.S. forces in West Germany, weapons that were guarded by U.S. troops. The Soviets were not about to agree to a treaty permitting West Germany to control any nuclear weapons.
These further negotiations with the West Germans and other U.S. allies produced a consensus on a U.S. proposal to submit to the Soviet negotiators. With changes resulting from further negotiations both with the Soviets and our interested allies, we produced a final draft of the NPT to present at the Geneva-based Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee and the UN General Assembly in 1968. This included provisions recommended by the eight nonaligned countries represented at the Geneva disarmament conference, including India, such as Article IV, which provides that the NPT “shall” not be interpreted as “affecting the inalienable right” of all NPT parties “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”
The NPT Today
The 1968 NPT permitted the five states that had tested nuclear weapons to keep these weapons for the time being but obligated them under Article VI to negotiate to reduce and ultimately eliminate them. The treaty also prohibited other states-parties from acquiring nuclear weapons.[7] Forty years after the signing of the NPT, it is a worldwide treaty joined by more than 180 countries that do not have nuclear weapons as well as the five that had tested them by 1968. Russia has taken the place of the Soviet Union as one of the five nuclear-weapon states, and the 14 other former Soviet republics that became independent have become non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to the NPT.
Today, the most important NPT provision that has not been well observed is Article VI, the obligation of the five nuclear-weapon states “to negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”
In 2007, when she was the United Kingdom’s foreign minister, Margaret Beckett called for negotiators to take additional steps toward nuclear disarmament. She said, “The judgment we made 40 years ago [at the NPT’s signing] that the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons was in all our interests is just as true today as it was then. For more than 60 years, good management and good fortune have meant that nuclear arsenals have not been used, but we cannot rely just on history to repeat itself.”[8]
It is true that on occasion nuclear-weapon states have taken advantage of NPT treaty review conferences to reiterate their intention to seek nuclear reductions. Yet, no serious nuclear-weapon reductions have taken place that include all five states permitted by the NPT to possess nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has been no exception. Unlike previous administrations, the current administration has made only a small effort to negotiate nuclear weapons reductions with Russia at a time when the two countries still control more than 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. The U.S.-Russian nuclear reduction treaty (the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) signed by the presidents of the two countries during the Bush administration calls for the removal from active deployment of some nuclear warheads, but it does not require their elimination.
Instead of negotiating agreed nuclear weapons reductions, the Bush administration has announced a wide range of potential uses for nuclear weapons, greater than any past U.S. administration seems to have announced.[9] In addition, the administration did not accept prior commitments by earlier U.S. administrations that limit the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon countries, including commitments that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against countries that have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons.[10] In brief, the Bush administration has done little to carry out the U.S. obligation to pursue “nuclear disarmament” mandated by Article VI.
Early this year, Congress passed legislation calling for the executive branch to conduct a thorough review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy by the end of the first year of the next administration. This review, Congress said, must describe the new U.S. administration’s “assessment of the role of nuclear forces in military strategy”; its “objectives…to maintain a safe, reliable and credible nuclear posture”; and its views of the “relationship among U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, targeting strategy, and arms control.” This would mark the first such re-examination since the Bush administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, which stated a new U.S. policy of relatively free use of nuclear weapons against countries that are hostile to the United States even though they do not have nuclear weapons.[11]
In addition, three important states (India, Israel, and Pakistan) refused to join the NPT in 1968 when it was opened for signature, and they eventually produced nuclear weapons. Despite its refusal to join the NPT and its acquisition of nuclear weapons, India has been rewarded by the Bush administration by a proposed U.S.-India agreement that, if implemented, would appear to violate current U.S. law and be inconsistent with agreed international guidelines.
North Korea did join the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state but later withdrew and tested a nuclear weapon that appeared to be in part the product of its nuclear weapons research activities conducted while it was an NPT state-party. Several countries, most prominently South Africa, abandoned their nuclear weapons-making efforts and joined the NPT.
Negotiations to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons began in the Clinton administration and, after a long pause, were taken up again by the Bush administration. Several preliminary agreements have been signed. However, North Korea has not yet carried out its promise to eliminate its nuclear weapons. Iran, while a member of the NPT, has a uranium-enrichment program that began in secrecy 20 years ago and remains ambiguous as to its purpose: weapons, peaceful uses, or both. Negotiations with Iran remain stalemated.[12]
Conclusion
The nuclear nonproliferation regime is at a crossroads. If it is to be saved and reinvigorated, the next U.S. president must take the lead at the start of his administration, January 20, 2009.
First, the president should outline a plan to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime to Congress, to the U.S. public, and to foreign leaders. We hope he will include the Shultz-Perry-Kissinger-Nunn proposals in the Wall Street Journal calling for deep cuts in nuclear weapons around the world.[13] This is, of course, one vision of what serious planning and successful negotiation of a nuclear weapons reduction agreement pursuant to Article VI could produce.
Second, the next U.S. president should propose early concrete steps for U.S.-Russian cooperation and nuclear reductions The United States should propose additional reductions beyond SORT and the continuation of START verification measures. It is self-evident that positive relations between the United States and Russia will be central both to specific near-term actions and to the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Third, the next U.S. president should extend these talks to include the other nuclear-weapon states. At a time that U.S.-Russian arms reduction talks have effectively stalled out, it may seem disingenuous for the two countries that control more than 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world to invite the “Three” (China, France, and the United Kingdom) to join their occasional nuclear weapons reduction negotiations. However, early agreements between Russia and the United States and then among the five nuclear-weapon states on steps toward nuclear disarmament are essential to satisfy the non-nuclear-weapon NPT members that these two countries are complying with their Article VI obligations. Significant compliance with this obligation is important to forestall further proliferation by non-nuclear-weapon countries and to keep some of them from withdrawing from the NPT.
Fourth, the United States should establish a serious dialogue with China on nuclear weapons issues. This is essential to steps that China and the United States, joined by others, should take in pursuit of nuclear disarmament.
Fifth, the next president should appoint a nonproliferation “czar” before inauguration day. The czar would work with the president-elect on his policy positions and be the leader of the president’s effort to enact legislation creating a new agency to focus on nonproliferation and arms reduction negotiations. In the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, the ACDA led the U.S. effort to negotiate an NPT and other important treaties to limit nuclear arms. The ACDA was separate from the State Department but under the general direction of the secretary of state (but not the rest of the State Department) as well as the president.
Unfortunately, conservatives in Congress during the last years of the Clinton administration succeeded in abolishing the ACDA and placing its employees back in the State Department. This meant that the personnel responsible for negotiations to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons were more likely to be influenced by State Department personnel responsible for specific regions of the world. State Department personnel focused on other subjects than preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and on other regions than those where that spread is a matter of particular concern. This happened in the case of the recent U.S.-Indian agreement that was to provide major nuclear assistance to India despite its pursuit of nuclear weapons, a pursuit which earlier U.S. administrations had tried hard to prevent and then slow. In negotiating the U.S.-Indian agreement, State Department officials overrode or ignored established arms control concerns in their eagerness to reach an unsound agreement.
Sixth, the 2006 U.S.-Indian nuclear agreement should be set aside. It seems to be stalled now by political opposition within India, and it will not likely come before the U.S. Congress for approval this year. If it went into force one day, it could help undermine the NPT regime. Instead, India should become a key actor in pursuit of the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, a goal that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi urged so eloquently at the UN.
In conclusion, it should not be forgotten that the NPT has been the primary rulemaker that has prevented the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. Many countries have nuclear research reactors and a sufficient industrial base to at least begin pursuing nuclear-weapon activities. Without joining the NPT, India, Israel, and Pakistan have become nations with nuclear weapons. North Korea, not well developed industrially, produced fissile material for nuclear weapons and then withdrew from the NPT. Libya, although a member of the NPT, started development of nuclear weapons but, with efforts by other countries to enforce the norm of the NPT and some financial assistance, was persuaded to stop that effort. In the Middle East, we saw Iraq pursuing nuclear weapons in the 1980s and 1990s. It took a UN-Iraq war to stop that effort. Subsequently, the existence of the NPT made it possible for the UN Security Council to demand strict disarmament requirements in a post-war cease fire. We have seen what may be nuclear weapons-making efforts in Iran and Syria. Additional NPT members in that region of the world, where non-nuclear sources of energy such as oil are readily available, have expressed interest in building nuclear power reactors. Does their nuclear interest go beyond power reactors?
What would the world look like if there were no NPT? It has provided the standard that has restrained many countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. Without it, would there be 20 or 30 countries with nuclear weapons or pursuing nuclear weapons?
Click here to comment on this article.
George Bunn, the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and later became U.S. ambassador to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee. He is now at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. John B. Rhinelander is senior counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. He served as deputy legal adviser at the Department of State and legal adviser to the ABM Treaty/SALT I delegation.
ENDNOTES
1. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (July 1, 1968), art. I (hereinafter NPT).
2. See, e.g., Lenice N. Wu, “The Baruch Plan,” in Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament, ed. Richard Dean Burns (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 771, 774-783; George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee: Managing Negotiations with the Russians (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 59-61.
3. Bunn, Arms Control by Committee, pp. 85-92.
4. UN General Assembly Resolution 1665, December 4, 1961 (the “Irish Resolution”).
5. See Bunn, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: History and Current Problems,” Arms Control Today, December 2003, p. 5.
6. NPT, arts. I and II.
7. Bunn, Arms Control by Committee, pp. 87-103; U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of Negotiations (1980), pp. 82-83.
8. Margaret Beckett, Keynote address at Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, Washington, D.C., June 25, 2007.
9. Amy F. Woolf, “Nuclear Weapons in the U.S. National Security Policy: Past, Present, and Prospects,” CRS Report for Congress, October 29, 2007, p. 10.
10. Over the years, several presidents have made commitments not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states party to the NPT, for example the nuclear nonuse protocol to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America of 1967, which the United States signed and ratified before the NPT. Similar treaties exist for several other regions of the world. The protocols to these treaties have been signed but not ratified by the United States. See, e.g., George Bunn, “The Legal Status of U.S. Negative Security Assurances to Non-Nuclear Weapon States,” Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1997, p. 1.
11. See David Holloway, “Deterrence, Preventive War, and Preemption,” in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy/Confronting Today’s Threats, eds. George Bunn and Christopher Chyba (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press and CISAC, 2006), p. 34; Roger Speed and Michael May, “Assessing the U.S. Nuclear Posture,” in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy/Confronting Today’s Threats, p. 248; George Bunn and Christopher Chyba, “U.S. Nuclear Postures for a New Era,” in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy/Confronting Today’s Threats, p. 297.
12. See William J. Broad, “Look Who’s Tough on Iran Now,” The New York Times, News of the Week in Review, June 1, 2008, p. 1.
13. George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. A15; George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008, p. A13. See interview with Sam Nunn, “World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Arms Control Today, March 2008, p. 6.
Latest ACA Resources
Kyle Fishman
In a May report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, a panel of prominent international leaders recommends that the agency assume additional responsibilities and perhaps double its budget by 2020 in order to ensure a substantial expansion in nuclear power while preventing nuclear weapons proliferation.
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_07-08/IAEA
Less than a year after dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the United States adopted a statute prohibiting the transfer of its nuclear weapons to any other country. It was not until 23 years later, however, that countries began signing an international treaty that prohibited the transfer of nuclear weapons by a country that had them to any other country, indeed “to any recipient whatsoever.”[1] On July 1, 1968, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and many other countries signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) at ceremonies in Washington, Moscow, and London. Subsequently, nearly 190 countries have signed and ratified the treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons from the few countries that then had them to the many that did not and at reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.
The 40th anniversary of the NPT provides an opportunity to re-examine the history of the treaty’s negotiation and ask what lessons it offers for today.
The NPT’s Negotiating History
The NPT’s history really began in 1946. That year, the Department of State and some of the scientists who had made the bomb drew up the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, which, with major revisions, became a formal U.S. proposal to the United Nations known as the Baruch Plan. It proposed that the United States turn over control of all its enriched uranium, including that in any nuclear weapons it had, to a new UN body (over which the United States and the other permanent members of the Security Council would have a veto) and that all countries in the world should be prohibited from possessing their own nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union opposed this plan, and the UN committee created to consider it got nowhere.[2]
The next stab at controlling nuclear weapons proliferation came in 1953 when President Dwight Eisenhower proposed to the UN General Assembly the negotiation of a treaty that would seek to control nuclear activities around the world and prevent, if possible, the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries. This led to negotiations that finally produced a useful treaty, though one that fell short of what Eisenhower had proposed. This treaty, the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of 1956, authorized creation of the IAEA and gave it the responsibility for providing information and assistance to countries seeking to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and for performing inspections of their nuclear facilities to ensure that the operators did not divert from peaceful purposes to weapons production the uranium fuel used to run nuclear reactors and the plutonium that was produced in such reactors.[3]
The NPT negotiations themselves really got started after the unanimous approval of a 1961 UN General Assembly resolution on negotiation of a treaty that would ban countries without nuclear weapons from acquiring them and that would require the inspections that the IAEA treaty only authorized. In particular, the resolution asked the countries “possessing nuclear weapons” to “undertake to refrain from relinquishing control of nuclear weapons and from transmitting information necessary for their manufacture” to nations not possessing nuclear weapons. Second, it recommended that states not possessing nuclear weapons “undertake not to manufacture or otherwise acquire control of such weapons.” It urged nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states to “cooperate to those ends.”[4]
The same year marked another step that had an important but indirect effect on the creation of the NPT. At President John Kennedy’s request, Congress approved legislation establishing the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) to replace the State Department in the research, planning, and negotiation of arms control and disarmament treaties. Soon after the ACDA’s creation, its leaders sought authority from Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Kennedy to negotiate with the Soviets an agreement intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries. This authority was granted after negotiations within the U.S. government and with U.S. allies produced a modified draft treaty.
By forming an institution separate from the State Department that would handle negotiations regarding a treaty such as this, Kennedy also created a means to sidestep opposition in Foggy Bottom to the NPT and win support from others in the executive branch and Congress. The State Department had long supported establishment of a multilateral force (MLF) composed of ships owned by several NATO countries, including the United States, armed with U.S. nuclear weapons and manned by officers and sailors from the United States and other participating NATO countries. Some State Department officials had insisted that U.S. officers and sailors on MLF ships would retain control of the U.S. nuclear weapons. However, other State Department officials and some allies felt that the MLF effort would be endangered if a new treaty prohibited transfer of control of nuclear weapons to any other entity, such as an MLF ship with officers and sailors from countries not having nuclear weapons or that had an MLF “board of directors” that included many allies that did not have nuclear weapons.
In 1962, Rusk showed Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko a simple U.S. draft nonproliferation agreement based on the 1961 General Assembly resolution, which the Soviets had not opposed. The draft did not mention the MLF but would not have prohibited it. Gromyko rejected Rusk’s proposal without even consulting Moscow. How much this action was based on Gromyko’s knowledge that NATO members were considering the MLF proposal was not clear, but there had been many private discussions about the MLF proposal among NATO members. Leaks to representatives of non-NATO countries seemed likely.
At the Disarmament Committee that followed this Rusk-Gromyko meeting, Gromyko focused on a broad Soviet proposal for “general and complete disarmament,” including complete nuclear disarmament, not on the General Assembly nonproliferation resolution.[5] Given Gromyko’s reaction and the interest of West Germany and others in the MLF proposal, negotiations to implement the 1961 General Assembly resolution calling for an NPT stalled for several years, but so did NATO-country negotiations to create an MLF armed with nuclear weapons.
After the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, U.S.-Soviet tensions relaxed somewhat, and serious negotiations to produce a ban on nuclear weapons tests produced U.S.-Soviet agreement on the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 (limited because it did not ban nuclear weapons tests underground). Still, the possibility of a successful negotiation of an MLF agreement with U.S. allies seemed likely to make successful negotiation of an NPT with the Soviets impossible. ACDA officials were concerned that the United States would get neither an MLF nor an NPT unless some way to break this stalemate could be found.
Indeed, it took three years of failure both in the MLF negotiations and the NPT negotiations to produce a U.S. decision to give up on an MLF and pursue an NPT alone. Then, the ACDA was authorized to try to negotiate with the Soviets a draft NPT with a provision prohibiting the five nations then having nuclear weapons (China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) from transferring control over any of their nuclear weapons to anyone. As finally negotiated, this provision also called on these five nations not to “assist, encourage or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear explosive weapons, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.” Moreover, the nations not having nuclear weapons that joined the treaty had to agree not to receive or manufacture or “otherwise acquire nuclear weapons…and not to seek or receive any assistance” in their manufacture.[6]
With this new U.S. formula in hand, U.S.-Soviet negotiations over a draft NPT finally began in earnest in Geneva. Later, Rusk and Gromyko met in New York to discuss further NPT negotiation possibilities, and it became clear that the Soviets were now interested in such talks. In September 1966, a U.S.-Soviet working group, which included one of the authors of this article, came up with three possible drafts of an NPT prohibition on the transfer of nuclear weapons that the Americans and the Soviets could present to their governments.
President Lyndon Johnson also authorized ACDA negotiators to present a draft no-transfer treaty provision to the West German government, probably the most important U.S. ally in Western Europe that the NPT would ban from having nuclear weapons. Johnson had good reason to be concerned about the reaction of the West Germans. They had already done considerable work related to building nuclear power reactors, and some in the West German government appeared to support research into nuclear weapons production, given that U.S. nuclear weapons were stationed with U.S. troops on West German territory. The British and the French already had nuclear weapons and would be accepted as NPT nuclear-weapon states in the U.S.-Soviet staff-proposed drafts. No other U.S. allies then seemed both seriously interested in and clearly capable of making nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, after further prolonged negotiations with the United States as well as with other NATO allies, the West Germans finally came around. They signed the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state, thus obligating themselves not to acquire nuclear weapons. Without West Germany’s NPT promise not to acquire nuclear weapons, the Soviets would not have accepted an NPT. The Soviets had already complained about U.S. nuclear weapons deployed with U.S. forces in West Germany, weapons that were guarded by U.S. troops. The Soviets were not about to agree to a treaty permitting West Germany to control any nuclear weapons.
These further negotiations with the West Germans and other U.S. allies produced a consensus on a U.S. proposal to submit to the Soviet negotiators. With changes resulting from further negotiations both with the Soviets and our interested allies, we produced a final draft of the NPT to present at the Geneva-based Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee and the UN General Assembly in 1968. This included provisions recommended by the eight nonaligned countries represented at the Geneva disarmament conference, including India, such as Article IV, which provides that the NPT “shall” not be interpreted as “affecting the inalienable right” of all NPT parties “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”
The NPT Today
The 1968 NPT permitted the five states that had tested nuclear weapons to keep these weapons for the time being but obligated them under Article VI to negotiate to reduce and ultimately eliminate them. The treaty also prohibited other states-parties from acquiring nuclear weapons.[7] Forty years after the signing of the NPT, it is a worldwide treaty joined by more than 180 countries that do not have nuclear weapons as well as the five that had tested them by 1968. Russia has taken the place of the Soviet Union as one of the five nuclear-weapon states, and the 14 other former Soviet republics that became independent have become non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to the NPT.
Today, the most important NPT provision that has not been well observed is Article VI, the obligation of the five nuclear-weapon states “to negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”
In 2007, when she was the United Kingdom’s foreign minister, Margaret Beckett called for negotiators to take additional steps toward nuclear disarmament. She said, “The judgment we made 40 years ago [at the NPT’s signing] that the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons was in all our interests is just as true today as it was then. For more than 60 years, good management and good fortune have meant that nuclear arsenals have not been used, but we cannot rely just on history to repeat itself.”[8]
It is true that on occasion nuclear-weapon states have taken advantage of NPT treaty review conferences to reiterate their intention to seek nuclear reductions. Yet, no serious nuclear-weapon reductions have taken place that include all five states permitted by the NPT to possess nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has been no exception. Unlike previous administrations, the current administration has made only a small effort to negotiate nuclear weapons reductions with Russia at a time when the two countries still control more than 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. The U.S.-Russian nuclear reduction treaty (the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) signed by the presidents of the two countries during the Bush administration calls for the removal from active deployment of some nuclear warheads, but it does not require their elimination.
Instead of negotiating agreed nuclear weapons reductions, the Bush administration has announced a wide range of potential uses for nuclear weapons, greater than any past U.S. administration seems to have announced.[9] In addition, the administration did not accept prior commitments by earlier U.S. administrations that limit the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon countries, including commitments that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against countries that have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons.[10] In brief, the Bush administration has done little to carry out the U.S. obligation to pursue “nuclear disarmament” mandated by Article VI.
Early this year, Congress passed legislation calling for the executive branch to conduct a thorough review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy by the end of the first year of the next administration. This review, Congress said, must describe the new U.S. administration’s “assessment of the role of nuclear forces in military strategy”; its “objectives…to maintain a safe, reliable and credible nuclear posture”; and its views of the “relationship among U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, targeting strategy, and arms control.” This would mark the first such re-examination since the Bush administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, which stated a new U.S. policy of relatively free use of nuclear weapons against countries that are hostile to the United States even though they do not have nuclear weapons.[11]
In addition, three important states (India, Israel, and Pakistan) refused to join the NPT in 1968 when it was opened for signature, and they eventually produced nuclear weapons. Despite its refusal to join the NPT and its acquisition of nuclear weapons, India has been rewarded by the Bush administration by a proposed U.S.-India agreement that, if implemented, would appear to violate current U.S. law and be inconsistent with agreed international guidelines.
North Korea did join the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state but later withdrew and tested a nuclear weapon that appeared to be in part the product of its nuclear weapons research activities conducted while it was an NPT state-party. Several countries, most prominently South Africa, abandoned their nuclear weapons-making efforts and joined the NPT.
Negotiations to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons began in the Clinton administration and, after a long pause, were taken up again by the Bush administration. Several preliminary agreements have been signed. However, North Korea has not yet carried out its promise to eliminate its nuclear weapons. Iran, while a member of the NPT, has a uranium-enrichment program that began in secrecy 20 years ago and remains ambiguous as to its purpose: weapons, peaceful uses, or both. Negotiations with Iran remain stalemated.[12]
Conclusion
The nuclear nonproliferation regime is at a crossroads. If it is to be saved and reinvigorated, the next U.S. president must take the lead at the start of his administration, January 20, 2009.
First, the president should outline a plan to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime to Congress, to the U.S. public, and to foreign leaders. We hope he will include the Shultz-Perry-Kissinger-Nunn proposals in the Wall Street Journal calling for deep cuts in nuclear weapons around the world.[13] This is, of course, one vision of what serious planning and successful negotiation of a nuclear weapons reduction agreement pursuant to Article VI could produce.
Second, the next U.S. president should propose early concrete steps for U.S.-Russian cooperation and nuclear reductions The United States should propose additional reductions beyond SORT and the continuation of START verification measures. It is self-evident that positive relations between the United States and Russia will be central both to specific near-term actions and to the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Third, the next U.S. president should extend these talks to include the other nuclear-weapon states. At a time that U.S.-Russian arms reduction talks have effectively stalled out, it may seem disingenuous for the two countries that control more than 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world to invite the “Three” (China, France, and the United Kingdom) to join their occasional nuclear weapons reduction negotiations. However, early agreements between Russia and the United States and then among the five nuclear-weapon states on steps toward nuclear disarmament are essential to satisfy the non-nuclear-weapon NPT members that these two countries are complying with their Article VI obligations. Significant compliance with this obligation is important to forestall further proliferation by non-nuclear-weapon countries and to keep some of them from withdrawing from the NPT.
Fourth, the United States should establish a serious dialogue with China on nuclear weapons issues. This is essential to steps that China and the United States, joined by others, should take in pursuit of nuclear disarmament.
Fifth, the next president should appoint a nonproliferation “czar” before inauguration day. The czar would work with the president-elect on his policy positions and be the leader of the president’s effort to enact legislation creating a new agency to focus on nonproliferation and arms reduction negotiations. In the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, the ACDA led the U.S. effort to negotiate an NPT and other important treaties to limit nuclear arms. The ACDA was separate from the State Department but under the general direction of the secretary of state (but not the rest of the State Department) as well as the president.
Unfortunately, conservatives in Congress during the last years of the Clinton administration succeeded in abolishing the ACDA and placing its employees back in the State Department. This meant that the personnel responsible for negotiations to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons were more likely to be influenced by State Department personnel responsible for specific regions of the world. State Department personnel focused on other subjects than preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and on other regions than those where that spread is a matter of particular concern. This happened in the case of the recent U.S.-Indian agreement that was to provide major nuclear assistance to India despite its pursuit of nuclear weapons, a pursuit which earlier U.S. administrations had tried hard to prevent and then slow. In negotiating the U.S.-Indian agreement, State Department officials overrode or ignored established arms control concerns in their eagerness to reach an unsound agreement.
Sixth, the 2006 U.S.-Indian nuclear agreement should be set aside. It seems to be stalled now by political opposition within India, and it will not likely come before the U.S. Congress for approval this year. If it went into force one day, it could help undermine the NPT regime. Instead, India should become a key actor in pursuit of the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, a goal that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi urged so eloquently at the UN.
In conclusion, it should not be forgotten that the NPT has been the primary rulemaker that has prevented the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. Many countries have nuclear research reactors and a sufficient industrial base to at least begin pursuing nuclear-weapon activities. Without joining the NPT, India, Israel, and Pakistan have become nations with nuclear weapons. North Korea, not well developed industrially, produced fissile material for nuclear weapons and then withdrew from the NPT. Libya, although a member of the NPT, started development of nuclear weapons but, with efforts by other countries to enforce the norm of the NPT and some financial assistance, was persuaded to stop that effort. In the Middle East, we saw Iraq pursuing nuclear weapons in the 1980s and 1990s. It took a UN-Iraq war to stop that effort. Subsequently, the existence of the NPT made it possible for the UN Security Council to demand strict disarmament requirements in a post-war cease fire. We have seen what may be nuclear weapons-making efforts in Iran and Syria. Additional NPT members in that region of the world, where non-nuclear sources of energy such as oil are readily available, have expressed interest in building nuclear power reactors. Does their nuclear interest go beyond power reactors?
What would the world look like if there were no NPT? It has provided the standard that has restrained many countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. Without it, would there be 20 or 30 countries with nuclear weapons or pursuing nuclear weapons?
Click here to comment on this article.
George Bunn, the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and later became U.S. ambassador to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee. He is now at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. John B. Rhinelander is senior counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. He served as deputy legal adviser at the Department of State and legal adviser to the ABM Treaty/SALT I delegation.
ENDNOTES
1. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (July 1, 1968), art. I (hereinafter NPT).
2. See, e.g., Lenice N. Wu, “The Baruch Plan,” in Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament, ed. Richard Dean Burns (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 771, 774-783; George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee: Managing Negotiations with the Russians (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 59-61.
3. Bunn, Arms Control by Committee, pp. 85-92.
4. UN General Assembly Resolution 1665, December 4, 1961 (the “Irish Resolution”).
5. See Bunn, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: History and Current Problems,” Arms Control Today, December 2003, p. 5.
6. NPT, arts. I and II.
7. Bunn, Arms Control by Committee, pp. 87-103; U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of Negotiations (1980), pp. 82-83.
8. Margaret Beckett, Keynote address at Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, Washington, D.C., June 25, 2007.
9. Amy F. Woolf, “Nuclear Weapons in the U.S. National Security Policy: Past, Present, and Prospects,” CRS Report for Congress, October 29, 2007, p. 10.
10. Over the years, several presidents have made commitments not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states party to the NPT, for example the nuclear nonuse protocol to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America of 1967, which the United States signed and ratified before the NPT. Similar treaties exist for several other regions of the world. The protocols to these treaties have been signed but not ratified by the United States. See, e.g., George Bunn, “The Legal Status of U.S. Negative Security Assurances to Non-Nuclear Weapon States,” Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1997, p. 1.
11. See David Holloway, “Deterrence, Preventive War, and Preemption,” in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy/Confronting Today’s Threats, eds. George Bunn and Christopher Chyba (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press and CISAC, 2006), p. 34; Roger Speed and Michael May, “Assessing the U.S. Nuclear Posture,” in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy/Confronting Today’s Threats, p. 248; George Bunn and Christopher Chyba, “U.S. Nuclear Postures for a New Era,” in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy/Confronting Today’s Threats, p. 297.
12. See William J. Broad, “Look Who’s Tough on Iran Now,” The New York Times, News of the Week in Review, June 1, 2008, p. 1.
13. George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. A15; George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008, p. A13. See interview with Sam Nunn, “World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Arms Control Today, March 2008, p. 6.
Israel's Airstrike on Syria's Reactor: Implications for the Nonproliferation Regime
Israel's Airstrike on Syria's Reactor: Implications for the Nonproliferation Regime
Leonard S. Spector and Avner Cohen, Arms Control Today
On September 6, 2007, in a surprise dawn attack, seven Israeli warplanes destroyed an industrial facility near al-Kibar, Syria, later identified by the CIA as a nearly completed nuclear reactor secretly under construction since 2001.
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_07-08/SpectorCohen
Leonard S. Spector and Avner Cohen, Arms Control Today
On September 6, 2007, in a surprise dawn attack, seven Israeli warplanes destroyed an industrial facility near al-Kibar, Syria, later identified by the CIA as a nearly completed nuclear reactor secretly under construction since 2001.
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_07-08/SpectorCohen
Reality of Delisting North Korea
Reality of Delisting North Korea
Hisahiko Okazaki, The Japan Times
It may be premature to discuss the results of the recent six-party talks at this stage. One reason for that is that all observers agree that North Korea's nuclear report is not complete. No consensus has been reached on a method of verifying the credibility of the report.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20080729a1.html
Hisahiko Okazaki, The Japan Times
It may be premature to discuss the results of the recent six-party talks at this stage. One reason for that is that all observers agree that North Korea's nuclear report is not complete. No consensus has been reached on a method of verifying the credibility of the report.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20080729a1.html
Buzz over Possible New Cuban Crisis Stirs Tensions
Buzz over Possible New Cuban Crisis Stirs Tensions
Alfonson Chardy and Tom Lasseter, Miami Herald
Moscow and Washington have moved aggressively to tamp down speculation over a possible deployment of Russian nuclear-capable bombers to Cuba, but the concerns haven't gone away.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/617210.html
Alfonson Chardy and Tom Lasseter, Miami Herald
Moscow and Washington have moved aggressively to tamp down speculation over a possible deployment of Russian nuclear-capable bombers to Cuba, but the concerns haven't gone away.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/617210.html
Pakistan Undecided about Seeking IAEA Vote on Indian Deal
Pakistan Undecided about Seeking IAEA Vote on Indian Deal
Baqir Sajjad Syed, Dawn
Because of immense US pressure, Pakistan has still not decided whether to press for a vote on the India-specific IAEA safeguards agreement when the UN nuclear watchdog’s board of governors meets on Friday.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/07/29/top3.htm
Baqir Sajjad Syed, Dawn
Because of immense US pressure, Pakistan has still not decided whether to press for a vote on the India-specific IAEA safeguards agreement when the UN nuclear watchdog’s board of governors meets on Friday.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/07/29/top3.htm
No 'Unconditional' NSG Nod for India, Says U.S.
No 'Unconditional' NSG Nod for India, Says U.S.
Siddharth Varadarajan, The Hindu
Though India has made it clear that it expects the United States to deliver a “clean and unconditional exemption” for it from the export guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Washington says it is committed only to a “clean” and not “unconditional” waiver for New Delhi.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/29/stories/2008072957840100.htm
Siddharth Varadarajan, The Hindu
Though India has made it clear that it expects the United States to deliver a “clean and unconditional exemption” for it from the export guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Washington says it is committed only to a “clean” and not “unconditional” waiver for New Delhi.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/29/stories/2008072957840100.htm
Iranian VP's Remarks Spark Angry Reactions in Beirut
Iranian VP's Remarks Spark Angry Reactions in Beirut
Dalila Mahdawi, The Daily Star
Lebanese politicians and religious figures reacted over the weekend to comments made last Thursday in Vienna by an Iranian vice president, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, with two MPs accusing the Islamic Republic of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in its attempts to resolve the international row over its nuclear program.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=94548
Dalila Mahdawi, The Daily Star
Lebanese politicians and religious figures reacted over the weekend to comments made last Thursday in Vienna by an Iranian vice president, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, with two MPs accusing the Islamic Republic of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in its attempts to resolve the international row over its nuclear program.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=94548
Diplomat Close to IAEA Says Iran Inflates Atom Progress
Diplomat Close to IAEA Says Iran Inflates Atom Progress
Mark Heinrich, Reuters
Mahmoud AhmadinejadIran appears to have overstated the expansion of its uranium enrichment programme at a sensitive juncture in talks with world powers, a diplomat close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday.
He said the International Atomic Energy Agency checked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement on Saturday that Iran had more than 5,000 centrifuges running and could verify just 4,000 were installed, 3,500 of which were regularly enriching uranium.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL873182520080728
Mark Heinrich, Reuters
Mahmoud AhmadinejadIran appears to have overstated the expansion of its uranium enrichment programme at a sensitive juncture in talks with world powers, a diplomat close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday.
He said the International Atomic Energy Agency checked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement on Saturday that Iran had more than 5,000 centrifuges running and could verify just 4,000 were installed, 3,500 of which were regularly enriching uranium.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL873182520080728
Don't Hold Olympics Without Iraq - Michael Soussan, Wall Street Journal opinion
Don't Hold Olympics Without Iraq - Michael Soussan, Wall Street Journal opinion
The decision last week by the International Olympic Committee to ban Iraq from participating in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing reflects far more negatively on the committee itself than on Iraq. The country's sin, as described by the IOC, is to have changed the members of its national Olympic committee, awarding posts based on local political loyalties. This is an interesting accusation -- given that the previous chief of Iraq's Olympic effort was Uday Hussein, the son of Iraq's former dictator. If Uday Hussein was acceptable to the IOC, why is the committee up in arms about the Iraqi government's decision to reshuffle its Olympic management team? The answer is that Iraq's new Olympic managers have not yet been accredited by the IOC. What will it take to get them accredited? Will they have to start torturing their athletes the way Uday used to do, when they failed to perform to his liking? There is a lot more at stake here than the bruised egos of IOC bureaucrats -- who for the most part, owe their own appointments to political connections within their national governments. The mission of the International Olympic Committee is to provide support and coordination for an event that aims to bring nations together through sports. And Iraqi athletes have, in recent years, overcome overwhelming odds for a chance to join in the Games.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121728817332991453.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
The decision last week by the International Olympic Committee to ban Iraq from participating in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing reflects far more negatively on the committee itself than on Iraq. The country's sin, as described by the IOC, is to have changed the members of its national Olympic committee, awarding posts based on local political loyalties. This is an interesting accusation -- given that the previous chief of Iraq's Olympic effort was Uday Hussein, the son of Iraq's former dictator. If Uday Hussein was acceptable to the IOC, why is the committee up in arms about the Iraqi government's decision to reshuffle its Olympic management team? The answer is that Iraq's new Olympic managers have not yet been accredited by the IOC. What will it take to get them accredited? Will they have to start torturing their athletes the way Uday used to do, when they failed to perform to his liking? There is a lot more at stake here than the bruised egos of IOC bureaucrats -- who for the most part, owe their own appointments to political connections within their national governments. The mission of the International Olympic Committee is to provide support and coordination for an event that aims to bring nations together through sports. And Iraqi athletes have, in recent years, overcome overwhelming odds for a chance to join in the Games.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121728817332991453.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Abizaid: "Iran Is Not a Suicide State; Deterrence Will Work"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/abizaid-iraq-is-not-a-sui_b_114575.html
Abizaid: "Iran Is Not a Suicide State; Deterrence Will Work"
Posted July 23, 2008 | 03:20 PM (EST)
Monday evening at a meeting of the Pacific Council, retired General John
Abizaid, the former commander of the US Central Command for Iraq and
Afghanistan from 2003-2007, offered lots of wisdom and an impressive
analysis of the Middle East. In this election season, every American,
including Barack Obama and John McCain, should hear what he has to say.
ON IRAN: Although he didn't say it outright, General Abizaid's implicit
view seemed to be that the world would not be able to stop Iran from
obtaining a nuclear weapon and that we would have to learn to live with
it. He questioned whether war with Iran to stop that eventuality would be
a wise idea "at this particular time" not only because world oil flows
would be shut down and turmoil would spread across the Middle East where
Iran's Shia allies hold sway, but also because the US armed forces lacked
strategic flexibility, bogged down as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan
with "our ground forces tapped out."
What, then, when they get the bomb? "I don't believe Iran is a suicide
state," he said. "Deterrence will work with Iran. It is a country of many
different power centers that are competing. Despite what their crazy
president says, I doubt seriously whether the Iranians are interested in
starting a nuclear war." As for the Israelis, Abizaid said "they can take
care of themselves up to a point...." but "we and the Israelis are going
to have to have a very clear conversation about what we will do if the
Iranians develop and field a weapon. Over the next 20 years the
relationship will have to go from a de-facto alliance to one of an
unmistakable alliance." In other words, the US should extend its nuclear
shield over Israel.
We should be talking to Iran, according to Abizaid, just the way we talked
to our other enemies in the past. "We need to make it very clear to the
Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China,
that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation of
their nation."
ON IRAQ: "Iraq is likely to stabilize sooner than Afghanistan," Abizaid
predicted. Combat activity is down dramatically in the last four or five
months. By the time the US presidential transfer takes place in January,
the Iraqis, in his view, will be close to getting their act together. "The
Iraqis have moved beyond the American political debate. We can't be in
Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there."
ADVICE TO THE CANDIDATES: Abizaid advised Obama and McCain to focus "on
strategy instead of brigades," recognizing that all the key issues in the
region -- Sunni non-state extremism, Shiite radicalism of the Iranian
nation-state, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and US dependence on Middle
East oil -- had to be dealt with in a comprehensive and linked way with
the help of the international community. The US can't do it alone;
military might can't do it alone.
Seeming to question Obama's idea of shifting brigades to Afghanistan,
Abizaid echoed what Afghan president Hamid Karzai told me in January: the
problem with Al Qaeda's resurgence is not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan.
"We've seen Al-Qaida weakened in Iraq but its growing presence in the
Pakistani territories along the Afghan border and in the horn of Africa,"
according to Abizaid. "In terms of confronting Al Qaeda, the problem we
face today is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. It is not as if there is a
roiling insurgency taking place in Afghanistan. Its stability depends on
what happens in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan."
In the longer term, by Abizaid's analysis, Iraq and Afghanistan are not
the key problems. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are. "Pakistan is a
nuclear-armed state that is unstable. In Saudi Arabia, the fight between
the ruling famliy and the clerical class has yet to play itself out. The
clerical class' theological frame is essentially Osama bin Laden's
ideology."
LIMITS OF AMERICAN POWER. On the limits of American power, Abizaid said
that the US had to recognize that the Middle East was embroiled "in the
first battle of globalization" between the modernizers and the
religious-zealots who aspire to a global Caliphate. The US Is only a
secondary player in this civilizational strife that will unfold over a
very long period. "As the British, the Russians and the Israelis found
out, " you can't control the Middle East."
Instead, "we need to move from direct to indirect influence" in the
region, focusing more on nation-building (he didn't use that word, though)
than overwhelming military might; not on building "Swiss-style democracy"
but a modicum of accountability by governments in the region.
"We have to understand," he said, "that our culture is not going to be
adopted by their culture. The only question is how we shape cultural
outcomes that will allow people to live together in peace and prosperity
so that we and our allies are not threatened by religious-inspired
zealots."
LESSONS FROM MISTAKES. Finally, this general properly obsessed with
culture offered a candid view of the conceptual errors that led to the
debacle of the pre-emptive war in Iraq. "There was a universal transfer of
cultural norms that took place in Washington, " Abizaid lamented. "They
thought that this was the liberation of France as opposed to going in to a
Middle Eastern state rife with ethnic divisions, in other words, an
unrealistic liberation philosophy based on our cultural expectations from
the outcome of World War II."
"During the Cold War," Abizaid continued, "there were many thousands of
experts the military could call on to tell us the size of the underwear
worn by a member of the Soviet Politburo. When I sought experts to advise
the Central Command, there were less than 300. There was a huge cultural
gap. So, we made some of the initial decisions in the war based on not
understanding their culture."
Abizaid: "Iran Is Not a Suicide State; Deterrence Will Work"
Posted July 23, 2008 | 03:20 PM (EST)
Monday evening at a meeting of the Pacific Council, retired General John
Abizaid, the former commander of the US Central Command for Iraq and
Afghanistan from 2003-2007, offered lots of wisdom and an impressive
analysis of the Middle East. In this election season, every American,
including Barack Obama and John McCain, should hear what he has to say.
ON IRAN: Although he didn't say it outright, General Abizaid's implicit
view seemed to be that the world would not be able to stop Iran from
obtaining a nuclear weapon and that we would have to learn to live with
it. He questioned whether war with Iran to stop that eventuality would be
a wise idea "at this particular time" not only because world oil flows
would be shut down and turmoil would spread across the Middle East where
Iran's Shia allies hold sway, but also because the US armed forces lacked
strategic flexibility, bogged down as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan
with "our ground forces tapped out."
What, then, when they get the bomb? "I don't believe Iran is a suicide
state," he said. "Deterrence will work with Iran. It is a country of many
different power centers that are competing. Despite what their crazy
president says, I doubt seriously whether the Iranians are interested in
starting a nuclear war." As for the Israelis, Abizaid said "they can take
care of themselves up to a point...." but "we and the Israelis are going
to have to have a very clear conversation about what we will do if the
Iranians develop and field a weapon. Over the next 20 years the
relationship will have to go from a de-facto alliance to one of an
unmistakable alliance." In other words, the US should extend its nuclear
shield over Israel.
We should be talking to Iran, according to Abizaid, just the way we talked
to our other enemies in the past. "We need to make it very clear to the
Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China,
that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation of
their nation."
ON IRAQ: "Iraq is likely to stabilize sooner than Afghanistan," Abizaid
predicted. Combat activity is down dramatically in the last four or five
months. By the time the US presidential transfer takes place in January,
the Iraqis, in his view, will be close to getting their act together. "The
Iraqis have moved beyond the American political debate. We can't be in
Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there."
ADVICE TO THE CANDIDATES: Abizaid advised Obama and McCain to focus "on
strategy instead of brigades," recognizing that all the key issues in the
region -- Sunni non-state extremism, Shiite radicalism of the Iranian
nation-state, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and US dependence on Middle
East oil -- had to be dealt with in a comprehensive and linked way with
the help of the international community. The US can't do it alone;
military might can't do it alone.
Seeming to question Obama's idea of shifting brigades to Afghanistan,
Abizaid echoed what Afghan president Hamid Karzai told me in January: the
problem with Al Qaeda's resurgence is not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan.
"We've seen Al-Qaida weakened in Iraq but its growing presence in the
Pakistani territories along the Afghan border and in the horn of Africa,"
according to Abizaid. "In terms of confronting Al Qaeda, the problem we
face today is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. It is not as if there is a
roiling insurgency taking place in Afghanistan. Its stability depends on
what happens in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan."
In the longer term, by Abizaid's analysis, Iraq and Afghanistan are not
the key problems. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are. "Pakistan is a
nuclear-armed state that is unstable. In Saudi Arabia, the fight between
the ruling famliy and the clerical class has yet to play itself out. The
clerical class' theological frame is essentially Osama bin Laden's
ideology."
LIMITS OF AMERICAN POWER. On the limits of American power, Abizaid said
that the US had to recognize that the Middle East was embroiled "in the
first battle of globalization" between the modernizers and the
religious-zealots who aspire to a global Caliphate. The US Is only a
secondary player in this civilizational strife that will unfold over a
very long period. "As the British, the Russians and the Israelis found
out, " you can't control the Middle East."
Instead, "we need to move from direct to indirect influence" in the
region, focusing more on nation-building (he didn't use that word, though)
than overwhelming military might; not on building "Swiss-style democracy"
but a modicum of accountability by governments in the region.
"We have to understand," he said, "that our culture is not going to be
adopted by their culture. The only question is how we shape cultural
outcomes that will allow people to live together in peace and prosperity
so that we and our allies are not threatened by religious-inspired
zealots."
