http://harpers.org/archive/2009/04/hbc-90004875
Byron York's Demographics
By Scott Horton
From the Washington Examiner:
On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.
"More popular than they actually are?" Of course, this conclusion is reached after making the mathematical adjustment contemplated in the Constitution as adopted in 1789. In Byron York's world, it seems, black Americans are still three-fifths citizens. They're apparently not capable of making objective political judgments like whites, and particularly the (dwindling) number of whites who support the G.O.P. One of the most unintentionally revealing posts I've ever seen.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Nukes and Spooks blog
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/nationalsecurity/
Nukes and Spooks blog
April 30, 2009
Terrorism in 2008
The State Department today released its much-followed report on terrorism around the world. Along with it comes a statistical compendium of terrorist incidents, prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center.
The headline is as sobering as it is is unsurprising: terrorist attacks climbed dramatically in Pakistan and (to a lesser degree) Afghanistan last year, even as they declined significantly in Iraq. (The report only covers calendar year 2008, and does not include the recent spike in suicide bombings in Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq).
Here's some numbers:
_ terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2007 accounted for 43% of all incidents worldwide. Last year, they accounted for just 28%.
_ meanwhile, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan *quadrupled* between 2006 and 2008. The violence was concentrated in Pakistan's semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province. Al Qaida senior operatives are believed to be hiding out in the FATA, while the Pakistani Taliban have steadily been gaining ground and political-military power in the NWFP.
Russell Travers of the NCTC told reporters that there were 61 terrorist attacks in the FATA in 2006, compared with 321 in 2008, and 28 in the North-West Frontier Province in 2006, compared with a whopping 870 in 2008.
On al Qaida, the report presents a mixed picture. On the one hand it says, as McClatchy and others have reported, "AQ has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the replacement of captured or killed operational lieutenants, and the restoration of some central control by its top leadership, in particular Ayman al-Zawahiri."
On the other hand, the report says that "worldwide efforts to counter terrorist financing have resulted in AQ appealing for money in its last few messages" and that "(Osama) bin Laden and Zawahiri appeared to be in the position of responding to events rather than driving them, particularly in the latter half of 2008." If true, that's a potentially major setback for a group that seemed at times to be driving the global agenda in the years after September 2001.
So, those are the headlines. But the report also contains some interesting tidbits that N&S thought might just make you rethink some assumptions about terrorism:
_ What was the single deadliest terrorist attack in 2008? In the Mideast or South Asia, right? Wrong. Travers said it was an attack on civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Uganda-based Lord's Resistance Army, where between 600 and 700 people were killed by machete.
_ Islamic extremists kill non-believers, right? Wrong again. The data show that of the 50,000 people killed or wounded by terrorism in 2008, more than 50 percent were themselves Muslims.
_ Even with the relatively good news from Iraq, the overall trend in terrorism isn't improving, according to the NCTC. Excluding attacks that took place in Iraq, the number of attacks and fatalities grew-slowly but steadily-between 2005 and 2008.
_ Finally, absent some new terrorist spectacular from al Qaida or one of its offshoots, the chances you - if you are a civilian - will die in a terrorist attack are pretty slim. There were 33 U.S. noncombatant fatalities in 2008, according to the State Department.
Nukes and Spooks blog
April 30, 2009
Terrorism in 2008
The State Department today released its much-followed report on terrorism around the world. Along with it comes a statistical compendium of terrorist incidents, prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center.
The headline is as sobering as it is is unsurprising: terrorist attacks climbed dramatically in Pakistan and (to a lesser degree) Afghanistan last year, even as they declined significantly in Iraq. (The report only covers calendar year 2008, and does not include the recent spike in suicide bombings in Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq).
Here's some numbers:
_ terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2007 accounted for 43% of all incidents worldwide. Last year, they accounted for just 28%.
_ meanwhile, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan *quadrupled* between 2006 and 2008. The violence was concentrated in Pakistan's semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province. Al Qaida senior operatives are believed to be hiding out in the FATA, while the Pakistani Taliban have steadily been gaining ground and political-military power in the NWFP.
Russell Travers of the NCTC told reporters that there were 61 terrorist attacks in the FATA in 2006, compared with 321 in 2008, and 28 in the North-West Frontier Province in 2006, compared with a whopping 870 in 2008.
On al Qaida, the report presents a mixed picture. On the one hand it says, as McClatchy and others have reported, "AQ has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the replacement of captured or killed operational lieutenants, and the restoration of some central control by its top leadership, in particular Ayman al-Zawahiri."
On the other hand, the report says that "worldwide efforts to counter terrorist financing have resulted in AQ appealing for money in its last few messages" and that "(Osama) bin Laden and Zawahiri appeared to be in the position of responding to events rather than driving them, particularly in the latter half of 2008." If true, that's a potentially major setback for a group that seemed at times to be driving the global agenda in the years after September 2001.
So, those are the headlines. But the report also contains some interesting tidbits that N&S thought might just make you rethink some assumptions about terrorism:
_ What was the single deadliest terrorist attack in 2008? In the Mideast or South Asia, right? Wrong. Travers said it was an attack on civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Uganda-based Lord's Resistance Army, where between 600 and 700 people were killed by machete.
_ Islamic extremists kill non-believers, right? Wrong again. The data show that of the 50,000 people killed or wounded by terrorism in 2008, more than 50 percent were themselves Muslims.
_ Even with the relatively good news from Iraq, the overall trend in terrorism isn't improving, according to the NCTC. Excluding attacks that took place in Iraq, the number of attacks and fatalities grew-slowly but steadily-between 2005 and 2008.
_ Finally, absent some new terrorist spectacular from al Qaida or one of its offshoots, the chances you - if you are a civilian - will die in a terrorist attack are pretty slim. There were 33 U.S. noncombatant fatalities in 2008, according to the State Department.
Secrets of Two Iraq Wars by Nathaniel Fick
Secrets of Two Iraq Wars
by Nathaniel Fick
April 30, 2009 | 5:54am
BS Top - Fick Haass IraqL to R: aurent Gillieron, Keystone / AP Photo; Maya Alleruzzo / AP Photo Richard Haass developed policy for both U.S. wars against Iraq. In his new behind-the-scenes book War of Necessity, War of Choice, he writes about Bush senior’s “sense of decorum,” explains why Colin Powell didn’t resign, and offers some devastating lessons about just and unjust wars.
“Ripeness is all” declares Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear, and this is the great lesson of Richard Haass’ account of his role in two U.S. wars against Iraq. The first, in 1990-91, was necessary, launched only after circumstance and great diplomatic effort had allowed it to “ripen.” Failing to respond to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait would have set a destabilizing precedent at the dawn of the post-Cold War era, so the George H.W. Bush administration ensured that the United Nations and a coalition of able partners were prepared to stand together and share the burden of war, its cost, and its aftermath. The 2003 war, by contrast, was fought by choice. In Haass’ estimation, it was more than a blunder: It was unjust. “The worthiness of the cause, the likelihood of success, the legitimacy of the authority to undertake it—all were questionable. Not even its advocates could argue it was a last resort.” It was unripe, and that made all the difference.
Early in 2003, Haass wrote a last-ditch memo for the president outlining alternatives to war, “on the off chance Bush was having second thoughts and was feeling trapped.” Colin Powell took the paper and stuffed it in his pocket, and the nation rolled on toward war.
During the first Gulf War, Haass was the senior director for the Near East and South Asia on the National Security Council staff. During the initial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Haass served as director of policy planning in Colin Powell’s State Department. The value of Haass’ insight is that most people experienced the two conflicts—separated by a dozen years—from vastly different vantage points. But he was a senior policymaker during both conflicts, and so is almost uniquely situated to draw lessons from the paired experience. His conclusions in this excellent book are valuable and devastating.
The War of Necessity book coverWar of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq. By Richard N. Haass. $27. 356 pages. Simon & Schuster. Haass, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, blends history, memoir, and policy pith to great effect. “The key to understanding George Herbert Walker Bush and what made him tick,” he writes, “was his sense of decorum.” The president, who insisted that his staff always wear their suit jackets in the Oval Office, “was genuinely offended by the Iraqi invasion… of Kuwait. It was simply not how civilized countries behaved toward one another.”
The broader lesson here is that people matter. “It was anything but axiomatic that the United States would decide to deploy half a million troops halfway around the world to rescue a country that few Americans could find on a map.” The most fateful decisions of a presidency, Haass concludes, are often those forced without much warning. “It is why basing one’s vote on judgment and character might be best.”
Judgment appears to be the supreme metric by which Haass evaluates policymakers. According to this yardstick, retired Air Force General Brent Scowcroft is the hero of the book, and Defense Secretary-turned-Vice President Dick Cheney is its villain. Scowcroft, as National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush, was the traffic cop overseeing the process by which the executive branch made foreign policy. “The trick is to make sure that the role of counselor does not get in the way of guarantor of due process; if it does, the system breaks down as everyone does end runs to get to the president.” A decade after managing that process “better than anyone who has held this job before or since,” Scowcroft emerged from private life to fire an opening salvo against the second Iraq war in an August 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed: “An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.” Vice President Cheney’s response was swift. In a speech to the VFW in Nashville later that month, Cheney declared, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction… Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.”
Scowcroft’s warning is poignant not only as a counterpoint to Dick Cheney (who, Haass notes, favored invading Iraq in 1991 even without Saudi agreement or the support of the U.S. Congress), but also as a reminder that the long preoccupation with Iraq has a sad parallel narrative: the neglect of Afghanistan and Pakistan. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, U.S. interest there faded, but U.S. interests did not. Pakistan filled the vacuum, fueling radicalism and then developing a nuclear deterrent after the U.S. cut off most of its military aid. Twelve years later, the neglect continued, although Haass seems to doubt this: “Iraq increasingly garnered extraordinary high-level attention, but it is not clear any of this came at the expense of Afghanistan. Also not clear is that Iraq in fact drew economic or military resources that otherwise would have gone to Afghanistan.” Given that decision-makers’ time and military resources are inherently finite, this claim strains credulity. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has been chronically under-resourced by nearly every conceivable measure: troops, development dollars, diplomatic attention. Indeed, as late as December 2007, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, testified before Congress, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” The tide has begun to turn in 2009, but only because U.S. forces are being withdrawn from Iraq.
In the end, Haass’ most interesting and introspective musings are on his own thought process as he advocated for and implemented policies with which he disagreed. He describes his position as 60/40 against going to war in 2003, and observes—correctly—that no organization could function if people left every time they lost out on a 60/40 decision. A more salient question, because it may have drastically altered the course of history, is what it would have taken for his boss, Colin Powell, to resign. Haass points out that Powell kept a portrait of George Marshall, the other general who became secretary of State, on his wall. When Marshall lost a debate with Truman over the decision to recognize the new state of Israel, his aides asked if he would resign. “No, gentlemen. You don’t take a post of this sort and then resign when the man who has the constitutional responsibility to make decisions makes one you don’t like.”
Early in 2003, soon before the invasion, Haass wrote a last-ditch memo for the president outlining alternatives to war, “on the off chance Bush was having second thoughts and was feeling trapped. I wanted Bush to know he retained a way out.” Powell took the paper and stuffed it in his pocket, and the nation rolled on toward war. “I wrote it,” Haass admits, “as much as anything for my own peace of mind.” When the contradictions became too much—and his wife called him an “enabler”—he stepped down.
Haass writes that all wars are fought three times: the political struggle over whether to go to war, the war itself, and then the sunset battle over what was accomplished and the lessons of it all. His book is a welcome addition to the long-running third phase of these wars, with lessons and insights for everyone they touched.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Nathaniel Fick is the chief operating officer of the Center for a New American Security. He served in Afghanistan and Iraq as a Marine Corps infantry officer.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-30/secrets-of-two-iraq-wars/2/
by Nathaniel Fick
April 30, 2009 | 5:54am
BS Top - Fick Haass IraqL to R: aurent Gillieron, Keystone / AP Photo; Maya Alleruzzo / AP Photo Richard Haass developed policy for both U.S. wars against Iraq. In his new behind-the-scenes book War of Necessity, War of Choice, he writes about Bush senior’s “sense of decorum,” explains why Colin Powell didn’t resign, and offers some devastating lessons about just and unjust wars.
“Ripeness is all” declares Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear, and this is the great lesson of Richard Haass’ account of his role in two U.S. wars against Iraq. The first, in 1990-91, was necessary, launched only after circumstance and great diplomatic effort had allowed it to “ripen.” Failing to respond to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait would have set a destabilizing precedent at the dawn of the post-Cold War era, so the George H.W. Bush administration ensured that the United Nations and a coalition of able partners were prepared to stand together and share the burden of war, its cost, and its aftermath. The 2003 war, by contrast, was fought by choice. In Haass’ estimation, it was more than a blunder: It was unjust. “The worthiness of the cause, the likelihood of success, the legitimacy of the authority to undertake it—all were questionable. Not even its advocates could argue it was a last resort.” It was unripe, and that made all the difference.
Early in 2003, Haass wrote a last-ditch memo for the president outlining alternatives to war, “on the off chance Bush was having second thoughts and was feeling trapped.” Colin Powell took the paper and stuffed it in his pocket, and the nation rolled on toward war.
During the first Gulf War, Haass was the senior director for the Near East and South Asia on the National Security Council staff. During the initial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Haass served as director of policy planning in Colin Powell’s State Department. The value of Haass’ insight is that most people experienced the two conflicts—separated by a dozen years—from vastly different vantage points. But he was a senior policymaker during both conflicts, and so is almost uniquely situated to draw lessons from the paired experience. His conclusions in this excellent book are valuable and devastating.
The War of Necessity book coverWar of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq. By Richard N. Haass. $27. 356 pages. Simon & Schuster. Haass, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, blends history, memoir, and policy pith to great effect. “The key to understanding George Herbert Walker Bush and what made him tick,” he writes, “was his sense of decorum.” The president, who insisted that his staff always wear their suit jackets in the Oval Office, “was genuinely offended by the Iraqi invasion… of Kuwait. It was simply not how civilized countries behaved toward one another.”
The broader lesson here is that people matter. “It was anything but axiomatic that the United States would decide to deploy half a million troops halfway around the world to rescue a country that few Americans could find on a map.” The most fateful decisions of a presidency, Haass concludes, are often those forced without much warning. “It is why basing one’s vote on judgment and character might be best.”
Judgment appears to be the supreme metric by which Haass evaluates policymakers. According to this yardstick, retired Air Force General Brent Scowcroft is the hero of the book, and Defense Secretary-turned-Vice President Dick Cheney is its villain. Scowcroft, as National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush, was the traffic cop overseeing the process by which the executive branch made foreign policy. “The trick is to make sure that the role of counselor does not get in the way of guarantor of due process; if it does, the system breaks down as everyone does end runs to get to the president.” A decade after managing that process “better than anyone who has held this job before or since,” Scowcroft emerged from private life to fire an opening salvo against the second Iraq war in an August 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed: “An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.” Vice President Cheney’s response was swift. In a speech to the VFW in Nashville later that month, Cheney declared, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction… Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.”
Scowcroft’s warning is poignant not only as a counterpoint to Dick Cheney (who, Haass notes, favored invading Iraq in 1991 even without Saudi agreement or the support of the U.S. Congress), but also as a reminder that the long preoccupation with Iraq has a sad parallel narrative: the neglect of Afghanistan and Pakistan. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, U.S. interest there faded, but U.S. interests did not. Pakistan filled the vacuum, fueling radicalism and then developing a nuclear deterrent after the U.S. cut off most of its military aid. Twelve years later, the neglect continued, although Haass seems to doubt this: “Iraq increasingly garnered extraordinary high-level attention, but it is not clear any of this came at the expense of Afghanistan. Also not clear is that Iraq in fact drew economic or military resources that otherwise would have gone to Afghanistan.” Given that decision-makers’ time and military resources are inherently finite, this claim strains credulity. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has been chronically under-resourced by nearly every conceivable measure: troops, development dollars, diplomatic attention. Indeed, as late as December 2007, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, testified before Congress, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” The tide has begun to turn in 2009, but only because U.S. forces are being withdrawn from Iraq.
In the end, Haass’ most interesting and introspective musings are on his own thought process as he advocated for and implemented policies with which he disagreed. He describes his position as 60/40 against going to war in 2003, and observes—correctly—that no organization could function if people left every time they lost out on a 60/40 decision. A more salient question, because it may have drastically altered the course of history, is what it would have taken for his boss, Colin Powell, to resign. Haass points out that Powell kept a portrait of George Marshall, the other general who became secretary of State, on his wall. When Marshall lost a debate with Truman over the decision to recognize the new state of Israel, his aides asked if he would resign. “No, gentlemen. You don’t take a post of this sort and then resign when the man who has the constitutional responsibility to make decisions makes one you don’t like.”
Early in 2003, soon before the invasion, Haass wrote a last-ditch memo for the president outlining alternatives to war, “on the off chance Bush was having second thoughts and was feeling trapped. I wanted Bush to know he retained a way out.” Powell took the paper and stuffed it in his pocket, and the nation rolled on toward war. “I wrote it,” Haass admits, “as much as anything for my own peace of mind.” When the contradictions became too much—and his wife called him an “enabler”—he stepped down.
Haass writes that all wars are fought three times: the political struggle over whether to go to war, the war itself, and then the sunset battle over what was accomplished and the lessons of it all. His book is a welcome addition to the long-running third phase of these wars, with lessons and insights for everyone they touched.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Nathaniel Fick is the chief operating officer of the Center for a New American Security. He served in Afghanistan and Iraq as a Marine Corps infantry officer.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-30/secrets-of-two-iraq-wars/2/
Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq
guardian.co.uk home
Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq
The Iraqi prime minister arrives in Britain today seeking UK investment. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports on how a leader once seen as weak is now being compared to his infamous predecessor
* Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
* The Guardian, Thursday 30 April 2009
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki surrounded by his bodyguards
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki surrounded by his bodyguards. Photograph: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images
Baghdad has always produced more than its fair share of surreal conversations, but few can match the one I had with three Iraqi intelligence officers in the garden of a newly opened restaurant a few weeks ago. The three were former members of Saddam's notorious Mukhabarat. Now "reformed", they worked for the newly established Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INSI), a highly independent security service which some in the Iraqi government accuse of being too close to the US.
After a few pleasantries, which included frisking my shirt for wire-tapping devices, we sat around a plastic table while the most senior officer told me that his men were actively monitoring intelligence and military activities inside the government of Nouri al-Maliki. The two other officers looked in opposite directions as their colleague spoke.
"We have our own eyes and follow what they are doing there," the senior officer said. "Maliki is running a dictatorship - everything is run by his office and advisers, he is surrounded by his party and clan members. They form a tight knot that is running Iraq now. He is not building a country, he is building a state for his own party and his own people."
As a waiter in a white shirt and black trousers approached, the senior officer fell silent and his colleague ordered tea. Only when the waiter moved away, the senior officer continued: "We compile reports on their activities, generals' and military units' movements, and their corruption, the positions they are taking in the government and the contracts they are obtaining. But we don't know what to do with these reports because we don't trust the government."
The charges voiced by the INSI officers are heard, in hushed tones, more and more around Baghdad these days. Critics say Maliki is concentrating power in his office (the office of the prime minister) and his advisers are running "a government inside a government", bypassing ministers and parliament. In his role as commander in chief, he appoints generals as heads of military units without the approval of parliament. The officers, critics say, are all loyal to him. He has created at least one intelligence service, dominated by his clan and party members, and taken two military units - the anti-terrorism unit and the Baghdad brigade - under his direct command. At the same time he has inflated the size of the ministry of national security that is run by one of his allies.
Maliki, who many say was chosen because he was perceived to be weak and without a strong grassroots power base, has managed to outflank everyone: his Shia allies and foes, the Americans who wanted him removed at one time, even the Iranians.
In Beirut I met an Iraqi Shia cleric who settled in Syria in the 80s to escape Saddam's persecution. Maliki was the head of the Dawa party there and the two met frequently. "Unlike other opposition figures he [Maliki] didn't build wealth, he is very honest and very organised," he told me. The sheik, who spent more than 25 years involved in the opposition to Saddam, explained the conspiratorial mentality of his fellow opposition figures.
"The Dawa party in its methods and way of working is very similar to the Communist party. They don't trust anyone. They surround themselves with people they know. Maliki, like all of us, is the product of exile. They have suffered for so long in exile so now they trust no one."
A senior official in the council of ministers offered a less sympathetic view of Maliki's growing monopoly on the levers of power. "Iraq is ruled by institutions that are not covered by the law or the constitution, they have their own prisons and intelligence service, working for the benefit of the government, not the state."
Shifting animatedly on his chair, he counted off the elements of Maliki's security apparatus. "Constitutionally we have intelligence units in the ministry of defence and the ministry of information, but then we have the ministry of state for national security, run by Maliki's ally Sherwan al-Wa'ili. According to the constitution it should have staff of no more than 26 people, now they are more than 1,000. Maliki has his own intelligence unit, and military units that work directly under his command as the commander in chief. The prime minister is running everything through his advisers and nothing happens without his approval or his office, the office of the prime minister."
The official kept adjusting his jacket nervously and after a long silence, he continued: "They changed their rhetoric. They talk now about law and nationality but the reality is the same, they are the same sectarian people." Then, after a pause, he added: "No, it's not about sects any more its about the party, the interest of the party."
Observers not steeped in Iraqi history might be bemused to find that six years after the toppling of a dictator, after the death of several hundred thousand Iraqis, a brutal insurgency, trillions of wasted dollars and more than 4,000 dead US soldiers, the country is being rebuilt along very familiar lines: concentration of power, shadowy intelligence services and corruption.
"Political imagination in Iraq is still attached to the past 30 years," an Iraq analyst based in Beirut told me. "Credibility of the ruler is connected somehow to the old order." After reflecting on the time she spent in Iraq before the war she added: "Saddam Hussein is not dead."
Guns and steel
One morning, I watched the Iraqi prime minister visit the newly opened Baghdad archaeological museum. Hundreds of armed men stood guard around the concrete buildings, while armoured vehicles blocked roads miles away. A helicopter buzzed in the dusty sky overhead. Outside the gates, dozens of black SUVs waited like faithful dogs and women pressed their black shrouded bodies against the metal railing waiting for a glimpse of the leader. In the centre of this bubble of men, guns and steel walked Maliki, surrounded by a further three rings of bodyguards, dressed respectively in dark grey suits, khaki outdoor outfits and commando fatigues.
He moved between glass display cabinets, inspected Sumerian seals and Islamic bowls, and listened to the accompanying museum official explaining the stone Assyrian motif. After inspecting each cabinet, he moved his eyes from the artefact into the lens of the accompanying Iraqi TV camera, beaming his confident image live to the nation. Then his tour would resume and his halo of bodyguards, journalists and foreign dignitaries move with him.
It's a scene Iraqis would be very familiar with. It has been played out numerous times through Iraq's modern history, as its leaders have sought to borrow legitimacy from the nation's history. In the lobby of the museum, newspaper clippings show the dictator Abdul Salam Arif making a similar visit for the museum's inauguration in 1963, though with significantly fewer guards. Saddam visited too, although the newspaper clippings are not afforded the same prominence for obvious reasons.
Even Maliki's critics admit he is giving Iraqis what they crave. All over Baghdad, people tell you that Abu Israa, as the prime minister is fondly known, is the strong leader the country needed after the chaos of civil war, insurgency and occupation. His success in the recent local elections was one measure of this popularity.
An Iraqi veteran politician, who attended a tribal meeting with Maliki two weeks ago, told me it was very similar to a meeting he had attended with Saddam. "The tribesmen cheered for him, they chanted: 'Yes, yes to Maliki the leader.' Some unfolded banners and, just like Saddam, he went on talking for hours, without a coherent message." Half giggling, he added: "These are all the signs of The Day ... the day when the dictator emerges."
Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of parliament, talked in a similar vein. "The problem is the people, they want a strong person.
People are used to that image, because Iraq went through decades of centralised authority and because people who want electricity, water and sewerage think that the authority of a strong man can solve all these problems."
Loyalty
Any self-respecting Iraqi politician who wants to build his own power base must first establish or acquire his own intelligence service. After a couple of weeks in Baghdad talking to politicians, members of parliament and intelligence officials I came to the conclusion that Iraq has seven separate intelligence units. Or maybe eight. No one could agree on the precise number.
An Iraqi journalist with links to some government officials explained. "People shouldn't blame Maliki. The security situation creates from the leader a dictator, and that's normal and logical, to surround yourself by people you trust; your friends and family, because you don't trust the others.
"Maliki and the leadership of Dawa [Maliki's party] managed to obtain the loyalty of military and civilian institutions and commanders and now those officers are loyal to Dawa and moved their alliances from other parties.
"Officers, even if they are not part of Dawa, want to kiss the hand that feeds them they become part of the matrix because they are appointed by Maliki. For example, officers attached to the supreme council changed their loyalties to that of Dawa."
Faryad Rawandousi, a member of the security committee in the Iraqi parliament, said: "There are a lot of appointments of officers, brigade commanders and above - 140 ranks that come directly from the prime minister without obtaining the approval of the parliament. These appointments are done without going back to the constitution, using existing laws of the former regime without taking into consideration that we are in a very different political system."
"The big commanders are loyal to whoever puts them in power," an official in the ministry of defence said. "They support Maliki because he is not imposing on them difficult conditions and some moved their alliances from other parties."
All these signs are not enough to make Maliki a dictator in the mould of Saddam, says the Iraq analyst. "There is no return to the days of Saddam - this is at most a shaky dictatorship. Now we have many small dictatorships, not one strong one, and that will create checks and balances."
Charles Tripp, a professor of politics in the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies and a leading Iraq historian, said: "Dictators didn't come out of nowhere, they didn't come by a great explosion. They come by capturing small things bit by bit. Small things are very telling - they tell you the nature of things to come. One day people will wake up and ask how did we come here, it must be an awful conspiracy."
Back in the Baghdad restaurant garden, the waiter returned with tea and sugar and the intelligence officer immediately changed the subject. "It's nice weather to sit outside in the gardens," said one of the other men.
"Yes, but the sound of the generators is too loud," replied the other.
When the waiter had left I asked the senior officer if he feared he was being watched. "We are all being monitored," he said. "We monitor each other." Then he laughed. "But Maliki's people are too young. In the world of Mukhabarat they are just learning."
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq
The Iraqi prime minister arrives in Britain today seeking UK investment. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports on how a leader once seen as weak is now being compared to his infamous predecessor
* Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
* The Guardian, Thursday 30 April 2009
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki surrounded by his bodyguards
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki surrounded by his bodyguards. Photograph: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images
Baghdad has always produced more than its fair share of surreal conversations, but few can match the one I had with three Iraqi intelligence officers in the garden of a newly opened restaurant a few weeks ago. The three were former members of Saddam's notorious Mukhabarat. Now "reformed", they worked for the newly established Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INSI), a highly independent security service which some in the Iraqi government accuse of being too close to the US.
After a few pleasantries, which included frisking my shirt for wire-tapping devices, we sat around a plastic table while the most senior officer told me that his men were actively monitoring intelligence and military activities inside the government of Nouri al-Maliki. The two other officers looked in opposite directions as their colleague spoke.
"We have our own eyes and follow what they are doing there," the senior officer said. "Maliki is running a dictatorship - everything is run by his office and advisers, he is surrounded by his party and clan members. They form a tight knot that is running Iraq now. He is not building a country, he is building a state for his own party and his own people."
As a waiter in a white shirt and black trousers approached, the senior officer fell silent and his colleague ordered tea. Only when the waiter moved away, the senior officer continued: "We compile reports on their activities, generals' and military units' movements, and their corruption, the positions they are taking in the government and the contracts they are obtaining. But we don't know what to do with these reports because we don't trust the government."
The charges voiced by the INSI officers are heard, in hushed tones, more and more around Baghdad these days. Critics say Maliki is concentrating power in his office (the office of the prime minister) and his advisers are running "a government inside a government", bypassing ministers and parliament. In his role as commander in chief, he appoints generals as heads of military units without the approval of parliament. The officers, critics say, are all loyal to him. He has created at least one intelligence service, dominated by his clan and party members, and taken two military units - the anti-terrorism unit and the Baghdad brigade - under his direct command. At the same time he has inflated the size of the ministry of national security that is run by one of his allies.
Maliki, who many say was chosen because he was perceived to be weak and without a strong grassroots power base, has managed to outflank everyone: his Shia allies and foes, the Americans who wanted him removed at one time, even the Iranians.
In Beirut I met an Iraqi Shia cleric who settled in Syria in the 80s to escape Saddam's persecution. Maliki was the head of the Dawa party there and the two met frequently. "Unlike other opposition figures he [Maliki] didn't build wealth, he is very honest and very organised," he told me. The sheik, who spent more than 25 years involved in the opposition to Saddam, explained the conspiratorial mentality of his fellow opposition figures.
"The Dawa party in its methods and way of working is very similar to the Communist party. They don't trust anyone. They surround themselves with people they know. Maliki, like all of us, is the product of exile. They have suffered for so long in exile so now they trust no one."
A senior official in the council of ministers offered a less sympathetic view of Maliki's growing monopoly on the levers of power. "Iraq is ruled by institutions that are not covered by the law or the constitution, they have their own prisons and intelligence service, working for the benefit of the government, not the state."
Shifting animatedly on his chair, he counted off the elements of Maliki's security apparatus. "Constitutionally we have intelligence units in the ministry of defence and the ministry of information, but then we have the ministry of state for national security, run by Maliki's ally Sherwan al-Wa'ili. According to the constitution it should have staff of no more than 26 people, now they are more than 1,000. Maliki has his own intelligence unit, and military units that work directly under his command as the commander in chief. The prime minister is running everything through his advisers and nothing happens without his approval or his office, the office of the prime minister."
The official kept adjusting his jacket nervously and after a long silence, he continued: "They changed their rhetoric. They talk now about law and nationality but the reality is the same, they are the same sectarian people." Then, after a pause, he added: "No, it's not about sects any more its about the party, the interest of the party."
Observers not steeped in Iraqi history might be bemused to find that six years after the toppling of a dictator, after the death of several hundred thousand Iraqis, a brutal insurgency, trillions of wasted dollars and more than 4,000 dead US soldiers, the country is being rebuilt along very familiar lines: concentration of power, shadowy intelligence services and corruption.
"Political imagination in Iraq is still attached to the past 30 years," an Iraq analyst based in Beirut told me. "Credibility of the ruler is connected somehow to the old order." After reflecting on the time she spent in Iraq before the war she added: "Saddam Hussein is not dead."
Guns and steel
One morning, I watched the Iraqi prime minister visit the newly opened Baghdad archaeological museum. Hundreds of armed men stood guard around the concrete buildings, while armoured vehicles blocked roads miles away. A helicopter buzzed in the dusty sky overhead. Outside the gates, dozens of black SUVs waited like faithful dogs and women pressed their black shrouded bodies against the metal railing waiting for a glimpse of the leader. In the centre of this bubble of men, guns and steel walked Maliki, surrounded by a further three rings of bodyguards, dressed respectively in dark grey suits, khaki outdoor outfits and commando fatigues.
He moved between glass display cabinets, inspected Sumerian seals and Islamic bowls, and listened to the accompanying museum official explaining the stone Assyrian motif. After inspecting each cabinet, he moved his eyes from the artefact into the lens of the accompanying Iraqi TV camera, beaming his confident image live to the nation. Then his tour would resume and his halo of bodyguards, journalists and foreign dignitaries move with him.
It's a scene Iraqis would be very familiar with. It has been played out numerous times through Iraq's modern history, as its leaders have sought to borrow legitimacy from the nation's history. In the lobby of the museum, newspaper clippings show the dictator Abdul Salam Arif making a similar visit for the museum's inauguration in 1963, though with significantly fewer guards. Saddam visited too, although the newspaper clippings are not afforded the same prominence for obvious reasons.
Even Maliki's critics admit he is giving Iraqis what they crave. All over Baghdad, people tell you that Abu Israa, as the prime minister is fondly known, is the strong leader the country needed after the chaos of civil war, insurgency and occupation. His success in the recent local elections was one measure of this popularity.
An Iraqi veteran politician, who attended a tribal meeting with Maliki two weeks ago, told me it was very similar to a meeting he had attended with Saddam. "The tribesmen cheered for him, they chanted: 'Yes, yes to Maliki the leader.' Some unfolded banners and, just like Saddam, he went on talking for hours, without a coherent message." Half giggling, he added: "These are all the signs of The Day ... the day when the dictator emerges."
Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of parliament, talked in a similar vein. "The problem is the people, they want a strong person.
People are used to that image, because Iraq went through decades of centralised authority and because people who want electricity, water and sewerage think that the authority of a strong man can solve all these problems."
Loyalty
Any self-respecting Iraqi politician who wants to build his own power base must first establish or acquire his own intelligence service. After a couple of weeks in Baghdad talking to politicians, members of parliament and intelligence officials I came to the conclusion that Iraq has seven separate intelligence units. Or maybe eight. No one could agree on the precise number.
An Iraqi journalist with links to some government officials explained. "People shouldn't blame Maliki. The security situation creates from the leader a dictator, and that's normal and logical, to surround yourself by people you trust; your friends and family, because you don't trust the others.
"Maliki and the leadership of Dawa [Maliki's party] managed to obtain the loyalty of military and civilian institutions and commanders and now those officers are loyal to Dawa and moved their alliances from other parties.
"Officers, even if they are not part of Dawa, want to kiss the hand that feeds them they become part of the matrix because they are appointed by Maliki. For example, officers attached to the supreme council changed their loyalties to that of Dawa."
Faryad Rawandousi, a member of the security committee in the Iraqi parliament, said: "There are a lot of appointments of officers, brigade commanders and above - 140 ranks that come directly from the prime minister without obtaining the approval of the parliament. These appointments are done without going back to the constitution, using existing laws of the former regime without taking into consideration that we are in a very different political system."
"The big commanders are loyal to whoever puts them in power," an official in the ministry of defence said. "They support Maliki because he is not imposing on them difficult conditions and some moved their alliances from other parties."
All these signs are not enough to make Maliki a dictator in the mould of Saddam, says the Iraq analyst. "There is no return to the days of Saddam - this is at most a shaky dictatorship. Now we have many small dictatorships, not one strong one, and that will create checks and balances."
Charles Tripp, a professor of politics in the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies and a leading Iraq historian, said: "Dictators didn't come out of nowhere, they didn't come by a great explosion. They come by capturing small things bit by bit. Small things are very telling - they tell you the nature of things to come. One day people will wake up and ask how did we come here, it must be an awful conspiracy."
Back in the Baghdad restaurant garden, the waiter returned with tea and sugar and the intelligence officer immediately changed the subject. "It's nice weather to sit outside in the gardens," said one of the other men.
"Yes, but the sound of the generators is too loud," replied the other.
When the waiter had left I asked the senior officer if he feared he was being watched. "We are all being monitored," he said. "We monitor each other." Then he laughed. "But Maliki's people are too young. In the world of Mukhabarat they are just learning."
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
McClatchy Washington Bureau Is Obama wrong on Iraq? Baghdad violence worst in year
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Is Obama wrong on Iraq? Baghdad violence worst in year
Posted on Wed, Apr. 29, 2009
Corinne Reilly and Hussein Kadhim | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 30, 2009 12:23:47 AM
BAGHDAD — April was the bloodiest month for violence in Baghdad in more than a year, another sign that Iraq's security gains are beginning to reverse.
President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday night that violence has risen in recent weeks, but he said the levels of violence were still below last year's.
Calling recent bombings "a legitimate cause for concern," Obama said "civilian deaths . . . remain very low compared to what was going on last year."
But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.
The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.
On Wednesday, a series of explosions killed at least 43 people, including at least 41 who were killed in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in east Baghdad. Three bombs hidden in parked cars detonated in quick succession along a busy commercial street around 5 p.m., an official with Iraq's interior ministry said. At least 68 were wounded, and authorities said they expect the death toll to rise.
"It was chaos in the streets," said one witness, Wissam Hassan.
Two more car bombs detonated in Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood Wednesday night, killing at least two people and wounding eight.
Large-scale bombings targeting civilians have been on the rise since March, and there is widespread concern among Iraqis that the violence may quickly spread as the U.S. begins to draw down.
American officials have said they don't think the renewed violence marks a serious setback.
During a visit to Baghdad last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters the spike in attacks in not an indication that Iraq is regressing. She said she and Army Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander here, agree that the uptick in bombings shouldn't change American plans for withdrawal.
Outside analysts aren't so optimistic.
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and Iraq expert with the Brookings Institution, called the rise in violence "significant."
"There almost surely won't be a complete reversal" in the progress that's been made, he said in an e-mail. "But there could be an end to the progress and even a new, somewhat higher level of ongoing violence."
O'Hanlon speculated that anger among Sunni Muslim militiamen known as the Sons of Iraq may be partly to blame for the rise in attacks. Relations between the militia's members and Iraq's Shiite-led government are at an all-time high.
Rahim al Daraji, a former mayor of Sadr City, said the explosions there prove that Iraq's security forces aren't effective.
"This will push us back to the sectarian violence," he said. "The Shiites will be looking for revenge."
Hakim Mishchil, a 34-year-old nurse who lives in Sadr City, said one of the bombs went off within feet of an Iraqi Army checkpoint.
"What does this tell you?" he asked. "They are not doing their job."
Under an agreement signed last year between Washington and Baghdad, U.S. troops must leave Iraqi cities and hand control to local security forces by the end of June. President Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw most Americans from the country altogether by late 2010.
(Reilly reports for the Merced Sun-Star. Kadhim is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Is Obama wrong on Iraq? Baghdad violence worst in year
Posted on Wed, Apr. 29, 2009
Corinne Reilly and Hussein Kadhim | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 30, 2009 12:23:47 AM
BAGHDAD — April was the bloodiest month for violence in Baghdad in more than a year, another sign that Iraq's security gains are beginning to reverse.
President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday night that violence has risen in recent weeks, but he said the levels of violence were still below last year's.
Calling recent bombings "a legitimate cause for concern," Obama said "civilian deaths . . . remain very low compared to what was going on last year."
But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.
The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.
On Wednesday, a series of explosions killed at least 43 people, including at least 41 who were killed in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in east Baghdad. Three bombs hidden in parked cars detonated in quick succession along a busy commercial street around 5 p.m., an official with Iraq's interior ministry said. At least 68 were wounded, and authorities said they expect the death toll to rise.
"It was chaos in the streets," said one witness, Wissam Hassan.
Two more car bombs detonated in Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood Wednesday night, killing at least two people and wounding eight.
Large-scale bombings targeting civilians have been on the rise since March, and there is widespread concern among Iraqis that the violence may quickly spread as the U.S. begins to draw down.
American officials have said they don't think the renewed violence marks a serious setback.
During a visit to Baghdad last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters the spike in attacks in not an indication that Iraq is regressing. She said she and Army Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander here, agree that the uptick in bombings shouldn't change American plans for withdrawal.
Outside analysts aren't so optimistic.
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and Iraq expert with the Brookings Institution, called the rise in violence "significant."
"There almost surely won't be a complete reversal" in the progress that's been made, he said in an e-mail. "But there could be an end to the progress and even a new, somewhat higher level of ongoing violence."
O'Hanlon speculated that anger among Sunni Muslim militiamen known as the Sons of Iraq may be partly to blame for the rise in attacks. Relations between the militia's members and Iraq's Shiite-led government are at an all-time high.
Rahim al Daraji, a former mayor of Sadr City, said the explosions there prove that Iraq's security forces aren't effective.
"This will push us back to the sectarian violence," he said. "The Shiites will be looking for revenge."
Hakim Mishchil, a 34-year-old nurse who lives in Sadr City, said one of the bombs went off within feet of an Iraqi Army checkpoint.
"What does this tell you?" he asked. "They are not doing their job."
Under an agreement signed last year between Washington and Baghdad, U.S. troops must leave Iraqi cities and hand control to local security forces by the end of June. President Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw most Americans from the country altogether by late 2010.
(Reilly reports for the Merced Sun-Star. Kadhim is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
NEFA Foundation: Exclusive English-Language Video Interview with Taliban Spokesman in Pakistan's Swat Valley By Evan Kohlmann
NEFA Foundation: Exclusive English-Language Video Interview with Taliban Spokesman in Pakistan's Swat Valley
By Evan Kohlmann
muslimkhan.jpgThe NEFA Foundation has obtained an exclusive English-language interview with Haji Muslim Khan, the spokesman of Tehrik-e-Taliban Swat Valley (Pakistan). During the interview, conducted on April 27, Muslim Khan discussed the Taliban implementation of Shariah law in Swat and neighboring regions. When asked about the notion of "moderate Taliban" versus "hardline Taliban", Khan began laughing and replied, "No, there is no difference... they are the same." Khan also accused U.S. President Barack Obama of ordering a Pakistani military attack on the TTP in Swat, referring to Obama as "an enemy of Islam and Muslims."
Part one of two of the interview is now available on the NEFA Foundation website.
April 29, 2009 09:37 PM
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/nefa_foundation_exclusive_engl.php
By Evan Kohlmann
muslimkhan.jpgThe NEFA Foundation has obtained an exclusive English-language interview with Haji Muslim Khan, the spokesman of Tehrik-e-Taliban Swat Valley (Pakistan). During the interview, conducted on April 27, Muslim Khan discussed the Taliban implementation of Shariah law in Swat and neighboring regions. When asked about the notion of "moderate Taliban" versus "hardline Taliban", Khan began laughing and replied, "No, there is no difference... they are the same." Khan also accused U.S. President Barack Obama of ordering a Pakistani military attack on the TTP in Swat, referring to Obama as "an enemy of Islam and Muslims."
Part one of two of the interview is now available on the NEFA Foundation website.
April 29, 2009 09:37 PM
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/nefa_foundation_exclusive_engl.php
Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: A Global Intelligence Imperative By Michael Jacobson
Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: A Global Intelligence Imperative
By Michael Jacobson
This afternoon, the Washington Institute published a piece by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the former DOE intelligence chief and head of the CIA's WMD Department in the Counterterrorism Center. In the article, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen lays out the threat the US still faces from nuclear terrorism, and outlines some steps the US and the international community should take to mitigate this dangerous situation. One particularly important step, in Mr. Mowatt-Larssen's view, would be to establish a full-fledged intelligence office at the IEAE.
Here is an excerpt from the piece:
As Mohamed ElBaradei's term as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) draws to a close, the organization is struggling to choose a new leader. After deadlocking on an initial vote in March, a new round of nominations closed on April 27, with the next vote scheduled in the coming months. While the IAEA sorts out changes at the top, the United States should try to expand the agency's mandate and responsibilities. One such change would be the establishment of a full-fledged intelligence office, which would dramatically improve the agency's ability to identify and deter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Post-September 11 Urgency
After the September 11 attacks, the CIA faced the daunting prospect of al-Qaeda seeking a nuclear bomb and collaborating with Pakistani nuclear scientists in an effort to build one. A mood of grim determination gripped the U.S. intelligence establishment, a sentiment highlighted by CIA Director George Tenet when he stated that "We are behind the eight ball" in tracking al-Qaeda's efforts to obtain WMDs.
This threat galvanized an unprecedented response, which stimulated a degree of risk taking, experimentation, and creativity that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies abandoned traditional methods of conducting business and worked together in unprecedented ways to defuse the threat. Government agencies agreed to colocate officers and work together as an integrated team, drawing from a well of capabilities that included everything at the U.S. government's disposal. The United States also shared raw leads and information with dozens of countries in the war on terrorism, most notably with our new Russian partners. Washington went to extreme lengths to ensure information was passed to anyone who might have answers, including Syria, Sudan, and Iran. Conventional rules limiting the sharing of information were suspended in favor of sharing everything with everyone. In all, the CIA passed WMD-related leads and analysis to over two dozen countries. In fact, in the process of averting a WMD-enabled al-Qaeda, the United States and its allies were able to thwart attacks in the formative stages in several countries.
To read the rest of the piece, http://washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3048
By Michael Jacobson
This afternoon, the Washington Institute published a piece by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the former DOE intelligence chief and head of the CIA's WMD Department in the Counterterrorism Center. In the article, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen lays out the threat the US still faces from nuclear terrorism, and outlines some steps the US and the international community should take to mitigate this dangerous situation. One particularly important step, in Mr. Mowatt-Larssen's view, would be to establish a full-fledged intelligence office at the IEAE.
Here is an excerpt from the piece:
As Mohamed ElBaradei's term as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) draws to a close, the organization is struggling to choose a new leader. After deadlocking on an initial vote in March, a new round of nominations closed on April 27, with the next vote scheduled in the coming months. While the IAEA sorts out changes at the top, the United States should try to expand the agency's mandate and responsibilities. One such change would be the establishment of a full-fledged intelligence office, which would dramatically improve the agency's ability to identify and deter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Post-September 11 Urgency
After the September 11 attacks, the CIA faced the daunting prospect of al-Qaeda seeking a nuclear bomb and collaborating with Pakistani nuclear scientists in an effort to build one. A mood of grim determination gripped the U.S. intelligence establishment, a sentiment highlighted by CIA Director George Tenet when he stated that "We are behind the eight ball" in tracking al-Qaeda's efforts to obtain WMDs.
This threat galvanized an unprecedented response, which stimulated a degree of risk taking, experimentation, and creativity that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies abandoned traditional methods of conducting business and worked together in unprecedented ways to defuse the threat. Government agencies agreed to colocate officers and work together as an integrated team, drawing from a well of capabilities that included everything at the U.S. government's disposal. The United States also shared raw leads and information with dozens of countries in the war on terrorism, most notably with our new Russian partners. Washington went to extreme lengths to ensure information was passed to anyone who might have answers, including Syria, Sudan, and Iran. Conventional rules limiting the sharing of information were suspended in favor of sharing everything with everyone. In all, the CIA passed WMD-related leads and analysis to over two dozen countries. In fact, in the process of averting a WMD-enabled al-Qaeda, the United States and its allies were able to thwart attacks in the formative stages in several countries.
To read the rest of the piece, http://washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3048
Afghanistan/Pakistan Update
AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN
Petraeus Parallels Iraq, Afghanistan Strategies - Fred W. Baker III, American Forces Press Service. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the author of the military’s counterinsurgency manual, yesterday explained the principles that led to success in Iraq and how they apply to the fight in Afghanistan. Petraeus cited the downward spiral the country has taken, with an expanded and stronger insurgency and markedly increased levels of violence. Also, the Afghan government has been slow to develop, is wracked with corruption, and its legitimacy in the eyes of the locals has suffered. Petraeus embraced President Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan, saying that progress there is tied to a “robust, sustained and comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign.”
General Retires, Readies to Become Ambassador to Afghanistan - Fred W. Baker III, American Forces Press Service. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry retired here today, 24 hours before being sworn in as the US Ambassador to Afghanistan. Until today, Eikenberry served as the deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium. Tomorrow he will be sworn in by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as ambassador.
US Sets Fight in the Poppies to Stop Taliban - Dexter Filkens, New York Times. American commanders are planning to cut off the Taliban’s main source of money, the country’s multimillion-dollar opium crop, by pouring thousands of troops into the three provinces that bankroll much of the group’s operations. The plan to send 20,000 Marines and soldiers into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces this summer promises weeks and perhaps months of heavy fighting, since American officers expect the Taliban to vigorously defend what makes up the economic engine for the insurgency.
US Training of Pakistan Army to Grow - Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times. The Pakistani government has agreed to allow the U. a greater role in training its military, part of an accord that will also send counterinsurgency equipment to help Islamabad step up its offensive against militants. Washington has been watching with growing alarm as Taliban forces have made military gains in Pakistan and US officials have stepped up pressure on Islamabad to do more. Although the Pakistani military launched an air attack against the Taliban on Tuesday, senior US Defense officials remain deeply worried about Islamabad's ability to beat back the militant advance.
US May Fast-track Aid to Block Taliban - Raza Khan and Christina Bellantoni, Washington Times. The Obama administration is considering expediting aid to Pakistan, where militants are advancing on the capital and posing a threat to a cluster of strategic installations, including a major dam, a key bridge and the country's largest weapons and ammunition complex. Pakistani military analysts say militants could bring normal life to a halt in a large part of Pakistan if they move against the Tarbela dam. The world's largest earthen dam, it is located on the Indus River about 30 miles northwest of the capital in the districts of Swabi and Haripur.
Pakistan Battles Taliban in Northwest - Barry Newhouse, Voice of America. Pakistan's military has opened a new front in its offensive against Taliban militants in the country's northwest. Troops are pursuing an estimated 500 militants in Buner district, a region just 100 kilometers from the capital. Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas says security forces, backed by attack helicopters and jets have moved into Buner district. He says the operation is focused on the estimated 500 Taliban militants now camped out in the mountainous terrain.
Pakistan Claims to Retake Town From Taliban - Carlotta Gall and Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times. After a week of strong criticism here and abroad over its inaction, the Pakistani military claimed on Wednesday to have reasserted control of a key town just 60 miles from the capital in the strategic district of Buner which was overrun by hundreds of Taliban militants last week. The development came one day after the military deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships against the insurgents. It was not immediately clear what level of resistance the Taliban had offered. Pakistan also agreed to move 6,000 troops from its Indian border to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified discussing troop movements in advance.
Pakistan Launches Air Strikes Against Taliban - Matthew Rosenberg and Zahid Hussain, Wall Street Journal. Pakistani fighter jets pounded Taliban positions in a district near the Swat Valley on Tuesday as ground troops pressed on, in the military's most robust effort to repel a Taliban advance. Pakistan faces intense pressure from Washington to abandon a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat, which has become a major militant base since the deal was struck in mid-February. Tuesday's fighting in the neighboring Buner district seemed likely to further undermine the already shaky accord. The Taliban moved last week from Swat into Buner, 70 miles northwest of Islamabad, the capital. Their advance - and Pakistan's passive initial response - raised alarm among US officials, who said the government was capitulating in the face of a Taliban sweep toward the capital, which lies in the plains where most of the country's population and industry is situated.
Pakistan Attacks Taliban Bases Near Islamabad - Zulfiqar Ali and Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times. The Pakistani army launched an air attack Tuesday and began deploying ground troops against Taliban bases near Islamabad, the nation's capital. The offensive appeared to be a broadening of the state's moves against militants, many of whom have become increasingly brash since reaching a controversial peace deal this year largely on their terms. Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, told reporters in Rawalpindi that army and Frontier Corps paramilitary units launched the operation in Buner district, building on a several-day offensive in the region. Abbas said 450 to 500 Taliban fighters are believed to be active in Buner.
Taleban Advance Halted by Pakistan's Combined Air and Ground Onslaught - Zahid Hussain, The Times. Pakistani jets pounded Taleban positions and ground troops moved into the northwestern town of Buner yesterday in an escalation of a military offensive against militants seeking to strengthen their grip in a region close to the country's capital. Jets and helicopter gunships launched airstrikes to cover the ground troops' advance through Buner's mountainous terrain and to keep Taleban fighters in the neighbouring Swat Valley from bringing in reinforcements.
US Welcomes Pakistani Offensive, Calls for Sustained Effort - Al Pessin, Voice of America. The US Defense Department on Tuesday welcomed Pakistan's offensive against the Taliban and other groups near Islamabad, but says the real test will be whether the effort is sustained and actually defeats the militants. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said that after months of calling for more decisive Pakistani action against the militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other top officials are "clearly pleased" with the offensive.
US Officials Ratchet Up Pressure on Pakistan Over Taliban Militants - Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor. The Obama administration appears to have pushed some hot buttons with the government of Pakistan – getting some quick action against the rising threat from the country's extremist forces, but also irritating a leadership anxious to show it is not acting under pressure from anyone. That sequence follows a familiar pattern in US-Pakistan relations, experts in the region say: first comes some American action, usually rhetorical, followed by just enough Pakistani action to satisfy Washington. The difference this time is that Pakistani action follows a shift in US focus: from Pakistan as it affects the war next door in Afghanistan to Pakistan itself and its stability amid an intensifying confrontation with Taliban militants.
Afghanistan Cancels Public Celebration of Holiday - Pamela Constable, Washington Post. The streets of the Afghan capital were deserted Tuesday in a tense, silent observance of an annual holiday that evokes an era of patriotic heroism for some Afghans and a period of brutal, devastating civil war for others. For the first time in 16 years, there was no military parade through city streets and no cheering crowd of retired mujaheddin donning pie-shaped pakul hats and faded combat jackets in memory of their triumphant guerrilla fight against Soviet occupation forces during the 1980s.
How Pakistan Is Countering the Taliban - Husain Haqqani, Wall Street Journal opinion. The specter of extremist Taliban taking over a nuclear-armed Pakistan is not only a gross exaggeration, it could also lead to misguided policy prescriptions from Pakistan's allies, including our friends in Washington. Pakistan and the international community do face serious challenges in confronting terrorists and the ideologies that sustain them. But panicked reactions of the type witnessed in the U.S. media over the last few weeks -- after the Taliban drove into Buner, a town 60 miles north of the capital Islamabad -- are not conducive to strengthening Pakistani democracy or to developing an effective counterterrorism policy for Pakistan. Now that the Taliban have been driven out of Buner, and Pakistani forces have militarily engaged them just outside their Swat Valley stronghold, it should be clear to all that Pakistan can and will defeat the Taliban.
Petraeus Parallels Iraq, Afghanistan Strategies - Fred W. Baker III, American Forces Press Service. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the author of the military’s counterinsurgency manual, yesterday explained the principles that led to success in Iraq and how they apply to the fight in Afghanistan. Petraeus cited the downward spiral the country has taken, with an expanded and stronger insurgency and markedly increased levels of violence. Also, the Afghan government has been slow to develop, is wracked with corruption, and its legitimacy in the eyes of the locals has suffered. Petraeus embraced President Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan, saying that progress there is tied to a “robust, sustained and comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign.”
General Retires, Readies to Become Ambassador to Afghanistan - Fred W. Baker III, American Forces Press Service. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry retired here today, 24 hours before being sworn in as the US Ambassador to Afghanistan. Until today, Eikenberry served as the deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium. Tomorrow he will be sworn in by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as ambassador.
US Sets Fight in the Poppies to Stop Taliban - Dexter Filkens, New York Times. American commanders are planning to cut off the Taliban’s main source of money, the country’s multimillion-dollar opium crop, by pouring thousands of troops into the three provinces that bankroll much of the group’s operations. The plan to send 20,000 Marines and soldiers into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces this summer promises weeks and perhaps months of heavy fighting, since American officers expect the Taliban to vigorously defend what makes up the economic engine for the insurgency.
US Training of Pakistan Army to Grow - Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times. The Pakistani government has agreed to allow the U. a greater role in training its military, part of an accord that will also send counterinsurgency equipment to help Islamabad step up its offensive against militants. Washington has been watching with growing alarm as Taliban forces have made military gains in Pakistan and US officials have stepped up pressure on Islamabad to do more. Although the Pakistani military launched an air attack against the Taliban on Tuesday, senior US Defense officials remain deeply worried about Islamabad's ability to beat back the militant advance.
US May Fast-track Aid to Block Taliban - Raza Khan and Christina Bellantoni, Washington Times. The Obama administration is considering expediting aid to Pakistan, where militants are advancing on the capital and posing a threat to a cluster of strategic installations, including a major dam, a key bridge and the country's largest weapons and ammunition complex. Pakistani military analysts say militants could bring normal life to a halt in a large part of Pakistan if they move against the Tarbela dam. The world's largest earthen dam, it is located on the Indus River about 30 miles northwest of the capital in the districts of Swabi and Haripur.
Pakistan Battles Taliban in Northwest - Barry Newhouse, Voice of America. Pakistan's military has opened a new front in its offensive against Taliban militants in the country's northwest. Troops are pursuing an estimated 500 militants in Buner district, a region just 100 kilometers from the capital. Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas says security forces, backed by attack helicopters and jets have moved into Buner district. He says the operation is focused on the estimated 500 Taliban militants now camped out in the mountainous terrain.
Pakistan Claims to Retake Town From Taliban - Carlotta Gall and Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times. After a week of strong criticism here and abroad over its inaction, the Pakistani military claimed on Wednesday to have reasserted control of a key town just 60 miles from the capital in the strategic district of Buner which was overrun by hundreds of Taliban militants last week. The development came one day after the military deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships against the insurgents. It was not immediately clear what level of resistance the Taliban had offered. Pakistan also agreed to move 6,000 troops from its Indian border to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified discussing troop movements in advance.
Pakistan Launches Air Strikes Against Taliban - Matthew Rosenberg and Zahid Hussain, Wall Street Journal. Pakistani fighter jets pounded Taliban positions in a district near the Swat Valley on Tuesday as ground troops pressed on, in the military's most robust effort to repel a Taliban advance. Pakistan faces intense pressure from Washington to abandon a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat, which has become a major militant base since the deal was struck in mid-February. Tuesday's fighting in the neighboring Buner district seemed likely to further undermine the already shaky accord. The Taliban moved last week from Swat into Buner, 70 miles northwest of Islamabad, the capital. Their advance - and Pakistan's passive initial response - raised alarm among US officials, who said the government was capitulating in the face of a Taliban sweep toward the capital, which lies in the plains where most of the country's population and industry is situated.
Pakistan Attacks Taliban Bases Near Islamabad - Zulfiqar Ali and Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times. The Pakistani army launched an air attack Tuesday and began deploying ground troops against Taliban bases near Islamabad, the nation's capital. The offensive appeared to be a broadening of the state's moves against militants, many of whom have become increasingly brash since reaching a controversial peace deal this year largely on their terms. Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, told reporters in Rawalpindi that army and Frontier Corps paramilitary units launched the operation in Buner district, building on a several-day offensive in the region. Abbas said 450 to 500 Taliban fighters are believed to be active in Buner.
Taleban Advance Halted by Pakistan's Combined Air and Ground Onslaught - Zahid Hussain, The Times. Pakistani jets pounded Taleban positions and ground troops moved into the northwestern town of Buner yesterday in an escalation of a military offensive against militants seeking to strengthen their grip in a region close to the country's capital. Jets and helicopter gunships launched airstrikes to cover the ground troops' advance through Buner's mountainous terrain and to keep Taleban fighters in the neighbouring Swat Valley from bringing in reinforcements.
US Welcomes Pakistani Offensive, Calls for Sustained Effort - Al Pessin, Voice of America. The US Defense Department on Tuesday welcomed Pakistan's offensive against the Taliban and other groups near Islamabad, but says the real test will be whether the effort is sustained and actually defeats the militants. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said that after months of calling for more decisive Pakistani action against the militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other top officials are "clearly pleased" with the offensive.
US Officials Ratchet Up Pressure on Pakistan Over Taliban Militants - Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor. The Obama administration appears to have pushed some hot buttons with the government of Pakistan – getting some quick action against the rising threat from the country's extremist forces, but also irritating a leadership anxious to show it is not acting under pressure from anyone. That sequence follows a familiar pattern in US-Pakistan relations, experts in the region say: first comes some American action, usually rhetorical, followed by just enough Pakistani action to satisfy Washington. The difference this time is that Pakistani action follows a shift in US focus: from Pakistan as it affects the war next door in Afghanistan to Pakistan itself and its stability amid an intensifying confrontation with Taliban militants.
Afghanistan Cancels Public Celebration of Holiday - Pamela Constable, Washington Post. The streets of the Afghan capital were deserted Tuesday in a tense, silent observance of an annual holiday that evokes an era of patriotic heroism for some Afghans and a period of brutal, devastating civil war for others. For the first time in 16 years, there was no military parade through city streets and no cheering crowd of retired mujaheddin donning pie-shaped pakul hats and faded combat jackets in memory of their triumphant guerrilla fight against Soviet occupation forces during the 1980s.
How Pakistan Is Countering the Taliban - Husain Haqqani, Wall Street Journal opinion. The specter of extremist Taliban taking over a nuclear-armed Pakistan is not only a gross exaggeration, it could also lead to misguided policy prescriptions from Pakistan's allies, including our friends in Washington. Pakistan and the international community do face serious challenges in confronting terrorists and the ideologies that sustain them. But panicked reactions of the type witnessed in the U.S. media over the last few weeks -- after the Taliban drove into Buner, a town 60 miles north of the capital Islamabad -- are not conducive to strengthening Pakistani democracy or to developing an effective counterterrorism policy for Pakistan. Now that the Taliban have been driven out of Buner, and Pakistani forces have militarily engaged them just outside their Swat Valley stronghold, it should be clear to all that Pakistan can and will defeat the Taliban.
Obama Says Pakistan Nukes in Safe Hands
Obama Says Pakistan Nukes in Safe Hands
Farhan Bokhari and James Lamont, Financial Times US president Barack Obama on Wednesday has backed assurances from Pakistan's military, saying he believed the country's nuclear arsenal of as many as 100 warheads was in safe hands.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a92fbbc2-34e4-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Farhan Bokhari and James Lamont, Financial Times US president Barack Obama on Wednesday has backed assurances from Pakistan's military, saying he believed the country's nuclear arsenal of as many as 100 warheads was in safe hands.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a92fbbc2-34e4-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
N. Korea Issues Threat on Uranium Choe Sang-Hun, The New York Times
N. Korea Issues Threat on Uranium
Choe Sang-Hun, The New York Times
North Korea said Wednesday that it would start a uranium enrichment program, declaring for the first time that it intended to pursue a second project unless the United Nations lifted sanctions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/world/asia/30korea.html?_r=1&em
Choe Sang-Hun, The New York Times
North Korea said Wednesday that it would start a uranium enrichment program, declaring for the first time that it intended to pursue a second project unless the United Nations lifted sanctions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/world/asia/30korea.html?_r=1&em
Ending the Nuclear-Weapons Threat
Ending the Nuclear-Weapons Threat
Diplomacy is the key. Japan stands ready to help.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124103588928969859.html
Diplomacy is the key. Japan stands ready to help.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124103588928969859.html
Congress Looks to Bolster Iran Sanctions
Congress Looks to Bolster Iran Sanctions
Matthew Lee, Associated Press
Sen. LiebermanCongress is taking up a bipartisan proposal which would give the Obama administration more leverage over Iran by toughening economic sanctions on foreign oil and shipping firms that aid Tehran.
A group of Democrats and Republicans introduced legislation Tuesday that would give the president expanded authority to crack down on companies that export gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMWnTNi2WvELwNz8MqRXYBYmK9dQD97S4R501
Matthew Lee, Associated Press
Sen. LiebermanCongress is taking up a bipartisan proposal which would give the Obama administration more leverage over Iran by toughening economic sanctions on foreign oil and shipping firms that aid Tehran.
