Now I've Seen Everything
A spy goes to work for a thinktank
by Justin Raimondo
November 28, 2008
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13819
Of course there's nothing all that unusual about a spy going to work
for a Washington thinktank. Ex-CIA employees do it all the time: so
do all sorts of other spooks, who would otherwise be haunting the
world's darkest corners. No big deal. But what I've never seen, and
don't recall ever hearing about, is the spectacle of a spy for a
foreign country being hired by any organization that hopes to
influence U.S. foreign policy. Well, here's one for the record books:
The Middle East Forum has hired Steve Rosen, once the head of policy
development for the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Rosen is accused of stealing highly classified information from the
U.S. government and passing it on to Israeli government officials.
Rosen was the sparkplug of AIPAC, known for implementing – with
notable success – the powerful lobbying group's efforts to influence
the executive branch. The very effective modus operandi of this
behind-the-scenes wheeler dealer was summed up by his reported
comment that:
"A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in
the sun."
Slinking about in the shadows, Rosen and his sidekick Keith Weissman –
an Iran expert – cultivated one Larry Franklin, the Pentagon policy
department's top Iran analyst, and pried top secret intelligence from
him, including information on al Qaeda, the Khobar Towers terrorist
attack, and Iranian armaments. Before the FBI descended on him,
Franklin had been passing information to the AIPAC espionage team for
over a year, planning to advance his career using the influential
lobby as his sponsor: he hoped for a spot on Bush's National Security
Council. In return, he gave his handlers access to some of America's
most closely guarded secrets. When FBI agents finally paid him a
visit, he led them to a treasure trove of stolen top secret dossiers
kept in his Alexandria,0 Virginia home – a veritable library of
classified information, 83 documents in all, spanning three decades.
The arrest was prefigured by two FBI raids on AIPAC headquarters in
Washington: federal law enforcement descended on the building early
in the morning, without warning, surrounded the place and carted away
loads of evidence. Four AIPAC officials were handed subpoenas.
Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in a federal
prison and a $10,000 fine, agreeing to testify for the prosecution.
Rosen and Weissman pleaded innocent, and their top-flight lawyers
have kept pretrial maneuvering ongoing for four years this past
August. Their very effective method: greymail. Apparently, the
purloined information is so sensitive that it cannot be revealed
without compromising America's national security interests in a major
way: the defense has delayed the trial by insisting that all this
information be discussed in open court, or else the defendants will
not be able to get a fair hearing.
What is amazing about this case isn't just the long delay in the
legal proceedings, but the brazenness of the accused: they openly
proclaim their guilt – that is, they admit to the actions detailed in
the indictment – while maintaining that they did absolutely nothing
wrong. Spying? Who – us? Why, we were just exercising our "First
Amendment rights" like any journalist out to get a scoop.
With one big difference, though: legitimate journalists don't report
their findings – classified sensitive purloined information – to the
intelligence agencies of foreign nations.
The contempt the defendants and their lawyers have for the very
concept of American national security permeates this case like a bad
smell, and is enough to make any patriot – heck, any ordinary
American – sick to his or her stomach. To give some further
indication of the unsavory flavor of this case, I'll only note the
latest wrinkle: in a recent court session, defense lawyers argued
that the information their clients are accused of stealing was
already known to the Israelis. This has been another of what I call
the "chutzpah defense" mounted by Rosen and Weissman's legal team:
the Israelis don't need to steal our secrets, they aver, because they
already know everything worth knowing anyway. As Josh Gerstein, a
former writer for the now-permanently-set New York Sun, puts it on
his blog:
"Both sides in the case seemed to agree that if information came from
Israel, even if it passed through U.S. Government hands, it could not
be a basis for the charges against Rosen and Weissman. That seemed
puzzling, since the mere fact that information came from a foreign
government is usually a good enough reason to get it classified."
The government has gone easy on the AIPAC defendants, and their
former employers. An apparent attempt was made by some in the Justice
Department to indict not only Rosen and Weissman, but AIPAC itself.
This was quashed by the chief prosecutor, Paul J. McNulty – who has
since gone on to graze in greener pastures – and the case was limited
from the outset: only Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman were charged.
As Grant F. Smith shows in his recent book, AIPAC's organizational
forerunner as Israel's Capitol Hill amen corner – the AZC, American
Zionist Council – was financed almost entirely by overseas sources,
i.e. Israel, and yet was not required to register as an agent of a
foreign government. Particularly fascinating is his original research
into the findings of Senator J. William Fulbright, remembered today
as an acerbic critic of the Vietnam war, who investigated and
uncovered financial conduits running from Israeli government agencies
to AIPAC in its AZC incarnation.
Everybody knows AIPAC is indeed an agent of a foreign government,
i.e. the Israelis. What most don't know, however, is that, unlike all
others, it is exempt from complying with the Foreign Agents
Registration Act. This immunity – the legal genesis of which Grant
traces in his fascinating account – created an opening for the
Israeli government and its various overseas agencies to act with
impunity within our borders. This includes not just advocacy, but
also providing the organizational mask behind which intelligence-
burglars like Rosen, Weissman, and god-knows-who-else are hiding.