LESSONS FROM MISTAKES. Finally, this general properly obsessed with
culture offered a candid view of the conceptual errors that led to the
debacle of the pre-emptive war in Iraq. "There was a universal transfer of
cultural norms that took place in Washington, " Abizaid lamented. "They
thought that this was the liberation of France as opposed to going in to a
Middle Eastern state rife with ethnic divisions, in other words, an
unrealistic liberation philosophy based on our cultural expectations from
the outcome of World War II."
"During the Cold War," Abizaid continued, "there were many thousands of
experts the military could call on to tell us the size of the underwear
worn by a member of the Soviet Politburo. When I sought experts to advise
the Central Command, there were less than 300. There was a huge cultural
gap. So, we made some of the initial decisions in the war based on not
understanding their culture."
Monday, July 28, 2008
Obama's War? by Pat Buchanan
Obama's War?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"We have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," says Barack Obama of the U.S. war in Iraq. Wise counsel.
But is Barack taking his own advice? For he pledges to shift two U.S. combat brigades, 10,000 troops, out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, raising American forces in that country from 33,000 to 43,000.
Why does Barack think a surge of 10,000 troops will succeed in winning a war in which we have failed to prevail after seven years of fighting? How many more troops is he prepared to commit? Is the Obama commitment open-ended?
For, without any visible strategy for victory, Barack is recommending the same course LBJ took after the death of JFK. Johnson bombed North Vietnam in 1964, landed Marines in 1965 and built U.S. forces from 16,000 advisers on Nov. 22, 1963, to 525,000 troops in January of 1969.
Gradual escalation, which is exactly what Barack is recommending.
LBJ never thought through to the end game: how to break Hanoi, withdraw and leave a South peaceful, prosperous and pro-American.
Has Barack thought his way through to how this war ends in victory and we withdraw all U.S. ground troops from Afghanistan? For this writer cannot see anywhere on the horizon any such ending.
If the old rule applies – the guerrilla wins if he does not lose – the United States, about to enter its eighth year of combat, is losing. And, using the old 10-to-one ratio of regular troops needed to defeat guerrillas, if the Taliban can recruit 1,000 new fighters, they can see Obama's two-brigade bet, and raise him. Just as Uncle Ho raised LBJ again and again.
What does President Obama do then? Send in 10,000 more?
The Soviet Union, whose 115,000-man army in Afghanistan reached more than twice the size of U.S.-NATO forces, even with the Obama surge, went home defeated in 1988. The Soviet Empire did not survive that humiliation.
Obama – and John McCain, who has endorsed the build-up – should, before committing any more combat brigades, explain how and when this war ends in an American victory. For as of today, the Afghan war resembles Vietnam far more than Iraq ever did.
Consider. Taliban attacks are up 40 percent this year. U.S. casualties in May and June exceeded those in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus says al-Qaeda is moving assets from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. President Karzai's writ still does not extend beyond the capital. He is mocked as the "Mayor of Kabul." Security in the capital is deteriorating.
For the sixth straight year, the poppy crop, primary source of the world's heroin, has set a new record. The Taliban eradicated the crop when in power, but are now collaborating with farmers to extort cash to keep fighting.
Most critically, Pakistan has become for the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda the same sanctuary that North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia provided for the Viet Cong and NVA, with this critical difference: We cannot bomb or invade Pakistan.
The new Islamabad regime is exhibiting no enthusiasm for fighting the Taliban who dominate the border regions and North-West Frontier province and have sympathizers in Pakistan's military and intelligences agencies.
Air strikes, to which we have begun to resort, have resulted in wedding parties and families wiped out in their homes on both sides of the border. President Musharraf has even threatened to retaliate against U.S. forces if more of his people become victims.
Anti-Americanism, pandemic in Pakistan, is rising.
As for Afghanistan, how do we win a war in a nation of 27 million, the size of Texas, with only 50,000 U.S.-NATO troops? How long will it take us to train, equip and arm an Afghan army that is both loyal to the regime and an effective fighting force against its Pashtun brothers?
How, ever, can victory be achieved, if the enemy can retire every winter to Pakistan to rest, rearm and prepare new attacks?
If the Pakistani army will not clean out the border regions, how can we accomplish it with pinprick strikes by Special Forces, or Predators and F-16s, which invariably cause civilian casualties?
Afghanistan, in and of itself, is of no strategic importance, if it is not a base camp for al-Qaeda. Loss of Pakistan to Islamism, however, a nation of 170 million Muslims with atomic bombs, would be a calamity for the Near East and United States.
Under the (Colin) Powell Doctrine for fighting wars, questions must be asked and answered affirmatively before committing U.S. troops:
Is a vital U.S. interest imperiled here? Do we have a defined and attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been fully weighed? Is there an exit strategy? Is the war supported by a united nation?
How many of these questions did Obama ask himself before pledging 10,000 more U.S combat troops to what will surely become, should he win, "Obama's war" even as Iraq has become "Bush's war"?
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=13218
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"We have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," says Barack Obama of the U.S. war in Iraq. Wise counsel.
But is Barack taking his own advice? For he pledges to shift two U.S. combat brigades, 10,000 troops, out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, raising American forces in that country from 33,000 to 43,000.
Why does Barack think a surge of 10,000 troops will succeed in winning a war in which we have failed to prevail after seven years of fighting? How many more troops is he prepared to commit? Is the Obama commitment open-ended?
For, without any visible strategy for victory, Barack is recommending the same course LBJ took after the death of JFK. Johnson bombed North Vietnam in 1964, landed Marines in 1965 and built U.S. forces from 16,000 advisers on Nov. 22, 1963, to 525,000 troops in January of 1969.
Gradual escalation, which is exactly what Barack is recommending.
LBJ never thought through to the end game: how to break Hanoi, withdraw and leave a South peaceful, prosperous and pro-American.
Has Barack thought his way through to how this war ends in victory and we withdraw all U.S. ground troops from Afghanistan? For this writer cannot see anywhere on the horizon any such ending.
If the old rule applies – the guerrilla wins if he does not lose – the United States, about to enter its eighth year of combat, is losing. And, using the old 10-to-one ratio of regular troops needed to defeat guerrillas, if the Taliban can recruit 1,000 new fighters, they can see Obama's two-brigade bet, and raise him. Just as Uncle Ho raised LBJ again and again.
What does President Obama do then? Send in 10,000 more?
The Soviet Union, whose 115,000-man army in Afghanistan reached more than twice the size of U.S.-NATO forces, even with the Obama surge, went home defeated in 1988. The Soviet Empire did not survive that humiliation.
Obama – and John McCain, who has endorsed the build-up – should, before committing any more combat brigades, explain how and when this war ends in an American victory. For as of today, the Afghan war resembles Vietnam far more than Iraq ever did.
Consider. Taliban attacks are up 40 percent this year. U.S. casualties in May and June exceeded those in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus says al-Qaeda is moving assets from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. President Karzai's writ still does not extend beyond the capital. He is mocked as the "Mayor of Kabul." Security in the capital is deteriorating.
For the sixth straight year, the poppy crop, primary source of the world's heroin, has set a new record. The Taliban eradicated the crop when in power, but are now collaborating with farmers to extort cash to keep fighting.
Most critically, Pakistan has become for the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda the same sanctuary that North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia provided for the Viet Cong and NVA, with this critical difference: We cannot bomb or invade Pakistan.
The new Islamabad regime is exhibiting no enthusiasm for fighting the Taliban who dominate the border regions and North-West Frontier province and have sympathizers in Pakistan's military and intelligences agencies.
Air strikes, to which we have begun to resort, have resulted in wedding parties and families wiped out in their homes on both sides of the border. President Musharraf has even threatened to retaliate against U.S. forces if more of his people become victims.
Anti-Americanism, pandemic in Pakistan, is rising.
As for Afghanistan, how do we win a war in a nation of 27 million, the size of Texas, with only 50,000 U.S.-NATO troops? How long will it take us to train, equip and arm an Afghan army that is both loyal to the regime and an effective fighting force against its Pashtun brothers?
How, ever, can victory be achieved, if the enemy can retire every winter to Pakistan to rest, rearm and prepare new attacks?
If the Pakistani army will not clean out the border regions, how can we accomplish it with pinprick strikes by Special Forces, or Predators and F-16s, which invariably cause civilian casualties?
Afghanistan, in and of itself, is of no strategic importance, if it is not a base camp for al-Qaeda. Loss of Pakistan to Islamism, however, a nation of 170 million Muslims with atomic bombs, would be a calamity for the Near East and United States.
Under the (Colin) Powell Doctrine for fighting wars, questions must be asked and answered affirmatively before committing U.S. troops:
Is a vital U.S. interest imperiled here? Do we have a defined and attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been fully weighed? Is there an exit strategy? Is the war supported by a united nation?
How many of these questions did Obama ask himself before pledging 10,000 more U.S combat troops to what will surely become, should he win, "Obama's war" even as Iraq has become "Bush's war"?
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=13218
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2275
CENTCOM: Planning for Empire
In May of 2007, Admiral William J. Fallon, then head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), asked Congress for $62 million for an ammunition storage facility at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, a station he called "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia." What is the U.S. military leadership doing and planning to do in that region? Adm. Fallon discussed CENTCOM's operations in terms of five broad goals: 1) setting conditions for stability in Iraq, 2) expanding governance and security in Afghanistan, 3) degrading violent extremist networks and operations, 4) strengthening relationships and influencing states to contribute to regional stability, and 5) posturing the force to build and sustain joint and combined war fighting capabilities and readiness.
"Notice that except possibly for the third item listed ("degrading violent extremist networks and operations"), none of this has more than a very remote connection with defending the people of the United States against foreign enemies," writes Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs.
Higgs pulls no punches in his assessment of Fallon's testimony rationalizing U.S. military involvement in Central Asia and beyond. Referring to Fallon's impeccable delivery in "bureaucratese"--and its apparently favorable reception by members of Congress--Higgs writes the following: "Of course, it's all a solemn face, a polished and meaningless charade staged purely for public-relations purposes--a ceremonial hors d'oeuvres served in public before the diners consume the entrée, which consists of a massive amount of the taxpayers' money ladled out to the armed forces and their civilian contractors." On Iraq, Higgs writes: "Indeed, a mere pullout is nearly inconceivable, despite the great amount of talk that goes on about it on both sides. On the Iraqi side, this talk is sincere; on the U.S. side, it is all for show." On Afghanistan, he writes: "The likelihood that outside forces will ever impose their designs on Afghanistan's backward but fiercely resilient tribesmen verges on nil." On U.S. friends in the Persian Gulf, he writes: "An honest observer feels compelled to recognize, however, that every one of the filthy-rich sheiks in these desert despotisms would gladly cut Fallon's throat if they weren't raking in such fabulous amounts of money from the current arrangements." Higgs concludes by arguing that Fallon omitted a fundamental truth about CENTCOM's operations on in that part of the world: "He fails to mention, however, that the people of southwest Asia would harbor no grievances whatsoever against Americans if the U.S. government had only possessed the intelligence and the decency to stay out of their affairs."
"CENTCOM's Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony," by Robert Higgs (7/22/08)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2275
Also see:
Depression, War, and Cold War, by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=65
Neither Liberty nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government, by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=68
Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11, by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=60
Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=69
In May of 2007, Admiral William J. Fallon, then head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), asked Congress for $62 million for an ammunition storage facility at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, a station he called "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia." What is the U.S. military leadership doing and planning to do in that region? Adm. Fallon discussed CENTCOM's operations in terms of five broad goals: 1) setting conditions for stability in Iraq, 2) expanding governance and security in Afghanistan, 3) degrading violent extremist networks and operations, 4) strengthening relationships and influencing states to contribute to regional stability, and 5) posturing the force to build and sustain joint and combined war fighting capabilities and readiness.
"Notice that except possibly for the third item listed ("degrading violent extremist networks and operations"), none of this has more than a very remote connection with defending the people of the United States against foreign enemies," writes Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs.
Higgs pulls no punches in his assessment of Fallon's testimony rationalizing U.S. military involvement in Central Asia and beyond. Referring to Fallon's impeccable delivery in "bureaucratese"--and its apparently favorable reception by members of Congress--Higgs writes the following: "Of course, it's all a solemn face, a polished and meaningless charade staged purely for public-relations purposes--a ceremonial hors d'oeuvres served in public before the diners consume the entrée, which consists of a massive amount of the taxpayers' money ladled out to the armed forces and their civilian contractors." On Iraq, Higgs writes: "Indeed, a mere pullout is nearly inconceivable, despite the great amount of talk that goes on about it on both sides. On the Iraqi side, this talk is sincere; on the U.S. side, it is all for show." On Afghanistan, he writes: "The likelihood that outside forces will ever impose their designs on Afghanistan's backward but fiercely resilient tribesmen verges on nil." On U.S. friends in the Persian Gulf, he writes: "An honest observer feels compelled to recognize, however, that every one of the filthy-rich sheiks in these desert despotisms would gladly cut Fallon's throat if they weren't raking in such fabulous amounts of money from the current arrangements." Higgs concludes by arguing that Fallon omitted a fundamental truth about CENTCOM's operations on in that part of the world: "He fails to mention, however, that the people of southwest Asia would harbor no grievances whatsoever against Americans if the U.S. government had only possessed the intelligence and the decency to stay out of their affairs."
"CENTCOM's Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony," by Robert Higgs (7/22/08)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2275
Also see:
Depression, War, and Cold War, by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=65
Neither Liberty nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government, by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=68
Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11, by Robert Higgs
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=60
Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=69
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks by Uri Avnery
July 28, 2008
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks
by Uri Avnery
In one of the most beautiful songs in the Bible, the poet vows: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, / Let my right hand forget her cunning. / If I do not remember thee, / Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; / If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy!" (Psalms 137:5)
For some reason, the poet did not write: "If I forget thee, O Umm Touba!" nor "If I forget thee, O Sur Baher!" nor "If I forget thee, O Jabal Mukaber!" nor even "If I forget thee, O Ein Karem!"
A fact that should be remembered in any discussion about Jerusalem: there is no resemblance between the Jerusalem of the Bible and the "Jerusalem" of the current Israeli map. The object of the yearning of the exiles who wept by the rivers of Babylon was the real Jerusalem - more or less within the boundaries of the Old City, whose center is the Temple Mount. One square kilometer, that's all.
The redefined municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 annexation comprises a vast area, some 126 square kilometers, from Bethlehem in the south to Ramallah in the north. This area has been clothed with the name of "Jerusalem" in order to bestow a religious-national-historic aura to what was nothing but an act of land-grabbing and settlement.
The planners of this map, including the late General Rehavam Ze'evi, nicknamed "Gandhi", the most far-right officer in the Israeli army, had a simple purpose: to annex to Jerusalem as many areas as possible that were free of Arabs, in order to set up Jewish settlements there. They were haunted by the demographic phantom that is still terrorizing us today: they aimed to expand the Jewish and to reduce the Arab population - in Jerusalem and throughout the country.
In order to achieve this, the planners were compelled to add some nearby Arab villages. Not only the Arab neighborhoods near the Old City, like the Mount of Olives, Silwan and Ras-al-Amud, but also villages located at some distance - such as Umm Touba, Sur Baher and Jabal Mukaber in the east, Beit Hanina and Kafr Aka in the north, Sharafat and Beit Safafa in the south.
The demographic phantom that haunted "Gandhi" then is now pursuing us through the streets of Jerusalem, riding a deadly bulldozer.
* * *
Until the 1949 war, Jerusalem was indeed a mixed city. Jewish and Arab neighborhoods were interwoven.
The demographic map of Jerusalem became engraved in my memory during a personal experience. A year or so before the war, some of us, young men and women of the Bama'avak group in Tel-Aviv, decided to make a trip to Hebron. At the time, only very few Jews went to the southern town, which was known as a nationalist and religious Muslim stronghold.
We took the Arab bus from Jerusalem and went to the town, walked around its alleyways, bought the blue glass for which Hebron is famous, visited the Gush Etzion kibbutzim on the way and returned to Jerusalem. But in the meantime something had happened: one of the "dissident" underground organizations had carried out an especially serious attack (I think it was the bombing of the officers' club in Jerusalem) and the British had imposed a general curfew on all Jewish neighborhoods throughout the country.
At the entrance of Jerusalem we alighted from the bus and crossed the city on foot from one end to the other, taking care to move only in the Arab neighborhoods. From there we took an Arab bus to Ramle, and another one to Jaffa, and then found our way to our homes in Tel Aviv through backyards and side streets. Not one of us was caught.
Thus I became acquainted with the Arab neighborhoods, among them elegant quarters like Talbieh and Bakaa, which became the centers of Jewish Jerusalem after the 1948 war. In that war, the inhabitants fled/were driven to East Jerusalem and settled there - until these neighborhoods, too, were conquered by the Israeli army and annexed to Israel.
The annexation of East Jerusalem created a dilemma. What to do with the Arab population? They could not be expelled. The destruction of the Mugrabi quarter opposite the Western Wall and the brutal expulsion of the Arab inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City had already caused much negative comment throughout the world.
If the government had indeed intended to "unite" the city, they would have accompanied the annexation with some immediate measures, such as conferring automatic citizenship on all the Arab inhabitants and returning their "abandoned" properties in West Jerusalem (or, at least, paying compensation.)
But the government did not dream of doing so. The inhabitants were not awarded citizenship, which would have given them the same rights as the Arab citizens of Israel in Galilee and the Triangle. They were only recognized as "residents" in the city in which their forefathers had lived for over a thousand years. That is a fragile status, which accords Israeli identity cards, but not the right to vote for parliament. It can easily be withdrawn.
True, in theory an Arab Jerusalemite can apply for Israeli citizenship, but such an application is subject to the arbitrary decision of hostile bureaucrats. And the government, of course, relies on the Arabs not to do so, since that would mean recognizing the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation.
* * *
The truth is that Jerusalem has never been united. "The city that was reunited, the capital of Israel for all eternity", was and has remained a mantra that has no bearing on reality. For all practical purposes, East Jerusalem remains an occupied territory.
The Arab inhabitants have the right to vote for the municipality. But only a handful - city employees and those dependent on government favors - exercise this right, because this, too, means recognition of the occupation.
In practice, the Jerusalem municipality is a city government by Jews for Jews. Its leaders are chosen by Jews only, and see their main purpose in Judaizing the city. Years ago, Haolam Hazeh magazine disclosed a secret directive to all government and city institutions to make sure that the number of Arabs in the city did not exceed 27.5%, the exact percentage that existed at the time of the annexation.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the elected democratic mayor of West Jerusalem is also the military governor of East Jerusalem.
Since 1967, all mayors have seen their job in this light. Together with all the arms of government, they see to it that Arabs living outside the city do not return to it, and that Arabs living in the city move out of it. A thousand and one tricks, large and small, are employed to this end, from the almost total refusal of building permits for rapidly growing Arab families, to the cancellation of residency rights for people who spend some time abroad or in the West Bank.
The contact between Arab Jerusalemites and the inhabitants of the adjoining West Bank, which had been a closely woven fabric, has been totally severed. Jerusalem, which served as the economic, political, cultural, medical and social center, has been completely cut off from its natural hinterland. The building of the wall, which separated fathers from sons, pupils from their schools, tradesmen from their clients, physicians from patients, mosques from believers, and even cemeteries from the newly deceased, serves this purpose.
In Israel, people say that the Arab residents "enjoy the benefits of social insurance". That is a mendacious argument: after all, the insurance is not a free meal - it is paid for by the insured. Arabs, like Jews, pay for it every month.
Arab residents have to pay all municipal taxes, but receive in return only a fraction of the municipal services, both in quality and in quantity. The schools lack hundreds of classrooms, and their standard is inferior to the private Islamic schools. Trash removal and other services are beneath contempt. Public gardens, youth clubs, gardening - cannot even be mentioned. The inhabitants of Kafr Akab, located beyond the Kalandia checkpoint, pay municipal taxes and receive no services at all - the municipality says that its employees are afraid to go there.
* * *
The Jewish public is not interested in all this. They don't know - and don't want to know - what is going on in the Arab neighborhoods, some hundreds of meters from their homes.
So they are surprised, surprised and shocked, by the ungratefulness of the Arab inhabitants. A young man from Sur Baher recently shot pupils of a religious seminary in West Jerusalem. A young man from Jabal Mukaber drove a bulldozer and ran over everything that crossed his path. This week, another youngster from Umm Touba repeated exactly the same act. All three of them were shot dead on the spot.
The attackers were ordinary young men, not particularly religious. It seems than none of them was a member of any organization. Apparently, a young man just gets up one fine morning and decides that he has enough. He then carries out an attack all by himself, with any instrument at hand - a pistol bought with his own money, in the first instance, or a bulldozer he drives at work, in the two others.
If this is indeed the case, a question presents itself: why is this being done by Jerusalemites? First, because they have the opportunity. A person who drives a bulldozer at a building site in West Jerusalem can just crash into a passing bus in the next street. The driver of a heavy truck can run over people. It is relatively easy to carry out a shooting attack, like the recent event at the Lion's Gate, the perpetrators of which were not caught. No intelligence service can prevent this, if the attacker has no partners and is not a member of any organization.
From the utterances of the commentators this week, one can gather that they cannot even imagine the anger that accumulates in the mind of a young Arab in Jerusalem throughout the years of humiliation, harassment, discrimination and helplessness. It is easier and more amusing to go into pornographic descriptions of the 72 virgins waiting for the martyrs in the Muslim paradise - what they do with them, how they do it to them, who has enough energy for them all.
One of the main contributing factors for the stirring up of hatred is the demolition of "illegal" homes of Arab residents, who are quite unable to build "legally". The dimension of official stupidity is attested to by the demand of the Shin-Bet chief, voiced this week again, to destroy the homes of the attackers' families, for the sake of "deterrence". Apparently he has not heard about the dozens of studies and the accumulated experience, which prove that every destroyed home becomes an incubator for new hate-driven avengers.
This week's attack is especially instructive. It is quite unclear what actually happened: did Ghassan Abu-Tir plan the attack in advance? Or was this a spontaneous decision in a moment of excitement? Was this an attack at all - or did the bulldozer driver run into a bus by accident and try, in a state of panic, to escape - running over his pursuers, becoming a target for a shooting spree by passersby and soldiers? In the atmosphere of suspicion and fear that pervades Jerusalem now, every road accident involving an Arab becomes an attack, and every Arab driver involved in an accident will in all probability be executed on the spot, without a trial. (It should be remembered that the first intifada broke out because of a road accident, in which a Jewish driver ran over some Arabs.)
* * *
And again there is the question: what is the solution to this complex problem, which arouses such strong emotions, feeds on deep-rooted myths and causes such moral dilemmas for millions around the world?
This week, a lot of proposals were presented, such as building a Berlin-style wall through the middle of Jerusalem (in addition to the one going around it). To punish whole families for the acts of their children, much like the Nazi "sippenhaft". To expel the families from the city or to cancel their resident status. To demolish their homes. To take away their social insurance benefits, even if they have paid for them.
All these "solutions" have one thing in common - they have been tried in the past, here and in other places, and found wanting.
Except one, clear solution: to turn East Jerusalem into the capital of the State of Palestine, to enable its inhabitants to set up their own municipality, while keeping the whole city as an urban entity united under one super-municipality in which the Arabs will be equal to the Jews. I am glad that during his visit with us this week, Barack Obama repeated almost word for word this plan, which Gush Shalom published some ten years ago in cooperation with Feisal Husseini, the late leader of the Jerusalem Arab community.
The attacks are the result of despair, frustration, hatred and the sense that there is no way out. Only a solution that will remove these feelings can bring security to both parts of Jerusalem.
http://www.antiwar.com/avnery/?articleid=13209
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks
by Uri Avnery
In one of the most beautiful songs in the Bible, the poet vows: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, / Let my right hand forget her cunning. / If I do not remember thee, / Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; / If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy!" (Psalms 137:5)
For some reason, the poet did not write: "If I forget thee, O Umm Touba!" nor "If I forget thee, O Sur Baher!" nor "If I forget thee, O Jabal Mukaber!" nor even "If I forget thee, O Ein Karem!"
A fact that should be remembered in any discussion about Jerusalem: there is no resemblance between the Jerusalem of the Bible and the "Jerusalem" of the current Israeli map. The object of the yearning of the exiles who wept by the rivers of Babylon was the real Jerusalem - more or less within the boundaries of the Old City, whose center is the Temple Mount. One square kilometer, that's all.
The redefined municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 annexation comprises a vast area, some 126 square kilometers, from Bethlehem in the south to Ramallah in the north. This area has been clothed with the name of "Jerusalem" in order to bestow a religious-national-historic aura to what was nothing but an act of land-grabbing and settlement.
The planners of this map, including the late General Rehavam Ze'evi, nicknamed "Gandhi", the most far-right officer in the Israeli army, had a simple purpose: to annex to Jerusalem as many areas as possible that were free of Arabs, in order to set up Jewish settlements there. They were haunted by the demographic phantom that is still terrorizing us today: they aimed to expand the Jewish and to reduce the Arab population - in Jerusalem and throughout the country.
In order to achieve this, the planners were compelled to add some nearby Arab villages. Not only the Arab neighborhoods near the Old City, like the Mount of Olives, Silwan and Ras-al-Amud, but also villages located at some distance - such as Umm Touba, Sur Baher and Jabal Mukaber in the east, Beit Hanina and Kafr Aka in the north, Sharafat and Beit Safafa in the south.
The demographic phantom that haunted "Gandhi" then is now pursuing us through the streets of Jerusalem, riding a deadly bulldozer.
* * *
Until the 1949 war, Jerusalem was indeed a mixed city. Jewish and Arab neighborhoods were interwoven.
The demographic map of Jerusalem became engraved in my memory during a personal experience. A year or so before the war, some of us, young men and women of the Bama'avak group in Tel-Aviv, decided to make a trip to Hebron. At the time, only very few Jews went to the southern town, which was known as a nationalist and religious Muslim stronghold.
We took the Arab bus from Jerusalem and went to the town, walked around its alleyways, bought the blue glass for which Hebron is famous, visited the Gush Etzion kibbutzim on the way and returned to Jerusalem. But in the meantime something had happened: one of the "dissident" underground organizations had carried out an especially serious attack (I think it was the bombing of the officers' club in Jerusalem) and the British had imposed a general curfew on all Jewish neighborhoods throughout the country.
At the entrance of Jerusalem we alighted from the bus and crossed the city on foot from one end to the other, taking care to move only in the Arab neighborhoods. From there we took an Arab bus to Ramle, and another one to Jaffa, and then found our way to our homes in Tel Aviv through backyards and side streets. Not one of us was caught.
Thus I became acquainted with the Arab neighborhoods, among them elegant quarters like Talbieh and Bakaa, which became the centers of Jewish Jerusalem after the 1948 war. In that war, the inhabitants fled/were driven to East Jerusalem and settled there - until these neighborhoods, too, were conquered by the Israeli army and annexed to Israel.
The annexation of East Jerusalem created a dilemma. What to do with the Arab population? They could not be expelled. The destruction of the Mugrabi quarter opposite the Western Wall and the brutal expulsion of the Arab inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City had already caused much negative comment throughout the world.
If the government had indeed intended to "unite" the city, they would have accompanied the annexation with some immediate measures, such as conferring automatic citizenship on all the Arab inhabitants and returning their "abandoned" properties in West Jerusalem (or, at least, paying compensation.)
But the government did not dream of doing so. The inhabitants were not awarded citizenship, which would have given them the same rights as the Arab citizens of Israel in Galilee and the Triangle. They were only recognized as "residents" in the city in which their forefathers had lived for over a thousand years. That is a fragile status, which accords Israeli identity cards, but not the right to vote for parliament. It can easily be withdrawn.
True, in theory an Arab Jerusalemite can apply for Israeli citizenship, but such an application is subject to the arbitrary decision of hostile bureaucrats. And the government, of course, relies on the Arabs not to do so, since that would mean recognizing the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation.
* * *
The truth is that Jerusalem has never been united. "The city that was reunited, the capital of Israel for all eternity", was and has remained a mantra that has no bearing on reality. For all practical purposes, East Jerusalem remains an occupied territory.
The Arab inhabitants have the right to vote for the municipality. But only a handful - city employees and those dependent on government favors - exercise this right, because this, too, means recognition of the occupation.
In practice, the Jerusalem municipality is a city government by Jews for Jews. Its leaders are chosen by Jews only, and see their main purpose in Judaizing the city. Years ago, Haolam Hazeh magazine disclosed a secret directive to all government and city institutions to make sure that the number of Arabs in the city did not exceed 27.5%, the exact percentage that existed at the time of the annexation.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the elected democratic mayor of West Jerusalem is also the military governor of East Jerusalem.
Since 1967, all mayors have seen their job in this light. Together with all the arms of government, they see to it that Arabs living outside the city do not return to it, and that Arabs living in the city move out of it. A thousand and one tricks, large and small, are employed to this end, from the almost total refusal of building permits for rapidly growing Arab families, to the cancellation of residency rights for people who spend some time abroad or in the West Bank.
The contact between Arab Jerusalemites and the inhabitants of the adjoining West Bank, which had been a closely woven fabric, has been totally severed. Jerusalem, which served as the economic, political, cultural, medical and social center, has been completely cut off from its natural hinterland. The building of the wall, which separated fathers from sons, pupils from their schools, tradesmen from their clients, physicians from patients, mosques from believers, and even cemeteries from the newly deceased, serves this purpose.
In Israel, people say that the Arab residents "enjoy the benefits of social insurance". That is a mendacious argument: after all, the insurance is not a free meal - it is paid for by the insured. Arabs, like Jews, pay for it every month.
Arab residents have to pay all municipal taxes, but receive in return only a fraction of the municipal services, both in quality and in quantity. The schools lack hundreds of classrooms, and their standard is inferior to the private Islamic schools. Trash removal and other services are beneath contempt. Public gardens, youth clubs, gardening - cannot even be mentioned. The inhabitants of Kafr Akab, located beyond the Kalandia checkpoint, pay municipal taxes and receive no services at all - the municipality says that its employees are afraid to go there.
* * *
The Jewish public is not interested in all this. They don't know - and don't want to know - what is going on in the Arab neighborhoods, some hundreds of meters from their homes.
So they are surprised, surprised and shocked, by the ungratefulness of the Arab inhabitants. A young man from Sur Baher recently shot pupils of a religious seminary in West Jerusalem. A young man from Jabal Mukaber drove a bulldozer and ran over everything that crossed his path. This week, another youngster from Umm Touba repeated exactly the same act. All three of them were shot dead on the spot.
The attackers were ordinary young men, not particularly religious. It seems than none of them was a member of any organization. Apparently, a young man just gets up one fine morning and decides that he has enough. He then carries out an attack all by himself, with any instrument at hand - a pistol bought with his own money, in the first instance, or a bulldozer he drives at work, in the two others.
If this is indeed the case, a question presents itself: why is this being done by Jerusalemites? First, because they have the opportunity. A person who drives a bulldozer at a building site in West Jerusalem can just crash into a passing bus in the next street. The driver of a heavy truck can run over people. It is relatively easy to carry out a shooting attack, like the recent event at the Lion's Gate, the perpetrators of which were not caught. No intelligence service can prevent this, if the attacker has no partners and is not a member of any organization.
From the utterances of the commentators this week, one can gather that they cannot even imagine the anger that accumulates in the mind of a young Arab in Jerusalem throughout the years of humiliation, harassment, discrimination and helplessness. It is easier and more amusing to go into pornographic descriptions of the 72 virgins waiting for the martyrs in the Muslim paradise - what they do with them, how they do it to them, who has enough energy for them all.
One of the main contributing factors for the stirring up of hatred is the demolition of "illegal" homes of Arab residents, who are quite unable to build "legally". The dimension of official stupidity is attested to by the demand of the Shin-Bet chief, voiced this week again, to destroy the homes of the attackers' families, for the sake of "deterrence". Apparently he has not heard about the dozens of studies and the accumulated experience, which prove that every destroyed home becomes an incubator for new hate-driven avengers.
This week's attack is especially instructive. It is quite unclear what actually happened: did Ghassan Abu-Tir plan the attack in advance? Or was this a spontaneous decision in a moment of excitement? Was this an attack at all - or did the bulldozer driver run into a bus by accident and try, in a state of panic, to escape - running over his pursuers, becoming a target for a shooting spree by passersby and soldiers? In the atmosphere of suspicion and fear that pervades Jerusalem now, every road accident involving an Arab becomes an attack, and every Arab driver involved in an accident will in all probability be executed on the spot, without a trial. (It should be remembered that the first intifada broke out because of a road accident, in which a Jewish driver ran over some Arabs.)
* * *
And again there is the question: what is the solution to this complex problem, which arouses such strong emotions, feeds on deep-rooted myths and causes such moral dilemmas for millions around the world?
This week, a lot of proposals were presented, such as building a Berlin-style wall through the middle of Jerusalem (in addition to the one going around it). To punish whole families for the acts of their children, much like the Nazi "sippenhaft". To expel the families from the city or to cancel their resident status. To demolish their homes. To take away their social insurance benefits, even if they have paid for them.
All these "solutions" have one thing in common - they have been tried in the past, here and in other places, and found wanting.
Except one, clear solution: to turn East Jerusalem into the capital of the State of Palestine, to enable its inhabitants to set up their own municipality, while keeping the whole city as an urban entity united under one super-municipality in which the Arabs will be equal to the Jews. I am glad that during his visit with us this week, Barack Obama repeated almost word for word this plan, which Gush Shalom published some ten years ago in cooperation with Feisal Husseini, the late leader of the Jerusalem Arab community.
The attacks are the result of despair, frustration, hatred and the sense that there is no way out. Only a solution that will remove these feelings can bring security to both parts of Jerusalem.
http://www.antiwar.com/avnery/?articleid=13209
Surge: The New Loyalty Test
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/07/26/surge-the-new-loyalty-test/
Surge: The New Loyalty Test
Posted on July 26th, 2008 by Kelley Vlahos
It’s no secret that the Republican Party has put a high tactical premium on loyalty over the last eight years, engaging it as a key political tool (and bludgeon) to keep party soldiers marching in-step, and to bleed its enemies of legitimacy in the arena of public opinion. While there are obvious doubts that such manipulations will work on the electorate this Nov. 4, they’ve been quite effective in the past.
goose stepYou can’t stop the Party from trying. It demanded loyalty for President Bush after 9/11 – who could deny the man with the megaphone atop the smoldering debris of the American dream? For Gen. David Petraeus, when it was critical that the Republicans throw water on the post-midterm cry to end the war. Today, the new litmus test is loyalty to an idea. The unflinching, unreflective loyalty to The Surge.
Will it work? Not sure, but it is a fascinating study in GOP mind-meld to watch the tactic employed once again. Not only are party surrogates demanding The Surge be recognized as a success, they are daring Sen. Obama to admit he was wrong for opposing it, suggesting he hasn’t admitted error already out of pride, that he doesn’t have the political nerve or yet, integrity, to say, “hey I made a mistake.”
(It seems that here, they’re confusing Obama with Bush, who for the better part of the Iraq War was loath to admit his leadership was ever at fault for all the mistakes – now laboriously itemized by military historians, analysts and the military itself – made in the post-invasion, much less the insertion of US troops into that country in the first place).
No matter. McCain was out on the stump Friday actually taunting the Democratic candidate about his vote against funding for the surge in 2007, saying “[Obama] actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn’t just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it.”
Kathleen Parker, writing for RealClearPolitics.com Thursday in a piece called “Pride Clouds Obama’s Vision,” does her best for the team:
(Emphasis mine)
Most Americans would have little trouble forgiving Obama for not believing the surge would be effective. It was a gamble, as are all strategies in war. Even with reports on the ground that locals seemed increasingly willing to rise up, there was reason enough by 2007 to doubt the wisdom of America’s commander in chief.
It is less easy to forgive the kind of wrongheaded stubbornness now on display. As recently as July 14, Obama wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true.” He mentioned the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, money spent in Iraq and said that the surge had failed to produce “political accommodation.”
Fine. But the larger, more important point is that the surge was necessary and successful. Those facts outweigh all other considerations past and present. Moreover, a recent U.S. Embassy report stated that 15 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for Iraq are being met in a “satisfactory” fashion.
Obama has fallen to pride in part because he has bought his own myth. By staking his future on a past of supernatural vision, he has made it difficult to admit human fault. The magic isn’t working anymore. And Obama, the visionary one, can’t even see what everyone else sees: He was wrong.
All other considerations past and present? Are we to believe that reducing the violence of an insurgency that our own government and its surrogates were content to deny until it absolutely, positively couldn’t be ignored any longer, down to the level it should have been in Spring 2003 when in military terms, we should have been doing things right already, neutralizes the fact that we blew apart a country, sent 4 million people from their homes, helped to create a brain drain in which there are hardly any doctors or teachers left in the cities and an unemployment rate that could reach 50 percent depending on who one talks to?
Not to mention that if we had done things right in the first place, thousands of US soldiers and Marines would be alive and full-bodied today, their brains not rattled from IED blasts, their dreams not stalked every night by the ghosts of dead Iraqi children and fallen comrades, their homes not broken and their chances for normal livelihoods more hopeful.
That’s even if one swallows whole the idea that The Surge was solely responsible for stabilizing Iraq in the first place. Obama won’t admit a mistake, because he is a smart guy – capable of understanding that foreign policy analysis can’t be popped out of a cereal box like a plastic decoder ring. He gets that the drop in violence resulted from a convergence of events “on the ground” that had as much to do with paying our former enemies to stop fighting us, the so-called “Anbar Awakening” that started before The Surge and the sectarian cleansing, as it did with the insertion of 30,000 more US troops into Iraq. Plus, Maliki found a way to ensure that his own militia – the Iraqi Army, plus an assist from the the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade –won the war of competing Shia factions in Basra and elsewhere, and Sadr’s milita in Baghdad is still lying low in a likely shrewd political calculation: there are elections (supposedly) coming up, and US soldiers wont be in his neighborhood forever. He thinks.
There are many who can breathe life into this analysis more than I, but the bottom line is this: Obama and his supporters, hell, anyone who is sick of the GOP spin cycle, can make the argument against this latest loyalty test without sounding peevish.
From Juan Cole on Thursday: The troop escalation in and of itself was probably not that consequential. That the troops were used in new ways by Gen. Petraeus was more important. But their main effect was ironic. They calmed Baghdad down by accidentally turning it into a Shiite city, as Shiite as Isfahan or Tehran, and thus a terrain on which the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement could not hope to fight effectively.
It is Obama who has the better argument in this debate, not Senator McCain, who knows almost nothing about Iraq and Iraqis, and overestimates what can be expected of 30,000 US troops in an enormous, complex country.
But the problem for McCain is that it does not matter very much for policy who is right in this debate. Security in Iraq is demonstrably improved, for whatever reason, and the Iraqis want the US out. If things are better, what is the rationale for keeping US troops in Iraq?
Rightly said, and surge proponents like Fred and Kimberly Kagan and Gen. Jack Keane still endeavor to have their bloody cake and to eat it too. Their rationale is simple: the surge worked, the battle has been won, but we cannot leave town lest the whole thing falls apart:
Past patterns suggest those [Iranian-backed] fighters will return to Iraq and attempt to restart attacks against Coalition Forces in time to disrupt Iraqi elections and to affect America’s voting. Their attacks are likely to be more spectacular, but less effective at disrupting Iraqi government and society.
Snip
The most serious error would be to withdraw American forces too rapidly. That would strengthen the resolve of both al Qaeda and Iran to persevere in their efforts to disrupt the young Iraqi state and weaken the resolve of those Iraqis, particularly in the Iraqi Security Forces, who are betting their lives on continued American assistance.
Ironically, the Surge Success mantra — which is slowly creeping into familiar “if you are not with us, you are against us” territory — is clouding the fact that violence is still a huge problem in Iraq and politically, the country is still teetering on the edge. Unless you believe, as Kagan & Co. do, “that there have been virtually no sectarian killings recorded for the past 10 weeks.” But then, one merely needs to read the news and see that whether sectarian or Al Qaeda-sponsored (as the Kagan squad pushes), there are plenty of bombings, assassination attempts and attacks on Iraqi security forces still going on to unsettle the place. The Turks are bombing northern Iraq and Diyala is reportedly on the brink.
Politically, the date for provincial elections has still not been ratified. Last week, the Kurds walked out of parliament in ongoing tensions over oil-rich Kirkuk, about the same time that the Sunnis were heralded by cheerleaders back home for ending their own five-week boycott.
Still, on the domestic front, it’s hard to predict whether this latest loyalty trap will spook the Democrats as it has often enough before. Fall into it – admit the glories of The Surge – and risk all credibility for criticizing the occupation. For, as the spin goes, if John McCain was right about the surge, he’s in the best position to determine the future of US involvement in Iraq. Just like Gen. Petraeus – not Congress – ultimately determined the level of troops there in 2007, and George Bush knew best when he invaded Iraq five years ago.
I think Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, long immune to the loyalty play, said it best on his return from touring the Middle East with Obama this week: “Quit talking about, ‘Did the surge work or not work,’ or, ‘Did you vote for this or support this,’” Hagel said Thursday on a conference call with reporters. “Get out of that. We’re done with that. How are we going to project forward?”
Surge: The New Loyalty Test
Posted on July 26th, 2008 by Kelley Vlahos
It’s no secret that the Republican Party has put a high tactical premium on loyalty over the last eight years, engaging it as a key political tool (and bludgeon) to keep party soldiers marching in-step, and to bleed its enemies of legitimacy in the arena of public opinion. While there are obvious doubts that such manipulations will work on the electorate this Nov. 4, they’ve been quite effective in the past.
goose stepYou can’t stop the Party from trying. It demanded loyalty for President Bush after 9/11 – who could deny the man with the megaphone atop the smoldering debris of the American dream? For Gen. David Petraeus, when it was critical that the Republicans throw water on the post-midterm cry to end the war. Today, the new litmus test is loyalty to an idea. The unflinching, unreflective loyalty to The Surge.
Will it work? Not sure, but it is a fascinating study in GOP mind-meld to watch the tactic employed once again. Not only are party surrogates demanding The Surge be recognized as a success, they are daring Sen. Obama to admit he was wrong for opposing it, suggesting he hasn’t admitted error already out of pride, that he doesn’t have the political nerve or yet, integrity, to say, “hey I made a mistake.”
(It seems that here, they’re confusing Obama with Bush, who for the better part of the Iraq War was loath to admit his leadership was ever at fault for all the mistakes – now laboriously itemized by military historians, analysts and the military itself – made in the post-invasion, much less the insertion of US troops into that country in the first place).
No matter. McCain was out on the stump Friday actually taunting the Democratic candidate about his vote against funding for the surge in 2007, saying “[Obama] actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn’t just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it.”
Kathleen Parker, writing for RealClearPolitics.com Thursday in a piece called “Pride Clouds Obama’s Vision,” does her best for the team:
(Emphasis mine)
Most Americans would have little trouble forgiving Obama for not believing the surge would be effective. It was a gamble, as are all strategies in war. Even with reports on the ground that locals seemed increasingly willing to rise up, there was reason enough by 2007 to doubt the wisdom of America’s commander in chief.
It is less easy to forgive the kind of wrongheaded stubbornness now on display. As recently as July 14, Obama wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true.” He mentioned the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, money spent in Iraq and said that the surge had failed to produce “political accommodation.”
Fine. But the larger, more important point is that the surge was necessary and successful. Those facts outweigh all other considerations past and present. Moreover, a recent U.S. Embassy report stated that 15 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for Iraq are being met in a “satisfactory” fashion.
Obama has fallen to pride in part because he has bought his own myth. By staking his future on a past of supernatural vision, he has made it difficult to admit human fault. The magic isn’t working anymore. And Obama, the visionary one, can’t even see what everyone else sees: He was wrong.
All other considerations past and present? Are we to believe that reducing the violence of an insurgency that our own government and its surrogates were content to deny until it absolutely, positively couldn’t be ignored any longer, down to the level it should have been in Spring 2003 when in military terms, we should have been doing things right already, neutralizes the fact that we blew apart a country, sent 4 million people from their homes, helped to create a brain drain in which there are hardly any doctors or teachers left in the cities and an unemployment rate that could reach 50 percent depending on who one talks to?