A group of Democrats and Republicans introduced legislation Tuesday that would give the president expanded authority to crack down on companies that export gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMWnTNi2WvELwNz8MqRXYBYmK9dQD97S4R501
Seamless Continuity From Bush Time Obama and "Two States" By ELLEN CANTAROW
Seamless Continuity From Bush Time
Obama and "Two States"
By ELLEN CANTAROW
A false claim is wafting through the press: Obama is hanging tough with Benjamin Netanyahu, he’s going to “twist Israel’s arm” and at long last force the Jewish state into a two-state agreement, settling the Israel-Palestine question for good. There’s even talk that Obama backs the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative, complete with its main demand: Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders.
There’s no proof for any of this. Obama has said nothing about when, where, and with what boundaries a Palestinian state might be established. Neither did George Bush. The slide from one regime to the next has been seamless on the score of Israel and Palestine as on much else.
In regard to a critical document invoked by Obama in his first policy speech about the region last January -- the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative -- Obama has not changed an iota, at least publicly. He gave the speech before State Department employees last January, announcing George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy. Most important, the speech delineated the clear outlines of Obama’s Middle East doctrine, as I described in my “The Problem Isn’t Avigdor Lieberman”
Obama’s reference to the Arab Peace Initiative was crucial for what it omitted -- the proposal’s first part, the precondition for everything that follows: “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.” Only after these preconditions have been laid out does the document continue: “Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following….” In “Consequently,” the intent is unmistakable: Once Israel fulfills the crucial condition requiring Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 lines, the Arab countries will do x, y, and z. One of the corollaries following the “Consequently” clause reads: “Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace [emphasis mine]”. Nothing could be clearer. Moreover, the Arab League’s request of Israel, “the context,” expresses the international consensus for the past 30 years, routinely blocked by the US and Israel.
Obama deliberately ignored all of this in his speech. Instead, he patted the Arab League on the head (“The Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements”), calling on Arab states to take “steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and [stand] up to extremism that threatens us all.” To construe Obama’s remarks as a slip or “mistake,” to suppose that this literate, lawyerly President didn’t actually read the document, would be preposterous. Obama’s choice was a deliberate policy declaration: Israel will continue to do what it is doing, with US protection. The US has found a proxy (and armed it -- more on this below). Hamas must “bow its head” to the master’s will. Between the lines that refer to Arab states “normalizing” their relations with Israel, read: the US’s most powerful Arab clients, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, hopefully (though not surely) with Syria in tow.
As for the “peace” which Obama professes to cherish, it would be easy to get to it through negotiation along the real Arab League proposal lines, the international consensus. But three-plus decades of US-Israel rejectionism have fostered only Israel’s expansion and the US’s regional hegemony, through brutal occupation and wars, with the consequences in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon (and, if one includes Iraq in the Gulf War, sanctions and Bush periods, Iraq) well-known to readers of this publication.
What has Obama had to say – let alone do about – all of the Palestinian suffering? He has somewhat tempered his if-rockets-were-falling-on-my-daughters expression of sympathy for Israel with words of the “both sides suffering” variety, taking a slight bow to Gaza’s “humanitarian” crisis (a topic that deserves its own commentary). It’s a mistake to think his intellect – and reverse racism to think his skin color - will serve the dispossessed across the American empire. (Among the “cool” and “aloof” moments which increasingly anger Obama’s voting base was his silence at the UN’s elimination of Israel-Palestine from the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference). Obama is a President skilled in oratory, with an admirable public relations machine, who can be counted on to exert all the savageries of imperial management. John F. Kennedy was just such a President, with charisma, intelligence, and a slick propaganda mill that still leaves liberals revering “Camelot.” In reality, however, his administration was among the US’s most brutal.
What’s surprising is that left publications have focused so little on Obama’s clear statement of intent in the Arab League proposal reference. It is also surprising that the left press has seldom commented (if at all) on a March 4 address to the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center by Senator John Kerry. As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry made very clear the Administration’s “peace” plans:
To start with, we need to fundamentally re-conceptualize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a regional problem that demands a regional solution. The challenges we face there – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Middle East peace process – form an interconnected web that requires an integrated approach . . . . That’s why it is vital that we move quickly, with the Arab world and the Quartet, to build Palestinian Authority capacity. [Thanks to Noam Chomsky for drawing my attention to his discussion of Kerry’s role in his “Exterminate All the Brutes,” on Znet.]
The US, together with “the Arab world” (meaning the US’s most powerful Arab clients, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) is to become a united front with Israel against, of course, Iran. The “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” will thus be integrated – or sidelined – within the wider spectrum of the US’s imperial dominance throughout the region. As for the Palestinians, Kerry reiterates that the Administration has found “a legitimate partner for peace” in Abbas – of course there have been no “legitimate” partners to date, Arafat’s compliance at Oslo and his pre-Oslo overtures to Israel being so much disposable trash in the dustbin of history. (Hamas’s repeated overtures to Israel – these have guaranteed truces as long as 30 years in exchange for Israel’s retreat to the ’67 borders, the same requirement as in the Arab League proposal – have been rebuffed by targeted assassinations and last winter’s butchery in Gaza.) Abbas is now shored up with an army. Here’s Kerry at Brookings again:
For years, everyone has talked of the need to give the Israelis a legitimate partner for peace . . . . We must help the Palestinian Authority deliver for the Palestinian people, and we must do it now. . . . Most importantly, this means strengthening General Dayton’s efforts to train Palestinian security forces that can keep order and fight terror. Recent developments have been extremely encouraging: during the invasion of Gaza, Palestinian Security Forces largely succeeded in maintaining calm in the West Bank amidst widespread expectations of civil unrest.
Given the US’s “help” to similar client regimes throughout the world, the “help the Palestinian Authority deliver” phrase is chilling. While one part of the “experiment” with a final solution to the Palestinian problem was underway – Israel’s bombing and shelling of Gaza, possibly as a test for future US strikes in the Middle East in densely populated areas – another part, equally critical, was underway in the West Bank. To protect the population’s “human rights” the “truly professional” Palestinian National Security Force (N.S.F.) crushed West Bank demonstrations, averting the worrisome possibility that in the face of Israel’s slaughter of their sisters and brothers in Gaza, there might be unwelcome disturbances. According to reliable reports, Abbas also has CIA-run forces, Preventive Security and General Intelligence, which promise to be far more brutal than Dayton’s paramilitaries (these fall under State Department aegis).
Thomas Friedman, the US-Israel’s press proxy, reported in the New York Times this past February that after Hamas “took over Gaza in 2007,” the US gave funds to Keith Dayton to do proxy-army training of Palestinians in Jordan: “Schooled in everything from riot control to human rights [sic], the N.S.F. [Palestinian National Security Force] is the only truly professional force controlled by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.”
Only a few of Abbas’s “truly professional” proxy-ancestors are Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Suharto in Indonesia, and the proxy forces, professionals in massacre, looting, rape, and assassination, which operated under them. There is, needless to say, no unified Palestinian resistance movement to parallel the FMLN in El Salvador let alone Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. In a Palestine weakened by decades of savage occupation, the US succeeded in fomenting maximal strife between Hamas and Fatah.
As for the “two states” that get Obama’s lip-service, there are only two possibilities. One is the Lieberman-Kadima proposal (Tzipi Livni, among others to Lieberman’s “left,” has endorsed it). It would annex to the West Bank parts of the Galilee containing large Arab populations and call the result a “Palestinian state.” This is the racist solution, which has sometimes been termed “soft transfer”, as I described it on this site.
The other is the land-swap option proposed at Taba, Egypt in 2001 at the end of Clinton’s administration. (There is also the land-swap option of the Geneva Accord crafted by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, after PM Ehud Barak pulled out of the Taba talks.) Israeli security and foreign policy expert Zeev Maoz quotes the joint Israeli-Palestinian January, 2001 statement after Taba:
The sides declare that they have never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of negotiations following the Israeli elections.
The Brzezinski-Scowcroft proposal savaged by Bill and Kathy Christison in these pages contains a sentence referring to Taba: “Indeed, the outline of an Israeli-Palestinian accord was crafted during the dying days of the Clinton administration.” After the sentence about Taba the authors demur about the difficulties of getting “to yes,” but the allusion is still in the document.
What is the alternative to Taba? Or to the Geneva initiative (in the very unlikely event that the Obama administration were to take it up again)? In the ruins of Gaza people hover on the edges of bare survival (among other ravages of the siege alone, which continues unremittingly, is stunted growth in young children, noted in a recent Lancet report) in the West Bank, California-like suburban settlements ravage the former beauty of Palestine’s hills, slicing and dicing what remains of Palestine’s villages and cities; two armies and brutal vigilantes attack any form of resistance, however peaceful, and the usual suffering (evictions, home demolitions and more) goes on under US-Israel rule.
It is difficult for those who have long yearned for justice for Palestine to admit that the US-Israel are winning. But the conclusion is inescapable.
To recognize this doesn’t mean stopping our condemnation of the ongoing daily savageries against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; or stopping educational work among Americans ignorant of the facts; or valuable “sister city” projects and other person-to-person work underway in, for instance, Cambridge, Massachusetts; or boycott and divestment activities of the sort recently achieved at Hampshire College. But none of that work should cloud our understanding of the very narrow real-world options possible under Obama.
Ellen Cantarow has written since 1979 on Israel and Palestine. She can be reached at ecantarow@comcast.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/cantarow04302009.html
Obama and "Two States"
By ELLEN CANTAROW
A false claim is wafting through the press: Obama is hanging tough with Benjamin Netanyahu, he’s going to “twist Israel’s arm” and at long last force the Jewish state into a two-state agreement, settling the Israel-Palestine question for good. There’s even talk that Obama backs the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative, complete with its main demand: Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders.
There’s no proof for any of this. Obama has said nothing about when, where, and with what boundaries a Palestinian state might be established. Neither did George Bush. The slide from one regime to the next has been seamless on the score of Israel and Palestine as on much else.
In regard to a critical document invoked by Obama in his first policy speech about the region last January -- the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative -- Obama has not changed an iota, at least publicly. He gave the speech before State Department employees last January, announcing George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy. Most important, the speech delineated the clear outlines of Obama’s Middle East doctrine, as I described in my “The Problem Isn’t Avigdor Lieberman”
Obama’s reference to the Arab Peace Initiative was crucial for what it omitted -- the proposal’s first part, the precondition for everything that follows: “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.” Only after these preconditions have been laid out does the document continue: “Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following….” In “Consequently,” the intent is unmistakable: Once Israel fulfills the crucial condition requiring Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 lines, the Arab countries will do x, y, and z. One of the corollaries following the “Consequently” clause reads: “Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace [emphasis mine]”. Nothing could be clearer. Moreover, the Arab League’s request of Israel, “the context,” expresses the international consensus for the past 30 years, routinely blocked by the US and Israel.
Obama deliberately ignored all of this in his speech. Instead, he patted the Arab League on the head (“The Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements”), calling on Arab states to take “steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and [stand] up to extremism that threatens us all.” To construe Obama’s remarks as a slip or “mistake,” to suppose that this literate, lawyerly President didn’t actually read the document, would be preposterous. Obama’s choice was a deliberate policy declaration: Israel will continue to do what it is doing, with US protection. The US has found a proxy (and armed it -- more on this below). Hamas must “bow its head” to the master’s will. Between the lines that refer to Arab states “normalizing” their relations with Israel, read: the US’s most powerful Arab clients, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, hopefully (though not surely) with Syria in tow.
As for the “peace” which Obama professes to cherish, it would be easy to get to it through negotiation along the real Arab League proposal lines, the international consensus. But three-plus decades of US-Israel rejectionism have fostered only Israel’s expansion and the US’s regional hegemony, through brutal occupation and wars, with the consequences in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon (and, if one includes Iraq in the Gulf War, sanctions and Bush periods, Iraq) well-known to readers of this publication.
What has Obama had to say – let alone do about – all of the Palestinian suffering? He has somewhat tempered his if-rockets-were-falling-on-my-daughters expression of sympathy for Israel with words of the “both sides suffering” variety, taking a slight bow to Gaza’s “humanitarian” crisis (a topic that deserves its own commentary). It’s a mistake to think his intellect – and reverse racism to think his skin color - will serve the dispossessed across the American empire. (Among the “cool” and “aloof” moments which increasingly anger Obama’s voting base was his silence at the UN’s elimination of Israel-Palestine from the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference). Obama is a President skilled in oratory, with an admirable public relations machine, who can be counted on to exert all the savageries of imperial management. John F. Kennedy was just such a President, with charisma, intelligence, and a slick propaganda mill that still leaves liberals revering “Camelot.” In reality, however, his administration was among the US’s most brutal.
What’s surprising is that left publications have focused so little on Obama’s clear statement of intent in the Arab League proposal reference. It is also surprising that the left press has seldom commented (if at all) on a March 4 address to the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center by Senator John Kerry. As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry made very clear the Administration’s “peace” plans:
To start with, we need to fundamentally re-conceptualize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a regional problem that demands a regional solution. The challenges we face there – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Middle East peace process – form an interconnected web that requires an integrated approach . . . . That’s why it is vital that we move quickly, with the Arab world and the Quartet, to build Palestinian Authority capacity. [Thanks to Noam Chomsky for drawing my attention to his discussion of Kerry’s role in his “Exterminate All the Brutes,” on Znet.]
The US, together with “the Arab world” (meaning the US’s most powerful Arab clients, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) is to become a united front with Israel against, of course, Iran. The “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” will thus be integrated – or sidelined – within the wider spectrum of the US’s imperial dominance throughout the region. As for the Palestinians, Kerry reiterates that the Administration has found “a legitimate partner for peace” in Abbas – of course there have been no “legitimate” partners to date, Arafat’s compliance at Oslo and his pre-Oslo overtures to Israel being so much disposable trash in the dustbin of history. (Hamas’s repeated overtures to Israel – these have guaranteed truces as long as 30 years in exchange for Israel’s retreat to the ’67 borders, the same requirement as in the Arab League proposal – have been rebuffed by targeted assassinations and last winter’s butchery in Gaza.) Abbas is now shored up with an army. Here’s Kerry at Brookings again:
For years, everyone has talked of the need to give the Israelis a legitimate partner for peace . . . . We must help the Palestinian Authority deliver for the Palestinian people, and we must do it now. . . . Most importantly, this means strengthening General Dayton’s efforts to train Palestinian security forces that can keep order and fight terror. Recent developments have been extremely encouraging: during the invasion of Gaza, Palestinian Security Forces largely succeeded in maintaining calm in the West Bank amidst widespread expectations of civil unrest.
Given the US’s “help” to similar client regimes throughout the world, the “help the Palestinian Authority deliver” phrase is chilling. While one part of the “experiment” with a final solution to the Palestinian problem was underway – Israel’s bombing and shelling of Gaza, possibly as a test for future US strikes in the Middle East in densely populated areas – another part, equally critical, was underway in the West Bank. To protect the population’s “human rights” the “truly professional” Palestinian National Security Force (N.S.F.) crushed West Bank demonstrations, averting the worrisome possibility that in the face of Israel’s slaughter of their sisters and brothers in Gaza, there might be unwelcome disturbances. According to reliable reports, Abbas also has CIA-run forces, Preventive Security and General Intelligence, which promise to be far more brutal than Dayton’s paramilitaries (these fall under State Department aegis).
Thomas Friedman, the US-Israel’s press proxy, reported in the New York Times this past February that after Hamas “took over Gaza in 2007,” the US gave funds to Keith Dayton to do proxy-army training of Palestinians in Jordan: “Schooled in everything from riot control to human rights [sic], the N.S.F. [Palestinian National Security Force] is the only truly professional force controlled by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.”
Only a few of Abbas’s “truly professional” proxy-ancestors are Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Suharto in Indonesia, and the proxy forces, professionals in massacre, looting, rape, and assassination, which operated under them. There is, needless to say, no unified Palestinian resistance movement to parallel the FMLN in El Salvador let alone Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. In a Palestine weakened by decades of savage occupation, the US succeeded in fomenting maximal strife between Hamas and Fatah.
As for the “two states” that get Obama’s lip-service, there are only two possibilities. One is the Lieberman-Kadima proposal (Tzipi Livni, among others to Lieberman’s “left,” has endorsed it). It would annex to the West Bank parts of the Galilee containing large Arab populations and call the result a “Palestinian state.” This is the racist solution, which has sometimes been termed “soft transfer”, as I described it on this site.
The other is the land-swap option proposed at Taba, Egypt in 2001 at the end of Clinton’s administration. (There is also the land-swap option of the Geneva Accord crafted by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, after PM Ehud Barak pulled out of the Taba talks.) Israeli security and foreign policy expert Zeev Maoz quotes the joint Israeli-Palestinian January, 2001 statement after Taba:
The sides declare that they have never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of negotiations following the Israeli elections.
The Brzezinski-Scowcroft proposal savaged by Bill and Kathy Christison in these pages contains a sentence referring to Taba: “Indeed, the outline of an Israeli-Palestinian accord was crafted during the dying days of the Clinton administration.” After the sentence about Taba the authors demur about the difficulties of getting “to yes,” but the allusion is still in the document.
What is the alternative to Taba? Or to the Geneva initiative (in the very unlikely event that the Obama administration were to take it up again)? In the ruins of Gaza people hover on the edges of bare survival (among other ravages of the siege alone, which continues unremittingly, is stunted growth in young children, noted in a recent Lancet report) in the West Bank, California-like suburban settlements ravage the former beauty of Palestine’s hills, slicing and dicing what remains of Palestine’s villages and cities; two armies and brutal vigilantes attack any form of resistance, however peaceful, and the usual suffering (evictions, home demolitions and more) goes on under US-Israel rule.
It is difficult for those who have long yearned for justice for Palestine to admit that the US-Israel are winning. But the conclusion is inescapable.
To recognize this doesn’t mean stopping our condemnation of the ongoing daily savageries against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; or stopping educational work among Americans ignorant of the facts; or valuable “sister city” projects and other person-to-person work underway in, for instance, Cambridge, Massachusetts; or boycott and divestment activities of the sort recently achieved at Hampshire College. But none of that work should cloud our understanding of the very narrow real-world options possible under Obama.
Ellen Cantarow has written since 1979 on Israel and Palestine. She can be reached at ecantarow@comcast.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/cantarow04302009.html
POLICY ON AFGHANISTAN
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/04/policy-in-afghanistan.html#more
POLICY ON AFGHANISTAN
Pakistan_facilitiesI have been asked to "put up or shut up" about Afghanistan. In other words, I have been asked to make clear my views on an appropriate US policy for Afghanistan. I thought I had done that, but, no matter.
I think that we Americans need to stop exagerating the level of threat to the United States that originates or will originate in Afghanistan. The temptation to see the activities and scheming of takfiri jihadis as parts of a world war between the Islamic "House of War" and the rest of us has caused us to begin to re-design our society(ies) for total war against an all powerful and virtually eternal enemy. This is nonsense. Islam, Islamdom, and Islamicate Civilization are much given, as are other such cultural constructs, to revivalism in a pattern that recurs over centuries as memory of the costs of each revival fades from the living collective mind. The present phenomenon of Islamic zealotry is not something new. It is something old come again. This wave of revivalism has peaked and will decline under the pressure of local government and religious establishments, foreign military intervention and the competition presented by other forms of Islam, each with its claim to universal authenticity and its own circle of adherents.
In Afghanistan there is always war; war for resources, honor, leadership, authenticity of Islamic identity. The causes of war are endless. There are many different peoples in Afghanistan; Pushtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Turkmen, Nuristani, etc. etc. etc. Many of these groups speak mutually incomprehensible languages. They are mostly Sunni, but some, like the Hazara, are Shia. What we see now in Afghanistan is NOT a "theater of war" in a "global war on terror." Rather, it is a continuation of the ancient Afghan pattern of traditional warfare among the peoples, their groupings old and new, and sectarian definitions of Islamic truth. The minions of the Al-Qa'ida related zealot groups are scattered and hidden in the "landscape" of ever shifting conflict that is Afghanistan. They are like raisins in a cake. These "raisins" are a danger to the United States. They are a danger but not an "existential" threat to our "way of life" as they are sometimes described. Americans are not going to experience a mass conversion to the Al-Qa'ida version of Islam. Such a conversion would be a threat to our "way of life" but it will not happen. Nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in the hands of Al-Qa'ida? The "dirty bomb" thing? None of these threats are existential threats to the United States. The US is too big a country for that. The Soviet Union with its thousands of hydrogen bombs was an existential threat to the Uhnited States, but not Al-Qa'ida. Americans in their obsession with self tend to confuse personal survival with group survival. In this case, the group under consideration is the American polity. That entity is in no way threatened existentially by the raggedy jihadis in Afghanistan or their better dressed fellow enthusiasts elsewhere. For true Muslims, the survuival of the 'Umma is all important. The base line truth is, as Cieran says, that attacks with 50kt. weapons would be met with retaliation with multi-megaton weapons. That would be the end of Islamdom in many places. It would not be the end of Islam but Muslim polities would suffer to an extent that few can imagine. Faced with that truth only a handful of fanatics would even consider such a thing. Therefore, it is the handful of fanatics that should be the objects of our attention. They are dangerous to us at the individual, familial and local levels.
President Obama in his announcement of policy with regard to Afghanistan, said that our goal would be to disrupt, disorganize and destroy our enemies. That is an appropriate goal given the actual size and intensity of the threat. Forget about nation building in Afghanistan. Forget about generational commitments of vast amounts of treasure that we no longer possess. Forget about Cheney's nonsensical 1% solution. This sounds like a half-baked "lift" from the Israeli Right. A decent regard for the opinion of mankind would point to the wisdom of infrastructure building aid for the Afghans on a multi-national basis. Past that point we should focus on killing and disrupting the adherents of tiny sects that opt for violent action against what they see as unbelief. Most Afghans, indeed most Pushtuns do not want an unending war with the US. They are more than willing, like Willie Sutton, to go where the money is. The goal of policy in Afghanistan should be to pit the majority(ies) against the handful of people who actively threaten us. Is this war? Yes. It is my kind of war.
In Pakistan the problem is very different. There, a developed post-colonial state is threatened by a reversion to ancient forms of conflict. Once again, the Pushtuns of the mountain and hill country seek to impose their will on the people of the plain of the Indus watershed. The nuclear arsenal of Pakistan makes a victory of the hillmen unacceptable to the US. As I wrote at the National Journal blog this week, a return to Pakistan Army control of the government and imposition of government control over the border country seems the only acceptable solution and the United States should stop impeding that outcome.
POLICY ON AFGHANISTAN
Pakistan_facilitiesI have been asked to "put up or shut up" about Afghanistan. In other words, I have been asked to make clear my views on an appropriate US policy for Afghanistan. I thought I had done that, but, no matter.
I think that we Americans need to stop exagerating the level of threat to the United States that originates or will originate in Afghanistan. The temptation to see the activities and scheming of takfiri jihadis as parts of a world war between the Islamic "House of War" and the rest of us has caused us to begin to re-design our society(ies) for total war against an all powerful and virtually eternal enemy. This is nonsense. Islam, Islamdom, and Islamicate Civilization are much given, as are other such cultural constructs, to revivalism in a pattern that recurs over centuries as memory of the costs of each revival fades from the living collective mind. The present phenomenon of Islamic zealotry is not something new. It is something old come again. This wave of revivalism has peaked and will decline under the pressure of local government and religious establishments, foreign military intervention and the competition presented by other forms of Islam, each with its claim to universal authenticity and its own circle of adherents.
In Afghanistan there is always war; war for resources, honor, leadership, authenticity of Islamic identity. The causes of war are endless. There are many different peoples in Afghanistan; Pushtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Turkmen, Nuristani, etc. etc. etc. Many of these groups speak mutually incomprehensible languages. They are mostly Sunni, but some, like the Hazara, are Shia. What we see now in Afghanistan is NOT a "theater of war" in a "global war on terror." Rather, it is a continuation of the ancient Afghan pattern of traditional warfare among the peoples, their groupings old and new, and sectarian definitions of Islamic truth. The minions of the Al-Qa'ida related zealot groups are scattered and hidden in the "landscape" of ever shifting conflict that is Afghanistan. They are like raisins in a cake. These "raisins" are a danger to the United States. They are a danger but not an "existential" threat to our "way of life" as they are sometimes described. Americans are not going to experience a mass conversion to the Al-Qa'ida version of Islam. Such a conversion would be a threat to our "way of life" but it will not happen. Nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in the hands of Al-Qa'ida? The "dirty bomb" thing? None of these threats are existential threats to the United States. The US is too big a country for that. The Soviet Union with its thousands of hydrogen bombs was an existential threat to the Uhnited States, but not Al-Qa'ida. Americans in their obsession with self tend to confuse personal survival with group survival. In this case, the group under consideration is the American polity. That entity is in no way threatened existentially by the raggedy jihadis in Afghanistan or their better dressed fellow enthusiasts elsewhere. For true Muslims, the survuival of the 'Umma is all important. The base line truth is, as Cieran says, that attacks with 50kt. weapons would be met with retaliation with multi-megaton weapons. That would be the end of Islamdom in many places. It would not be the end of Islam but Muslim polities would suffer to an extent that few can imagine. Faced with that truth only a handful of fanatics would even consider such a thing. Therefore, it is the handful of fanatics that should be the objects of our attention. They are dangerous to us at the individual, familial and local levels.
President Obama in his announcement of policy with regard to Afghanistan, said that our goal would be to disrupt, disorganize and destroy our enemies. That is an appropriate goal given the actual size and intensity of the threat. Forget about nation building in Afghanistan. Forget about generational commitments of vast amounts of treasure that we no longer possess. Forget about Cheney's nonsensical 1% solution. This sounds like a half-baked "lift" from the Israeli Right. A decent regard for the opinion of mankind would point to the wisdom of infrastructure building aid for the Afghans on a multi-national basis. Past that point we should focus on killing and disrupting the adherents of tiny sects that opt for violent action against what they see as unbelief. Most Afghans, indeed most Pushtuns do not want an unending war with the US. They are more than willing, like Willie Sutton, to go where the money is. The goal of policy in Afghanistan should be to pit the majority(ies) against the handful of people who actively threaten us. Is this war? Yes. It is my kind of war.
In Pakistan the problem is very different. There, a developed post-colonial state is threatened by a reversion to ancient forms of conflict. Once again, the Pushtuns of the mountain and hill country seek to impose their will on the people of the plain of the Indus watershed. The nuclear arsenal of Pakistan makes a victory of the hillmen unacceptable to the US. As I wrote at the National Journal blog this week, a return to Pakistan Army control of the government and imposition of government control over the border country seems the only acceptable solution and the United States should stop impeding that outcome.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Re Torture
This memorandum was hand-delivered to the White House yesterday afternoon.
April 29, 2009
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Torture
This memorandum is VIPS’ first attempt to inform you on a major intelligence issue, as we did your predecessor; thus, some background might be helpful. Five former CIA officers established Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in January 2003, when we saw our profession being corrupted to justify an attack on Iraq. Since then, our numbers have grown to 70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies.
In our first Memorandum for the President (George W. Bush), dated February 5, 2003, we provided a same-day commentary on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech. We warned the president that “an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future [and that] far from eliminating the [terrorist] threat, it would enhance it exponentially.”
We strongly urged the former president to widen the discussion on Iraq “beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” VIPS’ second pre-war Memorandum for the President was titled, “Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem”—a reference to the bogus intelligence we saw being ginned up to “justify” war.
President Bush ignored our warning and the warnings of other informed individuals and groups. The corporate media uncritically echoed the Bush administration’s misuse and misrepresentation of the intelligence, despite the questions raised—including those raised by our unique movement. (It was the first time an alumni group of intelligence officials had formed expressly to chronicle and to halt the corruption of intelligence.)
The cheerleading for war had begun—a war that would fit the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal’s description of a “war of aggression.” Nuremberg defined such a war as “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Torture: An Accumulated Evil
Torture is one of those accumulated evils. Violating domestic laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is another. You were right to unceremoniously jettison former CIA director Michael Hayden, who betrayed the thousands of NSA professionals who, until he directed that domestic law could be ignored, had adhered scrupulously to the 1978 FISA law as NSA’s “First Commandment”—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.
In contrast, we believe you were badly misguided in giving a prominent White House post to former CIA director George Tenet’s protégé John Brennan, who has publicly defended “extraordinary rendition” in full knowledge that its purpose was torture. Brennan also had complicit knowledge of the lengths to which Tenet conspired with the Department of Justice to distort history and the law in drafting opinions that attempted to “justify” torture.
With all due respect, Mr. President, it would be another mistake for you to believe what you are hearing from the likes of Brennan and Hayden and the journalists they have fed and domesticated. Please do not be deceived into thinking that most intelligence officials, past and present, condone torture—still less that they are angry that you have put a stop to such techniques. We are referring, of course, to what President Bush called “an alternative set of procedures” involving cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that violates domestic and international law. We focus on torture in the VIPS statement that follows these introductory remarks.
The Senate Armed Services Committee recently concluded that it was President Bush himself who, by Executive Memorandum of February 7, 2002 exempting al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Geneva protections, “opened the door” to the abuse that ensued. You need to know that the vast majority of intelligence professionals deplore “extraordinary rendition” and the other torture procedures that were subsequently ordered by senior Bush administration officials.
Sadly, President Bush was not the first chief executive to find a small cabal of superpatriots, amateur thugs, and contractors to do his administration’s bidding. But never before in this country were lawless thugs given such free rein. The congressional “oversight” committees looked the other way.
Tenet and his acolytes successfully ingratiated themselves with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the faux lawyers who devised what actually amounts to a very porous “legal” shield for those who carried out the torture. It was a shield designed for and applied exclusively to those “just following orders” at the CIA black sites, and not for the low-ranking soldiers doing similar things at Abu Ghraib.
Some of the latter have done time in prison; one is still there. It would appear that some are less equal than others. And, to this day, the organizers and apologists for torture have managed to escape the consequences of their actions.
No doubt you appreciate better than anyone that the official Department of Justice memoranda you insisted be released last week are a national disgrace. Worse still are the first-hand accounts by young soldiers at Guantanamo of perversions like “rape by instrumentality.” You should be aware that this was a practice adamantly defended by former White House lawyers when Congress attempted to draft legislation expressly prohibiting it. Asked to explain their objection, Bush administration lawyers acknowledged that they were worried that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes.
* * *
VIPS Statement on Torture
Interrogation Abuses and Those Responsible Must Be Fully Exposed
Inasmuch as we have gone on record as strongly opposed to torture, both on moral and practical grounds, from the first public awareness that the Bush administration had decided to violate international and domestic law, treaty provisions, and American tradition;
As former intelligence officials we understand that unless intelligence is “actionable”—accurate, specific, and timely enough to be acted upon with some confidence—it is ineffective. Equally important, we acknowledge our responsibility to expose fallacious reasoning regarding the utility of torture in acquiring actionable intelligence. This issue comes to the fore especially in the celebrated, but specious “ticking time-bomb hypothetical”—a regular feature of Jack Bauer TV fiction.
The fact that the exploits of Jack Bauer have injected a dangerous level of fiction and fear among impressionable viewers, and have misled not only interrogators at Guantanamo but also the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes—not to mention Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—leaves no doubt that such illusionary scenarios need to be addressed by professionals with real-life experience.
Inasmuch as the recently released legal memos that comprised part of the “golden shield” constructed by Bush Administration lawyers do shed some light but also provide inadequate information on “harsh interrogation tactics,” and that the memos sow confusion regarding which officials were responsible for institutionalizing those methods—not to mention whether they were actually effective, as former vice president Cheney continues to insist;
Inasmuch as it has come to light that two detainees were waterboarded at least 266 times, throwing strong doubt on various rationalizations regarding the effectiveness of waterboarding in providing timely actionable intelligence (in a “ticking time-bomb” scenario, for example);
Whereas CIA Director Leon Panetta has insisted that the “harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture” (the circumlocution now in vogue in the corporate media) might again be used in a future “ticking time-bomb hypothetical;”
Whereas, when the torture technique of waterboarding, a practice with antecedents in the Spanish Inquisition, was applied by Japanese troops in WWII to American and British prisoners—Japanese officers were later tried and executed;
Whereas there has been no better system devised— despite some shortcomings—to ascertain the truth of potential wrongdoing than the criminal investigative and judicial adversary process, which provides the right to attorney and right to jury and is governed by judicial rules which attempt to ensure fairness;
Whereas we recognize that the criminal justice process serves the important goal of stopping and deterring criminal actions and cannot be dismissed as merely “retribution;”
Whereas 92 videotapes showing application and results of the “harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture” have already been destroyed, and there is understandable concern that other evidence is being destroyed as the days go by;
Whereas other civilian and military intelligence professionals have also gone on record (see attached Annex) with respect to how torture tactics are not only ineffective in terms of getting reliable, actionable intelligence but have fueled recruitment by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to the point that, arguably, more U.S. troops have been killed by terrorists bent on revenge for torture than the 3,000 civilians killed on 9/11;
Whereas the false confessions that were elicited by the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, for example, were used by the president, vice president, and the secretary of state (at the U.N.) to claim that proof existed of operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and whereas such false confessions also diverted limited investigative resources to pursue bogus leads;
We of VIPS call for a full, truthful, and public fact-finding process to begin without delay. We ask that you give careful consideration to Senator Carl Levin’s suggestion that the attorney general appoint retired judges with solid reputations for integrity to begin the process. Another viable possibility would be the appointment of an independent “blue-ribbon commission,” perhaps modeled on the Church Committee of the mid-Seventies, to assess any illegal or improper activities and make recommendations for reform in government operations against terrorism.
We commend the administration for releasing the Department of Justice memos attempting to legalize torture.
We believe the remaining relevant information must be released promptly so that the citizenry can make informed judgments about what was done in our name and, if warranted, an independent prosecutor appointed without unnecessary delay. We believe strongly that any judgments regarding amnesty, forgiveness, or pardon can only be made on the basis of a fully developed, public record—and not used as some sort of political bargaining chip.
Finally, we firmly oppose the notion that anyone can arrogate a right to ignore the Nuremburg Tribunal’s rejection of “only-following-orders” as an acceptable defense.
(signatories are listed alphabetically with former intelligence affiliations)
Gene Betit, US Army, DIA, Arlington, Virginia
Ray Close, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Princeton, New jersey
Phil Giraldi, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Purcellville, Virginia
Larry Johnson, CIA & Department of State, Bethesda, Maryland
Pat Lang, US Army (Special Forces), DIA, Alexandria, Virginia
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council, Linden, Virginia
Tom Maertens, Department of State, Mankato, Minnesota
Ray McGovern, US Army, CIA, Arlington, Virginia
Sam Provance, US Army (Abu Ghraib), Greenville, South Carolina
Coleen Rowley, FBI, Apple Valley, Minnesota
Greg Theilmann, Department of State & Senate Intel. Committee staff, Arlington, Virginia
Ann Wright, US Army, Department of State, Honolulu, Hawaii
==========================================
Annex
We list below other experienced intelligence personnel, who have spoken out publicly about the inefficacy and counter productiveness of torture:
FBI: Ali Soufan, Dan Coleman, Jack Cloonan
CIA: John Helgerson (former Inspector General), Bob Baer, Haviland Smith
Military:
Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora;
Major General Antonio Taguba (who probed Abu Ghraib and concluded that Bush officials committed war crimes: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html);
Air Force Col Steven M. Kleinman; Rear Admiral (ret) and former Judge Advocate General for the Navy John Hutson;
former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration Lawrence Korb;
former U.S. military interrogator (pseudonym) Matthew Alexander;
former military intelligence officer Malcolm Nance,
Links
FBI
Ali Soufan Op-Ed Contributor; My Tortured Decision; Reclaiming America’s Soul - NYTimes.com Apr 23, 2009 www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html
Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005.
Dan Coleman; The Torture Memos Are Not Just Sick, They're Full of Lies:
Coleman was with the FBI; says “I can give you two reasons why Cheney wants more torture memos…” www.alternet.org/rights/.../the_torture_memos_are_not_just_sick,_they're_full_of_lies:_a_closer_look_at_the_bybee_memo/
Jack Cloonan: How to Break a Terrorist
Foreign Policy: FPTV
Cloonan is a veteran FBI interrogator who spent 25 years as an FBI special agent and interrogated members of al Qaeda
www.foreignpolicy.com/extras/torture
CIA
CIA IG John Helgerson: CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks Washington — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped ...
www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html
Ray Close (VIPS) and Haviland Smith, both are retired CIA Station Chiefs who served in various senior positions in the Operations Directorate, including in Europe, the Middle East and (Smith) as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
Two former top CIA officials on the efficacy of torture, by Stephen Soldz http://www.opednews.com/articles/Two-former-top-CIA-offical-by-Stephen-Soldz-090425-265.html
Military
Former Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are ‘first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.’ http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/17/mora-abu-ghraib-and-guantanamo-are-first-and-second-identifiable-causes-of-us-combat-deaths-in-iraq/
Air Force Col Steven Kleinman, senior intelligence officer: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6222229/Senate-Testimony-Col-Steven-M-Kleinman
Malcolm Nance: Why the Bush torture architects must be prosecuted
Nance is a former military intelligence officer and the Founding Director of the International Counterterrorism Center for Excellence at Hudson N.Y. and author of "The Terrorist Recognition Handbook - A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activity."
www.nydailynews.com/opinions/.../2009-04-19_why_the_bush_torture_architects_must_be_prosecuted_a_counterterror_expert_speak... Also at: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004617.php
Former U.S. Interrogator Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) author of Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks
“I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_pf.html;
Sunday, November 30, 2008. Also on http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004036 and http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/109792/former_u.s._interrogator:_torture_policy_has_led_to_more_deaths_than_9_11_attacks/
April 29, 2009
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Torture
This memorandum is VIPS’ first attempt to inform you on a major intelligence issue, as we did your predecessor; thus, some background might be helpful. Five former CIA officers established Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in January 2003, when we saw our profession being corrupted to justify an attack on Iraq. Since then, our numbers have grown to 70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies.
In our first Memorandum for the President (George W. Bush), dated February 5, 2003, we provided a same-day commentary on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech. We warned the president that “an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future [and that] far from eliminating the [terrorist] threat, it would enhance it exponentially.”
We strongly urged the former president to widen the discussion on Iraq “beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” VIPS’ second pre-war Memorandum for the President was titled, “Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem”—a reference to the bogus intelligence we saw being ginned up to “justify” war.
President Bush ignored our warning and the warnings of other informed individuals and groups. The corporate media uncritically echoed the Bush administration’s misuse and misrepresentation of the intelligence, despite the questions raised—including those raised by our unique movement. (It was the first time an alumni group of intelligence officials had formed expressly to chronicle and to halt the corruption of intelligence.)
The cheerleading for war had begun—a war that would fit the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal’s description of a “war of aggression.” Nuremberg defined such a war as “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Torture: An Accumulated Evil
Torture is one of those accumulated evils. Violating domestic laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is another. You were right to unceremoniously jettison former CIA director Michael Hayden, who betrayed the thousands of NSA professionals who, until he directed that domestic law could be ignored, had adhered scrupulously to the 1978 FISA law as NSA’s “First Commandment”—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.
In contrast, we believe you were badly misguided in giving a prominent White House post to former CIA director George Tenet’s protégé John Brennan, who has publicly defended “extraordinary rendition” in full knowledge that its purpose was torture. Brennan also had complicit knowledge of the lengths to which Tenet conspired with the Department of Justice to distort history and the law in drafting opinions that attempted to “justify” torture.
With all due respect, Mr. President, it would be another mistake for you to believe what you are hearing from the likes of Brennan and Hayden and the journalists they have fed and domesticated. Please do not be deceived into thinking that most intelligence officials, past and present, condone torture—still less that they are angry that you have put a stop to such techniques. We are referring, of course, to what President Bush called “an alternative set of procedures” involving cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that violates domestic and international law. We focus on torture in the VIPS statement that follows these introductory remarks.
The Senate Armed Services Committee recently concluded that it was President Bush himself who, by Executive Memorandum of February 7, 2002 exempting al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Geneva protections, “opened the door” to the abuse that ensued. You need to know that the vast majority of intelligence professionals deplore “extraordinary rendition” and the other torture procedures that were subsequently ordered by senior Bush administration officials.
Sadly, President Bush was not the first chief executive to find a small cabal of superpatriots, amateur thugs, and contractors to do his administration’s bidding. But never before in this country were lawless thugs given such free rein. The congressional “oversight” committees looked the other way.
Tenet and his acolytes successfully ingratiated themselves with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the faux lawyers who devised what actually amounts to a very porous “legal” shield for those who carried out the torture. It was a shield designed for and applied exclusively to those “just following orders” at the CIA black sites, and not for the low-ranking soldiers doing similar things at Abu Ghraib.
Some of the latter have done time in prison; one is still there. It would appear that some are less equal than others. And, to this day, the organizers and apologists for torture have managed to escape the consequences of their actions.
No doubt you appreciate better than anyone that the official Department of Justice memoranda you insisted be released last week are a national disgrace. Worse still are the first-hand accounts by young soldiers at Guantanamo of perversions like “rape by instrumentality.” You should be aware that this was a practice adamantly defended by former White House lawyers when Congress attempted to draft legislation expressly prohibiting it. Asked to explain their objection, Bush administration lawyers acknowledged that they were worried that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes.
* * *
VIPS Statement on Torture
Interrogation Abuses and Those Responsible Must Be Fully Exposed
Inasmuch as we have gone on record as strongly opposed to torture, both on moral and practical grounds, from the first public awareness that the Bush administration had decided to violate international and domestic law, treaty provisions, and American tradition;
As former intelligence officials we understand that unless intelligence is “actionable”—accurate, specific, and timely enough to be acted upon with some confidence—it is ineffective. Equally important, we acknowledge our responsibility to expose fallacious reasoning regarding the utility of torture in acquiring actionable intelligence. This issue comes to the fore especially in the celebrated, but specious “ticking time-bomb hypothetical”—a regular feature of Jack Bauer TV fiction.
The fact that the exploits of Jack Bauer have injected a dangerous level of fiction and fear among impressionable viewers, and have misled not only interrogators at Guantanamo but also the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes—not to mention Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—leaves no doubt that such illusionary scenarios need to be addressed by professionals with real-life experience.
Inasmuch as the recently released legal memos that comprised part of the “golden shield” constructed by Bush Administration lawyers do shed some light but also provide inadequate information on “harsh interrogation tactics,” and that the memos sow confusion regarding which officials were responsible for institutionalizing those methods—not to mention whether they were actually effective, as former vice president Cheney continues to insist;
Inasmuch as it has come to light that two detainees were waterboarded at least 266 times, throwing strong doubt on various rationalizations regarding the effectiveness of waterboarding in providing timely actionable intelligence (in a “ticking time-bomb” scenario, for example);
Whereas CIA Director Leon Panetta has insisted that the “harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture” (the circumlocution now in vogue in the corporate media) might again be used in a future “ticking time-bomb hypothetical;”
Whereas, when the torture technique of waterboarding, a practice with antecedents in the Spanish Inquisition, was applied by Japanese troops in WWII to American and British prisoners—Japanese officers were later tried and executed;
Whereas there has been no better system devised— despite some shortcomings—to ascertain the truth of potential wrongdoing than the criminal investigative and judicial adversary process, which provides the right to attorney and right to jury and is governed by judicial rules which attempt to ensure fairness;
Whereas we recognize that the criminal justice process serves the important goal of stopping and deterring criminal actions and cannot be dismissed as merely “retribution;”
Whereas 92 videotapes showing application and results of the “harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture” have already been destroyed, and there is understandable concern that other evidence is being destroyed as the days go by;
Whereas other civilian and military intelligence professionals have also gone on record (see attached Annex) with respect to how torture tactics are not only ineffective in terms of getting reliable, actionable intelligence but have fueled recruitment by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to the point that, arguably, more U.S. troops have been killed by terrorists bent on revenge for torture than the 3,000 civilians killed on 9/11;
Whereas the false confessions that were elicited by the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, for example, were used by the president, vice president, and the secretary of state (at the U.N.) to claim that proof existed of operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and whereas such false confessions also diverted limited investigative resources to pursue bogus leads;
We of VIPS call for a full, truthful, and public fact-finding process to begin without delay. We ask that you give careful consideration to Senator Carl Levin’s suggestion that the attorney general appoint retired judges with solid reputations for integrity to begin the process. Another viable possibility would be the appointment of an independent “blue-ribbon commission,” perhaps modeled on the Church Committee of the mid-Seventies, to assess any illegal or improper activities and make recommendations for reform in government operations against terrorism.
We commend the administration for releasing the Department of Justice memos attempting to legalize torture.
We believe the remaining relevant information must be released promptly so that the citizenry can make informed judgments about what was done in our name and, if warranted, an independent prosecutor appointed without unnecessary delay. We believe strongly that any judgments regarding amnesty, forgiveness, or pardon can only be made on the basis of a fully developed, public record—and not used as some sort of political bargaining chip.
Finally, we firmly oppose the notion that anyone can arrogate a right to ignore the Nuremburg Tribunal’s rejection of “only-following-orders” as an acceptable defense.
(signatories are listed alphabetically with former intelligence affiliations)
Gene Betit, US Army, DIA, Arlington, Virginia
Ray Close, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Princeton, New jersey
Phil Giraldi, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Purcellville, Virginia
Larry Johnson, CIA & Department of State, Bethesda, Maryland
Pat Lang, US Army (Special Forces), DIA, Alexandria, Virginia
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council, Linden, Virginia
Tom Maertens, Department of State, Mankato, Minnesota
Ray McGovern, US Army, CIA, Arlington, Virginia
Sam Provance, US Army (Abu Ghraib), Greenville, South Carolina
Coleen Rowley, FBI, Apple Valley, Minnesota
Greg Theilmann, Department of State & Senate Intel. Committee staff, Arlington, Virginia
Ann Wright, US Army, Department of State, Honolulu, Hawaii
==========================================
Annex
We list below other experienced intelligence personnel, who have spoken out publicly about the inefficacy and counter productiveness of torture:
FBI: Ali Soufan, Dan Coleman, Jack Cloonan
CIA: John Helgerson (former Inspector General), Bob Baer, Haviland Smith
Military:
Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora;
Major General Antonio Taguba (who probed Abu Ghraib and concluded that Bush officials committed war crimes: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html);
Air Force Col Steven M. Kleinman; Rear Admiral (ret) and former Judge Advocate General for the Navy John Hutson;
former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration Lawrence Korb;
former U.S. military interrogator (pseudonym) Matthew Alexander;
former military intelligence officer Malcolm Nance,
Links
FBI
Ali Soufan Op-Ed Contributor; My Tortured Decision; Reclaiming America’s Soul - NYTimes.com Apr 23, 2009 www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html
Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005.
Dan Coleman; The Torture Memos Are Not Just Sick, They're Full of Lies:
Coleman was with the FBI; says “I can give you two reasons why Cheney wants more torture memos…” www.alternet.org/rights/.../the_torture_memos_are_not_just_sick,_they're_full_of_lies:_a_closer_look_at_the_bybee_memo/
Jack Cloonan: How to Break a Terrorist
Foreign Policy: FPTV
Cloonan is a veteran FBI interrogator who spent 25 years as an FBI special agent and interrogated members of al Qaeda
www.foreignpolicy.com/extras/torture
CIA
CIA IG John Helgerson: CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks Washington — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped ...
www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html
Ray Close (VIPS) and Haviland Smith, both are retired CIA Station Chiefs who served in various senior positions in the Operations Directorate, including in Europe, the Middle East and (Smith) as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
Two former top CIA officials on the efficacy of torture, by Stephen Soldz http://www.opednews.com/articles/Two-former-top-CIA-offical-by-Stephen-Soldz-090425-265.html
Military
Former Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are ‘first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.’ http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/17/mora-abu-ghraib-and-guantanamo-are-first-and-second-identifiable-causes-of-us-combat-deaths-in-iraq/
Air Force Col Steven Kleinman, senior intelligence officer: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6222229/Senate-Testimony-Col-Steven-M-Kleinman
Malcolm Nance: Why the Bush torture architects must be prosecuted
Nance is a former military intelligence officer and the Founding Director of the International Counterterrorism Center for Excellence at Hudson N.Y. and author of "The Terrorist Recognition Handbook - A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activity."
www.nydailynews.com/opinions/.../2009-04-19_why_the_bush_torture_architects_must_be_prosecuted_a_counterterror_expert_speak... Also at: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004617.php
Former U.S. Interrogator Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) author of Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks
“I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_pf.html;
Sunday, November 30, 2008. Also on http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004036 and http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/109792/former_u.s._interrogator:_torture_policy_has_led_to_more_deaths_than_9_11_attacks/
Calamity Jane Harman Shoots Herself in the Foot
Calamity Jane Harman Shoots Herself in the Foot
Posted By Justin Raimondo On April 28, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
The exposure of the Jane Harman-AIPAC axis of treason has exploded the illusion of the Israel Lobby’s invulnerability. Here they thought they had the AIPAC espionage trial swept safely under the rug, or nearly so, what with the prosecution of two former top Lobby officials seemingly stalled indefinitely, and the Justice Department "reviewing" whether to pursue the case. Not only that, but accused Israeli spy Steve Rosen is riding high, having recently been instrumental in the downfall of Obama administration appointee Charles Freeman. Slated to take up a key post, which would have had him writing the president’s daily intelligence briefing, Freeman was lynched by a bipartisan mob of neocons and Israel-firsters, with the disgraceful (albeit not sufficiently disgraced) Rosen leading the charge.
This triumphal march hit a rather large bump in the road, however, when none other than Congressional Quarterly published a bombshell story detailing how Rep. Jane Harman – hawkish Democrat and reliable ally of the Lobby – had been caught red-handed offering to take up a request by "a suspected Israeli agent" to intercede with the Justice Department and the White House in order to get the charges against Rosen and his assistant, Keith Weissman, reduced or dropped altogether. In exchange, the agent averred, AIPAC would pressure Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman head of the House Intelligence Committee, with the threat of withholding Haim Saban’s substantial contribution to the Democratic Party dangled over Pelosi’s head like Damocles’ sword.
Harman has been twisting herself into a pretzel in a vain attempt to push back, and in the process she humiliated herself on the public airwaves in a real trainwreck of an interview with National Public Radio’s Robert Siegel. When he asked her if she remembers that conversation with a "suspected Israeli agent" – as the original story exposing her perfidy described her interlocutor – she screeched: "We don’t know that there was a conversation"! However, a few minutes later, when Siegel inquires whether it is "realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation," she averred: "Well, let’s find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen" – apparently forgetting that the existence of that conversation was supposed to be in doubt.
What is Calamity Jane smoking? Or is she so rattled by being closely questioned that she can’t remember important details of her story? She may be shaken, yet Harman hasn’t lost the natural craftiness that is an integral part of any successful politician’s personal arsenal: she apparently still thinks she can slither out of what appears to be a tight spot by brazening it out. At any rate, unlike her brother-in-corruption, Rod Blagojevich, she can count on the local Democratic Party machine to back her no matter what.
She may be right not to worry. After an initial flurry of publicity, the media is largely dropping the ball on this one. Antiwar.com, Congressional Quarterly, and Philip Weiss’ indispensable blog are about the only three venues where you can regularly read detailed updates on the Harman-AIPAC spy scandal. Elsewhere, the story is dropping well below the fold.
As for Congress exerting any discipline over their corrupt colleague – forget it. The Democrats in Congress, for their part, are busy protecting their own: the House Intelligence Committee, whose chair she coveted so much that she was willing to sell her own country down the river, is launching an "investigation" – not into Harman’s shenanigans, but into whether other members of Congress have been placed under surveillance. Not that anyone in that august body has a guilty conscience, mind you.
The Republicans, long in thrall to the Israel Lobby, are keeping mum. This is the one and only scandal involving a major figure in the Democratic Party about which they have absolutely nothing to say.
And it isn’t just Congress that’s giving Jane plenty of cover: after an initial wave of shock (and celebration, at least in the comments) that the warmongering congresswoman from Venice, Calif., was going to get her due, the mildly left wing of the blogosphere has readjusted its moral compass and taken up the partisan cudgels on Jane’s behalf.
Rep. Harman, says Laura Rozen, is a victim of a conspiracy by former CIA director Porter Goss, who has it in for Jane because (1) she’s a Democrat, and those horrible Republicans are so partisan; (2) Harman opposed the use of waterboarding, and this is payback from the pro-torture Republicans; and (3) something to do with someone named "Dusty Foggo." Seen from this perspective, the Harman spy scandal becomes Jane’s martyrdom at the hands of ghouls, and what she is reported to have said in her conversation with an Israeli agent fades like so much background noise. It’s a classic ad hominem argument: Goss is a creep, he’s behind this, end of story. No comment from Rozen about Harman’s sign-off to her spookish phone pal, possibly the most incriminating comment anyone has ever made while being eavesdropped on by the Feds: "This conversation doesn’t exist"!
Unfortunately for Jane, the conversation does exist, and sooner or later the transcript – which I hear is floating around reporters’ circles – is going to come out. Then what will she say?
If I were Jane Harman, I’d be looking over my shoulder at what’s going on in my home district. According to this report,
"Jane Harman’s high-profile role in the still-unfolding wiretap scandal has liberal activists in the 36th, long frustrated by Harman’s hold on this D+12 district, wondering if they finally have an opening to defeat her in a primary. Marcy Winograd, who won 38 percent against Harman in 2006, has been urged to run again and is ‘thinking about it.’"
Winograd is a co-founder of the Progressive Democrats of America, and she is quite articulate on the question of U.S. aid to Israel, Tel Aviv’s massive violation of human rights and basic human decency in Gaza and the West Bank, and foreign policy issues generally. Thirty-eight percent in a Democratic primary in California, running against a popular and powerful incumbent member of Congress, is nothing to sniff at, and Harman may be in some real trouble. She is hoping that the other shoes – the identity of her phone pal, the transcript of her conversation, or some other new development in the case – will fail to drop, but if this really is a "conspiracy" by Republicans and others out to get the bombastic congresswoman, then one would expect that we haven’t heard the end of this, not by a long shot.
Okay, but so what? Who cares whether a member of Congress tried to sell herself to the highest bidder, in this case, an Israeli agent who was offering AIPAC’s services as if that organization were an adjunct of the Israeli government? After all, isn’t corruption what Congress is all about? Nothing abnormal about that. Why should this be a major issue?
The significance of this case goes beyond the fate of any of the individuals enmeshed in it: Harman, Rosen, and Weissman. The purpose of the AIPAC spy nest was to penetrate the U.S. government’s closely guarded deliberations on a subject dear to Tel Aviv’s heart: Iran’s alleged nuclear program. They wanted, in particular, a document that would shed light on those internal deliberations, and their accomplice, former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin – who confessed and was sentenced to 12 and a half years in a federal prison – was eager to give them all they wanted, and more. Unlike most spies, Franklin didn’t do it for money or out of sheer hubris. He was and is a committed ideologue, a neocon who put into practice the principle that there is no daylight between Israeli and American interests.
While the rest of the country was debating the merits of the Iraq war, the AIPAC spy ring was preparing for the next war, with Tehran. And the results of that campaign are bearing fruit today, as the Obama administration ratchets up the rhetoric – throwing overboard the CIA’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that says Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago – while holding out the prospect of direct talks. The idea is to effect a tradeoff with the Israelis: a "peace settlement" over the status of the occupied territories in Palestine in exchange for a united front with Tel Aviv against Tehran.
Faced with what they claim is an existential threat – Iran’s alleged-but-never-proven quest for nukes – the Israelis are stepping up their activities in the U.S., both overt and covert, in an effort to drag America into a conflict with Iran. They are threatening to attack the Iranians themselves if we don’t do it, and this drama could no doubt be scheduled to reach a crescendo at a moment when the president of the United States can ill afford to alienate a significant section of his own party, which is firmly in the Lobby’s pocket.
When the Bush administration began to pull back from their effort to pull off a "transformation" of the Middle East, the Israelis went ballistic and launched a foolish attempt to covertly do an end-run around the Bushies – using methods that go under the heading of espionage, rather than lobbying. Under the illusion of its own invulnerability, the Israel Lobby has been pushing the boundaries for quite some time. The prosecution of Rosen and Weissman is an effort by professionals in law enforcement – the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA – to draw some boundaries. Yet the Lobby doesn’t recognize any such limits. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
They think they can – and will – get away with it, but we’ll see. The Harman affair is pushback from those whose job it is to protect this nation’s security from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. The problem with AIPAC, from their perspective – and mine – is that it is both foreign and domestic, as the leaked conversation with Harman underscores: here was an Israeli agent promising to mobilize AIPAC just as if it were a division of the IDF – which, in fact, it is.
If Rosen and Weissman are ever brought to trial – and we have no word yet on the "review" that is supposedly taking place within the Justice Department, which is deciding whether to succumb to pressure to drop the case – the massive extent of Israel’s penetration of our security defenses will become all too apparent. Regardless of its outcome, the trial will be just the beginning of the Lobby’s problems – which is why they’re fighting so furiously, and viciously, to prevent the court in the eastern district of Virginia from ever convening.
Which is why I’m glad to see that someone in the Justice Department (where the Harman leak originated, I’m told) is fighting just as furiously and viciously to make sure that doesn’t happen – at least, not without inflicting some damage on those who are protecting and enabling a spy nest in the heart of our nation’s capital.
Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/28/calamity-jane-harman-shoots-herself-in-the-foot/
Posted By Justin Raimondo On April 28, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
The exposure of the Jane Harman-AIPAC axis of treason has exploded the illusion of the Israel Lobby’s invulnerability. Here they thought they had the AIPAC espionage trial swept safely under the rug, or nearly so, what with the prosecution of two former top Lobby officials seemingly stalled indefinitely, and the Justice Department "reviewing" whether to pursue the case. Not only that, but accused Israeli spy Steve Rosen is riding high, having recently been instrumental in the downfall of Obama administration appointee Charles Freeman. Slated to take up a key post, which would have had him writing the president’s daily intelligence briefing, Freeman was lynched by a bipartisan mob of neocons and Israel-firsters, with the disgraceful (albeit not sufficiently disgraced) Rosen leading the charge.
This triumphal march hit a rather large bump in the road, however, when none other than Congressional Quarterly published a bombshell story detailing how Rep. Jane Harman – hawkish Democrat and reliable ally of the Lobby – had been caught red-handed offering to take up a request by "a suspected Israeli agent" to intercede with the Justice Department and the White House in order to get the charges against Rosen and his assistant, Keith Weissman, reduced or dropped altogether. In exchange, the agent averred, AIPAC would pressure Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman head of the House Intelligence Committee, with the threat of withholding Haim Saban’s substantial contribution to the Democratic Party dangled over Pelosi’s head like Damocles’ sword.
Harman has been twisting herself into a pretzel in a vain attempt to push back, and in the process she humiliated herself on the public airwaves in a real trainwreck of an interview with National Public Radio’s Robert Siegel. When he asked her if she remembers that conversation with a "suspected Israeli agent" – as the original story exposing her perfidy described her interlocutor – she screeched: "We don’t know that there was a conversation"! However, a few minutes later, when Siegel inquires whether it is "realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation," she averred: "Well, let’s find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen" – apparently forgetting that the existence of that conversation was supposed to be in doubt.
What is Calamity Jane smoking? Or is she so rattled by being closely questioned that she can’t remember important details of her story? She may be shaken, yet Harman hasn’t lost the natural craftiness that is an integral part of any successful politician’s personal arsenal: she apparently still thinks she can slither out of what appears to be a tight spot by brazening it out. At any rate, unlike her brother-in-corruption, Rod Blagojevich, she can count on the local Democratic Party machine to back her no matter what.
She may be right not to worry. After an initial flurry of publicity, the media is largely dropping the ball on this one. Antiwar.com, Congressional Quarterly, and Philip Weiss’ indispensable blog are about the only three venues where you can regularly read detailed updates on the Harman-AIPAC spy scandal. Elsewhere, the story is dropping well below the fold.
As for Congress exerting any discipline over their corrupt colleague – forget it. The Democrats in Congress, for their part, are busy protecting their own: the House Intelligence Committee, whose chair she coveted so much that she was willing to sell her own country down the river, is launching an "investigation" – not into Harman’s shenanigans, but into whether other members of Congress have been placed under surveillance. Not that anyone in that august body has a guilty conscience, mind you.
The Republicans, long in thrall to the Israel Lobby, are keeping mum. This is the one and only scandal involving a major figure in the Democratic Party about which they have absolutely nothing to say.
And it isn’t just Congress that’s giving Jane plenty of cover: after an initial wave of shock (and celebration, at least in the comments) that the warmongering congresswoman from Venice, Calif., was going to get her due, the mildly left wing of the blogosphere has readjusted its moral compass and taken up the partisan cudgels on Jane’s behalf.
Rep. Harman, says Laura Rozen, is a victim of a conspiracy by former CIA director Porter Goss, who has it in for Jane because (1) she’s a Democrat, and those horrible Republicans are so partisan; (2) Harman opposed the use of waterboarding, and this is payback from the pro-torture Republicans; and (3) something to do with someone named "Dusty Foggo." Seen from this perspective, the Harman spy scandal becomes Jane’s martyrdom at the hands of ghouls, and what she is reported to have said in her conversation with an Israeli agent fades like so much background noise. It’s a classic ad hominem argument: Goss is a creep, he’s behind this, end of story. No comment from Rozen about Harman’s sign-off to her spookish phone pal, possibly the most incriminating comment anyone has ever made while being eavesdropped on by the Feds: "This conversation doesn’t exist"!
Unfortunately for Jane, the conversation does exist, and sooner or later the transcript – which I hear is floating around reporters’ circles – is going to come out. Then what will she say?
If I were Jane Harman, I’d be looking over my shoulder at what’s going on in my home district. According to this report,
"Jane Harman’s high-profile role in the still-unfolding wiretap scandal has liberal activists in the 36th, long frustrated by Harman’s hold on this D+12 district, wondering if they finally have an opening to defeat her in a primary. Marcy Winograd, who won 38 percent against Harman in 2006, has been urged to run again and is ‘thinking about it.’"
Winograd is a co-founder of the Progressive Democrats of America, and she is quite articulate on the question of U.S. aid to Israel, Tel Aviv’s massive violation of human rights and basic human decency in Gaza and the West Bank, and foreign policy issues generally. Thirty-eight percent in a Democratic primary in California, running against a popular and powerful incumbent member of Congress, is nothing to sniff at, and Harman may be in some real trouble. She is hoping that the other shoes – the identity of her phone pal, the transcript of her conversation, or some other new development in the case – will fail to drop, but if this really is a "conspiracy" by Republicans and others out to get the bombastic congresswoman, then one would expect that we haven’t heard the end of this, not by a long shot.
Okay, but so what? Who cares whether a member of Congress tried to sell herself to the highest bidder, in this case, an Israeli agent who was offering AIPAC’s services as if that organization were an adjunct of the Israeli government? After all, isn’t corruption what Congress is all about? Nothing abnormal about that. Why should this be a major issue?