AIPAC quickly threw Rosen and Weissman overboard, the apparent price
for avoiding a wider prosecution, and Rosen's quest to reemerge found
limited sympathy on his old stomping grounds, the Washington policy
wonk circuit. The Forward reports:
"Rosen has been looking for his way back to the foreign policy scene
for a long while, but he found that in most cases, doors of think
tanks and advisory groups were closed. "They'd pat me on my back and
say it is not fair, but there are only a few that agree to stand up,"
Rosen said, praising the Middle East Forum for 'having the courage'
to reach out to him."
While the presumption of innocence is obligatory in a narrow legal
sense, one has only to read the indictment to see that Rosen and
Weissman not only stole classified information, but knew perfectly
well they were breaking the law, and went to great pains to avoid
detection. At one point, the indictment has the defendants shifting
meeting locations three times, going from restaurant to restaurant in
the clear knowledge that they were likely being followed. Document
exchanges were avoided: Franklin briefed his handlers verbally.
Recordings of these conversations are the core of the government's
case, and their substance is highly sensitive. Wrangling over what to
play in open court has delayed the trial for four years. In playing
for time, the defense is hoping that the incoming administration will
rein in the Justice Department and quash the case, and there is good
reason to suspect that this is true.
In any case, what kind of a public policy organization would hire
Rosen, in hopes of influencing U.S. foreign policy? The Middle East
Forum is a hate-the-Muslims "educational" organization, run by Daniel
Pipes. Pipes and his pals have followed the time-honored traditions
of smear artists everywhere in maintaining an academic
blacklist, "Campus Watch," which keeps tabs on college professors
deemed insufficiently friendly to Israeli government policies. Pipes
believes a "substantial" number of American Muslims are plotting to
overthrow the government and establish an Islamist theocracy in
America, and that this represents a real threat: it's all downhill
from there. In one of his recent screeds, Pipes attacks Barack Obama
for his supposed "links" to … Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy's
assassin. Yikes.
M. J. Rosenberg, blogging at Talking Points Memo, asks: "Are these
people crazy?" and concludes they're "crazy/irrelevant rather than
crazy/dangerous," and yet Rosen wielded enormous influence in
Washington, at one point. Jeffrey Goldberg, over at the New Yorker,
relates a conversation with Rosen:
"He pushed a napkin across the table. 'You see this napkin?' he
said. 'In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy
senators on this napkin.'"
Rosen may have personally fallen on hard times, having to take up
with a loony like Pipes, but one has to remember that the
organizational framework that spawned his treason is not only alive
and well – but it could still deliver those 70 senatorial signatures
on a napkin with the greatest of ease.
Crazy, yes – and dangerous, too.
Reflections from news and commentary of the day
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Same Old New Deal? By George F. Will
Same Old New Deal?
By George F. Will
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B07
Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. "Yes," he replied, "it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted 400 years." It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal.
The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression. Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America's biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal. In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending -- President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50 percent between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt -- unemployment was 17.2 percent.
"I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started," lamented Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary. Unemployment declined when America began selling materials to nations engaged in a war America would soon join.
In "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bloomberg News argues that government policies, beyond the Federal Reserve's tight money, deepened and prolonged the Depression. The policies included encouraging strong unions and higher wages than lagging productivity justified, on the theory that workers' spending would be stimulative. Instead, corporate profits -- prerequisites for job-creating investments -- were excessively drained into labor expenses that left many workers priced out of the market.
In a 2004 paper, Harold L. Cole of the University of California at Los Angeles and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued that the Depression would have ended in 1936, rather than in 1943, were it not for policies that magnified the power of labor and encouraged the cartelization of industries. These policies expressed the New Deal premise that the Depression was caused by excessive competition that first reduced prices and wages and then reduced employment and consumer demand. In a forthcoming paper, Ohanian argues that "much of the depth of the Depression" is explained by Hoover's policy -- a precursor of the New Deal mentality -- of pressuring businesses to keep nominal wages fixed.
Furthermore, Hoover's 1932 increase in the top income tax rate, from 25 percent to 63 percent, was unhelpful. And FDR's hyperkinetic New Deal created uncertainties that paralyzed private-sector decision making. Which sounds familiar.
Bear Stearns? Broker a merger. Lehman Brothers? Death sentence. The $700 billion is for cleaning up toxic assets? Maybe not. Writes Russell Roberts of George Mason University:
"By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing. Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s."
Barack Obama says that the next stimulus should deliver a "jolt." His adviser ustan Goolsbee says that it must be big enough to "startle the thing into submission." Their theory is that the crisis is largely psychological, requiring shock treatment. But shocks from government have been plentiful.
Unfortunately, one thing government can do quickly and efficiently -- distribute checks -- could fail to stimulate because Americans might do with the money what they have been rightly criticized for not doing nearly enough: Save it. Because individual consumption is 70 percent of economic activity, St. Augustine's prayer ("Give me chastity and continence, but not yet") is echoed today: Make Americans thrifty but not now.
Obama's "rescue plan for the middle class" includes a tax credit for businesses "for each new employee they hire" in America over the next two years. The assumption is that businesses will create jobs that would not have been created without the subsidy. If so, the subsidy will suffuse the economy with inefficiencies -- labor costs not justified by value added.
Here we go again? A new New Deal would vindicate pessimists who say that history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.
georgewill@washpost.com
.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pricetag30-2008nov30,0,7549258.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion
Heavy spending to battle the financial crisis is unlikely to abate soon. Analysts say next year's deficit could top $1 trillion.