Not to mention that if we had done things right in the first place, thousands of US soldiers and Marines would be alive and full-bodied today, their brains not rattled from IED blasts, their dreams not stalked every night by the ghosts of dead Iraqi children and fallen comrades, their homes not broken and their chances for normal livelihoods more hopeful.
That’s even if one swallows whole the idea that The Surge was solely responsible for stabilizing Iraq in the first place. Obama won’t admit a mistake, because he is a smart guy – capable of understanding that foreign policy analysis can’t be popped out of a cereal box like a plastic decoder ring. He gets that the drop in violence resulted from a convergence of events “on the ground” that had as much to do with paying our former enemies to stop fighting us, the so-called “Anbar Awakening” that started before The Surge and the sectarian cleansing, as it did with the insertion of 30,000 more US troops into Iraq. Plus, Maliki found a way to ensure that his own militia – the Iraqi Army, plus an assist from the the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade –won the war of competing Shia factions in Basra and elsewhere, and Sadr’s milita in Baghdad is still lying low in a likely shrewd political calculation: there are elections (supposedly) coming up, and US soldiers wont be in his neighborhood forever. He thinks.
There are many who can breathe life into this analysis more than I, but the bottom line is this: Obama and his supporters, hell, anyone who is sick of the GOP spin cycle, can make the argument against this latest loyalty test without sounding peevish.
From Juan Cole on Thursday: The troop escalation in and of itself was probably not that consequential. That the troops were used in new ways by Gen. Petraeus was more important. But their main effect was ironic. They calmed Baghdad down by accidentally turning it into a Shiite city, as Shiite as Isfahan or Tehran, and thus a terrain on which the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement could not hope to fight effectively.
It is Obama who has the better argument in this debate, not Senator McCain, who knows almost nothing about Iraq and Iraqis, and overestimates what can be expected of 30,000 US troops in an enormous, complex country.
But the problem for McCain is that it does not matter very much for policy who is right in this debate. Security in Iraq is demonstrably improved, for whatever reason, and the Iraqis want the US out. If things are better, what is the rationale for keeping US troops in Iraq?
Rightly said, and surge proponents like Fred and Kimberly Kagan and Gen. Jack Keane still endeavor to have their bloody cake and to eat it too. Their rationale is simple: the surge worked, the battle has been won, but we cannot leave town lest the whole thing falls apart:
Past patterns suggest those [Iranian-backed] fighters will return to Iraq and attempt to restart attacks against Coalition Forces in time to disrupt Iraqi elections and to affect America’s voting. Their attacks are likely to be more spectacular, but less effective at disrupting Iraqi government and society.
Snip
The most serious error would be to withdraw American forces too rapidly. That would strengthen the resolve of both al Qaeda and Iran to persevere in their efforts to disrupt the young Iraqi state and weaken the resolve of those Iraqis, particularly in the Iraqi Security Forces, who are betting their lives on continued American assistance.
Ironically, the Surge Success mantra — which is slowly creeping into familiar “if you are not with us, you are against us” territory — is clouding the fact that violence is still a huge problem in Iraq and politically, the country is still teetering on the edge. Unless you believe, as Kagan & Co. do, “that there have been virtually no sectarian killings recorded for the past 10 weeks.” But then, one merely needs to read the news and see that whether sectarian or Al Qaeda-sponsored (as the Kagan squad pushes), there are plenty of bombings, assassination attempts and attacks on Iraqi security forces still going on to unsettle the place. The Turks are bombing northern Iraq and Diyala is reportedly on the brink.
Politically, the date for provincial elections has still not been ratified. Last week, the Kurds walked out of parliament in ongoing tensions over oil-rich Kirkuk, about the same time that the Sunnis were heralded by cheerleaders back home for ending their own five-week boycott.
Still, on the domestic front, it’s hard to predict whether this latest loyalty trap will spook the Democrats as it has often enough before. Fall into it – admit the glories of The Surge – and risk all credibility for criticizing the occupation. For, as the spin goes, if John McCain was right about the surge, he’s in the best position to determine the future of US involvement in Iraq. Just like Gen. Petraeus – not Congress – ultimately determined the level of troops there in 2007, and George Bush knew best when he invaded Iraq five years ago.
I think Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, long immune to the loyalty play, said it best on his return from touring the Middle East with Obama this week: “Quit talking about, ‘Did the surge work or not work,’ or, ‘Did you vote for this or support this,’” Hagel said Thursday on a conference call with reporters. “Get out of that. We’re done with that. How are we going to project forward?”
The War Party's Credo: Power Before Profits Why the left's analysis of imperialism is inadequate by Justin Raimondo
The War Party's Credo: Power Before Profits
Why the left's analysis of imperialism is inadequate
by Justin Raimondo
The increased likelihood of war with Iran has raised a chorus of speculation and genuine shock: how can it be that our leaders don't recognize the potentially crippling consequences of such a course? The economic blowback alone would be enough to send the world economy – already knocked off-kilter – into a tailspin. There has been a lot of discussion over this, especially in the precincts of the antiwar movement. Writing in the online edition of Counterpunch, historian and scholar Gary Leupp expresses the bewilderment and confusion of much of the left in the face of a new war's rising prospects:
"Commentators whom I respect are saying, with conviction, that there's no way the U.S. is going to attack Iran. Alexander Cockburn, Jim Lobe and Tom Engelhardt, for example, say no. Others whom I equally respect predict the opposite. Gordon Prather, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter and Justin Raimondo say yes, it's going to happen."
A clarification: I have never written that war is a certainty for the simple reason that we cannot predict the future. No one can. What we can do, however, is analyze the facts in light of past experience, and, on that basis, project what we think may occur.
Given that caveat, then, I can safely brush aside the reasoning Leupp attributes to Messrs. Cockburn, Lobe, and Engelhardt, which points to the objective constraints placed on the War Party at this point: the over-extension of US forces currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the much-touted recent successes (or, rather, alleged successes) of the "realist" faction within the administration and the national security bureaucracy, and the apparent "rage" of the neocons directed at the Bush White House coming from such quarters as the Weekly Standard. I can dismiss them so readily because, in one form or another, we have seen their like before, specifically during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and we all know how that turned out.
You'll recall that, prior to the outbreak of the war, several of our military leaders raised logistical and other technical objections: the proposed invasion force wasn't big enough, an extended deployment would put a major strain on our military machine, and eventually the whole thing would begin to break down. Rumsfeld – he of the magical "transformation" of the US military – shut them up, and forced the worst offenders – notably Gen. Eric Shinseki – into retirement. The "over-extension" argument didn't deter the Bushies then, and there is no reason to believe it will now.
As for the supposed ascendancy of the "realists" in Washington: I wouldn't bet the ranch on this alleged victory of Reason over Blood & Iron. The neocons have come from behind, more than once, to win another day, and, this time, they have an overseas ally – Israel. That ally couldn't act unilaterally against Saddam Hussein: they had to depend on the US to make the first move. They could only lobby – quietly – on the sidelines. This time, however, things are quite different: the Israelis have declared Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program to be an "existential threat" to the survival of the Jewish state, and have practically announced their intention to strike if we fail to do so. Such a strike would certainly provoke a furious response on many fronts, including in Iraq, and this would doubtless drag in the US as Israel's co-combatant.
Aside from the Israeli factor, however, you have to remember that the "realists" were thought to be on the offensive on many occasions during the long prelude to the Iraq war, and yet, in the end, the War Party had their way. As George W. Bush and the cabal that lied us into war contemplate their options and their bloody "legacy," one can't help but think we're in for the same sort of outcome this time around.
As for the fulminations of the Weekly Standard, "rage" is what the editors of that publication are selling, after all, and one has to realize – once again – that this is nothing new where the neocons and the administration are concerned. Every time Bush or one of his underlings showed the least sign of wavering in their support for making war on Iraq, the Standard and its fellow-travelers went into paroxysms of panic, warning that the President would go down in history as the 21st century equivalent of Neville Chamberlain. Aside from which, this criticism coming from the small-yet-influential sect known as the neocons is bound to be having some effect, at least within the White House – the one place where a unilateral decision to go to war can actually be made.
In any case, Leupp is torn between what he recognizes as the objective economic and political "interests of the ruling class," and the increasing evidence that the US and/or Israel are preparing a military strike against Iranian targets. He expresses his confusion thusly:
"In short Bush may, as an unwitting agent of what Hegel called ‘the cunning of Reason,' help along a process that, were he thinking rationally from his own ruling-class point of view, he would emphatically reject: the actual decline of U.S. imperialism."
Leupp comes from the old-left school that analyzes American imperialism in terms of purely economic interests: imperialism, say the lefties, means super-profits for the rich and powerful, and therefore the US is engaged in rampaging from one end of the earth to the other, looting the ruins and growing fat on tribute from its conquered subjects. Yet it hasn't worked out quite that way, has it?
Empire-building, we're finding, is an expensive proposition, and imperialism is going to have to be a nonprofit venture if carried out on a large scale. As Professor Joseph Stiglitz pointed out in his book on the subject, The Three-Trillion Dollar War, this war is unsustainable economically as well as militarily, and we simply can't maintain these sorts of expenses indefinitely. The captains of industry are beginning to grumble, and little wonder: imperialism is bankrupting the country. While the military-industrial complex is doing quite well, the rest of the economy is going unquietly to hell.
Leupp is baffled by all this, because it doesn't fit into the standard leftie-Marxoid analysis of war as the necessary outgrowth and consequence of the capitalist system. This confusion comes to the fore when he tried to explain why he thinks "it's a toss-up" as to whether war with Iran is imminent:
"I believe that the president's cabinet is, as Lenin would put it, ‘the executive committee of the bourgeoisie' of this country. It mainly represents and is answerable to a ruling class. Bush made it clear in the 2000 presidential race that the billionaires are ‘my social base.' Obviously oilmen Bush and Cheney would love to secure U.S. control over the petroleum resources of Southwest Asia and establish military bases throughout the region in preparation for future rich man's wars. But on the other hand, U.S. capitalists and oil execs in general do not seem enthusiastically united in favor of the expansion of the conflict and the destabilization of regimes (like the Saudi) that they've profitably worked with for decades. The Wall Street Journal editors might be agitating for an attack on Iran, but the U.S. ruling class is in fact deeply divided on how to proceed."
If this administration is "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie" of this country, then they ought to be immediately fired, or impeached, as the case may be – and, who knows, perhaps they will be.
Furthermore my understanding of the term "bourgeois" or "bourgeoisie" is evidently quite different from Leupp's. In my view, I am a representative of the bourgeoisie, that embattled and fast-vanishing breed of middle to lower-middle class Americans who are just barely holding on to their status in the prevailing economic conditions, i.e. the overwhelming majority of Americans. The American bourgeoisie, at least these days, isn't interested in fighting wars: the only battle they're intent on winning is the constant struggle to keep their heads above water financially while still maintaining their rather self-indulgent lifestyle. Bush, far from acting as their representative, is overseeing their destruction.
On the other hand, George W. Bush's cabinet represents various battling factions of the ruling class, one of which has been in the ascendant for the past eight years, and shows great reluctance in making any sort of concessions to its rivals. Far from being conservative – conservatism being the default ideology of the bourgeoisie – it is revolutionary, and seeks to overthrow not only the old rulers, but also the moral and ideological constraints that kept them within certain bounds.
This idea that the captains of industry – Big Oil, in particular – represent "the ruling class" is a myth, and a curiously old-fashioned one at that. Private industry has long played a subordinate role in the American power structure: far more powerful is the administrative-managerial class, which has had a firm grip on the levers of power since the New Deal and has only strengthened its hand since.
The old WASP ruling class evoked by Leupp, which consisted of the captains of industry and a substantial upper-middle class employed in the private sector, is on the way out, and has been for quite some time. What's rising, especially in the past eight years, is a new and uniquely rapacious elite, one whose loyalties to the country are by no means certain. Their allegiance is to the Empire, and its expansion, no matter what the price – a price, in any case, that will not be personally paid by them.
The left treats imperialism as the logical outgrowth of capitalism, but what we are seeing instead is the destruction of functioning markets as a direct consequence of imperialist policies – a reality that bothers our aspiring elite not in the least. Given the experience of the past eight years – and the prospect of worse yet to come – the leftist analysis of imperialism as merely capitalism gone wild is giving way to a more nuanced psychological critique, one that sees power-worship rather than money-worship as the energizing factor that keeps the motor of Empire humming.
In short, this neo-Marxist analysis of attributing our aggressive foreign policy to a plot by top-hatted capitalists is a caricature out of some crude cartoon in the old Daily Worker of the 1930s – on a date sometime before the end of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. Today, it flies directly in the face of the facts, and explains nothing. It leaves out, for example, the key role played by the Israel lobby in getting to where we are today – occupying Iraq, and on the brink of war with Iran.
In the interests of a continuing libertarian-leftist dialogue over the origins of the War Party, and its ideological and social base, I would remind Leupp and my readers of a leftist bent that neoconservatism came out of their side of the political spectrum: the first neocons were renegade Trotskyists, such as Max Shachtman, and the "far left" has contributed more than its fair share of warmongers to the current congerie. (For an extensive historical treatment of the leftist orgins of neoconservatism, see my recently re-released book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.)
In short, the leftist origins of the War Party are no secret – and, to my mind at least, no surprise. They don't object, in principle, to state control of industry, and even a massive social welfare program: a command economy meshes with their militarist program more readily than the "chaos" of the market, and lends itself to the production of weaponry over consumer goods. Extensive social welfare programs keep the masses mollified, a task all the more necessary in wartime.
What motivates this trans-ideological War Party, then, isn't the love of money – although they don't mind making a profit off the proceeds of their ideas – but rather the same world-saving mindset and ideological zeal that led to the murder of millions in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution – an event which Leupp goes on to extol as "a move forward for humanity."
Armed ideologues have been responsible for all – not most, but all – of the catastrophic bloodbaths of the 20th century, and are no doubt slated to redouble their efforts in the course of the 21st. Just how much Leupp misunderstands this tragic history is made all too clear in his final paragraph:
"My pessimism about the prospect of war is alleviated somewhat by that prospect – -the arrival of a period of ‘creative chaos.' You may recall that Donald Rumsfeld used this phrase to refer to the havoc in Baghdad (including the plundering of the National Museum) during the U.S. invasion. I refer instead to the possibility that horrific events might produce something entirely unexpected and potentially positive. The First World War led to the Bolshevik Revolution (on the whole, a move forward for humanity in my view) and a wave of (unfortunately abortive) workers' and soldiers' revolutions in Europe. The ‘War on Terror' against ‘insurgents' throughout Southwest Asia could … provoke punitive moves against the dollar while Americans struggle to cope with rapidly rising fuel and food costs. If it hurts us deeply enough, it could produce a groundswell of protest in this country – -against things that are obviously intolerable and wrong – -greater than anything we saw in the sixties. It could generate a revolutionary crisis."
Regardless of how one evaluates the Russian Revolution of 1917, one has to remember that World War I also led to the Weimar Republic, the rise of Nazism in Germany, and World War II. In the present context, Leupp's historical analogy raises a number of rather horrific possibilities. These include a new world war and the rise of an openly authoritarian movement in this country. So what, exactly, is "positive" about this scenario? The answer is: nothing!
To get back to the original point – the division in the ranks over the prospects of war with Iran – I have to say no one can know what will happen. What we do know, however, is this: there is a determined effort to drag us into war with Iran, a coordinated and well-financed campaign carried out by the same crowd that was so successful last time around. Whether they succeed or fail depends, at least to some extent, on the ability of the antiwar opposition to raise a hue and cry and mobilize the generally antiwar American public against such a prospect. There has already been remarkable progress made in this regard, including the stalling of a congressional resolution that would have endorsed a blockade of Iran and paved the way for war. We are certainly redoubling our efforts here at Antiwar.com, in spite of our rather limited resources.
The more aware the American public – and the people of all nations – are of the looming war crisis, the more likely we are to win this battle. And that, of course, is the reason and rationale behind Antiwar.com: the more the people know about the plans of the War Party – and the nature of the War Party – the more likely they are to reject them out of hand. That is why it's so important to get it right, our analysis as well as our reporting.
~ Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13213
Why the left's analysis of imperialism is inadequate
by Justin Raimondo
The increased likelihood of war with Iran has raised a chorus of speculation and genuine shock: how can it be that our leaders don't recognize the potentially crippling consequences of such a course? The economic blowback alone would be enough to send the world economy – already knocked off-kilter – into a tailspin. There has been a lot of discussion over this, especially in the precincts of the antiwar movement. Writing in the online edition of Counterpunch, historian and scholar Gary Leupp expresses the bewilderment and confusion of much of the left in the face of a new war's rising prospects:
"Commentators whom I respect are saying, with conviction, that there's no way the U.S. is going to attack Iran. Alexander Cockburn, Jim Lobe and Tom Engelhardt, for example, say no. Others whom I equally respect predict the opposite. Gordon Prather, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter and Justin Raimondo say yes, it's going to happen."
A clarification: I have never written that war is a certainty for the simple reason that we cannot predict the future. No one can. What we can do, however, is analyze the facts in light of past experience, and, on that basis, project what we think may occur.
Given that caveat, then, I can safely brush aside the reasoning Leupp attributes to Messrs. Cockburn, Lobe, and Engelhardt, which points to the objective constraints placed on the War Party at this point: the over-extension of US forces currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the much-touted recent successes (or, rather, alleged successes) of the "realist" faction within the administration and the national security bureaucracy, and the apparent "rage" of the neocons directed at the Bush White House coming from such quarters as the Weekly Standard. I can dismiss them so readily because, in one form or another, we have seen their like before, specifically during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and we all know how that turned out.
You'll recall that, prior to the outbreak of the war, several of our military leaders raised logistical and other technical objections: the proposed invasion force wasn't big enough, an extended deployment would put a major strain on our military machine, and eventually the whole thing would begin to break down. Rumsfeld – he of the magical "transformation" of the US military – shut them up, and forced the worst offenders – notably Gen. Eric Shinseki – into retirement. The "over-extension" argument didn't deter the Bushies then, and there is no reason to believe it will now.
As for the supposed ascendancy of the "realists" in Washington: I wouldn't bet the ranch on this alleged victory of Reason over Blood & Iron. The neocons have come from behind, more than once, to win another day, and, this time, they have an overseas ally – Israel. That ally couldn't act unilaterally against Saddam Hussein: they had to depend on the US to make the first move. They could only lobby – quietly – on the sidelines. This time, however, things are quite different: the Israelis have declared Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program to be an "existential threat" to the survival of the Jewish state, and have practically announced their intention to strike if we fail to do so. Such a strike would certainly provoke a furious response on many fronts, including in Iraq, and this would doubtless drag in the US as Israel's co-combatant.
Aside from the Israeli factor, however, you have to remember that the "realists" were thought to be on the offensive on many occasions during the long prelude to the Iraq war, and yet, in the end, the War Party had their way. As George W. Bush and the cabal that lied us into war contemplate their options and their bloody "legacy," one can't help but think we're in for the same sort of outcome this time around.
As for the fulminations of the Weekly Standard, "rage" is what the editors of that publication are selling, after all, and one has to realize – once again – that this is nothing new where the neocons and the administration are concerned. Every time Bush or one of his underlings showed the least sign of wavering in their support for making war on Iraq, the Standard and its fellow-travelers went into paroxysms of panic, warning that the President would go down in history as the 21st century equivalent of Neville Chamberlain. Aside from which, this criticism coming from the small-yet-influential sect known as the neocons is bound to be having some effect, at least within the White House – the one place where a unilateral decision to go to war can actually be made.
In any case, Leupp is torn between what he recognizes as the objective economic and political "interests of the ruling class," and the increasing evidence that the US and/or Israel are preparing a military strike against Iranian targets. He expresses his confusion thusly:
"In short Bush may, as an unwitting agent of what Hegel called ‘the cunning of Reason,' help along a process that, were he thinking rationally from his own ruling-class point of view, he would emphatically reject: the actual decline of U.S. imperialism."
Leupp comes from the old-left school that analyzes American imperialism in terms of purely economic interests: imperialism, say the lefties, means super-profits for the rich and powerful, and therefore the US is engaged in rampaging from one end of the earth to the other, looting the ruins and growing fat on tribute from its conquered subjects. Yet it hasn't worked out quite that way, has it?
Empire-building, we're finding, is an expensive proposition, and imperialism is going to have to be a nonprofit venture if carried out on a large scale. As Professor Joseph Stiglitz pointed out in his book on the subject, The Three-Trillion Dollar War, this war is unsustainable economically as well as militarily, and we simply can't maintain these sorts of expenses indefinitely. The captains of industry are beginning to grumble, and little wonder: imperialism is bankrupting the country. While the military-industrial complex is doing quite well, the rest of the economy is going unquietly to hell.
Leupp is baffled by all this, because it doesn't fit into the standard leftie-Marxoid analysis of war as the necessary outgrowth and consequence of the capitalist system. This confusion comes to the fore when he tried to explain why he thinks "it's a toss-up" as to whether war with Iran is imminent:
"I believe that the president's cabinet is, as Lenin would put it, ‘the executive committee of the bourgeoisie' of this country. It mainly represents and is answerable to a ruling class. Bush made it clear in the 2000 presidential race that the billionaires are ‘my social base.' Obviously oilmen Bush and Cheney would love to secure U.S. control over the petroleum resources of Southwest Asia and establish military bases throughout the region in preparation for future rich man's wars. But on the other hand, U.S. capitalists and oil execs in general do not seem enthusiastically united in favor of the expansion of the conflict and the destabilization of regimes (like the Saudi) that they've profitably worked with for decades. The Wall Street Journal editors might be agitating for an attack on Iran, but the U.S. ruling class is in fact deeply divided on how to proceed."
If this administration is "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie" of this country, then they ought to be immediately fired, or impeached, as the case may be – and, who knows, perhaps they will be.
Furthermore my understanding of the term "bourgeois" or "bourgeoisie" is evidently quite different from Leupp's. In my view, I am a representative of the bourgeoisie, that embattled and fast-vanishing breed of middle to lower-middle class Americans who are just barely holding on to their status in the prevailing economic conditions, i.e. the overwhelming majority of Americans. The American bourgeoisie, at least these days, isn't interested in fighting wars: the only battle they're intent on winning is the constant struggle to keep their heads above water financially while still maintaining their rather self-indulgent lifestyle. Bush, far from acting as their representative, is overseeing their destruction.
On the other hand, George W. Bush's cabinet represents various battling factions of the ruling class, one of which has been in the ascendant for the past eight years, and shows great reluctance in making any sort of concessions to its rivals. Far from being conservative – conservatism being the default ideology of the bourgeoisie – it is revolutionary, and seeks to overthrow not only the old rulers, but also the moral and ideological constraints that kept them within certain bounds.
This idea that the captains of industry – Big Oil, in particular – represent "the ruling class" is a myth, and a curiously old-fashioned one at that. Private industry has long played a subordinate role in the American power structure: far more powerful is the administrative-managerial class, which has had a firm grip on the levers of power since the New Deal and has only strengthened its hand since.
The old WASP ruling class evoked by Leupp, which consisted of the captains of industry and a substantial upper-middle class employed in the private sector, is on the way out, and has been for quite some time. What's rising, especially in the past eight years, is a new and uniquely rapacious elite, one whose loyalties to the country are by no means certain. Their allegiance is to the Empire, and its expansion, no matter what the price – a price, in any case, that will not be personally paid by them.
The left treats imperialism as the logical outgrowth of capitalism, but what we are seeing instead is the destruction of functioning markets as a direct consequence of imperialist policies – a reality that bothers our aspiring elite not in the least. Given the experience of the past eight years – and the prospect of worse yet to come – the leftist analysis of imperialism as merely capitalism gone wild is giving way to a more nuanced psychological critique, one that sees power-worship rather than money-worship as the energizing factor that keeps the motor of Empire humming.
In short, this neo-Marxist analysis of attributing our aggressive foreign policy to a plot by top-hatted capitalists is a caricature out of some crude cartoon in the old Daily Worker of the 1930s – on a date sometime before the end of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. Today, it flies directly in the face of the facts, and explains nothing. It leaves out, for example, the key role played by the Israel lobby in getting to where we are today – occupying Iraq, and on the brink of war with Iran.
In the interests of a continuing libertarian-leftist dialogue over the origins of the War Party, and its ideological and social base, I would remind Leupp and my readers of a leftist bent that neoconservatism came out of their side of the political spectrum: the first neocons were renegade Trotskyists, such as Max Shachtman, and the "far left" has contributed more than its fair share of warmongers to the current congerie. (For an extensive historical treatment of the leftist orgins of neoconservatism, see my recently re-released book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.)
In short, the leftist origins of the War Party are no secret – and, to my mind at least, no surprise. They don't object, in principle, to state control of industry, and even a massive social welfare program: a command economy meshes with their militarist program more readily than the "chaos" of the market, and lends itself to the production of weaponry over consumer goods. Extensive social welfare programs keep the masses mollified, a task all the more necessary in wartime.
What motivates this trans-ideological War Party, then, isn't the love of money – although they don't mind making a profit off the proceeds of their ideas – but rather the same world-saving mindset and ideological zeal that led to the murder of millions in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution – an event which Leupp goes on to extol as "a move forward for humanity."
Armed ideologues have been responsible for all – not most, but all – of the catastrophic bloodbaths of the 20th century, and are no doubt slated to redouble their efforts in the course of the 21st. Just how much Leupp misunderstands this tragic history is made all too clear in his final paragraph:
"My pessimism about the prospect of war is alleviated somewhat by that prospect – -the arrival of a period of ‘creative chaos.' You may recall that Donald Rumsfeld used this phrase to refer to the havoc in Baghdad (including the plundering of the National Museum) during the U.S. invasion. I refer instead to the possibility that horrific events might produce something entirely unexpected and potentially positive. The First World War led to the Bolshevik Revolution (on the whole, a move forward for humanity in my view) and a wave of (unfortunately abortive) workers' and soldiers' revolutions in Europe. The ‘War on Terror' against ‘insurgents' throughout Southwest Asia could … provoke punitive moves against the dollar while Americans struggle to cope with rapidly rising fuel and food costs. If it hurts us deeply enough, it could produce a groundswell of protest in this country – -against things that are obviously intolerable and wrong – -greater than anything we saw in the sixties. It could generate a revolutionary crisis."
Regardless of how one evaluates the Russian Revolution of 1917, one has to remember that World War I also led to the Weimar Republic, the rise of Nazism in Germany, and World War II. In the present context, Leupp's historical analogy raises a number of rather horrific possibilities. These include a new world war and the rise of an openly authoritarian movement in this country. So what, exactly, is "positive" about this scenario? The answer is: nothing!
To get back to the original point – the division in the ranks over the prospects of war with Iran – I have to say no one can know what will happen. What we do know, however, is this: there is a determined effort to drag us into war with Iran, a coordinated and well-financed campaign carried out by the same crowd that was so successful last time around. Whether they succeed or fail depends, at least to some extent, on the ability of the antiwar opposition to raise a hue and cry and mobilize the generally antiwar American public against such a prospect. There has already been remarkable progress made in this regard, including the stalling of a congressional resolution that would have endorsed a blockade of Iran and paved the way for war. We are certainly redoubling our efforts here at Antiwar.com, in spite of our rather limited resources.
The more aware the American public – and the people of all nations – are of the looming war crisis, the more likely we are to win this battle. And that, of course, is the reason and rationale behind Antiwar.com: the more the people know about the plans of the War Party – and the nature of the War Party – the more likely they are to reject them out of hand. That is why it's so important to get it right, our analysis as well as our reporting.
~ Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13213
The Military-Industrial Complex by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt
The Military-Industrial Complex
by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
To offer a bit of context for Chalmers Johnson's latest post on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, it's important to know just how lucrative that intelligence "business" has become. According to the latest estimate, the cumulative 2009 intelligence budget for the 16 agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community will be more than $55 billion. However, it's possible that the real figure in the deeply classified budget may soar over $66 billion, which would mean that the U.S. budget for spooks has more than doubled in less than a decade. And as Robert Dreyfuss points out at his invaluable blog at the Nation, even more spectacularly (and wastefully), much of that money will end up in the hands of the "private contractors" who, by now, make up a mini intelligence-industrial complex of their own.
Chalmers Johnson, who once consulted for the CIA and more recently, in his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the third volume of his Blowback Trilogy, called for the Agency to be shut down, knows a thing or two about the world of American intelligence. As he has written, "An incompetent or unscrupulous intelligence agency can be as great a threat to national security as not having one at all." Now consider, with Johnson, just how incompetent and unscrupulous a thoroughly privatized intelligence "community" can turn out to be. Tom
The Military-Industrial Complex
It's Much Later Than You Think
By Chalmers Johnson
Most Americans have a rough idea what the term "military-industrial complex" means when they come across it in a newspaper or hear a politician mention it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the idea to the public in his farewell address of January 17, 1961. "Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime," he said, "or indeed by the fighting men of World War II and Korea... We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions... We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
Although Eisenhower's reference to the military-industrial complex is, by now, well-known, his warning against its "unwarranted influence" has, I believe, largely been ignored. Since 1961, there has been too little serious study of, or discussion of, the origins of the military-industrial complex, how it has changed over time, how governmental secrecy has hidden it from oversight by members of Congress or attentive citizens, and how it degrades our Constitutional structure of checks and balances.
From its origins in the early 1940s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was building up his "arsenal of democracy," down to the present moment, public opinion has usually assumed that it involved more or less equitable relations – often termed a "partnership" – between the high command and civilian overlords of the United States military and privately-owned, for-profit manufacturing and service enterprises. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that, from the time they first emerged, these relations were never equitable.
In the formative years of the military-industrial complex, the public still deeply distrusted privately owned industrial firms because of the way they had contributed to the Great Depression. Thus, the leading role in the newly emerging relationship was played by the official governmental sector. A deeply popular, charismatic president, FDR sponsored these public-private relationships. They gained further legitimacy because their purpose was to rearm the country, as well as allied nations around the world, against the gathering forces of fascism. The private sector was eager to go along with this largely as a way to regain public trust and disguise its wartime profit-making.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Roosevelt's use of public-private "partnerships" to build up the munitions industry, and thereby finally overcome the Great Depression, did not go entirely unchallenged. Although he was himself an implacable enemy of fascism, a few people thought that the president nonetheless was coming close to copying some of its key institutions. The leading Italian philosopher of fascism, the neo-Hegelian Giovanni Gentile, once argued that it should more appropriately be called "corporatism" because it was a merger of state and corporate power. (See Eugene Jarecki's The American Way of War, p. 69.)
Some critics were alarmed early on by the growing symbiotic relationship between government and corporate officials because each simultaneously sheltered and empowered the other, while greatly confusing the separation of powers. Since the activities of a corporation are less amenable to public or congressional scrutiny than those of a public institution, public-private collaborative relationships afford the private sector an added measure of security from such scrutiny. These concerns were ultimately swamped by enthusiasm for the war effort and the postwar era of prosperity that the war produced.
Beneath the surface, however, was a less well recognized movement by big business to replace democratic institutions with those representing the interests of capital. This movement is today ascendant. (See Thomas Frank's new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, for a superb analysis of Ronald Reagan's slogan "government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.") Its objectives have long been to discredit what it called "big government," while capturing for private interests the tremendous sums invested by the public sector in national defense. It may be understood as a slow-burning reaction to what American conservatives believed to be the socialism of the New Deal.
Perhaps the country's leading theorist of democracy, Sheldon S. Wolin, has written a new book, Democracy Incorporated, on what he calls "inverted totalitarianism" – the rise in the U.S. of totalitarian institutions of conformity and regimentation shorn of the police repression of the earlier German, Italian, and Soviet forms. He warns of "the expansion of private (i.e., mainly corporate) power and the selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry." He also decries the degree to which the so-called privatization of governmental activities has insidiously undercut our democracy, leaving us with the widespread belief that government is no longer needed and that, in any case, it is not capable of performing the functions we have entrusted to it.
Wolin writes:
"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture, from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributory elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled." (p. 284)
Mercenaries at Work
The military-industrial complex has changed radically since World War II or even the height of the Cold War. The private sector is now fully ascendant. The uniformed air, land, and naval forces of the country as well as its intelligence agencies, including the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), the NSA (National Security Agency), the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and even clandestine networks entrusted with the dangerous work of penetrating and spying on terrorist organizations are all dependent on hordes of "private contractors." In the context of governmental national security functions, a better term for these might be "mercenaries" working in private for profit-making companies.
Tim Shorrock, an investigative journalist and the leading authority on this subject, sums up this situation devastatingly in his new book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. The following quotes are a précis of some of his key findings:
"In 2006? the cost of America's spying and surveillance activities outsourced to contractors reached $42 billion, or about 70 percent of the estimated $60 billion the government spends each year on foreign and domestic intelligence? [The] number of contract employees now exceeds [the CIA's] full-time workforce of 17,500? Contractors make up more than half the workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service (formerly the Directorate of Operations), which conducts covert operations and recruits spies abroad?
"To feed the NSA's insatiable demand for data and information technology, the industrial base of contractors seeking to do business with the agency grew from 144 companies in 2001 to more than 5,400 in 2006? At the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency in charge of launching and maintaining the nation's photoreconnaissance and eavesdropping satellites, almost the entire workforce is composed of contract employees working for [private] companies? With an estimated $8 billion annual budget, the largest in the IC [intelligence community], contractors control about $7 billion worth of business at the NRO, giving the spy satellite industry the distinction of being the most privatized part of the intelligence community?
"If there's one generalization to be made about the NSA's outsourced IT [information technology] programs, it is this: they haven't worked very well, and some have been spectacular failures? In 2006, the NSA was unable to analyze much of the information it was collecting? As a result, more than 90 percent of the information it was gathering was being discarded without being translated into a coherent and understandable format; only about 5 percent was translated from its digital form into text and then routed to the right division for analysis.
"The key phrase in the new counterterrorism lexicon is 'public-private partnerships'? In reality, 'partnerships' are a convenient cover for the perpetuation of corporate interests." (pp. 6, 13-14, 16, 214-15, 365)
Several inferences can be drawn from Shorrock's shocking expos?. One is that if a foreign espionage service wanted to penetrate American military and governmental secrets, its easiest path would not be to gain access to any official U.S. agencies, but simply to get its agents jobs at any of the large intelligence-oriented private companies on which the government has become remarkably dependent. These include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with headquarters in San Diego, California, which typically pays its 42,000 employees higher salaries than if they worked at similar jobs in the government; Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the nation's oldest intelligence and clandestine-operations contractors, which, until January 2007, was the employer of Mike McConnell, the current director of national intelligence and the first private contractor to be named to lead the entire intelligence community; and CACI International, which, under two contracts for "information technology services," ended up supplying some two dozen interrogators to the Army at Iraq's already infamous Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. According to Major General Anthony Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse scandal, four of CACI's interrogators were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for torturing prisoners. (Shorrock, p. 281)
Remarkably enough, SAIC has virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government. It is the NSA's largest contractor, and that agency is today the company's single largest customer.
There are literally thousands of other profit-making enterprises that work to supply the government with so-called intelligence needs, sometimes even bribing Congressmen to fund projects that no one in the executive branch actually wants. This was the case with Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican of California's 50th District, who, in 2006, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in federal prison for soliciting bribes from defense contractors. One of the bribers, Brent Wilkes, snagged a $9.7 million contract for his company, ADCS Inc. ("Automated Document Conversion Systems") to computerize the century-old records of the Panama Canal dig!
A Country Drowning in Euphemisms
The United States has long had a sorry record when it comes to protecting its intelligence from foreign infiltration, but the situation today seems particularly perilous. One is reminded of the case described in the 1979 book by Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman (made into a 1985 film of the same name). It tells the true story of two young Southern Californians, one with a high security clearance working for the defense contractor TRW (dubbed "RTX" in the film), and the other a drug addict and minor smuggler. The TRW employee is motivated to act by his discovery of a misrouted CIA document describing plans to overthrow the prime minister of Australia, and the other by a need for money to pay for his addiction.
They decide to get even with the government by selling secrets to the Soviet Union and are exposed by their own bungling. Both are sentenced to prison for espionage. The message of the book (and film) lies in the ease with which they betrayed their country – and how long it took before they were exposed and apprehended. Today, thanks to the staggering over-privatization of the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence, the opportunities for such breaches of security are widespread.
I applaud Shorrock for his extraordinary research into an almost impenetrable subject using only openly available sources. There is, however, one aspect of his analysis with which I differ. This is his contention that the wholesale takeover of official intelligence collection and analysis by private companies is a form of "outsourcing." This term is usually restricted to a business enterprise buying goods and services that it does not want to manufacture or supply in-house. When it is applied to a governmental agency that turns over many, if not all, of its key functions to a risk-averse company trying to make a return on its investment, "outsourcing" simply becomes a euphemism for mercenary activities.
As David Bromwich, a political critic and Yale professor of literature, observed in the New York Review of Books:
"The separate bookkeeping and accountability devised for Blackwater, DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and similar outfits was part of a careful displacement of oversight from Congress to the vice-president and the stewards of his policies in various departments and agencies. To have much of the work parceled out to private companies who are unaccountable to army rules or military justice, meant, among its other advantages, that the cost of the war could be concealed beyond all detection."
Euphemisms are words intended to deceive. The United States is already close to drowning in them, particularly new words and terms devised, or brought to bear, to justify the American invasion of Iraq – coinages Bromwich highlights like "regime change," "enhanced interrogation techniques," "the global war on terrorism," "the birth pangs of a new Middle East," a "slight uptick in violence," "bringing torture within the law," "simulated drowning," and, of course, "collateral damage," meaning the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American troops and aircraft followed – rarely – by perfunctory apologies. It is important that the intrusion of unelected corporate officials with hidden profit motives into what are ostensibly public political activities not be confused with private businesses buying Scotch tape, paper clips, or hubcaps.
The wholesale transfer of military and intelligence functions to private, often anonymous, operatives took off under Ronald Reagan's presidency, and accelerated greatly after 9/11 under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Often not well understood, however, is this: The biggest private expansion into intelligence and other areas of government occurred under the presidency of Bill Clinton. He seems not to have had the same anti-governmental and neoconservative motives as the privatizers of both the Reagan and Bush II eras. His policies typically involved an indifference to – perhaps even an ignorance of – what was actually being done to democratic, accountable government in the name of cost-cutting and allegedly greater efficiency. It is one of the strengths of Shorrock's study that he goes into detail on Clinton's contributions to the wholesale privatization of our government, and of the intelligence agencies in particular.
Reagan launched his campaign to shrink the size of government and offer a large share of public expenditures to the private sector with the creation in 1982 of the "Private Sector Survey on Cost Control." In charge of the survey, which became known as the "Grace Commission," he named the conservative businessman, J. Peter Grace, Jr., chairman of the W.R. Grace Corporation, one of the world's largest chemical companies – notorious for its production of asbestos and its involvement in numerous anti-pollution suits. The Grace Company also had a long history of investment in Latin America, and Peter Grace was deeply committed to undercutting what he saw as leftist unions, particularly because they often favored state-led economic development.
The Grace Commission's actual achievements were modest. Its biggest was undoubtedly the 1987 privatization of Conrail, the freight railroad for the northeastern states. Nothing much else happened on this front during the first Bush's administration, but Bill Clinton returned to privatization with a vengeance.
According to Shorrock:
"Bill Clinton? picked up the cudgel where the conservative Ronald Reagan left off and? took it deep into services once considered inherently governmental, including high-risk military operations and intelligence functions once reserved only for government agencies. By the end of [Clinton's first] term, more than 100,000 Pentagon jobs had been transferred to companies in the private sector – among them thousands of jobs in intelligence? By the end of [his second] term in 2001, the administration had cut 360,000 jobs from the federal payroll and the government was spending 44 percent more on contractors than it had in 1993." (pp. 73, 86)
These activities were greatly abetted by the fact that the Republicans had gained control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 43 years. One liberal journalist described "outsourcing as a virtual joint venture between [House Majority Leader Newt] Gingrich and Clinton." The right-wing Heritage Foundation aptly labeled Clinton's 1996 budget as the "boldest privatization agenda put forth by any president to date." (p. 87)
After 2001, Bush and Cheney added an ideological rationale to the process Clinton had already launched so efficiently. They were enthusiastic supporters of "a neoconservative drive to siphon U.S. spending on defense, national security, and social programs to large corporations friendly to the Bush administration." (pp. 72-3)
The Privatization – and Loss – of Institutional Memory
The end result is what we see today: a government hollowed out in terms of military and intelligence functions. The KBR Corporation, for example, supplies food, laundry, and other personal services to our troops in Iraq based on extremely lucrative no-bid contracts, while Blackwater Worldwide supplies security and analytical services to the CIA and the State Department in Baghdad. (Among other things, its armed mercenaries opened fire on, and killed, 17 unarmed civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, on September 16, 2007, without any provocation, according to U.S. military reports.) The costs – both financial and personal – of privatization in the armed services and the intelligence community far exceed any alleged savings, and some of the consequences for democratic governance may prove irreparable.
These consequences include: the sacrifice of professionalism within our intelligence services; the readiness of private contractors to engage in illegal activities without compunction and with impunity; the inability of Congress or citizens to carry out effective oversight of privately-managed intelligence activities because of the wall of secrecy that surrounds them; and, perhaps most serious of all, the loss of the most valuable asset any intelligence organization possesses – its institutional memory.
Most of these consequences are obvious, even if almost never commented on by our politicians or paid much attention in the mainstream media. After all, the standards of a career CIA officer are very different from those of a corporate executive who must keep his eye on the contract he is fulfilling and future contracts that will determine the viability of his firm. The essence of professionalism for a career intelligence analyst is his integrity in laying out what the U.S. government should know about a foreign policy issue, regardless of the political interests of, or the costs to, the major players.
The loss of such professionalism within the CIA was starkly revealed in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. It still seems astonishing that no senior official, beginning with Secretary of State Colin Powell, saw fit to resign when the true dimensions of our intelligence failure became clear, least of all Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.
A willingness to engage in activities ranging from the dubious to the outright felonious seems even more prevalent among our intelligence contractors than among the agencies themselves, and much harder for an outsider to detect. For example, following 9/11, Rear Admiral John Poindexter, then working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense, got the bright idea that DARPA should start compiling dossiers on as many American citizens as possible in order to see whether "data-mining" procedures might reveal patterns of behavior associated with terrorist activities.
On November 14, 2002, the New York Times published a column by William Safire entitled "You Are a Suspect" in which he revealed that DARPA had been given a $200 million budget to compile dossiers on 300 million Americans. He wrote, "Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every web site you visit and every e-mail you send or receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book, and every event you attend – all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as a ?virtual centralized grand database.'" This struck many members of Congress as too close to the practices of the Gestapo and the Stasi under German totalitarianism, and so, the following year, they voted to defund the project.
However, Congress's action did not end the "total information awareness" program. The National Security Agency secretly decided to continue it through its private contractors. The NSA easily persuaded SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton to carry on with what Congress had declared to be a violation of the privacy rights of the American public – for a price. As far as we know, Admiral Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness Program" is still going strong today.
The most serious immediate consequence of the privatization of official governmental activities is the loss of institutional memory by our government's most sensitive organizations and agencies. Shorrock concludes, "So many former intelligence officers joined the private sector [during the 1990s] that, by the turn of the century, the institutional memory of the United States intelligence community now resides in the private sector. That's pretty much where things stood on September 11, 2001." (p. 112)
This means that the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, and the other 13 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community cannot easily be reformed because their staffs have largely forgotten what they are supposed to do, or how to go about it. They have not been drilled and disciplined in the techniques, unexpected outcomes, and know-how of previous projects, successful and failed.
As numerous studies have, by now, made clear, the abject failure of the American occupation of Iraq came about in significant measure because the Department of Defense sent a remarkably privatized military filled with incompetent amateurs to Baghdad to administer the running of a defeated country. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates (a former director of the CIA) has repeatedly warned that the United States is turning over far too many functions to the military because of its hollowing out of the Department of State and the Agency for International Development since the end of the Cold War. Gates believes that we are witnessing a "creeping militarization" of foreign policy – and, though this generally goes unsaid, both the military and the intelligence services have turned over far too many of their tasks to private companies and mercenaries.