The significance of this case goes beyond the fate of any of the individuals enmeshed in it: Harman, Rosen, and Weissman. The purpose of the AIPAC spy nest was to penetrate the U.S. government’s closely guarded deliberations on a subject dear to Tel Aviv’s heart: Iran’s alleged nuclear program. They wanted, in particular, a document that would shed light on those internal deliberations, and their accomplice, former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin – who confessed and was sentenced to 12 and a half years in a federal prison – was eager to give them all they wanted, and more. Unlike most spies, Franklin didn’t do it for money or out of sheer hubris. He was and is a committed ideologue, a neocon who put into practice the principle that there is no daylight between Israeli and American interests.
While the rest of the country was debating the merits of the Iraq war, the AIPAC spy ring was preparing for the next war, with Tehran. And the results of that campaign are bearing fruit today, as the Obama administration ratchets up the rhetoric – throwing overboard the CIA’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that says Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago – while holding out the prospect of direct talks. The idea is to effect a tradeoff with the Israelis: a "peace settlement" over the status of the occupied territories in Palestine in exchange for a united front with Tel Aviv against Tehran.
Faced with what they claim is an existential threat – Iran’s alleged-but-never-proven quest for nukes – the Israelis are stepping up their activities in the U.S., both overt and covert, in an effort to drag America into a conflict with Iran. They are threatening to attack the Iranians themselves if we don’t do it, and this drama could no doubt be scheduled to reach a crescendo at a moment when the president of the United States can ill afford to alienate a significant section of his own party, which is firmly in the Lobby’s pocket.
When the Bush administration began to pull back from their effort to pull off a "transformation" of the Middle East, the Israelis went ballistic and launched a foolish attempt to covertly do an end-run around the Bushies – using methods that go under the heading of espionage, rather than lobbying. Under the illusion of its own invulnerability, the Israel Lobby has been pushing the boundaries for quite some time. The prosecution of Rosen and Weissman is an effort by professionals in law enforcement – the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA – to draw some boundaries. Yet the Lobby doesn’t recognize any such limits. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
They think they can – and will – get away with it, but we’ll see. The Harman affair is pushback from those whose job it is to protect this nation’s security from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. The problem with AIPAC, from their perspective – and mine – is that it is both foreign and domestic, as the leaked conversation with Harman underscores: here was an Israeli agent promising to mobilize AIPAC just as if it were a division of the IDF – which, in fact, it is.
If Rosen and Weissman are ever brought to trial – and we have no word yet on the "review" that is supposedly taking place within the Justice Department, which is deciding whether to succumb to pressure to drop the case – the massive extent of Israel’s penetration of our security defenses will become all too apparent. Regardless of its outcome, the trial will be just the beginning of the Lobby’s problems – which is why they’re fighting so furiously, and viciously, to prevent the court in the eastern district of Virginia from ever convening.
Which is why I’m glad to see that someone in the Justice Department (where the Harman leak originated, I’m told) is fighting just as furiously and viciously to make sure that doesn’t happen – at least, not without inflicting some damage on those who are protecting and enabling a spy nest in the heart of our nation’s capital.
Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/28/calamity-jane-harman-shoots-herself-in-the-foot/
Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change
Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change
http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=20010&prog=zgp,zot&proj=zec
http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=20010&prog=zgp,zot&proj=zec
New Stakeholders, New Solutions? Addressing Global Problems in an Age of Emerging Powers Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Thomas Fingar
New Stakeholders, New Solutions? Addressing Global Problems in an Age of Emerging Powers
Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Thomas Fingar
http://carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1329&prog=zch
Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Thomas Fingar
http://carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1329&prog=zch
* o A Thousand Envoys Bloom
U.S. Foreign Policy
Obama's First 100 Days
Obama David Rothkopf warns that despite appointing high-profile advisers tasked with transforming U.S. foreign policy, the Obama administration has yet to engage the most pressing challenge: overhauling the entire national-security apparatus to reflect U.S. priorities and budget realities.
Emerging Powers
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21320
Obama's First 100 Days
Obama David Rothkopf warns that despite appointing high-profile advisers tasked with transforming U.S. foreign policy, the Obama administration has yet to engage the most pressing challenge: overhauling the entire national-security apparatus to reflect U.S. priorities and budget realities.
Emerging Powers
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21320
Does China's Financial Sector Jeopardize Economic Growth?
China's Economic Outlook
Does China's Financial Sector Jeopardize Economic Growth?
China Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, recently called for an alternative to the U.S. dollar as the world's currency of choice. To discuss the health of China's financial sector and whether the pace of reforms should increase, Carnegie convened the 9th debate on Captiol Hill in the ongoing "Reframing China Policy" series.
http://carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1322&prog=zru
Does China's Financial Sector Jeopardize Economic Growth?
China Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, recently called for an alternative to the U.S. dollar as the world's currency of choice. To discuss the health of China's financial sector and whether the pace of reforms should increase, Carnegie convened the 9th debate on Captiol Hill in the ongoing "Reframing China Policy" series.
http://carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1322&prog=zru
Bitterlemons-International.org Middle East Roundtable: The emerging US-Iran dynamic April 30, 2009
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 16 Volume 7 - April 30, 2009
The emerging US-Iran dynamic
• Where do we go from here? - Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
What we can realistically hope for in the short run is a "cold peace".
• The answer is always Clausewitz - Mark Perry
We can threaten to let loose the dogs of war, but we will not be believed.
• Just the beginning - Michael Rubin
Every US president has sought rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
• The first 100 days - Sadegh Zibakalam
Those who write about Iranian history in the future will refer to Obama's New Year message as a turning point.
Where do we go from here?
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
Make no mistake about it. The overtures that President Barack Obama has made to Iran since his election in November 2008 are momentous. In his first sit-down interview, which he symbolically gave to the Arabic satellite network al-Arabiya, Obama addressed Iran directly, asking the leaders of the country to "unclench their fist" so that they can shake hands with the "international community". On the occasion of the Persian New Year celebrations in March 2009, he reiterated his willingness to talk to Iranian leaders, setting a markedly different tone than his predecessor George W. Bush. Although his administration has not followed up rhetoric with policy yet, Obama has set the stage for rather less raucous engagements between the two countries. This may yield a "cold peace" characterized by diplomatic rivalry rather than militaristic coercion.
On the other side of the cognitive divide, President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad became the first Iranian leader in three decades to officially congratulate a US president-elect, a gesture acknowledged by Obama at a news conference in January 2009. So there is a lot of politics involved at this stage, including backdoor messages via third parties (e.g., Turkey and Switzerland) and a good dose of "veiled" or clandestine diplomacy. In general, many are hoping that things are moving in a better, rather more conciliatory direction.
This salutary moment of hope, intermittently suspended when Ahmadinezhad usurps center stage such as during the recent UN racism conference in Geneva, should not distract from the real strategic issues that threaten to keep the US and Iran apart. The strategic preferences of the two countries continue to clash along three issues: a) the pro-Israel policies of the US versus Iran's subversion of Israeli power within the region and beyond; b) US efforts to contain populist Islamist movements such as Hamas and Hizballah versus Iran's support for them; c) and the United States' opposition to populist leftist movements, especially in Latin America, which clashes with Iran's close cooperation with them.
So, on the one side we have Iran, which perceives itself as an ideological superpower poised to export the revolutionary call for empowerment and independence to receptive agents in the international environment. On the other side, the United States (including Obama) firmly believes in the Americo-centric configuration of world politics. These self-perceptions are in many ways mutually exclusive. But that does not mean that the US and Iran need be perennial enemies. What we can realistically hope for in the short run is a "cold peace" that can be achieved within three interrelated contexts and along three mutual interests. In Iraq, both the US and Iran support the stability of the al-Maliki government and the unity of the Iraqi nation-state. This mutual interest has already led to some low level diplomatic engagements throughout 2008. In Afghanistan, an equally important strategic theater, both states oppose the resurgence of the Taliban and support the government of Hamid Karzai politically and economically. And on a global scale, both the US and Iran are opposed to al-Qaeda type movements that are virulently anti-American and anti-Shi'ite/anti-Iranian.
Tehran will pay particular attention to US initiatives vis-a-vis the nuclear issue. More specifically it will measure the policy-value of Obama's conciliatory speeches with an assessment of its actions in the United Nations Security Council. Thus far the Obama administration has not shown any willingness to move away from the rather aggressive sanctions policy pursued by successive US administrations, which has done nothing but alienate the pragmatists in Iran. Yet an emphasis on "positive" rather than gunboat diplomacy is required in order to prepare the way for trust-building measures between the countries. For at the center of Iran's concern is an understandable insecurity dilemma that needs to be addressed in any negotiations, given that the country is geo-strategically located at the heart of a conflict zone that extends from Palestine/Israel in western Asia, over Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan/India in southern Asia. To put it simply: a state that does not feel threatened would not think about nuclear weapons in the first place.
These are some components for a positive-sum game between the two countries that would ensure that both parties benefit from dialogue and acknowledgement of each other's interests within a context of mutual respect and engagement. It would seem to me, therefore, that any efforts from the neo-conservatives in the United States and their brothers in arms in Israel to entangle us in a confrontation with Iran must be understood not as a recipe to prevent the country from going nuclear, but rather as incitement to surreptitious aggression and a prelude to war. And that is exactly what we do not need. - Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is the author of, most recently, "Iran in World Politics" (2008) and "The International Politics of the Persian Gulf" which has just been republished by Routledge as a paperback.
The answer is always Clausewitz
Mark Perry
The wry and oft-repeated saying among senior American military officers is always good for a laugh: "no matter what the question," they claim, "the answer is always Clausewitz." Unlike many war theoreticians, Prussian Major General Carl von Clausewitz actually served in the military--fighting Napoleon and spending time in a French prison. He was released in time to witness Wellington's British squares crush Bonaparte's Imperial Guard at Waterloo. His "On War" was published posthumously. For nearly two hundred years, Clausewitz's work has retained its power. It was studied by Mao, was carried in the knapsacks of Vietnamese soldiers at Dien Bien Phu, was required reading among Saddam Hussein's senior commanders.
We have Clausewitz to thank for German militarism: the Prussian army wasn't really an army until he came along--its officer corps took pride in the length of their ponytails and scoffed at the notion that they should actually command troops. The Germans have since discarded Clausewitz's most trenchant lessons: surveying the ruins of their cities in the wake of the last European war, they relegated "On War" to the dustbin of German history. Not so with America's officers, for whom "On War" is viewed with the same awed faith that believing Christians reserve for the Nicene Creed. America's commanders talk of war's "fog", its "friction" and the "strategic center of gravity"--all from the lexicon of the Clausewitz catechism.
Clausewitz's most famous Te Deum--that "war is a continuation of politics by other means"--is celebrated for good reason: it is a reflection of his belief that military commanders can practice and perfect their craft, much as Beethoven or Goethe practiced and perfected theirs. That war takes lives is not pertinent; organized killing is a specious fact undampened by good intentions. Even so, at the heart of the Clausewitz dictum is the unswerving belief that war is the result of failed diplomacy and not the other way around. That Clausewitz's descendents got this so terribly wrong was obvious in 1945. Having seen their military utterly destroyed, German diplomats had nothing left to talk about. What were they going to do: use harsh language?
Clausewitz is taught at nearly all of America's military colleges; it is as central to the study of war as Cicero is to the humanities. Yet, while "On War" is required reading for military officers, it is ignored by American politicians. Thus, Clausewitz's seminal lesson remains unlearned: that diplomacy is best practiced under a threat of certain pain-to-come. Yet, the not-so-secret truth about America's military is that it is exhausted, its army victimized by multiple deployments in an unnecessary war, the cream of its combat officer corps seeking employment elsewhere, its newest recruits dredged from the un-and-under employed. We can threaten to let loose the dogs of war, but we will not be believed.
We Americans now celebrate our willingness to talk, to grasp the hand of those who unclench their fist. That the world, and most especially the Iranian leadership, remains skeptical of this offer should not be a surprise. For we have gotten Clausewitz exactly wrong: we are talking not to prevent conflict, but because we have no choice. Which is why the Iranian leadership is insisting that any talks with America focus on a host of regional and international issues, and not simply on their nuclear program. Their insistence on this is a test of our good intentions--as it should be. Are we really interested in regional stability? Do we really want to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? They will undoubtedly tell us (if they have not already) that the road to peace and stability in the region does not run through Tehran (as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insists), but through Jerusalem.
We dismiss this view at our peril, for it is the one thing that every state in the region--from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Jordan--believes. That is to say: if the United States is truly interested in forging a new era of stability in the Middle East, and a new understanding with Iran, then President Obama can begin by telling Netanyahu that we expect Israel to be as good a friend to us as we have been to them. Netanyahu can confirm this by shifting Israel's policy on settlements in the West Bank. The United States, President Obama should say, does not want Israel's settlements frozen, it wants them removed. That can start now. The reward for this act of friendship will be our continuing commitment to Israel's defense. This message need not be confrontational, but it must be clear. Then too, the message has a certain elegance. It will convince Iran that we intend to follow our words with actions. At the same time it meets that other central tenet of the Clausewitz canon: a nation's strength is defined not by the size of its army, but by whether it means what it says. - Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mark Perry is a director of the Washington and Beirut-based Conflicts Forum and the author of Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace.
Just the beginning
Michael Rubin
President Barack Obama has made outreach to the Islamic Republic of Iran a foreign policy centerpiece of his administration. At his inauguration, he promised that if US adversaries would unclench their fists the United States would extend a hand. Then, in his first major television interview, he told al-Arabiya satellite TV, "It is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but [also] where there are potential avenues for progress. And we will over the next several months be laying out our general framework and approach."
He has. US diplomats have sought out their Iranian counterparts at international forums and agreed to meet Iranian officials without precondition. On March 20, Obama released a Nowruz greeting in which, without precedent, he declared, "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations," implicitly recognizing the current government as the legitimate representative of the Iranian people.
Obama believes in born-again diplomacy--that whether with Iran, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, North Korea or Russia it is possible to forget the past and start anew. Alas, the world does not revolve around Obama nor has the reason for the poor state of US-Iran relations been simply lack of past effort.
Every US president has sought rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. US diplomats remained in Tehran throughout the revolution, first by choice and later, of course, as hostages. It is ironic that President Jimmy Carter's desire to engage sparked the embassy seizure, as Iranian radicals responded to the perceived threat of rapprochement symbolized by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's handshake with Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan by storming the compound to disrupt that process. Nevertheless, Carter allowed the Islamic Republic to retain its embassy in Washington for five more months, hoping to keep open a possibility for dialogue.
The Reagan administration also sought relations, even sending former National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane to Tehran. Speaking at the University of Tehran on December 9, 2008, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ridiculed the attempt, recalling how, "McFarlane came here and our authorities were not willing to talk to him. Only our second and third rate authorities talked to him." McFarlane returned empty-handed.
Twenty years ago, there was again hope for change. The Iran-Iraq war had ended, Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini was dead and Hashemi Rafsanjani, lauded as a pragmatist in the West, won the presidency. "I don't want to...think that the status quo has to go on forever," President George H.W. Bush told a press conference shortly after his inauguration.
President Bill Clinton, too, reached out to the Islamic Republic, even authorizing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to engage her Iranian counterpart in a one-on-one meeting, an opportunity lost when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, shortly before the rendezvous, ordered Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi not to show.
And despite President George W. Bush branding Tehran as part of the Axis of Evil--a mild comment compared to near daily Iranian calls for America's demise--there was greater engagement with Tehran under Bush than under any administration since Carter's. Alas, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, the White House discovered that Iranian diplomats either did not speak for the Revolutionary Guards or did not keep their promises.
So where does this leave Obama? There is an unfortunate dynamic in Washington in which new administrations fault predecessors rather than adversaries for failure to engage productively. No matter what their preconceptions before entering the Oval Office, however, all presidents discover they are powerless to resolve differences with Tehran when Iran's leadership does not desire it. Hence, while the presidents or foreign ministers of countries like Bolivia, Eritrea and Senegal, let alone Hamas leaders, receive audiences with the Supreme Leader, the Iranian leadership refuses to allow US diplomats even to set foot in Tehran. And while journalists and academics applaud Obama's overtures, they too often ignore the Iranian response, for example Khamenei's Apr. 15, 2009 speech at Imam Hossein University where he declared, "The recommendation to return to the global order is the same as capitulating to the bullying powers and accepting the unjust world order."
The Islamic Republic is an ideological entity. It roots sovereignty not in the will of its citizens but upon the notion that the supreme leader acts as a place holder for the Hidden Imam. As a system it has failed. Iran's economy is in tatters and the regime preserves power through the ever more pervasive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
To deflect responsibility for failure, it pays to have an enemy to rally masses around the flag. Iran's leadership has determined that the United States--the "Great Satan"--is it. Meaningful rapprochement would mean the regime's demise. Rather than work to improve relations with the US, therefore, Iranian authorities, either directly or by proxy, impose ever more obstacles. Alas, Ahmadinezhad's recent speech at Geneva and the arrest of Roxanna Saberi are just the beginning.- Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
The first 100 days
Sadegh Zibakalam
US President Barack Obama's Iranian New Year message caught many Iranians, including many Iranian leaders, by surprise. Those who write about Iranian history in the future will refer to Obama's message as a turning point in relations between the post-Iranian revolution and its arch enemy, the United States.
The message contained several important and unprecedented points. First, unlike all previous messages from US leaders, it did not try to drive a wedge between the Islamic leadership and the Iranian people. Second, it avoided all the previous charges that successive US leaders have leveled at the Islamic regime since its birth in 1979. There was no call for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, no demand that it stop supporting Hamas and other militant groups in the region, nor was the frequent accusation of interference in the affairs of other states, notably Iraq, repeated.
But perhaps the most crucial point about Obama's New Year message was his reference to the "Islamic Republic of Iran" rather than simply saying Iran. This was the first time since the Iranian revolution and the birth of the Islamic regime in Iran in 1979 that a US president referred to Iran properly. Whether or not Obama realized it, that part of his speech was interpreted in Iran as delivering a significant message to Iranian leaders, to the effect that the US was prepared to recognize the Islamic revolution and therefore the Islamic Republic of Iran. In other words, the US had abandoned the strategy of regime change in Iran.
Obama's speech was far more conciliatory than even the most optimistic Iranians had anticipated. The US president had fully extended his hand to the Iranian leaders and the ball was now in their court. Less than 48 hours after the speech, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, speaking on the occasion of the beginning of the Iranian New Year, responded to Obama's olive branch.
Before analyzing the Iranian leader's response, we must consider the awkward position in which Obama's message placed the Iranian leaders. Hitherto, their approach toward the US was one of outright dismissal and condemnation for its arrogant power and behavior, support for Israel, inimical policies against Islam and Islamic states, illegitimate occupation of Islamic countries (Iraq and Afghanistan), exploitation of third world countries and the like. Khamenei's remarks about America's past and present policies in the region and throughout the world were particularly strong and scornful, invariably including severe attacks on US presidents.
His speech this New Year, however, was much softer regarding the US than anyone could recall. He refrained from the usual salvo against America's detrimental role in the world and its arrogant and power-hungry president. Instead, he maintained that words alone were insufficient to solve the problems. The US, continued the Iranian supreme leader, must take practical steps to prove that it is sincere in its aspiration to avoid repeating past mistakes and to adopt a new and different strategy. Thus the ayatollah did not slam the door on Obama; he was prepared to wait until the new US president demonstrated that he was genuine in carrying out changes. A more positive response was yet to come, surprisingly, from hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad. Still, Ahmadinezhad did not go beyond the supreme leader's guidelines and basically maintained that Iran was prepared to have "serious, positive and constructive dialogue with the US".
Yet not all the responses from across the ruling hard-line spectrum were lukewarm or ready to give Obama a chance. The more radical currents and figures warned the others not to trust "the gimmick, the disguise that the new US president was hiding behind". A leading hard-line newspaper used an old and famous Iranian proverb to describe the new US president: "a baby wolf that is raised with a human being will ultimately turn into a wolf." In other words, sooner or later Obama would present his real "face", one that is not very different from that of the previous US president. Every word used by the new administration regarding Iran that sounded similar to the previous vocabulary was highlighted in print to demonstrate the "wolf's" real character. US statements that did not correspond to this theory were either neglected or were exploited so as to demonstrate the arrogance of American power.
On balance, however, the atmosphere in Tehran is one of "wait-and-see". The customary daily shouts of "death to America" have decreased as has the burning of the US flag. While it is too early to conclude that detente has emerged between Iran and the US, many Iranians remain optimistic that the time is right for change between the two countries.- Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Sadegh Zibakalam is professor of Iranian Studies at Tehran University.
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Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Edition 16 Volume 7 - April 30, 2009
The emerging US-Iran dynamic
• Where do we go from here? - Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
What we can realistically hope for in the short run is a "cold peace".
• The answer is always Clausewitz - Mark Perry
We can threaten to let loose the dogs of war, but we will not be believed.
• Just the beginning - Michael Rubin
Every US president has sought rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
• The first 100 days - Sadegh Zibakalam
Those who write about Iranian history in the future will refer to Obama's New Year message as a turning point.
Where do we go from here?
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
Make no mistake about it. The overtures that President Barack Obama has made to Iran since his election in November 2008 are momentous. In his first sit-down interview, which he symbolically gave to the Arabic satellite network al-Arabiya, Obama addressed Iran directly, asking the leaders of the country to "unclench their fist" so that they can shake hands with the "international community". On the occasion of the Persian New Year celebrations in March 2009, he reiterated his willingness to talk to Iranian leaders, setting a markedly different tone than his predecessor George W. Bush. Although his administration has not followed up rhetoric with policy yet, Obama has set the stage for rather less raucous engagements between the two countries. This may yield a "cold peace" characterized by diplomatic rivalry rather than militaristic coercion.
On the other side of the cognitive divide, President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad became the first Iranian leader in three decades to officially congratulate a US president-elect, a gesture acknowledged by Obama at a news conference in January 2009. So there is a lot of politics involved at this stage, including backdoor messages via third parties (e.g., Turkey and Switzerland) and a good dose of "veiled" or clandestine diplomacy. In general, many are hoping that things are moving in a better, rather more conciliatory direction.
This salutary moment of hope, intermittently suspended when Ahmadinezhad usurps center stage such as during the recent UN racism conference in Geneva, should not distract from the real strategic issues that threaten to keep the US and Iran apart. The strategic preferences of the two countries continue to clash along three issues: a) the pro-Israel policies of the US versus Iran's subversion of Israeli power within the region and beyond; b) US efforts to contain populist Islamist movements such as Hamas and Hizballah versus Iran's support for them; c) and the United States' opposition to populist leftist movements, especially in Latin America, which clashes with Iran's close cooperation with them.
So, on the one side we have Iran, which perceives itself as an ideological superpower poised to export the revolutionary call for empowerment and independence to receptive agents in the international environment. On the other side, the United States (including Obama) firmly believes in the Americo-centric configuration of world politics. These self-perceptions are in many ways mutually exclusive. But that does not mean that the US and Iran need be perennial enemies. What we can realistically hope for in the short run is a "cold peace" that can be achieved within three interrelated contexts and along three mutual interests. In Iraq, both the US and Iran support the stability of the al-Maliki government and the unity of the Iraqi nation-state. This mutual interest has already led to some low level diplomatic engagements throughout 2008. In Afghanistan, an equally important strategic theater, both states oppose the resurgence of the Taliban and support the government of Hamid Karzai politically and economically. And on a global scale, both the US and Iran are opposed to al-Qaeda type movements that are virulently anti-American and anti-Shi'ite/anti-Iranian.
Tehran will pay particular attention to US initiatives vis-a-vis the nuclear issue. More specifically it will measure the policy-value of Obama's conciliatory speeches with an assessment of its actions in the United Nations Security Council. Thus far the Obama administration has not shown any willingness to move away from the rather aggressive sanctions policy pursued by successive US administrations, which has done nothing but alienate the pragmatists in Iran. Yet an emphasis on "positive" rather than gunboat diplomacy is required in order to prepare the way for trust-building measures between the countries. For at the center of Iran's concern is an understandable insecurity dilemma that needs to be addressed in any negotiations, given that the country is geo-strategically located at the heart of a conflict zone that extends from Palestine/Israel in western Asia, over Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan/India in southern Asia. To put it simply: a state that does not feel threatened would not think about nuclear weapons in the first place.
These are some components for a positive-sum game between the two countries that would ensure that both parties benefit from dialogue and acknowledgement of each other's interests within a context of mutual respect and engagement. It would seem to me, therefore, that any efforts from the neo-conservatives in the United States and their brothers in arms in Israel to entangle us in a confrontation with Iran must be understood not as a recipe to prevent the country from going nuclear, but rather as incitement to surreptitious aggression and a prelude to war. And that is exactly what we do not need. - Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is the author of, most recently, "Iran in World Politics" (2008) and "The International Politics of the Persian Gulf" which has just been republished by Routledge as a paperback.
The answer is always Clausewitz
Mark Perry
The wry and oft-repeated saying among senior American military officers is always good for a laugh: "no matter what the question," they claim, "the answer is always Clausewitz." Unlike many war theoreticians, Prussian Major General Carl von Clausewitz actually served in the military--fighting Napoleon and spending time in a French prison. He was released in time to witness Wellington's British squares crush Bonaparte's Imperial Guard at Waterloo. His "On War" was published posthumously. For nearly two hundred years, Clausewitz's work has retained its power. It was studied by Mao, was carried in the knapsacks of Vietnamese soldiers at Dien Bien Phu, was required reading among Saddam Hussein's senior commanders.
We have Clausewitz to thank for German militarism: the Prussian army wasn't really an army until he came along--its officer corps took pride in the length of their ponytails and scoffed at the notion that they should actually command troops. The Germans have since discarded Clausewitz's most trenchant lessons: surveying the ruins of their cities in the wake of the last European war, they relegated "On War" to the dustbin of German history. Not so with America's officers, for whom "On War" is viewed with the same awed faith that believing Christians reserve for the Nicene Creed. America's commanders talk of war's "fog", its "friction" and the "strategic center of gravity"--all from the lexicon of the Clausewitz catechism.
Clausewitz's most famous Te Deum--that "war is a continuation of politics by other means"--is celebrated for good reason: it is a reflection of his belief that military commanders can practice and perfect their craft, much as Beethoven or Goethe practiced and perfected theirs. That war takes lives is not pertinent; organized killing is a specious fact undampened by good intentions. Even so, at the heart of the Clausewitz dictum is the unswerving belief that war is the result of failed diplomacy and not the other way around. That Clausewitz's descendents got this so terribly wrong was obvious in 1945. Having seen their military utterly destroyed, German diplomats had nothing left to talk about. What were they going to do: use harsh language?
Clausewitz is taught at nearly all of America's military colleges; it is as central to the study of war as Cicero is to the humanities. Yet, while "On War" is required reading for military officers, it is ignored by American politicians. Thus, Clausewitz's seminal lesson remains unlearned: that diplomacy is best practiced under a threat of certain pain-to-come. Yet, the not-so-secret truth about America's military is that it is exhausted, its army victimized by multiple deployments in an unnecessary war, the cream of its combat officer corps seeking employment elsewhere, its newest recruits dredged from the un-and-under employed. We can threaten to let loose the dogs of war, but we will not be believed.
We Americans now celebrate our willingness to talk, to grasp the hand of those who unclench their fist. That the world, and most especially the Iranian leadership, remains skeptical of this offer should not be a surprise. For we have gotten Clausewitz exactly wrong: we are talking not to prevent conflict, but because we have no choice. Which is why the Iranian leadership is insisting that any talks with America focus on a host of regional and international issues, and not simply on their nuclear program. Their insistence on this is a test of our good intentions--as it should be. Are we really interested in regional stability? Do we really want to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? They will undoubtedly tell us (if they have not already) that the road to peace and stability in the region does not run through Tehran (as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insists), but through Jerusalem.
We dismiss this view at our peril, for it is the one thing that every state in the region--from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Jordan--believes. That is to say: if the United States is truly interested in forging a new era of stability in the Middle East, and a new understanding with Iran, then President Obama can begin by telling Netanyahu that we expect Israel to be as good a friend to us as we have been to them. Netanyahu can confirm this by shifting Israel's policy on settlements in the West Bank. The United States, President Obama should say, does not want Israel's settlements frozen, it wants them removed. That can start now. The reward for this act of friendship will be our continuing commitment to Israel's defense. This message need not be confrontational, but it must be clear. Then too, the message has a certain elegance. It will convince Iran that we intend to follow our words with actions. At the same time it meets that other central tenet of the Clausewitz canon: a nation's strength is defined not by the size of its army, but by whether it means what it says. - Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mark Perry is a director of the Washington and Beirut-based Conflicts Forum and the author of Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace.
Just the beginning
Michael Rubin
President Barack Obama has made outreach to the Islamic Republic of Iran a foreign policy centerpiece of his administration. At his inauguration, he promised that if US adversaries would unclench their fists the United States would extend a hand. Then, in his first major television interview, he told al-Arabiya satellite TV, "It is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but [also] where there are potential avenues for progress. And we will over the next several months be laying out our general framework and approach."
He has. US diplomats have sought out their Iranian counterparts at international forums and agreed to meet Iranian officials without precondition. On March 20, Obama released a Nowruz greeting in which, without precedent, he declared, "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations," implicitly recognizing the current government as the legitimate representative of the Iranian people.
Obama believes in born-again diplomacy--that whether with Iran, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, North Korea or Russia it is possible to forget the past and start anew. Alas, the world does not revolve around Obama nor has the reason for the poor state of US-Iran relations been simply lack of past effort.
Every US president has sought rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. US diplomats remained in Tehran throughout the revolution, first by choice and later, of course, as hostages. It is ironic that President Jimmy Carter's desire to engage sparked the embassy seizure, as Iranian radicals responded to the perceived threat of rapprochement symbolized by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's handshake with Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan by storming the compound to disrupt that process. Nevertheless, Carter allowed the Islamic Republic to retain its embassy in Washington for five more months, hoping to keep open a possibility for dialogue.
The Reagan administration also sought relations, even sending former National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane to Tehran. Speaking at the University of Tehran on December 9, 2008, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ridiculed the attempt, recalling how, "McFarlane came here and our authorities were not willing to talk to him. Only our second and third rate authorities talked to him." McFarlane returned empty-handed.
Twenty years ago, there was again hope for change. The Iran-Iraq war had ended, Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini was dead and Hashemi Rafsanjani, lauded as a pragmatist in the West, won the presidency. "I don't want to...think that the status quo has to go on forever," President George H.W. Bush told a press conference shortly after his inauguration.
President Bill Clinton, too, reached out to the Islamic Republic, even authorizing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to engage her Iranian counterpart in a one-on-one meeting, an opportunity lost when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, shortly before the rendezvous, ordered Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi not to show.
And despite President George W. Bush branding Tehran as part of the Axis of Evil--a mild comment compared to near daily Iranian calls for America's demise--there was greater engagement with Tehran under Bush than under any administration since Carter's. Alas, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, the White House discovered that Iranian diplomats either did not speak for the Revolutionary Guards or did not keep their promises.
So where does this leave Obama? There is an unfortunate dynamic in Washington in which new administrations fault predecessors rather than adversaries for failure to engage productively. No matter what their preconceptions before entering the Oval Office, however, all presidents discover they are powerless to resolve differences with Tehran when Iran's leadership does not desire it. Hence, while the presidents or foreign ministers of countries like Bolivia, Eritrea and Senegal, let alone Hamas leaders, receive audiences with the Supreme Leader, the Iranian leadership refuses to allow US diplomats even to set foot in Tehran. And while journalists and academics applaud Obama's overtures, they too often ignore the Iranian response, for example Khamenei's Apr. 15, 2009 speech at Imam Hossein University where he declared, "The recommendation to return to the global order is the same as capitulating to the bullying powers and accepting the unjust world order."
The Islamic Republic is an ideological entity. It roots sovereignty not in the will of its citizens but upon the notion that the supreme leader acts as a place holder for the Hidden Imam. As a system it has failed. Iran's economy is in tatters and the regime preserves power through the ever more pervasive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
To deflect responsibility for failure, it pays to have an enemy to rally masses around the flag. Iran's leadership has determined that the United States--the "Great Satan"--is it. Meaningful rapprochement would mean the regime's demise. Rather than work to improve relations with the US, therefore, Iranian authorities, either directly or by proxy, impose ever more obstacles. Alas, Ahmadinezhad's recent speech at Geneva and the arrest of Roxanna Saberi are just the beginning.- Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
The first 100 days
Sadegh Zibakalam
US President Barack Obama's Iranian New Year message caught many Iranians, including many Iranian leaders, by surprise. Those who write about Iranian history in the future will refer to Obama's message as a turning point in relations between the post-Iranian revolution and its arch enemy, the United States.
The message contained several important and unprecedented points. First, unlike all previous messages from US leaders, it did not try to drive a wedge between the Islamic leadership and the Iranian people. Second, it avoided all the previous charges that successive US leaders have leveled at the Islamic regime since its birth in 1979. There was no call for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, no demand that it stop supporting Hamas and other militant groups in the region, nor was the frequent accusation of interference in the affairs of other states, notably Iraq, repeated.
But perhaps the most crucial point about Obama's New Year message was his reference to the "Islamic Republic of Iran" rather than simply saying Iran. This was the first time since the Iranian revolution and the birth of the Islamic regime in Iran in 1979 that a US president referred to Iran properly. Whether or not Obama realized it, that part of his speech was interpreted in Iran as delivering a significant message to Iranian leaders, to the effect that the US was prepared to recognize the Islamic revolution and therefore the Islamic Republic of Iran. In other words, the US had abandoned the strategy of regime change in Iran.
Obama's speech was far more conciliatory than even the most optimistic Iranians had anticipated. The US president had fully extended his hand to the Iranian leaders and the ball was now in their court. Less than 48 hours after the speech, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, speaking on the occasion of the beginning of the Iranian New Year, responded to Obama's olive branch.
Before analyzing the Iranian leader's response, we must consider the awkward position in which Obama's message placed the Iranian leaders. Hitherto, their approach toward the US was one of outright dismissal and condemnation for its arrogant power and behavior, support for Israel, inimical policies against Islam and Islamic states, illegitimate occupation of Islamic countries (Iraq and Afghanistan), exploitation of third world countries and the like. Khamenei's remarks about America's past and present policies in the region and throughout the world were particularly strong and scornful, invariably including severe attacks on US presidents.
His speech this New Year, however, was much softer regarding the US than anyone could recall. He refrained from the usual salvo against America's detrimental role in the world and its arrogant and power-hungry president. Instead, he maintained that words alone were insufficient to solve the problems. The US, continued the Iranian supreme leader, must take practical steps to prove that it is sincere in its aspiration to avoid repeating past mistakes and to adopt a new and different strategy. Thus the ayatollah did not slam the door on Obama; he was prepared to wait until the new US president demonstrated that he was genuine in carrying out changes. A more positive response was yet to come, surprisingly, from hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad. Still, Ahmadinezhad did not go beyond the supreme leader's guidelines and basically maintained that Iran was prepared to have "serious, positive and constructive dialogue with the US".
Yet not all the responses from across the ruling hard-line spectrum were lukewarm or ready to give Obama a chance. The more radical currents and figures warned the others not to trust "the gimmick, the disguise that the new US president was hiding behind". A leading hard-line newspaper used an old and famous Iranian proverb to describe the new US president: "a baby wolf that is raised with a human being will ultimately turn into a wolf." In other words, sooner or later Obama would present his real "face", one that is not very different from that of the previous US president. Every word used by the new administration regarding Iran that sounded similar to the previous vocabulary was highlighted in print to demonstrate the "wolf's" real character. US statements that did not correspond to this theory were either neglected or were exploited so as to demonstrate the arrogance of American power.
On balance, however, the atmosphere in Tehran is one of "wait-and-see". The customary daily shouts of "death to America" have decreased as has the burning of the US flag. While it is too early to conclude that detente has emerged between Iran and the US, many Iranians remain optimistic that the time is right for change between the two countries.- Published 30/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Sadegh Zibakalam is professor of Iranian Studies at Tehran University.
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Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Clinton’s unpromising start by Ramzy Baroud | Arab News —
How we look ...?
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
Wednesday 29 April 2009 (04 Jumada al-Ula 1430)
Clinton’s unpromising start
Ramzy Baroud | Arab News —
Incongruous. One can hardly think of a more suitable word to describe the new US administration’s approach to peacemaking in the Middle East. Though there is little evidence that previous US administrations had genuinely attempted to play a balanced role in forging a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, many hoped — and a few still hope — that President Barack Obama’s administration will set some new standards.
However, if recent comments made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are a general indication of the administration’s Middle East policy, then little hope is on the horizon.
“For Israel to get the kind of strong support it’s looking for, vis-à-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts,” Clinton told legislators on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, on April 23. “The two go hand in hand,” she emphasized. Arab governments “believe that Israel’s willingness to re-enter into discussions with the Palestinian Authority strengthens them in being able to deal with Iran,” she stated.
What a baffling approach to peacemaking! In order for peace to prevail, Israel should engage Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority in “discussions” merely aimed at inspiring the Arabs to rally behind the US and Israel in isolating Iran, for reasons entirely pertinent to US interests and Israeli “security.”
Considering Clinton’s approach to lure Israel into her proposed peace discussions, what is her promise to the Palestinians, the Arabs and, indeed, Iran, but endless chatter, a regional cold war and sectarian divisions? Hasn’t the Middle East seen enough of all that? Is it not time to forsake such detrimental language and focus on positive engagement, regional stability and economic cooperation?
In fact, there is concrete evidence to support the claim that a responsible US policy in the region could indeed usher in a new beginning, which would ultimately prove beneficial to the US in a time of economic meltdown and repeated crises. For example, Iran has made clear its intentions of espousing dialogue with the US, Hamas is openly seeking “engagement” and Hezbollah — which seems committed to Lebanon’s stability — is responding positively to EU diplomatic overtures.
However, it seems that the new US administration, with all the gutsy talk of boldness, daring and audacity, is still unwilling or unable to confront Israel’s chaotic and destructive behavior in Palestine and in the Middle East at large.
Clinton should have used completely different language and adopted a wholly different approach if she and her administration were keenly interested in investing in a just peace and not merely “discussions.” Instead of trying to entice Israel to engage the Palestinians long enough to deceive the Arabs and alienate Iran, she should have dealt — and strongly so — with the provocative politics disseminated by Israel’s new right-wing government.
Israeli leaders, confident of their country’s revered status among Western governments, which excuses it from any consequential criticism, are lashing out left and right.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, recognized in many circles as “fascist”, is leading Israel’s offensive diplomacy, a strategy used and perfected by previous Israeli governments. The aim of the offensive is to condition any Israeli “concessions” on specific demands, whose implementation often elicits anything but peace and stability.
He told the Jerusalem Post on April 23 that it would be “impossible to resolve any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem.”
One can only guess what “resolving the Iranian problem” means and requires. However, it’s important to recall that it was Lieberman who launched his newest career by rejecting the Annapolis peace conference outcomes, reverting to the road map, solely because the latter requires nothing of Israel until Palestinians completely crack down on “terror.” According to Israel’s definition of terrorist groups, which also includes the elected Palestinian government, Lieberman’s real objective is to absolve Israel from any expectations pertaining to peace, dialogue or even simple “discussions.”
Lieberman is not only agitated by the mere — and largely discretionary — requirements placed on Israel, but by the language itself. “Over the last two weeks I’ve had many conversations with my colleagues around the world. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you’re in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers”, said Lieberman, who described those using such language as “speaking in slogans.”
Lieberman is, of course, not the eccentric loner in the Israeli government, but in many ways represents the emerging status quo in Israel with all of its alarming tendencies. Haaretz reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is angry over an EU attempt at linking closer ties with Israel with the latter’s commitment to a two-state solution.
“Peace is in Israel’s interest no less than it is in Europe’s interest, and there’s no need to make the upgrade in relations with Israel conditional on progress on the peace process. We are in the process of reviewing our policy; don’t rush us,” Netanyahu reportedly told visiting Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek.
Netanyahu was helpful enough to elaborate on what he meant by “peace is in Israel’s interest,” when he said: “If Israelis can’t build homes in the West Bank, then Palestinians shouldn’t be allowed to either”, in reference to the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements and destruction of Arab homes.
Lieberman, on the other hand, has dashed any hopes that Israel might find the Arab peace initiative a common ground for peacemaking, according to Haaretz on April 24. He rejected it for, in part, it stipulates a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, in accordance with international law. Moreover, he called on the international community to stop pushing for a Palestinian state.
Not only does Israel want to preserve its matrix of control over the West Bank, annex Arab lands and maintain its illegal settlements in violation of international law, but it also wants to control the language, silence even calls for Palestinian statehood and lead a world fury, including that of the Arabs against Iran. So much for peacemaking.
With such a reality, it behooves Clinton and the Obama administration to abandon the tired slogans and the old, belligerent policies of their predecessor.
If they are indeed interested in a just peace, for its own sake, then luring Israel to engage Abbas, to unite the Arabs and isolate Iran cannot possibly be a promising start.
— Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
Wednesday 29 April 2009 (04 Jumada al-Ula 1430)
Clinton’s unpromising start
Ramzy Baroud | Arab News —
Incongruous. One can hardly think of a more suitable word to describe the new US administration’s approach to peacemaking in the Middle East. Though there is little evidence that previous US administrations had genuinely attempted to play a balanced role in forging a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, many hoped — and a few still hope — that President Barack Obama’s administration will set some new standards.
However, if recent comments made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are a general indication of the administration’s Middle East policy, then little hope is on the horizon.
“For Israel to get the kind of strong support it’s looking for, vis-à-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts,” Clinton told legislators on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, on April 23. “The two go hand in hand,” she emphasized. Arab governments “believe that Israel’s willingness to re-enter into discussions with the Palestinian Authority strengthens them in being able to deal with Iran,” she stated.
What a baffling approach to peacemaking! In order for peace to prevail, Israel should engage Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority in “discussions” merely aimed at inspiring the Arabs to rally behind the US and Israel in isolating Iran, for reasons entirely pertinent to US interests and Israeli “security.”
Considering Clinton’s approach to lure Israel into her proposed peace discussions, what is her promise to the Palestinians, the Arabs and, indeed, Iran, but endless chatter, a regional cold war and sectarian divisions? Hasn’t the Middle East seen enough of all that? Is it not time to forsake such detrimental language and focus on positive engagement, regional stability and economic cooperation?
In fact, there is concrete evidence to support the claim that a responsible US policy in the region could indeed usher in a new beginning, which would ultimately prove beneficial to the US in a time of economic meltdown and repeated crises. For example, Iran has made clear its intentions of espousing dialogue with the US, Hamas is openly seeking “engagement” and Hezbollah — which seems committed to Lebanon’s stability — is responding positively to EU diplomatic overtures.
However, it seems that the new US administration, with all the gutsy talk of boldness, daring and audacity, is still unwilling or unable to confront Israel’s chaotic and destructive behavior in Palestine and in the Middle East at large.
Clinton should have used completely different language and adopted a wholly different approach if she and her administration were keenly interested in investing in a just peace and not merely “discussions.” Instead of trying to entice Israel to engage the Palestinians long enough to deceive the Arabs and alienate Iran, she should have dealt — and strongly so — with the provocative politics disseminated by Israel’s new right-wing government.
Israeli leaders, confident of their country’s revered status among Western governments, which excuses it from any consequential criticism, are lashing out left and right.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, recognized in many circles as “fascist”, is leading Israel’s offensive diplomacy, a strategy used and perfected by previous Israeli governments. The aim of the offensive is to condition any Israeli “concessions” on specific demands, whose implementation often elicits anything but peace and stability.
He told the Jerusalem Post on April 23 that it would be “impossible to resolve any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem.”
One can only guess what “resolving the Iranian problem” means and requires. However, it’s important to recall that it was Lieberman who launched his newest career by rejecting the Annapolis peace conference outcomes, reverting to the road map, solely because the latter requires nothing of Israel until Palestinians completely crack down on “terror.” According to Israel’s definition of terrorist groups, which also includes the elected Palestinian government, Lieberman’s real objective is to absolve Israel from any expectations pertaining to peace, dialogue or even simple “discussions.”
Lieberman is not only agitated by the mere — and largely discretionary — requirements placed on Israel, but by the language itself. “Over the last two weeks I’ve had many conversations with my colleagues around the world. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you’re in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers”, said Lieberman, who described those using such language as “speaking in slogans.”
Lieberman is, of course, not the eccentric loner in the Israeli government, but in many ways represents the emerging status quo in Israel with all of its alarming tendencies. Haaretz reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is angry over an EU attempt at linking closer ties with Israel with the latter’s commitment to a two-state solution.
“Peace is in Israel’s interest no less than it is in Europe’s interest, and there’s no need to make the upgrade in relations with Israel conditional on progress on the peace process. We are in the process of reviewing our policy; don’t rush us,” Netanyahu reportedly told visiting Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek.
Netanyahu was helpful enough to elaborate on what he meant by “peace is in Israel’s interest,” when he said: “If Israelis can’t build homes in the West Bank, then Palestinians shouldn’t be allowed to either”, in reference to the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements and destruction of Arab homes.
Lieberman, on the other hand, has dashed any hopes that Israel might find the Arab peace initiative a common ground for peacemaking, according to Haaretz on April 24. He rejected it for, in part, it stipulates a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, in accordance with international law. Moreover, he called on the international community to stop pushing for a Palestinian state.
Not only does Israel want to preserve its matrix of control over the West Bank, annex Arab lands and maintain its illegal settlements in violation of international law, but it also wants to control the language, silence even calls for Palestinian statehood and lead a world fury, including that of the Arabs against Iran. So much for peacemaking.
With such a reality, it behooves Clinton and the Obama administration to abandon the tired slogans and the old, belligerent policies of their predecessor.
If they are indeed interested in a just peace, for its own sake, then luring Israel to engage Abbas, to unite the Arabs and isolate Iran cannot possibly be a promising start.
— Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
What's up with Pakistan? We ought to stay out and let the Pakistanis fight the Taliban By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
What's up with Pakistan?
We ought to stay out and let the Pakistanis fight the Taliban
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The effort to stampede America into a major military effort to "save" Pakistan from the Taliban is ill-considered, irresponsible and a road to almost certain disaster for Pakistan and for the United States.
Whether the authors of this piece of folly are the media, some in the administration of President Barack Obama, the American military, the defense contractors and their congressional dependents or some of the same people who wanted the United States bogged down in the Iraq war so we could not concentrate our efforts on seeking a wider Middle East settlement -- or all of them -- this sheep-like drive for the cliff must be headed off, now.
We are told that the Taliban are moving up on Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, and that the Pakistani armed forces are unwilling to fight them, in spite of the some $11 billion the United States has given to Pakistan since 2001. In the meantime, American remote-controlled, pilotless aircraft drop bombs on Pakistani villages, targeting in principle Taliban and al-Qaida targets, but largely killing Pakistani civilians. This activity is virtually guaranteed to sow widespread hatred of the United States and the Pakistani government, if not love of the Taliban, in the hearts and minds of the villagers in question.
This is a policy that is so far out of synch with reality that it is hard to imagine that it has sufficient support or tolerance within the actually-sometimes-sensible Obama administration to survive.
First of all, with 140,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq and a total of some 53,000 now pledged to fight in Afghanistan, in pursuit of what fantasy would the United States want to involve itself more deeply militarily in Pakistan? Pakistan has a population of 175 million, its area is twice the size of California and it is composed of terrain that is nightmare-like as a venue for a war. Its government continues to state vehemently that it does not want U.S. military forces in Pakistan, with the implicit suggestion that one day its armed forces might actively resist further U.S. military intervention.
And why wouldn't they? If drone aircraft based and controlled outside the United States were bombing some upstate New York or Sonoma Valley California villages, what would be the reaction of Americans? "We would go berserk," is probably the mildest description.
And what kind of American thinks it is OK to bomb Pakistani villages? Have any of them ever met a Pakistani? Try the graduate schools of America's finest universities.
Try reading Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea." It is a little precious but makes it crystal clear that even Pakistanis living in very isolated, devoutly Muslim villages in the mountains are human beings who simply want education and a better life for their children, much as Americans do for theirs.
Then there's the part that says that the Taliban might take over Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, because Pakistan's armed forces are set up to fight only the neighboring Indians.
To believe that is to completely misunderstand modern Pakistan. It has scary poverty, some Pakistanis are devoutly Muslim, the literacy rate is uneven but low in some areas, there are parts of Pakistan that are as far outside the modern world as parts of Afghanistan.
At the same time, though, many, many Pakistanis are sophisticated, urban and modern. The vast majority are not bearded fundamentalist Pashtun tribesman like most of the Taliban.
In my view, there is no more possibility that the Taliban will take over Pakistan than there is that bearded mountain men will march out of the Blue Ridge mountains into Washington and take over the American government. (The subway system is too complicated.)
Seriously, it is safe to say that most Pakistanis, particularly urban Pakistanis in such large cities as Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar, would simply laugh at the Taliban behind their backs and quietly have them exterminated if the Pakistani armed forces don't do the job.
So why are we even thinking about trying to "save" Pakistan from the Taliban?
Part of the reason is the same phenomenon that Americans saw during the Vietnam War when we were unsuccessful in keeping the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong from drubbing us and our passive South Vietnamese allies and decided to try to save the day by taking the war into Cambodia. At that point, according to us, it was North Vietnam's ability to resupply itself through Cambodia that was preventing us from "winning the war."
It didn't work. Our military incursion into Cambodia simply expanded the war in the region, severely damaged Cambodia itself and widened our theater of battle without improving our situation in Vietnam.
The parallel with Vietnam and Cambodia is Afghanistan and our new focus on Pakistan.
Whatever is happening in Pakistan is the affair of the Pakistanis. If they were to be shortsighted and let the Taliban move closer to "taking over," it wouldn't be long before they realized what was happening and responded sharply and decisively. (That, by the way, probably means another military government, but so what? That would not be new.)
It is simply unimaginable that the Taliban could even survive among the Pakistanis of the Punjab and Sindh regions. The Pakistani military would find it out of the question, inconceivable, that the country's nuclear weapons fall into the hands of the Taliban, not to mention the foreign al-Qaida.
So the right move for the United States is to stay out of Pakistan. Whatever military action we are taking there now we should stop. Whatever is going to happen there is the affair of the Pakistanis, none of our business.
The administration of George W. Bush invading and occupying a country like Iraq was crazy enough. We must not repeat that error, further overextending ourselves militarily and financially to the point of self-destruction. What are we doing?
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1976).
We ought to stay out and let the Pakistanis fight the Taliban
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The effort to stampede America into a major military effort to "save" Pakistan from the Taliban is ill-considered, irresponsible and a road to almost certain disaster for Pakistan and for the United States.
Whether the authors of this piece of folly are the media, some in the administration of President Barack Obama, the American military, the defense contractors and their congressional dependents or some of the same people who wanted the United States bogged down in the Iraq war so we could not concentrate our efforts on seeking a wider Middle East settlement -- or all of them -- this sheep-like drive for the cliff must be headed off, now.
We are told that the Taliban are moving up on Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, and that the Pakistani armed forces are unwilling to fight them, in spite of the some $11 billion the United States has given to Pakistan since 2001. In the meantime, American remote-controlled, pilotless aircraft drop bombs on Pakistani villages, targeting in principle Taliban and al-Qaida targets, but largely killing Pakistani civilians. This activity is virtually guaranteed to sow widespread hatred of the United States and the Pakistani government, if not love of the Taliban, in the hearts and minds of the villagers in question.
This is a policy that is so far out of synch with reality that it is hard to imagine that it has sufficient support or tolerance within the actually-sometimes-sensible Obama administration to survive.
First of all, with 140,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq and a total of some 53,000 now pledged to fight in Afghanistan, in pursuit of what fantasy would the United States want to involve itself more deeply militarily in Pakistan? Pakistan has a population of 175 million, its area is twice the size of California and it is composed of terrain that is nightmare-like as a venue for a war. Its government continues to state vehemently that it does not want U.S. military forces in Pakistan, with the implicit suggestion that one day its armed forces might actively resist further U.S. military intervention.
And why wouldn't they? If drone aircraft based and controlled outside the United States were bombing some upstate New York or Sonoma Valley California villages, what would be the reaction of Americans? "We would go berserk," is probably the mildest description.
And what kind of American thinks it is OK to bomb Pakistani villages? Have any of them ever met a Pakistani? Try the graduate schools of America's finest universities.
Try reading Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea." It is a little precious but makes it crystal clear that even Pakistanis living in very isolated, devoutly Muslim villages in the mountains are human beings who simply want education and a better life for their children, much as Americans do for theirs.
Then there's the part that says that the Taliban might take over Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, because Pakistan's armed forces are set up to fight only the neighboring Indians.
To believe that is to completely misunderstand modern Pakistan. It has scary poverty, some Pakistanis are devoutly Muslim, the literacy rate is uneven but low in some areas, there are parts of Pakistan that are as far outside the modern world as parts of Afghanistan.
At the same time, though, many, many Pakistanis are sophisticated, urban and modern. The vast majority are not bearded fundamentalist Pashtun tribesman like most of the Taliban.
In my view, there is no more possibility that the Taliban will take over Pakistan than there is that bearded mountain men will march out of the Blue Ridge mountains into Washington and take over the American government. (The subway system is too complicated.)
Seriously, it is safe to say that most Pakistanis, particularly urban Pakistanis in such large cities as Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar, would simply laugh at the Taliban behind their backs and quietly have them exterminated if the Pakistani armed forces don't do the job.
So why are we even thinking about trying to "save" Pakistan from the Taliban?
Part of the reason is the same phenomenon that Americans saw during the Vietnam War when we were unsuccessful in keeping the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong from drubbing us and our passive South Vietnamese allies and decided to try to save the day by taking the war into Cambodia. At that point, according to us, it was North Vietnam's ability to resupply itself through Cambodia that was preventing us from "winning the war."
It didn't work. Our military incursion into Cambodia simply expanded the war in the region, severely damaged Cambodia itself and widened our theater of battle without improving our situation in Vietnam.
The parallel with Vietnam and Cambodia is Afghanistan and our new focus on Pakistan.
Whatever is happening in Pakistan is the affair of the Pakistanis. If they were to be shortsighted and let the Taliban move closer to "taking over," it wouldn't be long before they realized what was happening and responded sharply and decisively. (That, by the way, probably means another military government, but so what? That would not be new.)
It is simply unimaginable that the Taliban could even survive among the Pakistanis of the Punjab and Sindh regions. The Pakistani military would find it out of the question, inconceivable, that the country's nuclear weapons fall into the hands of the Taliban, not to mention the foreign al-Qaida.
So the right move for the United States is to stay out of Pakistan. Whatever military action we are taking there now we should stop. Whatever is going to happen there is the affair of the Pakistanis, none of our business.
The administration of George W. Bush invading and occupying a country like Iraq was crazy enough. We must not repeat that error, further overextending ourselves militarily and financially to the point of self-destruction. What are we doing?
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1976).
Interview with Dr. Henry Niman re: Swine Flu
An important watch. Dr. Henry Niman has been on the cutting edge of flu mutations from the get-go. Pass around if you think appropriate, or ignore if not. It seems wise to at least hear what he has to say and stay vigilant.:
http://www.wpxi.com/video/19313969/index.html
http://www.wpxi.com/video/19313969/index.html
Evaluating the Obama administration's national security budget and planning process
Evaluating the Obama administration's national security budget and planning process
By Gordon Adams | 28 April 2009
**Article first appeared in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists**
In its first 100 days, the Obama administration has had to confront a series of pressing foreign policy and national security issues--North Korean missile launches, a revamping of the war strategy in Afghanistan, the Taliban's continued rise in Pakistan, and, of course, the Iranian nuclear program. As with all new administrations, the issues have come faster than the Obama administration can cope with them. Thus, improvisation has been a major feature of the administration's response--especially with only part of the team in place.
As I've written before, my main concern has always been whether or not the administration is putting in place the budgets, structures, and processes that will allow them to escape the siren song of improvisation and begin to set a course toward longer-term strategic planning for foreign policy and national security.
Clearly, 100 days aren't enough to answer every question or quell every doubt. And while the most appropriate grade at the moment is probably an incomplete, some of the administration's action do deserve a clear passing grade.
What are the success stories?
The foreign policy and assistance budget. As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to double U.S. foreign assistance, and while he may not reach this goal as quickly as he'd like, the International Affairs budget request of $53.8 billion--an increase of about 11 percent--is a giant step forward. The details of the foreign policy budget won't appear until early May, but there are signs that it will include at least a couple of important steps in strengthening the civilian toolkit.
First, it will seek a major increase in personnel for both the State Department and USAID, beefing up an overstressed staff in both organizations. Second, it will fully fund major programs at State and USAID, particularly food aid and humanitarian assistance. For the past few years, both have been underfunded, with the difference being made up through emergency supplemental budget requests. But it seems honest budgeting has returned to the International Affairs budget requests, and State is asking for what it will realistically need at the start of the budget process, not scrambling for additional funding later.
The defense budget. Last September, the military services and Joint Chiefs conducted a budget drill that led to a "blue sky wish list" of a base budget for Defense (outside of war supplementals). The wish list would have expanded the Defense budget by 14 percent over fiscal year 2009. But the White House decided to hang tough, arguing that "current services" (fiscal year 2009 plus inflation, or roughly 3 percent growth) was enough. Any further increases, they reasoned, could await a full strategic review at Defense.
To the surprise of many, Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn't fight the administration's edict; he did seek and obtain an additional $10 billion, but those funds covered programs that had previously been funded through supplemental budgets. While some in Congress argued that Defense could have been constrained even further, this was a clear signal to the armed services that a new sheriff was in town.
Even more unexpected was the series of military hardware decisions that Gates announced in April. For years Defense's modus operandi has been to continue buying hardware that was outmoded, underperforming, or unnecessary. Gates began to end that practice by terminating hardy perennials such as the F-22 fighter, the vehicle portion of the Army's Future Combat System, an underperforming Transformation Satellite Program, the new navy destroyer, and the new White House helicopter program. Sure, Congress may reverse some of these decisions; but they were clear and decisive and based on strategy and future requirements, not made randomly. The forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review will tell us whether the long-term defense plan continues this trend.
In which areas does the administration deserve an incomplete grade?
Supplementals. For eight years, both Defense and State abused the supplemental process to request funding for things that clearly weren't war related--e.g., military hardware that wasn't being lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's unclear whether or not the administration will continue to allow this backdoor funding, which undermines planning and budget discipline, to happen. The intention of transmitting narrow, war-focused supplemental has been announced, though it applied incompletely to the fiscal year 2009 supplemental submitted by the Obama administration a couple of months ago. War funding for fiscal year 2010, however, will come to Congress with the overall budget--a good precedent.
Reforming State's budget planning process. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began to integrate budget planning for all of State's and USAID's foreign assistance programs, but those changes need to be strengthened and supported by additional capacity-building. That means developing a civilian capability to respond quickly to the needs of fragile and failing states and states recovering from civil war and military operations. It also means reforming the department's staff by recruiting, training, incentivizing, and promoting a new breed of State official who can plan and administer programs, as well as negotiate them.
Developing development policy. Here the grade is seriously incomplete. A new USAID administrator hasn't been named, and the agency is somewhat adrift. Its future relationship with State also is in question and needs to be resolved. Similarly, staffing increases should be accompanied by a vigorous reform of USAID processes and contracting. The agency needs to become the first responder when tending to fragile and failing states. At the moment, all of these issues are still in limbo.
Balancing the military and civilian instruments of statecraft. As I've noted several times in this column, Defense has built up a substantial portfolio of foreign and security assistance programs that duplicate programs and activities at State. They were developed, however, because Defense lacked the faith that State could run these programs in an agile or responsive way, or that State could raise the money for them from the Congress. These doubts weren't incorrect, but they've created a serious imbalance.
Today, the United States faces a major problem in civil military relations. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Michael Mullen noted at Princeton University on February 5, "You've hear . . . me talk about our foreign policy being too militarized. I believe that. And it's got to change." Gates has sent the first signal, announcing that he does not intend to seek to put these authorities into Defense's permanent legal authorities, pending congressional action on State's budget and capabilities. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given voice to the need to return State to the position of preeminence in foreign and security assistance policy.
But it isn't yet clear what State needs to do to become a more credible steward of these programs. And until it does, Congress won't agree to give it the flexibility and funding it needs to do the job. Nor is the first step promising. In the new fiscal year 2009 supplemental budget request for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, State agreed that Defense should request $400 million in funding to train Pakistani security forces in counterinsurgency operations. If State is to become the policy steward of these programs, this was a step in the wrong direction.
So, in sum, the first 100 days of the Obama administration have been promising, but to paraphrase Death of a Salesman, "Attention must [continue to] be paid."
For media inquiries, please contact Gordon Adams at gadams@stimson.org (301 219-6105) or David Glaudemans at dglaudemans@stimson.org (202-464-2672).
By Gordon Adams | 28 April 2009
**Article first appeared in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists**
In its first 100 days, the Obama administration has had to confront a series of pressing foreign policy and national security issues--North Korean missile launches, a revamping of the war strategy in Afghanistan, the Taliban's continued rise in Pakistan, and, of course, the Iranian nuclear program. As with all new administrations, the issues have come faster than the Obama administration can cope with them. Thus, improvisation has been a major feature of the administration's response--especially with only part of the team in place.
As I've written before, my main concern has always been whether or not the administration is putting in place the budgets, structures, and processes that will allow them to escape the siren song of improvisation and begin to set a course toward longer-term strategic planning for foreign policy and national security.
Clearly, 100 days aren't enough to answer every question or quell every doubt. And while the most appropriate grade at the moment is probably an incomplete, some of the administration's action do deserve a clear passing grade.
What are the success stories?
The foreign policy and assistance budget. As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to double U.S. foreign assistance, and while he may not reach this goal as quickly as he'd like, the International Affairs budget request of $53.8 billion--an increase of about 11 percent--is a giant step forward. The details of the foreign policy budget won't appear until early May, but there are signs that it will include at least a couple of important steps in strengthening the civilian toolkit.
First, it will seek a major increase in personnel for both the State Department and USAID, beefing up an overstressed staff in both organizations. Second, it will fully fund major programs at State and USAID, particularly food aid and humanitarian assistance. For the past few years, both have been underfunded, with the difference being made up through emergency supplemental budget requests. But it seems honest budgeting has returned to the International Affairs budget requests, and State is asking for what it will realistically need at the start of the budget process, not scrambling for additional funding later.
The defense budget. Last September, the military services and Joint Chiefs conducted a budget drill that led to a "blue sky wish list" of a base budget for Defense (outside of war supplementals). The wish list would have expanded the Defense budget by 14 percent over fiscal year 2009. But the White House decided to hang tough, arguing that "current services" (fiscal year 2009 plus inflation, or roughly 3 percent growth) was enough. Any further increases, they reasoned, could await a full strategic review at Defense.