By Jim Puzzanghera
November 30, 2008
Reporting from Washington — With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government eliminated any doubt that the nation is on a wartime footing in the battle to shore up the economy. The strategy now -- and in the coming Obama administration -- is essentially the win-at-any-cost approach previously adopted only to wage a major war.
And that means no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since World War II.
Indeed, analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the staggering cost of battling the current one.
Just last week, new initiatives added $600 billion to lower mortgage rates, $200 billion to stimulate consumer loans and nearly $300 billion to steady Citigroup, the banking conglomerate. That pushed the potential long-term cost of the government's varied economic rescue initiatives, including direct loans and loan guarantees, to an estimated total of $8.5 trillion -- half of the entire economic output of the U.S. this year.
Nor has the cash register stopped ringing. President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are expected to enact a stimulus package of $500 billion to $700 billion soon after he takes office in January.
The spending already has had a dramatic effect on the federal budget deficit, which soared to a record $455 billion last year and began the 2009 fiscal year with an amazing $237-billion deficit for October alone. Analysts say next year's budget deficit could easily bust the $1-trillion barrier.
"I didn't think we'd see that for a long time," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "There's a huge risk of another economic crisis, a debt crisis, once we get on the other side of this one."
But the Bush administration and the economic team that Obama is rapidly assembling like a war Cabinet are vowing to spend whatever it takes to avoid a depression; they'll worry about the effect later.
"I don't think that there's any way of denying the fact that my first priority and my first job is to get us on the path of economic recovery, to create 2.5 million jobs, to provide relief to middle-class families," Obama told reporters last week.
"But as soon as the recovery is well underway, then we've got to set up a long-term plan to reduce the structural deficit and make sure that we're not leaving a mountain of debt for the next generation."
The mountain is already there, and rising faster than at any time since the 1940s, when the United States was fighting a global war.
Analysts say the current flood of red ink calls into question Obama's ability to launch programs such as middle-class tax cuts and a healthcare overhaul. In 1993, a deficit only a third the size of next year's projected $1 trillion prompted President Clinton to abandoned his campaign pledges of tax cuts.
Once the financial crisis eases, higher interest rates and soaring inflation will be risks. If they materialize, they could dramatically increase the government's borrowing costs to meet its annual debt payments. For consumers, borrowing could become more expensive even as the price of everyday items rise, holding back economic growth.
"We could have a super sub-prime crisis associated with the meltdown of the federal government," warned David Walker, president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former head of the Government Accountability Office.
But even deficit hawks such as Walker acknowledge that the immediate crisis is priority No. 1. Just as with World War II, the government can worry about paying the bills once the enemy is defeated.
"You just throw everything you have at the problem to try to fix it as quickly as you can," said David Stowell, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "We're mortgaging our future to a certain extent, but we're trying to do things that give us a future."
Washington could wind up spending substantially less than the sum of the commitments. Though the total estimated cost of the government's efforts adds up to $8.5 trillion, only about $3.2 trillion has been tapped, according to an analysis by Bloomberg.
And not all the money committed is direct spending. About $5.5 trillion in loan guarantees and other financial backing by the Federal Reserve is included in the total.
"The only way those commitments would become obligations would be if the economy completely collapsed, in which case it's a whole new ballgame anyway," said John Steele Gordon, a business and economic historian.
The government even stands to make money on some expenditures, such as the $330 billion it has used to buy equity in banks and other financial institutions through the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.
In the $1.2-billion bailout of Chrysler in 1980, the government ended up gaining $311 million when it sold stock options back to the company three years later.
But the federal efforts to forestall a depression are still historic in scope.
A $1-trillion deficit next year would represent about 7% of the nation's total economic output, or gross domestic product. That would top the 5.9% reached during the height of the Great Depression in 1934 but would fall well short of the deficits of World War II. In 1943, the high point, the deficit amounted to 30% of GDP.
The national debt is soaring too. In September, the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits as the figure ticked over $10 trillion. The debt is now larger than the 45% of GDP it reached at the end of the Great Depression, but less than in 1946, when war spending had pushed the debt to 129% of GDP, said Gordon, author of "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt."
There's a potentially crucial difference, however, between the spending then and the commitments now:
Much of the Depression-World War II spending was on industrial production -- building new factories and converting existing plants to produce tanks, planes and ships. Huge sums also went into developing new technologies.
Those investments, combined with pent-up consumer demand and savings from the lean war years, quickly led to budget surpluses and sharp economic growth in the late 1940s as the baby boom began.
Analysts warn not to expect that to happen again. This time the government spending is largely ethereal, with the Federal Reserve printing more money to inject liquidity into the financial system and keep banks and other institutions afloat. And savings rates are low.
"Too many Americans have overextended themselves with regard to credit and debt, and too many have been following the bad example of the government," Walker said. "It is imperative that we recognize that this country has been living beyond its means and that we face large and growing structural deficits even after we turn the economy around."
Walker said he understands the need to attack the financial crisis. But the spending only adds to the looming problems of unfunded Social Security and Medicare commitments as baby boomers begin to retire.