When even Robert Gates begins to sound like President Eisenhower, it is time for ordinary citizens to pay attention. In my 2006 book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, with an eye to bringing the imperial presidency under some modest control, I advocated that we Americans abolish the CIA altogether, along with other dangerous and redundant agencies in our alphabet soup of sixteen secret intelligence agencies, and replace them with the State Department's professional staff devoted to collecting and analyzing foreign intelligence. I still hold that position.
Nonetheless, the current situation represents the worst of all possible worlds. Successive administrations and Congresses have made no effort to alter the CIA's role as the president's private army, even as we have increased its incompetence by turning over many of its functions to the private sector. We have thereby heightened the risks of war by accident, or by presidential whim, as well as of surprise attack because our government is no longer capable of accurately assessing what is going on in the world and because its intelligence agencies are so open to pressure, penetration, and manipulation of every kind.
[Note to Readers: This essay focuses on the new book by Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Other books noted: Eugene Jarecki's The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril, New York: Free Press, 2008; Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008; Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.]
Chalmers Johnson is the author of three linked books on the crises of American imperialism and militarism. They are Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006). All are available in paperback from Metropolitan Books.
Copyright 2008 Chalmers Johnson
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13214
by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
To offer a bit of context for Chalmers Johnson's latest post on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, it's important to know just how lucrative that intelligence "business" has become. According to the latest estimate, the cumulative 2009 intelligence budget for the 16 agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community will be more than $55 billion. However, it's possible that the real figure in the deeply classified budget may soar over $66 billion, which would mean that the U.S. budget for spooks has more than doubled in less than a decade. And as Robert Dreyfuss points out at his invaluable blog at the Nation, even more spectacularly (and wastefully), much of that money will end up in the hands of the "private contractors" who, by now, make up a mini intelligence-industrial complex of their own.
Chalmers Johnson, who once consulted for the CIA and more recently, in his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the third volume of his Blowback Trilogy, called for the Agency to be shut down, knows a thing or two about the world of American intelligence. As he has written, "An incompetent or unscrupulous intelligence agency can be as great a threat to national security as not having one at all." Now consider, with Johnson, just how incompetent and unscrupulous a thoroughly privatized intelligence "community" can turn out to be. Tom
The Military-Industrial Complex
It's Much Later Than You Think
By Chalmers Johnson
Most Americans have a rough idea what the term "military-industrial complex" means when they come across it in a newspaper or hear a politician mention it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the idea to the public in his farewell address of January 17, 1961. "Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime," he said, "or indeed by the fighting men of World War II and Korea... We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions... We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
Although Eisenhower's reference to the military-industrial complex is, by now, well-known, his warning against its "unwarranted influence" has, I believe, largely been ignored. Since 1961, there has been too little serious study of, or discussion of, the origins of the military-industrial complex, how it has changed over time, how governmental secrecy has hidden it from oversight by members of Congress or attentive citizens, and how it degrades our Constitutional structure of checks and balances.
From its origins in the early 1940s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was building up his "arsenal of democracy," down to the present moment, public opinion has usually assumed that it involved more or less equitable relations – often termed a "partnership" – between the high command and civilian overlords of the United States military and privately-owned, for-profit manufacturing and service enterprises. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that, from the time they first emerged, these relations were never equitable.
In the formative years of the military-industrial complex, the public still deeply distrusted privately owned industrial firms because of the way they had contributed to the Great Depression. Thus, the leading role in the newly emerging relationship was played by the official governmental sector. A deeply popular, charismatic president, FDR sponsored these public-private relationships. They gained further legitimacy because their purpose was to rearm the country, as well as allied nations around the world, against the gathering forces of fascism. The private sector was eager to go along with this largely as a way to regain public trust and disguise its wartime profit-making.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Roosevelt's use of public-private "partnerships" to build up the munitions industry, and thereby finally overcome the Great Depression, did not go entirely unchallenged. Although he was himself an implacable enemy of fascism, a few people thought that the president nonetheless was coming close to copying some of its key institutions. The leading Italian philosopher of fascism, the neo-Hegelian Giovanni Gentile, once argued that it should more appropriately be called "corporatism" because it was a merger of state and corporate power. (See Eugene Jarecki's The American Way of War, p. 69.)
Some critics were alarmed early on by the growing symbiotic relationship between government and corporate officials because each simultaneously sheltered and empowered the other, while greatly confusing the separation of powers. Since the activities of a corporation are less amenable to public or congressional scrutiny than those of a public institution, public-private collaborative relationships afford the private sector an added measure of security from such scrutiny. These concerns were ultimately swamped by enthusiasm for the war effort and the postwar era of prosperity that the war produced.
Beneath the surface, however, was a less well recognized movement by big business to replace democratic institutions with those representing the interests of capital. This movement is today ascendant. (See Thomas Frank's new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, for a superb analysis of Ronald Reagan's slogan "government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.") Its objectives have long been to discredit what it called "big government," while capturing for private interests the tremendous sums invested by the public sector in national defense. It may be understood as a slow-burning reaction to what American conservatives believed to be the socialism of the New Deal.
Perhaps the country's leading theorist of democracy, Sheldon S. Wolin, has written a new book, Democracy Incorporated, on what he calls "inverted totalitarianism" – the rise in the U.S. of totalitarian institutions of conformity and regimentation shorn of the police repression of the earlier German, Italian, and Soviet forms. He warns of "the expansion of private (i.e., mainly corporate) power and the selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry." He also decries the degree to which the so-called privatization of governmental activities has insidiously undercut our democracy, leaving us with the widespread belief that government is no longer needed and that, in any case, it is not capable of performing the functions we have entrusted to it.
Wolin writes:
"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture, from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributory elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled." (p. 284)
Mercenaries at Work
The military-industrial complex has changed radically since World War II or even the height of the Cold War. The private sector is now fully ascendant. The uniformed air, land, and naval forces of the country as well as its intelligence agencies, including the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), the NSA (National Security Agency), the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and even clandestine networks entrusted with the dangerous work of penetrating and spying on terrorist organizations are all dependent on hordes of "private contractors." In the context of governmental national security functions, a better term for these might be "mercenaries" working in private for profit-making companies.
Tim Shorrock, an investigative journalist and the leading authority on this subject, sums up this situation devastatingly in his new book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. The following quotes are a précis of some of his key findings:
"In 2006? the cost of America's spying and surveillance activities outsourced to contractors reached $42 billion, or about 70 percent of the estimated $60 billion the government spends each year on foreign and domestic intelligence? [The] number of contract employees now exceeds [the CIA's] full-time workforce of 17,500? Contractors make up more than half the workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service (formerly the Directorate of Operations), which conducts covert operations and recruits spies abroad?
"To feed the NSA's insatiable demand for data and information technology, the industrial base of contractors seeking to do business with the agency grew from 144 companies in 2001 to more than 5,400 in 2006? At the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency in charge of launching and maintaining the nation's photoreconnaissance and eavesdropping satellites, almost the entire workforce is composed of contract employees working for [private] companies? With an estimated $8 billion annual budget, the largest in the IC [intelligence community], contractors control about $7 billion worth of business at the NRO, giving the spy satellite industry the distinction of being the most privatized part of the intelligence community?
"If there's one generalization to be made about the NSA's outsourced IT [information technology] programs, it is this: they haven't worked very well, and some have been spectacular failures? In 2006, the NSA was unable to analyze much of the information it was collecting? As a result, more than 90 percent of the information it was gathering was being discarded without being translated into a coherent and understandable format; only about 5 percent was translated from its digital form into text and then routed to the right division for analysis.
"The key phrase in the new counterterrorism lexicon is 'public-private partnerships'? In reality, 'partnerships' are a convenient cover for the perpetuation of corporate interests." (pp. 6, 13-14, 16, 214-15, 365)
Several inferences can be drawn from Shorrock's shocking expos?. One is that if a foreign espionage service wanted to penetrate American military and governmental secrets, its easiest path would not be to gain access to any official U.S. agencies, but simply to get its agents jobs at any of the large intelligence-oriented private companies on which the government has become remarkably dependent. These include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with headquarters in San Diego, California, which typically pays its 42,000 employees higher salaries than if they worked at similar jobs in the government; Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the nation's oldest intelligence and clandestine-operations contractors, which, until January 2007, was the employer of Mike McConnell, the current director of national intelligence and the first private contractor to be named to lead the entire intelligence community; and CACI International, which, under two contracts for "information technology services," ended up supplying some two dozen interrogators to the Army at Iraq's already infamous Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. According to Major General Anthony Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse scandal, four of CACI's interrogators were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for torturing prisoners. (Shorrock, p. 281)
Remarkably enough, SAIC has virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government. It is the NSA's largest contractor, and that agency is today the company's single largest customer.
There are literally thousands of other profit-making enterprises that work to supply the government with so-called intelligence needs, sometimes even bribing Congressmen to fund projects that no one in the executive branch actually wants. This was the case with Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican of California's 50th District, who, in 2006, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in federal prison for soliciting bribes from defense contractors. One of the bribers, Brent Wilkes, snagged a $9.7 million contract for his company, ADCS Inc. ("Automated Document Conversion Systems") to computerize the century-old records of the Panama Canal dig!
A Country Drowning in Euphemisms
The United States has long had a sorry record when it comes to protecting its intelligence from foreign infiltration, but the situation today seems particularly perilous. One is reminded of the case described in the 1979 book by Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman (made into a 1985 film of the same name). It tells the true story of two young Southern Californians, one with a high security clearance working for the defense contractor TRW (dubbed "RTX" in the film), and the other a drug addict and minor smuggler. The TRW employee is motivated to act by his discovery of a misrouted CIA document describing plans to overthrow the prime minister of Australia, and the other by a need for money to pay for his addiction.
They decide to get even with the government by selling secrets to the Soviet Union and are exposed by their own bungling. Both are sentenced to prison for espionage. The message of the book (and film) lies in the ease with which they betrayed their country – and how long it took before they were exposed and apprehended. Today, thanks to the staggering over-privatization of the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence, the opportunities for such breaches of security are widespread.
I applaud Shorrock for his extraordinary research into an almost impenetrable subject using only openly available sources. There is, however, one aspect of his analysis with which I differ. This is his contention that the wholesale takeover of official intelligence collection and analysis by private companies is a form of "outsourcing." This term is usually restricted to a business enterprise buying goods and services that it does not want to manufacture or supply in-house. When it is applied to a governmental agency that turns over many, if not all, of its key functions to a risk-averse company trying to make a return on its investment, "outsourcing" simply becomes a euphemism for mercenary activities.
As David Bromwich, a political critic and Yale professor of literature, observed in the New York Review of Books:
"The separate bookkeeping and accountability devised for Blackwater, DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and similar outfits was part of a careful displacement of oversight from Congress to the vice-president and the stewards of his policies in various departments and agencies. To have much of the work parceled out to private companies who are unaccountable to army rules or military justice, meant, among its other advantages, that the cost of the war could be concealed beyond all detection."
Euphemisms are words intended to deceive. The United States is already close to drowning in them, particularly new words and terms devised, or brought to bear, to justify the American invasion of Iraq – coinages Bromwich highlights like "regime change," "enhanced interrogation techniques," "the global war on terrorism," "the birth pangs of a new Middle East," a "slight uptick in violence," "bringing torture within the law," "simulated drowning," and, of course, "collateral damage," meaning the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American troops and aircraft followed – rarely – by perfunctory apologies. It is important that the intrusion of unelected corporate officials with hidden profit motives into what are ostensibly public political activities not be confused with private businesses buying Scotch tape, paper clips, or hubcaps.
The wholesale transfer of military and intelligence functions to private, often anonymous, operatives took off under Ronald Reagan's presidency, and accelerated greatly after 9/11 under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Often not well understood, however, is this: The biggest private expansion into intelligence and other areas of government occurred under the presidency of Bill Clinton. He seems not to have had the same anti-governmental and neoconservative motives as the privatizers of both the Reagan and Bush II eras. His policies typically involved an indifference to – perhaps even an ignorance of – what was actually being done to democratic, accountable government in the name of cost-cutting and allegedly greater efficiency. It is one of the strengths of Shorrock's study that he goes into detail on Clinton's contributions to the wholesale privatization of our government, and of the intelligence agencies in particular.
Reagan launched his campaign to shrink the size of government and offer a large share of public expenditures to the private sector with the creation in 1982 of the "Private Sector Survey on Cost Control." In charge of the survey, which became known as the "Grace Commission," he named the conservative businessman, J. Peter Grace, Jr., chairman of the W.R. Grace Corporation, one of the world's largest chemical companies – notorious for its production of asbestos and its involvement in numerous anti-pollution suits. The Grace Company also had a long history of investment in Latin America, and Peter Grace was deeply committed to undercutting what he saw as leftist unions, particularly because they often favored state-led economic development.
The Grace Commission's actual achievements were modest. Its biggest was undoubtedly the 1987 privatization of Conrail, the freight railroad for the northeastern states. Nothing much else happened on this front during the first Bush's administration, but Bill Clinton returned to privatization with a vengeance.
According to Shorrock:
"Bill Clinton? picked up the cudgel where the conservative Ronald Reagan left off and? took it deep into services once considered inherently governmental, including high-risk military operations and intelligence functions once reserved only for government agencies. By the end of [Clinton's first] term, more than 100,000 Pentagon jobs had been transferred to companies in the private sector – among them thousands of jobs in intelligence? By the end of [his second] term in 2001, the administration had cut 360,000 jobs from the federal payroll and the government was spending 44 percent more on contractors than it had in 1993." (pp. 73, 86)
These activities were greatly abetted by the fact that the Republicans had gained control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 43 years. One liberal journalist described "outsourcing as a virtual joint venture between [House Majority Leader Newt] Gingrich and Clinton." The right-wing Heritage Foundation aptly labeled Clinton's 1996 budget as the "boldest privatization agenda put forth by any president to date." (p. 87)
After 2001, Bush and Cheney added an ideological rationale to the process Clinton had already launched so efficiently. They were enthusiastic supporters of "a neoconservative drive to siphon U.S. spending on defense, national security, and social programs to large corporations friendly to the Bush administration." (pp. 72-3)
The Privatization – and Loss – of Institutional Memory
The end result is what we see today: a government hollowed out in terms of military and intelligence functions. The KBR Corporation, for example, supplies food, laundry, and other personal services to our troops in Iraq based on extremely lucrative no-bid contracts, while Blackwater Worldwide supplies security and analytical services to the CIA and the State Department in Baghdad. (Among other things, its armed mercenaries opened fire on, and killed, 17 unarmed civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, on September 16, 2007, without any provocation, according to U.S. military reports.) The costs – both financial and personal – of privatization in the armed services and the intelligence community far exceed any alleged savings, and some of the consequences for democratic governance may prove irreparable.
These consequences include: the sacrifice of professionalism within our intelligence services; the readiness of private contractors to engage in illegal activities without compunction and with impunity; the inability of Congress or citizens to carry out effective oversight of privately-managed intelligence activities because of the wall of secrecy that surrounds them; and, perhaps most serious of all, the loss of the most valuable asset any intelligence organization possesses – its institutional memory.
Most of these consequences are obvious, even if almost never commented on by our politicians or paid much attention in the mainstream media. After all, the standards of a career CIA officer are very different from those of a corporate executive who must keep his eye on the contract he is fulfilling and future contracts that will determine the viability of his firm. The essence of professionalism for a career intelligence analyst is his integrity in laying out what the U.S. government should know about a foreign policy issue, regardless of the political interests of, or the costs to, the major players.
The loss of such professionalism within the CIA was starkly revealed in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. It still seems astonishing that no senior official, beginning with Secretary of State Colin Powell, saw fit to resign when the true dimensions of our intelligence failure became clear, least of all Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.
A willingness to engage in activities ranging from the dubious to the outright felonious seems even more prevalent among our intelligence contractors than among the agencies themselves, and much harder for an outsider to detect. For example, following 9/11, Rear Admiral John Poindexter, then working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense, got the bright idea that DARPA should start compiling dossiers on as many American citizens as possible in order to see whether "data-mining" procedures might reveal patterns of behavior associated with terrorist activities.
On November 14, 2002, the New York Times published a column by William Safire entitled "You Are a Suspect" in which he revealed that DARPA had been given a $200 million budget to compile dossiers on 300 million Americans. He wrote, "Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every web site you visit and every e-mail you send or receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book, and every event you attend – all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as a ?virtual centralized grand database.'" This struck many members of Congress as too close to the practices of the Gestapo and the Stasi under German totalitarianism, and so, the following year, they voted to defund the project.
However, Congress's action did not end the "total information awareness" program. The National Security Agency secretly decided to continue it through its private contractors. The NSA easily persuaded SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton to carry on with what Congress had declared to be a violation of the privacy rights of the American public – for a price. As far as we know, Admiral Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness Program" is still going strong today.
The most serious immediate consequence of the privatization of official governmental activities is the loss of institutional memory by our government's most sensitive organizations and agencies. Shorrock concludes, "So many former intelligence officers joined the private sector [during the 1990s] that, by the turn of the century, the institutional memory of the United States intelligence community now resides in the private sector. That's pretty much where things stood on September 11, 2001." (p. 112)
This means that the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, and the other 13 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community cannot easily be reformed because their staffs have largely forgotten what they are supposed to do, or how to go about it. They have not been drilled and disciplined in the techniques, unexpected outcomes, and know-how of previous projects, successful and failed.
As numerous studies have, by now, made clear, the abject failure of the American occupation of Iraq came about in significant measure because the Department of Defense sent a remarkably privatized military filled with incompetent amateurs to Baghdad to administer the running of a defeated country. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates (a former director of the CIA) has repeatedly warned that the United States is turning over far too many functions to the military because of its hollowing out of the Department of State and the Agency for International Development since the end of the Cold War. Gates believes that we are witnessing a "creeping militarization" of foreign policy – and, though this generally goes unsaid, both the military and the intelligence services have turned over far too many of their tasks to private companies and mercenaries.
When even Robert Gates begins to sound like President Eisenhower, it is time for ordinary citizens to pay attention. In my 2006 book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, with an eye to bringing the imperial presidency under some modest control, I advocated that we Americans abolish the CIA altogether, along with other dangerous and redundant agencies in our alphabet soup of sixteen secret intelligence agencies, and replace them with the State Department's professional staff devoted to collecting and analyzing foreign intelligence. I still hold that position.
Nonetheless, the current situation represents the worst of all possible worlds. Successive administrations and Congresses have made no effort to alter the CIA's role as the president's private army, even as we have increased its incompetence by turning over many of its functions to the private sector. We have thereby heightened the risks of war by accident, or by presidential whim, as well as of surprise attack because our government is no longer capable of accurately assessing what is going on in the world and because its intelligence agencies are so open to pressure, penetration, and manipulation of every kind.
[Note to Readers: This essay focuses on the new book by Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Other books noted: Eugene Jarecki's The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril, New York: Free Press, 2008; Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008; Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.]
Chalmers Johnson is the author of three linked books on the crises of American imperialism and militarism. They are Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006). All are available in paperback from Metropolitan Books.
Copyright 2008 Chalmers Johnson
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13214
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Too Big to Fail? by Peter Goodman
Too Big to Fail?
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 20, 2008
IN the narrative that has governed American commercial life for the last quarter-century, saving companies from their own mistakes was not supposed to be part of the government’s job description. Economic policy makers in the United States took swaggering pride in the cutthroat but lucrative form of capitalism that was supposedly indigenous to their frontier nation.
RESCUE Christopher Cox, the S.E.C. chairman, left, and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, center, hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tell senators he wants authority to help save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Through this uniquely American lens, saving businesses from collapse was the sort of thing that happened on other shores, where sentimental commitments to social welfare trumped sharp-edged competition. Weak-kneed European and Asian leaders were too frightened to endure the animal instincts of a real market, the story went. So they intervened time and again, using government largess to lift inefficient firms to safety, sparing jobs and limiting pain but keeping their economies from reaching full potential.
There have been recent interventions in America, of course — the taxpayer-backed bailout of Chrysler in 1979, and the savings and loan rescue of 1989. But the first happened under Jimmy Carter, a year before Americans embraced Ronald Reagan and his passion for unfettered markets. And the second was under George H. W. Bush, who did not share that passion.
So it made for a strange spectacle last weekend as the current Bush administration, which does cast itself in the Reagan mold, hastily prepared a bailout package to offer the government-sponsored mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The reasoning behind this rescue effort — like the reasoning behind the government-induced takeover of Bear Stearns by J. P. Morgan Chase just a month before — sounded no different from that offered in defense of many a bailout in Japan and Europe:
The mortgage giants were too big to be allowed to fail.
Big indeed. Together, Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion worth of home mortgages. If they collapse, so may the whole system of finance for American housing, threatening a most unfortunate string of events: First, an already plummeting real estate market might crater. Then the banks that have sunk capital into American homes would slip deeper into trouble. And the virus might spread globally.
The central banks of China and Japan are on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Fannie’s and Freddie’s bonds — debts they took on assuming that the two companies enjoyed the backing of the American government, argues Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Commercial banks from South Korea to Sweden hold investments linked to American mortgages. Their losses would mount if American homeowners suddenly couldn’t borrow. The global financial system could find itself short of capital and paralyzed by fear, hobbling economic growth in many lands.
Nobody with a meaningful office in Washington was in the mood for any of that, so the rescue nets were readied. The treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., announced that the government was willing to use taxpayer funds to buy shares in Fannie and Freddie. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said the central bank would lend them money.
The details were up in the air as the week ended, but some sort of bailout offer was on the table — one that could ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Whatever the dent to national bravado, or to the free-enterprise ideology, the phrase “too big to fail” suddenly carried an American accent.
“Some institutions really are too big to fail, and that’s the way it is,” said Douglas W. Elmendorf, a former Treasury and Federal Reserve Board economist who is now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There are no good options.”
Still, there are ironies. Since World War II, the United States has been the center of global finance, and it has used that position to virtually dictate the conditions under which many other nations — particularly developing countries — can get access to capital. Letting weak companies fail has been high on the list.
Mr. Paulson, who announced the bailout, made his name as chief executive of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment giant, where he pried open new markets to foreign investment. As treasury secretary, he has served as chief proselytizer for American-style capitalism, counseling the tough love of laissez-faire. In particular, he has leaned on China to let the value of its currency float freely, and has criticized its banks for shoveling money to companies favored by the Communist Party in order to limit joblessness and social instability.
All through Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s and afterward, American officials chided Tokyo for its unwillingness to let the forces of creative destruction take down the country’s bloated banks and the zombie companies they nurtured. The best way out of stagnation, Americans counseled, was to let weak companies die, freeing up capital for a new crop of leaner entrants.
But as Japan’s leaders engaged in bailouts and bookkeeping fictions to keep banks and companies breathing, they offered those words of justification now heard here: The companies were too big to fail.
In 2002, the government engineered the rescue of Daiei, a huge, debt-laden grocery chain. In 2003, it injected some $17 billion into Resona Bank to keep it upright. Each time, Japan’s leaders said failure was not an option. It would pull too many others into a downward spiral.
Today, among strict adherents of laissez-faire economics, the offer to bail out Fannie and Freddie is already being criticized as a trip down the Japanese path of putting off immediate pain while loading up the costs further along.
For one thing, this argument goes, taxpayers — who now confront plunging house prices, a drop on Wall Street and soaring costs for food and fuel — will ultimately pay the costs. To finance a bailout, the government can either pull more money from citizens directly, or the Fed can print more money — a step that encourages further inflation.
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“They are going to raise the cost of living for every American,” said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a Connecticut-based brokerage house that focuses on international investments. “The government is debasing the value of our money. Freddie and Fannie need to fail. They are too big to save.”
Using public money to spare Fannie and Freddie would increase the public debt, which now exceeds $9.4 trillion. The United States has been financing itself by leaning heavily on foreigners, particularly China, Japan and the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf. Were they to become worried that the United States might not be able to pay up, that would force the Treasury to offer higher rates of interest for its next tranche of bonds. And that would increase the interest rates that Americans must pay for houses and cars, putting a drag on economic growth.
Meanwhile, as American debts swell and foreigners hold more of it, nervousness grows that, some day, this arrangement will end badly. The dollar has been declining in value against other currencies. Some foreigners have begun to hedge their bets by buying more euros. “Obviously, this is going to come to an end,” Mr. Schiff said. “Foreigners are not charitable organizations, and they’re going to demand that we pay them back.”
No single country owning large amounts of dollar-based investments is inclined to dump them abruptly; nobody aims to start a panic. But fears have begun to grow that one day a country may get spooked that another is about to dump its dollars — and that could trigger pre-emptive panic selling.
“Foreigners could decide it’s just not worth the risk and sell,” says Andrew Tilton, an economist at Goldman Sachs. “The really dire scenarios have become a lot more likely than they were a year or two ago.”
Still, as Mr. Tilton and others are aware, one fundamental reality continues to offer assurances that foreigners will still buy American debt:
In the global economy of the moment, the United States itself is too big to fail.
The logic for that assurance goes like this:
The American consumer has for decades served as the engine of world commerce, using borrowed cash to snap up the accoutrements of modern living — clothes and computers and cars now manufactured, in whole or in part, in factories from Asia to Latin America. Eliminate the American wherewithal to shop, and the pain would ripple out to multiple shores.
Globalization, in other words, allowed China and Japan to amass the fortunes they have been lending to the United States.
But globalization also emboldened American capitalists to take huge risks they might have otherwise avoided — like borrowing to erect forests of unsold homes from California to Florida, delivering the speculative disaster of the day. They were operating with bedrock confidence that money would never run out. Someone would always buy American debt, delivering more cash for the next go.
And this same interconnectedness appears to have reassured regulators in Washington about the health of the American financial system, as they declined to intervene against highly speculative lending during the real estate boom. Mortgages were being distributed to investors around the globe, and so were the risks, the regulators reasoned. Anyone who bought into that risk would have a strong interest in seeing that the American financial system stayed upright.
In other words, in the estimation of people in control of money, the United States cannot be allowed to collapse, just as Fannie and Freddie cannot be allowed to fail. Too much is riding on their survival.
The central truth of that logic still seems to be apparent as the Treasury keeps finding takers for American debt.
So the government offers its rescue of the mortgage companies, and foreigners keep stocking the government’s coffers. “They don’t want the U.S. to go into the worst downturn since the Depression,” Mr. Tilton says.
But all the while, the debt mounts along with the costs of an ultimate day of reckoning. Debate grows about the wisdom of leaning on foreign credit, and about how much longer Americans will retain the privilege of spending and investing money that isn’t really theirs.
Bailouts amount to mortgaging the future to stave off the wolf howling at the door. The likelihood of a painful reckoning is diminished, while the costs of a reckoning — should one come — are increased.
The costs are getting big.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/weekinreview/20goodman.html
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 20, 2008
IN the narrative that has governed American commercial life for the last quarter-century, saving companies from their own mistakes was not supposed to be part of the government’s job description. Economic policy makers in the United States took swaggering pride in the cutthroat but lucrative form of capitalism that was supposedly indigenous to their frontier nation.
RESCUE Christopher Cox, the S.E.C. chairman, left, and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, center, hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tell senators he wants authority to help save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Through this uniquely American lens, saving businesses from collapse was the sort of thing that happened on other shores, where sentimental commitments to social welfare trumped sharp-edged competition. Weak-kneed European and Asian leaders were too frightened to endure the animal instincts of a real market, the story went. So they intervened time and again, using government largess to lift inefficient firms to safety, sparing jobs and limiting pain but keeping their economies from reaching full potential.
There have been recent interventions in America, of course — the taxpayer-backed bailout of Chrysler in 1979, and the savings and loan rescue of 1989. But the first happened under Jimmy Carter, a year before Americans embraced Ronald Reagan and his passion for unfettered markets. And the second was under George H. W. Bush, who did not share that passion.
So it made for a strange spectacle last weekend as the current Bush administration, which does cast itself in the Reagan mold, hastily prepared a bailout package to offer the government-sponsored mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The reasoning behind this rescue effort — like the reasoning behind the government-induced takeover of Bear Stearns by J. P. Morgan Chase just a month before — sounded no different from that offered in defense of many a bailout in Japan and Europe:
The mortgage giants were too big to be allowed to fail.
Big indeed. Together, Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion worth of home mortgages. If they collapse, so may the whole system of finance for American housing, threatening a most unfortunate string of events: First, an already plummeting real estate market might crater. Then the banks that have sunk capital into American homes would slip deeper into trouble. And the virus might spread globally.
The central banks of China and Japan are on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Fannie’s and Freddie’s bonds — debts they took on assuming that the two companies enjoyed the backing of the American government, argues Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Commercial banks from South Korea to Sweden hold investments linked to American mortgages. Their losses would mount if American homeowners suddenly couldn’t borrow. The global financial system could find itself short of capital and paralyzed by fear, hobbling economic growth in many lands.
Nobody with a meaningful office in Washington was in the mood for any of that, so the rescue nets were readied. The treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., announced that the government was willing to use taxpayer funds to buy shares in Fannie and Freddie. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said the central bank would lend them money.
The details were up in the air as the week ended, but some sort of bailout offer was on the table — one that could ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Whatever the dent to national bravado, or to the free-enterprise ideology, the phrase “too big to fail” suddenly carried an American accent.
“Some institutions really are too big to fail, and that’s the way it is,” said Douglas W. Elmendorf, a former Treasury and Federal Reserve Board economist who is now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There are no good options.”
Still, there are ironies. Since World War II, the United States has been the center of global finance, and it has used that position to virtually dictate the conditions under which many other nations — particularly developing countries — can get access to capital. Letting weak companies fail has been high on the list.
Mr. Paulson, who announced the bailout, made his name as chief executive of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment giant, where he pried open new markets to foreign investment. As treasury secretary, he has served as chief proselytizer for American-style capitalism, counseling the tough love of laissez-faire. In particular, he has leaned on China to let the value of its currency float freely, and has criticized its banks for shoveling money to companies favored by the Communist Party in order to limit joblessness and social instability.
All through Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s and afterward, American officials chided Tokyo for its unwillingness to let the forces of creative destruction take down the country’s bloated banks and the zombie companies they nurtured. The best way out of stagnation, Americans counseled, was to let weak companies die, freeing up capital for a new crop of leaner entrants.
But as Japan’s leaders engaged in bailouts and bookkeeping fictions to keep banks and companies breathing, they offered those words of justification now heard here: The companies were too big to fail.
In 2002, the government engineered the rescue of Daiei, a huge, debt-laden grocery chain. In 2003, it injected some $17 billion into Resona Bank to keep it upright. Each time, Japan’s leaders said failure was not an option. It would pull too many others into a downward spiral.
Today, among strict adherents of laissez-faire economics, the offer to bail out Fannie and Freddie is already being criticized as a trip down the Japanese path of putting off immediate pain while loading up the costs further along.
For one thing, this argument goes, taxpayers — who now confront plunging house prices, a drop on Wall Street and soaring costs for food and fuel — will ultimately pay the costs. To finance a bailout, the government can either pull more money from citizens directly, or the Fed can print more money — a step that encourages further inflation.
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“They are going to raise the cost of living for every American,” said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a Connecticut-based brokerage house that focuses on international investments. “The government is debasing the value of our money. Freddie and Fannie need to fail. They are too big to save.”
Using public money to spare Fannie and Freddie would increase the public debt, which now exceeds $9.4 trillion. The United States has been financing itself by leaning heavily on foreigners, particularly China, Japan and the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf. Were they to become worried that the United States might not be able to pay up, that would force the Treasury to offer higher rates of interest for its next tranche of bonds. And that would increase the interest rates that Americans must pay for houses and cars, putting a drag on economic growth.
Meanwhile, as American debts swell and foreigners hold more of it, nervousness grows that, some day, this arrangement will end badly. The dollar has been declining in value against other currencies. Some foreigners have begun to hedge their bets by buying more euros. “Obviously, this is going to come to an end,” Mr. Schiff said. “Foreigners are not charitable organizations, and they’re going to demand that we pay them back.”
No single country owning large amounts of dollar-based investments is inclined to dump them abruptly; nobody aims to start a panic. But fears have begun to grow that one day a country may get spooked that another is about to dump its dollars — and that could trigger pre-emptive panic selling.
“Foreigners could decide it’s just not worth the risk and sell,” says Andrew Tilton, an economist at Goldman Sachs. “The really dire scenarios have become a lot more likely than they were a year or two ago.”
Still, as Mr. Tilton and others are aware, one fundamental reality continues to offer assurances that foreigners will still buy American debt:
In the global economy of the moment, the United States itself is too big to fail.
The logic for that assurance goes like this:
The American consumer has for decades served as the engine of world commerce, using borrowed cash to snap up the accoutrements of modern living — clothes and computers and cars now manufactured, in whole or in part, in factories from Asia to Latin America. Eliminate the American wherewithal to shop, and the pain would ripple out to multiple shores.
Globalization, in other words, allowed China and Japan to amass the fortunes they have been lending to the United States.
But globalization also emboldened American capitalists to take huge risks they might have otherwise avoided — like borrowing to erect forests of unsold homes from California to Florida, delivering the speculative disaster of the day. They were operating with bedrock confidence that money would never run out. Someone would always buy American debt, delivering more cash for the next go.
And this same interconnectedness appears to have reassured regulators in Washington about the health of the American financial system, as they declined to intervene against highly speculative lending during the real estate boom. Mortgages were being distributed to investors around the globe, and so were the risks, the regulators reasoned. Anyone who bought into that risk would have a strong interest in seeing that the American financial system stayed upright.
In other words, in the estimation of people in control of money, the United States cannot be allowed to collapse, just as Fannie and Freddie cannot be allowed to fail. Too much is riding on their survival.
The central truth of that logic still seems to be apparent as the Treasury keeps finding takers for American debt.
So the government offers its rescue of the mortgage companies, and foreigners keep stocking the government’s coffers. “They don’t want the U.S. to go into the worst downturn since the Depression,” Mr. Tilton says.
But all the while, the debt mounts along with the costs of an ultimate day of reckoning. Debate grows about the wisdom of leaning on foreign credit, and about how much longer Americans will retain the privilege of spending and investing money that isn’t really theirs.
Bailouts amount to mortgaging the future to stave off the wolf howling at the door. The likelihood of a painful reckoning is diminished, while the costs of a reckoning — should one come — are increased.
The costs are getting big.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/weekinreview/20goodman.html
Can Hank Paulson Defuse This Crisis?
Can Hank Paulson Defuse This Crisis?
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
As the Bush administration’s third Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr. has faced a brutal series of crises on Wall Street and in Washington that have sparked fiercely partisan debates.
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and JENNY ANDERSON
Published: July 27, 2008
IF Henry M. Paulson Jr. hadn’t left Wall Street for Washington to become Treasury secretary in 2006, he would still be making tens of millions of dollars a year as the chairman of Goldman Sachs. He would be comfortably zipping around the globe on a corporate jet. He would be presiding over the only big Wall Street firm that hasn’t lost billions on bad debt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/business/economy/27hank.html
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
As the Bush administration’s third Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr. has faced a brutal series of crises on Wall Street and in Washington that have sparked fiercely partisan debates.
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and JENNY ANDERSON
Published: July 27, 2008
IF Henry M. Paulson Jr. hadn’t left Wall Street for Washington to become Treasury secretary in 2006, he would still be making tens of millions of dollars a year as the chairman of Goldman Sachs. He would be comfortably zipping around the globe on a corporate jet. He would be presiding over the only big Wall Street firm that hasn’t lost billions on bad debt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/business/economy/27hank.html
Change Germans Can’t Believe In
Change Germans Can’t Believe In
By SUSAN NEIMAN
Published: July 26, 2008
WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency.
It is true that Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, featured Mr. Obama on its cover, topped by the words “Germany Meets the Superstar” — but the cover was satire, and nasty satire at that. The editors managed to find the ugliest photograph of Mr. Obama ever taken. It caught the senator at a moment that might be exhaustion but looks like conceited smirking. When Der Spiegel featured Mr. Obama on its cover in March, the cover line was “The Messiah Factor.” Must one add that this, too, was not meant to be taken at face value?
Europeans will be as relieved as 72 percent of Americans to see the end of the Bush administration, but their attitudes toward the Democratic candidate are far from being the same as the ones he arouses at home. Mr. Obama makes Europeans uncomfortable.
In Germany, politicians in front of large, shouting crowds evoke images that nobody wants to see repeated. But genuine worries about demagoguery are not all that’s at issue. The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide. George W. Bush made matters far worse than they ever were, but the neoconservatives who advised him were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams.
Not every European shows scorn for Mr. Obama. Karsten Voigt, the astute coordinator of the German Foreign Ministry’s America policies, thinks the United States is attempting a “complete renewal of its own political culture.”
But then, Mr. Voigt told me last week, he considers himself a Kantian. Very few Germans do. Robert Kagan, the conservative foreign-policy expert, once claimed that Americans are hard-headed Hobbesian realists, while Europeans are Kantian idealists, but he got it backwards. European institutions may be closer to those imagined by Enlightenment thinkers, but the Enlightenment’s spirit crossed the Atlantic long ago. The whole-hearted enthusiasm of audiences back home is an American thing. Europeans wouldn’t understand.
Berlin, in particular, is in the middle of a very post-heroic moment. Its former bravado about its history now approaches indifference. Take the awkward turquoise building where visitors from the West used to part from loved ones at the Friedrichstrasse border. Dubbed the “Palace of Tears” by East Berliners, it later symbolized the local talent for black humor and raw energy when it was turned into a disco after reunification. Surrounded by cranes at work on yet another office building, the Palace of Tears no longer has any function, nor anyone to complain about it.
So when Mr. Obama reminded Berliners of their greater moments — the airlift, the destruction of the wall — he risked more scoffing. There was plenty of speculation about which German sentence he would memorize to one-up John F. Kennedy’s famous speech.
In fact, what Mr. Obama did was far more interesting. He studied a speech given by Ernst Reuter, West Berlin’s beleaguered mayor during the 1948 airlift. When Reuter said, “People of the world, look at Berlin!” he was calling for help. When Mr. Obama echoed him, he was using the city as a model — for all the other possibilities that Berliners, and the rest of us, are slow to acknowledge.
This was no feel-good speech about working together. Mr. Obama’s riff on the Berlin airlift was a reminder that you need not drop a bomb to be a hero, and that American influence lasts when we don’t. Nor was he merely flattering his hosts about their achievements or calling to mind happier days of trans-Atlantic partnerships. He was using the past to remind us all that we need not resign ourselves to the way things are now. What better place to remember than in the heart of Berlin?
“No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions,” said Ronald Reagan in his speech calling on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. I remember that day in 1987: the eyeballs rolled upward amid jaded sighs.
Mr. Reagan’s hosts heard his remarks with not quite concealed contempt, for most saw his speech as a tiresome bit of American naïveté. They had made their peace with a structure they thought would last forever — like the barrier between rich and poor nations whose existence, Mr. Obama concluded Thursday, is the greatest challenge of this century.
In other speeches, Mr. Obama has emphasized “the extraordinary nature of America,” where loyalty is less about particular places or tribes than particular ideas: above all the idea that we are not constrained by accidents of birth. We can make of our lives what we will.
Nothing quite like this is open to Europeans. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas proposed that Germans cultivate what he calls constitutional patriotism, but neither the estimable Mr. Habermas nor his countrymen have found the language to inspire it. Americans are lucky that our national thinkers could write words that continue to ring.
Mr. Obama’s speech gave Europeans a chance to hear the difference between optimism and idealism. Optimists refuse to acknowledge reality. Idealists remind us that it isn’t fixed.
Susan Neiman, the director of the Einstein Forum, is the author of “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/opinion/26neiman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By SUSAN NEIMAN
Published: July 26, 2008
WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency.
It is true that Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, featured Mr. Obama on its cover, topped by the words “Germany Meets the Superstar” — but the cover was satire, and nasty satire at that. The editors managed to find the ugliest photograph of Mr. Obama ever taken. It caught the senator at a moment that might be exhaustion but looks like conceited smirking. When Der Spiegel featured Mr. Obama on its cover in March, the cover line was “The Messiah Factor.” Must one add that this, too, was not meant to be taken at face value?
Europeans will be as relieved as 72 percent of Americans to see the end of the Bush administration, but their attitudes toward the Democratic candidate are far from being the same as the ones he arouses at home. Mr. Obama makes Europeans uncomfortable.
In Germany, politicians in front of large, shouting crowds evoke images that nobody wants to see repeated. But genuine worries about demagoguery are not all that’s at issue. The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide. George W. Bush made matters far worse than they ever were, but the neoconservatives who advised him were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams.
Not every European shows scorn for Mr. Obama. Karsten Voigt, the astute coordinator of the German Foreign Ministry’s America policies, thinks the United States is attempting a “complete renewal of its own political culture.”
But then, Mr. Voigt told me last week, he considers himself a Kantian. Very few Germans do. Robert Kagan, the conservative foreign-policy expert, once claimed that Americans are hard-headed Hobbesian realists, while Europeans are Kantian idealists, but he got it backwards. European institutions may be closer to those imagined by Enlightenment thinkers, but the Enlightenment’s spirit crossed the Atlantic long ago. The whole-hearted enthusiasm of audiences back home is an American thing. Europeans wouldn’t understand.
Berlin, in particular, is in the middle of a very post-heroic moment. Its former bravado about its history now approaches indifference. Take the awkward turquoise building where visitors from the West used to part from loved ones at the Friedrichstrasse border. Dubbed the “Palace of Tears” by East Berliners, it later symbolized the local talent for black humor and raw energy when it was turned into a disco after reunification. Surrounded by cranes at work on yet another office building, the Palace of Tears no longer has any function, nor anyone to complain about it.
So when Mr. Obama reminded Berliners of their greater moments — the airlift, the destruction of the wall — he risked more scoffing. There was plenty of speculation about which German sentence he would memorize to one-up John F. Kennedy’s famous speech.
In fact, what Mr. Obama did was far more interesting. He studied a speech given by Ernst Reuter, West Berlin’s beleaguered mayor during the 1948 airlift. When Reuter said, “People of the world, look at Berlin!” he was calling for help. When Mr. Obama echoed him, he was using the city as a model — for all the other possibilities that Berliners, and the rest of us, are slow to acknowledge.
This was no feel-good speech about working together. Mr. Obama’s riff on the Berlin airlift was a reminder that you need not drop a bomb to be a hero, and that American influence lasts when we don’t. Nor was he merely flattering his hosts about their achievements or calling to mind happier days of trans-Atlantic partnerships. He was using the past to remind us all that we need not resign ourselves to the way things are now. What better place to remember than in the heart of Berlin?
“No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions,” said Ronald Reagan in his speech calling on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. I remember that day in 1987: the eyeballs rolled upward amid jaded sighs.
Mr. Reagan’s hosts heard his remarks with not quite concealed contempt, for most saw his speech as a tiresome bit of American naïveté. They had made their peace with a structure they thought would last forever — like the barrier between rich and poor nations whose existence, Mr. Obama concluded Thursday, is the greatest challenge of this century.
In other speeches, Mr. Obama has emphasized “the extraordinary nature of America,” where loyalty is less about particular places or tribes than particular ideas: above all the idea that we are not constrained by accidents of birth. We can make of our lives what we will.
Nothing quite like this is open to Europeans. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas proposed that Germans cultivate what he calls constitutional patriotism, but neither the estimable Mr. Habermas nor his countrymen have found the language to inspire it. Americans are lucky that our national thinkers could write words that continue to ring.
Mr. Obama’s speech gave Europeans a chance to hear the difference between optimism and idealism. Optimists refuse to acknowledge reality. Idealists remind us that it isn’t fixed.
Susan Neiman, the director of the Einstein Forum, is the author of “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/opinion/26neiman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The bold but incremental King of Saudi Arabia
The bold but incremental King of Saudi Arabia
Sultan Al Qassemi
The National, Abu Dhabi
* Last Updated: July 26. 2008 8:27PM UAE Time
At 84 years old, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not a young man, but the rest of the world should hope that he has many years left in him. His desert kingdom, roughly the size of Western Europe, hosts the two holiest Muslim shrines and about a quarter of a trillion barrels of oil, equivalent to 25 per cent of known global oil reserves.