To the surprise of many, Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn't fight the administration's edict; he did seek and obtain an additional $10 billion, but those funds covered programs that had previously been funded through supplemental budgets. While some in Congress argued that Defense could have been constrained even further, this was a clear signal to the armed services that a new sheriff was in town.
Even more unexpected was the series of military hardware decisions that Gates announced in April. For years Defense's modus operandi has been to continue buying hardware that was outmoded, underperforming, or unnecessary. Gates began to end that practice by terminating hardy perennials such as the F-22 fighter, the vehicle portion of the Army's Future Combat System, an underperforming Transformation Satellite Program, the new navy destroyer, and the new White House helicopter program. Sure, Congress may reverse some of these decisions; but they were clear and decisive and based on strategy and future requirements, not made randomly. The forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review will tell us whether the long-term defense plan continues this trend.
In which areas does the administration deserve an incomplete grade?
Supplementals. For eight years, both Defense and State abused the supplemental process to request funding for things that clearly weren't war related--e.g., military hardware that wasn't being lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's unclear whether or not the administration will continue to allow this backdoor funding, which undermines planning and budget discipline, to happen. The intention of transmitting narrow, war-focused supplemental has been announced, though it applied incompletely to the fiscal year 2009 supplemental submitted by the Obama administration a couple of months ago. War funding for fiscal year 2010, however, will come to Congress with the overall budget--a good precedent.
Reforming State's budget planning process. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began to integrate budget planning for all of State's and USAID's foreign assistance programs, but those changes need to be strengthened and supported by additional capacity-building. That means developing a civilian capability to respond quickly to the needs of fragile and failing states and states recovering from civil war and military operations. It also means reforming the department's staff by recruiting, training, incentivizing, and promoting a new breed of State official who can plan and administer programs, as well as negotiate them.
Developing development policy. Here the grade is seriously incomplete. A new USAID administrator hasn't been named, and the agency is somewhat adrift. Its future relationship with State also is in question and needs to be resolved. Similarly, staffing increases should be accompanied by a vigorous reform of USAID processes and contracting. The agency needs to become the first responder when tending to fragile and failing states. At the moment, all of these issues are still in limbo.
Balancing the military and civilian instruments of statecraft. As I've noted several times in this column, Defense has built up a substantial portfolio of foreign and security assistance programs that duplicate programs and activities at State. They were developed, however, because Defense lacked the faith that State could run these programs in an agile or responsive way, or that State could raise the money for them from the Congress. These doubts weren't incorrect, but they've created a serious imbalance.
Today, the United States faces a major problem in civil military relations. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Michael Mullen noted at Princeton University on February 5, "You've hear . . . me talk about our foreign policy being too militarized. I believe that. And it's got to change." Gates has sent the first signal, announcing that he does not intend to seek to put these authorities into Defense's permanent legal authorities, pending congressional action on State's budget and capabilities. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given voice to the need to return State to the position of preeminence in foreign and security assistance policy.
But it isn't yet clear what State needs to do to become a more credible steward of these programs. And until it does, Congress won't agree to give it the flexibility and funding it needs to do the job. Nor is the first step promising. In the new fiscal year 2009 supplemental budget request for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, State agreed that Defense should request $400 million in funding to train Pakistani security forces in counterinsurgency operations. If State is to become the policy steward of these programs, this was a step in the wrong direction.
So, in sum, the first 100 days of the Obama administration have been promising, but to paraphrase Death of a Salesman, "Attention must [continue to] be paid."
For media inquiries, please contact Gordon Adams at gadams@stimson.org (301 219-6105) or David Glaudemans at dglaudemans@stimson.org (202-464-2672).
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Pentagon Plan Won't Echo Obama No-Nukes Pledge Anne Gearan, Associated Press
Pentagon Plan Won't Echo Obama No-Nukes Pledge
Anne Gearan, Associated Press
The Pentagon is starting work on a nuclear mission statement that envisions the U.S. maintaining its atomic weapons stockpile for the next five to 10 years, a far more cautious stance than President Barack Obama's dream of a nuclear-free future.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j46iNbDDtfjW6x6mmvPbBQVYpGegD97OELV80
Anne Gearan, Associated Press
The Pentagon is starting work on a nuclear mission statement that envisions the U.S. maintaining its atomic weapons stockpile for the next five to 10 years, a far more cautious stance than President Barack Obama's dream of a nuclear-free future.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j46iNbDDtfjW6x6mmvPbBQVYpGegD97OELV80
Watchdog Warns Arms Transfers to Mideast Rising Malin Rising, Associated Press
Watchdog Warns Arms Transfers to Mideast Rising
Malin Rising, Associated Press
The volume of weapons exported to the Middle East has risen sharply in the last four years, threatening to destabilize the volatile region further, a leading Swedish think tank warned Monday.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gSw1ChS6yerw8OZTUdMdOIBp81tQD97QMH2G1
Malin Rising, Associated Press
The volume of weapons exported to the Middle East has risen sharply in the last four years, threatening to destabilize the volatile region further, a leading Swedish think tank warned Monday.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gSw1ChS6yerw8OZTUdMdOIBp81tQD97QMH2G1
U.S. Seeks to Assure Arabs on Iran Jay Solomon, The Wall Street Journal
U.S. Seeks to Assure Arabs on Iran
Jay Solomon, The Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration is dispatching its point man on Iran, Dennis Ross, to the Middle East this week in an effort to win greater Arab support for Washington's engagement strategy toward Tehran, U.S. officials said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124075783265056747.html
Jay Solomon, The Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration is dispatching its point man on Iran, Dennis Ross, to the Middle East this week in an effort to win greater Arab support for Washington's engagement strategy toward Tehran, U.S. officials said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124075783265056747.html
First Round of US-Russia Arms Treaty Talks in May
First Round of US-Russia Arms Treaty Talks in May
Agence France-Presse
Russian and US officials will meet in Moscow next month for the first round of negotiations to replace a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty, the Russian foreign ministry said Monday.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jwFyeCTpI-1hOzY9RROFeYtHfsqw
Agence France-Presse
Russian and US officials will meet in Moscow next month for the first round of negotiations to replace a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty, the Russian foreign ministry said Monday.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jwFyeCTpI-1hOzY9RROFeYtHfsqw
Japan Unveils 11-Point Initiative to Push Global Disarmament
Japan Unveils 11-Point Initiative to Push Global Disarmament
Japan Today
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/japan-unveils-11-point-initiative-to-push-global-disarmament
FM NakasoneJapan unveiled an 11-point initiative Monday to achieve a nuclear-free world, including a call for the imposition of "effective global restrictions" on North Korea's ballistic missile development and a plan to hold an international conference in Japan early next year on global nuclear disarmament.
In a speech titled "Conditions towards Zero—11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament," Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone urged China and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and to ensure transparency regarding their arsenals, which he described as "vital" for advancing global nuclear disarmament.
* Conditions towards Zero – 11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament (PDF)
http://www2.jiia.or.jp/pdf/kouenkai/090427e-nakasone.pdf
Japan Today
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/japan-unveils-11-point-initiative-to-push-global-disarmament
FM NakasoneJapan unveiled an 11-point initiative Monday to achieve a nuclear-free world, including a call for the imposition of "effective global restrictions" on North Korea's ballistic missile development and a plan to hold an international conference in Japan early next year on global nuclear disarmament.
In a speech titled "Conditions towards Zero—11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament," Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone urged China and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and to ensure transparency regarding their arsenals, which he described as "vital" for advancing global nuclear disarmament.
* Conditions towards Zero – 11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament (PDF)
http://www2.jiia.or.jp/pdf/kouenkai/090427e-nakasone.pdf
No more make-believe in the Middle East
from the April 27, 2009 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0427/p09s02-coop.html
No more make-believe in the Middle East
Bibi's policies may be misguided, but at least he doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker. Such intellectual honesty could prove salutary.
By Norman H. Olsen
Cherryfield, Maine
Let's not be so hard on Bibi.
The squealing on the Israeli and American left is making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu out to be a minority radical, a warmonger among the majority progressives who want a just peace with the Palestinians.
In reality, the bad news – and the good – is that Mr. Netanyahu doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker.
Let's look at the record.
Settlement construction, including the massive developments encircling Jerusalem, has continued for four decades. All of Bibi's predecessors – even the "doves" – never once slowed settlement construction, despite their repeated assurances. Throughout, despite intensive US monitoring and reporting on growth, the US has always pretended to believe them.
In the early 1990s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the US that settlement sites such as Har Homa were merely in the planning stages. When site work began, he claimed that it was only preparatory work with no approval for construction. When ministry approvals for construction were given, he and his successors claimed that they would prevent construction. Today Har Homa stands as one of the many monuments to the success of deny, deny, deny.
The latest and final major link in the chain of Jerusalem-encircling settlements, known as E1, has followed exactly the same progression. E1 is important, because if it is allowed to become a town, it will effectively split the West Bank in two, ending hopes for a two-state solution. US observers, myself included, reported during the past six years the clear evidence of site preparation, only to be told by the highest levels of the Israeli government that roadbeds, drainage systems, terracing, and other clearly observable major works were "erosion control." Again, the US pretended to believe the official spin.
Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert told the US repeatedly that the separation barrier would not be used for political purposes, and that its route through the West Bank, rather than along the internationally accepted "Green Line," was to provide security "setback" for towns on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Again, the US pretended to believe them.
Today, the tens of thousands of acres of West Bank land between the Green Line and the separation barrier are the fastest-growing areas for settlement construction, all built right up against the barrier, with no security setback, ensuring Israeli facts on the ground.
This pattern of pretending holds true for promises to ease travel for Palestinians within the West Bank. At the time of the Nov. 15, 2005, Agreement on Movement and Access, which was pressed on the Israelis and Palestinians by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, there were some 320 roadblocks. At the time, some US embassy staff openly termed the agreement toothless. Secretary Rice and her team termed it a historic achievement. Today, there are 632 roadblocks.
Ditto for the growth in Israeli-settler-only road systems in the West Bank, the thousands of Palestinians held prisoner for years without charge in Israeli "administrative detention," and the continuing blockage of Palestinian commercial traffic into and out of the Occupied Territories.
Ditto, too, for the talk in the late 1990s – by Bibi no less! – about weaning Israel from the billions in US aid it gets each year. The Israelis assured progress and the US pretended to believe them. For cash-strapped American taxpayers, the 10-year agreement signed in 2007 for $30 billion in military assistance to Israel, plus another billion or so a year in assorted other US-funded programs, amounts to a lot of pretending.
Palestinians, unlike Americans, are under no illusion about change under a Netanyahu government; hence the lack of public outcry over the Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman alliance. Despite the regular meetings that the US insisted take place since 2002 between Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Abbas never won a single substantive, realized concession. Israel and the US pretended that meetings equaled progress, but, each time, Abbas returned to Ramallah weakened, the object of increasing scorn not only from Hamas, but from his own Fatah supporters.
From the field, the relationship was always reminiscent of the scene from the 1967 comedy "A Guide for the Married Man," where a man and his mistress, caught in flagrante by the wife, simply deny, deny, deny until they have calmly dressed and the mistress has departed, leaving the wife wondering whether to believe her eyes.
Once he became prime minister in the 1990s, even firebrand Netanyahu played the "we pretend, you pretend" game, signing on to the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which, among other things, provided billions in US funding for Israel's redeployment out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, though, Netanyahu appears to have ended the charade, although perhaps only until political expediency warrants another metamorphosis. His policies may be misguided, but his intellectual honesty may prove salutary. The Israeli right and its American supporters have a hard time claiming Israeli moderation and reasonableness when Netanyahu and his ministers openly oppose a two-state arrangement; affirm the blockade of Gaza, preventing reconstruction there; tout settlement expansion; brag of undermining US efforts to talk with Iran; and threaten an attack on Iran – across US-controlled Iraqi airspace – that could jeopardize US troops and interests throughout the region.
In lifting the veil on Israeli policy and the criticism-stifling fiction of US-Israeli mutual interest, Netanyahu leaves the US open, finally, to voice and pursue its own positions and interests.
Finally, Washington can say, clearly and forcefully, that Israel's occupation harms US interests; that an attack on Iran is unacceptable and will get no US support, even in the UN Security Council; that settlement construction must stop and barriers be removed; that meetings are no substitute for progress; that Palestinians must be granted the opportunity – a real one – to form a viable state; and that the time has come for one of the world's wealthiest countries to be weaned off American largess.
Norman H. Olsen is a former senior United States Foreign Service officer. He served at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1991 to 1995, and from 2002 to 2007, including four years as chief of the political section.
No more make-believe in the Middle East
Bibi's policies may be misguided, but at least he doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker. Such intellectual honesty could prove salutary.
By Norman H. Olsen
Cherryfield, Maine
Let's not be so hard on Bibi.
The squealing on the Israeli and American left is making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu out to be a minority radical, a warmonger among the majority progressives who want a just peace with the Palestinians.
In reality, the bad news – and the good – is that Mr. Netanyahu doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker.
Let's look at the record.
Settlement construction, including the massive developments encircling Jerusalem, has continued for four decades. All of Bibi's predecessors – even the "doves" – never once slowed settlement construction, despite their repeated assurances. Throughout, despite intensive US monitoring and reporting on growth, the US has always pretended to believe them.
In the early 1990s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the US that settlement sites such as Har Homa were merely in the planning stages. When site work began, he claimed that it was only preparatory work with no approval for construction. When ministry approvals for construction were given, he and his successors claimed that they would prevent construction. Today Har Homa stands as one of the many monuments to the success of deny, deny, deny.
The latest and final major link in the chain of Jerusalem-encircling settlements, known as E1, has followed exactly the same progression. E1 is important, because if it is allowed to become a town, it will effectively split the West Bank in two, ending hopes for a two-state solution. US observers, myself included, reported during the past six years the clear evidence of site preparation, only to be told by the highest levels of the Israeli government that roadbeds, drainage systems, terracing, and other clearly observable major works were "erosion control." Again, the US pretended to believe the official spin.
Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert told the US repeatedly that the separation barrier would not be used for political purposes, and that its route through the West Bank, rather than along the internationally accepted "Green Line," was to provide security "setback" for towns on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Again, the US pretended to believe them.
Today, the tens of thousands of acres of West Bank land between the Green Line and the separation barrier are the fastest-growing areas for settlement construction, all built right up against the barrier, with no security setback, ensuring Israeli facts on the ground.
This pattern of pretending holds true for promises to ease travel for Palestinians within the West Bank. At the time of the Nov. 15, 2005, Agreement on Movement and Access, which was pressed on the Israelis and Palestinians by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, there were some 320 roadblocks. At the time, some US embassy staff openly termed the agreement toothless. Secretary Rice and her team termed it a historic achievement. Today, there are 632 roadblocks.
Ditto for the growth in Israeli-settler-only road systems in the West Bank, the thousands of Palestinians held prisoner for years without charge in Israeli "administrative detention," and the continuing blockage of Palestinian commercial traffic into and out of the Occupied Territories.
Ditto, too, for the talk in the late 1990s – by Bibi no less! – about weaning Israel from the billions in US aid it gets each year. The Israelis assured progress and the US pretended to believe them. For cash-strapped American taxpayers, the 10-year agreement signed in 2007 for $30 billion in military assistance to Israel, plus another billion or so a year in assorted other US-funded programs, amounts to a lot of pretending.
Palestinians, unlike Americans, are under no illusion about change under a Netanyahu government; hence the lack of public outcry over the Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman alliance. Despite the regular meetings that the US insisted take place since 2002 between Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Abbas never won a single substantive, realized concession. Israel and the US pretended that meetings equaled progress, but, each time, Abbas returned to Ramallah weakened, the object of increasing scorn not only from Hamas, but from his own Fatah supporters.
From the field, the relationship was always reminiscent of the scene from the 1967 comedy "A Guide for the Married Man," where a man and his mistress, caught in flagrante by the wife, simply deny, deny, deny until they have calmly dressed and the mistress has departed, leaving the wife wondering whether to believe her eyes.
Once he became prime minister in the 1990s, even firebrand Netanyahu played the "we pretend, you pretend" game, signing on to the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which, among other things, provided billions in US funding for Israel's redeployment out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, though, Netanyahu appears to have ended the charade, although perhaps only until political expediency warrants another metamorphosis. His policies may be misguided, but his intellectual honesty may prove salutary. The Israeli right and its American supporters have a hard time claiming Israeli moderation and reasonableness when Netanyahu and his ministers openly oppose a two-state arrangement; affirm the blockade of Gaza, preventing reconstruction there; tout settlement expansion; brag of undermining US efforts to talk with Iran; and threaten an attack on Iran – across US-controlled Iraqi airspace – that could jeopardize US troops and interests throughout the region.
In lifting the veil on Israeli policy and the criticism-stifling fiction of US-Israeli mutual interest, Netanyahu leaves the US open, finally, to voice and pursue its own positions and interests.
Finally, Washington can say, clearly and forcefully, that Israel's occupation harms US interests; that an attack on Iran is unacceptable and will get no US support, even in the UN Security Council; that settlement construction must stop and barriers be removed; that meetings are no substitute for progress; that Palestinians must be granted the opportunity – a real one – to form a viable state; and that the time has come for one of the world's wealthiest countries to be weaned off American largess.
Norman H. Olsen is a former senior United States Foreign Service officer. He served at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1991 to 1995, and from 2002 to 2007, including four years as chief of the political section.
Obama's First 100 Days
Obama's First 100 Days
After 100 days in the Oval Office, President Obama merits a mixed report card, according Ivan Eland, director of the Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty and author of Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty. "Although it is unfair to pass judgment this early on a new president, he can be compared to his predecessors and given interim grades on his various policies," Eland writes.
Eland gives Obama a "B" for accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, a "D" for escalating U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, a "B" for ending torture and closing Guantanamo and CIA secret prisons, a "B" on accountability in defense spending, and a "D" on social spending. These grades, he stresses, are interim and might improve or plummet during the course of his tenure. "If Obama tries to use remaining taxpayer dollars allocated for bailouts to grab an even bigger government ownership share in the banks," writes Eland, "he will combine an augmentation of the welfare state with the expansion of Bush's outright socialism--earning him an 'FF' in economic management."
Ultimately, Obama should be judged by results, not rhetoric. Writes Eland: "Results should be measured by the degree to which his actions, or his deliberate inaction, contribute to peace, prosperity and liberty."
"Obama's First 100 Days: A Mixed Record," by Ivan Eland (4/27/09)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2489
"Don't Judge Obama's Legacy on First 100 Days," by Ivan Eland (San Francisco Chronicle, 4/26/09)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/26/IN4K173MPP.DTL
Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=79
Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=77
The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=74
Ivan Eland on C-SPAN2. Interview by Rep. Ron Paul.
http://www.booktv.org/watch.aspx?ProgramId=LW-10226
After 100 days in the Oval Office, President Obama merits a mixed report card, according Ivan Eland, director of the Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty and author of Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty. "Although it is unfair to pass judgment this early on a new president, he can be compared to his predecessors and given interim grades on his various policies," Eland writes.
Eland gives Obama a "B" for accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, a "D" for escalating U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, a "B" for ending torture and closing Guantanamo and CIA secret prisons, a "B" on accountability in defense spending, and a "D" on social spending. These grades, he stresses, are interim and might improve or plummet during the course of his tenure. "If Obama tries to use remaining taxpayer dollars allocated for bailouts to grab an even bigger government ownership share in the banks," writes Eland, "he will combine an augmentation of the welfare state with the expansion of Bush's outright socialism--earning him an 'FF' in economic management."
Ultimately, Obama should be judged by results, not rhetoric. Writes Eland: "Results should be measured by the degree to which his actions, or his deliberate inaction, contribute to peace, prosperity and liberty."
"Obama's First 100 Days: A Mixed Record," by Ivan Eland (4/27/09)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2489
"Don't Judge Obama's Legacy on First 100 Days," by Ivan Eland (San Francisco Chronicle, 4/26/09)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/26/IN4K173MPP.DTL
Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=79
Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=77
The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=74
Ivan Eland on C-SPAN2. Interview by Rep. Ron Paul.
http://www.booktv.org/watch.aspx?ProgramId=LW-10226
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saudis Now Dis Bush and Put Their Hopes on Obama A senior Saudi official refers to the "trials and tribulations" of the recent Bush years By Thomas Om
Saudis Now Dis Bush and Put Their Hopes on Obama
A senior Saudi official refers to the "trials and tribulations" of the recent Bush years
By Thomas Omestad
Posted April 27, 2009
In the latter part of the Bush administration, a few signs of deepening Saudi Arabian unhappiness with U.S. policy were breaking out. King Abdullah decided to opt out of an invitation to a formal state dinner at the Bush White House. And the monarch breezily rebuffed Bush's plea to increase oil production to bring relief to American gasoline consumers at a time of high prices.
Just how deeply disappointed the Saudi royal family must have been with George W. Bush, who along with his father once enjoyed personally cordial ties with the royals, became a bit clearer on Monday at a conference in Washington. "Trials and tribulations of the recent past" is how the kingdom's current minister of commerce and industry, Abdullah Alireza, described the Bush years.
He also referred to the last eight years as a "long hibernation." That was an apparent reference to the Saudi (and widespread Arab) view that the Bush administration had taken a long absence from even-handed mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Alireza called for a "new, value-added relationship between our two countries." He urged a relationship that goes beyond traditional ties largely based on oil supplies to matters that involve "intellectual capital and knowledge-sharing" as Saudi Arabia seeks to propel its economy into new sectors. He was speaking at a conference sponsored by the New America Foundation and the Committee for International Trade of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce.
In contrast to his only slightly veiled criticism of Bush policy, Alireza said that President Obama's early moves are being warmly welcomed in Saudi Arabia as "a serious glimmer of hope." Obama has embarked on an effort to reach out to Muslim communities around the world and has promised to re-energize Mideast peace diplomacy.
Saudi annoyance with the Bush administration was driven first and foremost by Bush's decision to invade neighboring Iraq in 2003. The kingdom's diplomats, while no fans of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, feared that U.S. military intervention would trigger violence between Shiites and Sunnis, lead to Shiite control, and open a path for Iranian influence. To varying degrees, all of those things happened.
The Saudis also faulted Bush for maintaining what they regarded as such tight ties to Israel—to the exclusion of Arab views—that Washington was incapable of netting significant progress on the peace process. And the Saudis saw the Bush administration as unwilling to push Israel to curb military attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza that resulted in civilian deaths. A Saudi-authored outline for peace also languished during the period.
The Saudis made clear that they still have their worries. Alireza warned that an attack on Iran would "open up a Wild West in the Middle East." He added, "Saudi Arabia probably would be one of the first casualties after an attack on Iran by certain quarters," presumably a reference to Israel.
A senior Saudi official refers to the "trials and tribulations" of the recent Bush years
By Thomas Omestad
Posted April 27, 2009
In the latter part of the Bush administration, a few signs of deepening Saudi Arabian unhappiness with U.S. policy were breaking out. King Abdullah decided to opt out of an invitation to a formal state dinner at the Bush White House. And the monarch breezily rebuffed Bush's plea to increase oil production to bring relief to American gasoline consumers at a time of high prices.
Just how deeply disappointed the Saudi royal family must have been with George W. Bush, who along with his father once enjoyed personally cordial ties with the royals, became a bit clearer on Monday at a conference in Washington. "Trials and tribulations of the recent past" is how the kingdom's current minister of commerce and industry, Abdullah Alireza, described the Bush years.
He also referred to the last eight years as a "long hibernation." That was an apparent reference to the Saudi (and widespread Arab) view that the Bush administration had taken a long absence from even-handed mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Alireza called for a "new, value-added relationship between our two countries." He urged a relationship that goes beyond traditional ties largely based on oil supplies to matters that involve "intellectual capital and knowledge-sharing" as Saudi Arabia seeks to propel its economy into new sectors. He was speaking at a conference sponsored by the New America Foundation and the Committee for International Trade of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce.
In contrast to his only slightly veiled criticism of Bush policy, Alireza said that President Obama's early moves are being warmly welcomed in Saudi Arabia as "a serious glimmer of hope." Obama has embarked on an effort to reach out to Muslim communities around the world and has promised to re-energize Mideast peace diplomacy.
Saudi annoyance with the Bush administration was driven first and foremost by Bush's decision to invade neighboring Iraq in 2003. The kingdom's diplomats, while no fans of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, feared that U.S. military intervention would trigger violence between Shiites and Sunnis, lead to Shiite control, and open a path for Iranian influence. To varying degrees, all of those things happened.
The Saudis also faulted Bush for maintaining what they regarded as such tight ties to Israel—to the exclusion of Arab views—that Washington was incapable of netting significant progress on the peace process. And the Saudis saw the Bush administration as unwilling to push Israel to curb military attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza that resulted in civilian deaths. A Saudi-authored outline for peace also languished during the period.
The Saudis made clear that they still have their worries. Alireza warned that an attack on Iran would "open up a Wild West in the Middle East." He added, "Saudi Arabia probably would be one of the first casualties after an attack on Iran by certain quarters," presumably a reference to Israel.
Democrats’ and Republicans’ Divergent Views on Israeli-Arab Peace By Dr. James Zogby
http://www.aaiusa.org/washington-watch/3866/democratsand-republicans-divergent-views-on-israeli-arab-peace
Democrats’ and Republicans’ Divergent Views on Israeli-Arab Peace
By Dr. James Zogby
Posted on Monday April 27, 2009
The American electorate is deeply divided on issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with voters who backed Barack Obama and John McCain holding dramatically divergent views on the conflict, what should be done to solve it, and the role the U.S. ought to play.
This is the most startling finding of a Zogby International interactive survey conducted in April, 2009, for the Doha Debates, a BBC-TV program emanating from Doha, Qatar. The survey engaged 4,230 U.S. adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5%.
The survey found that substantial majorities (of all groups) believed: that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important; that the conflict negatively impacts U.S. interests in the Middle East; that both Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to equal rights; and that there should be a Palestinian state.
Overall, the survey established that, while favorable attitudes toward Israel remain strong, pluralities of Americans believe that President Obama should pursue a policy less supportive of Israel than his predecessor. They believe he ought to “get tough” with Israel on settlements, and “steer a middle course between Israel and the Palestinians.”
These findings, however, mask the deep divide within the electorate.
Attitudes toward U.S.-Israeli Relations
Americans do support Israel, to be sure. But, are the interests of the two countries identical, and does its support for Israel strengthen or weaken the U.S.? Three quarters of voters who supported John McCain believe that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical. Nearly as many believe that the U.S. is strengthened by its support of Israel. Obama voters, however, strongly disagree with both propositions, with more than one half disagreeing that the interests of the two countries are the same. Similarly, half of Obama voters believe the U.S. is weakened by its support for Israel, with only one in five seeing the U.S. as strengthened.
When asked which is more important to the U.S.— relations with Israel, the Arabs, or both – only 7% of Obama voters say Israel, 17% say the Arabs, and 68% say both. On the other hand, 46% of McCain voters say that the U.S. relationship with Israel is most important, only 3% emphasize relations with the Arabs, while 48% say both.
It appears from the results of the survey that the recent war in Gaza served to widen the gap between the two groups of voters. Half of Obama supporters said that war made them less supportive of Israel, while two-thirds of McCain voters actually say that the Gaza war made them more supportive of Israel.
What Should the U.S. Do?
Predictably, McCain voters saw Bush as an honest broker (by an 84%-8% margin). Obama voters disagreed by an equally overwhelming margin. But what should President Obama do? When asked, 73% of those who voted for President Obama say he should “steer a middle course,” with only 10% saying he should support Israel and 6% saying support the Palestinians. Wildly different responses come from the McCain voters, 60% of whom say the current President should support Israel! Only 22% of McCain supporters say the President should be balanced in his approach to the conflict
Engage with Hamas? By a 67%-16% margin Obama voters say yes, while 79% of McCain voters say no. And should the U.S. get tough with Israel? 80% of Obama voters say it is time to get tough, with 73% Of McCain voters disagreeing.
Solving Final Status Issues
Even when it comes to solving critical final status issues, the two camps hold positions that are mirror opposites of one another. Do Palestinians have the right of return? Obama voters agree they do by a margin of 61%-13%, while McCain voters disagree, 21%-51%. Should Jerusalem be divided and serve as the capital of two states, or remain under sole Israeli control? Obama voters prefer the “divided” and “two capitals” option with McCain voters overwhelmingly supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel
Similarly, a majority of Obama voters believe Israel should be made to remove its settlements from occupied Palestinian lands, while a majority of McCain voters believe the settlements should stay.
Two Observations
The depth of this partisan divide is instructive on many levels. First and foremost, it establishes that, despite the claim of hard-line supporters of Israel, traditional U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not have bipartisan backing. In fact, as the two parties have evolved over the past thirty years, and as the issue itself has evolved – since Oslo – each of the two parties have moved in different directions.
The dominant role of the religious right, which now comprises up to one-third of the base of the Republican Party, coupled with the degree to which neo-conservativism has come to define the world view of that party, have contributed to a significant reorientation of the GOP. These two strands of thought were brought together by George W. Bush, who also embraced Ariel Sharon, and, post-9/11, characterized the struggles of Israel and the U.S. as identical. As a result, it now appears that the GOP is no longer the party of George Herbert Walker Bush and James Baker, but an entirely new entity.
Meanwhile, the base of the Democratic Party, has come to be defined by progressives (including a significant number of progressive Jews) and minority communities who have grown weary of Bush’s ideological approach to conflict. They have come to reject his policies and recoil from their consequences.
Obama’s victory, therefore, represents not only the election of a new President, but the victory of a new coalition whose component parts support an anti-war, pro-peace and pro-human rights agenda. This coalition, our poll findings demonstrate, can provide the support the new President needs, should he decide on a dramatically different direction for U.S policy toward the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Democrats’ and Republicans’ Divergent Views on Israeli-Arab Peace
By Dr. James Zogby
Posted on Monday April 27, 2009
The American electorate is deeply divided on issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with voters who backed Barack Obama and John McCain holding dramatically divergent views on the conflict, what should be done to solve it, and the role the U.S. ought to play.
This is the most startling finding of a Zogby International interactive survey conducted in April, 2009, for the Doha Debates, a BBC-TV program emanating from Doha, Qatar. The survey engaged 4,230 U.S. adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5%.
The survey found that substantial majorities (of all groups) believed: that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important; that the conflict negatively impacts U.S. interests in the Middle East; that both Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to equal rights; and that there should be a Palestinian state.
Overall, the survey established that, while favorable attitudes toward Israel remain strong, pluralities of Americans believe that President Obama should pursue a policy less supportive of Israel than his predecessor. They believe he ought to “get tough” with Israel on settlements, and “steer a middle course between Israel and the Palestinians.”
These findings, however, mask the deep divide within the electorate.
Attitudes toward U.S.-Israeli Relations
Americans do support Israel, to be sure. But, are the interests of the two countries identical, and does its support for Israel strengthen or weaken the U.S.? Three quarters of voters who supported John McCain believe that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical. Nearly as many believe that the U.S. is strengthened by its support of Israel. Obama voters, however, strongly disagree with both propositions, with more than one half disagreeing that the interests of the two countries are the same. Similarly, half of Obama voters believe the U.S. is weakened by its support for Israel, with only one in five seeing the U.S. as strengthened.
When asked which is more important to the U.S.— relations with Israel, the Arabs, or both – only 7% of Obama voters say Israel, 17% say the Arabs, and 68% say both. On the other hand, 46% of McCain voters say that the U.S. relationship with Israel is most important, only 3% emphasize relations with the Arabs, while 48% say both.
It appears from the results of the survey that the recent war in Gaza served to widen the gap between the two groups of voters. Half of Obama supporters said that war made them less supportive of Israel, while two-thirds of McCain voters actually say that the Gaza war made them more supportive of Israel.
What Should the U.S. Do?
Predictably, McCain voters saw Bush as an honest broker (by an 84%-8% margin). Obama voters disagreed by an equally overwhelming margin. But what should President Obama do? When asked, 73% of those who voted for President Obama say he should “steer a middle course,” with only 10% saying he should support Israel and 6% saying support the Palestinians. Wildly different responses come from the McCain voters, 60% of whom say the current President should support Israel! Only 22% of McCain supporters say the President should be balanced in his approach to the conflict
Engage with Hamas? By a 67%-16% margin Obama voters say yes, while 79% of McCain voters say no. And should the U.S. get tough with Israel? 80% of Obama voters say it is time to get tough, with 73% Of McCain voters disagreeing.
Solving Final Status Issues
Even when it comes to solving critical final status issues, the two camps hold positions that are mirror opposites of one another. Do Palestinians have the right of return? Obama voters agree they do by a margin of 61%-13%, while McCain voters disagree, 21%-51%. Should Jerusalem be divided and serve as the capital of two states, or remain under sole Israeli control? Obama voters prefer the “divided” and “two capitals” option with McCain voters overwhelmingly supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel
Similarly, a majority of Obama voters believe Israel should be made to remove its settlements from occupied Palestinian lands, while a majority of McCain voters believe the settlements should stay.
Two Observations
The depth of this partisan divide is instructive on many levels. First and foremost, it establishes that, despite the claim of hard-line supporters of Israel, traditional U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not have bipartisan backing. In fact, as the two parties have evolved over the past thirty years, and as the issue itself has evolved – since Oslo – each of the two parties have moved in different directions.
The dominant role of the religious right, which now comprises up to one-third of the base of the Republican Party, coupled with the degree to which neo-conservativism has come to define the world view of that party, have contributed to a significant reorientation of the GOP. These two strands of thought were brought together by George W. Bush, who also embraced Ariel Sharon, and, post-9/11, characterized the struggles of Israel and the U.S. as identical. As a result, it now appears that the GOP is no longer the party of George Herbert Walker Bush and James Baker, but an entirely new entity.
Meanwhile, the base of the Democratic Party, has come to be defined by progressives (including a significant number of progressive Jews) and minority communities who have grown weary of Bush’s ideological approach to conflict. They have come to reject his policies and recoil from their consequences.
Obama’s victory, therefore, represents not only the election of a new President, but the victory of a new coalition whose component parts support an anti-war, pro-peace and pro-human rights agenda. This coalition, our poll findings demonstrate, can provide the support the new President needs, should he decide on a dramatically different direction for U.S policy toward the Israeli-Arab conflict.
SWAT Analysis: Keeping an Eye on the Resurgent Taliban By Animesh Roul
SWAT Analysis: Keeping an Eye on the Resurgent Taliban
By Animesh Roul
‘Swat Analysis’ is a Daily brief on the resurgent Taliban and their safe sanctuaries in Pakistan. The brief will be posted in regular intervals focusing on the developments in Swat province, NWPF and other Taliban hotspots.
The scenic Swat valley (an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan is under complete control of Pakistani Taliban since the Islamabad administration succumbed to the demands of the militants and allowed them to implement Sharia law. The so called peace deal between Taliban and the NWFP government, effective from February 16, gave more power to Taliban elements to run parallel government and to exploit its abundant natural resources to fund their terrorist activities (they call it Jihad). The Taliban group in Swat led by Maulana Fazlullah, and pro Taliban religious extremist outfit Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) led by Sufi Muhammad have been ruling the region with active support from Taliban umbrella group, Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). At present, the Taliban consisting of Pakistanis, Afghans, Chechen and Tajik militants are well trained and equipped with SUVs, Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket launchers posing greater threat not only to Pakistan’s integrity, but to the South Asian region at large.
President Zardari signed the agreement, the Sharia Nizam-i-Adl Regulation 2009, on April 13, 2009 only to allow tranquility in the area. However, Mullah Fazlullah has said that the Taliban would accept only Islamic writ in the Valley and the whole Malakand division. Taliban forces also want Sharia rule all over Pakistan sooner or later. Terming democracy as unIslamic, TNSM chief Sufi Muhammad said recently that the prevailing political system in the country contravenes Islam and the Quran. He even accused Pakistan’s political elites of appeasing the USA and allies by thrusting the system of 'kafirs' or infidels on the people of the country.
On April 27, Pakistani forces retaliated against the rampaging Taliban in NWPF, following Taliban's Buner pullout couple of days back. Pakistan forces have killed nearly 50 Taliban militants in the latest renewed offensive against Taliban hideouts in Dir and Swat.
After this the TNSM which has been the face and voice of Taliban in Malakand region pulled out of the already fragile February 16 (2009) peace deal. In the face of this dangerous development, Taliban’s only English speaking spokesman Muslim Khan indicated strongly that the militants would not lay down their arms at any cost. The TNSM threatened earlier to quit the peace deal if Darul Qaza and the qazi courts in Malakand division as per the deal.
The situation remains volatile and unpredictable in Pakistan's NWFP, as a 20 member Ulema delegation reached Swat for talks with Suif Mohammad and members of shura of TNSM.
April 27, 2009 02:12 PM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/swat_analysis_keeping_an_eye_o.php
By Animesh Roul
‘Swat Analysis’ is a Daily brief on the resurgent Taliban and their safe sanctuaries in Pakistan. The brief will be posted in regular intervals focusing on the developments in Swat province, NWPF and other Taliban hotspots.
The scenic Swat valley (an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan is under complete control of Pakistani Taliban since the Islamabad administration succumbed to the demands of the militants and allowed them to implement Sharia law. The so called peace deal between Taliban and the NWFP government, effective from February 16, gave more power to Taliban elements to run parallel government and to exploit its abundant natural resources to fund their terrorist activities (they call it Jihad). The Taliban group in Swat led by Maulana Fazlullah, and pro Taliban religious extremist outfit Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) led by Sufi Muhammad have been ruling the region with active support from Taliban umbrella group, Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). At present, the Taliban consisting of Pakistanis, Afghans, Chechen and Tajik militants are well trained and equipped with SUVs, Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket launchers posing greater threat not only to Pakistan’s integrity, but to the South Asian region at large.
President Zardari signed the agreement, the Sharia Nizam-i-Adl Regulation 2009, on April 13, 2009 only to allow tranquility in the area. However, Mullah Fazlullah has said that the Taliban would accept only Islamic writ in the Valley and the whole Malakand division. Taliban forces also want Sharia rule all over Pakistan sooner or later. Terming democracy as unIslamic, TNSM chief Sufi Muhammad said recently that the prevailing political system in the country contravenes Islam and the Quran. He even accused Pakistan’s political elites of appeasing the USA and allies by thrusting the system of 'kafirs' or infidels on the people of the country.
On April 27, Pakistani forces retaliated against the rampaging Taliban in NWPF, following Taliban's Buner pullout couple of days back. Pakistan forces have killed nearly 50 Taliban militants in the latest renewed offensive against Taliban hideouts in Dir and Swat.
After this the TNSM which has been the face and voice of Taliban in Malakand region pulled out of the already fragile February 16 (2009) peace deal. In the face of this dangerous development, Taliban’s only English speaking spokesman Muslim Khan indicated strongly that the militants would not lay down their arms at any cost. The TNSM threatened earlier to quit the peace deal if Darul Qaza and the qazi courts in Malakand division as per the deal.
The situation remains volatile and unpredictable in Pakistan's NWFP, as a 20 member Ulema delegation reached Swat for talks with Suif Mohammad and members of shura of TNSM.
April 27, 2009 02:12 PM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/swat_analysis_keeping_an_eye_o.php
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Obama Sustains the Status Quo by Andrew J. Bacevich
Obama Sustains
the Status Quo
by Andrew J. Bacevich
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/25/obamas_sins_of_omission/
the Status Quo
by Andrew J. Bacevich
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/25/obamas_sins_of_omission/
The Efficacy of Torture by Haviland Smith
The Efficacy of Torture
April 21, 2009
Haviland Smith
Most Americans who are watching revelations about our past torture practices and related abuses, or “enhanced interrogation techniques”, seem primarily interested in the extent and nature of those activities. In the arcane world of secret intelligence, many professionals are asking precisely what if any benefits have accrued as a result of these questionable activities. More simply put, does torture work?
Interrogation is one of the disciplines used by intelligence officers working to obtain information. It rests somewhere in a continuum that includes interviewing, recruitment, debriefing and elicitation.
The most basic of these techniques is arguably recruitment, in which an intelligence officer seeks to obtain the cooperation of a prospective agent for the purpose of producing needed intelligence. Recruitment attempts can be categorized into two general categories, collaborative and coercive. Of these two, collaborative recruitments have been the only ones that have been consistently successful. Coercive recruitments rarely work because there is no communality of interest, only the threat of some as yet undefined punishment for the prospective recruit.
Collaborative recruitment is like seduction. It involves a dynamic in which two people realize that they have a common goal and then work together to reach that goal. The point is, it is a mutually shared process and goal. It works only if there is some positive benefit in it for both participants.
Interrogation is a totally different process. It starts with the fact that it involves one person who has been captured or arrested and is now being held captive by another, creating an uneven situation in which there is no mutual benefit in sight. That means that at the onset of the interrogation process, there is no identity of purpose between captor and captive. There is only reason for the captive to do everything he thinks will help him survive.
In an uneven, captor/captive situation, the captive – and this is particularly true in military or intelligence operations – has no reason to tell the truth. He has every reason to try to figure out what his captor wants and to then try to provide it. He will say virtually anything to stop torture, but will be terrified to reveal the real truth, realizing that doing so will probably end the interrogation process, bringing totally a uncertain future for him, perhaps even death!
Truly gifted interrogators say unequivocally that they can move from the essentially hostile imbalance that is inherent at the beginning of an interrogation to the stage of mutual advantage found in a recruitment scenario simply by approaching the captive as if he were a recruitment target. At that point, using the same process of seduction, he not only establishes a mutuality of interest, but completely removes all the disadvantages of coercion.
Members of the Bush Administration and the occasional “anonymous CIA source” have consistently told us that waterboarding has produced critical intelligence. Yet, admissions have crept into the public domain that not all of what was learned by waterboarding was true and accurate. Many of the most experienced and successful Military and FBI interrogators support this conclusion, saying it simply does not work.
The purpose of this piece is not to attempt to justify waterboarding or any other sort enhanced interrogation technique, or torture. We live in an unfortunate environment in which, thanks to mass media productions like Fox TV’s “24”, many Americans have been led to believe that torture produces critical intelligence. As that is the primary argument used by proponents of waterboarding, it simply must be challenged and cleared up. The keys to this matter lie probably the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
If it is found to be true that torture is productive, the debate formed in the Bush era on the legality of enhanced interrogation will continue. It will probably end with the banning of these techniques based simply on their lack of constitutionality.
However, if it can be established, as it is claimed by so many successful and experienced interrogators, that torture does not work and really never has, there will be no need for further debate.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
April 21, 2009
Haviland Smith
Most Americans who are watching revelations about our past torture practices and related abuses, or “enhanced interrogation techniques”, seem primarily interested in the extent and nature of those activities. In the arcane world of secret intelligence, many professionals are asking precisely what if any benefits have accrued as a result of these questionable activities. More simply put, does torture work?
Interrogation is one of the disciplines used by intelligence officers working to obtain information. It rests somewhere in a continuum that includes interviewing, recruitment, debriefing and elicitation.
The most basic of these techniques is arguably recruitment, in which an intelligence officer seeks to obtain the cooperation of a prospective agent for the purpose of producing needed intelligence. Recruitment attempts can be categorized into two general categories, collaborative and coercive. Of these two, collaborative recruitments have been the only ones that have been consistently successful. Coercive recruitments rarely work because there is no communality of interest, only the threat of some as yet undefined punishment for the prospective recruit.
Collaborative recruitment is like seduction. It involves a dynamic in which two people realize that they have a common goal and then work together to reach that goal. The point is, it is a mutually shared process and goal. It works only if there is some positive benefit in it for both participants.
Interrogation is a totally different process. It starts with the fact that it involves one person who has been captured or arrested and is now being held captive by another, creating an uneven situation in which there is no mutual benefit in sight. That means that at the onset of the interrogation process, there is no identity of purpose between captor and captive. There is only reason for the captive to do everything he thinks will help him survive.
In an uneven, captor/captive situation, the captive – and this is particularly true in military or intelligence operations – has no reason to tell the truth. He has every reason to try to figure out what his captor wants and to then try to provide it. He will say virtually anything to stop torture, but will be terrified to reveal the real truth, realizing that doing so will probably end the interrogation process, bringing totally a uncertain future for him, perhaps even death!
Truly gifted interrogators say unequivocally that they can move from the essentially hostile imbalance that is inherent at the beginning of an interrogation to the stage of mutual advantage found in a recruitment scenario simply by approaching the captive as if he were a recruitment target. At that point, using the same process of seduction, he not only establishes a mutuality of interest, but completely removes all the disadvantages of coercion.
Members of the Bush Administration and the occasional “anonymous CIA source” have consistently told us that waterboarding has produced critical intelligence. Yet, admissions have crept into the public domain that not all of what was learned by waterboarding was true and accurate. Many of the most experienced and successful Military and FBI interrogators support this conclusion, saying it simply does not work.
The purpose of this piece is not to attempt to justify waterboarding or any other sort enhanced interrogation technique, or torture. We live in an unfortunate environment in which, thanks to mass media productions like Fox TV’s “24”, many Americans have been led to believe that torture produces critical intelligence. As that is the primary argument used by proponents of waterboarding, it simply must be challenged and cleared up. The keys to this matter lie probably the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
If it is found to be true that torture is productive, the debate formed in the Bush era on the legality of enhanced interrogation will continue. It will probably end with the banning of these techniques based simply on their lack of constitutionality.
However, if it can be established, as it is claimed by so many successful and experienced interrogators, that torture does not work and really never has, there will be no need for further debate.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
Pakistan
Pakistan Fires Key Architect of Swat Peace Deal - Zahid Hussain and Matthew Rosenberg, Wall Street Journal. Pakistan's government fired an official who played a key role in crafting a peace deal that has given the Taliban control of the Swat Valley as militants partially pulled backed from a neighboring area they occupied this past week. The Taliban retreat from the Buner district back to their camps in Swat headed off what some feared was an imminent clash with the military. But government and Taliban officials said "local" Taliban were still in Buner, just 60 miles from Islamabad. The situation remained volatile and a growing number of Pakistani officials, foreign diplomats and analysts are saying it is only a matter of time before the Swat peace deal collapses.
In Pakistan, Guile Helps Taliban Gain - Jane Perlez and Zubair Shah, New York Times. Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them. But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.
‘Stop the Taliban Now, Or We Will’ - Christina Lamb and Daud Khattak, The Times. America made clear last week that it would attack Taliban forces in their Swat valley stronghold unless the Pakistan government stopped the militants’ advance towards Islamabad.
Pakistan Troops Stare Down Taliban - Amanda Hodge, The Australian. Taliban militants began retreating last night from towns less than 100km from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, after the Government despatched hundreds of troops to face down the extremists. The weak civilian Government finally acted to stem the march of the Islamic insurgents, three days after hundreds of militants seized control of fresh territory in the North Western Frontier Province. The move came as the US warned Pakistan that its relationship with the nuclear-armed nation depended on the Government's ability to stem the Taliban insurgency.
Taliban Retains Grip on Pakistan District - Zulfiqar Ali and Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times. Although recent headlines suggest that the Taliban has left Buner district, only 60 miles from the Pakistani capital, the facts Saturday told another story. Throughout the day, militants in black turbans with cloths over their faces could be seen brandishing automatic weapons in vehicles around the bazaars and on the main roads. Their stereos blared religious songs, and their presence was particularly evident at strategic locations such as key intersections.
Taliban Troops Make Tactical Retreat from Buner District - Saeed Shah, Daily Telegraph. Taliban fighters in Pakistan have begun a tactical retreat from a district just 60 miles from the capital Islamabad following an international outcry over their growing grip on parts of the country. The withdrawal followed an accusation from Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, that the Pakistani government was "abdicating to the Taliban".
Pakistan Warns Taliban to Fully Withdraw - Raza Khan, Washington Times. Pakistani Taliban officials said Saturday they have completely pulled out of a district 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad, but local officials said some armed militants were still holding their positions, forcing the military to warn that they could be expelled by force.
5 Killed in Afghan Governor's Compound - Associated Press. Three suicide bombers penetrated the governor's compound in Afghanistan's largest southern city Saturday, killing at least five police officers in the latest multi-pronged attack in the Taliban's spiritual birthplace. The three bombers were able to get past an initial security checkpoint in the governor's compound, and one bomber exploded himself at a second checkpoint, said Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president's brother and the head of Kandahar's provincial council.
Our Military Humiliation in Afghanistan is a Scandal and the Cover-up is an Even Greater One - Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph opinion. One of the best kept secrets of our recent politics, thanks to the news management of the Ministry of Defence, was how our occupation of southern Iraq turned into one of the greatest humiliations in the history of the British Army. In the end, after our hopelessly ill-equipped and undermanned contingent had been forced to abandon to the insurgents the two main cities of the region, Basra and Al Amarah, the Americans and Iraqis had to intervene to take them back. Last Christmas, having failed in our mission, we were contemptuously ordered to leave his country by the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Now, it seems, the MoD is managing to hide the fact that something remarkably similar is happening in Afghanistan.
Sound the Alarm - Washington Post editorial. The Taliban raised fears in Pakistan last week by briefly seizing new territories near the capital, Islamabad. But in its own way, the Obama administration offered as much reason for panic about the deteriorating situation in that nuclear-armed Muslim country. In the course of just three days, the US secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the commanding general of American forces in the Middle East all publicly warned, in blunt and dire language, that Pakistan was facing an existential threat - and that its government and Army were not facing it. "I think that the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In Pakistan, Guile Helps Taliban Gain - Jane Perlez and Zubair Shah, New York Times. Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them. But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.
‘Stop the Taliban Now, Or We Will’ - Christina Lamb and Daud Khattak, The Times. America made clear last week that it would attack Taliban forces in their Swat valley stronghold unless the Pakistan government stopped the militants’ advance towards Islamabad.
Pakistan Troops Stare Down Taliban - Amanda Hodge, The Australian. Taliban militants began retreating last night from towns less than 100km from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, after the Government despatched hundreds of troops to face down the extremists. The weak civilian Government finally acted to stem the march of the Islamic insurgents, three days after hundreds of militants seized control of fresh territory in the North Western Frontier Province. The move came as the US warned Pakistan that its relationship with the nuclear-armed nation depended on the Government's ability to stem the Taliban insurgency.
Taliban Retains Grip on Pakistan District - Zulfiqar Ali and Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times. Although recent headlines suggest that the Taliban has left Buner district, only 60 miles from the Pakistani capital, the facts Saturday told another story. Throughout the day, militants in black turbans with cloths over their faces could be seen brandishing automatic weapons in vehicles around the bazaars and on the main roads. Their stereos blared religious songs, and their presence was particularly evident at strategic locations such as key intersections.
Taliban Troops Make Tactical Retreat from Buner District - Saeed Shah, Daily Telegraph. Taliban fighters in Pakistan have begun a tactical retreat from a district just 60 miles from the capital Islamabad following an international outcry over their growing grip on parts of the country. The withdrawal followed an accusation from Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, that the Pakistani government was "abdicating to the Taliban".
Pakistan Warns Taliban to Fully Withdraw - Raza Khan, Washington Times. Pakistani Taliban officials said Saturday they have completely pulled out of a district 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad, but local officials said some armed militants were still holding their positions, forcing the military to warn that they could be expelled by force.
5 Killed in Afghan Governor's Compound - Associated Press. Three suicide bombers penetrated the governor's compound in Afghanistan's largest southern city Saturday, killing at least five police officers in the latest multi-pronged attack in the Taliban's spiritual birthplace. The three bombers were able to get past an initial security checkpoint in the governor's compound, and one bomber exploded himself at a second checkpoint, said Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president's brother and the head of Kandahar's provincial council.
Our Military Humiliation in Afghanistan is a Scandal and the Cover-up is an Even Greater One - Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph opinion. One of the best kept secrets of our recent politics, thanks to the news management of the Ministry of Defence, was how our occupation of southern Iraq turned into one of the greatest humiliations in the history of the British Army. In the end, after our hopelessly ill-equipped and undermanned contingent had been forced to abandon to the insurgents the two main cities of the region, Basra and Al Amarah, the Americans and Iraqis had to intervene to take them back. Last Christmas, having failed in our mission, we were contemptuously ordered to leave his country by the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Now, it seems, the MoD is managing to hide the fact that something remarkably similar is happening in Afghanistan.
Sound the Alarm - Washington Post editorial. The Taliban raised fears in Pakistan last week by briefly seizing new territories near the capital, Islamabad. But in its own way, the Obama administration offered as much reason for panic about the deteriorating situation in that nuclear-armed Muslim country. In the course of just three days, the US secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the commanding general of American forces in the Middle East all publicly warned, in blunt and dire language, that Pakistan was facing an existential threat - and that its government and Army were not facing it. "I think that the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Brzezinski's interview with Press TV Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:32:32 GMT
(For those who don't know it, Press TV is an international English-language international television news channel funded by the Iranian government, based in Tehran, widely syndicated, and broadcast round the clock. It has 26 international correspondents -- somewhat fewer than CNN -- and more than 500 staff around the world. Its stated mission is to offer a different view of world events.)
Brzezinski's interview with Press TV
Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:32:32 GMT
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski
By Susan Modaress, Press TV
The following is a Press TV interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Polish-American statesman and former national security advisor under President Jimmy Carter.
Press TV: Dr. Zbigniew, thank you for joining us today on this special edition of Face to Face.
Brzezinski: It's nice to be with you. It is nice to have the opportunity to talk to Iranian viewers.
Press TV: And our international viewers abroad as well?
Brzezinski: Of course, but the former are more important.
Press TV: Dr. Zbigniew, before the interview we were talking about the fact that how fascinated I was, personally, that you were at the forefront of American politics when two or three of the most major internal developments of our time took place; one was the Iranian revolution, two was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and as you mentioned the relations with China.
Looking at these issues one by one, how would you assess the current administration's policy toward Afghanistan, and how has it changed throughout the years?
Brzezinski: Well, the current administration's policy has not changed throughout the years, because it has been in office under several weeks.
But American policy is going to change, because the new administration has a more serious, more responsible, and more nuanced view of the problem. That is to say the problem is specifically al-Qaeda. Taliban may be an umbrella. It may be connected with it by historical circumstances, but Taliban is essentially a specific Afghan phenomenon focused on Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is an extremist organization which has a variety of very hostile intentions towards a number of countries in the world. The United States very much so, and we know this very painfully because of what happened here in New York City.
And it also involves other countries. If I dare say so, it also probably involves Iran as an object of some hostility on the part of al-Qaeda. Our objective, as articulated by President Obama, is to separate al-Qaeda from Taliban and to find a way whereby Afghanistan can be governed, in part, through traditional arrangements, in part, through some improvements, modernization, better social services, better transportation and, in part, also perhaps by some limited regional accommodations with different groups within the Taliban that maybe satisfied with a local status-quo arrangement, who can't see themselves as part of a larger global conspiracy.
Press TV: Now, we have good terrorist, bad terrorist. We have good Taliban, moderate Taliban and the bad Taliban which would become al-Qaeda. These definitions seem to change with administration. Do you think that the policy negotiating with the "moderate Taliban", would be wise for America's national security?
Brzezinski: There is an obvious deference between, not several administrations, but two administrations, the Bush administration and the Obama administration. The Bush administration had a sort of generalized, black/white view of the threat and sometimes used language that almost implied that the threat was in some fashion, in an un-generalized manner, an Islamic threat.
I think Obama recognizes the specificity of the threat: Al-Qaeda. Taliban happens to be a historically accidental association with al-Qaeda. And I think that if we can manage to negotiate with some second nuance of the Taliban, not the entire Taliban- the movement is not that centralized anyway- then perhaps arrange for a kind of modus vivendi in parts of Afghanistan.
Actual Taliban is not that influential through out Afghanistan. It is more influential in certain zones.
Press TV: It's gaining momentum ...
Brzezinski: Well, up to a point. It is certainly not a dominant force in terms of popular support. It is also very much a Pashtun phenomenon, and that spills the problem over into Pakistan.
I approve of what President Obama has been doing, in part because I have been advocating it myself for months now, in the press in the United States, in the European press, in the leading German, French, and British publications, on the radio and television. So, I am happy to see the administration doing what it does, and I think that is a better way towards finding an acceptable solution to the problem.
Press TV: To what extent do you think that the United States was responsible in creating the Mujahideen the Taliban and today, al-Qaeda? I think if anyone is responsible for the creation of the Mujahideen it was the Soviet Union. The Mujahideen was a reaction to the Soviet invasion. It was a spontaneous national reaction in Afghanistan. Supporting it made great sense. Because a Soviet victory at that time, with the Soviet Union actively sponsoring terrorist camps on the Soviet territory would have given the Soviet Union enormous momentum in the region.
And incidentally, since this program is originating in part from Tehran, it would have been a threat to Iran as well. And this is why the Iranian leadership was not enamored of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I think this was the right decision.
The Taliban arose after the Soviet Union was driven out, and when the West basically ignored the ravaged destroyed Afghan society. The Taliban came and filled a void which should not have been permitted to develop, there should have been an earlier, more constructive, more positive Western reaction.
In some ways, there should have been a reaction then, of the kind that took place in early 2002.
Press TV: A military invasion?
Brzezinski: When the United States and others, drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, initially, with the support, incidentally of Iran, very active, very important support.
That should have been done much earlier. We should have gotten together in a constructive fashion to help Afghanistan recover immediately after the departure of the Soviet in the late 1980s.
Press TV: Basically, militarily attack Afghanistan?
Brzezinski: No, the contrary! Provide positive political, social, and economic support to Afghanistan. After the Soviets had been driven out by the Mujahideen there was a social void, there was a political vacuum, there was enormous suffering and the rest of the world simply ignored Afghanistan at that moment and that created the opportunity for the Taliban.
Press TV: It is interesting that today, or during the previous years, the Afghan war has been termed as the forgotten war. Are we seeing that again? Are we seeing Afghanistan being ignored again?
Brzezinski: No, I do not think so; quite the contrary. We are not seeing Afghanistan being ignored. There is a lot of involvement now in Afghanistan. There is the international community, not only directly on the ground forces, but social aid, economic assistance, but also international conferences.
The most recent one which is about to conclude as we speak, involves a large number of countries, including incidentally the United States and Iran.
Press TV: What do make of President Obama's comments acknowledging Iran as the Islamic Republic after thirty years?
Brzezinski: I totally endorsed him. You know, I met with [head of Iran's interim government Mehdi] Bazargan and [leader of the Iran Freedom Movement Ebrahim] Yazdi after the [1979 Islamic] revolution.
And without going into enormous amount of historical detail, I am positive, without pointing accusatory fingers, there was even then a chance for some normalization. I am glad it may be now beginning to become reality. But normalization takes two, it can not be undertaken by one side alone.
I think President Obama made a historic effort. I think it was intellectually brave, politically courageous, and potentially and historically constructive. I think it is therefore very important to go forward. But it can only go forward if there is reciprocity.
Press TV: Iranian officials have asked for action, saying that actions speak louder than words. Do you think that these comments are basically enough on the part of the United States in reaching out to Iran?
Brzezinski: A relationship has to be built on mutual accommodation. A relationship between serious powers is not built on begging or pleading. If there is a genuine interest in mutual accommodation, actions as well as words, have to be reciprocal. Words are usually the beginning of a diplomatic dialogue. I think President Obama made a really historically significant gesture, and it can leads to things.
But, we sit down and start pointing fingers at each other, but and if we start to say: you have to take the first action ... No, you have to take the first action, it is not going to be very productive.
Press TV: I do not think that either side is at that point right now. I think that acknowledging that Iran is the Islamic Republic was a positive gesture definitely. But, then there are analysts who say what America needs to do, is stop setting pre-conditions for negotiations with Iran. You cannot set preconditions for pre-negotiations and negotiations.
Do you think that on that front perhaps the United States stop its "carrot and stick" policy, as some analysts like to put it?
Brzezinski: Well, you confused the two. Preconditions is one aspect of the American policy, and the "carrot and stick" is a generalized description of some aspects of it. It so happens that in my testimony before Congress, in my writings, I have said that if there are to be negotiations, they can not be based on unilateral preconditions. The United States should not insist on unilateral preconditions. Or alternatively there can be reciprocal preconditions; one side does this, the other side does that-more or less simultaneously.
But that kind of process can only get on the way if there is a willingness, seriously to sit down, to in effect signal a willingness to discuss seriously, and not start by making demands that one side only has to undertake actions and the other side can simply sit back and wait on whether it approves of these actions.
That is a formula for a stalemate. So I am hopeful that mature leadership in both countries, sense of responsibility for the region in the future, and awareness of the fact that both countries play important roles in the world, will accumulate to create condition under which we sit down in the wake of the intuitive undertaken and talk with each other as people are prepared seriously to negotiate.
Press TV: And for the United States at this point in time, what is that concrete action? What is the bottom line for the United States to see for negotiations to resume?
Brzezinski: Willingness to negotiate. That is all.
Press TV: Will the United States change its policies, change its actions and not just its words?
Brzezinski: Well you know, I could ask you the same question, except that you are interviewing me and I am not interviewing you.
Press TV: I could give the answer that Iranian officials are saying ...
Brzezinski:"If you were someone who was involved with Iranian government I could ask you: what actions are you prepared to take?
I am not authorized to negotiate. I am not negotiating. I speak for myself. But as someone who knows something about international affairs, I can say that you are not going to get negotiations going if one side insists that the other side undertake actions, that the side insisting then approves and then after that there are negotiations. Negotiations begin by serious discussions.
I think, what Mr. Obama did is to initiate the process in a constructive way, from the American side. It is a decision for Iran to make on its own, from the standpoint of its own sense of history and interests, whether it wants relations with the United States or whether it does not.
I hope that it does, because I think that it would be good for the world. I think it would be good for the United States. I think it would be good for Iran. But that is a judgment that each side has to make on its own.
Press TV: And on the part of Iranian officials, what I have been hearing - of course I do not have a government post - but what they say is that they are open to dialogue, if and when they see a change of policy and if and when the situation is right, hopefully the situation is right and to the benefit of both sides.
Brzezinski: I do not think that you are getting the point that I am making. If the Iranian position is that negotiations will only take place when they see evident changes in American policy, then I think they are failing to see something important that has already taken place; namely an overture that is constructive in spirit and in historic significance.
And the proper response to that is not to say that we are going to wait and see that you prove by some actions, that we either desire or specify or will then judge. That is not the way to begin serious negotiations.
Press TV: So what you are saying is that the United States' change of tone has been a step forward.
Brzezinski: Well, in diplomacy and in international affairs, tones are very important. Abusing, accusing, insulting, are sometimes also negotiating methods. The intent then if it is conducted by intelligent people, who know what they are saying, is obviously to prevent negotiations.