He noted that the Moody's bond-rating firm fired a shot across the government's bow in January with a warning that spending on entitlement programs poses a long-term threat to the triple-A rating for government bonds. And that was before the financial crisis.
Interest rates remain low because of the crisis. But they will rise, particularly when the U.S. government starts borrowing more money to cover its growing debt, analysts predict. That could cause inflation to increase as well.
"We could easily enter into a highly inflationary situation because of all the stimulus we have and all the borrowing we have once it works its way through the economy," MacGuineas said. "The single most important priority right now is to stabilize the economy . . . but it really means that there is a huge risk on the other side."
Puzzanghera is a Times staff writer.
jim.puzzanghera@ latimes.com
By George F. Will
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B07
Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. "Yes," he replied, "it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted 400 years." It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal.
The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression. Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America's biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal. In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending -- President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50 percent between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt -- unemployment was 17.2 percent.
"I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started," lamented Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary. Unemployment declined when America began selling materials to nations engaged in a war America would soon join.
In "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bloomberg News argues that government policies, beyond the Federal Reserve's tight money, deepened and prolonged the Depression. The policies included encouraging strong unions and higher wages than lagging productivity justified, on the theory that workers' spending would be stimulative. Instead, corporate profits -- prerequisites for job-creating investments -- were excessively drained into labor expenses that left many workers priced out of the market.
In a 2004 paper, Harold L. Cole of the University of California at Los Angeles and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued that the Depression would have ended in 1936, rather than in 1943, were it not for policies that magnified the power of labor and encouraged the cartelization of industries. These policies expressed the New Deal premise that the Depression was caused by excessive competition that first reduced prices and wages and then reduced employment and consumer demand. In a forthcoming paper, Ohanian argues that "much of the depth of the Depression" is explained by Hoover's policy -- a precursor of the New Deal mentality -- of pressuring businesses to keep nominal wages fixed.
Furthermore, Hoover's 1932 increase in the top income tax rate, from 25 percent to 63 percent, was unhelpful. And FDR's hyperkinetic New Deal created uncertainties that paralyzed private-sector decision making. Which sounds familiar.
Bear Stearns? Broker a merger. Lehman Brothers? Death sentence. The $700 billion is for cleaning up toxic assets? Maybe not. Writes Russell Roberts of George Mason University:
"By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing. Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s."
Barack Obama says that the next stimulus should deliver a "jolt." His adviser ustan Goolsbee says that it must be big enough to "startle the thing into submission." Their theory is that the crisis is largely psychological, requiring shock treatment. But shocks from government have been plentiful.
Unfortunately, one thing government can do quickly and efficiently -- distribute checks -- could fail to stimulate because Americans might do with the money what they have been rightly criticized for not doing nearly enough: Save it. Because individual consumption is 70 percent of economic activity, St. Augustine's prayer ("Give me chastity and continence, but not yet") is echoed today: Make Americans thrifty but not now.
Obama's "rescue plan for the middle class" includes a tax credit for businesses "for each new employee they hire" in America over the next two years. The assumption is that businesses will create jobs that would not have been created without the subsidy. If so, the subsidy will suffuse the economy with inefficiencies -- labor costs not justified by value added.
Here we go again? A new New Deal would vindicate pessimists who say that history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.
georgewill@washpost.com
.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pricetag30-2008nov30,0,7549258.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion
Heavy spending to battle the financial crisis is unlikely to abate soon. Analysts say next year's deficit could top $1 trillion.
By Jim Puzzanghera
November 30, 2008
Reporting from Washington — With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government eliminated any doubt that the nation is on a wartime footing in the battle to shore up the economy. The strategy now -- and in the coming Obama administration -- is essentially the win-at-any-cost approach previously adopted only to wage a major war.
And that means no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since World War II.
Indeed, analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the staggering cost of battling the current one.
Just last week, new initiatives added $600 billion to lower mortgage rates, $200 billion to stimulate consumer loans and nearly $300 billion to steady Citigroup, the banking conglomerate. That pushed the potential long-term cost of the government's varied economic rescue initiatives, including direct loans and loan guarantees, to an estimated total of $8.5 trillion -- half of the entire economic output of the U.S. this year.
Nor has the cash register stopped ringing. President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are expected to enact a stimulus package of $500 billion to $700 billion soon after he takes office in January.
The spending already has had a dramatic effect on the federal budget deficit, which soared to a record $455 billion last year and began the 2009 fiscal year with an amazing $237-billion deficit for October alone. Analysts say next year's budget deficit could easily bust the $1-trillion barrier.
"I didn't think we'd see that for a long time," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "There's a huge risk of another economic crisis, a debt crisis, once we get on the other side of this one."
But the Bush administration and the economic team that Obama is rapidly assembling like a war Cabinet are vowing to spend whatever it takes to avoid a depression; they'll worry about the effect later.
"I don't think that there's any way of denying the fact that my first priority and my first job is to get us on the path of economic recovery, to create 2.5 million jobs, to provide relief to middle-class families," Obama told reporters last week.
"But as soon as the recovery is well underway, then we've got to set up a long-term plan to reduce the structural deficit and make sure that we're not leaving a mountain of debt for the next generation."
The mountain is already there, and rising faster than at any time since the 1940s, when the United States was fighting a global war.