Since officially succeeding his brother three years ago this week, King Abdullah has launched a series of important initiatives that had been stalled since the assassination of King Faisal in 1975. Half a dozen new economic cities have been launched, all with the participation of the private sector to provide jobs for over a million people.
As you are reading these lines 20,000 workers are ploughing up the land 100 kilometres north of Jeddah to build a $3 billion university of science and technology that carries the monarch's name. KAUST, as it is to be known, will eventually educate 2,000 international students including Saudi men and women studying together for first time.
The university website shows students of both sexes attending a lecture in the same hall, side by side as equals; the instructor in the hi-tech classroom is a woman wearing a skirt; welcome to the Engineering College.
Here is a king of incremental change who has witnessed what revolutions have done to the countries of the Arab world. During his reign, women have been elected as board members of the Chamber of Commerce in Jeddah, the commercial capital of a region housing the Holy shrines of Mecca and Medina. Jeddah also just held its third film festival despite cinemas being outlawed under the previous monarch.
Under King Abdullah's supervision, too, municipal elections have been held in Saudi Arabia for the very first time since 1963 – although they were very modest and not nearly a complete step.
These minor developments are especially notable if one considers that Saudi Arabia today exists as a result of an 18th century pact between the founder of the first Saudi kingdom and a puritanical cleric by the name of Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, hence Wahhabism, in which the education and religious affairs of the new state would fall into the hands of the clerics in exchange for them supporting the Al Sauds in establishing a unified state in the Arabian peninsula.
King Abdullah is above all the only Arab ruler who has proactively tried to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat by inviting President Ahmedinejad to the Kingdom and assuring him of Saudi Arabia's position of solving the stand-off diplomatically. History has shown that when an insecure person with access to dangerous weapons feels that the noose is tightening about them, desperation kicks in and that person can be capable of irrational behaviour.
King Abdullah angered the powerful and notorious Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice during the recent Madrid Inter-Faith Dialogue conference. To the horror of the Commission, not only had he invited Muslims from other sects such as Shias as well as Jews and Christians, he had also invited followers of Buddhism and Hinduism. He personally stood up to meet and greet the 300 conference guests, and in a brief, powerful speech addressed them as "my brothers", saying "man is capable of vanquishing hatred through love, and bigotry through tolerance".
Needless to say, members of the Commission did not attend the conference. The significance of the decision to choose Spain as the venue for the three-day event was not lost on observers. Today's harmonious Spain was also once a land in which intolerance and bigotry were practised against Protestants, Jews and Muslims in the name of a great faith by officials and individuals alike under the banner of the Inquisition.
King Abdullah, the patron of the Arab peace initiative towards Israel, is also the first Saudi monarch to travel to the Vatican and meet the Pope, in addition to advocating the right of women to drive, and introducing a succession committee for future kings.
Due to his advanced years, King Abdullah will likely not live to see the day in which all the projects that he is currently launching will be complete. Furthermore, classes taught by female professors, women behind the steering wheel and film festivals all hardly seem to be major leaps forward in reform. Some advocates of faster progress are no doubt disappointed, but this is not a popularity contest – however popular he is. In fact, these steps might be more successful precisely because they are incremental, as there exists a delicate balance between the thousands of individuals and groups involved in the Saudi establishment. Each clique – from secular princes to the zealots of the Commission – has varying demands and expectations.
After all, a journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with a giant leap.
Sultan Al Qassemi is a Sharjah-based businessman and graduate of the American University of Paris. He is the founder of Barjeel Securities in Dubai and Chairman of the Young Arab Leaders in the UAE
sultan.alqassemi@gmail.com
Sultan Al Qassemi
The National, Abu Dhabi
* Last Updated: July 26. 2008 8:27PM UAE Time
At 84 years old, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not a young man, but the rest of the world should hope that he has many years left in him. His desert kingdom, roughly the size of Western Europe, hosts the two holiest Muslim shrines and about a quarter of a trillion barrels of oil, equivalent to 25 per cent of known global oil reserves.
Since officially succeeding his brother three years ago this week, King Abdullah has launched a series of important initiatives that had been stalled since the assassination of King Faisal in 1975. Half a dozen new economic cities have been launched, all with the participation of the private sector to provide jobs for over a million people.
As you are reading these lines 20,000 workers are ploughing up the land 100 kilometres north of Jeddah to build a $3 billion university of science and technology that carries the monarch's name. KAUST, as it is to be known, will eventually educate 2,000 international students including Saudi men and women studying together for first time.
The university website shows students of both sexes attending a lecture in the same hall, side by side as equals; the instructor in the hi-tech classroom is a woman wearing a skirt; welcome to the Engineering College.
Here is a king of incremental change who has witnessed what revolutions have done to the countries of the Arab world. During his reign, women have been elected as board members of the Chamber of Commerce in Jeddah, the commercial capital of a region housing the Holy shrines of Mecca and Medina. Jeddah also just held its third film festival despite cinemas being outlawed under the previous monarch.
Under King Abdullah's supervision, too, municipal elections have been held in Saudi Arabia for the very first time since 1963 – although they were very modest and not nearly a complete step.
These minor developments are especially notable if one considers that Saudi Arabia today exists as a result of an 18th century pact between the founder of the first Saudi kingdom and a puritanical cleric by the name of Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, hence Wahhabism, in which the education and religious affairs of the new state would fall into the hands of the clerics in exchange for them supporting the Al Sauds in establishing a unified state in the Arabian peninsula.
King Abdullah is above all the only Arab ruler who has proactively tried to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat by inviting President Ahmedinejad to the Kingdom and assuring him of Saudi Arabia's position of solving the stand-off diplomatically. History has shown that when an insecure person with access to dangerous weapons feels that the noose is tightening about them, desperation kicks in and that person can be capable of irrational behaviour.
King Abdullah angered the powerful and notorious Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice during the recent Madrid Inter-Faith Dialogue conference. To the horror of the Commission, not only had he invited Muslims from other sects such as Shias as well as Jews and Christians, he had also invited followers of Buddhism and Hinduism. He personally stood up to meet and greet the 300 conference guests, and in a brief, powerful speech addressed them as "my brothers", saying "man is capable of vanquishing hatred through love, and bigotry through tolerance".
Needless to say, members of the Commission did not attend the conference. The significance of the decision to choose Spain as the venue for the three-day event was not lost on observers. Today's harmonious Spain was also once a land in which intolerance and bigotry were practised against Protestants, Jews and Muslims in the name of a great faith by officials and individuals alike under the banner of the Inquisition.
King Abdullah, the patron of the Arab peace initiative towards Israel, is also the first Saudi monarch to travel to the Vatican and meet the Pope, in addition to advocating the right of women to drive, and introducing a succession committee for future kings.
Due to his advanced years, King Abdullah will likely not live to see the day in which all the projects that he is currently launching will be complete. Furthermore, classes taught by female professors, women behind the steering wheel and film festivals all hardly seem to be major leaps forward in reform. Some advocates of faster progress are no doubt disappointed, but this is not a popularity contest – however popular he is. In fact, these steps might be more successful precisely because they are incremental, as there exists a delicate balance between the thousands of individuals and groups involved in the Saudi establishment. Each clique – from secular princes to the zealots of the Commission – has varying demands and expectations.
After all, a journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with a giant leap.
Sultan Al Qassemi is a Sharjah-based businessman and graduate of the American University of Paris. He is the founder of Barjeel Securities in Dubai and Chairman of the Young Arab Leaders in the UAE
sultan.alqassemi@gmail.com
Obama: Filling a Vacuum in Berlin by Norman Birnbaum
Obama: Filling a Vacuum in Berlin
by Norman Birnbaum
The Germans have a term for the vacation period, with its political non-events: Sommerloch--best translated as the Summer Vacuum. With the principal
political players out of Berlin, substitutes emerge to perform, with more eagerness than skill, and quickly return to obscurity. Sometimes even the more experienced politicians rouse themselves to say things mercifully forgotten by fall.
Whatever else Senator Barack Obama did for the Germans, he provided a couple of weeks in which the usual vacuum was filled in unusual ways. First, there was an extended internal debate on where he could, or should, speak. Chancellor Angela Merkel was prodigous with objections to his speaking at Brandenburg Gate. She was offended by the thought that an American presidential candidate would speak at Germany's holy place. I spent four months earlier in the year in Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate has been sanctified by serving as an advertising prop for any number of consumer goods. True, American Presidents have spoken there. The Chancellor, herself already campaigning for re-election next year, ignored the fact that our Presidents are always running for re-election, or helping their preferred succesors.
Her press spokesman was eloquent: no German politician would dream of speaking at America's holy place, the Mall in Washington. The Mall isn't holy at all. It has seen papal masses, gay pride gatherings, rock concerts, rallies for sexual abstinence. Of course, no German politician has spoken there: who would notice? The White House, and not the Mall, is more of a national shrine. Merkel, newly installed as head of her party, was warmly welcomed there to criticise the then-Chancellor's refusal to back the invasion of Iraq. Merkel's office, asked about the possibility that Bush had intervened to make Obama's Berlin visit difficult, was shocked, shocked, at the suggestion.
Eventually, Obama's speech was scheduled for the Victory Column, not far from the Gate. Some other politicians promptly declared it inappropriate: it was erected to commemorate Germany's last winning war, in 1870-71, against France. Were Obama to speak there, it would rouse the ghosts of the past. Those ghosts, however, have long since fled. The Victory Column has been the site of the Love Parade--Berlin's Woodstock festival--and of periodic gay rights rallies.
In fact, Obama's visit filled a larger vacuum. The German political system is fragile. Party membership shrinks, electoral participation declines. A potential left majority in Parliament (the Greens, the new Left party, and the traditional Social Democrats) is blocked by the Social Democrats' refusal to activate it. They are trapped in a coalition with the Christian Democrats in which each of the partners blocks the other's initiatives. The candidate of the Social Democrats for the Chancellorship, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is a professorial public official whose admirable solidity is more evident than his magnetism.
Chancellor Merkel's greatest gift is her refined capacity for evading hard decisions. The younger contenders for eventual leadership, by the time they get to the top, will have lost what little originality they now possess. The nation's politicians are unable to maintain the socially responsible prosperity of the post-war welfare state. Much of the electorate has fled politics--or turned to the xenophobic right.
So the Germans were astonished by the exciting US contest between Senator Hillary Clinton (herself admired in Germany and favoured by women) and a young man who has defied convention and seniority. The more they saw, the more they thought of the United States as again the land of possibility. Berlin's response was especially emphatic. Half of the citizenry, after all, had lived under two dictatorships for fifty-six years. The older West Berliners remembered JFK, and Caroline Kennedy's appeal for Obama dominated the newspapers and television the day she made it.
When Obama arrived, then, the ground was well-tilled. Hundreds milled outside to greet him at the modern Chancellor's office (termed "The Wash Machine" by the Berliners on account of its cubically square forms.) The Chancellor's staff, and Obama's, were sparse with anything but aimiable emptiness when discussing the hour-long visit.
On one point, however, the Chancellor and her rival, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were united. Germany will send more troops to the north of Afghanistan for a peacekeeping and reconstruction mission, but will not send combat forces to fight the Taliban in the south.
The Chancellor neglected to instruct her friend George Bush on what Germany has learned from its history about the limits of military power. This time, it appears, she found that she had a brighter pupil. The two enjoyed one another. Merkel has been around the world and knows political talent when she sees it.
Obama's second visit was with Foreign Minister Steinmeier. One of the diplomats told me that when the Senator entered the inner courtyard of the Foreign Ministry, it was crowded with his colleagues. German diplomats are disciplined. Applauding might have been too overt a sign of partisanship; they let their presence speak. Obama and Steinmeier in their conversation, agreed that a new diplomacy was needed for a new world--one in which the old boundaries between domestic and foreign policies, between economic projects and diplomatic measures were erased. The two former law professors share intellectual curiousity and the capacity to deal with complexity. Their collaboration would be productive.
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit is himself a media star and already planning his 2013 campaign for the Chancellorship. He overcame his regret at Obama's not calling on him at Town Hall, and came to the Hotel Adlon with the city's Golden Book of visitors for the Senator to sign.
When Obama arrived in the evening at the Victory Column for his speech, 200,000 people were there---according to one German parliamentarian, about one hundred times what a European political figure would draw. The crowd was exceedingly mixed: young and old, lots of former citizens of the Communist state, plenty of African and Asian immigrants to Germany. It is striking to compare testimony from two ends of the age and political spectrum. Writing in the Washington Post, the intelligent retired US Ambassador to Germany John Kornblum (now working in international finance after a diplomatic career not conspicuous for a principled search for a transformed world) said: "Whatever magic Obama has with youths in the United States seems to translate overseas, at least in Berlin. We had a sense of being part of something new without being able to describe what it was."
Benjamin Hofmann a couple of years ago was editing the student newspaper at the bilingual John F. Kennedy School in Berlin and is now a university student. He said that he and his friends, veterans of demonstrations against visits by Bush, felt that now they would be listened to. Criticisms of the speech as too general struck him as missing the point.
That was the view of German political figures I talked with. We know something, one said, about how hard it is to tear down walls: Obama was right to state his intention of doing so. The rest will have to follow day by day, year by year, decade by decade. He had talked with Obama's advisors. He noted they are still not without imperial hubris. Given the views of their candidate, he was optimistic that in the event of an Obama presidency, the Germans and the other Europeans could repay US efforts in postwar Germany by doing some re-education of their own.
More reports on Obama's tour:
Graham Usher: Obama in Afghanistan--Careful What You Wish For
Patrick Cockburn: Obama in Iraq--The Gift of a Timetable
John Nichols: Obama in Afghanistan--A Wrong Turn
Hillel Schenker: Obama in Israel--One Tough Audience
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080804/birnbaum
________________________________________
by Norman Birnbaum
The Germans have a term for the vacation period, with its political non-events: Sommerloch--best translated as the Summer Vacuum. With the principal
political players out of Berlin, substitutes emerge to perform, with more eagerness than skill, and quickly return to obscurity. Sometimes even the more experienced politicians rouse themselves to say things mercifully forgotten by fall.
Whatever else Senator Barack Obama did for the Germans, he provided a couple of weeks in which the usual vacuum was filled in unusual ways. First, there was an extended internal debate on where he could, or should, speak. Chancellor Angela Merkel was prodigous with objections to his speaking at Brandenburg Gate. She was offended by the thought that an American presidential candidate would speak at Germany's holy place. I spent four months earlier in the year in Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate has been sanctified by serving as an advertising prop for any number of consumer goods. True, American Presidents have spoken there. The Chancellor, herself already campaigning for re-election next year, ignored the fact that our Presidents are always running for re-election, or helping their preferred succesors.
Her press spokesman was eloquent: no German politician would dream of speaking at America's holy place, the Mall in Washington. The Mall isn't holy at all. It has seen papal masses, gay pride gatherings, rock concerts, rallies for sexual abstinence. Of course, no German politician has spoken there: who would notice? The White House, and not the Mall, is more of a national shrine. Merkel, newly installed as head of her party, was warmly welcomed there to criticise the then-Chancellor's refusal to back the invasion of Iraq. Merkel's office, asked about the possibility that Bush had intervened to make Obama's Berlin visit difficult, was shocked, shocked, at the suggestion.
Eventually, Obama's speech was scheduled for the Victory Column, not far from the Gate. Some other politicians promptly declared it inappropriate: it was erected to commemorate Germany's last winning war, in 1870-71, against France. Were Obama to speak there, it would rouse the ghosts of the past. Those ghosts, however, have long since fled. The Victory Column has been the site of the Love Parade--Berlin's Woodstock festival--and of periodic gay rights rallies.
In fact, Obama's visit filled a larger vacuum. The German political system is fragile. Party membership shrinks, electoral participation declines. A potential left majority in Parliament (the Greens, the new Left party, and the traditional Social Democrats) is blocked by the Social Democrats' refusal to activate it. They are trapped in a coalition with the Christian Democrats in which each of the partners blocks the other's initiatives. The candidate of the Social Democrats for the Chancellorship, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is a professorial public official whose admirable solidity is more evident than his magnetism.
Chancellor Merkel's greatest gift is her refined capacity for evading hard decisions. The younger contenders for eventual leadership, by the time they get to the top, will have lost what little originality they now possess. The nation's politicians are unable to maintain the socially responsible prosperity of the post-war welfare state. Much of the electorate has fled politics--or turned to the xenophobic right.
So the Germans were astonished by the exciting US contest between Senator Hillary Clinton (herself admired in Germany and favoured by women) and a young man who has defied convention and seniority. The more they saw, the more they thought of the United States as again the land of possibility. Berlin's response was especially emphatic. Half of the citizenry, after all, had lived under two dictatorships for fifty-six years. The older West Berliners remembered JFK, and Caroline Kennedy's appeal for Obama dominated the newspapers and television the day she made it.
When Obama arrived, then, the ground was well-tilled. Hundreds milled outside to greet him at the modern Chancellor's office (termed "The Wash Machine" by the Berliners on account of its cubically square forms.) The Chancellor's staff, and Obama's, were sparse with anything but aimiable emptiness when discussing the hour-long visit.
On one point, however, the Chancellor and her rival, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were united. Germany will send more troops to the north of Afghanistan for a peacekeeping and reconstruction mission, but will not send combat forces to fight the Taliban in the south.
The Chancellor neglected to instruct her friend George Bush on what Germany has learned from its history about the limits of military power. This time, it appears, she found that she had a brighter pupil. The two enjoyed one another. Merkel has been around the world and knows political talent when she sees it.
Obama's second visit was with Foreign Minister Steinmeier. One of the diplomats told me that when the Senator entered the inner courtyard of the Foreign Ministry, it was crowded with his colleagues. German diplomats are disciplined. Applauding might have been too overt a sign of partisanship; they let their presence speak. Obama and Steinmeier in their conversation, agreed that a new diplomacy was needed for a new world--one in which the old boundaries between domestic and foreign policies, between economic projects and diplomatic measures were erased. The two former law professors share intellectual curiousity and the capacity to deal with complexity. Their collaboration would be productive.
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit is himself a media star and already planning his 2013 campaign for the Chancellorship. He overcame his regret at Obama's not calling on him at Town Hall, and came to the Hotel Adlon with the city's Golden Book of visitors for the Senator to sign.
When Obama arrived in the evening at the Victory Column for his speech, 200,000 people were there---according to one German parliamentarian, about one hundred times what a European political figure would draw. The crowd was exceedingly mixed: young and old, lots of former citizens of the Communist state, plenty of African and Asian immigrants to Germany. It is striking to compare testimony from two ends of the age and political spectrum. Writing in the Washington Post, the intelligent retired US Ambassador to Germany John Kornblum (now working in international finance after a diplomatic career not conspicuous for a principled search for a transformed world) said: "Whatever magic Obama has with youths in the United States seems to translate overseas, at least in Berlin. We had a sense of being part of something new without being able to describe what it was."
Benjamin Hofmann a couple of years ago was editing the student newspaper at the bilingual John F. Kennedy School in Berlin and is now a university student. He said that he and his friends, veterans of demonstrations against visits by Bush, felt that now they would be listened to. Criticisms of the speech as too general struck him as missing the point.
That was the view of German political figures I talked with. We know something, one said, about how hard it is to tear down walls: Obama was right to state his intention of doing so. The rest will have to follow day by day, year by year, decade by decade. He had talked with Obama's advisors. He noted they are still not without imperial hubris. Given the views of their candidate, he was optimistic that in the event of an Obama presidency, the Germans and the other Europeans could repay US efforts in postwar Germany by doing some re-education of their own.
More reports on Obama's tour:
Graham Usher: Obama in Afghanistan--Careful What You Wish For
Patrick Cockburn: Obama in Iraq--The Gift of a Timetable
John Nichols: Obama in Afghanistan--A Wrong Turn
Hillel Schenker: Obama in Israel--One Tough Audience
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080804/birnbaum
________________________________________
Letter from China: Angry Youth: The New Generation's neocon nationalists
The New Yorker
Letter from China
Angry Youth
The new generation's neocon nationalists.
by Evan Osnos July 28, 2008
Tang Jie (center) believes that American attempts to contain China may spark
Tang Jie (center) believes that American attempts to contain China may spark "a new Cold War." Photograph by Ian Teh.
On the morning of April 15th, a short video entitled "2008 China Stand Up!" appeared on Sina, a Chinese Web site. The video's origin was a mystery: unlike the usual YouTube-style clips, it had no host, no narrator, and no signature except the initials "CTGZ."
It was a homespun documentary, and it opened with a Technicolor portrait of Chairman Mao, sunbeams radiating from his head. Out of silence came an orchestral piece, thundering with drums, as a black screen flashed, in both Chinese and English, one of Mao's mantras: "Imperialism will never abandon its intention to destroy us." Then a cut to present-day photographs and news footage, and a fevered sprint through conspiracies and betrayals—the "farces, schemes, and disasters" confronting China today. The sinking Chinese stock market (the work of foreign speculators who "wildly manipulated" Chinese stock prices and lured rookie investors to lose their fortunes). Shoppers beset by inflation, a butcher counter where "even pork has become a luxury." And a warning: this is the dawn of a global "currency war," and the West intends to "make Chinese people foot the bill" for America's financial woes.
A cut, then, to another front: rioters looting stores and brawling in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The music crescendos as words flash across the scenes: "So-called peaceful protest!" A montage of foreign press clippings critical of China—nothing but "rumors, all speaking with one distorted voice." The screen fills with the logos of CNN, the BBC, and other news organizations, which give way to a portrait of Joseph Goebbels. The orchestra and the rhetoric climb toward a final sequence: "Obviously, there is a scheme behind the scenes to encircle China. A new Cold War!" The music turns triumphant with images of China's Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang standing in Tiananmen Square, raising the Olympic torch, "a symbol of Peace and Friendship!" But, first, one final act of treachery: in Paris, protesters attempt to wrest the Olympic torch from its official carrier, forcing guards to fend them off—a "long march" for a new era. The film ends with the image of a Chinese flag, aglow in the sunlight, and a solemn promise: "We will stand up and hold together always as one family in harmony!"
The video, which was just over six minutes long and is now on YouTube, captured the mood of nationalism that surged through China after the Tibetan uprising, in March, sparked foreign criticism of China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Citizens were greeting the criticism with rare fury. Thousands demonstrated in front of Chinese outlets of Carrefour, a French supermarket chain, in retaliation for what they considered France's sympathy for pro-Tibetan activists. Charles Zhang, who holds a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and is the founder and C.E.O. of Sohu, a leading Chinese Web portal along the lines of Yahoo, called online for a boycott of French products "to make the thoroughly biased French media and public feel losses and pain." When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi denounced China's handling of Tibet, Xinhua, China's official news service, called her "disgusting." State-run media revived language from another age: the magazine Outlook Weekly warned that "domestic and foreign hostile forces have made the Beijing Olympics a focus for infiltration and sabotage." In the anonymity of the Web, decorum deteriorated. "People who fart through the mouth will get shit stuffed down their throats by me!" one commentator wrote, in a forum hosted by a semi-official newspaper. "Someone give me a gun! Don't show mercy to the enemy!" wrote another. The comments were an embarrassment to many Chinese, but they were difficult to ignore among foreign journalists who had begun receiving threats. (An anonymous letter to my fax machine in Beijing warned, "Clarify the facts on China . . . or you and your loved ones will wish you were dead.")
In its first week and a half, the video by CTGZ drew more than a million hits and tens of thousands of favorable comments. It rose to the site's fourth-most-popular rating. (A television blooper clip of a yawning news anchor was No. 1.) On average, the film attracted nearly two clicks per second. It became a manifesto for a self-styled vanguard in defense of China's honor, a patriotic swath of society that the Chinese call the fen qing, the angry youth.
Nineteen years after the crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, China's young élite rose again this spring—not in pursuit of liberal democracy but in defense of sovereignty and prosperity. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory and one of the early ideologists of the Internet, once predicted that the global reach of the Web would transform the way we think about ourselves as countries. The state, he predicted, will evaporate "like a mothball, which goes from solid to gas directly," and "there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox." In China, things have gone differently.
A young Chinese friend of mine, who spends most of his time online, traced the screen name CTGZ to an e-mail address. It belonged to a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student in Shanghai named Tang Jie, and it was his first video. A couple of weeks later, I met Tang Jie at the gate of Fudan University, a top Chinese school, situated on a modern campus that radiates from a pair of thirty-story steel-and-glass towers that could pass for a corporate headquarters. He wore a crisp powder-blue oxford shirt, khakis, and black dress shoes. He had bright hazel eyes and rounded features—a baby face, everyone tells him—and a dusting of goatee and mustache on his chin and upper lip. He bounded over to welcome me as I stepped out of a cab, and he tried to pay my fare.
Tang spends most of his time working on his dissertation, which is on Western philosophy. He specializes in phenomenology; specifically, in the concept of "intersubjectivity," as theorized by Edmund Husserl, the German philosopher who influenced Sartre, among others. In addition to Chinese, Tang reads English and German easily, but he speaks them infrequently, so at times he swerves, apologetically, among languages. He is working on his Latin and Ancient Greek. He is so self-effacing and soft-spoken that his voice may drop to a whisper. He laughs sparingly, as if he were conserving energy. For fun, he listens to classical Chinese music, though he also enjoys screwball comedies by the Hong Kong star Stephen Chow. He is proudly unhip. The screen name CTGZ is an adaptation of two obscure terms from classical poetry: changting and gongzi, which together translate as "the noble son of the pavilion." Unlike some élite Chinese students, Tang has never joined the Communist Party, for fear that it would impugn his objectivity as a scholar.
Tang had invited some friends to join us for lunch, at Fat Brothers Sichuan Restaurant, and afterward we all climbed the stairs to his room. He lives alone in a sixth-floor walkup, a studio of less than seventy-five square feet, which could be mistaken for a library storage room occupied by a fastidious squatter. Books cover every surface, and great mounds list from the shelves above his desk. His collections encompass, more or less, the span of human thought: Plato leans against Lao-tzu, Wittgenstein, Bacon, Fustel de Coulanges, Heidegger, the Koran. When Tang wanted to widen his bed by a few inches, he laid plywood across the frame and propped up the edges with piles of books. Eventually, volumes overflowed the room, and they now stand outside his front door in a wall of cardboard boxes.
Tang slumped into his desk chair. We talked for a while, and I asked if he had any idea that his video would be so popular. He smiled. "It appears I have expressed a common feeling, a shared view," he said.
Next to him sat Liu Chengguang, a cheerful, broad-faced Ph.D. student in political science who recently translated into Chinese a lecture on the subject of "Manliness" by the conservative Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield. Sprawled on the bed, wearing a gray sweatshirt, was Xiong Wenchi, who earned a Ph.D. in political science before taking a teaching job last year. And to Tang's left sat Zeng Kewei, a lean and stylish banker, who picked up a master's degree in Western philosophy before going into finance. Like Tang, each of his friends was in his twenties, was the first in his family to go to college, and had been drawn to the study of Western thought.
"China was backward throughout its modern history, so we were always seeking the reasons for why the West grew strong," Liu said. "We learned from the West. All of us who are educated have this dream: Grow strong by learning from the West."
Tang and his friends were so gracious, so thankful that I'd come to listen to them, that I began to wonder if China's anger of last spring should be viewed as an aberration. They implored me not to make that mistake.
"We've been studying Western history for so long, we understand it well," Zeng said. "We think our love for China, our support for the government and the benefits of this country, is not a spontaneous reaction. It has developed after giving the matter much thought."
In fact, their view of China's direction, if not their vitriol, is consistent with the Chinese mainstream. Almost nine out of ten Chinese approve of the way things are going in the country—the highest share of any of the twenty-four countries surveyed this spring by the Pew Research Center. (In the United States, by comparison, just two out of ten voiced approval.) As for the more assertive strain of patriotism, scholars point to a Chinese petition against Japan's membership in the U.N. Security Council. At last count, it had attracted more than forty million signatures, roughly the population of Spain. I asked Tang to show me how he made his film. He turned to face the screen of his Lenovo desktop P.C., which has a Pentium 4 Processor and one gigabyte of memory. "Do you know Movie Maker?" he said, referring to a video-editing program. I pleaded ignorance and asked if he'd learned from a book. He glanced at me pityingly. He'd learned it on the fly from the help menu. "We must thank Bill Gates," he said.
When people began rioting in Lhasa in March, Tang followed the news closely. As usual, he was receiving his information from American and European news sites, in addition to China's official media. Like others his age, he has no hesitation about tunnelling under the government firewall, a vast infrastructure of digital filters and human censors which blocks politically objectionable content from reaching computers in China. Younger Chinese friends of mine regard the firewall as they would an officious lifeguard at a swimming pool—an occasional, largely irrelevant, intrusion.
To get around it, Tang detours through a proxy server—a digital way station overseas that connects a user with a blocked Web site. He watches television exclusively online, because he doesn't have a TV in his room. Tang also receives foreign news clips from Chinese students abroad. (According to the Institute of International Education, the number of Chinese students in the United States—some sixty-seven thousand—has grown by nearly two-thirds in the past decade.) He's baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation are somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship.
"Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed," he said. "We are always eager to get other information from different channels." Then he added, "But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed."
At the time, news and opinion about Tibet was swirling on Fudan's electronic bulletin board, or B.B.S. The board was alive with criticism of foreign coverage of Tibet. Tang had seen a range of foreign press clippings deemed by Chinese Web users to be misleading or unfair. A photograph on CNN.com, for instance, had been cropped around military trucks bearing down on unarmed protesters. But an uncropped version showed a crowd of demonstrators lurking nearby, including someone with an arm cocked, hurling something at the trucks. To Tang, the cropping looked like a deliberate distortion. (CNN disputed this and said that the caption fairly describes the scene.)
"It was a joke," he said bitterly. That photograph and others crisscrossed China by e-mail, scrawled with criticism, while people added more examples from the Times of London, Fox News, German television, and French radio. It was a range of news organizations, and, to those inclined to see it as such, it smacked of a conspiracy. It shocked people like Tang, who put faith in the Western press, but, more important, it offended them: Tang thought that he was living in the moment of greatest prosperity and openness in his country's modern history, and yet the world still seemed to view China with suspicion. As if he needed confirmation, Jack Cafferty, a CNN commentator, called China "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last fifty years," a quote that rippled across the front pages in China and for which CNN later apologized. Like many of his peers, Tang couldn't figure out why foreigners were so agitated about Tibet—an impoverished backwater, as he saw it, that China had tried for decades to civilize. Boycotting the Beijing Games in the name of Tibet seemed as logical to him as shunning the Salt Lake City Olympics to protest America's treatment of the Cherokee.
He scoured YouTube in search of a rebuttal, a clarification of the Chinese perspective, but he found nothing in English except pro-Tibet videos. He was already busy—under contract from a publisher for a Chinese translation of Leibniz's "Discourse on Metaphysics" and other essays—but he couldn't shake the idea of speaking up on China's behalf.
"I thought, O.K., I'll make something," he said.
Before Tang could start, however, he was obligated to go home for a few days. His mother had told him to be back for the harvest season. She needed his help in the fields, digging up bamboo shoots.
Tang is the youngest of four siblings from a farming family near the eastern city of Hangzhou. For breaking China's one-child policy, his parents paid fines measured in grain. Tang's birth cost them two hundred kilos of unmilled rice. ("I'm not very expensive," he says.)
Neither his mother nor his father could read or write. Until the fourth grade, Tang had no name. He went by Little Four, after his place in the family order. When that became impractical, his father began calling him Tang Jie, an abbreviated homage to his favorite comedian, Tang Jiezhong, half of a popular act in the style of Abbott and Costello.
Tang was bookish and, in a large, boisterous household, he said little. He took to science fiction. "I can tell you everything about all those movies, like 'Star Wars,' " he told me. He was a good, though not a spectacular, student, but he showed a precocious interest in ideas. "He wasn't like other kids, who spent their pocket money on food—he saved all his money to buy books," said his sister Tang Xiaoling, who is seven years older. None of his siblings had studied past the eighth grade, and they regarded him as an admirable oddity. "If he had questions that he couldn't figure out, then he couldn't sleep," his sister said. "For us, if we didn't get it we just gave up."
In high school, Tang improved his grades and had some success at science fairs as an inventor. But he was frustrated. "I discovered that science can't help your life," he said. He happened upon a Chinese translation of a fanciful Norwegian novel, "Sophie's World," by the philosophy teacher Jostein Gaarder, in which a teen-age girl encounters the history of great thinkers. "It was then that I discovered philosophy," Tang said.
Patriotism was not a particularly strong presence in his house, but landmarks of national progress became the backdrop of his adolescence. When Tang was in junior high, the Chinese were still celebrating the country's first major freeway, completed a few years before. "It was famous. We were proud of this. At last we had a highway!" he recalled one day, with a laugh, as we whizzed down an expressway in Shanghai. "Now we have highways everywhere, even in Tibet."
Supermarkets opened in his home town, and, eventually, so did an Internet café. (Tang, who was eighteen at the time, was particularly fond of the Web sites for the White House and NASA, because they had kids' sections that used simpler English sentences.) Tang enrolled at Hangzhou Normal University. He came to credit his country and his family for opportunities that his siblings had never had. By the time he reached Fudan, in 2003, he lived in a world of ideas. "He had a pure passion for philosophy," Ma Jun, a fellow philosophy student who met him early on, said. "A kind of religious passion."
The Internet had barely taken root in China before it became a vessel for nationalism. At the Atlanta Olympics, in 1996, as the Chinese delegation marched into the stadium, the NBC announcer Bob Costas riffed on China's "problems with human rights, property right disputes, the threat posed to Taiwan." Then he mentioned "suspicions" that Chinese athletes used performance-enhancing drugs. Even though the Web in China was in its infancy (there were just five telephone lines for every hundred people), comments spread instantly among Chinese living abroad. The timing couldn't have been more opportune: after more than fifteen years of reform and Westernization, Chinese writers were pushing back against Hollywood, McDonald's, and American values. An impassioned book titled "China Can Say No" came out that spring and sold more than a hundred thousand copies in its first month. Written by a group of young intellectuals, it decried China's "infatuation with America," which had suppressed the national imagination with a diet of visas, foreign aid, and advertising. If China didn't resist this "cultural strangulation," it would become "a slave," extending a history of humiliating foreign incursions that stretched back to China's defeat in the first Opium War and the British acquisition of Hong Kong, in 1842. The Chinese government, which is wary of fast-spreading new ideas, eventually pulled the book off the shelves, but not before a raft of knockoffs sought to exploit the same mood ("Why China Can Say No," "China Still Can Say No," and "China Always Say No").
Xu Wu, a former journalist in China who is now a professor at Arizona State University, says in his 2007 book "Chinese Cyber Nationalism" that groups claiming to represent more than seventy thousand overseas Chinese wrote to NBC asking for an apology for the Costas remarks. They collected donations online and bought an ad in the Washington Post, accusing Costas and the network of "ignominious prejudice and inhospitality." NBC apologized, and Chinese online activism was born.
Each day, some thirty-five hundred Chinese citizens were going online for the first time. In 1998, Charles Zhang's Sohu launched China's first major search engine. The following spring, when a NATO aircraft, using American intelligence, mistakenly dropped three bombs on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Chinese Web found its voice. The United States apologized, blaming outdated maps and inaccurate databases, but Chinese patriotic hackers—calling themselves "honkers," to capture the sound of hong, which is Chinese for the color red—attacked. As Peter Hays Gries, a China scholar at the University of Oklahoma, details in "China's New Nationalism," they plastered the home page of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing with the slogan "Down with the Barbarians!," and they caused the White House Web site to crash under a deluge of angry e-mail. "The Internet is Western," one commentator wrote, "but . . . we Chinese can use it to tell the people of the world that China cannot be insulted!"
The government treated online patriots warily. They placed their pride in the Chinese nation, not necessarily in the Party, and leaders rightly sensed that the passion could swerve against them. After a nationalist Web site was shut down by censors in 2004, one commentator wrote, "Our government is as weak as sheep!" The government permitted nationalism to grow at some moments but strained to control it at others. The following spring, when Japan approved a new textbook that critics claimed glossed over wartime atrocities, patriots in Beijing drafted protest plans and broadcast them via chat rooms, bulletin boards, and text messages. As many as ten thousand demonstrators took to the streets, hurling paint and bottles at the Japanese Embassy. Despite government warnings to cease these activities, thousands more marched in Shanghai the following week—one of China's largest demonstrations in years—and vandalized the Japanese consulate. At one point, Shanghai police cut off cell-phone service in downtown Shanghai.
"Up to now, the Chinese government has been able to keep a grip on it," Xu Wu told me. "But I call it the 'virtual Tiananmen Square.' They don't need to go there. They can do the same thing online and sometimes be even more damaging."
Tang was at dinner with friends one night in 2004 when he met Wan Manlu, an elegantly reserved Ph.D. student in Chinese literature and linguistics. Her delicate features suited her name, which includes the character for the finest jade. They sat side by side, but barely spoke. Later, Tang hunted down her screen name—gracelittle—and sent her a private message on Fudan's bulletin board. They worked up to a first date: an experimental opera based on "Regret for the Past," a Chinese story.
They discovered that they shared a frustration with China's unbridled Westernization. "Chinese tradition has many good things, but we've ditched them," Wan told me. "I feel there have to be people to carry them on." She came from a middle-class home, and Tang's humble roots and old-fashioned values impressed her. "Most of my generation has a smooth, happy life, including me," she said. "I feel like our character lacks something. For example, love for the country or the perseverance you get from conquering hardships. Those virtues, I don't see them in myself and many people my age."
She added, "For him, from that kind of background, with nobody educated in his family, nobody helping him with schoolwork, with great family pressure, it's not easy to get where he is today."
They were engaged this spring. In their years together, Wan watched Tang fall in with a group of students devoted to a charismatic thirty-nine-year-old Fudan philosophy professor named Ding Yun. He is a translator of Leo Strauss, the political philosopher whose admirers include Harvey Mansfield and other neoconservatives. A Strauss student, Abram Shulsky, who co-authored a 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)," ran the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans before the invasion of Iraq. Since then, other Strauss disciples have vigorously ridiculed suggestions of a connection between Strauss's thought and Bush-era foreign policy.
I saw Mansfield in Shanghai in May, during his first visit to China, at a dinner with a small group of conservative scholars. He was wearing a honey-colored panama and was in good spirits, though he seemed a bit puzzled by all the fuss they were making about him. His first question to the table: "Why would Chinese scholars be interested in Leo Strauss?"
Professor Ding teaches a Straussian regard for the universality of the classics and encourages his students to revive ancient Chinese thought. "During the nineteen-eighties and nineties, most intellectuals had a negative opinion of China's traditional culture," he told me recently. He has close-cropped hair and stylish rectangular glasses, and favors the conspicuously retro loose-fitting shirts of a Tang-dynasty scholar. When Ding grew up, in the early years of reform, "conservative" was a derogatory term, just like "reactionary," he said.
But Ding and others have thrived in recent years amid a new vein of conservatism which runs counter to China's drive for integration with the world. Just as America's conservative movement in the nineteen-sixties capitalized on the yearning for a post-liberal retreat to morality and nobility, China's classical revival draws on a nostalgic image of what it means to be Chinese. The biggest surprise best-seller of recent years is, arguably, "Yu Dan's Reflections on the Analects," a collection of Confucian lectures delivered by Yu, a telegenic Beijing professor of media studies. She writes, "To assess a country's true strength and prosperity, you can't simply look at GNP growth and not look at the inner experience of each ordinary person: Does he feel safe? Is he happy?" (Skeptics argue that it's simply "Chicken Soup for the Confucian Soul.")
Professor Ding met Tang in 2003, at the entrance interview for graduate students. "I was the person in charge of the exam," Ding recalled. "I sensed that this kid is very smart and diligent." He admitted Tang to the program, and watched with satisfaction as Tang and other students pushed back against the onslaught of Westernization. Tang developed an appetite for the classics. "The fact is we are very Westernized," he said. "Now we started reading ancient Chinese books and we rediscovered the ancient China."
This renewed pride has also affected the way Tang and his peers view the economy. They took to a theory that the world profits from China but blocks its attempts to invest abroad. Tang's friend Zeng smiled disdainfully as he ticked off examples of Chinese companies that have tried to invest in America.
"Huawei's bid to buy 3Com was rejected," he said. "C.N.O.O.C.'s bid to buy into Unocal and Lenovo's purchase of part of I.B.M. caused political repercussions. If it's not a market argument, it's a political argument. We think the world is a free market—"
Before he could finish, Tang jumped in. "This is what you—America—taught us," he said. "We opened our market, but when we try to buy your companies we hit political obstacles. It's not fair."
Their view, which is popular in China across ideological lines, has validity: American politicians have invoked national-security concerns, with varying degrees of credibility, to oppose Chinese direct investment. But Tang's view, infused with a sense of victimhood, also obscures some evidence to the contrary: China has succeeded in other deals abroad (its sovereign-wealth fund has stakes in the Blackstone Group and in Morgan Stanley), and though China has taken steps to open its markets to foreigners, it remains equally inclined to reject an American attempt to buy an asset as sensitive as a Chinese oil company.
Tang's belief that the United States will seek to obstruct China's rise—"a new Cold War"— extends beyond economics to broader American policy. Disparate issues of relatively minor importance to Americans, such as support for Taiwan and Washington's calls to raise the value of the yuan, have metastasized in China into a feeling of strategic containment. In polls, the Chinese public has not demonstrated a significant preference for either Barack Obama or John McCain, though Obama has attracted negative attention for saying that, were he President, he might boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Tang and his friends have watched some debates online, but the young patriots tend to see the race in broader terms. "No matter who is elected, China is still China and will go the way it goes," one recent posting in a discussion about Obama said. "Who can stand in the way of the march of history?"
This spring, Tang stayed at his family's farm for five days before he could return to Shanghai and finish his movie. He scoured the Web for photographs on the subjects that bother him and his friends, everything from inflation to Taiwan's threats of independence. He selected some of the pictures because they were evocative—a man raising his arm in a sea of Chinese flags reminded him of Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People"—and chose others because they embodied the political moment: a wheelchair-bound Chinese amputee carrying the Olympic flame in Paris, for instance, fending off a protester who was trying to snatch it away.
For a soundtrack, he typed "solemn music" into Baidu, a Chinese search engine, and scanned the results. He landed on a piece by Vangelis, a Yanni-style pop composer from Greece who is best known for his score for the movie "Chariots of Fire." Tang's favorite Vangelis track was from a Gérard Depardieu film about Christopher Columbus called "1492: Conquest of Paradise." He watched a few seconds of Depardieu standing manfully on the deck of a tall ship, coursing across the Atlantic. Perfect, Tang thought: "It was a time of globalization."
Tang added scenes of Chairman Mao and the Olympic track star Liu Xiang, both icons of their eras. The film was six minutes and sixteen seconds long. Some title screens in English were full of mistakes, because he was hurrying, but he was anxious to release it. He posted the film to Sina and sent a note to the Fudan bulletin board. As the film climbed in popularity, Professor Ding rejoiced. "We used to think they were just a postmodern, Occidentalized generation," Ding said. "Of course, I thought the students I knew were very good, but the wider generation? I was not very pleased. To see the content of Tang Jie's video, and the scale of its popularity among the youth, made me very happy. Very happy."
Not everyone was pleased. Young patriots are so polarizing in China that some people, by changing the intonation in Chinese, pronounce "angry youth" as "shit youth."
"How can our national self-respect be so fragile and shallow?" Han Han, one of China's most popular young writers, wrote on his blog, in an essay about nationalism. "Somebody says you're a mob, so you curse him, even want to beat him, and then you say, We're not a mob. This is as if someone said you were a fool, so you held up a big sign in front of his girlfriend's brother's dog, saying 'I Am Not a Fool.' The message will get to him, but he'll still think you're a fool."
If the activists thought that they were defending China's image abroad, there was little sign of success. After weeks of patriotic rhetoric emanating from China, a poll sponsored by the Financial Times showed that Europeans now ranked China as the greatest threat to global stability, surpassing America.