You can operate that way either if you are very stupid, or if very, very Machiavellian. But if you do not want negotiations to succeed, you can start them by insulting, abusing, accusing.
Press TV: Let us talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You were an extremely influential figure during the Camp David negotiations. Do you think that a two-state solution is possible at this point in time?
Brzezinski: I think it is not only possible, but it is necessary. It seems to me that if there is not such a solution in the not too distant future, the opportunity for that solution may pass.
There is settlement activity, which makes a real accommodation difficult. There are incidents, events, tragic situations, like what happened in Gaza, which poisoned the atmosphere.
There is a tendency, in different degrees perhaps and not yet irrevocable, but there is a tendency on both sides towards more extremist views.
So I think, time is of the essence. But I do think that still, it is possible to have a settlement in part because, according to public opinion polls, both within Israel itself and within Palestine, the majorities are still for settlement. And very interestingly, public opinion polls show that the majority of American Jews, who are as Americans interested in American policy and try to influence it, the majority, 60%, favor a two-state solution.
Press TV: What about the coming to power of a figure like Benjamin Netanyahu. Do you think that this will affect negotiations between the two sides?
Brzezinski: You know, the obvious and the short-range answer is, it will complicate it. On the other hand, sometimes, the leaders of that type are the ones that in the end can deliver a settlement, which reduces the opposition of the most rigid dogmatic elements within their camps.
In a way, if Netanyahu has some, as his foreign minister who has been described in American newspapers as having racist views, he may have a match on the Palestinian side, with Hamas in the government, who is described in Israel and elsewhere as a terrorist group, and paradoxically such two governments can reach a more comprehensive solution than when both sides are divided among moderates and extremists, and thereby paralyzed.
So it depends, it depends a bit on their personalities. It depends also a great deal on how the United States conducts itself. Because the fact is we have a great deal of influence with both sides.
Press TV: Regarding the Palestinian issue and Hamas, do you think that it is wise to draw a parallel between a Hamas, which was democratically elected in 2006, and the Israeli government? Because Hamas still enjoys great support among the Palestinian people, so when we say these are extremist views, are we calling as the international community is calling it? Are we using that definition? Or do you really believe that this is the case.
Brzezinski: You know both groups have been elected by their constituencies, and both groups have support in their constituencies. But within both groups, there is also a spectrum of opinion; some leaders are very rigid, very extremist, very uncompromising; some less so. And the name of the game is to find some kid of formula in which both sides recognize that in the long run they are better by accommodating than by waging a conflict, which will exclude the two-state solution but also in the long run create an abyss, a division, between both sides that will make for permanent instability and conflict in the region.
And from the American point of view, I think, paradoxically, it may be even a moment of opportunity.
Press TV: Coming back to the United States, are there any elements in a certain lobby that have an extremist tendency, or a very influential sense of power in the Obama administration right now, at this point in time?
Brzezinski: I think it is really changing. As I just cited, 69% of American Jews favor a two-state solution, that is something that probably a few years ago was a kind of anathema to the majority. I think that there is a growing realization within the responsible leadership of the Jewish-American community that [not] to let the two-state solution pass, is to create in the long run, conditions increasingly inimical to Israel's long-term survival in the region as an accepted part of the region.
Press TV: What about organizations like AIPAC?
Brzezinski: This would fit our previous discussion, and I am sure since AIPAC is a large-scale organization, there are probably differences of opinion in it now too.
Press TV: What did you make of the Charles Freeman saga recently?
Brzezinski: What do you mean what did I make of it?
Press TV: Well, he was chosen to head the National Intelligence Committee, and he resigned. President Obama did not back him. There was a wave of accusations against him, that he is too moderate and that he does not have Israeli interests at hand and that he might be perhaps a dangerous figure in the current administration, and in dealing with the future of the Middle East.
Brzezinski: Well you know some of these accusations were extreme and in my view unacceptable, and from a human point of view hurtful. So in that sense it was deplorable. On the other hand, I also have to acknowledge the fact that from a realistic point of view, that you want someone in that position who is not a priori, very controversial.
And the reason that he withdrew, he was not incidentally appointed by Obama himself, he was chosen by the head of National Intelligence, and the reason that he withdrew was that he realized that as a consequence of this very unfortunate, very unfair attacks on him, [he had become] so controversial that if he then makes a judgment or renders an opinion as the head of the Intelligence Council, that opinion will automatically be questioned, because he is viewed in some fashion as having been part of a very deep and wrenching debate.
So, probably, from a practical point of view, once that affair escalated to the level of ugliness that it did, the decision was a right one, I am sorry to say.
Press TV: And do you think that he became this controversial figure because he was swimming against the stream?
Brzezinski: We do not know. I mean, I do not think that he was swimming against the stream, if anything, if my final analysis turns up, he was swimming with the stream, but there were many rocks in that stream.
Press TV: What about the appointment of Denis Ross? How do you see him in the equation of American foreign policy?
Brzezinski: He is a very experienced foreign policy specialist who took an active role in the Camp David II discussions, and to the extent that one can judge from the sometimes conflicting accounts of the Camp David II, he played a constructive role in them and certainly, he could be quite important in trying to find a formula which would also be reassuring to both parties and especially to the Israeli side, because the Israeli side of course has to assess any settlement from the standpoint not only of its immediate effects but also of its long-range prospects.
Press TV: What about the Palestinians?
Brzezinski: Well, What about the Palestinians?
Press TV: Well do you think that he will be a fair broker?
Brzezinski: Well, first of all I do not think that he is going to be a broker. The broker is going to be the Secretary of State and even somebody more important than the Secretary of State, and that is the President and Vice-President of the United States. I think that is where the decisions are going to be made.
Press TV: And finally, you are a realist and do you see our world, the international community, as moving towards a more multi-polar world, as we speak or a uni-polar world?
Brzezinski: Neither, Neither. I think there are strong tendencies towards international chaos in the world today. That chaos could become very destructive, because chaos generally breeds intolerance, extremism, violence, and self-destructive behavior. But at the same time, I think there is also a growing realization in the world that we have to work together, that conflicts whether they are a hundred years old or thirty years old, have to be revised and reviewed.
That in such a world, everyone will have to participate but not everyone is equal. And whether one calls it multi-polar or uni-polar, the fact is that at this historical junction some countries are more important than others, and one country particularly is critical to economic recovery in the world and in many respects therefore to its political stability, and that is a reality. It will not endure forever. History has seen powers rise and decline and no one is immune to that historical process, but the process does require recognition of existing realities. Now this is why America's role in the world is important.
But it is also important, and it should be important, that that role be defined intelligently and in a historically relevant way. And one of the reasons why I supported Obama from early on was that I felt he understood something about the 21st century that others did not, especially our previous president, and therefore his presidency would be very timely.
And since you said that this was the last question, let me add that it is particularly timely to what we were talking about earlier, namely the relationship between America and Iran.
Press TV: What is the biggest challenge that the United States is facing today?
Brzezinski: I think what I just said is part of it. I think there is a risk of the international framework disintegrating into something that will be collectively self-destructive.
Press TV: Dr. Brzezinski, thank you for your time and company on this edition of Face to Face.
Brzezinski: Thank you very much.
Brzezinski's interview with Press TV
Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:32:32 GMT
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski
By Susan Modaress, Press TV
The following is a Press TV interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Polish-American statesman and former national security advisor under President Jimmy Carter.
Press TV: Dr. Zbigniew, thank you for joining us today on this special edition of Face to Face.
Brzezinski: It's nice to be with you. It is nice to have the opportunity to talk to Iranian viewers.
Press TV: And our international viewers abroad as well?
Brzezinski: Of course, but the former are more important.
Press TV: Dr. Zbigniew, before the interview we were talking about the fact that how fascinated I was, personally, that you were at the forefront of American politics when two or three of the most major internal developments of our time took place; one was the Iranian revolution, two was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and as you mentioned the relations with China.
Looking at these issues one by one, how would you assess the current administration's policy toward Afghanistan, and how has it changed throughout the years?
Brzezinski: Well, the current administration's policy has not changed throughout the years, because it has been in office under several weeks.
But American policy is going to change, because the new administration has a more serious, more responsible, and more nuanced view of the problem. That is to say the problem is specifically al-Qaeda. Taliban may be an umbrella. It may be connected with it by historical circumstances, but Taliban is essentially a specific Afghan phenomenon focused on Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is an extremist organization which has a variety of very hostile intentions towards a number of countries in the world. The United States very much so, and we know this very painfully because of what happened here in New York City.
And it also involves other countries. If I dare say so, it also probably involves Iran as an object of some hostility on the part of al-Qaeda. Our objective, as articulated by President Obama, is to separate al-Qaeda from Taliban and to find a way whereby Afghanistan can be governed, in part, through traditional arrangements, in part, through some improvements, modernization, better social services, better transportation and, in part, also perhaps by some limited regional accommodations with different groups within the Taliban that maybe satisfied with a local status-quo arrangement, who can't see themselves as part of a larger global conspiracy.
Press TV: Now, we have good terrorist, bad terrorist. We have good Taliban, moderate Taliban and the bad Taliban which would become al-Qaeda. These definitions seem to change with administration. Do you think that the policy negotiating with the "moderate Taliban", would be wise for America's national security?
Brzezinski: There is an obvious deference between, not several administrations, but two administrations, the Bush administration and the Obama administration. The Bush administration had a sort of generalized, black/white view of the threat and sometimes used language that almost implied that the threat was in some fashion, in an un-generalized manner, an Islamic threat.
I think Obama recognizes the specificity of the threat: Al-Qaeda. Taliban happens to be a historically accidental association with al-Qaeda. And I think that if we can manage to negotiate with some second nuance of the Taliban, not the entire Taliban- the movement is not that centralized anyway- then perhaps arrange for a kind of modus vivendi in parts of Afghanistan.
Actual Taliban is not that influential through out Afghanistan. It is more influential in certain zones.
Press TV: It's gaining momentum ...
Brzezinski: Well, up to a point. It is certainly not a dominant force in terms of popular support. It is also very much a Pashtun phenomenon, and that spills the problem over into Pakistan.
I approve of what President Obama has been doing, in part because I have been advocating it myself for months now, in the press in the United States, in the European press, in the leading German, French, and British publications, on the radio and television. So, I am happy to see the administration doing what it does, and I think that is a better way towards finding an acceptable solution to the problem.
Press TV: To what extent do you think that the United States was responsible in creating the Mujahideen the Taliban and today, al-Qaeda? I think if anyone is responsible for the creation of the Mujahideen it was the Soviet Union. The Mujahideen was a reaction to the Soviet invasion. It was a spontaneous national reaction in Afghanistan. Supporting it made great sense. Because a Soviet victory at that time, with the Soviet Union actively sponsoring terrorist camps on the Soviet territory would have given the Soviet Union enormous momentum in the region.
And incidentally, since this program is originating in part from Tehran, it would have been a threat to Iran as well. And this is why the Iranian leadership was not enamored of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I think this was the right decision.
The Taliban arose after the Soviet Union was driven out, and when the West basically ignored the ravaged destroyed Afghan society. The Taliban came and filled a void which should not have been permitted to develop, there should have been an earlier, more constructive, more positive Western reaction.
In some ways, there should have been a reaction then, of the kind that took place in early 2002.
Press TV: A military invasion?
Brzezinski: When the United States and others, drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, initially, with the support, incidentally of Iran, very active, very important support.
That should have been done much earlier. We should have gotten together in a constructive fashion to help Afghanistan recover immediately after the departure of the Soviet in the late 1980s.
Press TV: Basically, militarily attack Afghanistan?
Brzezinski: No, the contrary! Provide positive political, social, and economic support to Afghanistan. After the Soviets had been driven out by the Mujahideen there was a social void, there was a political vacuum, there was enormous suffering and the rest of the world simply ignored Afghanistan at that moment and that created the opportunity for the Taliban.
Press TV: It is interesting that today, or during the previous years, the Afghan war has been termed as the forgotten war. Are we seeing that again? Are we seeing Afghanistan being ignored again?
Brzezinski: No, I do not think so; quite the contrary. We are not seeing Afghanistan being ignored. There is a lot of involvement now in Afghanistan. There is the international community, not only directly on the ground forces, but social aid, economic assistance, but also international conferences.
The most recent one which is about to conclude as we speak, involves a large number of countries, including incidentally the United States and Iran.
Press TV: What do make of President Obama's comments acknowledging Iran as the Islamic Republic after thirty years?
Brzezinski: I totally endorsed him. You know, I met with [head of Iran's interim government Mehdi] Bazargan and [leader of the Iran Freedom Movement Ebrahim] Yazdi after the [1979 Islamic] revolution.
And without going into enormous amount of historical detail, I am positive, without pointing accusatory fingers, there was even then a chance for some normalization. I am glad it may be now beginning to become reality. But normalization takes two, it can not be undertaken by one side alone.
I think President Obama made a historic effort. I think it was intellectually brave, politically courageous, and potentially and historically constructive. I think it is therefore very important to go forward. But it can only go forward if there is reciprocity.
Press TV: Iranian officials have asked for action, saying that actions speak louder than words. Do you think that these comments are basically enough on the part of the United States in reaching out to Iran?
Brzezinski: A relationship has to be built on mutual accommodation. A relationship between serious powers is not built on begging or pleading. If there is a genuine interest in mutual accommodation, actions as well as words, have to be reciprocal. Words are usually the beginning of a diplomatic dialogue. I think President Obama made a really historically significant gesture, and it can leads to things.
But, we sit down and start pointing fingers at each other, but and if we start to say: you have to take the first action ... No, you have to take the first action, it is not going to be very productive.
Press TV: I do not think that either side is at that point right now. I think that acknowledging that Iran is the Islamic Republic was a positive gesture definitely. But, then there are analysts who say what America needs to do, is stop setting pre-conditions for negotiations with Iran. You cannot set preconditions for pre-negotiations and negotiations.
Do you think that on that front perhaps the United States stop its "carrot and stick" policy, as some analysts like to put it?
Brzezinski: Well, you confused the two. Preconditions is one aspect of the American policy, and the "carrot and stick" is a generalized description of some aspects of it. It so happens that in my testimony before Congress, in my writings, I have said that if there are to be negotiations, they can not be based on unilateral preconditions. The United States should not insist on unilateral preconditions. Or alternatively there can be reciprocal preconditions; one side does this, the other side does that-more or less simultaneously.
But that kind of process can only get on the way if there is a willingness, seriously to sit down, to in effect signal a willingness to discuss seriously, and not start by making demands that one side only has to undertake actions and the other side can simply sit back and wait on whether it approves of these actions.
That is a formula for a stalemate. So I am hopeful that mature leadership in both countries, sense of responsibility for the region in the future, and awareness of the fact that both countries play important roles in the world, will accumulate to create condition under which we sit down in the wake of the intuitive undertaken and talk with each other as people are prepared seriously to negotiate.
Press TV: And for the United States at this point in time, what is that concrete action? What is the bottom line for the United States to see for negotiations to resume?
Brzezinski: Willingness to negotiate. That is all.
Press TV: Will the United States change its policies, change its actions and not just its words?
Brzezinski: Well you know, I could ask you the same question, except that you are interviewing me and I am not interviewing you.
Press TV: I could give the answer that Iranian officials are saying ...
Brzezinski:"If you were someone who was involved with Iranian government I could ask you: what actions are you prepared to take?
I am not authorized to negotiate. I am not negotiating. I speak for myself. But as someone who knows something about international affairs, I can say that you are not going to get negotiations going if one side insists that the other side undertake actions, that the side insisting then approves and then after that there are negotiations. Negotiations begin by serious discussions.
I think, what Mr. Obama did is to initiate the process in a constructive way, from the American side. It is a decision for Iran to make on its own, from the standpoint of its own sense of history and interests, whether it wants relations with the United States or whether it does not.
I hope that it does, because I think that it would be good for the world. I think it would be good for the United States. I think it would be good for Iran. But that is a judgment that each side has to make on its own.
Press TV: And on the part of Iranian officials, what I have been hearing - of course I do not have a government post - but what they say is that they are open to dialogue, if and when they see a change of policy and if and when the situation is right, hopefully the situation is right and to the benefit of both sides.
Brzezinski: I do not think that you are getting the point that I am making. If the Iranian position is that negotiations will only take place when they see evident changes in American policy, then I think they are failing to see something important that has already taken place; namely an overture that is constructive in spirit and in historic significance.
And the proper response to that is not to say that we are going to wait and see that you prove by some actions, that we either desire or specify or will then judge. That is not the way to begin serious negotiations.
Press TV: So what you are saying is that the United States' change of tone has been a step forward.
Brzezinski: Well, in diplomacy and in international affairs, tones are very important. Abusing, accusing, insulting, are sometimes also negotiating methods. The intent then if it is conducted by intelligent people, who know what they are saying, is obviously to prevent negotiations.
You can operate that way either if you are very stupid, or if very, very Machiavellian. But if you do not want negotiations to succeed, you can start them by insulting, abusing, accusing.
Press TV: Let us talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You were an extremely influential figure during the Camp David negotiations. Do you think that a two-state solution is possible at this point in time?
Brzezinski: I think it is not only possible, but it is necessary. It seems to me that if there is not such a solution in the not too distant future, the opportunity for that solution may pass.
There is settlement activity, which makes a real accommodation difficult. There are incidents, events, tragic situations, like what happened in Gaza, which poisoned the atmosphere.
There is a tendency, in different degrees perhaps and not yet irrevocable, but there is a tendency on both sides towards more extremist views.
So I think, time is of the essence. But I do think that still, it is possible to have a settlement in part because, according to public opinion polls, both within Israel itself and within Palestine, the majorities are still for settlement. And very interestingly, public opinion polls show that the majority of American Jews, who are as Americans interested in American policy and try to influence it, the majority, 60%, favor a two-state solution.
Press TV: What about the coming to power of a figure like Benjamin Netanyahu. Do you think that this will affect negotiations between the two sides?
Brzezinski: You know, the obvious and the short-range answer is, it will complicate it. On the other hand, sometimes, the leaders of that type are the ones that in the end can deliver a settlement, which reduces the opposition of the most rigid dogmatic elements within their camps.
In a way, if Netanyahu has some, as his foreign minister who has been described in American newspapers as having racist views, he may have a match on the Palestinian side, with Hamas in the government, who is described in Israel and elsewhere as a terrorist group, and paradoxically such two governments can reach a more comprehensive solution than when both sides are divided among moderates and extremists, and thereby paralyzed.
So it depends, it depends a bit on their personalities. It depends also a great deal on how the United States conducts itself. Because the fact is we have a great deal of influence with both sides.
Press TV: Regarding the Palestinian issue and Hamas, do you think that it is wise to draw a parallel between a Hamas, which was democratically elected in 2006, and the Israeli government? Because Hamas still enjoys great support among the Palestinian people, so when we say these are extremist views, are we calling as the international community is calling it? Are we using that definition? Or do you really believe that this is the case.
Brzezinski: You know both groups have been elected by their constituencies, and both groups have support in their constituencies. But within both groups, there is also a spectrum of opinion; some leaders are very rigid, very extremist, very uncompromising; some less so. And the name of the game is to find some kid of formula in which both sides recognize that in the long run they are better by accommodating than by waging a conflict, which will exclude the two-state solution but also in the long run create an abyss, a division, between both sides that will make for permanent instability and conflict in the region.
And from the American point of view, I think, paradoxically, it may be even a moment of opportunity.
Press TV: Coming back to the United States, are there any elements in a certain lobby that have an extremist tendency, or a very influential sense of power in the Obama administration right now, at this point in time?
Brzezinski: I think it is really changing. As I just cited, 69% of American Jews favor a two-state solution, that is something that probably a few years ago was a kind of anathema to the majority. I think that there is a growing realization within the responsible leadership of the Jewish-American community that [not] to let the two-state solution pass, is to create in the long run, conditions increasingly inimical to Israel's long-term survival in the region as an accepted part of the region.
Press TV: What about organizations like AIPAC?
Brzezinski: This would fit our previous discussion, and I am sure since AIPAC is a large-scale organization, there are probably differences of opinion in it now too.
Press TV: What did you make of the Charles Freeman saga recently?
Brzezinski: What do you mean what did I make of it?
Press TV: Well, he was chosen to head the National Intelligence Committee, and he resigned. President Obama did not back him. There was a wave of accusations against him, that he is too moderate and that he does not have Israeli interests at hand and that he might be perhaps a dangerous figure in the current administration, and in dealing with the future of the Middle East.
Brzezinski: Well you know some of these accusations were extreme and in my view unacceptable, and from a human point of view hurtful. So in that sense it was deplorable. On the other hand, I also have to acknowledge the fact that from a realistic point of view, that you want someone in that position who is not a priori, very controversial.
And the reason that he withdrew, he was not incidentally appointed by Obama himself, he was chosen by the head of National Intelligence, and the reason that he withdrew was that he realized that as a consequence of this very unfortunate, very unfair attacks on him, [he had become] so controversial that if he then makes a judgment or renders an opinion as the head of the Intelligence Council, that opinion will automatically be questioned, because he is viewed in some fashion as having been part of a very deep and wrenching debate.
So, probably, from a practical point of view, once that affair escalated to the level of ugliness that it did, the decision was a right one, I am sorry to say.
Press TV: And do you think that he became this controversial figure because he was swimming against the stream?
Brzezinski: We do not know. I mean, I do not think that he was swimming against the stream, if anything, if my final analysis turns up, he was swimming with the stream, but there were many rocks in that stream.
Press TV: What about the appointment of Denis Ross? How do you see him in the equation of American foreign policy?
Brzezinski: He is a very experienced foreign policy specialist who took an active role in the Camp David II discussions, and to the extent that one can judge from the sometimes conflicting accounts of the Camp David II, he played a constructive role in them and certainly, he could be quite important in trying to find a formula which would also be reassuring to both parties and especially to the Israeli side, because the Israeli side of course has to assess any settlement from the standpoint not only of its immediate effects but also of its long-range prospects.
Press TV: What about the Palestinians?
Brzezinski: Well, What about the Palestinians?
Press TV: Well do you think that he will be a fair broker?
Brzezinski: Well, first of all I do not think that he is going to be a broker. The broker is going to be the Secretary of State and even somebody more important than the Secretary of State, and that is the President and Vice-President of the United States. I think that is where the decisions are going to be made.
Press TV: And finally, you are a realist and do you see our world, the international community, as moving towards a more multi-polar world, as we speak or a uni-polar world?
Brzezinski: Neither, Neither. I think there are strong tendencies towards international chaos in the world today. That chaos could become very destructive, because chaos generally breeds intolerance, extremism, violence, and self-destructive behavior. But at the same time, I think there is also a growing realization in the world that we have to work together, that conflicts whether they are a hundred years old or thirty years old, have to be revised and reviewed.
That in such a world, everyone will have to participate but not everyone is equal. And whether one calls it multi-polar or uni-polar, the fact is that at this historical junction some countries are more important than others, and one country particularly is critical to economic recovery in the world and in many respects therefore to its political stability, and that is a reality. It will not endure forever. History has seen powers rise and decline and no one is immune to that historical process, but the process does require recognition of existing realities. Now this is why America's role in the world is important.
But it is also important, and it should be important, that that role be defined intelligently and in a historically relevant way. And one of the reasons why I supported Obama from early on was that I felt he understood something about the 21st century that others did not, especially our previous president, and therefore his presidency would be very timely.
And since you said that this was the last question, let me add that it is particularly timely to what we were talking about earlier, namely the relationship between America and Iran.
Press TV: What is the biggest challenge that the United States is facing today?
Brzezinski: I think what I just said is part of it. I think there is a risk of the international framework disintegrating into something that will be collectively self-destructive.
Press TV: Dr. Brzezinski, thank you for your time and company on this edition of Face to Face.
Brzezinski: Thank you very much.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Potential Traps for George Mitchell by Daniel Levy
PROSPECTS FOR PEACE
4/21/09
Potential Traps for George Mitchell
Daniel Levy
President Obama's special peace envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, is just wrapping up his latest visit to the Middle East. It's his third trip since being appointed and this time in addition to Israel, the West Bank, and Egypt, included Saudi Arabia and North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria), with an emphasis on a comprehensive regional peace, building on the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. (Mitchell has yet to visit Damascus or Beirut, something unlikely to take place until after June's parliamentary elections in Lebanon.)
In meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Mitchell continued to reiterate U.S. support for a two-state solution, although the emphasis of the visit, perhaps understandably, still seems to be the listening tour aspect, including the first meetings since Israel's new government took office.
Some reports on these latest meetings portray PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas as carrying a message of hope and peace in the face of a rejectionist Israeli premier. Others depict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being seized by the more urgent calling of the Iranian threat, and showing a willingness to make progress on practical issues with the Palestinians, such as the economy, while avoiding a possibly dangerous and premature effort to address the political differences -- especially given the enfeebled nature of the Palestinian counterpart.
Both views are wrong.
The sad truth is that neither leader has a meaningful strategy for creating a new equilibrium for resolving this conflict. Despite all their differences (and there are many), Netanyahu and Abbas are similar in two major respects: Both stand atop deeply dysfunctional political systems that eschew bold decision-making. And both are focused on short-term political survival, an understandable instinct and one certainly not unique to the Levant, but also woefully inadequate given the challenges faced by their respective peoples.
So, due to both circumstance and a generous dose of intentional design, Senator Mitchell's Palestinian and Israeli interlocutors are busy preparing sugar-coated traps and distractions. The Mitchell team should be well prepared to recognize the pitch of a snake- oil salesman when they hear one.
On the Israel interlocutor side, here are the main traps Mitchell should look out for:
1) The ‘Say the Magic Words' Game. Thus far, Netanyahu is refusing to explicitly endorse the two-state formula. This is being nicely set up to become a rather large red herring, whereby diplomatic attention becomes focused on teasing out a linguistic formula to claim that Israel's premier is indeed a "two-stater." Last Friday's headline in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv even suggests that Netanyahu is planning for a dramatic climb- down gesture during his first visit with U.S. President Barack Obama (now postponed from early May to possibly later in the month), during which he would declare acceptance of the two states position. What a colossal distraction and waste of time.
To paraphrase what always used to be said of former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat --what matters are his actions, not his words. Saying the magic words is of minor import. Ending the occupation and actually delivering on a two-state solution is what should matter to the Mitchell team. The latest ruse to apparently come out of the Netanyahu-Mitchell meeting was an Israeli demand that the Palestinians first recognize Israel as a Jewish state (something that neither Egypt, nor Jordan, did in their respective peace treaties with Israel) -- a meaningless diversionary tactic.
2) It's not the economy, stupid. Netanyahu advocates focusing first on what he calls "economic peace" -- developing the Palestinian economy as a prerequisite for two states. Indeed, economic improvement would be welcome, and no one should oppose moves such as ending the closures, removing the 600-plus obstacles to freedom of Palestinian movement in the West Bank (that dovetail with the map of settlements and settler road use arrangements), lifting the siege on Gaza, etc. However, by now the secret may be out that developing the Palestinian economy in order to make the Palestinians a peace-loving people, while maintaining the Israeli occupation and the settlements, is precisely what's been tried for the last 15 years -- with dismal results. The Palestinians won't be bought off; this is a political conflict requiring political solutions. Economic improvements are important as a support ballast, not as a central plank.
3) "You go first; no you go first." If Netanyahu is smart (as I consider him to be), then he is likely to spot a tantalizing diversionary opportunity in the Arab Peace Initiative. That plan, initiated by the Saudis and adopted by the Arab League in 2002, and reissued in 2007, calls for recognition, security, and normal relations between all the Arab states and Israel in exchange for a comprehensive agreement between Israel and its immediate neighbors, based on land-for-peace, two-states, and U.N. resolutions. It's a potential game-changer, and the Obama administration (unlike its predecessor, which ignored the initiative) is apparently keen on using the initiative as a framing principle for its peace efforts. Its beauty is in its simplicity and in its comprehensive nature: everything for everything.
The lurking danger would lie be if Netanyahu attempts to break the initiative down into gradual, sequential, bite-size mini-steps that each side would be expected to take. For instance, Israel says the words "two states" or returns to negotiations, or freezes settlements in return for partial normalization from the Arab side. This may sound nice, but beware: In practice, it will prove to be a recipe for an endless, fruitless, and oxygen-sucking debate on the sequencing -- "you go first; no you go first" -- reminiscent of an Alphonse and Gaston routine, minus the exaggerated politeness.
All this even before Netanyahu gets out his bag of Iran party tricks and distractions. So much for the Israeli side. On to the Palestinians, who talk a good game and often sound eminently reasonable, but are equally infatuated with distraction promotion. (Here, it's important to remember that Mitchell's interlocutor is not the "Palestinians"; it is a political leadership with political calculations and a well-developed fear of change.) So what cards might they be expected to play?
1) Cheering on a fight. Judging by reports from Friday's meetings, the focus in Ramallah right now seems to be egging on a fight between Israel and America. Such a spat would undoubtedly create a fleeting, feel-good factor, but then what? While it's nice to sound good on CNNi, to play the blame game, and to appear closer to Washington's talking points, winning the media war is hardly a strategy for national liberation.
If Israel and America are at some point to publicly disagree, then it should be about something meaningful, such as an actual plan for implementing two states, rather than, for instance, over terminology or a dozen out of more than 600 obstacles to Palestinian freedom of movement. Often, the PLO leadership seems interested in spectacle for its own sake rather than real results. Bottom line: the U.S.-Israeli spat is a distraction.
2) Cross-dressing on preconditions. Ever since the first Palestinian national unity government was formed in 2007, bringing together the electorally victorious Hamas, and the ousted Fatah, Israel, America and the Quartet demanded that any Palestinian government meet three preconditions (recognize Israel, accept past agreements, and renounce terrorism). Since the Netanyahu government was sworn in, the PLO leadership has adopted this same mantra: In order for negotiations to continue, the Israeli government must accept two states, abide by previous agreements, and freeze settlements.
Preconditions were a mistake when applied to the Palestinians, and will be equally mistaken if applied to the Israelis. (And in fact, this is much more about domestic Palestinian politics than Israel-Palestinian affairs and it's being used by Fatah in its struggle with Hamas.) Most troubling, this approach could hamper an especially urgent issue: reopening Gaza and allowing a regular flow of goods and materials, including those desperately needed for reconstruction following Israel's Operation Cast Lead.
3) Nostalgia for Bush and Annapolis. Palestinian leaders never had very many good things to say about the Bush administration, so it's ironic that they are advocating a return and adherence to the Roadmap and the Annapolis process. Again, don't be fooled. The latter is little more than a pushback against the Israeli government's apparent rejection of Annapolis as explicitly stated by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Plus, as with so much of the Bush legacy in the Middle East, Annapolis was a failure and structurally flawed, relying on bilateral negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships with no U.S. presence, and making Palestinian performance a prerequisite for ending the occupation.
Just as there have been policy reviews and significant course corrections on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, the Mitchell team should apply the same principle of a rethink on the Israeli-Arab track. The United States should not be maneuvered back to the flawed Annapolis design, whether in response to a Palestinian bear hug or an Israeli pushback.
Indeed, there seems little value then in recycling that approach. A moment has presented itself where there is a new U.S. administration, a new Israeli government, and a chance to devise a new way of finally achieving -- and not just talking about - two states living side by side in security and dignity. These new circumstances can be seen more as an opportunity than a crisis. The Mitchell team would do well to avoid the distractions and traps on offer, whether from Israelis or Palestinians, and take its time in devising an American plan that delivers on the American interest in resolving the conflict. It's time for the United States to step up.
4/21/09
Potential Traps for George Mitchell
Daniel Levy
President Obama's special peace envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, is just wrapping up his latest visit to the Middle East. It's his third trip since being appointed and this time in addition to Israel, the West Bank, and Egypt, included Saudi Arabia and North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria), with an emphasis on a comprehensive regional peace, building on the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. (Mitchell has yet to visit Damascus or Beirut, something unlikely to take place until after June's parliamentary elections in Lebanon.)
In meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Mitchell continued to reiterate U.S. support for a two-state solution, although the emphasis of the visit, perhaps understandably, still seems to be the listening tour aspect, including the first meetings since Israel's new government took office.
Some reports on these latest meetings portray PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas as carrying a message of hope and peace in the face of a rejectionist Israeli premier. Others depict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being seized by the more urgent calling of the Iranian threat, and showing a willingness to make progress on practical issues with the Palestinians, such as the economy, while avoiding a possibly dangerous and premature effort to address the political differences -- especially given the enfeebled nature of the Palestinian counterpart.
Both views are wrong.
The sad truth is that neither leader has a meaningful strategy for creating a new equilibrium for resolving this conflict. Despite all their differences (and there are many), Netanyahu and Abbas are similar in two major respects: Both stand atop deeply dysfunctional political systems that eschew bold decision-making. And both are focused on short-term political survival, an understandable instinct and one certainly not unique to the Levant, but also woefully inadequate given the challenges faced by their respective peoples.
So, due to both circumstance and a generous dose of intentional design, Senator Mitchell's Palestinian and Israeli interlocutors are busy preparing sugar-coated traps and distractions. The Mitchell team should be well prepared to recognize the pitch of a snake- oil salesman when they hear one.
On the Israel interlocutor side, here are the main traps Mitchell should look out for:
1) The ‘Say the Magic Words' Game. Thus far, Netanyahu is refusing to explicitly endorse the two-state formula. This is being nicely set up to become a rather large red herring, whereby diplomatic attention becomes focused on teasing out a linguistic formula to claim that Israel's premier is indeed a "two-stater." Last Friday's headline in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv even suggests that Netanyahu is planning for a dramatic climb- down gesture during his first visit with U.S. President Barack Obama (now postponed from early May to possibly later in the month), during which he would declare acceptance of the two states position. What a colossal distraction and waste of time.
To paraphrase what always used to be said of former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat --what matters are his actions, not his words. Saying the magic words is of minor import. Ending the occupation and actually delivering on a two-state solution is what should matter to the Mitchell team. The latest ruse to apparently come out of the Netanyahu-Mitchell meeting was an Israeli demand that the Palestinians first recognize Israel as a Jewish state (something that neither Egypt, nor Jordan, did in their respective peace treaties with Israel) -- a meaningless diversionary tactic.
2) It's not the economy, stupid. Netanyahu advocates focusing first on what he calls "economic peace" -- developing the Palestinian economy as a prerequisite for two states. Indeed, economic improvement would be welcome, and no one should oppose moves such as ending the closures, removing the 600-plus obstacles to freedom of Palestinian movement in the West Bank (that dovetail with the map of settlements and settler road use arrangements), lifting the siege on Gaza, etc. However, by now the secret may be out that developing the Palestinian economy in order to make the Palestinians a peace-loving people, while maintaining the Israeli occupation and the settlements, is precisely what's been tried for the last 15 years -- with dismal results. The Palestinians won't be bought off; this is a political conflict requiring political solutions. Economic improvements are important as a support ballast, not as a central plank.
3) "You go first; no you go first." If Netanyahu is smart (as I consider him to be), then he is likely to spot a tantalizing diversionary opportunity in the Arab Peace Initiative. That plan, initiated by the Saudis and adopted by the Arab League in 2002, and reissued in 2007, calls for recognition, security, and normal relations between all the Arab states and Israel in exchange for a comprehensive agreement between Israel and its immediate neighbors, based on land-for-peace, two-states, and U.N. resolutions. It's a potential game-changer, and the Obama administration (unlike its predecessor, which ignored the initiative) is apparently keen on using the initiative as a framing principle for its peace efforts. Its beauty is in its simplicity and in its comprehensive nature: everything for everything.
The lurking danger would lie be if Netanyahu attempts to break the initiative down into gradual, sequential, bite-size mini-steps that each side would be expected to take. For instance, Israel says the words "two states" or returns to negotiations, or freezes settlements in return for partial normalization from the Arab side. This may sound nice, but beware: In practice, it will prove to be a recipe for an endless, fruitless, and oxygen-sucking debate on the sequencing -- "you go first; no you go first" -- reminiscent of an Alphonse and Gaston routine, minus the exaggerated politeness.
All this even before Netanyahu gets out his bag of Iran party tricks and distractions. So much for the Israeli side. On to the Palestinians, who talk a good game and often sound eminently reasonable, but are equally infatuated with distraction promotion. (Here, it's important to remember that Mitchell's interlocutor is not the "Palestinians"; it is a political leadership with political calculations and a well-developed fear of change.) So what cards might they be expected to play?
1) Cheering on a fight. Judging by reports from Friday's meetings, the focus in Ramallah right now seems to be egging on a fight between Israel and America. Such a spat would undoubtedly create a fleeting, feel-good factor, but then what? While it's nice to sound good on CNNi, to play the blame game, and to appear closer to Washington's talking points, winning the media war is hardly a strategy for national liberation.
If Israel and America are at some point to publicly disagree, then it should be about something meaningful, such as an actual plan for implementing two states, rather than, for instance, over terminology or a dozen out of more than 600 obstacles to Palestinian freedom of movement. Often, the PLO leadership seems interested in spectacle for its own sake rather than real results. Bottom line: the U.S.-Israeli spat is a distraction.
2) Cross-dressing on preconditions. Ever since the first Palestinian national unity government was formed in 2007, bringing together the electorally victorious Hamas, and the ousted Fatah, Israel, America and the Quartet demanded that any Palestinian government meet three preconditions (recognize Israel, accept past agreements, and renounce terrorism). Since the Netanyahu government was sworn in, the PLO leadership has adopted this same mantra: In order for negotiations to continue, the Israeli government must accept two states, abide by previous agreements, and freeze settlements.
Preconditions were a mistake when applied to the Palestinians, and will be equally mistaken if applied to the Israelis. (And in fact, this is much more about domestic Palestinian politics than Israel-Palestinian affairs and it's being used by Fatah in its struggle with Hamas.) Most troubling, this approach could hamper an especially urgent issue: reopening Gaza and allowing a regular flow of goods and materials, including those desperately needed for reconstruction following Israel's Operation Cast Lead.
3) Nostalgia for Bush and Annapolis. Palestinian leaders never had very many good things to say about the Bush administration, so it's ironic that they are advocating a return and adherence to the Roadmap and the Annapolis process. Again, don't be fooled. The latter is little more than a pushback against the Israeli government's apparent rejection of Annapolis as explicitly stated by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Plus, as with so much of the Bush legacy in the Middle East, Annapolis was a failure and structurally flawed, relying on bilateral negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships with no U.S. presence, and making Palestinian performance a prerequisite for ending the occupation.
Just as there have been policy reviews and significant course corrections on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, the Mitchell team should apply the same principle of a rethink on the Israeli-Arab track. The United States should not be maneuvered back to the flawed Annapolis design, whether in response to a Palestinian bear hug or an Israeli pushback.
Indeed, there seems little value then in recycling that approach. A moment has presented itself where there is a new U.S. administration, a new Israeli government, and a chance to devise a new way of finally achieving -- and not just talking about - two states living side by side in security and dignity. These new circumstances can be seen more as an opportunity than a crisis. The Mitchell team would do well to avoid the distractions and traps on offer, whether from Israelis or Palestinians, and take its time in devising an American plan that delivers on the American interest in resolving the conflict. It's time for the United States to step up.
Saudi prince asks Obama for action by Stacey Shackford
ITHICA JOURNAL
4/24/09
Saudi prince asks Obama for action
Stacey Shackford
ITHACA - There is an Arabic saying that a friend is he who tells you the truth, not he who tells you what you want to hear, and Saudi Arabia's Turki bin Faisal Al Saud was more than willing to tell President Barack Obama exactly what was on his mind.
At a lecture in front of hundreds of students and faculty Thursday at Cornell University's Statler Hall, he urged the new U.S. president to stop talking the pretty talk and start walking the mighty walk, to use his power to galvanize other nations and bully world leaders into action.
"All the plans in the world about the Middle East have been presented and dissected already. We know what is needed to make peace. We don't want any more plans. We don't want President Obama to say to King Abdullah, 'What do you want me to do?' We want Obama to come and tell us what he wants," Prince Turki said.
"The leaders in the Middle East, they want to be pushed by this big bear behind their backs to do things, so that they can say to whatever opposition they face in their own governments, 'The big bear made me do it'," he said.
The youngest son of the late King Faisal and nephew of the present King Abdullah, Prince Turki formerly served as Saudi ambassador to the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland, and said he believed President George W Bush did not take enough steps in this direction.
"Although we most appreciate some of the statements he made, nothing was accomplished. The U.S. simply has not pushed enough," the prince said.
He said he was hopeful that Obama is going in the right direction, but warned that all of his beautiful speeches would come to nothing unless he acted on them, and quickly.
"We are holding our breath and waiting. But I think President Obama has exhausted the lead time for things to be done," he added. "I hope that by the middle of summer if not sooner we will see something happen on the ground."
The 64-year-old, who has studied at The Lawrenceville School, Georgetown University, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, and the University of London, started the lecture with a history lesson.
He outlined the development of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States over the past 81 years, beginning with the first meeting between Chicago philanthropist Charles Crane and Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, who unified the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Crane offered the resources of a geologist who spent a year trying to locate a potable water source in the arid region.
"He came back and said, 'Sir, there is no water. But there must be oil in Saudi Arabia.' And, ladies and gentlemen, the rest is history," Prince Turki said.
Through the years, the relationship between the two nations grew stronger, with American leaders continually promising technological, economic and military support in exchange for oil agreements. But it also had its hiccups - after the Second World War over the relocation of Nazi-persecuted Jews, in 1948 over the establishment of Israel and in 1973 over the Ramadan War which led to a Saudi oil embargo.
He said Bush's presidency was marked by a cool but controlled hostility, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 bombings, in which many of the hijackers were identified as Saudi.
"Bush had turned his back to peace in the Middle East and almost abandoned all that Clinton had done. The Crown Prince sent him a letter stating that we were coming to a crossroads and either we go together in the road that we choose or we go our separate ways," he said.
Eventually, they came together and established what Prince Turki described as a preferable institutional dialogue, rather than being subject to the "whim and will" of two heads of state.
He said this more diffused approach has served well as the two nations tackle sensitive subjects like Palestine, Lebanon, Iran "and all the other hot spots."
He went on to outline some specific advice for several of these contentious areas. In regards to Lebanon, Prince Turki said Obama should ask Israel to withdraw immediately from Shebaa Farms, arguing that doing so would also remove Hezbollah's excuse to maintain armed conflict in the area.
He argued that American use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan should be stopped, as it only galvanizes anti-terrorist sentiments there.
"People blame Pakistan for the Taliban, but they forget that Pakistan is a victim of those same terrorists," he said.
For Syria, where leaders have indicated a willingness to talk, he urged Obama to get on with it.
"Go ahead and talk. You don't need a midwife to bring you together."
He said Obama seemed to be following the right policy in Afghanistan by going after terrorists there, but he urged him to be even more aggressive in soliciting support from other nations around the world, and to pull out as soon as victory was achieved.
And in Iraq, he said it is vital that a U.N. Security Council resolution be passed to guarantee its territorial stability before total troop withdrawal, to prevent civil wars from breaking out and sucking the entire Arab world into a conflict it doesn't want.
He also had some advice for Hamas: Follow the examples of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., who used civil disobedience to achieve their objectives.
"You are choosing the wrong weapons," he said. "How can you challenge the Israeli might with a few rockets and suicide bombs? Challenge them on humanitarian grounds, make them out to be the bullies that they are. That's how you win."
4/24/09
Saudi prince asks Obama for action
Stacey Shackford
ITHACA - There is an Arabic saying that a friend is he who tells you the truth, not he who tells you what you want to hear, and Saudi Arabia's Turki bin Faisal Al Saud was more than willing to tell President Barack Obama exactly what was on his mind.
At a lecture in front of hundreds of students and faculty Thursday at Cornell University's Statler Hall, he urged the new U.S. president to stop talking the pretty talk and start walking the mighty walk, to use his power to galvanize other nations and bully world leaders into action.
"All the plans in the world about the Middle East have been presented and dissected already. We know what is needed to make peace. We don't want any more plans. We don't want President Obama to say to King Abdullah, 'What do you want me to do?' We want Obama to come and tell us what he wants," Prince Turki said.
"The leaders in the Middle East, they want to be pushed by this big bear behind their backs to do things, so that they can say to whatever opposition they face in their own governments, 'The big bear made me do it'," he said.
The youngest son of the late King Faisal and nephew of the present King Abdullah, Prince Turki formerly served as Saudi ambassador to the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland, and said he believed President George W Bush did not take enough steps in this direction.
"Although we most appreciate some of the statements he made, nothing was accomplished. The U.S. simply has not pushed enough," the prince said.
He said he was hopeful that Obama is going in the right direction, but warned that all of his beautiful speeches would come to nothing unless he acted on them, and quickly.
"We are holding our breath and waiting. But I think President Obama has exhausted the lead time for things to be done," he added. "I hope that by the middle of summer if not sooner we will see something happen on the ground."
The 64-year-old, who has studied at The Lawrenceville School, Georgetown University, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, and the University of London, started the lecture with a history lesson.
He outlined the development of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States over the past 81 years, beginning with the first meeting between Chicago philanthropist Charles Crane and Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, who unified the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Crane offered the resources of a geologist who spent a year trying to locate a potable water source in the arid region.
"He came back and said, 'Sir, there is no water. But there must be oil in Saudi Arabia.' And, ladies and gentlemen, the rest is history," Prince Turki said.
Through the years, the relationship between the two nations grew stronger, with American leaders continually promising technological, economic and military support in exchange for oil agreements. But it also had its hiccups - after the Second World War over the relocation of Nazi-persecuted Jews, in 1948 over the establishment of Israel and in 1973 over the Ramadan War which led to a Saudi oil embargo.
He said Bush's presidency was marked by a cool but controlled hostility, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 bombings, in which many of the hijackers were identified as Saudi.
"Bush had turned his back to peace in the Middle East and almost abandoned all that Clinton had done. The Crown Prince sent him a letter stating that we were coming to a crossroads and either we go together in the road that we choose or we go our separate ways," he said.
Eventually, they came together and established what Prince Turki described as a preferable institutional dialogue, rather than being subject to the "whim and will" of two heads of state.
He said this more diffused approach has served well as the two nations tackle sensitive subjects like Palestine, Lebanon, Iran "and all the other hot spots."
He went on to outline some specific advice for several of these contentious areas. In regards to Lebanon, Prince Turki said Obama should ask Israel to withdraw immediately from Shebaa Farms, arguing that doing so would also remove Hezbollah's excuse to maintain armed conflict in the area.
He argued that American use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan should be stopped, as it only galvanizes anti-terrorist sentiments there.
"People blame Pakistan for the Taliban, but they forget that Pakistan is a victim of those same terrorists," he said.
For Syria, where leaders have indicated a willingness to talk, he urged Obama to get on with it.
"Go ahead and talk. You don't need a midwife to bring you together."
He said Obama seemed to be following the right policy in Afghanistan by going after terrorists there, but he urged him to be even more aggressive in soliciting support from other nations around the world, and to pull out as soon as victory was achieved.
And in Iraq, he said it is vital that a U.N. Security Council resolution be passed to guarantee its territorial stability before total troop withdrawal, to prevent civil wars from breaking out and sucking the entire Arab world into a conflict it doesn't want.
He also had some advice for Hamas: Follow the examples of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., who used civil disobedience to achieve their objectives.
"You are choosing the wrong weapons," he said. "How can you challenge the Israeli might with a few rockets and suicide bombs? Challenge them on humanitarian grounds, make them out to be the bullies that they are. That's how you win."
Does Pakistan's Taliban Surge Raise a Nuclear Threat? by Mark Thompson
TIME
4/24/09
Does Pakistan's Taliban Surge Raise a Nuclear Threat?
Mark Thompson
When asked last year about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen didn't hesitate: "I'm very comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure," he said flatly. Asked the same question earlier this month, his answer had changed. "I'm reasonably comfortable," he said, "that the nuclear weapons are secure."
As America's top military officer, Mullen has traveled regularly to Pakistan — twice in just the past two weeks — for talks with his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Kayani, and others. And like all those who have risen to four-star rank, Mullen chooses his words with extreme care. Replacing "very comfortable" with "reasonably comfortable" is a decidedly discomforting signal of Washington's concern that no matter how well-guarded the nukes may be today, the chaos now enveloping Pakistan doesn't bode well for their status tomorrow or the day after.
The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons. Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials.
The U.S. has been keeping a watchful eye on Pakistan's nukes since it first detonated a series of devices a decade ago. "Pakistan has taken important steps to safeguard its nuclear weapons, although vulnerabilities still exist," Army General Michael Maples, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. Then, he immediately turned to the threat posed by al-Qaeda, which, along with the Taliban, is sowing unrest in Pakistan. "Al-Qaeda continues efforts to acquire chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials," he said, "and would not hesitate to use such weapons if the group develops sufficient capabilities."
The concern in Washington is less that al-Qaeda or the Taliban would manage to actually seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but instead that increasingly-radicalized younger Pakistanis are finding their way into military and research circles where they may begin to play a growing role in the nation's nuclear-weapons program. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say.
Nowhere in the world is the gap between would-be terror-martyrs and the nuclear weapons they crave as small as it is in Pakistan. Nor is their much comfort in the fact that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal who was recently ordered freed from house arrest by the country's supreme court, was the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation, dispatching the atomic genie to Iran, Libya and North Korea. But U.S. and Pakistani officials insist it is important to separate Pakistan's poor proliferation record with what is, by all accounts, a modern and multilayered system designed to protect its nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.
For starters, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials, there is no way a complete nuclear weapon can be plucked from Islamabad's stockpile, which is protected by about 10,000 of the Pakistani military's most elite troops. The guts of the nuclear warhead are kept separate from the rest of the device, and a nuclear detonation is impossible without both pieces. Additionally, the delivery vehicle — plane or missile — is also segregated from the warhead components.
Over the past decade, Pakistan has created the National Command Authority and the Strategic Plans Division to manage the nuclear infrastructure from day to day, and the U.S. has given Pakistan an estimated $100 million since 9/11 to bolster the security of its arsenal. While much of that has been spent on bringing Pakistani nuclear personnel to the U.S. for training, it has also been spent on hardware, including various surveillance and security systems.
Then, there's the touchy area of "permissive action links" — the electronic "locks" on nuclear weapons that must be "opened" for a nuclear detonation to take place. Washington doesn't share its own PALs with other countries for fear of losing control of the technology and surrendering key elements about U.S. weapons design (although installing PALs on another country's nukes — with a secret "kill" capability that could remotely render the weapons impotent — has always been a tempting option). "Permissive action links are custom-made devices based on the design and configuration of the weapons," former senior Pakistani nuclear official Naeem Salik told TIME 16 months ago. Until late 2005, he had served as director of arms control and disarmament affairs at Pakistan's National Command Authority, created in 1999 as the command and control center for Pakistan's nuclear weapons. "Unless one is willing to share the technical configuration of the weapon, a permissive action link cannot be developed. We did not share these secrets, so we never asked for the permissive action links — our people have developed our own."
That may all be well and good, Mullen seemed to suggest to NBC during a Wednesday interview in Afghanistan, just before he headed across the border to Islamabad. But, he cautioned, it may not be good enough, given the turmoil racking Pakistan. "My long-term worry," Mullen said, "is that descent — should it continue — gives us the worst possible outcome there."
4/24/09
Does Pakistan's Taliban Surge Raise a Nuclear Threat?
Mark Thompson
When asked last year about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen didn't hesitate: "I'm very comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure," he said flatly. Asked the same question earlier this month, his answer had changed. "I'm reasonably comfortable," he said, "that the nuclear weapons are secure."
As America's top military officer, Mullen has traveled regularly to Pakistan — twice in just the past two weeks — for talks with his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Kayani, and others. And like all those who have risen to four-star rank, Mullen chooses his words with extreme care. Replacing "very comfortable" with "reasonably comfortable" is a decidedly discomforting signal of Washington's concern that no matter how well-guarded the nukes may be today, the chaos now enveloping Pakistan doesn't bode well for their status tomorrow or the day after.
The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons. Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials.
The U.S. has been keeping a watchful eye on Pakistan's nukes since it first detonated a series of devices a decade ago. "Pakistan has taken important steps to safeguard its nuclear weapons, although vulnerabilities still exist," Army General Michael Maples, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. Then, he immediately turned to the threat posed by al-Qaeda, which, along with the Taliban, is sowing unrest in Pakistan. "Al-Qaeda continues efforts to acquire chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials," he said, "and would not hesitate to use such weapons if the group develops sufficient capabilities."
The concern in Washington is less that al-Qaeda or the Taliban would manage to actually seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but instead that increasingly-radicalized younger Pakistanis are finding their way into military and research circles where they may begin to play a growing role in the nation's nuclear-weapons program. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say.
Nowhere in the world is the gap between would-be terror-martyrs and the nuclear weapons they crave as small as it is in Pakistan. Nor is their much comfort in the fact that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal who was recently ordered freed from house arrest by the country's supreme court, was the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation, dispatching the atomic genie to Iran, Libya and North Korea. But U.S. and Pakistani officials insist it is important to separate Pakistan's poor proliferation record with what is, by all accounts, a modern and multilayered system designed to protect its nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.
For starters, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials, there is no way a complete nuclear weapon can be plucked from Islamabad's stockpile, which is protected by about 10,000 of the Pakistani military's most elite troops. The guts of the nuclear warhead are kept separate from the rest of the device, and a nuclear detonation is impossible without both pieces. Additionally, the delivery vehicle — plane or missile — is also segregated from the warhead components.
Over the past decade, Pakistan has created the National Command Authority and the Strategic Plans Division to manage the nuclear infrastructure from day to day, and the U.S. has given Pakistan an estimated $100 million since 9/11 to bolster the security of its arsenal. While much of that has been spent on bringing Pakistani nuclear personnel to the U.S. for training, it has also been spent on hardware, including various surveillance and security systems.
Then, there's the touchy area of "permissive action links" — the electronic "locks" on nuclear weapons that must be "opened" for a nuclear detonation to take place. Washington doesn't share its own PALs with other countries for fear of losing control of the technology and surrendering key elements about U.S. weapons design (although installing PALs on another country's nukes — with a secret "kill" capability that could remotely render the weapons impotent — has always been a tempting option). "Permissive action links are custom-made devices based on the design and configuration of the weapons," former senior Pakistani nuclear official Naeem Salik told TIME 16 months ago. Until late 2005, he had served as director of arms control and disarmament affairs at Pakistan's National Command Authority, created in 1999 as the command and control center for Pakistan's nuclear weapons. "Unless one is willing to share the technical configuration of the weapon, a permissive action link cannot be developed. We did not share these secrets, so we never asked for the permissive action links — our people have developed our own."
That may all be well and good, Mullen seemed to suggest to NBC during a Wednesday interview in Afghanistan, just before he headed across the border to Islamabad. But, he cautioned, it may not be good enough, given the turmoil racking Pakistan. "My long-term worry," Mullen said, "is that descent — should it continue — gives us the worst possible outcome there."
Beyond Pakistan: The First Nuclear Failed State Part One
Beyond Pakistan: The First Nuclear Failed State Part One
Washington (UPI) April 24, 2009
Afghanistan is a big problem for the Western world and for the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But if Pakistan fails, the United States and its allies have an even bigger problem. What can the West do to prevent a large, dysfunctional nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 172 million inhabitants from becoming a major incubator of anti-Western hostility? The disintegration or conti ... read more
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Beyond_Pakistan_The_First_Nuclear_Failed_State_Part_One_999.html
Washington (UPI) April 24, 2009
Afghanistan is a big problem for the Western world and for the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But if Pakistan fails, the United States and its allies have an even bigger problem. What can the West do to prevent a large, dysfunctional nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 172 million inhabitants from becoming a major incubator of anti-Western hostility? The disintegration or conti ... read more
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Beyond_Pakistan_The_First_Nuclear_Failed_State_Part_One_999.html
Pakistan
Israel: Pakistan’s nukes could fall to Taliban | International …
Defense official: If Taliban gets bomb, it will be "a nightmare for the West and will also affect us."
JPost International - http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1239710777377
Jihad Watch: Pakistan: Karachi churches vandalized with "Long live …
By Marisol http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025812.php
More signs of escalation as Pakistan continues its deterioration into a failed state — a failed state with nuclear weapons. "Taliban attack Christians in Karachi," by Qaiser Felix for AsiaNews, April 23: Karachi (AsiaNews) – Armed men …
Jihad Watch - http://www.jihadwatch.org/
Key talks on Pakistan Sharia deal
BBC News - UK
Officials in North West Frontier Province in Pakistan are meeting to discuss a peace deal with the Taleban that has sparked deep US concern. …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8015846.stm
Taliban Advance, Pakistan’s Wavering Worry Obama Team
Washington Post - United States
By Karen DeYoung The Obama administration reacted with increasing alarm yesterday to ongoing Taliban advances in Pakistan, warning the Pakistani government …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042304114.html
Faced with mortal threat, Pakistan chooses denial
USA Today - USA
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is unraveling at a frightening pace. Equally alarming,Pakistan’s leaders appear far less concerned than their American counterparts. …
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/faced-with-mortal-threat-pakistan-chooses-denial.html
Clinton warns of Pakistan nuke risk
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
By Nicholas Kralev (Contact) and Barbara Slavin | Friday, April 24, 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Thursday that Pakistan has …
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/24/clinton-warns-of-pakistan-nuke-risk/
Pakistan - Taliban Nuclear Nightmare : Homeland Security News
By national
Pakistan Taliban Nuclear Nightmare. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is unraveling at a frightening pace. Equally alarming, Pakistan’s leaders appear far less concerned than their American counterparts. You have to wonder what they’re thinking in …
Homeland Security News - http://www.nationalterroralert.com/
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2009/04/23/pakistan-taliban-nuclear-nightmare/
Epoch Times - Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Quandary
By By Ashley J. Tellis
If success in Afghanistan is to be achieved, Washington will have no choice but to erect an effective Afghan state.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/15808/
Defense official: If Taliban gets bomb, it will be "a nightmare for the West and will also affect us."
JPost International - http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1239710777377
Jihad Watch: Pakistan: Karachi churches vandalized with "Long live …
By Marisol http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025812.php
More signs of escalation as Pakistan continues its deterioration into a failed state — a failed state with nuclear weapons. "Taliban attack Christians in Karachi," by Qaiser Felix for AsiaNews, April 23: Karachi (AsiaNews) – Armed men …
Jihad Watch - http://www.jihadwatch.org/
Key talks on Pakistan Sharia deal
BBC News - UK
Officials in North West Frontier Province in Pakistan are meeting to discuss a peace deal with the Taleban that has sparked deep US concern. …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8015846.stm
Taliban Advance, Pakistan’s Wavering Worry Obama Team
Washington Post - United States
By Karen DeYoung The Obama administration reacted with increasing alarm yesterday to ongoing Taliban advances in Pakistan, warning the Pakistani government …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042304114.html
Faced with mortal threat, Pakistan chooses denial
USA Today - USA
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is unraveling at a frightening pace. Equally alarming,Pakistan’s leaders appear far less concerned than their American counterparts. …
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/faced-with-mortal-threat-pakistan-chooses-denial.html
Clinton warns of Pakistan nuke risk
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
By Nicholas Kralev (Contact) and Barbara Slavin | Friday, April 24, 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Thursday that Pakistan has …
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/24/clinton-warns-of-pakistan-nuke-risk/
Pakistan - Taliban Nuclear Nightmare : Homeland Security News
By national
Pakistan Taliban Nuclear Nightmare. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is unraveling at a frightening pace. Equally alarming, Pakistan’s leaders appear far less concerned than their American counterparts. You have to wonder what they’re thinking in …
Homeland Security News - http://www.nationalterroralert.com/
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2009/04/23/pakistan-taliban-nuclear-nightmare/
Epoch Times - Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Quandary
By By Ashley J. Tellis
If success in Afghanistan is to be achieved, Washington will have no choice but to erect an effective Afghan state.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/15808/
Errant Drone Attacks Spur Militants in Pakistan By Gareth Porter
Errant Drone Attacks Spur Militants in Pakistan
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The U.S. programme of drone aircraft strikes against higher-ranking officials of al Qaeda and allied militant organisations, which has been touted by proponents as having eliminated nine of the 20 top al Qaeda leaders, is actually weakening Pakistan’s defence against the insurgency of the Islamic militants there by killing large numbers of civilians based on faulty intelligence and discrediting the Pakistani military, according to data from the Pakistani government and interviews with senior analysts.
MORE http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46511
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The U.S. programme of drone aircraft strikes against higher-ranking officials of al Qaeda and allied militant organisations, which has been touted by proponents as having eliminated nine of the 20 top al Qaeda leaders, is actually weakening Pakistan’s defence against the insurgency of the Islamic militants there by killing large numbers of civilians based on faulty intelligence and discrediting the Pakistani military, according to data from the Pakistani government and interviews with senior analysts.
MORE http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46511
Media Disinformation: Reframing the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a "Class War"- by Michael Skinner
Media Disinformation: Reframing the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a "Class War"- by Michael Skinner - 2009-04-25
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13341
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13341
Strategic Focus: Empire
Strategic Focus: Empire
http://www.fpif.org/fpifinfo/5976
Is the Obama administration winding down our empire or simply trying to implement a kinder, gentler version?
In Piracy and Empire, John Feffer notes that pirates were present at the creation of the U.S. empire. Have they returned for the empire's finale? http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6073
Is the United States running out of power at this time of economic crisis? asks Mark Engler in Empire Foreclosed? http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6049
The new administration needs to move beyond the nation's imperial tradition in this hemisphere, says Manuel Pérez-Rocha in Empire and Latin America in the Obama Era.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6007
In the video at left, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecKj5g_8P1c, John Feffer interviews Professor Stephen Zunes about the role of the U.S. in the world under the Obama administration. Will the U.S. empire roll back or continue on?
Empire Roundtable: We asked FPIF's senior analysts to weigh in on the future course of American foreign policy: maintenance of empire or its rejection? http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5997
Strategic Dialogue on R2P: Trevor Keck and Bridget Moix, Steven Fake and Kevin Funk, and Shaun Randol all weigh in on the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, with a corresponding debate on the subject. http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5982
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5985
http://www.fpif.org/fpifinfo/5976
Is the Obama administration winding down our empire or simply trying to implement a kinder, gentler version?
In Piracy and Empire, John Feffer notes that pirates were present at the creation of the U.S. empire. Have they returned for the empire's finale? http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6073
Is the United States running out of power at this time of economic crisis? asks Mark Engler in Empire Foreclosed? http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6049
The new administration needs to move beyond the nation's imperial tradition in this hemisphere, says Manuel Pérez-Rocha in Empire and Latin America in the Obama Era.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6007
In the video at left, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecKj5g_8P1c, John Feffer interviews Professor Stephen Zunes about the role of the U.S. in the world under the Obama administration. Will the U.S. empire roll back or continue on?