Analysts say the current flood of red ink calls into question Obama's ability to launch programs such as middle-class tax cuts and a healthcare overhaul. In 1993, a deficit only a third the size of next year's projected $1 trillion prompted President Clinton to abandoned his campaign pledges of tax cuts.
Once the financial crisis eases, higher interest rates and soaring inflation will be risks. If they materialize, they could dramatically increase the government's borrowing costs to meet its annual debt payments. For consumers, borrowing could become more expensive even as the price of everyday items rise, holding back economic growth.
"We could have a super sub-prime crisis associated with the meltdown of the federal government," warned David Walker, president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former head of the Government Accountability Office.
But even deficit hawks such as Walker acknowledge that the immediate crisis is priority No. 1. Just as with World War II, the government can worry about paying the bills once the enemy is defeated.
"You just throw everything you have at the problem to try to fix it as quickly as you can," said David Stowell, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "We're mortgaging our future to a certain extent, but we're trying to do things that give us a future."
Washington could wind up spending substantially less than the sum of the commitments. Though the total estimated cost of the government's efforts adds up to $8.5 trillion, only about $3.2 trillion has been tapped, according to an analysis by Bloomberg.
And not all the money committed is direct spending. About $5.5 trillion in loan guarantees and other financial backing by the Federal Reserve is included in the total.
"The only way those commitments would become obligations would be if the economy completely collapsed, in which case it's a whole new ballgame anyway," said John Steele Gordon, a business and economic historian.
The government even stands to make money on some expenditures, such as the $330 billion it has used to buy equity in banks and other financial institutions through the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.
In the $1.2-billion bailout of Chrysler in 1980, the government ended up gaining $311 million when it sold stock options back to the company three years later.
But the federal efforts to forestall a depression are still historic in scope.
A $1-trillion deficit next year would represent about 7% of the nation's total economic output, or gross domestic product. That would top the 5.9% reached during the height of the Great Depression in 1934 but would fall well short of the deficits of World War II. In 1943, the high point, the deficit amounted to 30% of GDP.
The national debt is soaring too. In September, the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits as the figure ticked over $10 trillion. The debt is now larger than the 45% of GDP it reached at the end of the Great Depression, but less than in 1946, when war spending had pushed the debt to 129% of GDP, said Gordon, author of "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt."
There's a potentially crucial difference, however, between the spending then and the commitments now:
Much of the Depression-World War II spending was on industrial production -- building new factories and converting existing plants to produce tanks, planes and ships. Huge sums also went into developing new technologies.
Those investments, combined with pent-up consumer demand and savings from the lean war years, quickly led to budget surpluses and sharp economic growth in the late 1940s as the baby boom began.
Analysts warn not to expect that to happen again. This time the government spending is largely ethereal, with the Federal Reserve printing more money to inject liquidity into the financial system and keep banks and other institutions afloat. And savings rates are low.
"Too many Americans have overextended themselves with regard to credit and debt, and too many have been following the bad example of the government," Walker said. "It is imperative that we recognize that this country has been living beyond its means and that we face large and growing structural deficits even after we turn the economy around."
Walker said he understands the need to attack the financial crisis. But the spending only adds to the looming problems of unfunded Social Security and Medicare commitments as baby boomers begin to retire.
He noted that the Moody's bond-rating firm fired a shot across the government's bow in January with a warning that spending on entitlement programs poses a long-term threat to the triple-A rating for government bonds. And that was before the financial crisis.
Interest rates remain low because of the crisis. But they will rise, particularly when the U.S. government starts borrowing more money to cover its growing debt, analysts predict. That could cause inflation to increase as well.
"We could easily enter into a highly inflationary situation because of all the stimulus we have and all the borrowing we have once it works its way through the economy," MacGuineas said. "The single most important priority right now is to stabilize the economy . . . but it really means that there is a huge risk on the other side."
Puzzanghera is a Times staff writer.
jim.puzzanghera@ latimes.com
Colossal Financial Collapse: The Truth behind the Citigroup Bank "Nationalization" - by F. William Engdahl
Colossal Financial Collapse: The Truth behind the Citigroup Bank "Nationalization"
- by F. William Engdahl - 2008-11-24
The scale of the hidden losses of the twenty largest US banks is enormous
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11117
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?act=post&do=reply_post&f=268&t=79158
- by F. William Engdahl - 2008-11-24
The scale of the hidden losses of the twenty largest US banks is enormous
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11117
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?act=post&do=reply_post&f=268&t=79158
The Custodians Of Empire Obama's "New" National Security Team Is Not Very New By Tom Engelhardt
The Custodians Of Empire
Obama's "New" National Security Team Is Not Very New
By Tom Engelhardt
The next secretary of state looks to be Hillary Clinton, a hawk on the Middle East. During the campaign, she spoke of our ability to "totally obliterate" Iran, should that country carry out a nuclear strike against Israel. She will evidently be allowed to bring her own (hawkish) subordinates into the State Department with her. Her prospective appointment is now being praised by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger. Continue http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21337.htm
Obama's "New" National Security Team Is Not Very New
By Tom Engelhardt
The next secretary of state looks to be Hillary Clinton, a hawk on the Middle East. During the campaign, she spoke of our ability to "totally obliterate" Iran, should that country carry out a nuclear strike against Israel. She will evidently be allowed to bring her own (hawkish) subordinates into the State Department with her. Her prospective appointment is now being praised by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger. Continue http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21337.htm
Analysis: Mumbai Attack Differs from Past Terror Strikes.