But the eruption of the angry youth has been even more disconcerting to those interested in furthering democracy. By age and education, Tang and his peers inherit a long legacy of activism that stretches from 1919, when nationalist demonstrators demanded "Mr. Democracy" and "Mr. Science," to 1989, when students flooded Tiananmen Square, challenging the government and erecting a sculpture inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of that movement, but the events of this spring suggest that prosperity, computers, and Westernization have not driven China's young élite toward tolerance but, rather, persuaded more than a few of them to postpone idealism as long as life keeps improving. The students in 1989 were rebelling against corruption and abuses of power. "Nowadays, these issues haven't disappeared but have worsened," Li Datong, an outspoken newspaper editor and reform advocate, told me. "However, the current young generation turns a blind eye to it. I've never seen them respond to those major domestic issues. Rather, they take a utilitarian, opportunistic approach."
One caricature of young Chinese holds that they know virtually nothing about the crackdown at Tiananmen Square—known in Chinese as "the June 4th incident"—because the authorities have purged it from the nation's official history. It's not that simple, however. Anyone who can click on a proxy server can discover as much about Tiananmen as he chooses to learn. And yet many Chinese have concluded that the movement was misguided and naïve.
"We accept all the values of human rights, of democracy," Tang told me. "We accept that. The issue is how to realize it."
I met dozens of urbane students and young professionals this spring, and we often got to talking about Tiananmen Square. In a typical conversation, one college senior asked whether she should interpret the killing of protesters at Kent State in 1970 as a fair measure of American freedom. Liu Yang, a graduate student in environmental engineering, said, "June 4th could not and should not succeed at that time. If June 4th had succeeded, China would be worse and worse, not better."
Liu, who is twenty-six, once considered himself a liberal. As a teen-ager, he and his friends happily criticized the Communist Party. "In the nineteen-nineties, I thought that the Chinese government is not good enough. Maybe we need to set up a better government," he told me. "The problem is that we didn't know what a good government would be. So we let the Chinese Communist Party stay in place. The other problem is we didn't have the power to get them out. They have the Army!"
When Liu got out of college, he found a good job as an engineer at an oil-services company. He was earning more money in a month than his parents—retired laborers living on a pension—earned in a year. Eventually, he saved enough money that, with scholarships, he was able to enroll in a Ph.D. program at Stanford. He had little interest in the patriotic pageantry of the Olympics until he saw the fracas around the torch in Paris. "We were furious," he said, and when the torch came to San Francisco he and other Chinese students surged toward the relay route to support it. I was in San Francisco not long ago, and we arranged to meet at a Starbucks near his dorm, in Palo Alto. He arrived on his mountain bike, wearing a Nautica fleece pullover and jeans.
The date, we both knew, was June 4th, nineteen years since soldiers put down the Tiananmen uprising. The overseas Chinese students' bulletin board had been alive all afternoon with discussions of the anniversary. Liu mentioned the famous photograph of an unknown man standing in front of a tank—perhaps the most provocative image in modern Chinese history.
"We really acknowledge him. We really think he was brave," Liu told me. But, of that generation, he said, "They fought for China, to make the country better. And there were some faults of the government. But, finally, we must admit that the Chinese government had to use any way it could to put down that event."
Sitting in the cool quiet of a California night, sipping his coffee, Liu said that he is not willing to risk all that his generation enjoys at home in order to hasten the liberties he has come to know in America. "Do you live on democracy?" he asked me. "You eat bread, you drink coffee. All of these are not brought by democracy. Indian guys have democracy, and some African countries have democracy, but they can't feed their own people.
"Chinese people have begun to think, One part is the good life, another part is democracy," Liu went on. "If democracy can really give you the good life, that's good. But, without democracy, if we can still have the good life why should we choose democracy?"
When the Olympic torch returned to China, in May, for the final journey to Beijing, the Chinese seemed determined to make up for its woes abroad. Crowds overflowed along the torch's route. One afternoon, Tang and I set off to watch the torch traverse a suburb of Shanghai.
At the time, the country was still in a state of shock following the May 12th earthquake in the mountains of Sichuan Province, which killed more than sixty-nine thousand people and left millions homeless. It was the worst disaster in three decades, but it also produced a rare moment of national unity. Donations poured in, revealing the positive side of the patriotism that had erupted weeks earlier.
The initial rhetoric of that nationalist outcry contained a spirit of violence that anyone old enough to remember the Red Guards—or the rise of skinheads in Europe—could not casually dismiss. And that spirit had materialized, in ugly episodes: when the Olympic torch reached South Korea, Chinese and rival protesters fought in the streets. The Korean government said it would deport Chinese agitators, though a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stood by the demonstrators' original intent to "safeguard the dignity of the torch." Chinese students overseas emerged as some of the most vocal patriots. According to the Times, at the University of Southern California they marshalled statistics and photographs to challenge a visiting Tibetan monk during a lecture. Then someone threw a plastic water bottle in the monk's direction, and campus security removed the man who tossed it. At Cornell, an anthropology professor who arranged for the screening of a film on Tibet informed the crowd that, on a Web forum for Chinese students, she was "told to 'go die.' " At Duke University, Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman, tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-China protesters on campus. But online she was branded a "race traitor." People ferreted out her mother's address, in the seaside city of Qingdao, and vandalized their home. Her mother, an accountant, remains in hiding. Of her mother, Grace Wang said, "I really don't know where she is, and I think it's better for me not to know."
Now in summer school at Duke, Grace Wang does not regret speaking up, but she says that she misjudged how others her age, online but frustrated in China, would resent her. "When people can't express themselves in real life, what can they do? They definitely have to express their anger toward someone. I'm far away. They don't know me, so they don't feel sorry about it. They say whatever they want." She doesn't know when she'll return home (she becomes uneasy when she is recognized in Chinese restaurants near campus), but she takes comfort in the fact that history is filled with names once vilified, later rehabilitated. "This is just like what happened in the Cultural Revolution," she said. "Think about how Deng Xiaoping was treated at that time, and then, in just ten years, things had changed completely."
In the end, nothing came of the threats to foreign journalists. No blood was shed. After the chaos around the torch in Paris, the Chinese efforts to boycott Carrefour fizzled. China's leaders, awakening to their deteriorating image abroad, ultimately reined in the students with a call for only "rational patriotism."
"We do not want any violence," Tang told me. He and his peers had merely been desperate for someone to hear them. They felt no connection to Tiananmen Square, but, in sending their voices out onto the Web, they, too, had spoken for their moment in time. Their fury, Li Datong, the newspaper editor, told me, arose from "the accumulated desire for expression—just like when a flood suddenly races into a breach." Because a flood moves in whatever direction it chooses, the young conservatives are, to China's ruling class, an unnerving new force. They "are acutely aware that their country, whose resurgence they feel and admire, has no principle to guide it," Harvey Mansfield wrote in an e-mail to me, after his visit. "Some of them see . . . that liberalism in the West has lost its belief in itself, and they turn to Leo Strauss for conservatism that is based on principle, on 'natural right.' This conservatism is distinct from a status-quo conservatism, because they are not satisfied with a country that has only a status quo and not a principle."
In the weeks after Tang's video went viral, he made a series of others, about youth, the earthquake, China's leaders. None of his follow-ups generated more than a flicker of the attention of the original. The Web had moved on—to newer nationalist films and other distractions.
As Tang and I approached the torch-relay route, he said, "Look at the people. Everyone thinks this is their own Olympics."
Venders were selling T-shirts, big Chinese flags, headbands, and mini-flags. Tang told me to wait until the torch passed, because hawkers would then cut prices by up to fifty per cent. He was carrying a plastic bag and fished around in it for a bright-red scarf of the kind that Chinese children wear to signal membership in the Young Pioneers, a kind of Socialist Boy Scouts. He tied it around his neck and grinned. He offered one to a passing teen-ager, who politely declined.
The air was stagnant and thick beneath a canopy of haze, but the mood was exuberant. Time was ticking down to the torch's arrival, and the town was coming out for a look: a man in a dark suit, sweating and smoothing his hair; a construction worker in an orange helmet and farmer's galoshes; a bellboy in a vaguely nautical getup.
Some younger spectators were wearing T-shirts inspired by China's recent troubles: "Love China, Oppose Divisions, Oppose Tibetan Independence," read a popular one. All around us, people strained for a better perch. A woman hung off a lamppost. A young man in a red headband climbed a tree.
The crowd's enthusiasm seemed to brighten Tang's view of things, reminding him that China's future belongs to him and to those around him. "When I stand here, I can feel, deeply, the common emotion of Chinese youth," he said. "We are self-confident."
Police blocked the road. A frisson swept through the crowd. People surged toward the curb, straining to see over one another's heads. But Tang hung back. He is a patient man. ♦
PHOTOGRAPH: PANOS PICTURES
Letter from China
Angry Youth
The new generation's neocon nationalists.
by Evan Osnos July 28, 2008
Tang Jie (center) believes that American attempts to contain China may spark
Tang Jie (center) believes that American attempts to contain China may spark "a new Cold War." Photograph by Ian Teh.
On the morning of April 15th, a short video entitled "2008 China Stand Up!" appeared on Sina, a Chinese Web site. The video's origin was a mystery: unlike the usual YouTube-style clips, it had no host, no narrator, and no signature except the initials "CTGZ."
It was a homespun documentary, and it opened with a Technicolor portrait of Chairman Mao, sunbeams radiating from his head. Out of silence came an orchestral piece, thundering with drums, as a black screen flashed, in both Chinese and English, one of Mao's mantras: "Imperialism will never abandon its intention to destroy us." Then a cut to present-day photographs and news footage, and a fevered sprint through conspiracies and betrayals—the "farces, schemes, and disasters" confronting China today. The sinking Chinese stock market (the work of foreign speculators who "wildly manipulated" Chinese stock prices and lured rookie investors to lose their fortunes). Shoppers beset by inflation, a butcher counter where "even pork has become a luxury." And a warning: this is the dawn of a global "currency war," and the West intends to "make Chinese people foot the bill" for America's financial woes.
A cut, then, to another front: rioters looting stores and brawling in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The music crescendos as words flash across the scenes: "So-called peaceful protest!" A montage of foreign press clippings critical of China—nothing but "rumors, all speaking with one distorted voice." The screen fills with the logos of CNN, the BBC, and other news organizations, which give way to a portrait of Joseph Goebbels. The orchestra and the rhetoric climb toward a final sequence: "Obviously, there is a scheme behind the scenes to encircle China. A new Cold War!" The music turns triumphant with images of China's Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang standing in Tiananmen Square, raising the Olympic torch, "a symbol of Peace and Friendship!" But, first, one final act of treachery: in Paris, protesters attempt to wrest the Olympic torch from its official carrier, forcing guards to fend them off—a "long march" for a new era. The film ends with the image of a Chinese flag, aglow in the sunlight, and a solemn promise: "We will stand up and hold together always as one family in harmony!"
The video, which was just over six minutes long and is now on YouTube, captured the mood of nationalism that surged through China after the Tibetan uprising, in March, sparked foreign criticism of China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Citizens were greeting the criticism with rare fury. Thousands demonstrated in front of Chinese outlets of Carrefour, a French supermarket chain, in retaliation for what they considered France's sympathy for pro-Tibetan activists. Charles Zhang, who holds a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and is the founder and C.E.O. of Sohu, a leading Chinese Web portal along the lines of Yahoo, called online for a boycott of French products "to make the thoroughly biased French media and public feel losses and pain." When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi denounced China's handling of Tibet, Xinhua, China's official news service, called her "disgusting." State-run media revived language from another age: the magazine Outlook Weekly warned that "domestic and foreign hostile forces have made the Beijing Olympics a focus for infiltration and sabotage." In the anonymity of the Web, decorum deteriorated. "People who fart through the mouth will get shit stuffed down their throats by me!" one commentator wrote, in a forum hosted by a semi-official newspaper. "Someone give me a gun! Don't show mercy to the enemy!" wrote another. The comments were an embarrassment to many Chinese, but they were difficult to ignore among foreign journalists who had begun receiving threats. (An anonymous letter to my fax machine in Beijing warned, "Clarify the facts on China . . . or you and your loved ones will wish you were dead.")
In its first week and a half, the video by CTGZ drew more than a million hits and tens of thousands of favorable comments. It rose to the site's fourth-most-popular rating. (A television blooper clip of a yawning news anchor was No. 1.) On average, the film attracted nearly two clicks per second. It became a manifesto for a self-styled vanguard in defense of China's honor, a patriotic swath of society that the Chinese call the fen qing, the angry youth.
Nineteen years after the crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, China's young élite rose again this spring—not in pursuit of liberal democracy but in defense of sovereignty and prosperity. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory and one of the early ideologists of the Internet, once predicted that the global reach of the Web would transform the way we think about ourselves as countries. The state, he predicted, will evaporate "like a mothball, which goes from solid to gas directly," and "there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox." In China, things have gone differently.
A young Chinese friend of mine, who spends most of his time online, traced the screen name CTGZ to an e-mail address. It belonged to a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student in Shanghai named Tang Jie, and it was his first video. A couple of weeks later, I met Tang Jie at the gate of Fudan University, a top Chinese school, situated on a modern campus that radiates from a pair of thirty-story steel-and-glass towers that could pass for a corporate headquarters. He wore a crisp powder-blue oxford shirt, khakis, and black dress shoes. He had bright hazel eyes and rounded features—a baby face, everyone tells him—and a dusting of goatee and mustache on his chin and upper lip. He bounded over to welcome me as I stepped out of a cab, and he tried to pay my fare.
Tang spends most of his time working on his dissertation, which is on Western philosophy. He specializes in phenomenology; specifically, in the concept of "intersubjectivity," as theorized by Edmund Husserl, the German philosopher who influenced Sartre, among others. In addition to Chinese, Tang reads English and German easily, but he speaks them infrequently, so at times he swerves, apologetically, among languages. He is working on his Latin and Ancient Greek. He is so self-effacing and soft-spoken that his voice may drop to a whisper. He laughs sparingly, as if he were conserving energy. For fun, he listens to classical Chinese music, though he also enjoys screwball comedies by the Hong Kong star Stephen Chow. He is proudly unhip. The screen name CTGZ is an adaptation of two obscure terms from classical poetry: changting and gongzi, which together translate as "the noble son of the pavilion." Unlike some élite Chinese students, Tang has never joined the Communist Party, for fear that it would impugn his objectivity as a scholar.
Tang had invited some friends to join us for lunch, at Fat Brothers Sichuan Restaurant, and afterward we all climbed the stairs to his room. He lives alone in a sixth-floor walkup, a studio of less than seventy-five square feet, which could be mistaken for a library storage room occupied by a fastidious squatter. Books cover every surface, and great mounds list from the shelves above his desk. His collections encompass, more or less, the span of human thought: Plato leans against Lao-tzu, Wittgenstein, Bacon, Fustel de Coulanges, Heidegger, the Koran. When Tang wanted to widen his bed by a few inches, he laid plywood across the frame and propped up the edges with piles of books. Eventually, volumes overflowed the room, and they now stand outside his front door in a wall of cardboard boxes.
Tang slumped into his desk chair. We talked for a while, and I asked if he had any idea that his video would be so popular. He smiled. "It appears I have expressed a common feeling, a shared view," he said.
Next to him sat Liu Chengguang, a cheerful, broad-faced Ph.D. student in political science who recently translated into Chinese a lecture on the subject of "Manliness" by the conservative Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield. Sprawled on the bed, wearing a gray sweatshirt, was Xiong Wenchi, who earned a Ph.D. in political science before taking a teaching job last year. And to Tang's left sat Zeng Kewei, a lean and stylish banker, who picked up a master's degree in Western philosophy before going into finance. Like Tang, each of his friends was in his twenties, was the first in his family to go to college, and had been drawn to the study of Western thought.
"China was backward throughout its modern history, so we were always seeking the reasons for why the West grew strong," Liu said. "We learned from the West. All of us who are educated have this dream: Grow strong by learning from the West."
Tang and his friends were so gracious, so thankful that I'd come to listen to them, that I began to wonder if China's anger of last spring should be viewed as an aberration. They implored me not to make that mistake.
"We've been studying Western history for so long, we understand it well," Zeng said. "We think our love for China, our support for the government and the benefits of this country, is not a spontaneous reaction. It has developed after giving the matter much thought."
In fact, their view of China's direction, if not their vitriol, is consistent with the Chinese mainstream. Almost nine out of ten Chinese approve of the way things are going in the country—the highest share of any of the twenty-four countries surveyed this spring by the Pew Research Center. (In the United States, by comparison, just two out of ten voiced approval.) As for the more assertive strain of patriotism, scholars point to a Chinese petition against Japan's membership in the U.N. Security Council. At last count, it had attracted more than forty million signatures, roughly the population of Spain. I asked Tang to show me how he made his film. He turned to face the screen of his Lenovo desktop P.C., which has a Pentium 4 Processor and one gigabyte of memory. "Do you know Movie Maker?" he said, referring to a video-editing program. I pleaded ignorance and asked if he'd learned from a book. He glanced at me pityingly. He'd learned it on the fly from the help menu. "We must thank Bill Gates," he said.
When people began rioting in Lhasa in March, Tang followed the news closely. As usual, he was receiving his information from American and European news sites, in addition to China's official media. Like others his age, he has no hesitation about tunnelling under the government firewall, a vast infrastructure of digital filters and human censors which blocks politically objectionable content from reaching computers in China. Younger Chinese friends of mine regard the firewall as they would an officious lifeguard at a swimming pool—an occasional, largely irrelevant, intrusion.
To get around it, Tang detours through a proxy server—a digital way station overseas that connects a user with a blocked Web site. He watches television exclusively online, because he doesn't have a TV in his room. Tang also receives foreign news clips from Chinese students abroad. (According to the Institute of International Education, the number of Chinese students in the United States—some sixty-seven thousand—has grown by nearly two-thirds in the past decade.) He's baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation are somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship.
"Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed," he said. "We are always eager to get other information from different channels." Then he added, "But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed."
At the time, news and opinion about Tibet was swirling on Fudan's electronic bulletin board, or B.B.S. The board was alive with criticism of foreign coverage of Tibet. Tang had seen a range of foreign press clippings deemed by Chinese Web users to be misleading or unfair. A photograph on CNN.com, for instance, had been cropped around military trucks bearing down on unarmed protesters. But an uncropped version showed a crowd of demonstrators lurking nearby, including someone with an arm cocked, hurling something at the trucks. To Tang, the cropping looked like a deliberate distortion. (CNN disputed this and said that the caption fairly describes the scene.)
"It was a joke," he said bitterly. That photograph and others crisscrossed China by e-mail, scrawled with criticism, while people added more examples from the Times of London, Fox News, German television, and French radio. It was a range of news organizations, and, to those inclined to see it as such, it smacked of a conspiracy. It shocked people like Tang, who put faith in the Western press, but, more important, it offended them: Tang thought that he was living in the moment of greatest prosperity and openness in his country's modern history, and yet the world still seemed to view China with suspicion. As if he needed confirmation, Jack Cafferty, a CNN commentator, called China "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last fifty years," a quote that rippled across the front pages in China and for which CNN later apologized. Like many of his peers, Tang couldn't figure out why foreigners were so agitated about Tibet—an impoverished backwater, as he saw it, that China had tried for decades to civilize. Boycotting the Beijing Games in the name of Tibet seemed as logical to him as shunning the Salt Lake City Olympics to protest America's treatment of the Cherokee.
He scoured YouTube in search of a rebuttal, a clarification of the Chinese perspective, but he found nothing in English except pro-Tibet videos. He was already busy—under contract from a publisher for a Chinese translation of Leibniz's "Discourse on Metaphysics" and other essays—but he couldn't shake the idea of speaking up on China's behalf.
"I thought, O.K., I'll make something," he said.
Before Tang could start, however, he was obligated to go home for a few days. His mother had told him to be back for the harvest season. She needed his help in the fields, digging up bamboo shoots.
Tang is the youngest of four siblings from a farming family near the eastern city of Hangzhou. For breaking China's one-child policy, his parents paid fines measured in grain. Tang's birth cost them two hundred kilos of unmilled rice. ("I'm not very expensive," he says.)
Neither his mother nor his father could read or write. Until the fourth grade, Tang had no name. He went by Little Four, after his place in the family order. When that became impractical, his father began calling him Tang Jie, an abbreviated homage to his favorite comedian, Tang Jiezhong, half of a popular act in the style of Abbott and Costello.
Tang was bookish and, in a large, boisterous household, he said little. He took to science fiction. "I can tell you everything about all those movies, like 'Star Wars,' " he told me. He was a good, though not a spectacular, student, but he showed a precocious interest in ideas. "He wasn't like other kids, who spent their pocket money on food—he saved all his money to buy books," said his sister Tang Xiaoling, who is seven years older. None of his siblings had studied past the eighth grade, and they regarded him as an admirable oddity. "If he had questions that he couldn't figure out, then he couldn't sleep," his sister said. "For us, if we didn't get it we just gave up."
In high school, Tang improved his grades and had some success at science fairs as an inventor. But he was frustrated. "I discovered that science can't help your life," he said. He happened upon a Chinese translation of a fanciful Norwegian novel, "Sophie's World," by the philosophy teacher Jostein Gaarder, in which a teen-age girl encounters the history of great thinkers. "It was then that I discovered philosophy," Tang said.
Patriotism was not a particularly strong presence in his house, but landmarks of national progress became the backdrop of his adolescence. When Tang was in junior high, the Chinese were still celebrating the country's first major freeway, completed a few years before. "It was famous. We were proud of this. At last we had a highway!" he recalled one day, with a laugh, as we whizzed down an expressway in Shanghai. "Now we have highways everywhere, even in Tibet."
Supermarkets opened in his home town, and, eventually, so did an Internet café. (Tang, who was eighteen at the time, was particularly fond of the Web sites for the White House and NASA, because they had kids' sections that used simpler English sentences.) Tang enrolled at Hangzhou Normal University. He came to credit his country and his family for opportunities that his siblings had never had. By the time he reached Fudan, in 2003, he lived in a world of ideas. "He had a pure passion for philosophy," Ma Jun, a fellow philosophy student who met him early on, said. "A kind of religious passion."
The Internet had barely taken root in China before it became a vessel for nationalism. At the Atlanta Olympics, in 1996, as the Chinese delegation marched into the stadium, the NBC announcer Bob Costas riffed on China's "problems with human rights, property right disputes, the threat posed to Taiwan." Then he mentioned "suspicions" that Chinese athletes used performance-enhancing drugs. Even though the Web in China was in its infancy (there were just five telephone lines for every hundred people), comments spread instantly among Chinese living abroad. The timing couldn't have been more opportune: after more than fifteen years of reform and Westernization, Chinese writers were pushing back against Hollywood, McDonald's, and American values. An impassioned book titled "China Can Say No" came out that spring and sold more than a hundred thousand copies in its first month. Written by a group of young intellectuals, it decried China's "infatuation with America," which had suppressed the national imagination with a diet of visas, foreign aid, and advertising. If China didn't resist this "cultural strangulation," it would become "a slave," extending a history of humiliating foreign incursions that stretched back to China's defeat in the first Opium War and the British acquisition of Hong Kong, in 1842. The Chinese government, which is wary of fast-spreading new ideas, eventually pulled the book off the shelves, but not before a raft of knockoffs sought to exploit the same mood ("Why China Can Say No," "China Still Can Say No," and "China Always Say No").
Xu Wu, a former journalist in China who is now a professor at Arizona State University, says in his 2007 book "Chinese Cyber Nationalism" that groups claiming to represent more than seventy thousand overseas Chinese wrote to NBC asking for an apology for the Costas remarks. They collected donations online and bought an ad in the Washington Post, accusing Costas and the network of "ignominious prejudice and inhospitality." NBC apologized, and Chinese online activism was born.
Each day, some thirty-five hundred Chinese citizens were going online for the first time. In 1998, Charles Zhang's Sohu launched China's first major search engine. The following spring, when a NATO aircraft, using American intelligence, mistakenly dropped three bombs on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Chinese Web found its voice. The United States apologized, blaming outdated maps and inaccurate databases, but Chinese patriotic hackers—calling themselves "honkers," to capture the sound of hong, which is Chinese for the color red—attacked. As Peter Hays Gries, a China scholar at the University of Oklahoma, details in "China's New Nationalism," they plastered the home page of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing with the slogan "Down with the Barbarians!," and they caused the White House Web site to crash under a deluge of angry e-mail. "The Internet is Western," one commentator wrote, "but . . . we Chinese can use it to tell the people of the world that China cannot be insulted!"
The government treated online patriots warily. They placed their pride in the Chinese nation, not necessarily in the Party, and leaders rightly sensed that the passion could swerve against them. After a nationalist Web site was shut down by censors in 2004, one commentator wrote, "Our government is as weak as sheep!" The government permitted nationalism to grow at some moments but strained to control it at others. The following spring, when Japan approved a new textbook that critics claimed glossed over wartime atrocities, patriots in Beijing drafted protest plans and broadcast them via chat rooms, bulletin boards, and text messages. As many as ten thousand demonstrators took to the streets, hurling paint and bottles at the Japanese Embassy. Despite government warnings to cease these activities, thousands more marched in Shanghai the following week—one of China's largest demonstrations in years—and vandalized the Japanese consulate. At one point, Shanghai police cut off cell-phone service in downtown Shanghai.
"Up to now, the Chinese government has been able to keep a grip on it," Xu Wu told me. "But I call it the 'virtual Tiananmen Square.' They don't need to go there. They can do the same thing online and sometimes be even more damaging."
Tang was at dinner with friends one night in 2004 when he met Wan Manlu, an elegantly reserved Ph.D. student in Chinese literature and linguistics. Her delicate features suited her name, which includes the character for the finest jade. They sat side by side, but barely spoke. Later, Tang hunted down her screen name—gracelittle—and sent her a private message on Fudan's bulletin board. They worked up to a first date: an experimental opera based on "Regret for the Past," a Chinese story.
They discovered that they shared a frustration with China's unbridled Westernization. "Chinese tradition has many good things, but we've ditched them," Wan told me. "I feel there have to be people to carry them on." She came from a middle-class home, and Tang's humble roots and old-fashioned values impressed her. "Most of my generation has a smooth, happy life, including me," she said. "I feel like our character lacks something. For example, love for the country or the perseverance you get from conquering hardships. Those virtues, I don't see them in myself and many people my age."
She added, "For him, from that kind of background, with nobody educated in his family, nobody helping him with schoolwork, with great family pressure, it's not easy to get where he is today."
They were engaged this spring. In their years together, Wan watched Tang fall in with a group of students devoted to a charismatic thirty-nine-year-old Fudan philosophy professor named Ding Yun. He is a translator of Leo Strauss, the political philosopher whose admirers include Harvey Mansfield and other neoconservatives. A Strauss student, Abram Shulsky, who co-authored a 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)," ran the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans before the invasion of Iraq. Since then, other Strauss disciples have vigorously ridiculed suggestions of a connection between Strauss's thought and Bush-era foreign policy.
I saw Mansfield in Shanghai in May, during his first visit to China, at a dinner with a small group of conservative scholars. He was wearing a honey-colored panama and was in good spirits, though he seemed a bit puzzled by all the fuss they were making about him. His first question to the table: "Why would Chinese scholars be interested in Leo Strauss?"
Professor Ding teaches a Straussian regard for the universality of the classics and encourages his students to revive ancient Chinese thought. "During the nineteen-eighties and nineties, most intellectuals had a negative opinion of China's traditional culture," he told me recently. He has close-cropped hair and stylish rectangular glasses, and favors the conspicuously retro loose-fitting shirts of a Tang-dynasty scholar. When Ding grew up, in the early years of reform, "conservative" was a derogatory term, just like "reactionary," he said.
But Ding and others have thrived in recent years amid a new vein of conservatism which runs counter to China's drive for integration with the world. Just as America's conservative movement in the nineteen-sixties capitalized on the yearning for a post-liberal retreat to morality and nobility, China's classical revival draws on a nostalgic image of what it means to be Chinese. The biggest surprise best-seller of recent years is, arguably, "Yu Dan's Reflections on the Analects," a collection of Confucian lectures delivered by Yu, a telegenic Beijing professor of media studies. She writes, "To assess a country's true strength and prosperity, you can't simply look at GNP growth and not look at the inner experience of each ordinary person: Does he feel safe? Is he happy?" (Skeptics argue that it's simply "Chicken Soup for the Confucian Soul.")
Professor Ding met Tang in 2003, at the entrance interview for graduate students. "I was the person in charge of the exam," Ding recalled. "I sensed that this kid is very smart and diligent." He admitted Tang to the program, and watched with satisfaction as Tang and other students pushed back against the onslaught of Westernization. Tang developed an appetite for the classics. "The fact is we are very Westernized," he said. "Now we started reading ancient Chinese books and we rediscovered the ancient China."
This renewed pride has also affected the way Tang and his peers view the economy. They took to a theory that the world profits from China but blocks its attempts to invest abroad. Tang's friend Zeng smiled disdainfully as he ticked off examples of Chinese companies that have tried to invest in America.
"Huawei's bid to buy 3Com was rejected," he said. "C.N.O.O.C.'s bid to buy into Unocal and Lenovo's purchase of part of I.B.M. caused political repercussions. If it's not a market argument, it's a political argument. We think the world is a free market—"
Before he could finish, Tang jumped in. "This is what you—America—taught us," he said. "We opened our market, but when we try to buy your companies we hit political obstacles. It's not fair."
Their view, which is popular in China across ideological lines, has validity: American politicians have invoked national-security concerns, with varying degrees of credibility, to oppose Chinese direct investment. But Tang's view, infused with a sense of victimhood, also obscures some evidence to the contrary: China has succeeded in other deals abroad (its sovereign-wealth fund has stakes in the Blackstone Group and in Morgan Stanley), and though China has taken steps to open its markets to foreigners, it remains equally inclined to reject an American attempt to buy an asset as sensitive as a Chinese oil company.
Tang's belief that the United States will seek to obstruct China's rise—"a new Cold War"— extends beyond economics to broader American policy. Disparate issues of relatively minor importance to Americans, such as support for Taiwan and Washington's calls to raise the value of the yuan, have metastasized in China into a feeling of strategic containment. In polls, the Chinese public has not demonstrated a significant preference for either Barack Obama or John McCain, though Obama has attracted negative attention for saying that, were he President, he might boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Tang and his friends have watched some debates online, but the young patriots tend to see the race in broader terms. "No matter who is elected, China is still China and will go the way it goes," one recent posting in a discussion about Obama said. "Who can stand in the way of the march of history?"
This spring, Tang stayed at his family's farm for five days before he could return to Shanghai and finish his movie. He scoured the Web for photographs on the subjects that bother him and his friends, everything from inflation to Taiwan's threats of independence. He selected some of the pictures because they were evocative—a man raising his arm in a sea of Chinese flags reminded him of Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People"—and chose others because they embodied the political moment: a wheelchair-bound Chinese amputee carrying the Olympic flame in Paris, for instance, fending off a protester who was trying to snatch it away.
For a soundtrack, he typed "solemn music" into Baidu, a Chinese search engine, and scanned the results. He landed on a piece by Vangelis, a Yanni-style pop composer from Greece who is best known for his score for the movie "Chariots of Fire." Tang's favorite Vangelis track was from a Gérard Depardieu film about Christopher Columbus called "1492: Conquest of Paradise." He watched a few seconds of Depardieu standing manfully on the deck of a tall ship, coursing across the Atlantic. Perfect, Tang thought: "It was a time of globalization."
Tang added scenes of Chairman Mao and the Olympic track star Liu Xiang, both icons of their eras. The film was six minutes and sixteen seconds long. Some title screens in English were full of mistakes, because he was hurrying, but he was anxious to release it. He posted the film to Sina and sent a note to the Fudan bulletin board. As the film climbed in popularity, Professor Ding rejoiced. "We used to think they were just a postmodern, Occidentalized generation," Ding said. "Of course, I thought the students I knew were very good, but the wider generation? I was not very pleased. To see the content of Tang Jie's video, and the scale of its popularity among the youth, made me very happy. Very happy."
Not everyone was pleased. Young patriots are so polarizing in China that some people, by changing the intonation in Chinese, pronounce "angry youth" as "shit youth."
"How can our national self-respect be so fragile and shallow?" Han Han, one of China's most popular young writers, wrote on his blog, in an essay about nationalism. "Somebody says you're a mob, so you curse him, even want to beat him, and then you say, We're not a mob. This is as if someone said you were a fool, so you held up a big sign in front of his girlfriend's brother's dog, saying 'I Am Not a Fool.' The message will get to him, but he'll still think you're a fool."
If the activists thought that they were defending China's image abroad, there was little sign of success. After weeks of patriotic rhetoric emanating from China, a poll sponsored by the Financial Times showed that Europeans now ranked China as the greatest threat to global stability, surpassing America.
But the eruption of the angry youth has been even more disconcerting to those interested in furthering democracy. By age and education, Tang and his peers inherit a long legacy of activism that stretches from 1919, when nationalist demonstrators demanded "Mr. Democracy" and "Mr. Science," to 1989, when students flooded Tiananmen Square, challenging the government and erecting a sculpture inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of that movement, but the events of this spring suggest that prosperity, computers, and Westernization have not driven China's young élite toward tolerance but, rather, persuaded more than a few of them to postpone idealism as long as life keeps improving. The students in 1989 were rebelling against corruption and abuses of power. "Nowadays, these issues haven't disappeared but have worsened," Li Datong, an outspoken newspaper editor and reform advocate, told me. "However, the current young generation turns a blind eye to it. I've never seen them respond to those major domestic issues. Rather, they take a utilitarian, opportunistic approach."
One caricature of young Chinese holds that they know virtually nothing about the crackdown at Tiananmen Square—known in Chinese as "the June 4th incident"—because the authorities have purged it from the nation's official history. It's not that simple, however. Anyone who can click on a proxy server can discover as much about Tiananmen as he chooses to learn. And yet many Chinese have concluded that the movement was misguided and naïve.
"We accept all the values of human rights, of democracy," Tang told me. "We accept that. The issue is how to realize it."
I met dozens of urbane students and young professionals this spring, and we often got to talking about Tiananmen Square. In a typical conversation, one college senior asked whether she should interpret the killing of protesters at Kent State in 1970 as a fair measure of American freedom. Liu Yang, a graduate student in environmental engineering, said, "June 4th could not and should not succeed at that time. If June 4th had succeeded, China would be worse and worse, not better."
Liu, who is twenty-six, once considered himself a liberal. As a teen-ager, he and his friends happily criticized the Communist Party. "In the nineteen-nineties, I thought that the Chinese government is not good enough. Maybe we need to set up a better government," he told me. "The problem is that we didn't know what a good government would be. So we let the Chinese Communist Party stay in place. The other problem is we didn't have the power to get them out. They have the Army!"
When Liu got out of college, he found a good job as an engineer at an oil-services company. He was earning more money in a month than his parents—retired laborers living on a pension—earned in a year. Eventually, he saved enough money that, with scholarships, he was able to enroll in a Ph.D. program at Stanford. He had little interest in the patriotic pageantry of the Olympics until he saw the fracas around the torch in Paris. "We were furious," he said, and when the torch came to San Francisco he and other Chinese students surged toward the relay route to support it. I was in San Francisco not long ago, and we arranged to meet at a Starbucks near his dorm, in Palo Alto. He arrived on his mountain bike, wearing a Nautica fleece pullover and jeans.
The date, we both knew, was June 4th, nineteen years since soldiers put down the Tiananmen uprising. The overseas Chinese students' bulletin board had been alive all afternoon with discussions of the anniversary. Liu mentioned the famous photograph of an unknown man standing in front of a tank—perhaps the most provocative image in modern Chinese history.
"We really acknowledge him. We really think he was brave," Liu told me. But, of that generation, he said, "They fought for China, to make the country better. And there were some faults of the government. But, finally, we must admit that the Chinese government had to use any way it could to put down that event."
Sitting in the cool quiet of a California night, sipping his coffee, Liu said that he is not willing to risk all that his generation enjoys at home in order to hasten the liberties he has come to know in America. "Do you live on democracy?" he asked me. "You eat bread, you drink coffee. All of these are not brought by democracy. Indian guys have democracy, and some African countries have democracy, but they can't feed their own people.
"Chinese people have begun to think, One part is the good life, another part is democracy," Liu went on. "If democracy can really give you the good life, that's good. But, without democracy, if we can still have the good life why should we choose democracy?"
When the Olympic torch returned to China, in May, for the final journey to Beijing, the Chinese seemed determined to make up for its woes abroad. Crowds overflowed along the torch's route. One afternoon, Tang and I set off to watch the torch traverse a suburb of Shanghai.
At the time, the country was still in a state of shock following the May 12th earthquake in the mountains of Sichuan Province, which killed more than sixty-nine thousand people and left millions homeless. It was the worst disaster in three decades, but it also produced a rare moment of national unity. Donations poured in, revealing the positive side of the patriotism that had erupted weeks earlier.
The initial rhetoric of that nationalist outcry contained a spirit of violence that anyone old enough to remember the Red Guards—or the rise of skinheads in Europe—could not casually dismiss. And that spirit had materialized, in ugly episodes: when the Olympic torch reached South Korea, Chinese and rival protesters fought in the streets. The Korean government said it would deport Chinese agitators, though a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stood by the demonstrators' original intent to "safeguard the dignity of the torch." Chinese students overseas emerged as some of the most vocal patriots. According to the Times, at the University of Southern California they marshalled statistics and photographs to challenge a visiting Tibetan monk during a lecture. Then someone threw a plastic water bottle in the monk's direction, and campus security removed the man who tossed it. At Cornell, an anthropology professor who arranged for the screening of a film on Tibet informed the crowd that, on a Web forum for Chinese students, she was "told to 'go die.' " At Duke University, Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman, tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-China protesters on campus. But online she was branded a "race traitor." People ferreted out her mother's address, in the seaside city of Qingdao, and vandalized their home. Her mother, an accountant, remains in hiding. Of her mother, Grace Wang said, "I really don't know where she is, and I think it's better for me not to know."
Now in summer school at Duke, Grace Wang does not regret speaking up, but she says that she misjudged how others her age, online but frustrated in China, would resent her. "When people can't express themselves in real life, what can they do? They definitely have to express their anger toward someone. I'm far away. They don't know me, so they don't feel sorry about it. They say whatever they want." She doesn't know when she'll return home (she becomes uneasy when she is recognized in Chinese restaurants near campus), but she takes comfort in the fact that history is filled with names once vilified, later rehabilitated. "This is just like what happened in the Cultural Revolution," she said. "Think about how Deng Xiaoping was treated at that time, and then, in just ten years, things had changed completely."
In the end, nothing came of the threats to foreign journalists. No blood was shed. After the chaos around the torch in Paris, the Chinese efforts to boycott Carrefour fizzled. China's leaders, awakening to their deteriorating image abroad, ultimately reined in the students with a call for only "rational patriotism."
"We do not want any violence," Tang told me. He and his peers had merely been desperate for someone to hear them. They felt no connection to Tiananmen Square, but, in sending their voices out onto the Web, they, too, had spoken for their moment in time. Their fury, Li Datong, the newspaper editor, told me, arose from "the accumulated desire for expression—just like when a flood suddenly races into a breach." Because a flood moves in whatever direction it chooses, the young conservatives are, to China's ruling class, an unnerving new force. They "are acutely aware that their country, whose resurgence they feel and admire, has no principle to guide it," Harvey Mansfield wrote in an e-mail to me, after his visit. "Some of them see . . . that liberalism in the West has lost its belief in itself, and they turn to Leo Strauss for conservatism that is based on principle, on 'natural right.' This conservatism is distinct from a status-quo conservatism, because they are not satisfied with a country that has only a status quo and not a principle."
In the weeks after Tang's video went viral, he made a series of others, about youth, the earthquake, China's leaders. None of his follow-ups generated more than a flicker of the attention of the original. The Web had moved on—to newer nationalist films and other distractions.
As Tang and I approached the torch-relay route, he said, "Look at the people. Everyone thinks this is their own Olympics."
Venders were selling T-shirts, big Chinese flags, headbands, and mini-flags. Tang told me to wait until the torch passed, because hawkers would then cut prices by up to fifty per cent. He was carrying a plastic bag and fished around in it for a bright-red scarf of the kind that Chinese children wear to signal membership in the Young Pioneers, a kind of Socialist Boy Scouts. He tied it around his neck and grinned. He offered one to a passing teen-ager, who politely declined.
The air was stagnant and thick beneath a canopy of haze, but the mood was exuberant. Time was ticking down to the torch's arrival, and the town was coming out for a look: a man in a dark suit, sweating and smoothing his hair; a construction worker in an orange helmet and farmer's galoshes; a bellboy in a vaguely nautical getup.
Some younger spectators were wearing T-shirts inspired by China's recent troubles: "Love China, Oppose Divisions, Oppose Tibetan Independence," read a popular one. All around us, people strained for a better perch. A woman hung off a lamppost. A young man in a red headband climbed a tree.
The crowd's enthusiasm seemed to brighten Tang's view of things, reminding him that China's future belongs to him and to those around him. "When I stand here, I can feel, deeply, the common emotion of Chinese youth," he said. "We are self-confident."
Police blocked the road. A frisson swept through the crowd. People surged toward the curb, straining to see over one another's heads. But Tang hung back. He is a patient man. ♦
PHOTOGRAPH: PANOS PICTURES
Debt capitalism self-destructs by Henry C K Liu
Debt capitalism self-destructs
By Henry C K Liu
In a period of less than a year, what had been described by US authorities as a temporary financial problem related to the bursting the housing bubble has turned into a fully fledged crisis at the very core of free-market capitalism.
A handful of analysts have been warning for years that the wholesale deregulation of financial markets and the wrong-headed privatization of the public sector during the past two decades would threaten the viability of free-market capitalism. Yet ideological neoliberal fixation remain firmly imbedded in US ruling circles, fertilized by irresistible campaign contributions from
profiteers on Wall Street, methodically purging regulatory agencies of all who tried to maintain a sense of financial reality.
This ideology of "market knows best" has allowed the nation to slip into an unsustainable joyride on massive debt giddily assumed by all market participants, ranging from supposedly conservative banks, investment banks and other non-bank financial institutions, to industrial corporations, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and individuals.
The once-dynamic US economy has turned itself into a system in which it is difficult to find any institution, company or individual not over their head in speculative debt. Undercapitalized capitalism, also known as debt capitalism, has been the engine of growth for the US debt bubble in the last two decades. This debt capitalism cancer is caused by a failure of central banking.
In the face of a broad systemic collapse of debt capitalism, where capital has become dangerously inadequate and new capital hazardously and prohibitively scarce, having been crowded out by massive debt collateralized by overblown assets of declining value and with a credit crisis that clearly requires systemic restructuring and comprehensive intensive care, those in the US responsible for the financial well-being of the nation seem to have been reacting tactically from crisis to crisis with a script of adamant denial of obvious facts, symptoms and trends, with no signs of any coherent grand strategy or plan to save the cancerous system from structural self-destruction.
This band-aid short-term approach to artificially pop up share prices in the collapsing equity market and to maintain insolvent financial institutions with technical life-support will lead only to long-term disaster for the whole economy.
Yet this approach is preferred by those in authority, trapped in self deception about unregulated market capitalism being still fundamentally sound. They try to calm markets by asserting that the current turmoil is merely a minor liquidity bottleneck that can be handled by the central bank releasing more liquidity against the full face value of collaterals of declining worth.
The message is that somehow, if easy money in the form of debt is made endlessly available, the economy will recover from this credit crunch, notwithstanding that excessive debt has been the cause of the problem; or bad loans can be made good by Congress giving the US Treasury authority to buy up bad loans with unlimited amounts of taxpayer money.
Yet these incremental measures taken so far by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve make the two government units with direct responsibility on the nation's long-term financial health look like panicky rogue traders trading for the national account in desperate hope to score a win in the next quarter by upping the ante, to contain allegedly isolated crisis hot points. The aggregate effect adds up to a broad stealth nationalization of the insolvent financial sector. Their prescription for stabilizing a debt-destabilized market is more public debt to support corporation socialism.