Empire Roundtable: We asked FPIF's senior analysts to weigh in on the future course of American foreign policy: maintenance of empire or its rejection? http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5997
Strategic Dialogue on R2P: Trevor Keck and Bridget Moix, Steven Fake and Kevin Funk, and Shaun Randol all weigh in on the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, with a corresponding debate on the subject. http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5982
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5985
The Mighty Debt Purge of 2009 by Mike Whitney
The Mighty Debt Purge of 2009
by Mike Whitney / April 23rd, 2009 (8)
The Fed’s $12.8 trillion of monetary stimulus has triggered a six-week long surge in the stock market. Think of it as Bernanke’s Bear Market Rally, a torrent of capital gushing from every rusty pipe in the financial system. The Fed’s so-called “lending facilities” have gone far beyond their original purpose, which was to backstop a broken system. Now they’re leaking liquidity into the equities markets and sending stocks soaring while the “real” economy sinks to the bottom of the fish tank. That’s how the Fed does business these days: plenty of tasty crepes for the Wall Street kingpins and table …
(Full article …)
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-mighty-debt-purge-of-2009/
by Mike Whitney / April 23rd, 2009 (8)
The Fed’s $12.8 trillion of monetary stimulus has triggered a six-week long surge in the stock market. Think of it as Bernanke’s Bear Market Rally, a torrent of capital gushing from every rusty pipe in the financial system. The Fed’s so-called “lending facilities” have gone far beyond their original purpose, which was to backstop a broken system. Now they’re leaking liquidity into the equities markets and sending stocks soaring while the “real” economy sinks to the bottom of the fish tank. That’s how the Fed does business these days: plenty of tasty crepes for the Wall Street kingpins and table …
(Full article …)
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-mighty-debt-purge-of-2009/
It’s Democracy’s Turn: Bankers of the World, Untie! by Greg Moses
It’s Democracy’s Turn: Bankers of the World, Untie!
by Greg Moses / April 24th, 2009 (6)
It wasn’t the housing bubble exactly. It was more the way the bubble was blown.
In the official language of the International Monetary Fund report for April 2009, “the crisis was largely caused by weak risk management in large institutions at the core of the global financial system combined with failures in financial regulation and supervision.”
After “the crisis” was caused, the weak risk managers along with their failed regulators and supervisors came back to loot the national debt.
In essence, the mortgage of the American Worker has been preyed upon to inflate the wealth and power of financiers. …
(Full article …)http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/it%E2%80%99s-democracy%E2%80%99s-turn-bankers-of-the-world-untie/
by Greg Moses / April 24th, 2009 (6)
It wasn’t the housing bubble exactly. It was more the way the bubble was blown.
In the official language of the International Monetary Fund report for April 2009, “the crisis was largely caused by weak risk management in large institutions at the core of the global financial system combined with failures in financial regulation and supervision.”
After “the crisis” was caused, the weak risk managers along with their failed regulators and supervisors came back to loot the national debt.
In essence, the mortgage of the American Worker has been preyed upon to inflate the wealth and power of financiers. …
(Full article …)http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/it%E2%80%99s-democracy%E2%80%99s-turn-bankers-of-the-world-untie/
Another Missing Element in the AfPak Analysis By Douglas Farah
Another Missing Element in the AfPak Analysis
By Douglas Farah
To build on my CTB colleague Walid Phares recent post, there is another missing element in the analysis of the Taliban's recent advances in Pakistan.
It is the concept or religious precept of taqiyya in Islam and fully embraced by radical Islamists (including the Muslim Brotherhood.
It blesses the concept of disguising one's beliefs, intentions, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions or strategies from the enemy and the infidel. In practical terms it is manifested as dissimulation, lying, deceiving, vexing and confounding with the intention of deflecting attention, foiling or pre-emptive blocking. See this paper for a deeper look at what the term implies.
So, when the Taliban negotiates certain terms of its taking over parts of Pakistan and promises certain behaviors in return for limited power there, they have no intention of keeping to the terms of the agreement.
Under the terms of taqiyya, such behavior, which we widely view as duplicitous, is simply part of the accepted ways to spread sharia law and the caliphate. It has no moral consequence except to raise the esteem of the practitioner of this art in the eyes of his cohorts. My
April 24, 2009 11:31 AM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/another_missing_element_in_the.php
By Douglas Farah
To build on my CTB colleague Walid Phares recent post, there is another missing element in the analysis of the Taliban's recent advances in Pakistan.
It is the concept or religious precept of taqiyya in Islam and fully embraced by radical Islamists (including the Muslim Brotherhood.
It blesses the concept of disguising one's beliefs, intentions, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions or strategies from the enemy and the infidel. In practical terms it is manifested as dissimulation, lying, deceiving, vexing and confounding with the intention of deflecting attention, foiling or pre-emptive blocking. See this paper for a deeper look at what the term implies.
So, when the Taliban negotiates certain terms of its taking over parts of Pakistan and promises certain behaviors in return for limited power there, they have no intention of keeping to the terms of the agreement.
Under the terms of taqiyya, such behavior, which we widely view as duplicitous, is simply part of the accepted ways to spread sharia law and the caliphate. It has no moral consequence except to raise the esteem of the practitioner of this art in the eyes of his cohorts. My
April 24, 2009 11:31 AM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/another_missing_element_in_the.php
Poor and Unemployed, Young Afghan Men Turning to Part-Time Work for the Taliban by Fetrat Zerak, Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Poor and Unemployed, Young Afghan Men Turning to Part-Time Work for the Taliban
by Fetrat Zerak, Institute for War and Peace Reporting
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/138256/poor_and_unemployed%2C_young_afghan_men_turning_to_part-time_work_for_the_taliban/
by Fetrat Zerak, Institute for War and Peace Reporting
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/138256/poor_and_unemployed%2C_young_afghan_men_turning_to_part-time_work_for_the_taliban/
Will Afghanistan Be Worse Than Vietnam? 7 Tough Questions to Ask Obama Before He Sinks Us Into a New Quagmire
Will Afghanistan Be Worse Than Vietnam? 7 Tough Questions to Ask Obama Before He Sinks Us Into a New Quagmire
By William Astore, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 20, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/137390/will_afghanistan_be_worse_than_vietnam_7_tough_questions_to_ask_obama_before_he_sinks_us_into_a_new_quagmire/
By William Astore, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 20, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/137390/will_afghanistan_be_worse_than_vietnam_7_tough_questions_to_ask_obama_before_he_sinks_us_into_a_new_quagmire/
Uri Avnery: What Israelis Want
The founder of Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace movement, Uri Avnery, spoke recently by video to a conference in Washington organized by the Center for the National Interest (CNI). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxcLfIATPV4
Friday, April 24, 2009
Commentary: Fujimori's Conviction Should Give Bush Nightmares
Commentary: Fujimori's Conviction Should Give Bush Nightmares
April 22, 2009
By Dennis Jett, McClatchy Newspapers
There was a truly remarkable news item recently that received less notice than it deserved. A former president was tried, convicted and sentenced to a long jail term for crimes committed in his government's fight against terrorism.
No, this was not George W. Bush's worst nightmare come true. The story came from Peru where Alberto Fujimori was found to be responsible for the killing of a number of innocent civilians by government death squads. The conviction of Fujimori, who had been president from 1990 to 2000, was a rare triumph of justice over the impunity of power and was the first time in Latin America that an ex-president had been called to account in such a manner.
This happened even though Fujimori had a number of accomplishments to his credit as president. He brought Peru's rampant terrorism under control, reformed its economy and signed a peace treaty with Ecuador ending a long-standing border dispute. Had he stepped down in 2000 with that as his record, he probably would have never been brought to trial. Instead he attempted to perpetuate himself in power by rigging his second reelection. He no doubt thought that, in office, the judicial system was too weak to try him and that, out of office, it would be used against him.
The charges against him were not new, but they did not move forward until he had been so thoroughly discredited that he was forced to resign from office and flee the country. He initially went into exile in Japan, but he then made the mistake of going to Chile - a country willing to extradite him.
The official U.S. Government reaction to the outcome of the trial was "This verdict is a powerful statement against impunity, and underscores the importance of the rule of law as a foundation of democratic government." This press guidance was never used, however, as no journalist bothered to ask the State Department. Perhaps no one wanted to embarrass Washington since there is no small irony in all this.
With new revelations every day, there can be no doubt the Bush administration used torture and committed other illegal acts during its so-called war on terror. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the State Department lawyer responsible for detainee cases, the top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring detainees at Guantanamo to trial have all concluded that acts of torture were committed.
Vice President Cheney once said using water boarding in interrogating terrorists was a "no-brainer." So is the fact that it is torture.
The United States, when it ratified the Convention Against Torture, obligated itself to extradite or prosecute those who torture, or are complicit in its use. Nevertheless the American judicial system, the Obama administration and Congress have all done nothing. Attorney General Holder, when asked about the advisability of a truth commission to investigate America's use of torture, dodged the question and passed the buck to Senator Patrick Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy has proposed such a commission, but insisted on at least some Republican support. He has all but given up the effort since no one in the minority party is willing to put principle above partisanship even though immunity would be given to those that testify.
As for public opinion, there has been little notice let alone outrage. Perhaps Americans are too busy complaining about how high their taxes are to contemplate their complicity in crimes committed in their name.
Meanwhile charges against a number of former Bush administration officials for these crimes are being considered in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. A Spanish judge has proposed indicting six administration lawyers who provided the legal framework for torture. They defined torture as only something that causes a major organ to fail. They also defined the law as whatever the boss wanted to hear.
Thus far Bush's nightmare has not come true and he can continue to sleep soundly. He, and the yes men he surrounded himself with, may have to be careful about where they travel overseas in the future however.
And as for the rule of law - it is alive and well - in Peru.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador to Mozambique and Peru, is a professor of international affairs at Penn State's School of International Affairs. His most recent book is "Why American Foreign Policy Fails: Unsafe at Home and Despised Abroad."
McClatchy Newspapers did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy Newspapers or its editors.
April 22, 2009
By Dennis Jett, McClatchy Newspapers
There was a truly remarkable news item recently that received less notice than it deserved. A former president was tried, convicted and sentenced to a long jail term for crimes committed in his government's fight against terrorism.
No, this was not George W. Bush's worst nightmare come true. The story came from Peru where Alberto Fujimori was found to be responsible for the killing of a number of innocent civilians by government death squads. The conviction of Fujimori, who had been president from 1990 to 2000, was a rare triumph of justice over the impunity of power and was the first time in Latin America that an ex-president had been called to account in such a manner.
This happened even though Fujimori had a number of accomplishments to his credit as president. He brought Peru's rampant terrorism under control, reformed its economy and signed a peace treaty with Ecuador ending a long-standing border dispute. Had he stepped down in 2000 with that as his record, he probably would have never been brought to trial. Instead he attempted to perpetuate himself in power by rigging his second reelection. He no doubt thought that, in office, the judicial system was too weak to try him and that, out of office, it would be used against him.
The charges against him were not new, but they did not move forward until he had been so thoroughly discredited that he was forced to resign from office and flee the country. He initially went into exile in Japan, but he then made the mistake of going to Chile - a country willing to extradite him.
The official U.S. Government reaction to the outcome of the trial was "This verdict is a powerful statement against impunity, and underscores the importance of the rule of law as a foundation of democratic government." This press guidance was never used, however, as no journalist bothered to ask the State Department. Perhaps no one wanted to embarrass Washington since there is no small irony in all this.
With new revelations every day, there can be no doubt the Bush administration used torture and committed other illegal acts during its so-called war on terror. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the State Department lawyer responsible for detainee cases, the top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring detainees at Guantanamo to trial have all concluded that acts of torture were committed.
Vice President Cheney once said using water boarding in interrogating terrorists was a "no-brainer." So is the fact that it is torture.
The United States, when it ratified the Convention Against Torture, obligated itself to extradite or prosecute those who torture, or are complicit in its use. Nevertheless the American judicial system, the Obama administration and Congress have all done nothing. Attorney General Holder, when asked about the advisability of a truth commission to investigate America's use of torture, dodged the question and passed the buck to Senator Patrick Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy has proposed such a commission, but insisted on at least some Republican support. He has all but given up the effort since no one in the minority party is willing to put principle above partisanship even though immunity would be given to those that testify.
As for public opinion, there has been little notice let alone outrage. Perhaps Americans are too busy complaining about how high their taxes are to contemplate their complicity in crimes committed in their name.
Meanwhile charges against a number of former Bush administration officials for these crimes are being considered in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. A Spanish judge has proposed indicting six administration lawyers who provided the legal framework for torture. They defined torture as only something that causes a major organ to fail. They also defined the law as whatever the boss wanted to hear.
Thus far Bush's nightmare has not come true and he can continue to sleep soundly. He, and the yes men he surrounded himself with, may have to be careful about where they travel overseas in the future however.
And as for the rule of law - it is alive and well - in Peru.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador to Mozambique and Peru, is a professor of international affairs at Penn State's School of International Affairs. His most recent book is "Why American Foreign Policy Fails: Unsafe at Home and Despised Abroad."
McClatchy Newspapers did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy Newspapers or its editors.
New bombings in Iraq steal thunder from top insurgent's arrest Al Qaeda in Iraq appears to be exploiting instability in Iraq's government
from the April 23, 2009 edition -
New bombings in Iraq steal thunder from top insurgent's arrest
Al Qaeda in Iraq appears to be exploiting instability in Iraq's government
By Tom A. Peter | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Amman, Jordan
In what Iraqi authorities say could be the biggest blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) since its former leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a 2006, a military spokesman announced Thursday that Iraqi security forces had arrested the group's current leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. [Editor's note: The original version did not specify the nationality of the security forces.]
The news was a morale boost in Iraq, which has seen increased violence in recent weeks, including two bombings Thursday that killed dozens.
US military officials, however, said that they did not have information from the field to confirm the capture of the self-proclaimed "emir of the Islamic State of Iraq."
But even if Mr. Baghdadi was captured, Iraq's recent uptick in violence is not likely to abate soon, experts say. The government remains divided and the country's sectarian fault lines are easily exploitable.
"Far from becoming a functioning democracy, far becoming a stable state, far from winning the war in Iraq, Iraq remains a highly precarious state," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, N.Y. "The central political conflict has not been resolved ... [and] as long as Iraq remains sectarian-based you're going to have instability and violence."
On Thursday, two separate bomb blasts left at least 60 people dead and more than 110 injured in Baghdad and Muqdadiya, north of the capital city. The attacks resembled past incidents linked to AQI, but it remains unclear who was responsible for them. Earlier this month, AQI launched a coordinated strike detonating seven car bombs in Baghdad that killed at least 37 people.
US officials have emphasized that, despite the renewed violence, US and Iraqi forces are making progress in the fight against remaining insurgent and terrorist elements. On President Obama's recent visit to Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top military commander in Iraq, assured him that violence was at 2003 levels, before the insurgency began.
"These attacks [on Thursday] are an attempt to incite violence, but the Iraqi people have shown that they are rejecting this bankrupt philosophy," writes Lt. John Brimley, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force – Iraq, in an e-mail to The Christian Science Monitor.
AQI tries to undermine Awakening
The US had made significant inroads against AQI by building and funding a Sunni paramilitary group known as the Sons of Iraq (also referred to as the Awakening). But members of the group – which at one point included more than 100,000 members – have become disgruntled in recent months over the arrests of key leaders and a delay in payment from the Shiite-led Iraqi government, which has been in charge of their activities since late last year.
"If you continue arresting, harassing, and shunning Awakening types – many of whom were originally derived from the insurgency – you're really playing with fire," says Wayne White, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and the former deputy director of the State Department's office of Near East intelligence.
Earlier this week, a senior AQI leader called on Awakening members to return to the terrorist organization. Other reports indicate that, amid growing neglect from the Iraqi government, AQI is having increasing success unravelling the community-policing organization.
Additionally, in the face of increased pressure from both the Awakening members and American and Iraqi forces, AQI, which originally behaved more like a militia than a terrorist group, had to go deep underground. It adopted more of a cellular operating structure that has allowed it to continue operations even if top leaders are killed or captured.
"It is a multisegmented hydra that can survive this kind of thing," Mr. White says. "It can survive being beheaded more."
US again caught between Sunni and Shiite
The Maliki government and Iraqi security forces remain predominantly Shiite organizations, providing fertile recruiting ground for AQI, which has played on sectarian tensions to recruit Sunnis.
If the Awakening movement, a predominantly Sunni group, were to rejoin AQI or create new militias, American forces could find themselves in a difficult position.
"The Sunni Arab population that AQI depends on for support increasingly has the feeling that we [the US] are walking away from them," says Patrick Lang, a Middle East expert and former US Army officer. "There's this feeling that the Maliki government is so Shiite that it intends to not treat the Sunni Arabs very well, and the United States is not showing any inclination to continue to support [the Sunnis]."
Should the US take up arms against former Awakening members, it could create the perception that American forces had sided with the Shiites, some analysts warn. With strained relations between Iraq's three major ethnic groups – the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds – and no apparent road to a unity government, deeper conflict could still be brewing in the restive nation.
The US had the mistaken "belief that everybody would just decide to play nice in the school yard without their interests being served," says Mr. Lang. "We've made these mistake over and over again in Iraq."
New bombings in Iraq steal thunder from top insurgent's arrest
Al Qaeda in Iraq appears to be exploiting instability in Iraq's government
By Tom A. Peter | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Amman, Jordan
In what Iraqi authorities say could be the biggest blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) since its former leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a 2006, a military spokesman announced Thursday that Iraqi security forces had arrested the group's current leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. [Editor's note: The original version did not specify the nationality of the security forces.]
The news was a morale boost in Iraq, which has seen increased violence in recent weeks, including two bombings Thursday that killed dozens.
US military officials, however, said that they did not have information from the field to confirm the capture of the self-proclaimed "emir of the Islamic State of Iraq."
But even if Mr. Baghdadi was captured, Iraq's recent uptick in violence is not likely to abate soon, experts say. The government remains divided and the country's sectarian fault lines are easily exploitable.
"Far from becoming a functioning democracy, far becoming a stable state, far from winning the war in Iraq, Iraq remains a highly precarious state," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, N.Y. "The central political conflict has not been resolved ... [and] as long as Iraq remains sectarian-based you're going to have instability and violence."
On Thursday, two separate bomb blasts left at least 60 people dead and more than 110 injured in Baghdad and Muqdadiya, north of the capital city. The attacks resembled past incidents linked to AQI, but it remains unclear who was responsible for them. Earlier this month, AQI launched a coordinated strike detonating seven car bombs in Baghdad that killed at least 37 people.
US officials have emphasized that, despite the renewed violence, US and Iraqi forces are making progress in the fight against remaining insurgent and terrorist elements. On President Obama's recent visit to Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top military commander in Iraq, assured him that violence was at 2003 levels, before the insurgency began.
"These attacks [on Thursday] are an attempt to incite violence, but the Iraqi people have shown that they are rejecting this bankrupt philosophy," writes Lt. John Brimley, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force – Iraq, in an e-mail to The Christian Science Monitor.
AQI tries to undermine Awakening
The US had made significant inroads against AQI by building and funding a Sunni paramilitary group known as the Sons of Iraq (also referred to as the Awakening). But members of the group – which at one point included more than 100,000 members – have become disgruntled in recent months over the arrests of key leaders and a delay in payment from the Shiite-led Iraqi government, which has been in charge of their activities since late last year.
"If you continue arresting, harassing, and shunning Awakening types – many of whom were originally derived from the insurgency – you're really playing with fire," says Wayne White, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and the former deputy director of the State Department's office of Near East intelligence.
Earlier this week, a senior AQI leader called on Awakening members to return to the terrorist organization. Other reports indicate that, amid growing neglect from the Iraqi government, AQI is having increasing success unravelling the community-policing organization.
Additionally, in the face of increased pressure from both the Awakening members and American and Iraqi forces, AQI, which originally behaved more like a militia than a terrorist group, had to go deep underground. It adopted more of a cellular operating structure that has allowed it to continue operations even if top leaders are killed or captured.
"It is a multisegmented hydra that can survive this kind of thing," Mr. White says. "It can survive being beheaded more."
US again caught between Sunni and Shiite
The Maliki government and Iraqi security forces remain predominantly Shiite organizations, providing fertile recruiting ground for AQI, which has played on sectarian tensions to recruit Sunnis.
If the Awakening movement, a predominantly Sunni group, were to rejoin AQI or create new militias, American forces could find themselves in a difficult position.
"The Sunni Arab population that AQI depends on for support increasingly has the feeling that we [the US] are walking away from them," says Patrick Lang, a Middle East expert and former US Army officer. "There's this feeling that the Maliki government is so Shiite that it intends to not treat the Sunni Arabs very well, and the United States is not showing any inclination to continue to support [the Sunnis]."
Should the US take up arms against former Awakening members, it could create the perception that American forces had sided with the Shiites, some analysts warn. With strained relations between Iraq's three major ethnic groups – the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds – and no apparent road to a unity government, deeper conflict could still be brewing in the restive nation.
The US had the mistaken "belief that everybody would just decide to play nice in the school yard without their interests being served," says Mr. Lang. "We've made these mistake over and over again in Iraq."
Fourth Annual Failed States Index
Whether it is an unexpected food crisis or a devastating hurricane, the world’s weakest states are the most exposed when crisis strikes. In the fourth annual Failed States Index, FOREIGN POLICY and The Fund for Peace rank the countries where state collapse may be just one disaster away.
When troops opened fire in the streets of Mogadishu in early May, it was a tragically familiar scene in war-torn Somalia. Except on this day, soldiers weren’t fighting Islamist militias or warlords. They were combating a mob of tens of thousands rioting over soaring food prices.
On top of the country’s already colossal challenges, a food crisis seems an especially cruel turn for a place like Somalia. But it is a test that dozens of weak states are being forced to confront this year, with escalating prices threatening to undo years of poverty-alleviation and development efforts. The unrest in Mogadishu echoes food riots that have erupted on nearly every continent in the past year. Tens of thousands of Mexicans protested when the price of corn flour jumped 400 percent in early 2007. Thousands of Russian pensioners took to the streets in November to call for a return to price controls on milk and bread. In Egypt, the army was ordered to bake more loaves at military-run bakeries after riots broke out across the country. Kabul, Port-au-Prince, and Jakarta experienced angry protests over spikes in the price of staples.
But if few foretold the hunger and hardship that have followed the uptick in prices, the events of 2007 revealed that unexpected shocks can play a decisive role in the stability of an increasing number of vulnerable states. Primary among last year’s shocks was the implosion of the U.S. subprime market, which burst housing bubbles worldwide, slowed trade, and sent currencies into tailspins. A contested election in Kenya in December swiftly shredded any semblance of ethnic peace in a country that many had considered an African success story. And though Benazir Bhutto feared her own assassination upon returning to Pakistan, her murder reverberated in a country already contending with the challenges of ambitious mullahs, suicide bombers, and an all-powerful military.
These shocks are the sparks of state failure, events that further corrode the integrity of weak states and push those on the edge closer to combustion. As the food crisis has shown, these political and economic setbacks are not unique to the world’s most vulnerable countries. But weak states are weak precisely because they lack the resiliency to cope with unwelcome—and unpleasant—surprises. When a global economic downturn pinches the main export base, an election goes awry, or a natural disaster wipes out villages, the cracks of vulnerability open wider.
Because it is crucial to closely monitor weak states—their progress, their deterioration, and their ability to withstand challenges—the Fund for Peace, an independent research organization, and FOREIGN POLICY present the fourth annual Failed States Index. Using 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators, we ranked 177 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration. To do so, we examined more than 30,000 publicly available sources, collected from May to December 2007, to form the basis of the index’s scores. The 60 most vulnerable states are listed in the rankings, and the full results are available at ForeignPolicy.com and fundforpeace.org.
Go to link for rest of the article: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4350
Copyright 2008, The Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved. FOREIGN POLICY is a registered trademark owned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
When troops opened fire in the streets of Mogadishu in early May, it was a tragically familiar scene in war-torn Somalia. Except on this day, soldiers weren’t fighting Islamist militias or warlords. They were combating a mob of tens of thousands rioting over soaring food prices.
On top of the country’s already colossal challenges, a food crisis seems an especially cruel turn for a place like Somalia. But it is a test that dozens of weak states are being forced to confront this year, with escalating prices threatening to undo years of poverty-alleviation and development efforts. The unrest in Mogadishu echoes food riots that have erupted on nearly every continent in the past year. Tens of thousands of Mexicans protested when the price of corn flour jumped 400 percent in early 2007. Thousands of Russian pensioners took to the streets in November to call for a return to price controls on milk and bread. In Egypt, the army was ordered to bake more loaves at military-run bakeries after riots broke out across the country. Kabul, Port-au-Prince, and Jakarta experienced angry protests over spikes in the price of staples.
But if few foretold the hunger and hardship that have followed the uptick in prices, the events of 2007 revealed that unexpected shocks can play a decisive role in the stability of an increasing number of vulnerable states. Primary among last year’s shocks was the implosion of the U.S. subprime market, which burst housing bubbles worldwide, slowed trade, and sent currencies into tailspins. A contested election in Kenya in December swiftly shredded any semblance of ethnic peace in a country that many had considered an African success story. And though Benazir Bhutto feared her own assassination upon returning to Pakistan, her murder reverberated in a country already contending with the challenges of ambitious mullahs, suicide bombers, and an all-powerful military.
These shocks are the sparks of state failure, events that further corrode the integrity of weak states and push those on the edge closer to combustion. As the food crisis has shown, these political and economic setbacks are not unique to the world’s most vulnerable countries. But weak states are weak precisely because they lack the resiliency to cope with unwelcome—and unpleasant—surprises. When a global economic downturn pinches the main export base, an election goes awry, or a natural disaster wipes out villages, the cracks of vulnerability open wider.
Because it is crucial to closely monitor weak states—their progress, their deterioration, and their ability to withstand challenges—the Fund for Peace, an independent research organization, and FOREIGN POLICY present the fourth annual Failed States Index. Using 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators, we ranked 177 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration. To do so, we examined more than 30,000 publicly available sources, collected from May to December 2007, to form the basis of the index’s scores. The 60 most vulnerable states are listed in the rankings, and the full results are available at ForeignPolicy.com and fundforpeace.org.
Go to link for rest of the article: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4350
Copyright 2008, The Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved. FOREIGN POLICY is a registered trademark owned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
CHAN AKYA G-8's first bankruptcy
CHAN AKYA
G-8's first bankruptcy
The United Kingdom is the leading candidate for the first sovereign bankruptcy among Group of Eight countries. Rather than learn from the downward spiral of its financial system, the government is crawling back towards populist socialism in a move that is destined to destroy the economy.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KD25Dj03.html
G-8's first bankruptcy
The United Kingdom is the leading candidate for the first sovereign bankruptcy among Group of Eight countries. Rather than learn from the downward spiral of its financial system, the government is crawling back towards populist socialism in a move that is destined to destroy the economy.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KD25Dj03.html
China Admits to Significantly Building Its Gold Reserves
China Admits to Significantly Building Its Gold Reserves
China admits to building up stockpile of gold
Alfred Cang and Tom Miles, Reuters
Friday, April 24, 2009
SHANGHAI/BEIJING - China revealed on Friday that it had secretly raised its gold reserves by three-quarters since 2003, increasing its holdings to 1,054 tonnes - or a pot worth about US$30.9-billion - and confirming years of speculation it had been buying.
Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, told Xinhua news agency in an interview that the country's reserves had risen by 454 tonnes from 600 tonnes since 2003, when China last adjusted its state gold reserves figure.
The confirmation of its surreptitious stockpiling is likely to fuel market talk about Beijing's ability to buy secretly and its ambitions for spending its nearly US$2-trillion pile of savings. And not just in gold: copper and other metals markets are booming thanks to China's barely-visible hand.
Speculation has gathered speed over the last year, since the tumbling dollar has threatened to weaken China's buying power - and give it yet more reason to diversify into gold, oil and metals.
Gold prices jumped on the news of Chinese buying and were up more than 1% on the day at US$912.05 an ounce at 0715 GMT. By a Reuters calculation, China's holding of gold would be worth around US$30.9-billion at current prices.
That accounts for only about 1.6% of China's total foreign exchange holdings and is little more than one-tenth of the value of the U.S. gold reserve, the world's biggest. It also means gold has slipped as a share of China's total reserves from about 2%, based on end-2003 prices.
Only six countries hold more than 1,000 tonnes, and China is ranked fifth, having leap-frogged Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands with its announcement.
However, the International Monetary Fund and the SPDR Gold Trust exchange traded fund are even bigger, leaving China with the world's seventh-biggest pot of gold.
Several gold market participants said they thought China had bought on the international market, helping to absorb hundreds of tonnes sold off by central banks and the International Monetary Fund in recent years.
"China has been buying via government channels from South Africa, Russia and South America," said Ellison Chu, director of precious metals at Standard Bank in Hong Kong.
But Hu said the increase in China's stocks was achieved by buying on the domestic market and from domestic producers.
China is the world's largest gold producer and does not permit exports of gold ingots, only jewellery, leaving plentiful supplies for the domestic market.
China produced 282 tonnes of gold last year, meaning the state bought around one quarter of domestic production, assuming 454 tonnes increase in state purchases were spread out over the six years since China last reported a change in its holdings.
Despite the rumours, buying by the state was partially obscured by soaring demand for gold as an investment, especially after the bursting of the Shanghai stock market bubble last year.
Investment demand in China rose to 68.9 tonnes from 25.6 tonnes in 2007. But that was still less than one third of retail demand in India, where total bullion consumption topped 660 tonnes last year.
Hu said China recently reported the change in its gold holdings to the International Monetary Fund and would include the latest change in central bank reports and balance of payment statistics.
She did not say when China notified the IMF.
Although gold rose after Hu's comments were published, the price move was not a huge one for the highly liquid market. Prices had jumped by US$13 in the space of an hour on Thursday.
Gold market participants said the news signalled likely further buying by China.
"The comments indicate that China will buy more gold as reserve to improve its foreign reserve portfolio. This is a trend," said Yao Haiqiao, president of Longgold Asset Management.
Hou Huimin, vice general secretary of the China Gold Association, said China should build its reserves to 5,000 tonnes.
"It's not a matter of a few hundred, or 1,000 tonnes. China should hold more because of its new international status, and because of the financial crisis," he said.
"The financial crisis means the U.S. dollar value is changing fast, and it may retreat from being the international reserve currency. If that happens, whoever holds gold will be at an advantage."
The European Central Bank recommends its member banks hold 15% of their reserves in gold, but among Asian nations the percentage is far smaller, said Albert Cheng, World Gold Council managing director for the far east. http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
China admits to building up stockpile of gold
Alfred Cang and Tom Miles, Reuters
Friday, April 24, 2009
SHANGHAI/BEIJING - China revealed on Friday that it had secretly raised its gold reserves by three-quarters since 2003, increasing its holdings to 1,054 tonnes - or a pot worth about US$30.9-billion - and confirming years of speculation it had been buying.
Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, told Xinhua news agency in an interview that the country's reserves had risen by 454 tonnes from 600 tonnes since 2003, when China last adjusted its state gold reserves figure.
The confirmation of its surreptitious stockpiling is likely to fuel market talk about Beijing's ability to buy secretly and its ambitions for spending its nearly US$2-trillion pile of savings. And not just in gold: copper and other metals markets are booming thanks to China's barely-visible hand.
Speculation has gathered speed over the last year, since the tumbling dollar has threatened to weaken China's buying power - and give it yet more reason to diversify into gold, oil and metals.
Gold prices jumped on the news of Chinese buying and were up more than 1% on the day at US$912.05 an ounce at 0715 GMT. By a Reuters calculation, China's holding of gold would be worth around US$30.9-billion at current prices.
That accounts for only about 1.6% of China's total foreign exchange holdings and is little more than one-tenth of the value of the U.S. gold reserve, the world's biggest. It also means gold has slipped as a share of China's total reserves from about 2%, based on end-2003 prices.
Only six countries hold more than 1,000 tonnes, and China is ranked fifth, having leap-frogged Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands with its announcement.
However, the International Monetary Fund and the SPDR Gold Trust exchange traded fund are even bigger, leaving China with the world's seventh-biggest pot of gold.
Several gold market participants said they thought China had bought on the international market, helping to absorb hundreds of tonnes sold off by central banks and the International Monetary Fund in recent years.
"China has been buying via government channels from South Africa, Russia and South America," said Ellison Chu, director of precious metals at Standard Bank in Hong Kong.
But Hu said the increase in China's stocks was achieved by buying on the domestic market and from domestic producers.
China is the world's largest gold producer and does not permit exports of gold ingots, only jewellery, leaving plentiful supplies for the domestic market.
China produced 282 tonnes of gold last year, meaning the state bought around one quarter of domestic production, assuming 454 tonnes increase in state purchases were spread out over the six years since China last reported a change in its holdings.
Despite the rumours, buying by the state was partially obscured by soaring demand for gold as an investment, especially after the bursting of the Shanghai stock market bubble last year.
Investment demand in China rose to 68.9 tonnes from 25.6 tonnes in 2007. But that was still less than one third of retail demand in India, where total bullion consumption topped 660 tonnes last year.
Hu said China recently reported the change in its gold holdings to the International Monetary Fund and would include the latest change in central bank reports and balance of payment statistics.
She did not say when China notified the IMF.
Although gold rose after Hu's comments were published, the price move was not a huge one for the highly liquid market. Prices had jumped by US$13 in the space of an hour on Thursday.
Gold market participants said the news signalled likely further buying by China.
"The comments indicate that China will buy more gold as reserve to improve its foreign reserve portfolio. This is a trend," said Yao Haiqiao, president of Longgold Asset Management.
Hou Huimin, vice general secretary of the China Gold Association, said China should build its reserves to 5,000 tonnes.
"It's not a matter of a few hundred, or 1,000 tonnes. China should hold more because of its new international status, and because of the financial crisis," he said.
"The financial crisis means the U.S. dollar value is changing fast, and it may retreat from being the international reserve currency. If that happens, whoever holds gold will be at an advantage."
The European Central Bank recommends its member banks hold 15% of their reserves in gold, but among Asian nations the percentage is far smaller, said Albert Cheng, World Gold Council managing director for the far east. http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
The Central Asian Water Crisis The "Upstream" against the "DownStream" Countries - by Aleksandr Shustov - 2009-04-23
The Central Asian Water Crisis
The "Upstream" against the "DownStream" Countries
- by Aleksandr Shustov - 2009-04-23
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13322
The "Upstream" against the "DownStream" Countries
- by Aleksandr Shustov - 2009-04-23
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13322
The Destabilization of Pakistan: Finding Clarity in the Baluchistan Conundrum - by Talha Mujaddidi
The Destabilization of Pakistan: Finding Clarity in the Baluchistan Conundrum
- by Talha Mujaddidi - 2009-04-24
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13325
- by Talha Mujaddidi - 2009-04-24
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13325
The Taliban’s “AfPak” Strategy: A Jihadi Preemptive War By Walid Phares
The Taliban’s “AfPak” Strategy: A Jihadi Preemptive War
By Walid Phares
As the U.S. administration and its allies are devising a new strategy for the next steps in Afghanistan, the jihadists have already begun their next move — but this time it’s inside Pakistan. As I’ve written over the past few months, we need to look at Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as one regional battlefield where the “other side” is coordinating strategically, acting methodically and for sure beating the international coalition in speed. If Washington and its allies fail to see the big picture in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which unfortunately may be the case now, the rapidly deteriorating situation will soon exceed the northwestern provinces of Pakistan to spill over to both Afghanistan and India, if not beyond. That’s how I suggest “reading” the recent worrisome leaps achieved by the Taliban from the SWAT valley into the neighboring district of Buner. So what’s the story and why should we consider it as a crossing of the red lines?
Read More »
70 miles.jpg
Taliban, 70 miles from Islamabad
For over two years both the past government of General Musharraf and the current democratically elected government of President Asif Ali Zardari have been advised to “engage” the Taliban, or rather what they perceived as “reconcilable” leaders of the Jihadi militia in control of large areas in Waziristan and the adjacent districts. Despite the fact that the Taliban protects Al Qaeda (openly), obstruct the army from bringing legal order along the borders with Afghanistan, controls training camps for international terrorists, wages attacks against security forces and have been involved in car bombs, suicide attacks and assassinations for years now, advice was given to high authorities in Islamabad (both from inside and outside the country) that “accommodating” some of the Taliban’s basic requirements will bring stability, at least for a while. Musharraf, whose intelligence services had kept good relations and friendships with the Jihadists of “AfPak” (Afghanistan and Pakistan combined), attempted to calm down some of the radical war lords even though he accused the Taliban at large of attempting to kill him and “Talibanize” the country. This dual and contradictive approach between shouting at them and engaging them at the same time allowed the jihadi militias to survive across Waziristan and other locations between 2001 and 2008.
The missing link has always been the failure in winning the war of ideas against the radical networks. As long as the jihadi madrassas are operational, droves of “graduates” enlarge the ranks of the Taliban and their other associates such as Laskar Taibah (accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks), Jaish e Muhammed and other armed Islamist factions. In short, the strength of the Jihadi machine in Pakistan today is a direct result of the non-action by the Musharraf government against the network, particularly along the western borders for eight years.
The reasons for this restraint are numerous and aren’t all the product of presidential inaction. Rather they are embedded in an international consensus not to “touch” the ideology of the radicals. That is an overarching problem hovering over many other areas of crises including Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Sudan, and even within Western countries. This is another discussion.
With the election of a new president of Pakistan, the widower of the late Benazir Bhutto assassinated by the Taliban, and the formation of a new cabinet dominated by the secular “Party of the People,” conventional wisdom would project that Islamabad would mobilize wider and stronger against the creeping militias. Although during the election campaign and for the first few months of its tenure government figures blasted the “extremists” and pledged for shutting down the ideological madrassas across the country, the “engagement policy” persisted and ironically went farther than under Musharraf. Over the past few months, Pakistan’s government authorized governors in the Northwest part of the country to sign agreements with the leaders of the “Sharia Movement” in the Swat valley, a Jihadi front, to apply their interpretation of religious laws. The founder of the movement, Sufi Mohammad accepted the terms of the settlement with Islamabad. But his son in law Maulana Qazi Fazlullah the chief of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi organization (TNSM), who since 2007 has deployed his 5,000 militiamen in 60 villages forming a “parallel emirate,” is now on the march to expand Taliban influence beyond the “authorized” district. In short, the cohort of jihadists is not stopping, not reconciling, not de-radicalizing but seeking to eventually reach the capital.
First in Waziristan, then as of last year in Swat, and now seizing the district of Buner, the Taliban are conquering Pakistani land. Their technique is simple: Give us Sharia implementation or endure terror. Authorities have been choosing the morphine option: let them apply Sharia if they seize fire. But as soon as an area is “granted” to the jihadists, a new “jihad” begins towards the adjacent district. The “forced Sharia” gives the Taliban more than just catechism: full control, broadcast, courts, training facilities, and money. It just cedes territory and people to a highly ideological force. Their Sharia-based “Talibanization” grants them harsh show of severity and intimidation: girls and women punished, opponents eliminated, civil society repressed, a copycat of pre-2001 Afghanistan.
But the strategic consequences of the last “offensives” inside Pakistan are boundless. By reaching a distance of 70 miles or so of the capital the Taliban are putting the government under their direct menace. Pushes elsewhere are expected southbound and northeast bound. The army is deploying around public buildings; that is a bad sign. I’d also project a Jihadi push along the Kashmir borders with India. The hydra is expanding gradually, preparing for a massive squeeze.
We should be concerned about two titanic effects on international security: Obviously, the nukes of Pakistan are on the minds of the Al Qaeda leadership, hidden comfortably in the belly of the Taliban. But also the US-led coming campaign in Afghanistan. The Taliban are attempting to change the landscape inside Pakistan and along its northwestern borders so that when the new push begins in Afghanistan, the Taliban would already have a deep hinterland east of the borders and so that the Pakistani Army busy is protecting the government, not in encircling the jihadists. The war room of the terror forces has begun fighting America’s new terrorism strategy before the latter starts. I can only characterize it as a “jihadi preemptive war.”
*****
Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of “The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.”
« Close It
April 23, 2009 11:17 PM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/the_talibans_afpak_strategy_a.php
By Walid Phares
As the U.S. administration and its allies are devising a new strategy for the next steps in Afghanistan, the jihadists have already begun their next move — but this time it’s inside Pakistan. As I’ve written over the past few months, we need to look at Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as one regional battlefield where the “other side” is coordinating strategically, acting methodically and for sure beating the international coalition in speed. If Washington and its allies fail to see the big picture in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which unfortunately may be the case now, the rapidly deteriorating situation will soon exceed the northwestern provinces of Pakistan to spill over to both Afghanistan and India, if not beyond. That’s how I suggest “reading” the recent worrisome leaps achieved by the Taliban from the SWAT valley into the neighboring district of Buner. So what’s the story and why should we consider it as a crossing of the red lines?
Read More »
70 miles.jpg
Taliban, 70 miles from Islamabad
For over two years both the past government of General Musharraf and the current democratically elected government of President Asif Ali Zardari have been advised to “engage” the Taliban, or rather what they perceived as “reconcilable” leaders of the Jihadi militia in control of large areas in Waziristan and the adjacent districts. Despite the fact that the Taliban protects Al Qaeda (openly), obstruct the army from bringing legal order along the borders with Afghanistan, controls training camps for international terrorists, wages attacks against security forces and have been involved in car bombs, suicide attacks and assassinations for years now, advice was given to high authorities in Islamabad (both from inside and outside the country) that “accommodating” some of the Taliban’s basic requirements will bring stability, at least for a while. Musharraf, whose intelligence services had kept good relations and friendships with the Jihadists of “AfPak” (Afghanistan and Pakistan combined), attempted to calm down some of the radical war lords even though he accused the Taliban at large of attempting to kill him and “Talibanize” the country. This dual and contradictive approach between shouting at them and engaging them at the same time allowed the jihadi militias to survive across Waziristan and other locations between 2001 and 2008.
The missing link has always been the failure in winning the war of ideas against the radical networks. As long as the jihadi madrassas are operational, droves of “graduates” enlarge the ranks of the Taliban and their other associates such as Laskar Taibah (accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks), Jaish e Muhammed and other armed Islamist factions. In short, the strength of the Jihadi machine in Pakistan today is a direct result of the non-action by the Musharraf government against the network, particularly along the western borders for eight years.
The reasons for this restraint are numerous and aren’t all the product of presidential inaction. Rather they are embedded in an international consensus not to “touch” the ideology of the radicals. That is an overarching problem hovering over many other areas of crises including Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Sudan, and even within Western countries. This is another discussion.
With the election of a new president of Pakistan, the widower of the late Benazir Bhutto assassinated by the Taliban, and the formation of a new cabinet dominated by the secular “Party of the People,” conventional wisdom would project that Islamabad would mobilize wider and stronger against the creeping militias. Although during the election campaign and for the first few months of its tenure government figures blasted the “extremists” and pledged for shutting down the ideological madrassas across the country, the “engagement policy” persisted and ironically went farther than under Musharraf. Over the past few months, Pakistan’s government authorized governors in the Northwest part of the country to sign agreements with the leaders of the “Sharia Movement” in the Swat valley, a Jihadi front, to apply their interpretation of religious laws. The founder of the movement, Sufi Mohammad accepted the terms of the settlement with Islamabad. But his son in law Maulana Qazi Fazlullah the chief of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi organization (TNSM), who since 2007 has deployed his 5,000 militiamen in 60 villages forming a “parallel emirate,” is now on the march to expand Taliban influence beyond the “authorized” district. In short, the cohort of jihadists is not stopping, not reconciling, not de-radicalizing but seeking to eventually reach the capital.
First in Waziristan, then as of last year in Swat, and now seizing the district of Buner, the Taliban are conquering Pakistani land. Their technique is simple: Give us Sharia implementation or endure terror. Authorities have been choosing the morphine option: let them apply Sharia if they seize fire. But as soon as an area is “granted” to the jihadists, a new “jihad” begins towards the adjacent district. The “forced Sharia” gives the Taliban more than just catechism: full control, broadcast, courts, training facilities, and money. It just cedes territory and people to a highly ideological force. Their Sharia-based “Talibanization” grants them harsh show of severity and intimidation: girls and women punished, opponents eliminated, civil society repressed, a copycat of pre-2001 Afghanistan.
But the strategic consequences of the last “offensives” inside Pakistan are boundless. By reaching a distance of 70 miles or so of the capital the Taliban are putting the government under their direct menace. Pushes elsewhere are expected southbound and northeast bound. The army is deploying around public buildings; that is a bad sign. I’d also project a Jihadi push along the Kashmir borders with India. The hydra is expanding gradually, preparing for a massive squeeze.
We should be concerned about two titanic effects on international security: Obviously, the nukes of Pakistan are on the minds of the Al Qaeda leadership, hidden comfortably in the belly of the Taliban. But also the US-led coming campaign in Afghanistan. The Taliban are attempting to change the landscape inside Pakistan and along its northwestern borders so that when the new push begins in Afghanistan, the Taliban would already have a deep hinterland east of the borders and so that the Pakistani Army busy is protecting the government, not in encircling the jihadists. The war room of the terror forces has begun fighting America’s new terrorism strategy before the latter starts. I can only characterize it as a “jihadi preemptive war.”
*****
Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of “The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.”
« Close It
April 23, 2009 11:17 PM Link http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/04/the_talibans_afpak_strategy_a.php
What They Craved Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11 By MARJORIE COHN
What They Craved
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
By MARJORIE COHN
When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.
Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003. That link was never established.
President Obama released the four memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU. They describe unimaginably brutal techniques and provide “legal” justification for clearly illegal acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the face of monumental pressure from the CIA to keep them secret, Obama demonstrated great courage in deciding to make the grotesque memos public. At the same time, however, in an attempt to pacify the intelligence establishment, Obama said, “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
In startlingly clinical and dispassionate terms, the authors of the newly-released torture memos describe and then rationalize why the devastating techniques the CIA sought to employ on human beings do not violate the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. sec. 2340).
The memos justify 10 techniques, including banging heads into walls 30 times in a row, prolonged nudity, repeated slapping, dietary manipulation, and dousing with cold water as low as 41 degrees. They allow shackling in a standing position for 180 hours, sleep deprivation for 11 days, confinement of people in small dark boxes with insects for hours, and waterboarding to create the perception they are drowning. Moreover, the memos permit many of these techniques to be used in combination for a 30-day period. They find that none of these techniques constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Waterboarding, admittedly the most serious of the methods, is designed, according to Jay Bybee, to induce the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic, i.e. the perception of drowning.” But although Bybee finds that “the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death,” he accepts the CIA’s claim that it does “not anticipate that any prolonged mental harm would result from the use of the waterboard.” One of Bradbury’s memos requires that a physician be on duty during waterboarding to perform a tracheotomy in case the victim doesn’t recover after being returned to an upright position.
As psychologist Jeffrey Kaye points out, the CIA and the Justice Department “ignored a wealth of other published information” that indicates dissociative symptoms, changes greater than those in patients undergoing heart surgery, and drops in testosterone to castration levels after acute stress associated with techniques that the memos sanction.
The Torture Statute punishes conduct, or conspiracy to engage in conduct, specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. “Severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from either the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering, or from the threat of imminent death.
Bybee asserts that “if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent.” He makes the novel claim that the presence of personnel with medical training who can stop the interrogation if medically necessary “indicates that it is not your intent to cause severe physical pain.”
Now a federal judge with lifetime appointment, Bybee concludes that waterboarding does not constitute torture under the Torture Statute. However, he writes, “we cannot predict with confidence whether a court would agree with this conclusion.”
Bybee’s memo explains why the 10 techniques could be used on Abu Zubaydah, who was considered to be a top Al Qaeda operative. “Zubaydah does not have any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to suffer prolonged mental harm from [the CIA’s] proposed interrogation methods,” the CIA told Bybee. But Zubaydah was a low-ranking Al Qaeda operative, according to leading FBI counter-terrorism expert Dan Coleman, who advised a top FBI official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.” This was reported by Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Doctrine.
The CIA’s request to confine Zubaydah in a cramped box with an insect was granted by Bybee, who told the CIA it could place a harmless insect in the box and tell Zubaydah that it will sting him but it won’t kill him. Even though the CIA knew that Zubaydah had an irrational fear of insects, Bybee found there would be no threat of severe physical pain or suffering if it followed this procedure.
Obama’s intent to immunize those who violated our laws banning torture and cruel treatment violates the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
U.S. law prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and requires that those who subject people to such treatment be prosecuted. The Convention against Torture compels us to refer all torture cases for prosecution or extradite the suspect to a country that will undertake a criminal investigation.
Obama has made a political calculation to seek amnesty for the CIA torturers. However, good faith reliance on superior orders was rejected as a defense at Nuremberg and in Lt. Calley’s Vietnam-era trial for the My Lai Massacre. The Torture Convention provides unequivocally, “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification for torture.”
There is evidence that the CIA was using the illegal techniques as early as April 2002, three to four months before the August memo was written. That would eliminate “good faith” reliance on Justice Department advice as a “defense” to prosecution.
The Senate IntelligenceCommittee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding in July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.
Obama told AP’s Jennifer Loven in the Oval Office: “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that.” If Holder continues to carry out Obama’s political agenda by resisting investigations and prosecution, Congress can, and should, authorize the appointment of a special independent prosecutor to do what the law requires.
The President must fulfill his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed. Obama said that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” He is wrong. There is more to gain from upholding the rule of law. It will make future leaders think twice before they authorize the cruel, illegal treatment of other human beings.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Cowboy Republic. and co-author of the new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn04242009.html
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
By MARJORIE COHN
When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.
Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003. That link was never established.
President Obama released the four memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU. They describe unimaginably brutal techniques and provide “legal” justification for clearly illegal acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the face of monumental pressure from the CIA to keep them secret, Obama demonstrated great courage in deciding to make the grotesque memos public. At the same time, however, in an attempt to pacify the intelligence establishment, Obama said, “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
In startlingly clinical and dispassionate terms, the authors of the newly-released torture memos describe and then rationalize why the devastating techniques the CIA sought to employ on human beings do not violate the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. sec. 2340).
The memos justify 10 techniques, including banging heads into walls 30 times in a row, prolonged nudity, repeated slapping, dietary manipulation, and dousing with cold water as low as 41 degrees. They allow shackling in a standing position for 180 hours, sleep deprivation for 11 days, confinement of people in small dark boxes with insects for hours, and waterboarding to create the perception they are drowning. Moreover, the memos permit many of these techniques to be used in combination for a 30-day period. They find that none of these techniques constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Waterboarding, admittedly the most serious of the methods, is designed, according to Jay Bybee, to induce the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic, i.e. the perception of drowning.” But although Bybee finds that “the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death,” he accepts the CIA’s claim that it does “not anticipate that any prolonged mental harm would result from the use of the waterboard.” One of Bradbury’s memos requires that a physician be on duty during waterboarding to perform a tracheotomy in case the victim doesn’t recover after being returned to an upright position.
As psychologist Jeffrey Kaye points out, the CIA and the Justice Department “ignored a wealth of other published information” that indicates dissociative symptoms, changes greater than those in patients undergoing heart surgery, and drops in testosterone to castration levels after acute stress associated with techniques that the memos sanction.
The Torture Statute punishes conduct, or conspiracy to engage in conduct, specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. “Severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from either the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering, or from the threat of imminent death.
Bybee asserts that “if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent.” He makes the novel claim that the presence of personnel with medical training who can stop the interrogation if medically necessary “indicates that it is not your intent to cause severe physical pain.”
Now a federal judge with lifetime appointment, Bybee concludes that waterboarding does not constitute torture under the Torture Statute. However, he writes, “we cannot predict with confidence whether a court would agree with this conclusion.”
Bybee’s memo explains why the 10 techniques could be used on Abu Zubaydah, who was considered to be a top Al Qaeda operative. “Zubaydah does not have any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to suffer prolonged mental harm from [the CIA’s] proposed interrogation methods,” the CIA told Bybee. But Zubaydah was a low-ranking Al Qaeda operative, according to leading FBI counter-terrorism expert Dan Coleman, who advised a top FBI official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.” This was reported by Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Doctrine.
The CIA’s request to confine Zubaydah in a cramped box with an insect was granted by Bybee, who told the CIA it could place a harmless insect in the box and tell Zubaydah that it will sting him but it won’t kill him. Even though the CIA knew that Zubaydah had an irrational fear of insects, Bybee found there would be no threat of severe physical pain or suffering if it followed this procedure.
Obama’s intent to immunize those who violated our laws banning torture and cruel treatment violates the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
U.S. law prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and requires that those who subject people to such treatment be prosecuted. The Convention against Torture compels us to refer all torture cases for prosecution or extradite the suspect to a country that will undertake a criminal investigation.
Obama has made a political calculation to seek amnesty for the CIA torturers. However, good faith reliance on superior orders was rejected as a defense at Nuremberg and in Lt. Calley’s Vietnam-era trial for the My Lai Massacre. The Torture Convention provides unequivocally, “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification for torture.”
There is evidence that the CIA was using the illegal techniques as early as April 2002, three to four months before the August memo was written. That would eliminate “good faith” reliance on Justice Department advice as a “defense” to prosecution.
The Senate IntelligenceCommittee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding in July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.
Obama told AP’s Jennifer Loven in the Oval Office: “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that.” If Holder continues to carry out Obama’s political agenda by resisting investigations and prosecution, Congress can, and should, authorize the appointment of a special independent prosecutor to do what the law requires.
The President must fulfill his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed. Obama said that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” He is wrong. There is more to gain from upholding the rule of law. It will make future leaders think twice before they authorize the cruel, illegal treatment of other human beings.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Cowboy Republic. and co-author of the new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn04242009.html
How Bush's Torture Helped al-Qaeda
How Bush's Torture Helped al-Qaeda
Though George W. Bush's defenders say his torture policies worked, al-Qaeda captives told fake stories about Iraq and bought time for al-Qaeda to regroup in nuclear-armed Pakistan, reports Robert Parry. April 23, 2009
Captured al-Qaeda operatives, facing the threat or reality of torture, appear to have fed the Bush administration’s obsession about Iraq, buying Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders time to rebuild their organization inside nuclear-armed Pakistan
Even now, as al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies expand their power ever closer to Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, ex-Bush administration officials continue to insist they protected U.S. security by repeatedly waterboarding the likes of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and terrifying others, such as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, with “extraordinary renditions” to foreign countries known to torture.
For rest of the article go to http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2009/042209.html
However, the emerging evidence, including recently released Justice Department memos, suggests that the “high-value detainees” may have helped divert U.S. focus away from their al-Qaeda colleagues by providing tantalizing misinformation about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and dropping tidbits about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who operated inside Iraq.
The May 30, 2005, memo by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, also appears to have exaggerated the value of intelligence extracted from detainee Abu Zubaydah through harsh interrogations – references that Bush administration defenders have cited as justification for abusive tactics, including the near-drowning of waterboarding.
The May 30 memo states: “Interrogations of Zubaydah – again, once enhanced techniques were employed – furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. …
“You [CIA officials] have informed us that Zubaydah also ‘provided significant information on two operatives, [including] Jose Padilla [,] who planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in Washington DC area.”
However, that last claim conflicts with known evidence about Zubaydah’s interrogations and with the time elements of Padilla’s arrest. Zubaydah was captured on March 28, 2002, after a gunfight that left him wounded. Padilla, an American citizen who converted to Islam, was arrested on May 8, 2002.
Yet, Bush administration lawyers did not give clearance for the “enhanced interrogation techniques” until late July, verbally, and on Aug. 1, 2002, in writing.
In addition, Zubaydah’s information about Padilla and KSM was provided to FBI interrogators who had employed rapport-building techniques with Zubaydah, not the harsh tactics that CIA interrogators insisted upon later, according to published accounts.
Though George W. Bush's defenders say his torture policies worked, al-Qaeda captives told fake stories about Iraq and bought time for al-Qaeda to regroup in nuclear-armed Pakistan, reports Robert Parry. April 23, 2009
Captured al-Qaeda operatives, facing the threat or reality of torture, appear to have fed the Bush administration’s obsession about Iraq, buying Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders time to rebuild their organization inside nuclear-armed Pakistan
Even now, as al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies expand their power ever closer to Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, ex-Bush administration officials continue to insist they protected U.S. security by repeatedly waterboarding the likes of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and terrifying others, such as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, with “extraordinary renditions” to foreign countries known to torture.
For rest of the article go to http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2009/042209.html
However, the emerging evidence, including recently released Justice Department memos, suggests that the “high-value detainees” may have helped divert U.S. focus away from their al-Qaeda colleagues by providing tantalizing misinformation about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and dropping tidbits about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who operated inside Iraq.
The May 30, 2005, memo by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, also appears to have exaggerated the value of intelligence extracted from detainee Abu Zubaydah through harsh interrogations – references that Bush administration defenders have cited as justification for abusive tactics, including the near-drowning of waterboarding.
The May 30 memo states: “Interrogations of Zubaydah – again, once enhanced techniques were employed – furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. …
“You [CIA officials] have informed us that Zubaydah also ‘provided significant information on two operatives, [including] Jose Padilla [,] who planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in Washington DC area.”
However, that last claim conflicts with known evidence about Zubaydah’s interrogations and with the time elements of Padilla’s arrest. Zubaydah was captured on March 28, 2002, after a gunfight that left him wounded. Padilla, an American citizen who converted to Islam, was arrested on May 8, 2002.
Yet, Bush administration lawyers did not give clearance for the “enhanced interrogation techniques” until late July, verbally, and on Aug. 1, 2002, in writing.
In addition, Zubaydah’s information about Padilla and KSM was provided to FBI interrogators who had employed rapport-building techniques with Zubaydah, not the harsh tactics that CIA interrogators insisted upon later, according to published accounts.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Obama's Foreign Policy Challenge by Henry A. Kissinger
Obama's Foreign Policy Challenge
Henry A. Kissinger, The Washington Post
The vast diplomatic agenda that the Obama administration has adopted will test its ability to harmonize national priorities such as relations with Iran and North Korea with global and multilateral concerns. President Obama has come into office at a moment of unique opportunity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042102967.html
Henry A. Kissinger, The Washington Post
The vast diplomatic agenda that the Obama administration has adopted will test its ability to harmonize national priorities such as relations with Iran and North Korea with global and multilateral concerns. President Obama has come into office at a moment of unique opportunity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042102967.html
Walking Out on Ahmadinejad was Just Plain Childish What are we trying to say? That any mention of Israel is now barred? by Adrian Hamilton
Published on Thursday, April 23, 2009 by The Independent/UK
Walking Out on Ahmadinejad was Just Plain Childish
What are we trying to say? That any mention of Israel is now barred?
by Adrian Hamilton
Isn't it time western diplomats just grew up and stopped these infantile games over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? All that this play-acting over boycotting of conferences because of his presence and walking out because of his words achieves is to flatter his ego, boost his poll ratings at home and play into the hands of an Israel that is desperate to prove Iran the gravest threat to its existence.
True, Iran's President is not the world's most endearing character. Some of the things he says are certainly contentious. But he is far from the most offensive leader on the block at the moment. With Silvio Berlusconi sounding off about women and sex, and Nicolas Sarkozy sounding off about everything from the quality of his fellow leaders to the unsuitability of Muslims to join the civilised nations, and a Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, giving his views on gays, Europe could claim its fair share of premiers who should not be allowed out in public.
Read Ahmadinejad's address at the UN conference on racism in Geneva this week and there is little to surprise and a certain amount to be agreed with. His accusations against the imperial powers for what they did with colonial rule and the business of slavery is pretty much part of the school curriculum now. His anger at the way the economic crisis originated in the West but has hit worst the innocent of the developing world would find a ready echo (and did) among most of the delegates.
It was not for this, however, that the countries of Europe and North America gathered up their skirts and walked out of Ahmadinejad's peroration. The UK's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, rather gave the game away when he said afterwards: "As soon as President Ahmadinejad started talking about Israel, that was the cue for us to walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any such rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it." The Iranian leader, he went on to say, was guilty of anti-Semitisim.
Just how you can accuse a man of anti-Semitisim when you haven't stayed to hear him talk is one of those questions which the Foreign Office no doubt trains its diplomats to explain. But what basically was our representative trying to say here? That any mention of the word Israel is barred from international discussions? That the mere mention of it is enough to have the Western governments combine to still it? In fact, Ahmadinejad's speech was not anti-Semitic, not in the strict sense of the word. Nowhere in his speech did he mention his oft-quoted suggestion that Israel be expunged from the map of the world. At no point did he mention the word "Jews", only "Zionists", and then specifically in an Israeli context. Nor did he repeat his infamous Holocaust denials, although he did reportedly refer to it slightingly as "ambiguous" in its evidence.
Instead, he launched the time-honoured Middle Eastern accusation that Israel was an alien country imposed on the local population by the West, out of its own guilt for the genocide; that it was supported by a Zionist take-over of Western politics and that it pursued racist policies towards the Palestinians. Now you may find these calls offensive or far-fetched (if there is a Zionist world conspiracy, it is making a singularly bad job of it) but it is pretty much the standard view in the Muslim world. Western support of Israel is seen as a conspiracy, and it is not just prejudice. There are now books by Western academics arguing that the pro-Israeli lobby wields an influence in the US out of all proportion to its numbers. If the Western walkout in Geneva did nothing else, it rather proved the point.
Nor is it far-fetched to charge Israel with being a racist state. As the only country in the world that defines itself and its immigrants on racial grounds, it could be regarded as fair comment. And if you doubt that this founding principle leads Israel into racist attitudes to non-Israelis, then you only have to read the comments of its new Foreign Secretary, Avigdor Lieberman, to disabuse you.
Of course, Ahamadinejad was playing to his home audience. He is a politician facing re-election at a time when his domestic economic record makes him vulnerable. Most of the educated class are fed up with his cavorting on the world stage while his country goes from wrack to ruin. And, of course, international conferences of this sort, intended to spread sweetness and light, are not the most appropriate forums for such tirades.
But on these issues he does speak for the majority not just in Iran but in the region. Deny that view a hearing and you will only increase the resentment and the sense of a Western world set up against them. Which is precisely what our oh-so-sanctimonious representatives achieved this week.
© 2009 The Independent
a.hamilton@independent.co.uk [1]
Walking Out on Ahmadinejad was Just Plain Childish
What are we trying to say? That any mention of Israel is now barred?
by Adrian Hamilton
Isn't it time western diplomats just grew up and stopped these infantile games over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? All that this play-acting over boycotting of conferences because of his presence and walking out because of his words achieves is to flatter his ego, boost his poll ratings at home and play into the hands of an Israel that is desperate to prove Iran the gravest threat to its existence.