Analysis: Mumbai Attack Differs from Past Terror Strikes.
... The Mumbai attack is unique from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the Mumbai attackers struck throughout the city using military tactics. Instead of one or more bombings carried out over a short period of time, Mumbai is entering its third day of crisis.
An attack of this nature cannot be thrown together overnight. It requires planned, scouting, financing, training, and a support network to aid the fighters. Initial reports indicate the attacks originated from Pakistan, the hub of jihadi activity in South Asia. Few local terror groups have the capacity to pull off an attack such as this...
Much more at The Long War Journal.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/11/analysis_mumbai_atta.php
... The Mumbai attack is unique from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the Mumbai attackers struck throughout the city using military tactics. Instead of one or more bombings carried out over a short period of time, Mumbai is entering its third day of crisis.
An attack of this nature cannot be thrown together overnight. It requires planned, scouting, financing, training, and a support network to aid the fighters. Initial reports indicate the attacks originated from Pakistan, the hub of jihadi activity in South Asia. Few local terror groups have the capacity to pull off an attack such as this...
Much more at The Long War Journal.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/11/analysis_mumbai_atta.php
A Wicked Brew Piracy and Islamism in the Horn of Africa by Tim Sullivan, Small Wars Journal Op-Ed
A Wicked Brew
Piracy and Islamism in the Horn of Africa
by Tim Sullivan, Small Wars Journal Op-Ed
A Wicked Brew (Full PDF Article)
The recent surge in pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia has again revealed the vulnerability of U.S. and allied interests to transnational, unconventional security threats—and demonstrated just how confounded we remain in determining the appropriate responses to these challenges. Somali piracy has now become more than simply a nuisance: the explosion in attacks has the potential to disrupt international trade (at least one major international shipping firm has announced plans to shift its transit routes), and further destabilize the volatile Horn of Africa region. The audacity of recent hijackings, combined with an uncoordinated and anemic international response, portends a growing threat. In reaction to the news that the pirates had seized the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker, 450 miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the sentiments of many analysts and observers when he said that he was “stunned” by the Somali pirates’ range of operations.
A more disturbing element of the Somali piracy phenomenon is the apparent connection between the pirates and the country’s militant Islamist movement. Though it hasn’t been making the front pages, Somalia is in the throes of a protracted insurgency. The country’s primary Islamist militant group, al-Shabaab, was recently added to the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The group has emerged as the successor (and was the former militia) of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which in the summer of 2006 came close to unseating the country’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); the ICU was eventually defeated by the TFG with the help of the Ethiopian military.
A Wicked Brew (Full PDF Article)
http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/140-sullivan.pdf
Piracy and Islamism in the Horn of Africa
by Tim Sullivan, Small Wars Journal Op-Ed
A Wicked Brew (Full PDF Article)
The recent surge in pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia has again revealed the vulnerability of U.S. and allied interests to transnational, unconventional security threats—and demonstrated just how confounded we remain in determining the appropriate responses to these challenges. Somali piracy has now become more than simply a nuisance: the explosion in attacks has the potential to disrupt international trade (at least one major international shipping firm has announced plans to shift its transit routes), and further destabilize the volatile Horn of Africa region. The audacity of recent hijackings, combined with an uncoordinated and anemic international response, portends a growing threat. In reaction to the news that the pirates had seized the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker, 450 miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the sentiments of many analysts and observers when he said that he was “stunned” by the Somali pirates’ range of operations.
A more disturbing element of the Somali piracy phenomenon is the apparent connection between the pirates and the country’s militant Islamist movement. Though it hasn’t been making the front pages, Somalia is in the throes of a protracted insurgency. The country’s primary Islamist militant group, al-Shabaab, was recently added to the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The group has emerged as the successor (and was the former militia) of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which in the summer of 2006 came close to unseating the country’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); the ICU was eventually defeated by the TFG with the help of the Ethiopian military.
A Wicked Brew (Full PDF Article)
http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/140-sullivan.pdf
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Possible Geopolitical Consequences of the Mumbai Attacks
Possible Geopolitical Consequences of the Mumbai Attacks
Summary
If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.
Analysis
At this point the situation on the ground in Mumbai remains unclear following the militant attacks of Nov. 26. But in order to understand the geopolitical significance of what is going on, it is necessary to begin looking beyond this event at what will follow. Though the situation is still in motion, the likely consequences of the attack are less murky.
We will begin by assuming that the attackers are Islamist militant groups operating in India, possibly with some level of outside support from Pakistan. We can also see quite clearly that this was a carefully planned, well-executed attack.
Given this, the Indian government has two choices. First, it can simply say that the perpetrators are a domestic group. In that case, it will be held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It will be charged with being unable to protect the public. On the other hand, it can link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state responsible for the attack, and can use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government's internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this is a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it is the most likely course of action. This is not to say that there are no outside powers involved — simply that, regardless of the ground truth, the Indian government will claim there were.