For years, anyone warning that the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, should be held to normal capitalization requirements was ridiculed as a fear monger by the powerful lobbying machines these GSEs employed. Capital is considered as superfluous in the new game of debt capitalism held up by complex circular hedging. As a result, the GSEs have become the monstrous tail that wags the dog of housing finance.
The current talk about the need to curb speculation in the commodities and financial markets to stabilize prices is off target, especially for believers of market capitalism. All market transactions are speculative in nature. Speculation can stabilize prices as well as to destabilize them, but only in the short term. Long-term price levels (inflation or deflation), as Milton Friedman aptly observed, are always monetary phenomena. The current turmoil in the financial system, the subprime mortgage implosion, the credit crisis from the seizure in the asset-backed commercial papers market, the undercapitalization of commercial and investment bank, the rating agency dysfunction, the insolvency of monocline (bond) insurers, the massive financial losses by the GSEs and a host of other financial problems percolating under the media radar, are the outcome, and not the cause, of this market turbulence. (See Perils of the debt-propelled economy, Asia Times Online, September 14, 2002.)
Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, GSEs that have provided mortgage funds for the housing market since 1938, were created as part of the New Deal to help low-income families. They were privatized in 1968 on terms that would alter their social mandate and would inevitably lead them into financial trouble on a big scale. Finally but suddenly, these GSEs find themselves in danger of defaulting on their massive debts, upwards of US$5 trillion, in the course of a single week.
Deeply rooted in US political culture is the view that credit is a financial public utility, much like air and water, and should be equally accessible to all, not just to the rich. Economic democracy has been the core strength of US political democracy. Government loan guarantees for students and home mortgages for low- and moderate-income groups and loans to small business are based on this principle. Yet from time to time, this principle of economic democracy is overshadowed by free-market extremism to push the nation's economy into extended depressions.
The US National Housing Act was enacted on June 27, 1934, as one of several economic recovery measures of the New Deal to get the nation out of the Great Depression. It provided for the establishment of a Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Title II of the Act provided for the insurance of home-mortgage loans made by private lenders, taking the disaggregated risk in lending to low-income borrowers off private lenders and managing the risk on a national scale with a government agency to take advantage of the law of large numbers, a theorem in probability that describes the long-term stability of a random variable. Title III of the Act provided for the chartering of national mortgage associations by the FHA administrator. These associations were to be independent corporations regulated by the administrator, and their chief purpose was to buy and sell the mortgages insured by the FHA under Title II.
Only one association was ever formed under this authority. On February 10, 1938, this association, the National Mortgage Association of Washington, became a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corp, a government corporation. Its name was changed that same year to Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). By amendments made in 1948, Title III of the US National Housing Act became a statutory charter for Fannie Mae.
Balloon payment barrier
Before the Great Depression, affording a home was difficult for most people in the US. At that time, a prospective homeowner had to make a down payment of 40% and pay the mortgage off in three to five years. Until the last payment, borrowers paid only interest on the loan. The entire principal was paid in one lump sum as the final "balloon" payment. Lenders could demand full payment of the outstanding loan at any time of the lender's choosing, often at time least advantageous to borrowers. This allowed lenders to use foreclosures as a means to take over desirable properties.
During the 1920s boom time in real estate, a rudimentary secondary mortgage market had come into being. The stock-market crash of 1929 ended the real-estate boom and forced many private guarantee companies into insolvency as home prices collapsed. As economic conditions worsened, more and more borrowers defaulted on mortgages because they couldn't come up with the money for the final balloon payment or to roll over their mortgage because of low market value of their homes.
To help lift the country out of the Great Depression, Congress created the FHA through the National Housing Act of 1934. The FHA's insurance program protected mortgage lenders from the risk of default on long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. Because this type of mortgage was unpopular with private lenders and investors, Congress in 1938 created Fannie Mae to refinance FHA-insured mortgages.
As soldiers came home from World War II, Congress passed the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, which gave the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) authority to guarantee veterans' loans with no down payment or insurance premium requirements. Many financial institutions considered this arrangement a more attractive investment than war bonds.
By revision of Title III in 1954, Fannie Mae was converted into a mixed-ownership corporation, its preferred stock to be held by the government and its common stock to be privately held. It was at this time that Section 312 was first enacted, giving Title III the short title of Federal National Mortgage Association Charter Act.
By amendments made in 1968, the Federal National Mortgage Association was partitioned into two separate entities, one to be known as the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), the other to retain the name Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). Ginnie Mae remained in the government, and Fannie Mae became privately owned by retiring the government-held stock. Ginnie Mae has operated as a wholly owned government association since the 1968 amendments. Fannie Mae, as a private company operating with private capital on a self-sustaining basis, expanded to buy mortgages beyond traditional government loan limits, reaching out to a broader income cross-section.
By the early '70s, inflation and interest rates rose drastically. Many investors drifted away from mortgages. Ginnie Mae eased economic tension by issuing its first mortgage-backed security (MBS) guarantee in 1970. Investors found these guaranteed MBSs highly attractive. Also in 1970, under the Emergency Home Finance Act, Congress chartered the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp (Freddie Mac) to buy conventional mortgages from federally insured financial institutions. The legislation also authorized Fannie Mae to purchase conventional mortgages. Freddie Mac introduced its own MBS program in 1971.
Fannie and Freddie charters give these GSEs exemptions from state and local taxes, allow them relatively meager capital requirements, and provide them with an ability to borrow money at lowest possible rates to lend at near market rates. Over the years, this advantage has served not to lower home prices and mortgage payments to help low-income buyers but to enrich debt securitizers and brokers.
Aging credit line
Each agency now has a $2.25 billion credit line with the Treasury, set nearly 40 years ago by Congress at a time when Fannie had only about $15 billion in outstanding debt. It now has total debt of about $800 billion, while Freddie has about $740 billion. Today the two companies also hold or guarantee loans with face value of more than $5 trillion, about half the nation's mortgages. Market analysts estimate that the market value of this liability may be less than 50% unless the housing market recovers. In other words, the GSEs face a $3.5 trillion exposure to default if they cannot raise new funds in the credit market.
In the early 1980s, the US economy spiraled into deep recession. Interest rates were high while house prices while falling, remaining beyond the reach of many low- and moderate-income buyers because income growth stayed stagnant. The US economy faced a dual problem of income deficiency and money devaluation. In this poor housing market environment, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all created programs to handle adjustable-rate mortgages. The Ginnie Mae guaranty is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Today, Ginnie Mae guaranteed securities are one of the most widely held and traded MBSs in the world. Ginnie Mae has guaranteed more than $1.7 trillion in MBSs. Historically, 95% of all FHA and VA mortgages have been securitized through Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae is a guarantor, a surety. Ginnie Mae does not issue, sell, or buy MBSs, or purchase mortgage loans. Ginnie Mae is not in financial distress.
Fannie Mae is another story. Many of the innovative mortgage options introduced during the early 1980s to revive the weak housing market in a recession were exploited to fuel a housing bubble with excessive liquidity provided by the Federal Reserve, helping low- and middle-income buyer to buy homes their stagnant income could not afford. Fannie continues to operate under a congressional charter that directs it to channel its efforts into increasing the availability and affordability of home ownership for low-, moderate- and middle-income Americans. Yet Fannie Mae receives no government funding or backing, and it is one of the nation's largest taxpayers as well as one of the most consistently profitable corporations until now.
The company has evolved to become a shareholder-owned, privately managed corporation supporting the secondary market for conventional loans. Its congressional mandate of keeping homes affordable has since been largely forgotten in favor of an unprecedented boom in the housing market. Yet it continues to operate under a congressional charter that provides it with low-cost funds with only perfunctory oversight from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Treasury.
Fannie Mae has two primary lines of business: Portfolio investment, in which the company buys mortgages and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) as investments, funding those purchases with debt, and credit guaranty, which involves guaranteeing for a fee the credit performance of single-family and multi-family loans.
Overseas debt holders
During the housing bubble which it essentially helped create with the Fed easy money, Fannie was highly profitable, with high returns for happy shareholders and lucrative compensation for its executives. Above all, it provided a continuous stream of income and profit for Wall Street and central banks around the world while US homeowners were led down a treachery path of eventual foreclosure. According to data from the Council on Foreign Relations, foreign central banks own $925 billion of debt in the two GSEs. China tops the list with $420 billion in Freddie and Fannie debt; Russia and Japan come in second with a combined $407 billion in GSE debt. Others countries that hold the debt include Singapore, Taiwan, and several cash-rich countries in the Persian Gulf.
Fannie's portfolio investment business includes mortgage loans purchased throughout the US from approved mortgage lending institutions. It also purchases MBSs, structured mortgage products and other assets in the open market. The corporation derives income from the difference between the yield on these investments and the low subsidized costs to fund the purchase of these investments, usually from issuing debt in the domestic and international markets. Fannie Mae has $3.46 trillion in MBSs outstanding today, held by a dispersed network of investors, including foreign central banks, topped by China's.
The GSEs now only pay lip service to accomplishing its mission to provide products and services that increase the availability and the affordability of housing for low-, moderate- and middle-income buyers by operating in the secondary rather than the primary mortgage market.
Fannie Mae purchases mortgage loans from mortgage lenders such as mortgage companies, savings institutions, credit unions and commercial banks, thereby replenishing those institutions' supply of mortgage funds. It either packages these loans into MBSs, which it guarantees for full and timely payment of principal and interest, or purchases these loans for cash and retains the mortgages in its own portfolio. Yet Fannie's role in recent years has been to supply the housing bubble with excess liquidity released by a wayward central bank, by buying at a profit economically unsound mortgages that depended on a continuing spiral of rising home prices way beyond reasonable projection of home buyer income growth. It has turned the US from a nation of homeowners into a nation of foreclosed homes.
Fannie Mae is now one of the world's largest issuers of debt securities, the leader in the $14 trillion US home-mortgage market. Fannie Mae's debt obligations are treated as US agency securities in the marketplace, which is just below US Treasuries and above AAA corporate debt. This agency status is due in part to the creation and existence of the corporation pursuant to a federal law, the public mission that it allegedly serves, and the corporation's continuing ties to the US government through a weak oversight link. It benefits from an appearance, though not the essence, of being backed by sovereign credit that borders on outright fraud and protected by the doctrine of too big to fail.
Fannie Mae debt obligations receive favorable treatment from a regulatory perspective. Fannie Mae securities are "exempted securities" under laws administered by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to the same extent as US government obligations. Also, Fannie Mae debt qualifies for more liberal treatment than corporate debt under US federal statutes and regulations and, to a limited extent, foreign overseas statutes and regulations. Fund managers who buy GSE debt are protected from fiduciary challenges.
Some of these statutes and regulations make it possible for deposit-taking institutions to invest in Fannie Mae debt more liberally than in corporate debt and other mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities. Others enable certain institutions to invest in Fannie Mae debt on par with obligations of the United States and in unlimited amounts. Fannie Mae uses a variety of funding vehicles to provide investors with debt securities that meet their investment, trading, hedging, and financing objectives, not all of which serves the public interest. Fannie Mae is able to issue different debt structures at various points on the yield curve because of its large and consistent funding needs. As the Treasury retired 30-year bonds, these GSE agencies stepped in to fill the void in long term finance.
Ideology triumphant
The privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was an ideological move. It was financially unnecessary as sovereign credit could have funded the entire low-, moderate- and middle-income housing-mortgage needs with no profit siphoned off to private investors and brokers. These agency debt instruments played a crucial role in developing and sustaining the credit bubble in the US that is now coming home to roost.
In fact, the funding risk of both agencies was questioned, among many others, by the voice of free-market capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, on February 20, 2002 in an editorial about Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's safety, soundness and financial management, characterizing both agencies as risky, fast-growing companies that "look like poorly run hedge funds" … "unduly exposed to credit risk with large derivative positions", and that they "use all manner of derivatives" and "are exposed to unquantified counterparty risk on these positions". Such concerns would have been avoided if both agencies had been funded directly with government credit, and the cost of housing to low-, moderate- and middle-income Americans would have been lower. As it happens, the government is now faced with the prospect of having to bail out these GSEs with public funds.
The term "undercapitalization" for financial institutions is merely a sanitized euphemism for insolvency. The real source of the present market turbulence is more than just the waywardness of runaway GSEs sidetracked from their public purpose. It is another symptom of the failure of central banking. The world is now witnessing the slow but steady collapse of the central banking regime that came into being in the US in 1913, which has since failed to fulfill its mandate of managing the monetary system to maintain price stability and full employment. Dysfunctional monetary policies adopted by all central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, have allowed the market to take capital out of free market capitalism to turn it into a gigantic Ponzi scheme.
In the 1990s, the original congressional intent for the GSEs was distorted from making homeownership affordable to low- and moderate-income families to a new role of supporting a housing bubble that enables families to buy homes at prices with mortgages their incomes cannot service. The profit from housing price appreciation went mostly to mortgage originators and banks that bought and sold MBSs to investors who also profited from buying debt with debt collateralized with the debt they bought. Capital suddenly became only a notional value in the market of debt derivatives. Homebuyers bought mortgages with no downpayment, banks and mortgage brokers sold the debt to securitizers who sold it to institutional investors who borrowed using the securities as collateral. The GSEs also became very profitable, leaving homeowners to default on their mortgages as the market turned on them. The whole transaction cycle did not require any capital.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ranked Aaa by the world's leading credit-rating companies, are now being treated by derivatives traders as if they were rated five levels lower because the issuers are pitifully undercapitalized for the size of the debt they issue. Credit-default swaps tied to $1.45 trillion of debt sold by these two biggest allegedly US-backed mortgage finance companies are trading at levels that imply the bonds should be rated A2 by Moody's Investors Service. The price of contracts used to speculate on the creditworthiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to protect against a default has doubled in the past two months.
Debt guarantee disregarded
Traders are disregarding the government's implied guarantee of GSE debt as credit losses grow and concern rises about the GSEs not having enough capital to weather the biggest housing slump since the Great Depression. Fannie Mae has lost 80% of market capitalization value in the first half of 2008 on the New York Stock Exchange; and Freddie Mac lost 70%. The two GSEs reported combined operating losses of more than $11 billion, and have raised more than $20 billion new capital since December 2007. After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc released a report on June 7, 2008, saying a new accounting rule may require the GSEs to raise another $75 billion in new capital, Freddie Mac shares dropped another 18% and Fannie Mae fell 16%.
Still, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulator of these GSEs, declared them as adequately capitalized in regulatory terms. The companies' existing congressional charters give the Treasury the authority to buy as much as $2.25 billion in each of their securities in the event of possible default, against a total liability of over $5 trillion. The works out as an equity injection of less than half-a-cent on each dollar of liability.
Credit-default swaps tied to the senior debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have climbed 35 basis points to 70 basis points since May 1, 2008. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point. The cost to protect the companies' subordinated debt from default
rose at a faster rate. That debt is rated Aa2 by Moody's. Credit-default swaps on Fannie Mae's subordinated notes jumped 103 basis points to 190 basis points since May 1, while contracts on Freddie Mac's subordinated notes rose 102 basis points to 190 basis points.
The median credit-default swap on debt rated Aaa by Moody's was 26 basis points as of July 8. It was 76 basis points for debt rated A2, and 180 basis points for debt rated Baa3, the lowest investment-grade ranking. The costs likely reflect counterparty risk, or the risk that the bank or securities firm on the other end of the contract fails. For most companies, the counterparty risk embedded in credit-default swap costs would not be as pronounced because the risk of a default on the underlying debt would be greater than that of the bank backing the protection. In the case of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other companies with Aaa ratings, the default risk for lower-rated banks is greater.
Credit-default swaps are financial instruments based on bonds and loans that are used to speculate on a company's ability to repay debt. They pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A rise indicates deterioration in the perception of credit quality; a decline, the opposite. A basis point on a contract protecting $10 million of debt for five years is equivalent to $1,000 a year.
On January 11, 2006, in Asia Times Online I wrote in Of debt, deflation and rotten apples:
In the US, where loan securitization is widespread, banks are tempted to push risky loans by passing on the long-term risk to non-bank investors through debt securitization. Credit-default swaps, a relatively novel form of derivative contract, allow investors to hedge against securitized mortgage pools. This type of contract, known as asset-back securities, has been limited to the corporate bond market, conventional home mortgages, and auto and credit-card loans. Last June [2005], a new standard contract began trading by hedge funds that bets on home-equity securities backed by adjustable-rate loans to sub-prime borrowers, not as a hedge strategy but as a profit center. When bearish trades are profitable, their bets can easily become self-fulfilling prophesies by kick-starting a downward vicious cycle.
The US charter and the GSEs' role in guaranteeing about 46% of the $12 trillion US mortgages outstanding led to expectations that the government would stand behind the agencies' debt. Standard & Poor's assigned the debt top ratings, citing the agencies' "explicit and implicit support" from the government.
Moral hazard effect
The bailout of Bear Stearns Cos arranged by the Federal Reserve in March signaled to the market that the government would not allow the GSEs to fail or default on their debts. It is clear evidence of the moral hazard effect on the financial market from bailing out one institution. With all the exposure that all banks and non-bank institutions and central banks have to Fannie and Freddie debt default, the ripple effect through the whole financial system would be unbelievable if they were allowed to fail. It was also clear evidence of the "too big to fail" doctrine.
The risk surrounding Fannie Mae was reflected in the GSE's latest sale of $3 billion of two-year benchmark notes at higher yields over benchmark rates than in previous offerings. The 3.25% notes, which mature August 12, 2010, priced to yield 3.27%, or 74 basis points more than comparable US Treasuries. The company in June 2008 sold $4 billion of 3% notes maturing July 12, 2010, that priced to yield 3.036%, or 65 basis points more than Treasuries.
The government has been leaning on the GSEs to help revive the home mortgage market. Congress lifted growth restrictions on the companies, eased their capital requirements and allowed them to buy bigger, so-called jumbo mortgages, to spur demand for home loans as private lenders fled the market. The decision to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of a $300 billion housing stimulus plan strengthened perceptions of the government's support of the GSEs. Their share of new conforming mortgages, or loans of $417,000 or less, almost doubled to 81% in the first quarter of 2008, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulator. It appears that the fire engines caught on fire on its way to the scene of the fire.
Merrill Lynch analyst Kenneth Bruce said in a report that the "highly levered financial institutions" would have pretax credit-related losses of $45 billion, suggesting that Fannie and Freddie are going to have to raise more capital, but the market does not think they are going to be able to raise capital when they need to at a cost they can live with. The New York Times reported on the night of July 13, 2008 (Sunday) that discussions among senior US government officials had heated up with respect to the US taking over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae before markets opened in Asia. The structure being contemplated is a "conservatorship", which is permitted under a 1992 law and is one that would essentially wipe out the two GSEs' respective equity while allowing their loans to be managed.
Conservatorship is another fancy term of nationalization. The scheme allows the government to pretend the GSEs' liabilities are not its own even after it assumes them. A finding from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the enterprises' regulator, that the GSEs are "critically undercapitalized" would be needed for conservatorship application. Up to now, the OFHEO has sent out the opposite message to the public. It will have to announce a 180-degree "correction" to shift quickly from "adequately capitalized" to "critically undercapitalized" for the government's proposal to work.
But unlike 1933 in the days of the New Deal when deficit financing was an operative option to revive the economy because the government was relatively free of debt, the US in 2008 is already deeply in debt, having operated with deficit financing in a boom time for more than two decades. Estimates suggest that for each 10% decline in Freddie/Fannie assets value, a loss of $150 billion would result, equivalent to the cost of the Iraq War to date. And Fannie has lost 80% of market capitalization and Freddie has lost 70% to date.
Soaring government obligations
By assuming the GSEs' combined $5 trillion in liabilities, the US government's total obligations would soar from $9.5 trillion to $14.5 trillion. This will raise the per capita national debt from $31,250 to $47,650. The added debt is one and a half times the Bush Administration proposed 2008 fiscal budget of $3.1 trillion. While the agencies own housing-related assets that roughly match their liabilities, the still-collapsing housing market makes their value uncertain. This will unavoidably force the dollar to fall and dollar interest rates to rise. Meanwhile, the turmoil is impeding or even paralyzing the GSEs in their crucial life-support role for the housing market.
An analyst's early July report from Lehman Brothers, an investment bank itself on the brink of collapse, provoked the market panic over the GSEs. Lehman, a major player in the mortgage-backed securities market, lost as much as 20% in intraday trading on talk that PIMCO, the world's largest bond trader, no longer was conducting business with the Wall Street firm. Then William Poole, a respected former chief of the St Louis Federal Reserve, now a private investment advisor since July 1, 2008, observed that Fannie and Freddie were technically insolvent in the first quarter this year on a mark-to-market basis. Such information was not news - in a 2006 speech, Emil Henry, then a Treasury assistant secretary, likened a failure of one of the GSE companies to a "single gunshot setting off an avalanche" - and had no bearing on the GSEs' solvency in regulatory terms. Yet the new unsettling attention on two market leaders of overwhelming scale in an uncertain climate threw financial markets into a downward spin.
Fannie and Freddie were the original inventors of mortgage-backed security, a key cause of the housing bubble and its subsequent deflation. These GSEs received credit and recognition for ingenuity in unbundling risk and reselling mortgage-backed securities to buyers of varying risk appetite in the global market. It was the secret behind the US housing boom and the enabling idea behind the structured finance market. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, praised it ceaselessly as an ingenious breakthrough that did much to widen home ownership. But the development weakened the mortgage originators' oversight of loan quality.
Greenspan accepted the risk as part of the natural phenomenon of "bad loans are made in good times". The backing of the GSEs enabled securitization of "ninja" mortgages (no income, no job or assets), loans that no one would buy if they were not guaranteed by the government. Thus the fault did not lie with mortgage originators, for they would not be able to issue shaky mortgages unless there was a market for them. GSEs' abuse of their alleged government guarantee had rendered market discipline inoperative, allowing the system to go on a wide joyride that was bound to crash of a cliff. Because of their complexity and broad distribution, when securitized debts default, restructuring is almost impossible. There is no effective fire break once the fire begins and quickly engulfs the whole market.
The sooner the need for a systemic restructure is acknowledged and acted upon, the better it would be for the long-term health of the economy, or the future of regulated market capitalism itself. However, hybrid solutions of quick fixes to paper over seismic financial faults are being proposed to enable the evasion of responsibility and for political advantage in an election year.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Friday, July 6 this year that the government would support the GSEs "in their current form as they carry out their important mission". On Sunday, the Treasury issued a statement indicating that
its main focus was still on supporting Fannie and Freddie in their current form. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies. Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction. GSE debt is held by financial institutions around the world. Its continued strength is important to maintaining confidence and stability in our financial system and our financial markets. Therefore we must take steps to address the current situation as we move to a stronger regulatory structure.
Regulatory reform while necessary cannot be backdated. There are $5 trillion of outstanding debt instruments written under
problematic regulatory oversight that need to be dealt with. Expressions of support for the "current form" that has proved wanting by a wide margin, a new line of credit to support bad loans and a proposed unlimited injection of capital by government that would surely face congressional opposition is a prescription to muddle through a major structural rupture.
Government support
The ability of the GSEs to raise new capital and credit from private sources is totally dependent on government support. Thus the plan to support these GSEs in distress will be much more costly if it must be done through private profit incentives. The outcome is likely to be a new contraction in the supply, and increase in the cost, of mortgage finance - further lessening the chances of an early recovery in the housing market and the wider economy. Private profit incentive overwhelming public interest got the GSEs in trouble. How can more private profit incentives be expected to get them out of trouble?
The Fed has announced that it will allow Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to borrow from its discount widow, normal open only to commercial banks and since March 2008 open also to investment banks as part of the bail out of Bear Stearns. Under a three-part proposal by the Treasury, the Fed will also be given a consultative role in setting capital requirements and other regulatory standards for Fannie and Freddie, as part of an evolution to be the top regulator and overseer of the nation's financial system.
Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker expressed concern that by expanding its role of lender of last resort to institutions beside commercial banks that previously were not allowed to hold positions in equities, the Fed may have opened itself up to moral hazard dangers if large institutions believe their adventurous behavior will be bailed out by the Fed.
With the Fed, whose perspective tends to align with those of its member banks, taking over many of the regulatory powers of the Security Exchange Commission, whose mandate was originally to protect the interest of small investors, the public interest may face further diminished protection.
Yet the financial market has irreversibly changed with the emergence of structured finance in which loan securitization has taken loans that once had to stay in the balance sheets of issuing banks but are now securitized and sold by brokers to institutional investors worldwide. Default of a major broker default, such as Fannie and Freddie, will be as damaging as failure of a major money-center bank and cause catastrophic collapse of the credit market.
In 1968, then president Lyndon Johnson, as part of his Great Society program, turned Fannie into a shareholder-owned company as part of a national housing policy to make finance capitalism finance the nationalization of housing. It was the beginning of corporate market socialism in the name of populist economic democracy. The public could only benefit if corporate and financial institutional interests could profit first. And the public must pay if market capitalism fails systemically, absolving the losses of wayward corporations and financial institutions.
In 1970, the savings and loan industry, envying the huge profit made by commercial and investment banks from Fannie Mae, called for and received congressional approval for a GSE of their own and Congress created Freddie Mac. Like the Urban Renewal program of the 1950s, the GSEs served a coalition of interest that included liberals who wanted to help low-income households, real state developers that wanted guaranteed demand, home builders that wanted a guaranteed market, local politicians who wanted tax revenue from redevelopment, banks that wanted lucrative risk-free loan proceeds and congressmen who wanted campaign contributions from mortgage lenders.
Too good to be true
Low-income voters were first dazzled by the new homes they were able to acquire with no money down and with monthly payments financed with home equity loans as house prices rose. They acted like Pinocchio in a Pleasure Island - that would soon turn them into jackasses to be sold to work in salt mines. The financial institutions were comforting their pangs of conscience over taking loans off their balance sheets as soon as they made them by excusing themselves with the idea that they were making low-cost mortgage available to millions of homebuyers. Neoliberal economists were celebrating the US miracle of mass capitalism that does not need capital.
The program of passing unsustainable loans to faceless investors benefited also land speculators, home builders, real estate agents, investment bankers, structured financiers and household furnishers. Since the main thrust of the GSE program was to help low- and moderate-income homebuyers, opposition was considered undemocratic.
Yet everyone knows that the GSEs face an interest-rate risk in their long-term mortgages if interest rates should rise over the loan period. To protect itself from interest rate risks, the GSEs use derivatives to hedge against interest-rate risk.
The OFHEO was created by the House Banking Committee chaired by Texas populist Henry Gonzalez in 1992 with minimal power to regulate the two giant GSEs on the ground that GSEs were institutions intended to support the national policy of a nation of homeowners by making housing loans affordable and should be exempt from regulation regulating commercial institutions.
The problem of this good policy intention was that during the era of neoliberal ascendancy, the light regulatory environment was used to negate a more fundamental economic law: the need to increase worker income to match mortgage payments, subsidized or not.
The GSEs have been financially successful because they combine private sector appetite for profit with access to government-backed credit at below market rates. It was a way to nationalize housing through the free market capitalism. The problem was that financial manipulation cannot replace the need for adequate income growth. The mismatch of income with asset price is the definition of a financial bubble. People were buying homes with cheap credit at prices that their income could not afford. The more home prices rose due to cheap credit, the more homeowners fell into the debt trap.
Yet in all the current talk about finding ways to deal with the crisis, not one single voice is heard from official circles about the need to increase worker income. Instead, false hopes on one-time stimulant tax rebates are hailed as the magic bullet.
Suddenly this summer, Fannie and Freddie's relatively anemic capital supply is a serious concern for the market. In one week in July, Fannie's stock plummeted to $10.25, down 74% in 2008. Freddie's shares also dived, closing at $7.75, a loss of 77% this year.
Even as investors stampede out of these battered stocks, the sycophants of free market capitalism in Washington, led by Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, rushed to reassure the market, pointing out that the mortgage giants' regulators had confirmed that the companies were "adequately capitalized", trying to give the impression that regulators had the problem firmly in hand and that no new capital was needed by the GSEs.
But these two leaders had lost much credibility since in August 2007 when they voiced a similar mantra that problems in the mortgage market were "contained" to subprime loans and would not spread beyond. SEC chairman Christopher Cox tried to calm investors by telling them that Bear Stearns passed financial muster only days before it required a Fed-engineered bail out by JP Morgan Chase with Fed loans.
More than capital adequacy is at risk. The credibility of the team with responsibility for the nation's monetary system and its financial market is heading for a meltdown. Unfortunately, credibility is much easier to lose than to regain. (See America's Untested Management Team Asia Times Online, June 17, 2006.)
Recurring anxiety
Anxiety about Fannie and Freddie's liabilities of more than $5 trillion getting too big for the funding authority of the Federal Reserve of a measly $2.5 billion credit line has been a recurring concern in many quarters in recent years. Even after both GSEs were found to be infested with accounting irregularities (Freddie Mac in 2003 and Fannie Mae in 2004), Congress failed to act, except to make the regulator require the GSEs to hold 30% more capital than the minimum previously required, in effect capping their ability to purchase mortgages when the housing bubble was approach its peak.
Still, Fannie and Freddie were allowed to pose as high-growth companies whose shares were safe enough for widows and orphans. GSE market share fell to 45% at the peak of the housing bubble. After the bubble burst, it rose to 68% in the first quarter of 2008.
After empty official assurances failed to convince the market because it was plain for all to see that the two GSEs' direct and guaranteed liabilities were almost 65 times their regulatory capital at the end of the first quarter of 2008, the near-term priority was to restore the rapidly fading confidence of buyers of Fannie's and Freddie's debt, many of whom are foreigners. By increasing the GSEs' credit line and pushing for authority to inject fresh equity if necessary, the Treasury's proposed plan appears to be aimed at allaying fears of widespread counterparty default and market failure. Freddie seemed to have no serious problem offloading $3 billion of new paper on Monday, July 14, although arm-twisting was rumored to have been needed to persuade banks to buy it.
The bigger problem for Washington is that merely stabilizing Fannie and Freddie is not enough. With US banks seriously distressed by the credit crisis, the GSEs, which hold or guarantee 22% of the $24.3 trillion outstanding debts borrowed by US households and the non-financial sector, are a major source of credit. Yet the market is clearly uncomfortable with the inability of the GSEs to maintain its over-bloated balance sheet. The options are either to shrink the balance sheet drastically, thus exacerbating the credit crisis, or to seek a massive injection of new capital, both requiring government action at an unprecedented scale.
Despite these ad hoc measures, which may or may not receive congressional approval, the whole world knows that credit capacity is shrinking drastically in the market. There are rumors that the US is pressing foreign central banks to acquire more GSE debt, but the market is inundated with fear of new crises before the housing market recovers. And the housing market is lying in a coma in intensive care with an oxygen tank of new credit running near empty.
As the housing market collapses, both GSE companies are reporting steep losses. But the subprime mortgage meltdown has also made the GSEs more important than ever in holding up the housing finance sector. Since the credit markets seized up, Fannie and Freddie have regained their central role in mortgage finance after losing significant market share to investment banks during the housing boom. They have issued the vast majority of mortgage securities sold in the last six months because investors have lost confidence in deals put together by big investment banks.
In February 2008, prodded by the Treasury, federal regulators announced they were easing some restrictions on lending by Fannie and Freddie. Then on March 19 the federal government announced that it was easing those restrictions in an effort to calm the turmoil afflicting the mortgage markets. Officials said the change could allow the two GSEs to invest $200 billion more in mortgages.
Alarmed by the sharply eroding market confidence in the nation's two GSEs, the largest mortgage finance companies, the Bush administration announced plans on Sunday, July 13 to ask Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject unlimited funds into the beleaguered companies through investments and loans.
In a separate announcement, the Federal Reserve said that at the request of the Treasury it would make one of its temporary short-term lending programs at the discount window available to the two GSEs, "to promote the availability of home mortgage credit during a period of stress in financial markets." The program for the GSEs would end when Congress approves the Treasury's proposed plan.
Treasury Secretary Paulson announced dramatically Sunday on the steps of the Treasury building: "The president has asked me to work with Congress to act on this plan immediately. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies. Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction."
Paulson paradox
While officials in successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have for many years repeatedly denied that the trillions of dollars of debt Fannie and Freddie issued is guaranteed by the government, the Paulson package, if adopted, would bring the Treasury closer than ever to exposing taxpayers to potentially huge new liabilities. The two GSEs are expected to face significant new losses this year as the wave of housing foreclosures continues and rises. Paulson seemed to suggest that there is no choice but for the government to intervene. The proposed plan, requiring the Treasury to be giving authority by Congress to command unlimited funds to stabilize the GSEs, is predicated on the hope that the very availability of unlimited funds would make it unnecessary to use them. The investment and lending elements of the proposed plan are to last two years.
Over the weekend, Treasury officials sought assurances from Wall Street firms that the $3 billion auction on Monday by Freddie Mac of short-term debt would go off without a hitch. While $3 billion is a relatively small sum for an institution of Freddie's size, officials said they did not want to risk even a small misstep that could set off a new round of problems. Despite repeated assurances by top officials that the companies had adequate cash to weather the current financial storm, Fannie and Freddie had suffered a withering blow of confidence the week before. As a result, Freddie was faced with an uncertain debt offering on Monday. Should Fannie and Freddie fail, $5.3 trillion in mortgage debt would go unpaid. As it happened, the offering went smoothly but everyone knew it was not a normal market.
Freddie Mac continued to try to raise capital from private investors even after a government rescue plan it and its sister company Fannie Mae was announced the weekend before, indicating concern that the government plan may be delayed in Congress. On Friday, July 18, Freddie Mac cleared one of the last obstacles to raising new capital through a planned $5.5 billion stock offering when it received approval to register with US securities regulators. However, Freddie Mac's ability to attract much-needed capital from new and existing shareholders has been potentially lessened by the possibility of a future government stake that might place restrictions on the business. There is also little clarity with regard to where in the capital structure the government might invest, and how dilutive such a move would be to existing shareholders.
The government's rescue plan, which would allow the Treasury unlimited powers until the end of 2009 to increase its credit line to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and invest in their equity, met some strong vocal resistance in Congressional hearings during the week before July 18.
While many expect Congress to have no option except to approve the Paulson plan, a few skeptics were voicing their opposition in public hearings. Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, described Paulson as "asking for a blank check ... for this unprecedented intervention in our free markets." He also vowed to try his best to stop a proposal that would give the Federal Reserve sweeping new powers aimed at protecting the nation's shaky financial system. Bunning said the Federal Reserve "can't be trusted with the power it already has". He says the Fed's policies in recent years have contributed to economic woes, including surging inflation, a declining dollar and the housing bust.
"When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turns out socialism is alive and well in America. The Treasury Secretary is asking for a blank check to buy as much Fannie and Freddie debt or equity as he wants. The Fed's purchase of Bear Stearns' assets was amateur socialism compared to this," thundered the Republican Senator against his own party's Treasury secretary. In US political discourse, socialism is a dirty word, albeit what Paulson proposes is not anywhere near what socialism is commonly understood to be in the rest of the world, but a scheme to use public funds to save debt capitalism by frustrating the right to fail in market capitalism.
Predatory lending
Ron Paul, Republican congressman from Texas, told Bernanke that the Federal Reserve is a "predatory lender". But he did not mention that by law, predatory lenders forfeit any right of collection.
Lender liability is embodied in common and statutory law covering a broad spectrum of claims surrounding predatory lending. It is a key concept in environmental-cleanup litigation. If a lender knowingly lends to a borrower who is obviously unable to make reasonable beneficial gain from the use of the funds, or causes the borrower to assume responsibilities that are obviously beyond the borrower's capacity, the lender not only risks losing the loan without recourse but is also liable for the financial damage to the borrower caused by such loans. For example, if a bank lends to a trust client who is a minor, or someone who had no business experience, to start a risky business that resulted in the loss not only of the loan but of the client trust account, the bank may well be required by the court to make whole the client.
In the United States, although predatory lending is not defined by federal law, and various states define abusive lending differently, it usually involves practices that strip equity away from a homeowner, or equity from a company, or condemn the debtor into perpetual indenture. Predatory or abusive lending practices can include making a loan to a borrower without regard to the borrower's ability to repay, repeatedly refinancing a loan within a short period of time and charging high points and fees with each refinance, charging excessive rates and fees to a borrower who qualifies for lower rates and/or fees offered by the lender, or imposing new unjustifiably harsh terms for rolling over existing debt. Predation breaks the links between an economy's aggregate resource endowment and aggregate consumption and between the interpersonal distribution of endowments and the interpersonal distribution of consumption.
The choice by some to be predators decreases aggregate consumption, both because the predators' resources are wasted and because producers sacrifice production by allocating resources to guarding against predators. Much of welfare economics is based on the concept of pareto optimum, which asserts that resources are optimally distributed when an individual cannot move into a better position without putting someone else into a worse position. In an unjust global society, the pareto optimum will perpetuate injustice.
Now, there is a close parallel in most Third World debts and International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue packages to the above predation examples, where sophisticated international bankers knowingly lend to dubious schemes in developing economies merely to get their fees and high interest, knowing that "countries don't go bankrupt", as Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citibank, once famously proclaimed.
The argument for Third World debt forgiveness contains large measures of lender liability and predatory lending. Debt securitization allows predatory bankers to pass the risk to global credit markets, socializing the potential damage after skimming off the privatized profits. The housing bubble has been created largely by predatory lending without any lender liability. The argument for forgiving Third World debt is applicable to low- and moderate-income home mortgage borrowers in the US as well. Let's hear some proactive commitments from the presumptive candidates of both political parties instead of empty populist campaign rhetoric.
Henry C K Liu is chairman of a New York-based private investment group. His website is at http://www.henryckliu.com.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
By Henry C K Liu
In a period of less than a year, what had been described by US authorities as a temporary financial problem related to the bursting the housing bubble has turned into a fully fledged crisis at the very core of free-market capitalism.
A handful of analysts have been warning for years that the wholesale deregulation of financial markets and the wrong-headed privatization of the public sector during the past two decades would threaten the viability of free-market capitalism. Yet ideological neoliberal fixation remain firmly imbedded in US ruling circles, fertilized by irresistible campaign contributions from
profiteers on Wall Street, methodically purging regulatory agencies of all who tried to maintain a sense of financial reality.
This ideology of "market knows best" has allowed the nation to slip into an unsustainable joyride on massive debt giddily assumed by all market participants, ranging from supposedly conservative banks, investment banks and other non-bank financial institutions, to industrial corporations, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and individuals.
The once-dynamic US economy has turned itself into a system in which it is difficult to find any institution, company or individual not over their head in speculative debt. Undercapitalized capitalism, also known as debt capitalism, has been the engine of growth for the US debt bubble in the last two decades. This debt capitalism cancer is caused by a failure of central banking.
In the face of a broad systemic collapse of debt capitalism, where capital has become dangerously inadequate and new capital hazardously and prohibitively scarce, having been crowded out by massive debt collateralized by overblown assets of declining value and with a credit crisis that clearly requires systemic restructuring and comprehensive intensive care, those in the US responsible for the financial well-being of the nation seem to have been reacting tactically from crisis to crisis with a script of adamant denial of obvious facts, symptoms and trends, with no signs of any coherent grand strategy or plan to save the cancerous system from structural self-destruction.
This band-aid short-term approach to artificially pop up share prices in the collapsing equity market and to maintain insolvent financial institutions with technical life-support will lead only to long-term disaster for the whole economy.
Yet this approach is preferred by those in authority, trapped in self deception about unregulated market capitalism being still fundamentally sound. They try to calm markets by asserting that the current turmoil is merely a minor liquidity bottleneck that can be handled by the central bank releasing more liquidity against the full face value of collaterals of declining worth.
The message is that somehow, if easy money in the form of debt is made endlessly available, the economy will recover from this credit crunch, notwithstanding that excessive debt has been the cause of the problem; or bad loans can be made good by Congress giving the US Treasury authority to buy up bad loans with unlimited amounts of taxpayer money.
Yet these incremental measures taken so far by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve make the two government units with direct responsibility on the nation's long-term financial health look like panicky rogue traders trading for the national account in desperate hope to score a win in the next quarter by upping the ante, to contain allegedly isolated crisis hot points. The aggregate effect adds up to a broad stealth nationalization of the insolvent financial sector. Their prescription for stabilizing a debt-destabilized market is more public debt to support corporation socialism.
For years, anyone warning that the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, should be held to normal capitalization requirements was ridiculed as a fear monger by the powerful lobbying machines these GSEs employed. Capital is considered as superfluous in the new game of debt capitalism held up by complex circular hedging. As a result, the GSEs have become the monstrous tail that wags the dog of housing finance.
The current talk about the need to curb speculation in the commodities and financial markets to stabilize prices is off target, especially for believers of market capitalism. All market transactions are speculative in nature. Speculation can stabilize prices as well as to destabilize them, but only in the short term. Long-term price levels (inflation or deflation), as Milton Friedman aptly observed, are always monetary phenomena. The current turmoil in the financial system, the subprime mortgage implosion, the credit crisis from the seizure in the asset-backed commercial papers market, the undercapitalization of commercial and investment bank, the rating agency dysfunction, the insolvency of monocline (bond) insurers, the massive financial losses by the GSEs and a host of other financial problems percolating under the media radar, are the outcome, and not the cause, of this market turbulence. (See Perils of the debt-propelled economy, Asia Times Online, September 14, 2002.)
Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, GSEs that have provided mortgage funds for the housing market since 1938, were created as part of the New Deal to help low-income families. They were privatized in 1968 on terms that would alter their social mandate and would inevitably lead them into financial trouble on a big scale. Finally but suddenly, these GSEs find themselves in danger of defaulting on their massive debts, upwards of US$5 trillion, in the course of a single week.
Deeply rooted in US political culture is the view that credit is a financial public utility, much like air and water, and should be equally accessible to all, not just to the rich. Economic democracy has been the core strength of US political democracy. Government loan guarantees for students and home mortgages for low- and moderate-income groups and loans to small business are based on this principle. Yet from time to time, this principle of economic democracy is overshadowed by free-market extremism to push the nation's economy into extended depressions.
The US National Housing Act was enacted on June 27, 1934, as one of several economic recovery measures of the New Deal to get the nation out of the Great Depression. It provided for the establishment of a Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Title II of the Act provided for the insurance of home-mortgage loans made by private lenders, taking the disaggregated risk in lending to low-income borrowers off private lenders and managing the risk on a national scale with a government agency to take advantage of the law of large numbers, a theorem in probability that describes the long-term stability of a random variable. Title III of the Act provided for the chartering of national mortgage associations by the FHA administrator. These associations were to be independent corporations regulated by the administrator, and their chief purpose was to buy and sell the mortgages insured by the FHA under Title II.
Only one association was ever formed under this authority. On February 10, 1938, this association, the National Mortgage Association of Washington, became a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corp, a government corporation. Its name was changed that same year to Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). By amendments made in 1948, Title III of the US National Housing Act became a statutory charter for Fannie Mae.
Balloon payment barrier
Before the Great Depression, affording a home was difficult for most people in the US. At that time, a prospective homeowner had to make a down payment of 40% and pay the mortgage off in three to five years. Until the last payment, borrowers paid only interest on the loan. The entire principal was paid in one lump sum as the final "balloon" payment. Lenders could demand full payment of the outstanding loan at any time of the lender's choosing, often at time least advantageous to borrowers. This allowed lenders to use foreclosures as a means to take over desirable properties.
During the 1920s boom time in real estate, a rudimentary secondary mortgage market had come into being. The stock-market crash of 1929 ended the real-estate boom and forced many private guarantee companies into insolvency as home prices collapsed. As economic conditions worsened, more and more borrowers defaulted on mortgages because they couldn't come up with the money for the final balloon payment or to roll over their mortgage because of low market value of their homes.
To help lift the country out of the Great Depression, Congress created the FHA through the National Housing Act of 1934. The FHA's insurance program protected mortgage lenders from the risk of default on long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. Because this type of mortgage was unpopular with private lenders and investors, Congress in 1938 created Fannie Mae to refinance FHA-insured mortgages.
As soldiers came home from World War II, Congress passed the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, which gave the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) authority to guarantee veterans' loans with no down payment or insurance premium requirements. Many financial institutions considered this arrangement a more attractive investment than war bonds.