True, Iran's President is not the world's most endearing character. Some of the things he says are certainly contentious. But he is far from the most offensive leader on the block at the moment. With Silvio Berlusconi sounding off about women and sex, and Nicolas Sarkozy sounding off about everything from the quality of his fellow leaders to the unsuitability of Muslims to join the civilised nations, and a Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, giving his views on gays, Europe could claim its fair share of premiers who should not be allowed out in public.
Read Ahmadinejad's address at the UN conference on racism in Geneva this week and there is little to surprise and a certain amount to be agreed with. His accusations against the imperial powers for what they did with colonial rule and the business of slavery is pretty much part of the school curriculum now. His anger at the way the economic crisis originated in the West but has hit worst the innocent of the developing world would find a ready echo (and did) among most of the delegates.
It was not for this, however, that the countries of Europe and North America gathered up their skirts and walked out of Ahmadinejad's peroration. The UK's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, rather gave the game away when he said afterwards: "As soon as President Ahmadinejad started talking about Israel, that was the cue for us to walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any such rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it." The Iranian leader, he went on to say, was guilty of anti-Semitisim.
Just how you can accuse a man of anti-Semitisim when you haven't stayed to hear him talk is one of those questions which the Foreign Office no doubt trains its diplomats to explain. But what basically was our representative trying to say here? That any mention of the word Israel is barred from international discussions? That the mere mention of it is enough to have the Western governments combine to still it? In fact, Ahmadinejad's speech was not anti-Semitic, not in the strict sense of the word. Nowhere in his speech did he mention his oft-quoted suggestion that Israel be expunged from the map of the world. At no point did he mention the word "Jews", only "Zionists", and then specifically in an Israeli context. Nor did he repeat his infamous Holocaust denials, although he did reportedly refer to it slightingly as "ambiguous" in its evidence.
Instead, he launched the time-honoured Middle Eastern accusation that Israel was an alien country imposed on the local population by the West, out of its own guilt for the genocide; that it was supported by a Zionist take-over of Western politics and that it pursued racist policies towards the Palestinians. Now you may find these calls offensive or far-fetched (if there is a Zionist world conspiracy, it is making a singularly bad job of it) but it is pretty much the standard view in the Muslim world. Western support of Israel is seen as a conspiracy, and it is not just prejudice. There are now books by Western academics arguing that the pro-Israeli lobby wields an influence in the US out of all proportion to its numbers. If the Western walkout in Geneva did nothing else, it rather proved the point.
Nor is it far-fetched to charge Israel with being a racist state. As the only country in the world that defines itself and its immigrants on racial grounds, it could be regarded as fair comment. And if you doubt that this founding principle leads Israel into racist attitudes to non-Israelis, then you only have to read the comments of its new Foreign Secretary, Avigdor Lieberman, to disabuse you.
Of course, Ahamadinejad was playing to his home audience. He is a politician facing re-election at a time when his domestic economic record makes him vulnerable. Most of the educated class are fed up with his cavorting on the world stage while his country goes from wrack to ruin. And, of course, international conferences of this sort, intended to spread sweetness and light, are not the most appropriate forums for such tirades.
But on these issues he does speak for the majority not just in Iran but in the region. Deny that view a hearing and you will only increase the resentment and the sense of a Western world set up against them. Which is precisely what our oh-so-sanctimonious representatives achieved this week.
© 2009 The Independent
a.hamilton@independent.co.uk [1]
Iran’s 2003 Memo: A Starting Point for Negotiations? 23 April, 2009 Nicole Stracke Researcher Security and Terrorism Department
Gulf Research Center Analysis
Iran’s 2003 Memo: A Starting Point for Negotiations?
23 April, 2009
Nicole Stracke
Researcher
Security and Terrorism Department
"Iran is like a train without brakes and without reverse gear." This is what the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated this week highlighting Iran’s determination to go ahead with the state's plans without considering the costs. In a previous speech on Army Day, the Iranian leader had declared that Iran is “one of the strongest” nations in the region and a “great part of the world.”
Such statements from the Iranian leadership are not promising considering the expected negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program with the US. It is statements like these that make it so difficult for a country to deal with Iran and accept it as a trustworthy, reliable partner in negotiations.
Behind the typical emotional statements lies well-calculated national interest, as the leadership may be seeking to whip up internal public support or gain greater leverage before sitting down at the negotiation table. Many observers do argue that, apart from the emotional slogans, Iranian policy can be rational when the country’s leadership understands the rules of the game. This was evident in 2003 when, just after the successful US invasion of Iraq and the removal of the Ba'ath regime, the Iranian leadership, fearing possible American action to undermine the regime in Tehran, decided to approach the US with a comprehensive offer to settle their differences.
The offer included a proposal to deal with all outstanding key issues which undermine relations between the two states. Among other things, Iran showed its readiness to ensure transparency in its nuclear program, support the disarmament of Hizbollah, and accept the two-state solution in the Arab-Israeli conflict, effectively recognizing the existence of Israel. In return, Iran expected the US to recognize its legitimate security interests in the region, lift the unilateral US sanctions –among them the ILSA Sanctions Act of 1996 – ensure guaranteed access to civilian nuclear technology, and withdraw the classification of Iran as a member of "the axis of evil."
It is not likely that in 2009 the Iranian offer, which was made six years ago, will be still on the table. The regional and international situation has changed fundamentally in favor of Iran. Over the past six years, the strategic environment has altered. The US has lost influence, power and credibility. Militarily, the US has failed to secure a real victory either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Politically, the US has lost its credibility as a major power, and confidence and trust in the US has diminished among regional allies. Today, they anxiously watch the moves of the new American President Barack Obama, and wait, with deep concern, to see his actions in follow up to his promises.
At the same time, Iran has enhanced its strategic position and power. During the past six years, Iran has emerged as a key player in major issues and conflicts directly affecting US strategic interest. It has also emerged as a major player in Iraqi affairs having direct links to political and religious groups, and armed militias, which has placed Tehran in a unique position to influence future developments in Iraq. Iran has also emerged as a key player in Afghanistan. In other parts of the region, Iranian influence over the major non-state actors like Hizbollah and Hamas has increased. In short, Iran has secured an important position in all areas related to US security interests. Its help has become indispensable to the US.
Iranian strength derives and benefits from US weakness. The balance of power has changed in favor of Iran in every aspect and major developments have made the Iranian memorandum of 2003 outdated. From the Iranian standpoint, this memorandum can no longer serve as a starting point for negotiations. On the other hand, the ceiling for future Iranian demands for settlement could be much higher than before, corresponding with the new status of Iran. What will be offered to Mr. Obama in 2009 is going to be different from what was offered to Mr. Bush in 2003.
Yet, the 2003 memorandum is important as it is shows the issues that Iran considers negotiable and those which it does not. It demonstrates Iran’s rational decision-making that is based on the state's national interests rather than on principles. The memorandum underlined that Iranian policies are negotiable on a tactical level, given the right incentives. Iran might be persuaded to halt the support for Hizbollah or accept the Arab Peace Plan and the two-state solution if, in return, it is recognized as a "regional power,” allowed to go on with its nuclear program and have friendly relations with the US. Surely, Iran will avoid giving any substantial concessions on strategic issues or anything that would undermine its position as a regional power. This includes the development of the nuclear program which is an essential part of Iranian regional ambition. In fact, the stronger geopolitical position of Iran in 2009 will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the US to persuade Tehran to give up the nuclear program.
US hands are tied. In fact, the US may have to consider the possibility that Iran might be willing to negotiate most outstanding issues between the two states except one: the nuclear program. It may have to risk starting negotiations with Iran on some of the issues before, or even without, getting any meaningful concession on the nuclear program. Eventually, Mr. Obama will be forced to consider his priorities and options. Would the US settle for a bargain with Iran whereby Tehran would recognize Israel, stop its support to militant groups such Hizbollah, offer help in Iraq and Afghanistan, but keep its nuclear program? Or would Mr. Obama still keep military action against Iran as a serious option on the table? This will be a difficult decision to make for the new US administration. For some of the hardliners in Iran, however, it will not matter; abandoning nuclear enrichment is not an option. They believe that losing the nuclear program through an Israeli or US military strike would be less painful than losing it through political or economic pressure from the US, EU, or the UN.
Iran’s 2003 Memo: A Starting Point for Negotiations?
23 April, 2009
Nicole Stracke
Researcher
Security and Terrorism Department
"Iran is like a train without brakes and without reverse gear." This is what the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated this week highlighting Iran’s determination to go ahead with the state's plans without considering the costs. In a previous speech on Army Day, the Iranian leader had declared that Iran is “one of the strongest” nations in the region and a “great part of the world.”
Such statements from the Iranian leadership are not promising considering the expected negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program with the US. It is statements like these that make it so difficult for a country to deal with Iran and accept it as a trustworthy, reliable partner in negotiations.
Behind the typical emotional statements lies well-calculated national interest, as the leadership may be seeking to whip up internal public support or gain greater leverage before sitting down at the negotiation table. Many observers do argue that, apart from the emotional slogans, Iranian policy can be rational when the country’s leadership understands the rules of the game. This was evident in 2003 when, just after the successful US invasion of Iraq and the removal of the Ba'ath regime, the Iranian leadership, fearing possible American action to undermine the regime in Tehran, decided to approach the US with a comprehensive offer to settle their differences.
The offer included a proposal to deal with all outstanding key issues which undermine relations between the two states. Among other things, Iran showed its readiness to ensure transparency in its nuclear program, support the disarmament of Hizbollah, and accept the two-state solution in the Arab-Israeli conflict, effectively recognizing the existence of Israel. In return, Iran expected the US to recognize its legitimate security interests in the region, lift the unilateral US sanctions –among them the ILSA Sanctions Act of 1996 – ensure guaranteed access to civilian nuclear technology, and withdraw the classification of Iran as a member of "the axis of evil."
It is not likely that in 2009 the Iranian offer, which was made six years ago, will be still on the table. The regional and international situation has changed fundamentally in favor of Iran. Over the past six years, the strategic environment has altered. The US has lost influence, power and credibility. Militarily, the US has failed to secure a real victory either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Politically, the US has lost its credibility as a major power, and confidence and trust in the US has diminished among regional allies. Today, they anxiously watch the moves of the new American President Barack Obama, and wait, with deep concern, to see his actions in follow up to his promises.
At the same time, Iran has enhanced its strategic position and power. During the past six years, Iran has emerged as a key player in major issues and conflicts directly affecting US strategic interest. It has also emerged as a major player in Iraqi affairs having direct links to political and religious groups, and armed militias, which has placed Tehran in a unique position to influence future developments in Iraq. Iran has also emerged as a key player in Afghanistan. In other parts of the region, Iranian influence over the major non-state actors like Hizbollah and Hamas has increased. In short, Iran has secured an important position in all areas related to US security interests. Its help has become indispensable to the US.
Iranian strength derives and benefits from US weakness. The balance of power has changed in favor of Iran in every aspect and major developments have made the Iranian memorandum of 2003 outdated. From the Iranian standpoint, this memorandum can no longer serve as a starting point for negotiations. On the other hand, the ceiling for future Iranian demands for settlement could be much higher than before, corresponding with the new status of Iran. What will be offered to Mr. Obama in 2009 is going to be different from what was offered to Mr. Bush in 2003.
Yet, the 2003 memorandum is important as it is shows the issues that Iran considers negotiable and those which it does not. It demonstrates Iran’s rational decision-making that is based on the state's national interests rather than on principles. The memorandum underlined that Iranian policies are negotiable on a tactical level, given the right incentives. Iran might be persuaded to halt the support for Hizbollah or accept the Arab Peace Plan and the two-state solution if, in return, it is recognized as a "regional power,” allowed to go on with its nuclear program and have friendly relations with the US. Surely, Iran will avoid giving any substantial concessions on strategic issues or anything that would undermine its position as a regional power. This includes the development of the nuclear program which is an essential part of Iranian regional ambition. In fact, the stronger geopolitical position of Iran in 2009 will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the US to persuade Tehran to give up the nuclear program.
US hands are tied. In fact, the US may have to consider the possibility that Iran might be willing to negotiate most outstanding issues between the two states except one: the nuclear program. It may have to risk starting negotiations with Iran on some of the issues before, or even without, getting any meaningful concession on the nuclear program. Eventually, Mr. Obama will be forced to consider his priorities and options. Would the US settle for a bargain with Iran whereby Tehran would recognize Israel, stop its support to militant groups such Hizbollah, offer help in Iraq and Afghanistan, but keep its nuclear program? Or would Mr. Obama still keep military action against Iran as a serious option on the table? This will be a difficult decision to make for the new US administration. For some of the hardliners in Iran, however, it will not matter; abandoning nuclear enrichment is not an option. They believe that losing the nuclear program through an Israeli or US military strike would be less painful than losing it through political or economic pressure from the US, EU, or the UN.
Stratfor Second Quarter Forecast 2009: Global Trends
Stratfor
Second Quarter Forecast 2009: Global Trends
Editor’s note: STRATFOR arranges its primary forecasts — in this case the document below — topically rather than geographically. Thus, the entirety of our South Asia and Global Economy coverage for the quarterly is included in this primary forecast. Those portions of the Middle East and Eurasia forecasts that are not included in this forecast have been appended with the other regional sections.
Executive Summary
STRATFOR’s 2009 annual forecast focused on three broad trends: the global recession, the Russian resurgence and the evolution of the jihadist war.
There are number of indications that the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, but it will be weeks — if not months — before these glimmers may assemble into a firm recovery. At that point, it would be a minimum of an additional three months before a U.S. recovery could foster a global recovery. This means that for the second quarter, STRATFOR is able to take a pass on this part of our forecast. Either this quarter will be the dark before the dawn, or it will be the dark before midnight. Either way, it will be dark. A noticeable recovery will have to wait until the third quarter.
In the first quarter, Russia was convinced that it had the new U.S. president and his administration right where it wanted them: so obsessed with the Afghan war that Russia could demand anything it wanted in exchange for allowing military supplies to enter Afghanistan from the north. Russia miscalculated. It seems the Obama administration puts something above fighting the Afghan war on its priority list: limiting Russia’s resurgence. The second quarter will be Russia’s time to consolidate the advances it has made over the course of the past four years, before the Americans can gain any capacity from their planned Iraqi drawdown. Washington will be looking for ways to bolster allies against Moscow, with a somewhat ambivalent Turkey taking center stage.
Finally there is the jihadist war itself. The U.S. divide-and-conquer strategy has worked reasonably well in Iraq: Some Sunni militants, rather than shooting at U.S. forces, are now being integrated (after a fashion) into the fragile yet strengthening Iraqi federal government. This is allowing the United States to remove some forces from Iraq, and thus to surge some into Afghanistan. The American intent is to rework the divide-and-conquer trick on the Taliban. However, this tactic is not likely to be replicable for a mixture of historical, demographic and geographic reasons. The most likely reason for the plan to not succeed is because in Iraq, the “good” Sunnis the Americans courted were locals — nationalists under pressure from Shiite Iran — while the “bad” Sunnis were foreign Islamists. In Afghanistan, there is no neat factional split within the Taliban. So for the Americans, the next three months will be about trying to force a square peg into a round hole. There will be little if any progress, and the Pakistani government’s lack of enthusiasm for the conflict will allow the region’s militants to expand the scope of the war.
Primary Forecast
Global trend: The economy
Undoubtedly, there is plenty of bad news — stock market surges tend to be the first major sign that the U.S. economy is healing, but the stock market cannot seem to find its feet, and employment remains well off ideal levels. Yet in the latter half of the first quarter, there were several developments indicating that the credit chokehold that caused the American recession to go global has begun to slacken. The availability of credit is the critical issue when evaluating this recession. Until firms and consumers can reliably borrow, economic growth cannot recover.
There are limited signs that credit is indeed loosening, and that some life is creeping back into the U.S. economy. Recent changes in accounting rules in the United States and Europe should grant banks the confidence they need to resume lending, independent of anything the governments might attempt. The Obama stimulus package — albeit far from perfect for actually stimulating the economy — is beginning to take effect. Retail sales have been surprisingly buoyant and since consumer spending comprises 70 percent of the American economy, this is a critical factor. Even more important is the fact that the stock of inventories has dropped for six consecutive months (September 2008 to February 2009, the latest month for which data is available) in the steepest decline on record. With inventories low, producers will soon be getting orders. That is how economic recoveries begin. There are even flickers of activity in the most moribund U.S. economic sector: housing.
But even if the United States economy is indeed showing signs of life, four caveats must kept in mind.
First, even a robust resumption in U.S. growth will not begin on any specific date. Instead, there will be increasingly bright glimmers of light here and there that will not be fully recognized until six months after the fact. It appears that the second quarter may be a transition quarter for the United States, with the more noticeable growth happening later in the year.
Second, the future of the American automotive industry his shifted from bleak to dark, with General Motors Corp. in particular planning for imminent bankruptcy (and GM is not the worst off of the Detroit Three). The dislocations caused by this industry’s implosion will be felt far and wide and even if they somehow do not delay the recovery, they are certain to have a material impact on how serious the average American views the recession as being.
Third, a resumption in growth in the United States historically does not mean an immediate rebound in either income or employment figures — both tend to be lagging indicators — particularly if the automotive industry breaks apart. Therefore, even if the recession does let up in the second quarter and growth turns nominally positive, that does not mean that most Americans will feel like the situation has improved. Bear in mind that it did not become conventional wisdom that the United States’ 2001 recession — which actually ended in October 2001 — had ended until 2004. Dispelling Americans’ mental gloom required more than two years of strong and sustained growth.
Fourth, while STRATFOR is certain that the U.S. economy will lead the world out of recession — the roughly $10 trillion American consumer market will demand products from, and thus generate growth in, Asia and Europe — STRATFOR is equally certain that there will be a lag of one to three quarters between a U.S. recovery and a global recovery. Most of Asia has suffered export plunges of at least 50 percent, and industrial output is down by a third the world over. Even if the Americans already have eaten through existing inventory, it will take some time for foreign suppliers to spin their industrial bases back up. The global system does not turn on a dime.
This means in the quarter ahead STRATFOR actually gets to opt out of taking a hard stance on this issue. If the United States does not recover, the world will remain mired in recession. If the United States begins to recover, the world will remain mired in recession and will begin pulling out later in the year. Either way, the second quarter is not going to be a comfortable time; it just might be slightly less uncomfortable for the Americans.
Internationally, there will be only one force aside from the U.S. economy to watch: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was recapitalized at the April G-20 summit to handle the growing need for bailouts. The IMF’s assistance programs can be split into two parts. First, traditional structural adjustment programs will provide funds to states that have made poor economic decisions. These states then fall under the IMF’s tutelage, and they must make often-wrenching changes to how their systems are run. States tapping this sort of loan program include Ukraine, Hungary, Iceland, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. These states in essence are on a sort of life support while undergoing economic surgery.
The second kind of program — introduced in March — is a bridge loan for states that have been doing a decent job of economic management but are affected by factors related to the recession that lie utterly beyond their control. This second type of program does not require any meaningful changes to a state’s economic management as (in the IMF’s eyes) they have not done anything wrong, and could perhaps be extended to countries like South Korea, Brazil, Mexico and Poland. It is this second sort of program that will have a deeper effect on the system in the short run as it will allow larger states to maintain economic activity independent of the United States, somewhat blunting the effects of the recession without threatening social stability. It is also going to absorb the lion’s share of the IMF’s funding; the first program negotiated under this system — a $40 billion line of credit to Mexico — is two-thirds as large as the combined total of the more traditional loans granted since the crisis began.
Global trend: The Russian resurgence
In STRATFOR’s 2009 annual forecast, we outlined how a dominant issue for the year would be Russia’s effort to force the United States to make a strategic bargain: Russia would grant U.S. forces a northern supply route into Afghanistan in exchange for an expunging of Western influence from the former Soviet space. At a series of summits in the first week of April, the Obama administration broadly rebuffed Russia’s demands, and the two states are sliding quickly into confrontational stances.
From the U.S. point of view, Russia has overreached and has failed to consolidate its position in the key former Soviet spheres it assumed were under its control. From the Russian point of view, the U.S. refusal to accept Russia’s superior position has forced Moscow to redouble its consolidation efforts in order to erode Washington’s confidence and limit Washington’s future options inside the former Soviet sphere.
Russia will make three major consolidation efforts during the next three months. First and most important, Moscow will try to manipulate Ukraine to remove pro-Western elements such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko from power. Second, Moscow will undermine the Georgian government to destabilize pro-Western elements there. Georgia, unlike Ukraine, is solidly pro-Western, so Russia is satisfied simply to destabilize or neutralize it rather than transform it into something useful to Moscow. The deck is stacked in the Kremlin’s favor in both states due to Russia’s overwhelming energy, intelligence, political, economic and cultural influence, as well as geographic proximity.
But it is the third consolidation attempt where things will get tricky: Armenia.
Turkey and Russia’s spheres of influence overlap in many regions, including the Caucasus. Not only is Russia very active in Georgia, but Turkey — as part of its efforts to relaunch long-dormant geopolitical ambitions — is trying to normalize relations with Armenia. Turkey ended relations with Armenia in 1993 after Armenia began its war with neighboring Azerbaijan over the secessionist Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh located inside Azerbaijan — and the Turkish-Azerbaijani relationship has only strengthened (especially against Armenia) since then.
However, the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia would open the Caucasus to a flood of Turkish political and economic influence. Until now, Moscow has actually facilitated this process, thinking that a grateful Turkey would not side with Europe and particularly the United States in containing Russian influence. Now that U.S. President Barack Obama has personally forged a partnership with the Turks, the Kremlin is not so sure.
The restoration of ties between Turkey and Armenia was rumored to occur in the first week of April, though now dates for the event range from May to October. Russia has many levers, including energy, which it can use to counter Turkey’s orientation toward the Americans, including Moscow’s power to decide whether its protectorate of Armenia will go forward with any deal with Ankara.
The wild card in talks between Turkey and Armenia is Azerbaijan. Baku — which considers Yerevan its worst enemy — feels that its close ally Turkey has abandoned it and wants to ensure its interests are not overlooked in any deal between Turkey and Armenia. Baku is considering two means of scuttling the talks, both with the intent of severing growing Turkish-Armenian ties: appealing to Russia (the logic being that Turkey does not wish to simply trade energy-rich Azerbaijan for energy-poor Armenia), or directly attacking Armenian-held territory (triggering a war in which Turkey would feel forced to take sides).
Global trend: The U.S.-jihadist war
While STRATFOR maintains that the overall strategic threat posed by the transnational jihadist movement continues to wane, the U.S.-jihadist war, which stretches from Iraq to the Indian subcontinent, remains a dominant theme for 2009.
The United States has no choice but to wrap up the war in Iraq so that it can devote more resources to the war in Afghanistan, but the transition from the Middle East to South Asia will not be easy. A fragile power-sharing deal among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish power groups remains intact, and violence levels are still low. Yet, as STRATFOR expected, the United States is facing difficulties ensuring that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government is integrating into the security apparatus members of the Sunni militia forces that split off from al Qaeda and allied with the United States. Shiite-Sunni tensions will continue to simmer. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), while a much-weakened force, may still appeal to dissident Sunnis — which may allow AQI to regain space and carry out more attacks.
Kurdish-Arab tensions are also likely to escalate over the next several months. Kurdish claims to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and constant political maneuvering among Sunnis, Kurds and Shia (most notably involving the Iraqi prime minister) could ignite the dispute over Kirkuk’s future for political gain. In addition, political infighting within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is likely to worsen as PUK leader and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani prepares for his succession.
The United States will try to improve its chances of holding Iraq together internally by laying the groundwork for a more constructive relationship with Iraq’s Persian neighbors. On the surface, the U.S.-Iranian relationship is improving: Obama has made clear his intent to engage Iran; his administration has agreed to direct, multilateral talks with the Iranians on the nuclear issue; and Iran is participating in U.S.-led summits on Afghanistan. But beyond the rhetoric, little has changed between Tehran and Washington. Iran is more likely to ratchet up ambiguity and Western anxiety over its nuclear program than make concessions to Washington. Like AQI, Iran’s influence may have slipped, but it has not evaporated: Iran’s influence with Shiite militants remains strong enough to upset the delicate Sunni-Shiite balance the Americans are counting on holding.
Iran is also unhappy with the developing U.S. strategy in Afghanistan that calls for engaging with “moderate” members of the Taliban — a radical Sunni force that Tehran regards as a strategic threat. Tehran will keep up appearances in the diplomatic sphere but will continue to keep its distance from Washington on any issues of substance in the near term. Iranian presidential elections will be held in June, but regardless of which camp the winner comes from — hard-line, moderate or reformist — Iran’s foreign policy goals and concerns are unlikely to shift significantly.
Meanwhile, Washington will shift its focus to South Asia even though there are evidently many loose ends to tie up in the Middle East. The developing U.S. strategy for this region will focus on bolstering the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, negotiating with moderate Taliban and diversifying supply routes to deny Pakistan some of the leverage it holds in this war. However, this plan suffers from a number of strategic flaws.
The second quarter will be a trying one for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The initial surge of 21,000 troops into Afghanistan will not be in place until summer’s end. Though European NATO members have contributed additional forces to help secure the country for elections in August, most are temporary commitments and do little to alter the overall U.S. and NATO force structure being directed at a native guerrilla force with superior local knowledge and intelligence. This puts NATO on its heels in combating Taliban and al Qaeda forces, which will use this spring fighting season to shape the battlefield, carrying out operations in the countryside that aim to expand their territorial control and launching complex attacks in urban centers that aim to degrade the confidence of Afghan civilians and security forces.
American attempts to elicit cooperation from Pakistan through aid packages are unlikely to affect Pakistani behavior significantly in the near term. Though Pakistan is threatened by a separate Taliban insurgency at home, it prefers negotiations over force on its side of the border. This gap between U.S. and Pakistani policy in managing the insurgency will become more evident in the coming weeks and months as Pakistan fends off U.S. attempts to overhaul the Pakistani intelligence apparatus and makes agreements that undermine the writ of the Pakistani state in its northwest periphery. Pakistan’s preference to avoid combat will allow Taliban forces to concentrate their attacks on the U.S. and NATO supply routes that originate in the port of Karachi.
The United States had attempted to diversify its supply lines by opening up a northern route that enters Afghanistan through Russian-dominated Central Asia, but talks have frozen as U.S.-Russian relations deteriorate. The United States is now almost completely dependent on Pakistan; the logistical burden is rising with support for the troop surge, and the militants feel emboldened as Pakistan feels it can use a lighter touch in combating them.
India’s concerns will rise as little progress is made in the war.
As STRATFOR forecasted in the 2009 annual, New Delhi has refrained from taking overt military action against Pakistan after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks for fear of destabilizing Pakistan further and giving regional jihadists an excuse to focus their attention on India. Yet the gradual unraveling of command and control within the Pakistani military establishment has enabled many more of Islamabad’s Islamist militant proxies operating in Pakistan and India to team up with transnational jihadists to carry out deadlier and more strategically targeted attacks. Though the timing is uncertain, India is likely to witness another large-scale Islamist militant attack on its soil that will once again escalate cross-border tensions on the subcontinent.
India has thus far stayed on the sidelines of U.S. dealings with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its involvement is largely limited to two items: first, making clear to Washington that Kashmir is not up for debate as Washington attempts to rehabilitate Pakistan, and second, increasing its presence in Afghanistan, devoting effort to reconstruction projects and perhaps providing covert support to anti-Taliban groups in the north (in part to counter a U.S. strategy to engage “pragmatic” Taliban). Much like the Iranians and the Russians, India has no interest in engaging Taliban forces who share a Pashtun link with the Pakistanis.
India is currently in the midst of a general election that will conclude in mid-May. No party is likely to win a clear majority, and it will be up to the incumbent Congress party and the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to cobble together a ruling coalition of smaller regional parties. STRATFOR will not attempt to predict the outcome of this uncertain election, which will largely be based on the populist votes of India’s lower classes, but should the BJP manage to overcome its setbacks and take the lead, Indian restraint against Pakistan would not be assured in the event of another large-scale militant attack.
Part Two: Second Quarter Forecast 2009: Regional Breakouts
http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/136094/forecast/20090416_second_quarter_forecast_2009_regional_breakouts
Second Quarter Forecast 2009: Global Trends
Editor’s note: STRATFOR arranges its primary forecasts — in this case the document below — topically rather than geographically. Thus, the entirety of our South Asia and Global Economy coverage for the quarterly is included in this primary forecast. Those portions of the Middle East and Eurasia forecasts that are not included in this forecast have been appended with the other regional sections.
Executive Summary
STRATFOR’s 2009 annual forecast focused on three broad trends: the global recession, the Russian resurgence and the evolution of the jihadist war.
There are number of indications that the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, but it will be weeks — if not months — before these glimmers may assemble into a firm recovery. At that point, it would be a minimum of an additional three months before a U.S. recovery could foster a global recovery. This means that for the second quarter, STRATFOR is able to take a pass on this part of our forecast. Either this quarter will be the dark before the dawn, or it will be the dark before midnight. Either way, it will be dark. A noticeable recovery will have to wait until the third quarter.
In the first quarter, Russia was convinced that it had the new U.S. president and his administration right where it wanted them: so obsessed with the Afghan war that Russia could demand anything it wanted in exchange for allowing military supplies to enter Afghanistan from the north. Russia miscalculated. It seems the Obama administration puts something above fighting the Afghan war on its priority list: limiting Russia’s resurgence. The second quarter will be Russia’s time to consolidate the advances it has made over the course of the past four years, before the Americans can gain any capacity from their planned Iraqi drawdown. Washington will be looking for ways to bolster allies against Moscow, with a somewhat ambivalent Turkey taking center stage.
Finally there is the jihadist war itself. The U.S. divide-and-conquer strategy has worked reasonably well in Iraq: Some Sunni militants, rather than shooting at U.S. forces, are now being integrated (after a fashion) into the fragile yet strengthening Iraqi federal government. This is allowing the United States to remove some forces from Iraq, and thus to surge some into Afghanistan. The American intent is to rework the divide-and-conquer trick on the Taliban. However, this tactic is not likely to be replicable for a mixture of historical, demographic and geographic reasons. The most likely reason for the plan to not succeed is because in Iraq, the “good” Sunnis the Americans courted were locals — nationalists under pressure from Shiite Iran — while the “bad” Sunnis were foreign Islamists. In Afghanistan, there is no neat factional split within the Taliban. So for the Americans, the next three months will be about trying to force a square peg into a round hole. There will be little if any progress, and the Pakistani government’s lack of enthusiasm for the conflict will allow the region’s militants to expand the scope of the war.
Primary Forecast
Global trend: The economy
Undoubtedly, there is plenty of bad news — stock market surges tend to be the first major sign that the U.S. economy is healing, but the stock market cannot seem to find its feet, and employment remains well off ideal levels. Yet in the latter half of the first quarter, there were several developments indicating that the credit chokehold that caused the American recession to go global has begun to slacken. The availability of credit is the critical issue when evaluating this recession. Until firms and consumers can reliably borrow, economic growth cannot recover.
There are limited signs that credit is indeed loosening, and that some life is creeping back into the U.S. economy. Recent changes in accounting rules in the United States and Europe should grant banks the confidence they need to resume lending, independent of anything the governments might attempt. The Obama stimulus package — albeit far from perfect for actually stimulating the economy — is beginning to take effect. Retail sales have been surprisingly buoyant and since consumer spending comprises 70 percent of the American economy, this is a critical factor. Even more important is the fact that the stock of inventories has dropped for six consecutive months (September 2008 to February 2009, the latest month for which data is available) in the steepest decline on record. With inventories low, producers will soon be getting orders. That is how economic recoveries begin. There are even flickers of activity in the most moribund U.S. economic sector: housing.
But even if the United States economy is indeed showing signs of life, four caveats must kept in mind.
First, even a robust resumption in U.S. growth will not begin on any specific date. Instead, there will be increasingly bright glimmers of light here and there that will not be fully recognized until six months after the fact. It appears that the second quarter may be a transition quarter for the United States, with the more noticeable growth happening later in the year.
Second, the future of the American automotive industry his shifted from bleak to dark, with General Motors Corp. in particular planning for imminent bankruptcy (and GM is not the worst off of the Detroit Three). The dislocations caused by this industry’s implosion will be felt far and wide and even if they somehow do not delay the recovery, they are certain to have a material impact on how serious the average American views the recession as being.
Third, a resumption in growth in the United States historically does not mean an immediate rebound in either income or employment figures — both tend to be lagging indicators — particularly if the automotive industry breaks apart. Therefore, even if the recession does let up in the second quarter and growth turns nominally positive, that does not mean that most Americans will feel like the situation has improved. Bear in mind that it did not become conventional wisdom that the United States’ 2001 recession — which actually ended in October 2001 — had ended until 2004. Dispelling Americans’ mental gloom required more than two years of strong and sustained growth.
Fourth, while STRATFOR is certain that the U.S. economy will lead the world out of recession — the roughly $10 trillion American consumer market will demand products from, and thus generate growth in, Asia and Europe — STRATFOR is equally certain that there will be a lag of one to three quarters between a U.S. recovery and a global recovery. Most of Asia has suffered export plunges of at least 50 percent, and industrial output is down by a third the world over. Even if the Americans already have eaten through existing inventory, it will take some time for foreign suppliers to spin their industrial bases back up. The global system does not turn on a dime.
This means in the quarter ahead STRATFOR actually gets to opt out of taking a hard stance on this issue. If the United States does not recover, the world will remain mired in recession. If the United States begins to recover, the world will remain mired in recession and will begin pulling out later in the year. Either way, the second quarter is not going to be a comfortable time; it just might be slightly less uncomfortable for the Americans.
Internationally, there will be only one force aside from the U.S. economy to watch: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was recapitalized at the April G-20 summit to handle the growing need for bailouts. The IMF’s assistance programs can be split into two parts. First, traditional structural adjustment programs will provide funds to states that have made poor economic decisions. These states then fall under the IMF’s tutelage, and they must make often-wrenching changes to how their systems are run. States tapping this sort of loan program include Ukraine, Hungary, Iceland, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. These states in essence are on a sort of life support while undergoing economic surgery.
The second kind of program — introduced in March — is a bridge loan for states that have been doing a decent job of economic management but are affected by factors related to the recession that lie utterly beyond their control. This second type of program does not require any meaningful changes to a state’s economic management as (in the IMF’s eyes) they have not done anything wrong, and could perhaps be extended to countries like South Korea, Brazil, Mexico and Poland. It is this second sort of program that will have a deeper effect on the system in the short run as it will allow larger states to maintain economic activity independent of the United States, somewhat blunting the effects of the recession without threatening social stability. It is also going to absorb the lion’s share of the IMF’s funding; the first program negotiated under this system — a $40 billion line of credit to Mexico — is two-thirds as large as the combined total of the more traditional loans granted since the crisis began.
Global trend: The Russian resurgence
In STRATFOR’s 2009 annual forecast, we outlined how a dominant issue for the year would be Russia’s effort to force the United States to make a strategic bargain: Russia would grant U.S. forces a northern supply route into Afghanistan in exchange for an expunging of Western influence from the former Soviet space. At a series of summits in the first week of April, the Obama administration broadly rebuffed Russia’s demands, and the two states are sliding quickly into confrontational stances.
From the U.S. point of view, Russia has overreached and has failed to consolidate its position in the key former Soviet spheres it assumed were under its control. From the Russian point of view, the U.S. refusal to accept Russia’s superior position has forced Moscow to redouble its consolidation efforts in order to erode Washington’s confidence and limit Washington’s future options inside the former Soviet sphere.
Russia will make three major consolidation efforts during the next three months. First and most important, Moscow will try to manipulate Ukraine to remove pro-Western elements such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko from power. Second, Moscow will undermine the Georgian government to destabilize pro-Western elements there. Georgia, unlike Ukraine, is solidly pro-Western, so Russia is satisfied simply to destabilize or neutralize it rather than transform it into something useful to Moscow. The deck is stacked in the Kremlin’s favor in both states due to Russia’s overwhelming energy, intelligence, political, economic and cultural influence, as well as geographic proximity.
But it is the third consolidation attempt where things will get tricky: Armenia.
Turkey and Russia’s spheres of influence overlap in many regions, including the Caucasus. Not only is Russia very active in Georgia, but Turkey — as part of its efforts to relaunch long-dormant geopolitical ambitions — is trying to normalize relations with Armenia. Turkey ended relations with Armenia in 1993 after Armenia began its war with neighboring Azerbaijan over the secessionist Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh located inside Azerbaijan — and the Turkish-Azerbaijani relationship has only strengthened (especially against Armenia) since then.
However, the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia would open the Caucasus to a flood of Turkish political and economic influence. Until now, Moscow has actually facilitated this process, thinking that a grateful Turkey would not side with Europe and particularly the United States in containing Russian influence. Now that U.S. President Barack Obama has personally forged a partnership with the Turks, the Kremlin is not so sure.
The restoration of ties between Turkey and Armenia was rumored to occur in the first week of April, though now dates for the event range from May to October. Russia has many levers, including energy, which it can use to counter Turkey’s orientation toward the Americans, including Moscow’s power to decide whether its protectorate of Armenia will go forward with any deal with Ankara.
The wild card in talks between Turkey and Armenia is Azerbaijan. Baku — which considers Yerevan its worst enemy — feels that its close ally Turkey has abandoned it and wants to ensure its interests are not overlooked in any deal between Turkey and Armenia. Baku is considering two means of scuttling the talks, both with the intent of severing growing Turkish-Armenian ties: appealing to Russia (the logic being that Turkey does not wish to simply trade energy-rich Azerbaijan for energy-poor Armenia), or directly attacking Armenian-held territory (triggering a war in which Turkey would feel forced to take sides).
Global trend: The U.S.-jihadist war
While STRATFOR maintains that the overall strategic threat posed by the transnational jihadist movement continues to wane, the U.S.-jihadist war, which stretches from Iraq to the Indian subcontinent, remains a dominant theme for 2009.
The United States has no choice but to wrap up the war in Iraq so that it can devote more resources to the war in Afghanistan, but the transition from the Middle East to South Asia will not be easy. A fragile power-sharing deal among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish power groups remains intact, and violence levels are still low. Yet, as STRATFOR expected, the United States is facing difficulties ensuring that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government is integrating into the security apparatus members of the Sunni militia forces that split off from al Qaeda and allied with the United States. Shiite-Sunni tensions will continue to simmer. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), while a much-weakened force, may still appeal to dissident Sunnis — which may allow AQI to regain space and carry out more attacks.
Kurdish-Arab tensions are also likely to escalate over the next several months. Kurdish claims to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and constant political maneuvering among Sunnis, Kurds and Shia (most notably involving the Iraqi prime minister) could ignite the dispute over Kirkuk’s future for political gain. In addition, political infighting within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is likely to worsen as PUK leader and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani prepares for his succession.
The United States will try to improve its chances of holding Iraq together internally by laying the groundwork for a more constructive relationship with Iraq’s Persian neighbors. On the surface, the U.S.-Iranian relationship is improving: Obama has made clear his intent to engage Iran; his administration has agreed to direct, multilateral talks with the Iranians on the nuclear issue; and Iran is participating in U.S.-led summits on Afghanistan. But beyond the rhetoric, little has changed between Tehran and Washington. Iran is more likely to ratchet up ambiguity and Western anxiety over its nuclear program than make concessions to Washington. Like AQI, Iran’s influence may have slipped, but it has not evaporated: Iran’s influence with Shiite militants remains strong enough to upset the delicate Sunni-Shiite balance the Americans are counting on holding.
Iran is also unhappy with the developing U.S. strategy in Afghanistan that calls for engaging with “moderate” members of the Taliban — a radical Sunni force that Tehran regards as a strategic threat. Tehran will keep up appearances in the diplomatic sphere but will continue to keep its distance from Washington on any issues of substance in the near term. Iranian presidential elections will be held in June, but regardless of which camp the winner comes from — hard-line, moderate or reformist — Iran’s foreign policy goals and concerns are unlikely to shift significantly.
Meanwhile, Washington will shift its focus to South Asia even though there are evidently many loose ends to tie up in the Middle East. The developing U.S. strategy for this region will focus on bolstering the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, negotiating with moderate Taliban and diversifying supply routes to deny Pakistan some of the leverage it holds in this war. However, this plan suffers from a number of strategic flaws.
The second quarter will be a trying one for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The initial surge of 21,000 troops into Afghanistan will not be in place until summer’s end. Though European NATO members have contributed additional forces to help secure the country for elections in August, most are temporary commitments and do little to alter the overall U.S. and NATO force structure being directed at a native guerrilla force with superior local knowledge and intelligence. This puts NATO on its heels in combating Taliban and al Qaeda forces, which will use this spring fighting season to shape the battlefield, carrying out operations in the countryside that aim to expand their territorial control and launching complex attacks in urban centers that aim to degrade the confidence of Afghan civilians and security forces.
American attempts to elicit cooperation from Pakistan through aid packages are unlikely to affect Pakistani behavior significantly in the near term. Though Pakistan is threatened by a separate Taliban insurgency at home, it prefers negotiations over force on its side of the border. This gap between U.S. and Pakistani policy in managing the insurgency will become more evident in the coming weeks and months as Pakistan fends off U.S. attempts to overhaul the Pakistani intelligence apparatus and makes agreements that undermine the writ of the Pakistani state in its northwest periphery. Pakistan’s preference to avoid combat will allow Taliban forces to concentrate their attacks on the U.S. and NATO supply routes that originate in the port of Karachi.
The United States had attempted to diversify its supply lines by opening up a northern route that enters Afghanistan through Russian-dominated Central Asia, but talks have frozen as U.S.-Russian relations deteriorate. The United States is now almost completely dependent on Pakistan; the logistical burden is rising with support for the troop surge, and the militants feel emboldened as Pakistan feels it can use a lighter touch in combating them.
India’s concerns will rise as little progress is made in the war.
As STRATFOR forecasted in the 2009 annual, New Delhi has refrained from taking overt military action against Pakistan after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks for fear of destabilizing Pakistan further and giving regional jihadists an excuse to focus their attention on India. Yet the gradual unraveling of command and control within the Pakistani military establishment has enabled many more of Islamabad’s Islamist militant proxies operating in Pakistan and India to team up with transnational jihadists to carry out deadlier and more strategically targeted attacks. Though the timing is uncertain, India is likely to witness another large-scale Islamist militant attack on its soil that will once again escalate cross-border tensions on the subcontinent.
India has thus far stayed on the sidelines of U.S. dealings with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its involvement is largely limited to two items: first, making clear to Washington that Kashmir is not up for debate as Washington attempts to rehabilitate Pakistan, and second, increasing its presence in Afghanistan, devoting effort to reconstruction projects and perhaps providing covert support to anti-Taliban groups in the north (in part to counter a U.S. strategy to engage “pragmatic” Taliban). Much like the Iranians and the Russians, India has no interest in engaging Taliban forces who share a Pashtun link with the Pakistanis.
India is currently in the midst of a general election that will conclude in mid-May. No party is likely to win a clear majority, and it will be up to the incumbent Congress party and the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to cobble together a ruling coalition of smaller regional parties. STRATFOR will not attempt to predict the outcome of this uncertain election, which will largely be based on the populist votes of India’s lower classes, but should the BJP manage to overcome its setbacks and take the lead, Indian restraint against Pakistan would not be assured in the event of another large-scale militant attack.
Part Two: Second Quarter Forecast 2009: Regional Breakouts
http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/136094/forecast/20090416_second_quarter_forecast_2009_regional_breakouts
Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause gover
Scientific American Magazine - April 22, 2009
Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse
By Lester R. Brown
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.
For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!
For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.
I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.
The Problem of Failed States
Even a cursory look at the vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one.
In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.
As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar]. Many of their problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.
States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.
Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).
Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases—such as polio, SARS or avian flu—breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.
A New Kind of Food Shortage
The surge in world grain prices in 2007 and 2008—and the threat they pose to food security—has a different, more troubling quality than the increases of the past. During the second half of the 20th century, grain prices rose dramatically several times. In 1972, for instance, the Soviets, recognizing their poor harvest early, quietly cornered the world wheat market. As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pulling rice and corn prices up with them. But this and other price shocks were event-driven—drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt. And the rises were short-lived: prices typically returned to normal with the next harvest.
In contrast, the recent surge in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to reverse without a reversal in the trends themselves. On the demand side, those trends include the ongoing addition of more than 70 million people a year; a growing number of people wanting to move up the food chain to consume highly grain-intensive livestock products [see “The Greenhouse Hamburger,” by Nathan Fiala; Scientific American, February 2009]; and the massive diversion of U.S. grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries.
The extra demand for grain associated with rising affluence varies widely among countries. People in low-income countries where grain supplies 60 percent of calories, such as India, directly consume a bit more than a pound of grain a day. In affluent countries such as the U.S. and Canada, grain consumption per person is nearly four times that much, though perhaps 90 percent of it is consumed indirectly as meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals.
The potential for further grain consumption as incomes rise among low-income consumers is huge. But that potential pales beside the insatiable demand for crop-based automotive fuels. A fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest—enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels—will go to fuel cars. Yet even if the entire U.S. grain harvest were diverted into making ethanol, it would meet at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.
The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition between cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.
Water Shortages Mean Food Shortages
What about supply? The three environmental trends I mentioned earlier—the shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures (and other effects) of global warming—are making it increasingly hard to expand the world’s grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand. Of all those trends, however, the spread of water shortages poses the most immediate threat. The biggest challenge here is irrigation, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. Millions of irrigation wells in many countries are now pumping water out of underground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. The result is falling water tables in countries populated by half the world’s people, including the three big grain producers—China, India and the U.S.
Usually aquifers are replenishable, but some of the most important ones are not: the “fossil” aquifers, so called because they store ancient water and are not recharged by precipitation. For these—including the vast Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the U.S. Great Plains, the Saudi aquifer and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain—depletion would spell the end of pumping. In arid regions such a loss could also bring an end to agriculture altogether.
In China the water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 percent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.
But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food consumption and survival is more precarious. Millions of irrigation wells have dropped water tables in almost every state. As Fred Pearce reported in New Scientist:
Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up, bringing a spate of suicides among those who rely on them. Electricity blackouts are reaching epidemic proportions in states where half of the electricity is used to pump water from depths of up to a kilometer [3,300 feet].
A World Bank study reports that 15 percent of India’s food supply is produced by mining groundwater. Stated otherwise, 175 million
Indians consume grain produced with water from irrigation wells that will soon be exhausted. The continued shrinking of water supplies could lead to unmanageable food shortages and social conflict.
Less Soil, More Hunger
The scope of the second worrisome trend—the loss of topsoil—is also startling. Topsoil is eroding faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. This thin layer of essential plant nutrients, the very foundation of civilization, took long stretches of geologic time to build up, yet it is typically only about six inches deep. Its loss from wind and water erosion doomed earlier civilizations.
In 2002 a U.N. team assessed the food situation in Lesotho, the small, landlocked home of two million people embedded within South Africa. The team’s finding was straightforward: “Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility.”
In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti—one of the first states to be recognized as failing—was largely self-sufficient in grain 40 years ago. In the years since, though, it has lost nearly all its forests and much of its topsoil, forcing the country to import more than half of its grain.
The third and perhaps most pervasive environmental threat to food security—rising surface temperature—can affect crop yields everywhere. In many countries crops are grown at or near their thermal optimum, so even a minor temperature rise during the growing season can shrink the harvest. A study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has confirmed a rule of thumb among crop ecologists: for every rise of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm, wheat, rice and corn yields fall by 10 percent.
In the past, most famously when the innovations in the use of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield varieties of wheat and rice created the “green revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, the response to the growing demand for food was the successful application of scientific agriculture: the technological fix. This time, regrettably, many of the most productive advances in agricultural technology have already been put into practice, and so the long-term rise in land productivity is slowing down. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers increased the grain yield per acre by more than 2 percent a year, exceeding the growth of population. But since then, the annual growth in yield has slowed to slightly more than 1 percent. In some countries the yields appear to be near their practical limits, including rice yields in Japan and China.
Some commentators point to genetically modified crop strains as a way out of our predicament. Unfortunately, however, no genetically modified crops have led to dramatically higher yields, comparable to the doubling or tripling of wheat and rice yields that took place during the green revolution. Nor do they seem likely to do so, simply because conventional plant-breeding techniques have already tapped most of the potential for raising crop yields.
Jockeying for Food
As the world’s food security unravels, a dangerous politics of food scarcity is coming into play: individual countries acting in their narrowly defined self-interest are actually worsening the plight of the many. The trend began in 2007, when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports, in hopes of increasing locally available food supplies and thereby bringing down food prices domestically. Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand, banned its exports for several months for the same reason. Such moves may reassure those living in the exporting countries, but they are creating panic in importing countries that must rely on what is then left of the world’s exportable grain.
In response to those restrictions, grain importers are trying to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines, no longer able to count on getting rice from the world market, recently negotiated a three-year deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each year. Food-import anxiety is even spawning entirely new efforts by food-importing countries to buy or lease farmland in other countries [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar].
In spite of such stopgap measures, soaring food prices and spreading hunger in many other countries are beginning to break down the social order. In several provinces of Thailand the predations of “rice rustlers” have forced villagers to guard their rice fields at night with loaded shotguns. In Pakistan an armed soldier escorts each grain truck. During the first half of 2008, 83 trucks carrying grain in Sudan were hijacked before reaching the Darfur relief camps.
No country is immune to the effects of tightening food supplies, not even the U.S., the world’s breadbasket. If China turns to the world market for massive quantities of grain, as it has recently done for soybeans, it will have to buy from the U.S. For U.S. consumers, that would mean competing for the U.S. grain harvest with 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with fast-rising incomes—a nightmare scenario. In such circumstances, it would be tempting for the U.S. to restrict exports, as it did, for instance, with grain and soybeans in the 1970s when domestic prices soared. But that is not an option with China. Chinese investors now hold well over a trillion U.S. dollars, and they have often been the leading international buyers of U.S. Treasury securities issued to finance the fiscal deficit. Like it or not, U.S. consumers will share their grain with Chinese consumers, no matter how high food prices rise.
Plan B: Our Only Option
Since the current world food shortage is trend-driven, the environmental trends that cause it must be reversed. To do so requires extraordinarily demanding measures, a monumental shift away from business as usual—what we at the Earth Policy Institute call Plan A—to a civilization-saving Plan B. [see "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization," at www.earthpoli cy.org/Books/PB3/]
Similar in scale and urgency to the U.S. mobilization for World War II, Plan B has four components: a massive effort to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent from their 2006 levels by 2020; the stabilization of the world’s population at eight billion by 2040; the eradication of poverty; and the restoration of forests, soils and aquifers.
Net carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by systematically raising energy efficiency and investing massively in the development of renewable sources of energy. We must also ban deforestation worldwide, as several countries already have done, and plant billions of trees to sequester carbon. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy can be driven by imposing a tax on carbon, while offsetting it with a reduction in income taxes.
Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty—and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.
The fourth component, restoring the earth’s natural systems and resources, incorporates a worldwide initiative to arrest the fall in water tables by raising water productivity: the useful activity that can be wrung from each drop. That implies shifting to more efficient irrigation systems and to more water-efficient crops. In some countries, it implies growing (and eating) more wheat and less rice, a water-intensive crop. And for industries and cities, it implies doing what some are doing already, namely, continuously recycling water.
At the same time, we must launch a worldwide effort to conserve soil, similar to the U.S. response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terracing the ground, planting trees as shelterbelts against windblown soil erosion, and practicing minimum tillage—in which the soil is not plowed and crop residues are left on the field—are among the most important soil-conservation measures.
There is nothing new about our four interrelated objectives. They have been discussed individually for years. Indeed, we have created entire institutions intended to tackle some of them, such as the World Bank to alleviate poverty. And we have made substantial progress in some parts of the world on at least one of them—the distribution of family-planning services and the associated shift to smaller families that brings population stability.
For many in the development community, the four objectives of Plan B were seen as positive, promoting development as long as they did not cost too much. Others saw them as humanitarian goals—politically correct and morally appropriate. Now a third and far more momentous rationale presents itself: meeting these goals may be necessary to prevent the collapse of our civilization. Yet the cost we project for saving civilization would amount to less than $200 billion a year, a sixth of current global military spending. In effect, Plan B is the new security budget.
Time: Our Scarcest Resource
Our challenge is not only to implement Plan B but also to do it quickly. The world is in a race between political tipping points and natural ones. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to prevent the Greenland ice sheet from slipping into the sea and inundating our coastlines? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the mountain glaciers of Asia? During the dry season their meltwaters sustain the major rivers of India and China—and by extension, hundreds of millions of people. Can we stabilize population before countries such as India, Pakistan and Yemen are overwhelmed by shortages of the water they need to irrigate their crops?
It is hard to overstate the urgency of our predicament. [For the most thorough and authoritative scientific assessment of global climate change, see "Climate Change 2007. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," available at www.ipcc.ch] Every day counts. Unfortunately, we do not know how long we can light our cities with coal, for instance, before Greenland’s ice sheet can no longer be saved. Nature sets the deadlines; nature is the timekeeper. But we human beings cannot see the clock.
We desperately need a new way of thinking, a new mind-set. The thinking that got us into this bind will not get us out. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: “There is no box.”
There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive.
=
Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse
By Lester R. Brown
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.
For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!
For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.
I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.
The Problem of Failed States
Even a cursory look at the vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one.
In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.
As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar]. Many of their problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.
States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.
Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).
Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases—such as polio, SARS or avian flu—breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.
A New Kind of Food Shortage
The surge in world grain prices in 2007 and 2008—and the threat they pose to food security—has a different, more troubling quality than the increases of the past. During the second half of the 20th century, grain prices rose dramatically several times. In 1972, for instance, the Soviets, recognizing their poor harvest early, quietly cornered the world wheat market. As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pulling rice and corn prices up with them. But this and other price shocks were event-driven—drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt. And the rises were short-lived: prices typically returned to normal with the next harvest.
In contrast, the recent surge in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to reverse without a reversal in the trends themselves. On the demand side, those trends include the ongoing addition of more than 70 million people a year; a growing number of people wanting to move up the food chain to consume highly grain-intensive livestock products [see “The Greenhouse Hamburger,” by Nathan Fiala; Scientific American, February 2009]; and the massive diversion of U.S. grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries.
The extra demand for grain associated with rising affluence varies widely among countries. People in low-income countries where grain supplies 60 percent of calories, such as India, directly consume a bit more than a pound of grain a day. In affluent countries such as the U.S. and Canada, grain consumption per person is nearly four times that much, though perhaps 90 percent of it is consumed indirectly as meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals.
The potential for further grain consumption as incomes rise among low-income consumers is huge. But that potential pales beside the insatiable demand for crop-based automotive fuels. A fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest—enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels—will go to fuel cars. Yet even if the entire U.S. grain harvest were diverted into making ethanol, it would meet at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.
The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition between cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.
Water Shortages Mean Food Shortages
What about supply? The three environmental trends I mentioned earlier—the shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures (and other effects) of global warming—are making it increasingly hard to expand the world’s grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand. Of all those trends, however, the spread of water shortages poses the most immediate threat. The biggest challenge here is irrigation, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. Millions of irrigation wells in many countries are now pumping water out of underground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. The result is falling water tables in countries populated by half the world’s people, including the three big grain producers—China, India and the U.S.
Usually aquifers are replenishable, but some of the most important ones are not: the “fossil” aquifers, so called because they store ancient water and are not recharged by precipitation. For these—including the vast Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the U.S. Great Plains, the Saudi aquifer and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain—depletion would spell the end of pumping. In arid regions such a loss could also bring an end to agriculture altogether.
In China the water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 percent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.
But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food consumption and survival is more precarious. Millions of irrigation wells have dropped water tables in almost every state. As Fred Pearce reported in New Scientist:
Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up, bringing a spate of suicides among those who rely on them. Electricity blackouts are reaching epidemic proportions in states where half of the electricity is used to pump water from depths of up to a kilometer [3,300 feet].
A World Bank study reports that 15 percent of India’s food supply is produced by mining groundwater. Stated otherwise, 175 million
Indians consume grain produced with water from irrigation wells that will soon be exhausted. The continued shrinking of water supplies could lead to unmanageable food shortages and social conflict.
Less Soil, More Hunger
The scope of the second worrisome trend—the loss of topsoil—is also startling. Topsoil is eroding faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. This thin layer of essential plant nutrients, the very foundation of civilization, took long stretches of geologic time to build up, yet it is typically only about six inches deep. Its loss from wind and water erosion doomed earlier civilizations.
In 2002 a U.N. team assessed the food situation in Lesotho, the small, landlocked home of two million people embedded within South Africa. The team’s finding was straightforward: “Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility.”
In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti—one of the first states to be recognized as failing—was largely self-sufficient in grain 40 years ago. In the years since, though, it has lost nearly all its forests and much of its topsoil, forcing the country to import more than half of its grain.
The third and perhaps most pervasive environmental threat to food security—rising surface temperature—can affect crop yields everywhere. In many countries crops are grown at or near their thermal optimum, so even a minor temperature rise during the growing season can shrink the harvest. A study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has confirmed a rule of thumb among crop ecologists: for every rise of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm, wheat, rice and corn yields fall by 10 percent.
In the past, most famously when the innovations in the use of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield varieties of wheat and rice created the “green revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, the response to the growing demand for food was the successful application of scientific agriculture: the technological fix. This time, regrettably, many of the most productive advances in agricultural technology have already been put into practice, and so the long-term rise in land productivity is slowing down. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers increased the grain yield per acre by more than 2 percent a year, exceeding the growth of population. But since then, the annual growth in yield has slowed to slightly more than 1 percent. In some countries the yields appear to be near their practical limits, including rice yields in Japan and China.
Some commentators point to genetically modified crop strains as a way out of our predicament. Unfortunately, however, no genetically modified crops have led to dramatically higher yields, comparable to the doubling or tripling of wheat and rice yields that took place during the green revolution. Nor do they seem likely to do so, simply because conventional plant-breeding techniques have already tapped most of the potential for raising crop yields.
Jockeying for Food
As the world’s food security unravels, a dangerous politics of food scarcity is coming into play: individual countries acting in their narrowly defined self-interest are actually worsening the plight of the many. The trend began in 2007, when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports, in hopes of increasing locally available food supplies and thereby bringing down food prices domestically. Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand, banned its exports for several months for the same reason. Such moves may reassure those living in the exporting countries, but they are creating panic in importing countries that must rely on what is then left of the world’s exportable grain.
In response to those restrictions, grain importers are trying to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines, no longer able to count on getting rice from the world market, recently negotiated a three-year deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each year. Food-import anxiety is even spawning entirely new efforts by food-importing countries to buy or lease farmland in other countries [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar].
In spite of such stopgap measures, soaring food prices and spreading hunger in many other countries are beginning to break down the social order. In several provinces of Thailand the predations of “rice rustlers” have forced villagers to guard their rice fields at night with loaded shotguns. In Pakistan an armed soldier escorts each grain truck. During the first half of 2008, 83 trucks carrying grain in Sudan were hijacked before reaching the Darfur relief camps.
No country is immune to the effects of tightening food supplies, not even the U.S., the world’s breadbasket. If China turns to the world market for massive quantities of grain, as it has recently done for soybeans, it will have to buy from the U.S. For U.S. consumers, that would mean competing for the U.S. grain harvest with 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with fast-rising incomes—a nightmare scenario. In such circumstances, it would be tempting for the U.S. to restrict exports, as it did, for instance, with grain and soybeans in the 1970s when domestic prices soared. But that is not an option with China. Chinese investors now hold well over a trillion U.S. dollars, and they have often been the leading international buyers of U.S. Treasury securities issued to finance the fiscal deficit. Like it or not, U.S. consumers will share their grain with Chinese consumers, no matter how high food prices rise.
Plan B: Our Only Option
Since the current world food shortage is trend-driven, the environmental trends that cause it must be reversed. To do so requires extraordinarily demanding measures, a monumental shift away from business as usual—what we at the Earth Policy Institute call Plan A—to a civilization-saving Plan B. [see "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization," at www.earthpoli cy.org/Books/PB3/]
Similar in scale and urgency to the U.S. mobilization for World War II, Plan B has four components: a massive effort to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent from their 2006 levels by 2020; the stabilization of the world’s population at eight billion by 2040; the eradication of poverty; and the restoration of forests, soils and aquifers.
Net carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by systematically raising energy efficiency and investing massively in the development of renewable sources of energy. We must also ban deforestation worldwide, as several countries already have done, and plant billions of trees to sequester carbon. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy can be driven by imposing a tax on carbon, while offsetting it with a reduction in income taxes.
Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty—and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.
The fourth component, restoring the earth’s natural systems and resources, incorporates a worldwide initiative to arrest the fall in water tables by raising water productivity: the useful activity that can be wrung from each drop. That implies shifting to more efficient irrigation systems and to more water-efficient crops. In some countries, it implies growing (and eating) more wheat and less rice, a water-intensive crop. And for industries and cities, it implies doing what some are doing already, namely, continuously recycling water.
At the same time, we must launch a worldwide effort to conserve soil, similar to the U.S. response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terracing the ground, planting trees as shelterbelts against windblown soil erosion, and practicing minimum tillage—in which the soil is not plowed and crop residues are left on the field—are among the most important soil-conservation measures.
There is nothing new about our four interrelated objectives. They have been discussed individually for years. Indeed, we have created entire institutions intended to tackle some of them, such as the World Bank to alleviate poverty. And we have made substantial progress in some parts of the world on at least one of them—the distribution of family-planning services and the associated shift to smaller families that brings population stability.
For many in the development community, the four objectives of Plan B were seen as positive, promoting development as long as they did not cost too much. Others saw them as humanitarian goals—politically correct and morally appropriate. Now a third and far more momentous rationale presents itself: meeting these goals may be necessary to prevent the collapse of our civilization. Yet the cost we project for saving civilization would amount to less than $200 billion a year, a sixth of current global military spending. In effect, Plan B is the new security budget.
Time: Our Scarcest Resource
Our challenge is not only to implement Plan B but also to do it quickly. The world is in a race between political tipping points and natural ones. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to prevent the Greenland ice sheet from slipping into the sea and inundating our coastlines? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the mountain glaciers of Asia? During the dry season their meltwaters sustain the major rivers of India and China—and by extension, hundreds of millions of people. Can we stabilize population before countries such as India, Pakistan and Yemen are overwhelmed by shortages of the water they need to irrigate their crops?
It is hard to overstate the urgency of our predicament. [For the most thorough and authoritative scientific assessment of global climate change, see "Climate Change 2007. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," available at www.ipcc.ch] Every day counts. Unfortunately, we do not know how long we can light our cities with coal, for instance, before Greenland’s ice sheet can no longer be saved. Nature sets the deadlines; nature is the timekeeper. But we human beings cannot see the clock.