That, in turn, will plunge India and Pakistan into the worst crisis they have had since 2002. If the Pakistanis are understood to be responsible for the attack, then the Indians must hold them responsible, and that means they will have to take action in retaliation — otherwise, the Indian government's domestic credibility will plunge. The shape of the crisis, then, will consist of demands that the Pakistanis take immediate steps to suppress Islamist radicals across the board, but particularly in Kashmir. New Delhi will demand that this action be immediate and public. This demand will come parallel to U.S. demands for the same actions, and threats by incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to force greater cooperation from Pakistan.
If that happens, Pakistan will find itself in a nutcracker. On the one side, the Indians will be threatening action — deliberately vague but menacing — along with the Americans. This will be even more intense if it turns out, as currently seems likely, that Americans and Europeans were being held hostage (or worse) in the two hotels that were attacked. If the attacks are traced to Pakistan, American demands will escalate well in advance of inauguration day.
There is a precedent for this. In 2002 there was an attack on the Indian parliament in Mumbai by Islamist militants linked to Pakistan. A near-nuclear confrontation took place between India and Pakistan, in which the United States brokered a stand-down in return for intensified Pakistani pressure on the Islamists. The crisis helped redefine the Pakistani position on Islamist radicals in Pakistan.
In the current iteration, the demands will be even more intense. The Indians and Americans will have a joint interest in forcing the Pakistani government to act decisively and immediately. The Pakistani government has warned that such pressure could destabilize Pakistan. The Indians will not be in a position to moderate their position, and the Americans will see the situation as an opportunity to extract major concessions. Thus the crisis will directly intersect U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn't matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible — never a good thing with a nuclear power.
This is thinking far ahead of the curve, and is based on an assumption of the truth of something we don't know for certain yet, which is that the attackers were Muslims and that the Pakistanis will not be able to demonstrate categorically that they weren't involved. Since we suspect they were Muslims, and since we doubt the Pakistanis can be categorical and convincing enough to thwart Indian demands, we suspect that we will be deep into a crisis within the next few days, very shortly after the situation on the ground clarifies itself.
Summary
If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.
Analysis
At this point the situation on the ground in Mumbai remains unclear following the militant attacks of Nov. 26. But in order to understand the geopolitical significance of what is going on, it is necessary to begin looking beyond this event at what will follow. Though the situation is still in motion, the likely consequences of the attack are less murky.
We will begin by assuming that the attackers are Islamist militant groups operating in India, possibly with some level of outside support from Pakistan. We can also see quite clearly that this was a carefully planned, well-executed attack.
Given this, the Indian government has two choices. First, it can simply say that the perpetrators are a domestic group. In that case, it will be held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It will be charged with being unable to protect the public. On the other hand, it can link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state responsible for the attack, and can use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government's internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this is a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it is the most likely course of action. This is not to say that there are no outside powers involved — simply that, regardless of the ground truth, the Indian government will claim there were.
That, in turn, will plunge India and Pakistan into the worst crisis they have had since 2002. If the Pakistanis are understood to be responsible for the attack, then the Indians must hold them responsible, and that means they will have to take action in retaliation — otherwise, the Indian government's domestic credibility will plunge. The shape of the crisis, then, will consist of demands that the Pakistanis take immediate steps to suppress Islamist radicals across the board, but particularly in Kashmir. New Delhi will demand that this action be immediate and public. This demand will come parallel to U.S. demands for the same actions, and threats by incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to force greater cooperation from Pakistan.
If that happens, Pakistan will find itself in a nutcracker. On the one side, the Indians will be threatening action — deliberately vague but menacing — along with the Americans. This will be even more intense if it turns out, as currently seems likely, that Americans and Europeans were being held hostage (or worse) in the two hotels that were attacked. If the attacks are traced to Pakistan, American demands will escalate well in advance of inauguration day.
There is a precedent for this. In 2002 there was an attack on the Indian parliament in Mumbai by Islamist militants linked to Pakistan. A near-nuclear confrontation took place between India and Pakistan, in which the United States brokered a stand-down in return for intensified Pakistani pressure on the Islamists. The crisis helped redefine the Pakistani position on Islamist radicals in Pakistan.
In the current iteration, the demands will be even more intense. The Indians and Americans will have a joint interest in forcing the Pakistani government to act decisively and immediately. The Pakistani government has warned that such pressure could destabilize Pakistan. The Indians will not be in a position to moderate their position, and the Americans will see the situation as an opportunity to extract major concessions. Thus the crisis will directly intersect U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn't matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible — never a good thing with a nuclear power.
This is thinking far ahead of the curve, and is based on an assumption of the truth of something we don't know for certain yet, which is that the attackers were Muslims and that the Pakistanis will not be able to demonstrate categorically that they weren't involved. Since we suspect they were Muslims, and since we doubt the Pakistanis can be categorical and convincing enough to thwart Indian demands, we suspect that we will be deep into a crisis within the next few days, very shortly after the situation on the ground clarifies itself.
Kristallnacht in Hebron When will Israel wake up to its gruesome legacy, asks Khaled Amayreh
Kristallnacht in Hebron
When will Israel wake up to its gruesome legacy, asks Khaled Amayreh
Unconcerned about arrest by the police or prosecution by the Israeli justice system, fanatical Jewish settlers in the Palestinian town of Hebron (Al-Khalil) have been attacking Palestinians, damaging and ransacking their property, exactly like Nazi thugs did to Jewish-owned property in Germany 80 years ago.