By revision of Title III in 1954, Fannie Mae was converted into a mixed-ownership corporation, its preferred stock to be held by the government and its common stock to be privately held. It was at this time that Section 312 was first enacted, giving Title III the short title of Federal National Mortgage Association Charter Act.
By amendments made in 1968, the Federal National Mortgage Association was partitioned into two separate entities, one to be known as the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), the other to retain the name Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). Ginnie Mae remained in the government, and Fannie Mae became privately owned by retiring the government-held stock. Ginnie Mae has operated as a wholly owned government association since the 1968 amendments. Fannie Mae, as a private company operating with private capital on a self-sustaining basis, expanded to buy mortgages beyond traditional government loan limits, reaching out to a broader income cross-section.
By the early '70s, inflation and interest rates rose drastically. Many investors drifted away from mortgages. Ginnie Mae eased economic tension by issuing its first mortgage-backed security (MBS) guarantee in 1970. Investors found these guaranteed MBSs highly attractive. Also in 1970, under the Emergency Home Finance Act, Congress chartered the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp (Freddie Mac) to buy conventional mortgages from federally insured financial institutions. The legislation also authorized Fannie Mae to purchase conventional mortgages. Freddie Mac introduced its own MBS program in 1971.
Fannie and Freddie charters give these GSEs exemptions from state and local taxes, allow them relatively meager capital requirements, and provide them with an ability to borrow money at lowest possible rates to lend at near market rates. Over the years, this advantage has served not to lower home prices and mortgage payments to help low-income buyers but to enrich debt securitizers and brokers.
Aging credit line
Each agency now has a $2.25 billion credit line with the Treasury, set nearly 40 years ago by Congress at a time when Fannie had only about $15 billion in outstanding debt. It now has total debt of about $800 billion, while Freddie has about $740 billion. Today the two companies also hold or guarantee loans with face value of more than $5 trillion, about half the nation's mortgages. Market analysts estimate that the market value of this liability may be less than 50% unless the housing market recovers. In other words, the GSEs face a $3.5 trillion exposure to default if they cannot raise new funds in the credit market.
In the early 1980s, the US economy spiraled into deep recession. Interest rates were high while house prices while falling, remaining beyond the reach of many low- and moderate-income buyers because income growth stayed stagnant. The US economy faced a dual problem of income deficiency and money devaluation. In this poor housing market environment, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all created programs to handle adjustable-rate mortgages. The Ginnie Mae guaranty is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Today, Ginnie Mae guaranteed securities are one of the most widely held and traded MBSs in the world. Ginnie Mae has guaranteed more than $1.7 trillion in MBSs. Historically, 95% of all FHA and VA mortgages have been securitized through Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae is a guarantor, a surety. Ginnie Mae does not issue, sell, or buy MBSs, or purchase mortgage loans. Ginnie Mae is not in financial distress.
Fannie Mae is another story. Many of the innovative mortgage options introduced during the early 1980s to revive the weak housing market in a recession were exploited to fuel a housing bubble with excessive liquidity provided by the Federal Reserve, helping low- and middle-income buyer to buy homes their stagnant income could not afford. Fannie continues to operate under a congressional charter that directs it to channel its efforts into increasing the availability and affordability of home ownership for low-, moderate- and middle-income Americans. Yet Fannie Mae receives no government funding or backing, and it is one of the nation's largest taxpayers as well as one of the most consistently profitable corporations until now.
The company has evolved to become a shareholder-owned, privately managed corporation supporting the secondary market for conventional loans. Its congressional mandate of keeping homes affordable has since been largely forgotten in favor of an unprecedented boom in the housing market. Yet it continues to operate under a congressional charter that provides it with low-cost funds with only perfunctory oversight from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Treasury.
Fannie Mae has two primary lines of business: Portfolio investment, in which the company buys mortgages and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) as investments, funding those purchases with debt, and credit guaranty, which involves guaranteeing for a fee the credit performance of single-family and multi-family loans.
Overseas debt holders
During the housing bubble which it essentially helped create with the Fed easy money, Fannie was highly profitable, with high returns for happy shareholders and lucrative compensation for its executives. Above all, it provided a continuous stream of income and profit for Wall Street and central banks around the world while US homeowners were led down a treachery path of eventual foreclosure. According to data from the Council on Foreign Relations, foreign central banks own $925 billion of debt in the two GSEs. China tops the list with $420 billion in Freddie and Fannie debt; Russia and Japan come in second with a combined $407 billion in GSE debt. Others countries that hold the debt include Singapore, Taiwan, and several cash-rich countries in the Persian Gulf.
Fannie's portfolio investment business includes mortgage loans purchased throughout the US from approved mortgage lending institutions. It also purchases MBSs, structured mortgage products and other assets in the open market. The corporation derives income from the difference between the yield on these investments and the low subsidized costs to fund the purchase of these investments, usually from issuing debt in the domestic and international markets. Fannie Mae has $3.46 trillion in MBSs outstanding today, held by a dispersed network of investors, including foreign central banks, topped by China's.
The GSEs now only pay lip service to accomplishing its mission to provide products and services that increase the availability and the affordability of housing for low-, moderate- and middle-income buyers by operating in the secondary rather than the primary mortgage market.
Fannie Mae purchases mortgage loans from mortgage lenders such as mortgage companies, savings institutions, credit unions and commercial banks, thereby replenishing those institutions' supply of mortgage funds. It either packages these loans into MBSs, which it guarantees for full and timely payment of principal and interest, or purchases these loans for cash and retains the mortgages in its own portfolio. Yet Fannie's role in recent years has been to supply the housing bubble with excess liquidity released by a wayward central bank, by buying at a profit economically unsound mortgages that depended on a continuing spiral of rising home prices way beyond reasonable projection of home buyer income growth. It has turned the US from a nation of homeowners into a nation of foreclosed homes.
Fannie Mae is now one of the world's largest issuers of debt securities, the leader in the $14 trillion US home-mortgage market. Fannie Mae's debt obligations are treated as US agency securities in the marketplace, which is just below US Treasuries and above AAA corporate debt. This agency status is due in part to the creation and existence of the corporation pursuant to a federal law, the public mission that it allegedly serves, and the corporation's continuing ties to the US government through a weak oversight link. It benefits from an appearance, though not the essence, of being backed by sovereign credit that borders on outright fraud and protected by the doctrine of too big to fail.
Fannie Mae debt obligations receive favorable treatment from a regulatory perspective. Fannie Mae securities are "exempted securities" under laws administered by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to the same extent as US government obligations. Also, Fannie Mae debt qualifies for more liberal treatment than corporate debt under US federal statutes and regulations and, to a limited extent, foreign overseas statutes and regulations. Fund managers who buy GSE debt are protected from fiduciary challenges.
Some of these statutes and regulations make it possible for deposit-taking institutions to invest in Fannie Mae debt more liberally than in corporate debt and other mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities. Others enable certain institutions to invest in Fannie Mae debt on par with obligations of the United States and in unlimited amounts. Fannie Mae uses a variety of funding vehicles to provide investors with debt securities that meet their investment, trading, hedging, and financing objectives, not all of which serves the public interest. Fannie Mae is able to issue different debt structures at various points on the yield curve because of its large and consistent funding needs. As the Treasury retired 30-year bonds, these GSE agencies stepped in to fill the void in long term finance.
Ideology triumphant
The privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was an ideological move. It was financially unnecessary as sovereign credit could have funded the entire low-, moderate- and middle-income housing-mortgage needs with no profit siphoned off to private investors and brokers. These agency debt instruments played a crucial role in developing and sustaining the credit bubble in the US that is now coming home to roost.
In fact, the funding risk of both agencies was questioned, among many others, by the voice of free-market capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, on February 20, 2002 in an editorial about Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's safety, soundness and financial management, characterizing both agencies as risky, fast-growing companies that "look like poorly run hedge funds" … "unduly exposed to credit risk with large derivative positions", and that they "use all manner of derivatives" and "are exposed to unquantified counterparty risk on these positions". Such concerns would have been avoided if both agencies had been funded directly with government credit, and the cost of housing to low-, moderate- and middle-income Americans would have been lower. As it happens, the government is now faced with the prospect of having to bail out these GSEs with public funds.
The term "undercapitalization" for financial institutions is merely a sanitized euphemism for insolvency. The real source of the present market turbulence is more than just the waywardness of runaway GSEs sidetracked from their public purpose. It is another symptom of the failure of central banking. The world is now witnessing the slow but steady collapse of the central banking regime that came into being in the US in 1913, which has since failed to fulfill its mandate of managing the monetary system to maintain price stability and full employment. Dysfunctional monetary policies adopted by all central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, have allowed the market to take capital out of free market capitalism to turn it into a gigantic Ponzi scheme.
In the 1990s, the original congressional intent for the GSEs was distorted from making homeownership affordable to low- and moderate-income families to a new role of supporting a housing bubble that enables families to buy homes at prices with mortgages their incomes cannot service. The profit from housing price appreciation went mostly to mortgage originators and banks that bought and sold MBSs to investors who also profited from buying debt with debt collateralized with the debt they bought. Capital suddenly became only a notional value in the market of debt derivatives. Homebuyers bought mortgages with no downpayment, banks and mortgage brokers sold the debt to securitizers who sold it to institutional investors who borrowed using the securities as collateral. The GSEs also became very profitable, leaving homeowners to default on their mortgages as the market turned on them. The whole transaction cycle did not require any capital.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ranked Aaa by the world's leading credit-rating companies, are now being treated by derivatives traders as if they were rated five levels lower because the issuers are pitifully undercapitalized for the size of the debt they issue. Credit-default swaps tied to $1.45 trillion of debt sold by these two biggest allegedly US-backed mortgage finance companies are trading at levels that imply the bonds should be rated A2 by Moody's Investors Service. The price of contracts used to speculate on the creditworthiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to protect against a default has doubled in the past two months.
Debt guarantee disregarded
Traders are disregarding the government's implied guarantee of GSE debt as credit losses grow and concern rises about the GSEs not having enough capital to weather the biggest housing slump since the Great Depression. Fannie Mae has lost 80% of market capitalization value in the first half of 2008 on the New York Stock Exchange; and Freddie Mac lost 70%. The two GSEs reported combined operating losses of more than $11 billion, and have raised more than $20 billion new capital since December 2007. After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc released a report on June 7, 2008, saying a new accounting rule may require the GSEs to raise another $75 billion in new capital, Freddie Mac shares dropped another 18% and Fannie Mae fell 16%.
Still, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulator of these GSEs, declared them as adequately capitalized in regulatory terms. The companies' existing congressional charters give the Treasury the authority to buy as much as $2.25 billion in each of their securities in the event of possible default, against a total liability of over $5 trillion. The works out as an equity injection of less than half-a-cent on each dollar of liability.
Credit-default swaps tied to the senior debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have climbed 35 basis points to 70 basis points since May 1, 2008. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point. The cost to protect the companies' subordinated debt from default
rose at a faster rate. That debt is rated Aa2 by Moody's. Credit-default swaps on Fannie Mae's subordinated notes jumped 103 basis points to 190 basis points since May 1, while contracts on Freddie Mac's subordinated notes rose 102 basis points to 190 basis points.
The median credit-default swap on debt rated Aaa by Moody's was 26 basis points as of July 8. It was 76 basis points for debt rated A2, and 180 basis points for debt rated Baa3, the lowest investment-grade ranking. The costs likely reflect counterparty risk, or the risk that the bank or securities firm on the other end of the contract fails. For most companies, the counterparty risk embedded in credit-default swap costs would not be as pronounced because the risk of a default on the underlying debt would be greater than that of the bank backing the protection. In the case of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other companies with Aaa ratings, the default risk for lower-rated banks is greater.
Credit-default swaps are financial instruments based on bonds and loans that are used to speculate on a company's ability to repay debt. They pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A rise indicates deterioration in the perception of credit quality; a decline, the opposite. A basis point on a contract protecting $10 million of debt for five years is equivalent to $1,000 a year.
On January 11, 2006, in Asia Times Online I wrote in Of debt, deflation and rotten apples:
In the US, where loan securitization is widespread, banks are tempted to push risky loans by passing on the long-term risk to non-bank investors through debt securitization. Credit-default swaps, a relatively novel form of derivative contract, allow investors to hedge against securitized mortgage pools. This type of contract, known as asset-back securities, has been limited to the corporate bond market, conventional home mortgages, and auto and credit-card loans. Last June [2005], a new standard contract began trading by hedge funds that bets on home-equity securities backed by adjustable-rate loans to sub-prime borrowers, not as a hedge strategy but as a profit center. When bearish trades are profitable, their bets can easily become self-fulfilling prophesies by kick-starting a downward vicious cycle.
The US charter and the GSEs' role in guaranteeing about 46% of the $12 trillion US mortgages outstanding led to expectations that the government would stand behind the agencies' debt. Standard & Poor's assigned the debt top ratings, citing the agencies' "explicit and implicit support" from the government.
Moral hazard effect
The bailout of Bear Stearns Cos arranged by the Federal Reserve in March signaled to the market that the government would not allow the GSEs to fail or default on their debts. It is clear evidence of the moral hazard effect on the financial market from bailing out one institution. With all the exposure that all banks and non-bank institutions and central banks have to Fannie and Freddie debt default, the ripple effect through the whole financial system would be unbelievable if they were allowed to fail. It was also clear evidence of the "too big to fail" doctrine.
The risk surrounding Fannie Mae was reflected in the GSE's latest sale of $3 billion of two-year benchmark notes at higher yields over benchmark rates than in previous offerings. The 3.25% notes, which mature August 12, 2010, priced to yield 3.27%, or 74 basis points more than comparable US Treasuries. The company in June 2008 sold $4 billion of 3% notes maturing July 12, 2010, that priced to yield 3.036%, or 65 basis points more than Treasuries.
The government has been leaning on the GSEs to help revive the home mortgage market. Congress lifted growth restrictions on the companies, eased their capital requirements and allowed them to buy bigger, so-called jumbo mortgages, to spur demand for home loans as private lenders fled the market. The decision to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of a $300 billion housing stimulus plan strengthened perceptions of the government's support of the GSEs. Their share of new conforming mortgages, or loans of $417,000 or less, almost doubled to 81% in the first quarter of 2008, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulator. It appears that the fire engines caught on fire on its way to the scene of the fire.
Merrill Lynch analyst Kenneth Bruce said in a report that the "highly levered financial institutions" would have pretax credit-related losses of $45 billion, suggesting that Fannie and Freddie are going to have to raise more capital, but the market does not think they are going to be able to raise capital when they need to at a cost they can live with. The New York Times reported on the night of July 13, 2008 (Sunday) that discussions among senior US government officials had heated up with respect to the US taking over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae before markets opened in Asia. The structure being contemplated is a "conservatorship", which is permitted under a 1992 law and is one that would essentially wipe out the two GSEs' respective equity while allowing their loans to be managed.
Conservatorship is another fancy term of nationalization. The scheme allows the government to pretend the GSEs' liabilities are not its own even after it assumes them. A finding from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the enterprises' regulator, that the GSEs are "critically undercapitalized" would be needed for conservatorship application. Up to now, the OFHEO has sent out the opposite message to the public. It will have to announce a 180-degree "correction" to shift quickly from "adequately capitalized" to "critically undercapitalized" for the government's proposal to work.
But unlike 1933 in the days of the New Deal when deficit financing was an operative option to revive the economy because the government was relatively free of debt, the US in 2008 is already deeply in debt, having operated with deficit financing in a boom time for more than two decades. Estimates suggest that for each 10% decline in Freddie/Fannie assets value, a loss of $150 billion would result, equivalent to the cost of the Iraq War to date. And Fannie has lost 80% of market capitalization and Freddie has lost 70% to date.
Soaring government obligations
By assuming the GSEs' combined $5 trillion in liabilities, the US government's total obligations would soar from $9.5 trillion to $14.5 trillion. This will raise the per capita national debt from $31,250 to $47,650. The added debt is one and a half times the Bush Administration proposed 2008 fiscal budget of $3.1 trillion. While the agencies own housing-related assets that roughly match their liabilities, the still-collapsing housing market makes their value uncertain. This will unavoidably force the dollar to fall and dollar interest rates to rise. Meanwhile, the turmoil is impeding or even paralyzing the GSEs in their crucial life-support role for the housing market.
An analyst's early July report from Lehman Brothers, an investment bank itself on the brink of collapse, provoked the market panic over the GSEs. Lehman, a major player in the mortgage-backed securities market, lost as much as 20% in intraday trading on talk that PIMCO, the world's largest bond trader, no longer was conducting business with the Wall Street firm. Then William Poole, a respected former chief of the St Louis Federal Reserve, now a private investment advisor since July 1, 2008, observed that Fannie and Freddie were technically insolvent in the first quarter this year on a mark-to-market basis. Such information was not news - in a 2006 speech, Emil Henry, then a Treasury assistant secretary, likened a failure of one of the GSE companies to a "single gunshot setting off an avalanche" - and had no bearing on the GSEs' solvency in regulatory terms. Yet the new unsettling attention on two market leaders of overwhelming scale in an uncertain climate threw financial markets into a downward spin.
Fannie and Freddie were the original inventors of mortgage-backed security, a key cause of the housing bubble and its subsequent deflation. These GSEs received credit and recognition for ingenuity in unbundling risk and reselling mortgage-backed securities to buyers of varying risk appetite in the global market. It was the secret behind the US housing boom and the enabling idea behind the structured finance market. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, praised it ceaselessly as an ingenious breakthrough that did much to widen home ownership. But the development weakened the mortgage originators' oversight of loan quality.
Greenspan accepted the risk as part of the natural phenomenon of "bad loans are made in good times". The backing of the GSEs enabled securitization of "ninja" mortgages (no income, no job or assets), loans that no one would buy if they were not guaranteed by the government. Thus the fault did not lie with mortgage originators, for they would not be able to issue shaky mortgages unless there was a market for them. GSEs' abuse of their alleged government guarantee had rendered market discipline inoperative, allowing the system to go on a wide joyride that was bound to crash of a cliff. Because of their complexity and broad distribution, when securitized debts default, restructuring is almost impossible. There is no effective fire break once the fire begins and quickly engulfs the whole market.
The sooner the need for a systemic restructure is acknowledged and acted upon, the better it would be for the long-term health of the economy, or the future of regulated market capitalism itself. However, hybrid solutions of quick fixes to paper over seismic financial faults are being proposed to enable the evasion of responsibility and for political advantage in an election year.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Friday, July 6 this year that the government would support the GSEs "in their current form as they carry out their important mission". On Sunday, the Treasury issued a statement indicating that
its main focus was still on supporting Fannie and Freddie in their current form. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies. Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction. GSE debt is held by financial institutions around the world. Its continued strength is important to maintaining confidence and stability in our financial system and our financial markets. Therefore we must take steps to address the current situation as we move to a stronger regulatory structure.
Regulatory reform while necessary cannot be backdated. There are $5 trillion of outstanding debt instruments written under
problematic regulatory oversight that need to be dealt with. Expressions of support for the "current form" that has proved wanting by a wide margin, a new line of credit to support bad loans and a proposed unlimited injection of capital by government that would surely face congressional opposition is a prescription to muddle through a major structural rupture.
Government support
The ability of the GSEs to raise new capital and credit from private sources is totally dependent on government support. Thus the plan to support these GSEs in distress will be much more costly if it must be done through private profit incentives. The outcome is likely to be a new contraction in the supply, and increase in the cost, of mortgage finance - further lessening the chances of an early recovery in the housing market and the wider economy. Private profit incentive overwhelming public interest got the GSEs in trouble. How can more private profit incentives be expected to get them out of trouble?
The Fed has announced that it will allow Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to borrow from its discount widow, normal open only to commercial banks and since March 2008 open also to investment banks as part of the bail out of Bear Stearns. Under a three-part proposal by the Treasury, the Fed will also be given a consultative role in setting capital requirements and other regulatory standards for Fannie and Freddie, as part of an evolution to be the top regulator and overseer of the nation's financial system.
Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker expressed concern that by expanding its role of lender of last resort to institutions beside commercial banks that previously were not allowed to hold positions in equities, the Fed may have opened itself up to moral hazard dangers if large institutions believe their adventurous behavior will be bailed out by the Fed.
With the Fed, whose perspective tends to align with those of its member banks, taking over many of the regulatory powers of the Security Exchange Commission, whose mandate was originally to protect the interest of small investors, the public interest may face further diminished protection.
Yet the financial market has irreversibly changed with the emergence of structured finance in which loan securitization has taken loans that once had to stay in the balance sheets of issuing banks but are now securitized and sold by brokers to institutional investors worldwide. Default of a major broker default, such as Fannie and Freddie, will be as damaging as failure of a major money-center bank and cause catastrophic collapse of the credit market.
In 1968, then president Lyndon Johnson, as part of his Great Society program, turned Fannie into a shareholder-owned company as part of a national housing policy to make finance capitalism finance the nationalization of housing. It was the beginning of corporate market socialism in the name of populist economic democracy. The public could only benefit if corporate and financial institutional interests could profit first. And the public must pay if market capitalism fails systemically, absolving the losses of wayward corporations and financial institutions.
In 1970, the savings and loan industry, envying the huge profit made by commercial and investment banks from Fannie Mae, called for and received congressional approval for a GSE of their own and Congress created Freddie Mac. Like the Urban Renewal program of the 1950s, the GSEs served a coalition of interest that included liberals who wanted to help low-income households, real state developers that wanted guaranteed demand, home builders that wanted a guaranteed market, local politicians who wanted tax revenue from redevelopment, banks that wanted lucrative risk-free loan proceeds and congressmen who wanted campaign contributions from mortgage lenders.
Too good to be true
Low-income voters were first dazzled by the new homes they were able to acquire with no money down and with monthly payments financed with home equity loans as house prices rose. They acted like Pinocchio in a Pleasure Island - that would soon turn them into jackasses to be sold to work in salt mines. The financial institutions were comforting their pangs of conscience over taking loans off their balance sheets as soon as they made them by excusing themselves with the idea that they were making low-cost mortgage available to millions of homebuyers. Neoliberal economists were celebrating the US miracle of mass capitalism that does not need capital.
The program of passing unsustainable loans to faceless investors benefited also land speculators, home builders, real estate agents, investment bankers, structured financiers and household furnishers. Since the main thrust of the GSE program was to help low- and moderate-income homebuyers, opposition was considered undemocratic.
Yet everyone knows that the GSEs face an interest-rate risk in their long-term mortgages if interest rates should rise over the loan period. To protect itself from interest rate risks, the GSEs use derivatives to hedge against interest-rate risk.
The OFHEO was created by the House Banking Committee chaired by Texas populist Henry Gonzalez in 1992 with minimal power to regulate the two giant GSEs on the ground that GSEs were institutions intended to support the national policy of a nation of homeowners by making housing loans affordable and should be exempt from regulation regulating commercial institutions.
The problem of this good policy intention was that during the era of neoliberal ascendancy, the light regulatory environment was used to negate a more fundamental economic law: the need to increase worker income to match mortgage payments, subsidized or not.
The GSEs have been financially successful because they combine private sector appetite for profit with access to government-backed credit at below market rates. It was a way to nationalize housing through the free market capitalism. The problem was that financial manipulation cannot replace the need for adequate income growth. The mismatch of income with asset price is the definition of a financial bubble. People were buying homes with cheap credit at prices that their income could not afford. The more home prices rose due to cheap credit, the more homeowners fell into the debt trap.
Yet in all the current talk about finding ways to deal with the crisis, not one single voice is heard from official circles about the need to increase worker income. Instead, false hopes on one-time stimulant tax rebates are hailed as the magic bullet.
Suddenly this summer, Fannie and Freddie's relatively anemic capital supply is a serious concern for the market. In one week in July, Fannie's stock plummeted to $10.25, down 74% in 2008. Freddie's shares also dived, closing at $7.75, a loss of 77% this year.
Even as investors stampede out of these battered stocks, the sycophants of free market capitalism in Washington, led by Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, rushed to reassure the market, pointing out that the mortgage giants' regulators had confirmed that the companies were "adequately capitalized", trying to give the impression that regulators had the problem firmly in hand and that no new capital was needed by the GSEs.
But these two leaders had lost much credibility since in August 2007 when they voiced a similar mantra that problems in the mortgage market were "contained" to subprime loans and would not spread beyond. SEC chairman Christopher Cox tried to calm investors by telling them that Bear Stearns passed financial muster only days before it required a Fed-engineered bail out by JP Morgan Chase with Fed loans.
More than capital adequacy is at risk. The credibility of the team with responsibility for the nation's monetary system and its financial market is heading for a meltdown. Unfortunately, credibility is much easier to lose than to regain. (See America's Untested Management Team Asia Times Online, June 17, 2006.)
Recurring anxiety
Anxiety about Fannie and Freddie's liabilities of more than $5 trillion getting too big for the funding authority of the Federal Reserve of a measly $2.5 billion credit line has been a recurring concern in many quarters in recent years. Even after both GSEs were found to be infested with accounting irregularities (Freddie Mac in 2003 and Fannie Mae in 2004), Congress failed to act, except to make the regulator require the GSEs to hold 30% more capital than the minimum previously required, in effect capping their ability to purchase mortgages when the housing bubble was approach its peak.
Still, Fannie and Freddie were allowed to pose as high-growth companies whose shares were safe enough for widows and orphans. GSE market share fell to 45% at the peak of the housing bubble. After the bubble burst, it rose to 68% in the first quarter of 2008.
After empty official assurances failed to convince the market because it was plain for all to see that the two GSEs' direct and guaranteed liabilities were almost 65 times their regulatory capital at the end of the first quarter of 2008, the near-term priority was to restore the rapidly fading confidence of buyers of Fannie's and Freddie's debt, many of whom are foreigners. By increasing the GSEs' credit line and pushing for authority to inject fresh equity if necessary, the Treasury's proposed plan appears to be aimed at allaying fears of widespread counterparty default and market failure. Freddie seemed to have no serious problem offloading $3 billion of new paper on Monday, July 14, although arm-twisting was rumored to have been needed to persuade banks to buy it.
The bigger problem for Washington is that merely stabilizing Fannie and Freddie is not enough. With US banks seriously distressed by the credit crisis, the GSEs, which hold or guarantee 22% of the $24.3 trillion outstanding debts borrowed by US households and the non-financial sector, are a major source of credit. Yet the market is clearly uncomfortable with the inability of the GSEs to maintain its over-bloated balance sheet. The options are either to shrink the balance sheet drastically, thus exacerbating the credit crisis, or to seek a massive injection of new capital, both requiring government action at an unprecedented scale.
Despite these ad hoc measures, which may or may not receive congressional approval, the whole world knows that credit capacity is shrinking drastically in the market. There are rumors that the US is pressing foreign central banks to acquire more GSE debt, but the market is inundated with fear of new crises before the housing market recovers. And the housing market is lying in a coma in intensive care with an oxygen tank of new credit running near empty.
As the housing market collapses, both GSE companies are reporting steep losses. But the subprime mortgage meltdown has also made the GSEs more important than ever in holding up the housing finance sector. Since the credit markets seized up, Fannie and Freddie have regained their central role in mortgage finance after losing significant market share to investment banks during the housing boom. They have issued the vast majority of mortgage securities sold in the last six months because investors have lost confidence in deals put together by big investment banks.
In February 2008, prodded by the Treasury, federal regulators announced they were easing some restrictions on lending by Fannie and Freddie. Then on March 19 the federal government announced that it was easing those restrictions in an effort to calm the turmoil afflicting the mortgage markets. Officials said the change could allow the two GSEs to invest $200 billion more in mortgages.
Alarmed by the sharply eroding market confidence in the nation's two GSEs, the largest mortgage finance companies, the Bush administration announced plans on Sunday, July 13 to ask Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject unlimited funds into the beleaguered companies through investments and loans.
In a separate announcement, the Federal Reserve said that at the request of the Treasury it would make one of its temporary short-term lending programs at the discount window available to the two GSEs, "to promote the availability of home mortgage credit during a period of stress in financial markets." The program for the GSEs would end when Congress approves the Treasury's proposed plan.
Treasury Secretary Paulson announced dramatically Sunday on the steps of the Treasury building: "The president has asked me to work with Congress to act on this plan immediately. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies. Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction."
Paulson paradox
While officials in successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have for many years repeatedly denied that the trillions of dollars of debt Fannie and Freddie issued is guaranteed by the government, the Paulson package, if adopted, would bring the Treasury closer than ever to exposing taxpayers to potentially huge new liabilities. The two GSEs are expected to face significant new losses this year as the wave of housing foreclosures continues and rises. Paulson seemed to suggest that there is no choice but for the government to intervene. The proposed plan, requiring the Treasury to be giving authority by Congress to command unlimited funds to stabilize the GSEs, is predicated on the hope that the very availability of unlimited funds would make it unnecessary to use them. The investment and lending elements of the proposed plan are to last two years.
Over the weekend, Treasury officials sought assurances from Wall Street firms that the $3 billion auction on Monday by Freddie Mac of short-term debt would go off without a hitch. While $3 billion is a relatively small sum for an institution of Freddie's size, officials said they did not want to risk even a small misstep that could set off a new round of problems. Despite repeated assurances by top officials that the companies had adequate cash to weather the current financial storm, Fannie and Freddie had suffered a withering blow of confidence the week before. As a result, Freddie was faced with an uncertain debt offering on Monday. Should Fannie and Freddie fail, $5.3 trillion in mortgage debt would go unpaid. As it happened, the offering went smoothly but everyone knew it was not a normal market.
Freddie Mac continued to try to raise capital from private investors even after a government rescue plan it and its sister company Fannie Mae was announced the weekend before, indicating concern that the government plan may be delayed in Congress. On Friday, July 18, Freddie Mac cleared one of the last obstacles to raising new capital through a planned $5.5 billion stock offering when it received approval to register with US securities regulators. However, Freddie Mac's ability to attract much-needed capital from new and existing shareholders has been potentially lessened by the possibility of a future government stake that might place restrictions on the business. There is also little clarity with regard to where in the capital structure the government might invest, and how dilutive such a move would be to existing shareholders.
The government's rescue plan, which would allow the Treasury unlimited powers until the end of 2009 to increase its credit line to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and invest in their equity, met some strong vocal resistance in Congressional hearings during the week before July 18.
While many expect Congress to have no option except to approve the Paulson plan, a few skeptics were voicing their opposition in public hearings. Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, described Paulson as "asking for a blank check ... for this unprecedented intervention in our free markets." He also vowed to try his best to stop a proposal that would give the Federal Reserve sweeping new powers aimed at protecting the nation's shaky financial system. Bunning said the Federal Reserve "can't be trusted with the power it already has". He says the Fed's policies in recent years have contributed to economic woes, including surging inflation, a declining dollar and the housing bust.
"When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turns out socialism is alive and well in America. The Treasury Secretary is asking for a blank check to buy as much Fannie and Freddie debt or equity as he wants. The Fed's purchase of Bear Stearns' assets was amateur socialism compared to this," thundered the Republican Senator against his own party's Treasury secretary. In US political discourse, socialism is a dirty word, albeit what Paulson proposes is not anywhere near what socialism is commonly understood to be in the rest of the world, but a scheme to use public funds to save debt capitalism by frustrating the right to fail in market capitalism.
Predatory lending
Ron Paul, Republican congressman from Texas, told Bernanke that the Federal Reserve is a "predatory lender". But he did not mention that by law, predatory lenders forfeit any right of collection.
Lender liability is embodied in common and statutory law covering a broad spectrum of claims surrounding predatory lending. It is a key concept in environmental-cleanup litigation. If a lender knowingly lends to a borrower who is obviously unable to make reasonable beneficial gain from the use of the funds, or causes the borrower to assume responsibilities that are obviously beyond the borrower's capacity, the lender not only risks losing the loan without recourse but is also liable for the financial damage to the borrower caused by such loans. For example, if a bank lends to a trust client who is a minor, or someone who had no business experience, to start a risky business that resulted in the loss not only of the loan but of the client trust account, the bank may well be required by the court to make whole the client.
In the United States, although predatory lending is not defined by federal law, and various states define abusive lending differently, it usually involves practices that strip equity away from a homeowner, or equity from a company, or condemn the debtor into perpetual indenture. Predatory or abusive lending practices can include making a loan to a borrower without regard to the borrower's ability to repay, repeatedly refinancing a loan within a short period of time and charging high points and fees with each refinance, charging excessive rates and fees to a borrower who qualifies for lower rates and/or fees offered by the lender, or imposing new unjustifiably harsh terms for rolling over existing debt. Predation breaks the links between an economy's aggregate resource endowment and aggregate consumption and between the interpersonal distribution of endowments and the interpersonal distribution of consumption.
The choice by some to be predators decreases aggregate consumption, both because the predators' resources are wasted and because producers sacrifice production by allocating resources to guarding against predators. Much of welfare economics is based on the concept of pareto optimum, which asserts that resources are optimally distributed when an individual cannot move into a better position without putting someone else into a worse position. In an unjust global society, the pareto optimum will perpetuate injustice.
Now, there is a close parallel in most Third World debts and International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue packages to the above predation examples, where sophisticated international bankers knowingly lend to dubious schemes in developing economies merely to get their fees and high interest, knowing that "countries don't go bankrupt", as Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citibank, once famously proclaimed.
The argument for Third World debt forgiveness contains large measures of lender liability and predatory lending. Debt securitization allows predatory bankers to pass the risk to global credit markets, socializing the potential damage after skimming off the privatized profits. The housing bubble has been created largely by predatory lending without any lender liability. The argument for forgiving Third World debt is applicable to low- and moderate-income home mortgage borrowers in the US as well. Let's hear some proactive commitments from the presumptive candidates of both political parties instead of empty populist campaign rhetoric.
Henry C K Liu is chairman of a New York-based private investment group. His website is at http://www.henryckliu.com.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
State Department Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras: War with Iran?
State Department Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras
War With Iran?
By GARY LEUPP
Commentators whom I respect are saying, with conviction, that there’s no way the U.S. is going to attack Iran. Alexander Cockburn, Jim Lobe and Tom Engelhardt, for example, say no. Others whom I equally respect predict the opposite. Gordon Prather, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter and Justin Raimondo say yes, it’s going to happen. Those proffering the comforting message that further insanity is not on the immediate horizon argue that the U.S. is overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the military brass opposes an attack, and that the Condoleezza Rice faction of “realists” in the State Department is heading off Vice President Cheney and the neocons. They point to the presence of Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns at the recent six-nations talks with Iran, and talk of opening a U.S. interests section in Iran. They note the furious denunciations of Rice in the Weekly Standard, presumed to articulate Cheney’s views, and suggest that the rage results from a sense of political defeat.
Those predicting an assault point to the incessant propaganda campaign against Iran, abject Congressional complicity in that campaign, military preparations in the U.S. and Israel, the recent flurry of U.S.-Israeli military contacts, the power of AIPAC and Israel in U.S. politics and specifically their influence on the impressionable mind of President Bush. They point to the sidelining of mainstream intelligence reports that declare Iran has no active military program, and to the nearly identical rhetoric from Bush, McCain and Obama about how that (probably non-existent) program poses an “existential threat” to (nuclear) Israel. They suggest Burns’ recent step and other small diplomatic initiatives are really cover, merely designed to convince the world that the U.S. is exhausting diplomacy before the bombing starts.
Having predicted a U.S. attack on Iran for several years during which it’s failed to materialize, at this point I think it’s a toss-up. I believe that the president’s cabinet is, as Lenin would put it, “the executive committee of the bourgeoisie” of this country. It mainly represents and is answerable to a ruling class. Bush made it clear in the 2000 presidential race that the billionaires are “my social base.” Obviously oilmen Bush and Cheney would love to secure U.S. control over the petroleum resources of Southwest Asia and establish military bases throughout the region in preparation for future rich man’s wars. But on the other hand, U.S. capitalists and oil execs in general do not seem enthusiastically united in favor of the expansion of the conflict and the destabilization of regimes (like the Saudi) that they’ve profitably worked with for decades. The Wall Street Journal editors might be agitating for an attack on Iran, but the U.S. ruling class is in fact deeply divided on how to proceed.
When the Iranian regime in the summer of 2003 delivered a message to the Bush administration via the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, proposing talks towards a comprehensive settlement of issues between the U.S. and Iran, Colin Powell’s State Department first responded positively. But Cheney’s team contemptuously dismissed the overture, sabotaging a positive response. There’s been a “two-line struggle” underway at the highest levels: on the one side are the Cheney-neocon faction, a mix of anti-China geopolitical strategists and extreme Zionists, on the other the “realists” who doubt the benefits of the ongoing military engagements in Southwest Asia and feel alarmed by the prospect of a spreading war in the region.
It’s not at all clear that what government officials always term “the interests of United States” (in reality, the interests of the corporate elite and those of U.S. imperialism) would be well-served by an attack on Iran. The blowback could actually be disastrous for the whole system. But Dick Cheney, wielding unprecedented power as a vice-president, may think that a go-for-broke assault on Iran, Syria and Hizbollah in southern Lebanon is perfectly rational. It would if successful complete the U.S. colonization of Southwest Asia, end the emerging alliance between Tehran’s mullahs and the al-Maliki regime in Iraq, place more resources of the region under U.S. hegemony, and allow further “containment” of emerging rival China. Meanwhile Cheney’s busy foot soldiers, the neoconservatives, obsessed with the destruction of Arab or Muslim regimes that maintain a hostile stance towards Israel, are driven by the conviction that American power must be used NOW, by this unprecedentedly pro-Israel administration, to destroy the Iranian regime to save Israel from a “nuclear holocaust.”
We’re talking about the government of an imperialist country taking action that, in the judgment of its more rational agents and former officials like Brent Snowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski wouldn’t serve the interests of the state and its ruling class. (Not that they’d put it in those words, of course.) It’s action urged by a faction of the ruling class of Israel, a small country founded as a settler-state and at war with its Arab neighbors for sixty years. Such appeals are echoed by the second largest and most effective lobbying organization in the U.S., backed up by seemingly limitless funding and the support of the maybe 25% of Americans whose religious beliefs incline them towards unswerving support for Israel.
The personality of the president could be key here. George Bush is the representative of his class, but he is also a failed businessman, and someone easily influenced by advisors taking advantage of his ignorance of the world and general inattention to details. He has a cruel streak; recall his enthusiasm for the death penalty as Texas governor and his sickening mockery of a woman who had appealed for clemency (“Please,” he mimicked her, pursing his lips in mock desperation in 1999,” don’t kill me!”) Alongside that cruel streak, and indifference to human suffering so evident in the Hurricane Katrina episode, is a self-righteous religiosity; recall his comment to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2003 that “God told me to smite [Saddam Hussein]. And I smote him.” Perhaps he really believes God talks to him. Perhaps the neocons (cynical secularists for the most part) skillfully play upon such delusions.
The personality of the vice president is also a potentially decisive factor. He well exemplifies the mentality of the Bush aide (Karl Rove?) who in a conversation with Ron Suskind in 2004 mocked “the reality-based community,” comprised of people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” No, he argued: “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, w
War With Iran?
By GARY LEUPP
Commentators whom I respect are saying, with conviction, that there’s no way the U.S. is going to attack Iran. Alexander Cockburn, Jim Lobe and Tom Engelhardt, for example, say no. Others whom I equally respect predict the opposite. Gordon Prather, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter and Justin Raimondo say yes, it’s going to happen. Those proffering the comforting message that further insanity is not on the immediate horizon argue that the U.S. is overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the military brass opposes an attack, and that the Condoleezza Rice faction of “realists” in the State Department is heading off Vice President Cheney and the neocons. They point to the presence of Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns at the recent six-nations talks with Iran, and talk of opening a U.S. interests section in Iran. They note the furious denunciations of Rice in the Weekly Standard, presumed to articulate Cheney’s views, and suggest that the rage results from a sense of political defeat.
Those predicting an assault point to the incessant propaganda campaign against Iran, abject Congressional complicity in that campaign, military preparations in the U.S. and Israel, the recent flurry of U.S.-Israeli military contacts, the power of AIPAC and Israel in U.S. politics and specifically their influence on the impressionable mind of President Bush. They point to the sidelining of mainstream intelligence reports that declare Iran has no active military program, and to the nearly identical rhetoric from Bush, McCain and Obama about how that (probably non-existent) program poses an “existential threat” to (nuclear) Israel. They suggest Burns’ recent step and other small diplomatic initiatives are really cover, merely designed to convince the world that the U.S. is exhausting diplomacy before the bombing starts.
Having predicted a U.S. attack on Iran for several years during which it’s failed to materialize, at this point I think it’s a toss-up. I believe that the president’s cabinet is, as Lenin would put it, “the executive committee of the bourgeoisie” of this country. It mainly represents and is answerable to a ruling class. Bush made it clear in the 2000 presidential race that the billionaires are “my social base.” Obviously oilmen Bush and Cheney would love to secure U.S. control over the petroleum resources of Southwest Asia and establish military bases throughout the region in preparation for future rich man’s wars. But on the other hand, U.S. capitalists and oil execs in general do not seem enthusiastically united in favor of the expansion of the conflict and the destabilization of regimes (like the Saudi) that they’ve profitably worked with for decades. The Wall Street Journal editors might be agitating for an attack on Iran, but the U.S. ruling class is in fact deeply divided on how to proceed.
When the Iranian regime in the summer of 2003 delivered a message to the Bush administration via the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, proposing talks towards a comprehensive settlement of issues between the U.S. and Iran, Colin Powell’s State Department first responded positively. But Cheney’s team contemptuously dismissed the overture, sabotaging a positive response. There’s been a “two-line struggle” underway at the highest levels: on the one side are the Cheney-neocon faction, a mix of anti-China geopolitical strategists and extreme Zionists, on the other the “realists” who doubt the benefits of the ongoing military engagements in Southwest Asia and feel alarmed by the prospect of a spreading war in the region.
It’s not at all clear that what government officials always term “the interests of United States” (in reality, the interests of the corporate elite and those of U.S. imperialism) would be well-served by an attack on Iran. The blowback could actually be disastrous for the whole system. But Dick Cheney, wielding unprecedented power as a vice-president, may think that a go-for-broke assault on Iran, Syria and Hizbollah in southern Lebanon is perfectly rational. It would if successful complete the U.S. colonization of Southwest Asia, end the emerging alliance between Tehran’s mullahs and the al-Maliki regime in Iraq, place more resources of the region under U.S. hegemony, and allow further “containment” of emerging rival China. Meanwhile Cheney’s busy foot soldiers, the neoconservatives, obsessed with the destruction of Arab or Muslim regimes that maintain a hostile stance towards Israel, are driven by the conviction that American power must be used NOW, by this unprecedentedly pro-Israel administration, to destroy the Iranian regime to save Israel from a “nuclear holocaust.”
We’re talking about the government of an imperialist country taking action that, in the judgment of its more rational agents and former officials like Brent Snowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski wouldn’t serve the interests of the state and its ruling class. (Not that they’d put it in those words, of course.) It’s action urged by a faction of the ruling class of Israel, a small country founded as a settler-state and at war with its Arab neighbors for sixty years. Such appeals are echoed by the second largest and most effective lobbying organization in the U.S., backed up by seemingly limitless funding and the support of the maybe 25% of Americans whose religious beliefs incline them towards unswerving support for Israel.
The personality of the president could be key here. George Bush is the representative of his class, but he is also a failed businessman, and someone easily influenced by advisors taking advantage of his ignorance of the world and general inattention to details. He has a cruel streak; recall his enthusiasm for the death penalty as Texas governor and his sickening mockery of a woman who had appealed for clemency (“Please,” he mimicked her, pursing his lips in mock desperation in 1999,” don’t kill me!”) Alongside that cruel streak, and indifference to human suffering so evident in the Hurricane Katrina episode, is a self-righteous religiosity; recall his comment to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2003 that “God told me to smite [Saddam Hussein]. And I smote him.” Perhaps he really believes God talks to him. Perhaps the neocons (cynical secularists for the most part) skillfully play upon such delusions.
The personality of the vice president is also a potentially decisive factor. He well exemplifies the mentality of the Bush aide (Karl Rove?) who in a conversation with Ron Suskind in 2004 mocked “the reality-based community,” comprised of people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” No, he argued: “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, w