We desperately need a new way of thinking, a new mind-set. The thinking that got us into this bind will not get us out. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: “There is no box.”
There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive.
=
We Are Still A Long Way Away From The Bottom - Nouriel Roubini, Forbes
We Are Still A Long Way Away From The Bottom - Nouriel Roubini, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/22/depression-recession-growth-job-losses-opinions-columnists-nouriel-roubini.html
The global economy is in the middle of a synchronized contraction that will push global growth into negative territory in 2009 for the first time in decades. This will be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the worst global economic downturn in decades. Global trade volumes face their sharpest contractions of the postwar era--trade is expected to contract 12% in 2009 due to the severe and prolonged slump in global demand, excess capacity across supply chains and the continued crunch in trade finance.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/22/depression-recession-growth-job-losses-opinions-columnists-nouriel-roubini.html
The global economy is in the middle of a synchronized contraction that will push global growth into negative territory in 2009 for the first time in decades. This will be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the worst global economic downturn in decades. Global trade volumes face their sharpest contractions of the postwar era--trade is expected to contract 12% in 2009 due to the severe and prolonged slump in global demand, excess capacity across supply chains and the continued crunch in trade finance.
DE BORCHGRAVE: Saving America's future
The Washington Times
Thursday, April 23, 2009
DE BORCHGRAVE: Saving America's future
Arnaud de Borchgrav
COMMENTARY:
>From right to left, Washington's think tank senior economic fellows agree the capitalist system is broken.
But few agree on what comes next. Borrow-and-spend must now give way to save-and-invest. Clearly, the mammon of profits-before-people has been knocked off its pedestal. Borrowing $2 billion to $3 billion a day from other countries (mostly China) to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption at a time of growing world shortages, is no longer viable. New York's Federal Reserve says the United States borrowed $4.4 trillion in the first six years of this decade to finance its current account deficits - 85 percent of total net borrowing worldwide.
Obama administration palliatives, according to Bloomberg, now total a little more than $8.5 trillion ($300 billion on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc., and Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. (now part of JP Morgan); $300 billion on Citigroup Inc.; $700 billion on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); $800 billion on Fed-directed asset-backed debt-purchase programs; $2.3 trillion on Fed commercial paper programs; and $2.2 trillion on other Fed lending and government commitments).
The buy-on-rumor-sell-on-news speculators are understandably confused. They read - or more likely hear - that banks are still holding the bad assets that the original $700 billion TARP was supposed to buy. Thus, the new "Plan B" may include going back to "Plan A," this time around forcing the government to actually buy those bad assets.
Despite all this, the public is assured the stimulus package of $787 billion will eventually revive the U.S. economy. And when it does, says Money Morning, mourning will be declared as the hugely inflated bubble in Treasuries bursts.
Meanwhile, "Saving America's Future," as spelled out by 24 of the nation's most illustrious names (12 from each party) in "A Challenge to the American People," released by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC), warns that worse news is yet to come because today's economic reality is "only the tip of the iceberg." And if we do not act now - in everything from "structural challenges in financing our government" to "ensuring quality public education, competing globally for jobs, extending health care while reducing its cost," and much more - "a far greater crisis awaits below the surface and threatens to sink our ship of state."
Clearly, the United States cannot continue building up the national debt, now almost $11 trillion, when "the government has committed to over $56 trillion in liabilities and unfunded promises," says one of the key findings. The nation's physical infrastructure "is crumbling around us ... neglected ... to such a degree that it would cost $2.2 trillion just to bring it up to 'good' condition."
While the economy was losing 23,000 jobs each day, pushing unemployment above 8 percent, the highest in 25 years, household net worth decreased $11.2 trillion (in 2008 alone). During the last year, says the CSPC report, about $50 trillion in the value of financial assets, equivalent to one year of the world's gross domestic product, was destroyed, shrinking the world economy in 2009 for the first time since World War II. The value of equities in retirement plans dropped by $4 trillion in a year.
The tax code contains 3.7 million words, and "current fiscal and financing practices are unsustainable." The federal government is "increasingly dysfunctional," say CSPC's 24 wise men and women, "politically and ideologically divided, shortsighted, compartmentalized, bureaucratic and arcane. Both major political parties seem unable to agree on the approaches necessary to address the structural challenges confronting the country. To make matters worse, these impediments to effective leadership seem to be growing by the day."
America is widely acknowledged as having one of the worst K-12 education systems in the world, yet it spends more on it per student than all but two other nations, says CSPC. More than 1.2 million American students drop out of school every year - or 6,000 every school day. And only 56 percent of students who enroll in four-year colleges after high school manage to earn a bachelor's degree.
"The more our children are exposed to our educational system, the more poorly they perform on international tests," said the report. And as President Obama said before the joint session of Congress, "This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow."
Addressing energy dependence and the environment, the report says the United States, the world's largest energy consumer, produces 10 percent of the world's petroleum but consumes 24 percent. The International Energy Agency forecasts world demand for energy could grow by 45 percent by 2030. "The time has arrived to shift the country's energy signature toward clean energy sources, greater levels of domestic supply, and increased innovation. At the same time, sustained investment is required across the entire energy spectrum, and around the world, to avoid new oil supply and price shocks over the next decade."
"Modernizing America's Infrastructure" produced a "D" on the most recent report of the American Society of Civil Engineers and now requires $2.2 trillion over five years to shore up more than 25 percent of the nation's bridges that are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
Deficient roads cost the economy $78.2 billion in time and fuel. The cost of aviation delays will rise from $9 billion to $30 billion by 2015. But the stimulus package contains billions of infrastructure spending, including $27.5 billion for highway construction; $16.5 billion to modernize public infrastructure; $18 billion for clean water, flood control and environmental restoration; and $17.7 billion for transit and rail.
As for modernizing the U.S. military, the emergence of a global multipolar system out to the year 2025 will be a "relative certainty," according to the latest National Intelligence Council assessment. Shrinking economic and military capabilities may force the United States into a difficult set of trade-offs between domestic and foreign policy priorities," the CSPC study concludes.
America is faced with three options - Business-as-Usual; Muddle-Through; "Transformational" Future. The first means that each American's share of the federal financial burden, currently $184,000, will continue to grow.
Muddling through will postpone the toughest challenges - i.e., health care reform - to where we need to be today to a dangerous future of social upheaval.
Transformation will require citizens to shed their role as spectators and demand that their leaders "set aside short-term interests and take bold, nonpartisan steps, promoting the spirit of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship" that has carried the United States for 233 years.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
DE BORCHGRAVE: Saving America's future
Arnaud de Borchgrav
COMMENTARY:
>From right to left, Washington's think tank senior economic fellows agree the capitalist system is broken.
But few agree on what comes next. Borrow-and-spend must now give way to save-and-invest. Clearly, the mammon of profits-before-people has been knocked off its pedestal. Borrowing $2 billion to $3 billion a day from other countries (mostly China) to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption at a time of growing world shortages, is no longer viable. New York's Federal Reserve says the United States borrowed $4.4 trillion in the first six years of this decade to finance its current account deficits - 85 percent of total net borrowing worldwide.
Obama administration palliatives, according to Bloomberg, now total a little more than $8.5 trillion ($300 billion on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc., and Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. (now part of JP Morgan); $300 billion on Citigroup Inc.; $700 billion on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); $800 billion on Fed-directed asset-backed debt-purchase programs; $2.3 trillion on Fed commercial paper programs; and $2.2 trillion on other Fed lending and government commitments).
The buy-on-rumor-sell-on-news speculators are understandably confused. They read - or more likely hear - that banks are still holding the bad assets that the original $700 billion TARP was supposed to buy. Thus, the new "Plan B" may include going back to "Plan A," this time around forcing the government to actually buy those bad assets.
Despite all this, the public is assured the stimulus package of $787 billion will eventually revive the U.S. economy. And when it does, says Money Morning, mourning will be declared as the hugely inflated bubble in Treasuries bursts.
Meanwhile, "Saving America's Future," as spelled out by 24 of the nation's most illustrious names (12 from each party) in "A Challenge to the American People," released by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC), warns that worse news is yet to come because today's economic reality is "only the tip of the iceberg." And if we do not act now - in everything from "structural challenges in financing our government" to "ensuring quality public education, competing globally for jobs, extending health care while reducing its cost," and much more - "a far greater crisis awaits below the surface and threatens to sink our ship of state."
Clearly, the United States cannot continue building up the national debt, now almost $11 trillion, when "the government has committed to over $56 trillion in liabilities and unfunded promises," says one of the key findings. The nation's physical infrastructure "is crumbling around us ... neglected ... to such a degree that it would cost $2.2 trillion just to bring it up to 'good' condition."
While the economy was losing 23,000 jobs each day, pushing unemployment above 8 percent, the highest in 25 years, household net worth decreased $11.2 trillion (in 2008 alone). During the last year, says the CSPC report, about $50 trillion in the value of financial assets, equivalent to one year of the world's gross domestic product, was destroyed, shrinking the world economy in 2009 for the first time since World War II. The value of equities in retirement plans dropped by $4 trillion in a year.
The tax code contains 3.7 million words, and "current fiscal and financing practices are unsustainable." The federal government is "increasingly dysfunctional," say CSPC's 24 wise men and women, "politically and ideologically divided, shortsighted, compartmentalized, bureaucratic and arcane. Both major political parties seem unable to agree on the approaches necessary to address the structural challenges confronting the country. To make matters worse, these impediments to effective leadership seem to be growing by the day."
America is widely acknowledged as having one of the worst K-12 education systems in the world, yet it spends more on it per student than all but two other nations, says CSPC. More than 1.2 million American students drop out of school every year - or 6,000 every school day. And only 56 percent of students who enroll in four-year colleges after high school manage to earn a bachelor's degree.
"The more our children are exposed to our educational system, the more poorly they perform on international tests," said the report. And as President Obama said before the joint session of Congress, "This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow."
Addressing energy dependence and the environment, the report says the United States, the world's largest energy consumer, produces 10 percent of the world's petroleum but consumes 24 percent. The International Energy Agency forecasts world demand for energy could grow by 45 percent by 2030. "The time has arrived to shift the country's energy signature toward clean energy sources, greater levels of domestic supply, and increased innovation. At the same time, sustained investment is required across the entire energy spectrum, and around the world, to avoid new oil supply and price shocks over the next decade."
"Modernizing America's Infrastructure" produced a "D" on the most recent report of the American Society of Civil Engineers and now requires $2.2 trillion over five years to shore up more than 25 percent of the nation's bridges that are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
Deficient roads cost the economy $78.2 billion in time and fuel. The cost of aviation delays will rise from $9 billion to $30 billion by 2015. But the stimulus package contains billions of infrastructure spending, including $27.5 billion for highway construction; $16.5 billion to modernize public infrastructure; $18 billion for clean water, flood control and environmental restoration; and $17.7 billion for transit and rail.
As for modernizing the U.S. military, the emergence of a global multipolar system out to the year 2025 will be a "relative certainty," according to the latest National Intelligence Council assessment. Shrinking economic and military capabilities may force the United States into a difficult set of trade-offs between domestic and foreign policy priorities," the CSPC study concludes.
America is faced with three options - Business-as-Usual; Muddle-Through; "Transformational" Future. The first means that each American's share of the federal financial burden, currently $184,000, will continue to grow.
Muddling through will postpone the toughest challenges - i.e., health care reform - to where we need to be today to a dangerous future of social upheaval.
Transformation will require citizens to shed their role as spectators and demand that their leaders "set aside short-term interests and take bold, nonpartisan steps, promoting the spirit of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship" that has carried the United States for 233 years.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
Bitterlemons-International.org Middle East Roundtable: The Egyptian-Hizballah Affair April 23, 2009
The Egypt-Hizballah affair
• Sunni-Shi'ite threat to Arab regimes - Ferry Biederman
The vocal Egyptian campaign against Hizballah may be meant to undercut the chances of Hizballah's electoral alliance.
• A public relations bust - an interview with Mustafa al-Sawwaf
The Arab regimes are paralyzed and they want everybody to be paralyzed along with them.
• Time to unite against Iran - Ephraim Sneh
Iran, Hamas and Hizballah are the real and principal enemy and all who oppose them are our allies.
• Egypt strikes back - Gamal A. G. Soltan
Egypt will not subscribe to a reconciliation that allows the radical forces to continue enjoying the same freedom of action.
Sunni-Shi'ite threat to Arab regimes
Ferry Biederman
For all the verbal fireworks coming out of Cairo, Egypt's campaign against the Lebanese Hizballah movement may not amount to much in the end. We're talking after all about a country that cannot even exert significant influence over events in neighboring Gaza and that cannot rein in the Palestinian Hamas movement there to which it is ostensibly not well disposed either. To think that it can counter Hizballah in any meaningful way in its Lebanese home base or anywhere else in the region, beyond its own borders, seems farfetched. But the row does emphasize a couple of regional fault lines and raises questions of Hizballah's international ambitions and the extent of its coordination with Iran.
While many in Lebanon have focused on the Egyptian charges that Hizballah was planning to carry out attacks on its soil, the claim by its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, that the group was smuggling arms to Palestinian factions in Gaza, for which "we do not apologize", was the more remarkable. Any attack on Israelis in Egypt can be construed as being in line with his earlier pledge to seek revenge for the killing of Hizballah commander Imad Moughniyeh in Damascus last year, of which the group has accused Israel. But the now open extension of Hizballah's role to supporting the Palestinian cause hundreds of miles from the Lebanese border opens up the prospect of a continued confrontation with Israel even if all outstanding Lebanese-Israeli issues get settled. It also lifts a tip of the veil of secrecy that has always covered persistent indications that Hizballah does have an international strategy, be it in the Palestinian territories, in Iraq or in South America.
Hizballah's support for Hamas in Gaza is in a way not surprising given the well-known ties that go back several years now between Iran and Hamas. What is significant is that Hizballah's and Tehran's aid to Hamas gives the lie to the notion that militant Shi'ite and Sunni movements do not cooperate. Since Hamas, apart from its Palestinian nationalist agenda, is also an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, such cooperation becomes even more important and could be regarded as a real threat by some of the so-called moderate or pro-western Arab regimes. This may be one of the reasons behind Egypt's decision to take Hizballah on in such a public and vocal way.
The combination of Iranian support and Hizballah's guerrilla expertise and Arab nationalist appeal seems to be an alarming one for Arab states. Egypt's foreign minister immediately claimed a link between Iran and Hizballah's alleged activities in his country. The rivalry between Cairo and Tehran is well established by now and Egypt has kept a wary eye on increased Iranian influence in the region, which has been particularly in evidence since 2003. Iran and Hizballah received a further boost from the 2006 war when Hizballah fought credibly against the Israelis. By some accounts the popularity of the group among ordinary Egyptians has been neutralized by the row, which would be an achievement for the Egyptian authorities.
The confrontation also comes at a time when the Obama administration's advances toward Iran have made Cairo, as well as other Arab regimes, even more nervous about being sidelined in the region's great game. The Americans seem momentarily more interested in bringing on board the more rejectionist and hence more popular players in the Arab-Israel conflict rather than relying on their traditional allies. If Cairo can convince the Americans that Iran had a hand in a real plot in Egypt, it may put a bit of a break on the administration's ardor in pursuing Tehran.
The vocal Egyptian campaign against Hizballah may finally be meant to undercut the chances of Hizballah's electoral alliance in the upcoming elections in Lebanon. These will be decided in the Christian areas where there is a contest between anti-Syrian groups and the faction following former General Michel Aoun, who has signed an agreement with Hizballah. That movement's international entanglements may embarrass the general. His Christian followers often have little sympathy for the armed Shi'ite group. They may tolerate it as long as it claims to be defending Lebanon's interests but not when it is aiding the Palestinians to the detriment of Lebanon's interests.
As with all else, the way in which the affair is being viewed in Lebanon depends on the political allegiance of the person who is being asked. In some anti-American quarters the Egyptian accusations are seen as paving the way for another assault on Hizballah by Israel. Others cannot believe that the country may once again be held hostage by the actions of one particular group. They note that Egypt has also accused the Lebanese state of giving cover to Hizballah and they wonder how it will affect Egypt's support for Lebanon vis-a-vis Syria. Hizballah itself is reasonably immune to pressure but if the group is indeed carrying out an international strategy in coordination with Iran, this could have long-lasting implications for Lebanon.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Ferry Biedermann is a free-lance journalist based in Beirut.
A public relations bust
an interview with Mustafa al-Sawwaf
BI: Egypt has accused Hizballah of planning to attack targets in Egypt. What do you make of this accusation?
Al-Sawwaf: I don't believe the Egyptian claims that Hizballah was planning to execute military operations against Egyptian interests or against foreign or Israeli targets in Egypt. I believe there was an attempt to provide Gaza with weapons and this is how the Egyptian accusations arose. I think the Egyptian regime is trying to curry favor with the new American administration and those who are meeting to discuss ways to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza from Egypt. In addition there are political reasons, which include US financial support and maintaining good Egyptian-Israeli relations.
BI: Do you think Cairo feels threatened by Hizballah or Hamas?
Al-Sawwaf: Egypt is too large to be threatened by Hizballah or any other movement. Unfortunately, the political regime in Cairo is undermining the traditional role and position of Egypt. I don't think any resistance movement wants to jeopardize Egyptian national security. Egypt, during the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, used to play an important role in supporting the Arab resistance. It's strange how this role has completely turned.
Hamas, furthermore, has never been a threat to any Arab country. On the contrary, Hamas has always tried to ensure good relations with all Arab and Muslim countries. The movement has time and again said that it is against interfering in the domestic affairs of any Arab country. Hamas' resistance is confined to fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and no more than that.
BI: Hizballah admitted that it was active in Egypt, but only to help Gaza. Is Hizballah providing any kind of help to Gaza and Hamas?
Al-Sawwaf: What [Hizballah leader] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said was that one of those arrested was a Hizballah activist based in Egypt to facilitate the process of providing Gaza with weapons. He didn't specify whether these weapons were going to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. But in any case, Hamas and all the other resistance movements in Gaza welcome any support from Arab countries or other quarters to help them resist the occupation and defend Palestinians.
BI: People talk about Shi'ite-Sunni conflict in the region. But is there Shi'ite-Sunni conflict, or would it be more accurate to look at competition in the region as being between resistance movements and state regimes?
Al-Sawwaf: The Arab regimes are paralyzed and they want everybody to be paralyzed along with them. They don't want to provide the Palestinian resistance with weapons simply because they are paralyzed. There is no Shi'ite-Sunni conflict in any Arab country. The Americans are the ones who invented this game, and they did so in order to create divisions among Arabs and provoke conflicts. The real conflict is how to manage support for the Palestinian resistance in spite of the Arab regimes.
BI: Why do you think the argument between Cairo and Hizballah erupted now?
Al-Sawwaf: Egypt arrested the cell before the recent war on Gaza, but after the European, American and Israeli meetings to find ways to fight weapons smuggling into Gaza through Egypt. Cairo has presented the story as if it was a recent event to show itself as capable and active in fighting such smuggling.
BI: What effect might the argument between Cairo and Hizballah have in Gaza?
Al-Sawwaf: I believe nothing will affect Gaza unless its people give up and that's impossible. Egypt and others are trying to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza but the resistance movements can secure weapons in many ways. In the past, weapons were obtained from Israeli sources and whatever happens, there will always be a way to get weapons. The struggle here is one for freedom and justice, and for as long as it has to continue a way will be found to fight.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mustafa al-Sawwaf is a Gaza-based political analyst and an expert on Islamic movements.
Time to unite against Iran
Ephraim Sneh
The success of Egyptian intelligence against Iran's espionage and sabotage ring in Egypt not only saved the lives of hundreds of people. It also revealed Iran's modus operandi for taking over countries and territories in the region.
Iran seeks to depose independent regimes in the area that reject its religious system and refuse to become part of the "resistance camp", meaning the new Persian empire. Regimes are to be overthrown by weakening their economies through terrorist attacks and assassinating key ruling figures.
Iran may have forced the "Doha accord" on the Lebanese political system, but it is using Hizballah not only to take over Lebanon. Hizballah is deployed against Egypt (as recently revealed), Jordan and Gulf states as well. Nor is Gaza merely a launching base for rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. The Hamas "emirate" established in Gaza with Iranian money and weapons also serves as a cover for Hizballah's activities against Egypt. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has now virtually admitted as much: Hizballah's "logistical assistance" activities in Egypt on behalf of Hamas concealed preparations for terrorist attacks on Egypt's soil.
Beyond uncovering Iran's modus operandi, however, Egypt's reaction spotlights the true fault line in the Middle East. No longer is this the old delineation between Israel and the Arab world. Now, on one side of the line are Iran and its proxies, Hizballah, Hamas and Syria. On the other are all the countries that do not wish to live according to the extremist Shi'ite version of Islam and are not interested in confrontation with western culture or a new war with Israel. These states treasure their own sovereignty and don't want to become part of the new empire that Iran is building--from Herat in the mountains of Afghanistan to Beirut on the Mediterranean coast.
The lesson that Israel and its neighbors can learn from the Hizballah affair in Egypt is the need to act in concert against a common enemy. Not everyone in Israel understands this or appreciates where the true Middle East fault line lies. Not everyone recognizes that Iran, Hamas and Hizballah are the real and principal enemy and that all who oppose them are our allies.
The Arab Peace Initiative is the authorized expression of this new regional division. Myopia has denied this document its rightful response from Jerusalem. We don't have to accept every single line in the API, but we do need to respect it as an acceptable opening stand on the part of the Arab side.
Events in Egypt demonstrate that the most urgent place to cooperate is Gaza. Iran has turned the Gaza Strip into a forward terror base against both Israel and Egypt, at a huge cost to Palestinians. We need a joint, coordinated Palestinian-Egyptian-Israeli effort to put an end to Hamas rule in Gaza. As long as Hamas is in charge in Gaza and Iran sends it money and weapons, the fighting and suffering there will not end. Nor is there any sense in rebuilding Gaza now: sooner or later the fighting will be renewed and everything will again be destroyed.
The immediate lesson to be derived from events in Egypt is to end Hamas rule in Gaza. Egypt has to play a central role in achieving this vital objective. In so doing, Cairo will not only serve its own security and stability but will also restore a life of dignity to 1.5 million Palestinians who have become hostages of Hizballah, Hamas and Iran. Once Hamas rule in Gaza has ended, the way will be open for the rehabilitation and economic development that Gaza so desperately needs.
This will also be the first confirmation that it is possible to halt the advance of the ayatollahs' empire.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Ephraim Sneh is a former minister of health, minister of transportation and deputy minister of defense in Israeli governments.
Egypt strikes back
Gamal A. G. Soltan
The current tension between Egypt and Hizballah is a crisis that has been waiting to happen for years. The causes of tension between the two sides are multifaceted. This is a conflict between nationalism and supra-nationalism, between Egypt and Iran, between moderation and radicalism, between Sunnis and Shi'ites and between status quo and revisionist forces in the Middle East. Hizballah's ideology, its nature as a non-state armed actor and its strong alliance with Iran are sufficient to generate heavy doubts and concerns among mainstream Arab states regarding the movement.
Until the year 2000, Hizballah's dedication to the mission of ending Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon helped offset these concerns. But since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May of that year, apprehension has been rising regarding the possibility that Hizballah is redirecting its capabilities toward further destabilization of the region.
Hizballah interference in other countries' internal affairs was bound to happen. Hizballah successfully established itself as a Lebanese national resistance movement during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. As such, it was able to conceal the other dimensions integral to its identity. The ideology of Hizballah commits the party to the goals and strategies of the revolutionary Islamic movement: transforming the nature of Middle East political systems and societies and the liberation of all of Palestine.
Ironically, the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was at the same time Hizballah's greatest achievement and the development that denied the party the capacity to further conceal its supra-national identity. The partial stabilization of the situation in southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 conflict made a new Hizballah adventure across the Lebanese-Israeli border unlikely. Hizballah had to find other venues for demonstrating its hard-line anti-Israel stand. It was Gaza that gave the party a new opportunity to maintain its anti-Israel credentials.
The extra-territorial revolutionary forces of Islamism have gained tremendous influence in the past few years. The many mistakes committed by the United States in the post 9/11 period granted revolutionary Islamism a golden opportunity to advance its popularity among the peoples of the Middle East. Moreover, US policy has been instrumental in granting Iran precious opportunities to further its influence in the region. The combined power of radical Islamism and the state of Iran expose moderates in the Middle East to tremendous pressure.
The current Hizballah-Egypt affair should be perceived within this context. Egypt, like any other state, cannot tolerate the encroachment of either a foreign government or a non-state armed actor on its sovereignty and national security. The strong Egyptian reaction to the arrest of Hizballah's operatives in Egypt, however, indicates that Egypt's concerns and objectives go beyond the mere elimination of the illegal ring of Hizballah's operatives. Egypt is apparently turning this incident into an opportunity to convict Hizballah of committing the capital crime of tampering with the national security of a neighboring state.
Radical revisionist forces in the Middle East have been able during the past couple of years to obfuscate the distinction between their national and supra-national goals. Claims have been made by radicals that the security and interests of Middle East peoples and states are not to be put at risk as a result of the radical policies pursued in places such as Gaza and Lebanon. Legitimate sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians at the time of a failing Middle East peace process has allowed radicals the opportunity to market their claims region-wide. Yet the ring of Hizballah's operatives shut down in Egypt and the kinds of activities they plotted on Egyptian soil demonstrate the risks posed to states' national security by these same radical tactics and policies, alongside the inherent conflicts between rival orientations in Middle East politics.
Egypt's strategy in handling the Hizballah ring it captured seeks the achievement of a number of goals. On the domestic level, there is an attempt to capitalize on the incident to win back the support of segments of the Egyptian public that were lost to radical propaganda during the past few years. The Hizballah case lends itself to the mobilization of the Egyptian sense of national identity that had been overwhelmed by strong waves of Arabism and Islamism. The recent conflict in Gaza, in particular, was successfully employed by radicals to advance their supra-national cause. Winning the Egyptian public back to Egyptian nationalism is instrumental as a legitimating strategy and as a safeguard against further trespassing by radical regional forces against Egyptian security and interests.
Egypt's escalated reaction against Hizballah is designed to deter the revolutionary pro-Iran party from further encroaching on its interests. It provoked Iranian officials to come to the rescue of their valuable ally: the harsh words exchanged between Iranian and Egyptian officials reveal the regional dimension of the incident. Egypt is interested in mobilizing the moderate Arab states against this Iranian and radical influence.
Egypt also seeks to contribute to stability by containing conflicts between radicals and moderates region-wide. Yet it is not satisfied with the terms of the nascent reconciliation between radicals and moderates in the Arab world. In particular Egypt, which was strongly targeted by the inflammatory radical propaganda of Hizballah, Syria and Iran as they sought to mobilize the Egyptian public against its government and regime during the Gaza conflict, will not subscribe to a reconciliation that allows the radical forces to continue enjoying the same freedom of action as before.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Gamal A. G. Soltan is a senior research fellow in Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and a visiting professor of political science at The American University in Cairo.
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Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
• Sunni-Shi'ite threat to Arab regimes - Ferry Biederman
The vocal Egyptian campaign against Hizballah may be meant to undercut the chances of Hizballah's electoral alliance.
• A public relations bust - an interview with Mustafa al-Sawwaf
The Arab regimes are paralyzed and they want everybody to be paralyzed along with them.
• Time to unite against Iran - Ephraim Sneh
Iran, Hamas and Hizballah are the real and principal enemy and all who oppose them are our allies.
• Egypt strikes back - Gamal A. G. Soltan
Egypt will not subscribe to a reconciliation that allows the radical forces to continue enjoying the same freedom of action.
Sunni-Shi'ite threat to Arab regimes
Ferry Biederman
For all the verbal fireworks coming out of Cairo, Egypt's campaign against the Lebanese Hizballah movement may not amount to much in the end. We're talking after all about a country that cannot even exert significant influence over events in neighboring Gaza and that cannot rein in the Palestinian Hamas movement there to which it is ostensibly not well disposed either. To think that it can counter Hizballah in any meaningful way in its Lebanese home base or anywhere else in the region, beyond its own borders, seems farfetched. But the row does emphasize a couple of regional fault lines and raises questions of Hizballah's international ambitions and the extent of its coordination with Iran.
While many in Lebanon have focused on the Egyptian charges that Hizballah was planning to carry out attacks on its soil, the claim by its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, that the group was smuggling arms to Palestinian factions in Gaza, for which "we do not apologize", was the more remarkable. Any attack on Israelis in Egypt can be construed as being in line with his earlier pledge to seek revenge for the killing of Hizballah commander Imad Moughniyeh in Damascus last year, of which the group has accused Israel. But the now open extension of Hizballah's role to supporting the Palestinian cause hundreds of miles from the Lebanese border opens up the prospect of a continued confrontation with Israel even if all outstanding Lebanese-Israeli issues get settled. It also lifts a tip of the veil of secrecy that has always covered persistent indications that Hizballah does have an international strategy, be it in the Palestinian territories, in Iraq or in South America.
Hizballah's support for Hamas in Gaza is in a way not surprising given the well-known ties that go back several years now between Iran and Hamas. What is significant is that Hizballah's and Tehran's aid to Hamas gives the lie to the notion that militant Shi'ite and Sunni movements do not cooperate. Since Hamas, apart from its Palestinian nationalist agenda, is also an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, such cooperation becomes even more important and could be regarded as a real threat by some of the so-called moderate or pro-western Arab regimes. This may be one of the reasons behind Egypt's decision to take Hizballah on in such a public and vocal way.
The combination of Iranian support and Hizballah's guerrilla expertise and Arab nationalist appeal seems to be an alarming one for Arab states. Egypt's foreign minister immediately claimed a link between Iran and Hizballah's alleged activities in his country. The rivalry between Cairo and Tehran is well established by now and Egypt has kept a wary eye on increased Iranian influence in the region, which has been particularly in evidence since 2003. Iran and Hizballah received a further boost from the 2006 war when Hizballah fought credibly against the Israelis. By some accounts the popularity of the group among ordinary Egyptians has been neutralized by the row, which would be an achievement for the Egyptian authorities.
The confrontation also comes at a time when the Obama administration's advances toward Iran have made Cairo, as well as other Arab regimes, even more nervous about being sidelined in the region's great game. The Americans seem momentarily more interested in bringing on board the more rejectionist and hence more popular players in the Arab-Israel conflict rather than relying on their traditional allies. If Cairo can convince the Americans that Iran had a hand in a real plot in Egypt, it may put a bit of a break on the administration's ardor in pursuing Tehran.
The vocal Egyptian campaign against Hizballah may finally be meant to undercut the chances of Hizballah's electoral alliance in the upcoming elections in Lebanon. These will be decided in the Christian areas where there is a contest between anti-Syrian groups and the faction following former General Michel Aoun, who has signed an agreement with Hizballah. That movement's international entanglements may embarrass the general. His Christian followers often have little sympathy for the armed Shi'ite group. They may tolerate it as long as it claims to be defending Lebanon's interests but not when it is aiding the Palestinians to the detriment of Lebanon's interests.
As with all else, the way in which the affair is being viewed in Lebanon depends on the political allegiance of the person who is being asked. In some anti-American quarters the Egyptian accusations are seen as paving the way for another assault on Hizballah by Israel. Others cannot believe that the country may once again be held hostage by the actions of one particular group. They note that Egypt has also accused the Lebanese state of giving cover to Hizballah and they wonder how it will affect Egypt's support for Lebanon vis-a-vis Syria. Hizballah itself is reasonably immune to pressure but if the group is indeed carrying out an international strategy in coordination with Iran, this could have long-lasting implications for Lebanon.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Ferry Biedermann is a free-lance journalist based in Beirut.
A public relations bust
an interview with Mustafa al-Sawwaf
BI: Egypt has accused Hizballah of planning to attack targets in Egypt. What do you make of this accusation?
Al-Sawwaf: I don't believe the Egyptian claims that Hizballah was planning to execute military operations against Egyptian interests or against foreign or Israeli targets in Egypt. I believe there was an attempt to provide Gaza with weapons and this is how the Egyptian accusations arose. I think the Egyptian regime is trying to curry favor with the new American administration and those who are meeting to discuss ways to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza from Egypt. In addition there are political reasons, which include US financial support and maintaining good Egyptian-Israeli relations.
BI: Do you think Cairo feels threatened by Hizballah or Hamas?
Al-Sawwaf: Egypt is too large to be threatened by Hizballah or any other movement. Unfortunately, the political regime in Cairo is undermining the traditional role and position of Egypt. I don't think any resistance movement wants to jeopardize Egyptian national security. Egypt, during the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, used to play an important role in supporting the Arab resistance. It's strange how this role has completely turned.
Hamas, furthermore, has never been a threat to any Arab country. On the contrary, Hamas has always tried to ensure good relations with all Arab and Muslim countries. The movement has time and again said that it is against interfering in the domestic affairs of any Arab country. Hamas' resistance is confined to fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and no more than that.
BI: Hizballah admitted that it was active in Egypt, but only to help Gaza. Is Hizballah providing any kind of help to Gaza and Hamas?
Al-Sawwaf: What [Hizballah leader] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said was that one of those arrested was a Hizballah activist based in Egypt to facilitate the process of providing Gaza with weapons. He didn't specify whether these weapons were going to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. But in any case, Hamas and all the other resistance movements in Gaza welcome any support from Arab countries or other quarters to help them resist the occupation and defend Palestinians.
BI: People talk about Shi'ite-Sunni conflict in the region. But is there Shi'ite-Sunni conflict, or would it be more accurate to look at competition in the region as being between resistance movements and state regimes?
Al-Sawwaf: The Arab regimes are paralyzed and they want everybody to be paralyzed along with them. They don't want to provide the Palestinian resistance with weapons simply because they are paralyzed. There is no Shi'ite-Sunni conflict in any Arab country. The Americans are the ones who invented this game, and they did so in order to create divisions among Arabs and provoke conflicts. The real conflict is how to manage support for the Palestinian resistance in spite of the Arab regimes.
BI: Why do you think the argument between Cairo and Hizballah erupted now?
Al-Sawwaf: Egypt arrested the cell before the recent war on Gaza, but after the European, American and Israeli meetings to find ways to fight weapons smuggling into Gaza through Egypt. Cairo has presented the story as if it was a recent event to show itself as capable and active in fighting such smuggling.
BI: What effect might the argument between Cairo and Hizballah have in Gaza?
Al-Sawwaf: I believe nothing will affect Gaza unless its people give up and that's impossible. Egypt and others are trying to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza but the resistance movements can secure weapons in many ways. In the past, weapons were obtained from Israeli sources and whatever happens, there will always be a way to get weapons. The struggle here is one for freedom and justice, and for as long as it has to continue a way will be found to fight.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mustafa al-Sawwaf is a Gaza-based political analyst and an expert on Islamic movements.
Time to unite against Iran
Ephraim Sneh
The success of Egyptian intelligence against Iran's espionage and sabotage ring in Egypt not only saved the lives of hundreds of people. It also revealed Iran's modus operandi for taking over countries and territories in the region.
Iran seeks to depose independent regimes in the area that reject its religious system and refuse to become part of the "resistance camp", meaning the new Persian empire. Regimes are to be overthrown by weakening their economies through terrorist attacks and assassinating key ruling figures.
Iran may have forced the "Doha accord" on the Lebanese political system, but it is using Hizballah not only to take over Lebanon. Hizballah is deployed against Egypt (as recently revealed), Jordan and Gulf states as well. Nor is Gaza merely a launching base for rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. The Hamas "emirate" established in Gaza with Iranian money and weapons also serves as a cover for Hizballah's activities against Egypt. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has now virtually admitted as much: Hizballah's "logistical assistance" activities in Egypt on behalf of Hamas concealed preparations for terrorist attacks on Egypt's soil.
Beyond uncovering Iran's modus operandi, however, Egypt's reaction spotlights the true fault line in the Middle East. No longer is this the old delineation between Israel and the Arab world. Now, on one side of the line are Iran and its proxies, Hizballah, Hamas and Syria. On the other are all the countries that do not wish to live according to the extremist Shi'ite version of Islam and are not interested in confrontation with western culture or a new war with Israel. These states treasure their own sovereignty and don't want to become part of the new empire that Iran is building--from Herat in the mountains of Afghanistan to Beirut on the Mediterranean coast.
The lesson that Israel and its neighbors can learn from the Hizballah affair in Egypt is the need to act in concert against a common enemy. Not everyone in Israel understands this or appreciates where the true Middle East fault line lies. Not everyone recognizes that Iran, Hamas and Hizballah are the real and principal enemy and that all who oppose them are our allies.
The Arab Peace Initiative is the authorized expression of this new regional division. Myopia has denied this document its rightful response from Jerusalem. We don't have to accept every single line in the API, but we do need to respect it as an acceptable opening stand on the part of the Arab side.
Events in Egypt demonstrate that the most urgent place to cooperate is Gaza. Iran has turned the Gaza Strip into a forward terror base against both Israel and Egypt, at a huge cost to Palestinians. We need a joint, coordinated Palestinian-Egyptian-Israeli effort to put an end to Hamas rule in Gaza. As long as Hamas is in charge in Gaza and Iran sends it money and weapons, the fighting and suffering there will not end. Nor is there any sense in rebuilding Gaza now: sooner or later the fighting will be renewed and everything will again be destroyed.
The immediate lesson to be derived from events in Egypt is to end Hamas rule in Gaza. Egypt has to play a central role in achieving this vital objective. In so doing, Cairo will not only serve its own security and stability but will also restore a life of dignity to 1.5 million Palestinians who have become hostages of Hizballah, Hamas and Iran. Once Hamas rule in Gaza has ended, the way will be open for the rehabilitation and economic development that Gaza so desperately needs.
This will also be the first confirmation that it is possible to halt the advance of the ayatollahs' empire.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Ephraim Sneh is a former minister of health, minister of transportation and deputy minister of defense in Israeli governments.
Egypt strikes back
Gamal A. G. Soltan
The current tension between Egypt and Hizballah is a crisis that has been waiting to happen for years. The causes of tension between the two sides are multifaceted. This is a conflict between nationalism and supra-nationalism, between Egypt and Iran, between moderation and radicalism, between Sunnis and Shi'ites and between status quo and revisionist forces in the Middle East. Hizballah's ideology, its nature as a non-state armed actor and its strong alliance with Iran are sufficient to generate heavy doubts and concerns among mainstream Arab states regarding the movement.
Until the year 2000, Hizballah's dedication to the mission of ending Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon helped offset these concerns. But since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May of that year, apprehension has been rising regarding the possibility that Hizballah is redirecting its capabilities toward further destabilization of the region.
Hizballah interference in other countries' internal affairs was bound to happen. Hizballah successfully established itself as a Lebanese national resistance movement during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. As such, it was able to conceal the other dimensions integral to its identity. The ideology of Hizballah commits the party to the goals and strategies of the revolutionary Islamic movement: transforming the nature of Middle East political systems and societies and the liberation of all of Palestine.
Ironically, the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was at the same time Hizballah's greatest achievement and the development that denied the party the capacity to further conceal its supra-national identity. The partial stabilization of the situation in southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 conflict made a new Hizballah adventure across the Lebanese-Israeli border unlikely. Hizballah had to find other venues for demonstrating its hard-line anti-Israel stand. It was Gaza that gave the party a new opportunity to maintain its anti-Israel credentials.
The extra-territorial revolutionary forces of Islamism have gained tremendous influence in the past few years. The many mistakes committed by the United States in the post 9/11 period granted revolutionary Islamism a golden opportunity to advance its popularity among the peoples of the Middle East. Moreover, US policy has been instrumental in granting Iran precious opportunities to further its influence in the region. The combined power of radical Islamism and the state of Iran expose moderates in the Middle East to tremendous pressure.
The current Hizballah-Egypt affair should be perceived within this context. Egypt, like any other state, cannot tolerate the encroachment of either a foreign government or a non-state armed actor on its sovereignty and national security. The strong Egyptian reaction to the arrest of Hizballah's operatives in Egypt, however, indicates that Egypt's concerns and objectives go beyond the mere elimination of the illegal ring of Hizballah's operatives. Egypt is apparently turning this incident into an opportunity to convict Hizballah of committing the capital crime of tampering with the national security of a neighboring state.
Radical revisionist forces in the Middle East have been able during the past couple of years to obfuscate the distinction between their national and supra-national goals. Claims have been made by radicals that the security and interests of Middle East peoples and states are not to be put at risk as a result of the radical policies pursued in places such as Gaza and Lebanon. Legitimate sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians at the time of a failing Middle East peace process has allowed radicals the opportunity to market their claims region-wide. Yet the ring of Hizballah's operatives shut down in Egypt and the kinds of activities they plotted on Egyptian soil demonstrate the risks posed to states' national security by these same radical tactics and policies, alongside the inherent conflicts between rival orientations in Middle East politics.
Egypt's strategy in handling the Hizballah ring it captured seeks the achievement of a number of goals. On the domestic level, there is an attempt to capitalize on the incident to win back the support of segments of the Egyptian public that were lost to radical propaganda during the past few years. The Hizballah case lends itself to the mobilization of the Egyptian sense of national identity that had been overwhelmed by strong waves of Arabism and Islamism. The recent conflict in Gaza, in particular, was successfully employed by radicals to advance their supra-national cause. Winning the Egyptian public back to Egyptian nationalism is instrumental as a legitimating strategy and as a safeguard against further trespassing by radical regional forces against Egyptian security and interests.
Egypt's escalated reaction against Hizballah is designed to deter the revolutionary pro-Iran party from further encroaching on its interests. It provoked Iranian officials to come to the rescue of their valuable ally: the harsh words exchanged between Iranian and Egyptian officials reveal the regional dimension of the incident. Egypt is interested in mobilizing the moderate Arab states against this Iranian and radical influence.
Egypt also seeks to contribute to stability by containing conflicts between radicals and moderates region-wide. Yet it is not satisfied with the terms of the nascent reconciliation between radicals and moderates in the Arab world. In particular Egypt, which was strongly targeted by the inflammatory radical propaganda of Hizballah, Syria and Iran as they sought to mobilize the Egyptian public against its government and regime during the Gaza conflict, will not subscribe to a reconciliation that allows the radical forces to continue enjoying the same freedom of action as before.- Published 23/4/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Gamal A. G. Soltan is a senior research fellow in Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and a visiting professor of political science at The American University in Cairo.
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Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Obama, American Ideals, and Torture as ‘a useful tool’ April 21, 2009 by Jeremy R. Hammond
Obama, American Ideals, and Torture as ‘a useful tool’
April 21, 2009
by Jeremy R. Hammond
The self-described “world leader in global intelligence” information group STRATFOR said on Monday, in an assessment of the Obama administration’s decision to release a series of legal memoranda giving the C.I.A. legal cover to engage in torture, that “torture can be a useful tool” and defended President Barack Obama’s decision to protect C.I.A. interrogators who employed torture against detainees from any criminal prosecution.
Obama, in his own defense of his decision to protect torturers, said that harsh interrogation methods “undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer” while defending interrogators “who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
He also asserted that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” The suggestion that it would serve no purpose to hold people accountable for violating U.S. and international law stands in contrast to his avowal within the same statement that he believes in accountability, as well as his remark that “The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and unshakeable commitment to our ideals.”
U.S. law defines “torture” as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict sever physical or mental pain or suffering … upon another person within his custody or physical control”.
The legal memoranda in question effectively served to grant the color of law to the use of torture.
Under the law, anyone found guilty of using torture can be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years. If death results from the use of torture, the offender may be given the death penalty. This applies to anyone who uses torture “outside the United States”, such as C.I.A. detention facilities overseas.
The U.S. War Crimes statute, which applies to offenses “whether inside or outside the United States”, forbids war crimes, defined as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and other relevant bodies of international law to which the U.S. is a party. The statute notes that the Geneva Conventions specifically forbid torture as a war crime, defining torture as “The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering … for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment not only obligates parties to establish jurisdiction over offences committed within that state or by nationals of that state beyond its borders, but to prosecute those accused of having committed such offences.
The legal argument put forth by Justice Department and White House lawyers in numerous memoranda that have come to light over the years is in essence that the President is simply above the law. The Executive Office may simply disregard international treaties and U.S. law as he sees fit in the execution of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and as deemed necessary for purposes of “national security”.
President Obama, by declaring that his administration will protect those who committed or conspired to commit torture despite the U.S. obligation under both domestic and international law to prosecute such individuals, is effectively reaffirming that same interpretation of Executive power adopted under the Bush administration.
In defense of this policy under the Obama administration, George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, acknowledges that while the harsh interrogation methods given color of law under the recently released memoranda “do not rise anywhere near the top” of the “scale of human cruelty”, the treatment of detainees by the U.S. “was terrible nonetheless.”
water_cure“But”, continues Friedman, “torture is meant to be terrible” and torturers should be judged in the context of the terror of 9/11. The U.S. “lack of intelligence” led to an increased sense of fear both among the public and within the government, he asserts. “Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States.”
The notion that 9/11 was the result of an intelligence failure has been largely discredited. Former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet admitted to the 9/11 Commission that “the system was blinking red” with warnings about an imminent attack. The C.I.A. had been tracking two of the would-be-hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and knew that al-Midhar had obtained a visa to enter the U.S. Yet the C.I.A. chose not to inform the State Department, the F.B.I., or the Immigration and Naturalization Service to put the men on the terrorist watchlist or otherwise be on the lookout for known al Qaeda operatives who might attempt to enter the U.S.
C.I.A. documents showed that it was known that “al-Qa’ida operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was recruiting persons to travel to the United States and engage in planning terrorist-related activity here”, according to the 9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry report. These persons “would be ‘expected to establish contact with colleagues already living’” in the U.S. “In short,” the report observed, “before September 11, the Intelligence Community recognized that a radical Islamic network that could provide support to al-Qa’ida operatives probably existed in the United States.”
While in the U.S., the two terrorists were assisted by the subject of an F.B.I. terrorism investigation and made frequent contact with an F.B.I. informant. They lived in San Diego under their real names and were even listed in the phone book.
Numerous other examples discrediting the intelligence failure claim exist, including the fact that President George W. Bush received an intelligence brief on August 6, 2001, entitled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S.” that said terrorists were planning on exploiting their access to the U.S. “to mount a terrorist strike.” Al Qaeda, the brief stated, “maintains a support structure that could aid attacks” within the U.S. The threat of hijackings was noted, and New York was specifically named as a potential target for an attack.
When the existence of this brief became public knowledge, President Bush responded to criticism by saying that brief “was no indication of a terrorist threat.” Such public statements, belied by actual facts, served to help establish the popular myth that U.S. intelligence was blind to the threat that manifested on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Friedman argues that it was this “lack of knowledge” about terrorists’ intentions that “led to the authorization of torture”, which “offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence”.
That torture is an effective means of gathering intelligence is also a notion that is offered no credibility among interrogation experts. The use of torture, far from resulting in the extraction of credible and useful information, results in the victim saying whatever he or she thinks their interrogator wants to hear in order to make it stop. Torture is useful, but as a means to elicit false confessions, such as for propaganda purposes.
This is perfectly well recognized. In fact, many of the interrogation methods authorized during the Bush administration were derived from Chinese Communist techniques. Military interrogation trainers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. maintains a detention facility, based an entire class on methods taken from a 1957 study entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From the Air Force Prisoners of War”.
The military developed a training program ostensibly designed to teach members of the armed forces how to resist harsh interrogation methods, but this program, known as “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape”, or SERE, was used by both the C.I.A. and military not to teach resistance to such methods, but rather how to use such methods on others.
Remarking on the revelation of the origins of interrogation methods employed by the U.S. after 9/11, Senator Carl Levin said, “What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions. People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”
Continuing, Friedman points out that “The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic”, but argues fulfillment of this oath required President Bush to authorize torture gain intelligence. In other words, he adopts the position of the authors of government legal memos that it’s okay to disregard U.S. and international law under the U.S. Constitution in cases where the President unilaterally decides it is necessary to do so for national security.
Friedman illustrates this supposed necessity not with a real life example, but with what is known as the “ticking time bomb scenario”.
Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, coauthor of the Army counterinsurgency field manual, said, “Frankly, I joined the military to fight against people who torture” in expressing shock and horror at a survey by Foreign Policy that found that 44% of retired and active military officers disagreed with the statement “Torture is never acceptable”. He suggested this figure might reflect what he called “the Jack Bauer effect” (a reference to the popular TV series “24″ in which the main character employs torture in just such “ticking time bomb” scenarios) and “the extraordinarily hypothetical, one in a million million sort of case”.
Torture should be exercised only by “well-trained, experienced personnel”, Friedman argues in his STRATFOR assessment. While acknowledging that “the person you are torturing may well know nothing at all”, in which case torture “becomes not only a waste of time and a violation of decency, it actually undermines good intelligence.” But at the same time he argues that “critics” of torture “cannot know the extent to which the use of torture actually prevented follow-on attacks.” While such critics “may have been correct”, nobody “had the right to assume” that another terrorist attack wasn’t imminent.
The implication is that critics have no right to judge those responsible for authorizing and using torture. The problem isn’t with the use of torture itself. Torture, “as with other exceptional measures”, he argues, “is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations.” But “in the hands of bureaucracies”, it “becomes the routine”. Torture was initially “essential”, but after time “the emergency” ended. It “can be a useful tool”. Torture isn’t wrong, in other words, it is just at times not necessary.
The “fundamental question” to Friedman and his ilk is what the limits are on the president’s obligation under his oath of office, implying that the Executive may have a duty to use torture under the U.S. Constitution - the very argument employed by the authors of the legal memos in question.
That such Orwellian logic, which says essentially that the president must assume dictatorial powers and violate U.S. and international law in order to uphold his oath of office, has come to be so widely accepted in mainstream thought and commentary is perhaps an instructive measure about the “unshakeable commitment to our ideals” in American society today.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/04/21/obama-american-ideals-and-torture-as-a-useful-tool/
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=107964&st=60&gopid=986287&#entry986287
April 21, 2009
by Jeremy R. Hammond
The self-described “world leader in global intelligence” information group STRATFOR said on Monday, in an assessment of the Obama administration’s decision to release a series of legal memoranda giving the C.I.A. legal cover to engage in torture, that “torture can be a useful tool” and defended President Barack Obama’s decision to protect C.I.A. interrogators who employed torture against detainees from any criminal prosecution.
Obama, in his own defense of his decision to protect torturers, said that harsh interrogation methods “undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer” while defending interrogators “who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
He also asserted that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” The suggestion that it would serve no purpose to hold people accountable for violating U.S. and international law stands in contrast to his avowal within the same statement that he believes in accountability, as well as his remark that “The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and unshakeable commitment to our ideals.”
U.S. law defines “torture” as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict sever physical or mental pain or suffering … upon another person within his custody or physical control”.
The legal memoranda in question effectively served to grant the color of law to the use of torture.
Under the law, anyone found guilty of using torture can be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years. If death results from the use of torture, the offender may be given the death penalty. This applies to anyone who uses torture “outside the United States”, such as C.I.A. detention facilities overseas.
The U.S. War Crimes statute, which applies to offenses “whether inside or outside the United States”, forbids war crimes, defined as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and other relevant bodies of international law to which the U.S. is a party. The statute notes that the Geneva Conventions specifically forbid torture as a war crime, defining torture as “The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering … for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment not only obligates parties to establish jurisdiction over offences committed within that state or by nationals of that state beyond its borders, but to prosecute those accused of having committed such offences.
The legal argument put forth by Justice Department and White House lawyers in numerous memoranda that have come to light over the years is in essence that the President is simply above the law. The Executive Office may simply disregard international treaties and U.S. law as he sees fit in the execution of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and as deemed necessary for purposes of “national security”.
President Obama, by declaring that his administration will protect those who committed or conspired to commit torture despite the U.S. obligation under both domestic and international law to prosecute such individuals, is effectively reaffirming that same interpretation of Executive power adopted under the Bush administration.
In defense of this policy under the Obama administration, George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, acknowledges that while the harsh interrogation methods given color of law under the recently released memoranda “do not rise anywhere near the top” of the “scale of human cruelty”, the treatment of detainees by the U.S. “was terrible nonetheless.”
water_cure“But”, continues Friedman, “torture is meant to be terrible” and torturers should be judged in the context of the terror of 9/11. The U.S. “lack of intelligence” led to an increased sense of fear both among the public and within the government, he asserts. “Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States.”
The notion that 9/11 was the result of an intelligence failure has been largely discredited. Former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet admitted to the 9/11 Commission that “the system was blinking red” with warnings about an imminent attack. The C.I.A. had been tracking two of the would-be-hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and knew that al-Midhar had obtained a visa to enter the U.S. Yet the C.I.A. chose not to inform the State Department, the F.B.I., or the Immigration and Naturalization Service to put the men on the terrorist watchlist or otherwise be on the lookout for known al Qaeda operatives who might attempt to enter the U.S.
C.I.A. documents showed that it was known that “al-Qa’ida operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was recruiting persons to travel to the United States and engage in planning terrorist-related activity here”, according to the 9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry report. These persons “would be ‘expected to establish contact with colleagues already living’” in the U.S. “In short,” the report observed, “before September 11, the Intelligence Community recognized that a radical Islamic network that could provide support to al-Qa’ida operatives probably existed in the United States.”
While in the U.S., the two terrorists were assisted by the subject of an F.B.I. terrorism investigation and made frequent contact with an F.B.I. informant. They lived in San Diego under their real names and were even listed in the phone book.
Numerous other examples discrediting the intelligence failure claim exist, including the fact that President George W. Bush received an intelligence brief on August 6, 2001, entitled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S.” that said terrorists were planning on exploiting their access to the U.S. “to mount a terrorist strike.” Al Qaeda, the brief stated, “maintains a support structure that could aid attacks” within the U.S. The threat of hijackings was noted, and New York was specifically named as a potential target for an attack.
When the existence of this brief became public knowledge, President Bush responded to criticism by saying that brief “was no indication of a terrorist threat.” Such public statements, belied by actual facts, served to help establish the popular myth that U.S. intelligence was blind to the threat that manifested on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Friedman argues that it was this “lack of knowledge” about terrorists’ intentions that “led to the authorization of torture”, which “offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence”.
That torture is an effective means of gathering intelligence is also a notion that is offered no credibility among interrogation experts. The use of torture, far from resulting in the extraction of credible and useful information, results in the victim saying whatever he or she thinks their interrogator wants to hear in order to make it stop. Torture is useful, but as a means to elicit false confessions, such as for propaganda purposes.
This is perfectly well recognized. In fact, many of the interrogation methods authorized during the Bush administration were derived from Chinese Communist techniques. Military interrogation trainers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. maintains a detention facility, based an entire class on methods taken from a 1957 study entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From the Air Force Prisoners of War”.
The military developed a training program ostensibly designed to teach members of the armed forces how to resist harsh interrogation methods, but this program, known as “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape”, or SERE, was used by both the C.I.A. and military not to teach resistance to such methods, but rather how to use such methods on others.
Remarking on the revelation of the origins of interrogation methods employed by the U.S. after 9/11, Senator Carl Levin said, “What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions. People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”
Continuing, Friedman points out that “The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic”, but argues fulfillment of this oath required President Bush to authorize torture gain intelligence. In other words, he adopts the position of the authors of government legal memos that it’s okay to disregard U.S. and international law under the U.S. Constitution in cases where the President unilaterally decides it is necessary to do so for national security.
Friedman illustrates this supposed necessity not with a real life example, but with what is known as the “ticking time bomb scenario”.
Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, coauthor of the Army counterinsurgency field manual, said, “Frankly, I joined the military to fight against people who torture” in expressing shock and horror at a survey by Foreign Policy that found that 44% of retired and active military officers disagreed with the statement “Torture is never acceptable”. He suggested this figure might reflect what he called “the Jack Bauer effect” (a reference to the popular TV series “24″ in which the main character employs torture in just such “ticking time bomb” scenarios) and “the extraordinarily hypothetical, one in a million million sort of case”.
Torture should be exercised only by “well-trained, experienced personnel”, Friedman argues in his STRATFOR assessment. While acknowledging that “the person you are torturing may well know nothing at all”, in which case torture “becomes not only a waste of time and a violation of decency, it actually undermines good intelligence.” But at the same time he argues that “critics” of torture “cannot know the extent to which the use of torture actually prevented follow-on attacks.” While such critics “may have been correct”, nobody “had the right to assume” that another terrorist attack wasn’t imminent.
The implication is that critics have no right to judge those responsible for authorizing and using torture. The problem isn’t with the use of torture itself. Torture, “as with other exceptional measures”, he argues, “is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations.” But “in the hands of bureaucracies”, it “becomes the routine”. Torture was initially “essential”, but after time “the emergency” ended. It “can be a useful tool”. Torture isn’t wrong, in other words, it is just at times not necessary.
The “fundamental question” to Friedman and his ilk is what the limits are on the president’s obligation under his oath of office, implying that the Executive may have a duty to use torture under the U.S. Constitution - the very argument employed by the authors of the legal memos in question.
That such Orwellian logic, which says essentially that the president must assume dictatorial powers and violate U.S. and international law in order to uphold his oath of office, has come to be so widely accepted in mainstream thought and commentary is perhaps an instructive measure about the “unshakeable commitment to our ideals” in American society today.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/04/21/obama-american-ideals-and-torture-as-a-useful-tool/
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=107964&st=60&gopid=986287&#entry986287
MICHAEL C. DORF Why President Obama Should Consider Pardoning those Who Designed, Authorized, and Carried Out the Bush Policy of Abusing Detainees
MICHAEL C. DORF
Why President Obama Should Consider Pardoning those Who Designed, Authorized, and Carried Out the Bush Policy of Abusing Detainees
FindLaw columnist and Cornell law professor Michael Dorf discusses a number of questions that are especially timely in light of the recent release of four memos by Bush Administration attorneys that authorized methods of interrogation which many eminent legal experts believe constituted torture under the applicable law. These questions include: Was there any plausible legal basis for the memos' conclusions? Should the Obama Administration prosecute those who designed, authorized, and/or carried out the policies to which the memos gave their blessing? And, might pardoning those who were inculpated in these practices and policies actually be a better solution than simple non-prosecution, in that pardons would at least admit that what was done was criminal? Dorf argues that President Obama should seriously consider the pardon option.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20090422.html
Why President Obama Should Consider Pardoning those Who Designed, Authorized, and Carried Out the Bush Policy of Abusing Detainees
FindLaw columnist and Cornell law professor Michael Dorf discusses a number of questions that are especially timely in light of the recent release of four memos by Bush Administration attorneys that authorized methods of interrogation which many eminent legal experts believe constituted torture under the applicable law. These questions include: Was there any plausible legal basis for the memos' conclusions? Should the Obama Administration prosecute those who designed, authorized, and/or carried out the policies to which the memos gave their blessing? And, might pardoning those who were inculpated in these practices and policies actually be a better solution than simple non-prosecution, in that pardons would at least admit that what was done was criminal? Dorf argues that President Obama should seriously consider the pardon option.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20090422.html
As the Shredders Hum Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture By RAY McGOVERN
As the Shredders Hum
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture
By RAY McGOVERN
"The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a human being, to destroy their identity and soul. It is more evil than murder... "
-- Inge Genefke (1938) Danish Doctor & Human Rights Activist
Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role played by two faux psychologists in helping the Bush administration devise ways to torture people. We should, I suppose, be thankful for small favors.
Apparently, a NY Times exposé requires a 21-month gestation period. The substance of the Wednesday’s lead story on torture had already appeared in an article in the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.
Katherine Eban, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes about public health, authored that article and titled it “Rorschach and Awe.” It was the result of a careful effort to understand the role of psychologists in the torture of detainees in Guantanamo.
She identified the two psychologists as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who she reported were inexperienced in interrogations and “had no proof of their tactics’ effectiveness” but nevertheless sold the Bush administration on a plan to subject detainees to “psychic demolition”—essentially severing them from their personalities and scaring them “almost to death.”
In Wednesday’s Times, reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti plow much of the same ground. Please don’t misunderstand. They deserve considerable praise for finally pushing their article past the Times’ timorous censors, but let’s not pretend the startling revelations are new.
The Times ought to allow the likes of Shane and Mazzetti to publish these stories when they are fresh. Alternatively, the once-known-as “newspaper of record” might at least report the findings of the likes of Eban, rather than ignoring them for nearly two years.
It’s pretty much all out there now, isn’t it? Not only the Times’ better-late-than-never exposé, but also:
-The (leaked) text of the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the torture of “high-value” detainees;
-The too-slick-by-half “legal opinions” under Department of Justice letterhead;
-The findings of the 18-month investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee highlighting that it was President George W. Bush’s dismissal of Geneva (in his executive order of February 7, 2002) that “opened the door” to abuse of detainees.
The North/Gonzales Memorial Shredder
One issue of some urgency has been overlooked in the media, but probably not
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture
By RAY McGOVERN
"The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a human being, to destroy their identity and soul. It is more evil than murder... "
-- Inge Genefke (1938) Danish Doctor & Human Rights Activist
Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role played by two faux psychologists in helping the Bush administration devise ways to torture people. We should, I suppose, be thankful for small favors.
Apparently, a NY Times exposé requires a 21-month gestation period. The substance of the Wednesday’s lead story on torture had already appeared in an article in the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.
Katherine Eban, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes about public health, authored that article and titled it “Rorschach and Awe.” It was the result of a careful effort to understand the role of psychologists in the torture of detainees in Guantanamo.
She identified the two psychologists as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who she reported were inexperienced in interrogations and “had no proof of their tactics’ effectiveness” but nevertheless sold the Bush administration on a plan to subject detainees to “psychic demolition”—essentially severing them from their personalities and scaring them “almost to death.”
In Wednesday’s Times, reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti plow much of the same ground. Please don’t misunderstand. They deserve considerable praise for finally pushing their article past the Times’ timorous censors, but let’s not pretend the startling revelations are new.
The Times ought to allow the likes of Shane and Mazzetti to publish these stories when they are fresh. Alternatively, the once-known-as “newspaper of record” might at least report the findings of the likes of Eban, rather than ignoring them for nearly two years.
It’s pretty much all out there now, isn’t it? Not only the Times’ better-late-than-never exposé, but also:
-The (leaked) text of the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the torture of “high-value” detainees;
-The too-slick-by-half “legal opinions” under Department of Justice letterhead;
-The findings of the 18-month investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee highlighting that it was President George W. Bush’s dismissal of Geneva (in his executive order of February 7, 2002) that “opened the door” to abuse of detainees.
The North/Gonzales Memorial Shredder
One issue of some urgency has been overlooked in the media, but probably not