The settlers, who claim to be acting in the name of true Judaism, espouse a messianic doctrine advocating violence and terror against non- Jews in Israel-Palestine for the purpose of creating a pure Jewish kingdom that would be ruled by Halacha, or Jewish religious law.
The settlers, who represent the core of religious Zionism, believe that the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in the Holy Land will eventually usher the messianic age and accelerate the appearance of the Jewish Messiah, or Redeemer, who would bring about redemption for Jews and rule the entire world from Jerusalem.
In recent weeks, these thugs have been attacking Palestinian homes, smashing cars, vandalising property and fostering a general atmosphere of fear and terror throughout this town of nearly 200,000 people.
Al-Ahram Weekly has inspected the damage inflicted by settlers and spoken with thoroughly terrorised victims who complained that the Israeli authorities and army were effectively giving the paramilitary terrorists a carte blanche to terrorise Palestinians. "They [the settlers] are Nazi, and if there was a stronger epithet, I would not hesitate to use. You can't imagine the ugliness and brutality of their behaviour," said Ahmed Al-Jamal, a frequent target of settler terror and vandalism.
"Every Friday night and Saturday, dozens of settlers, including kids, descend on our neighbourhood to smash our cars, windows and property and shout 'Death to the Arabs!' This is their way of sanctifying the Sabbath and pleasing God."
Al-Jamal said dozens of settlers, some of them masked, last week attacked his and his brother's and neighbour's homes around 2.30am, smashing windows and windshields of parked cars. "We informed the police, and the police told us they would look into the matter. This is pretty much what they have been telling us since 1970 when these 'Nazis' came to live here."
Mohamed Daana, who lives in Wadi Al-Nasara, located just south of the Jewish colony of Kiryat Araba, said he submitted at least 500 complaints to the Israeli police in a desperate effort to put an end to settler violence and terror against him and his family.
"The last time I went to submit a police complaint in Kiryat Araba one policeman took me to the next room and told me 'I want to advise you, there is no point in submitting all these complaints. We simply can't do anything to help you. The settlers control the state and the army can do little to protect you from them.'" Asked what he would do next to protect his family, Daana said, "I have no choice but to remain steadfast. A harmful neighbour will either die or move away," said Daana quoting an old Arabic proverb.
Last week, dozens of young settlers, many of them wearing masks and armed with submachine guns, rampaged through the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid neighbourhood, not far from the colony of Kiryat Araba. There the settlers, who reportedly were dressed in religious attire, vandalised a Muslim cemetery and scrawled the Star of David on Muslim graves.
On the walls of the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid Mosque, the rampaging thugs scrawled the following phrase: "Mohamed is a pig." This is the new slogan the settlers are mouthing to offend and provoke the Palestinians. The other slogan is Mavet le Arabim or "Death to the Arabs!"
These obscenities are infuriating the Palestinians who warned that settlers were trying to instigate a religious war in the Middle East. "What does the Prophet Mohamed have to do with the conflict? Why are they deliberately provoking us? We have never, and never will speak ill of their prophets and religious figures," said Hassan Jaber, a neighbour of the mosque.
"When someone touches a Jewish cemetery anywhere in the world, the Jews make a big outcry about anti-Semitism. But when Jews commit blasphemous acts against Islam and Christianity, it is freedom of speech."
This is not the first time self-righteous settlers, who claim to be following the Torah, seek to offend Muslim religious sensibilities. According to local Palestinians, settlers have markedly escalated their anti-Islam discourse, mainly by way of scrawling sacrilegious epithets that are deeply offensive to the Islamic faith, such as cursing the Arabic name of God (Allah) and the Prophet Mohamed. Several years ago, a Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union pasted on the doors of Arab stalls and shops in downtown Hebron drawings depicting the prophet of Islam as a pig writing the Quran.
Such sacrilegious acts generally go unpunished by the Israeli government, allowing the settlers and their supporters to feel powerful and immune from government action.
The bulk of Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories follow the teachings of Abraham Kook, the first rabbi of Israel, who taught that Jews should seek to expedite the appearance of the "redeemer" or Jewish Messiah by way of carrying out acts of violence and bloodshed. In 1994, a Jewish settler terrorist, an American immigrant by the name of Baruch Goldstein, murdered at least 29 Arab worshipers who as they were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Goldstein, who was eventually killed by survivors, became a national hero among religious Zionists and Jewish extremists in general, and his tomb in Kiryat Araba became a pilgrimage site for religious Zionists from around the world. The settlers adopt a manifestly genocidal ideology with regard to how non-Jews living in Israel ought to be treated.
This ideology, which settlers say is based on the Talmud and is taught at the Mirkaz Harav religious Zionist college in Jerusalem, and gives Palestinians in Israel-Palestine three choices: first, comprehensive enslavement whereby non- Jews, or goyem, would have to accept their inferior status, second, outright expulsion, "lest they remain a thorn in your side," and third, Old Testament-style physical extermination.
The settler community in Hebron is not large in terms of numbers. According to Israeli government statistics, no more than 500-600 settlers and Yeshiva (religious school) students live in the old quarter of Hebron among the town's 180,000--200,000 Palestinian inhabitants. However, thousands of Israeli soldiers and paramilitary troops guard and protect the settlers around the clock, with the chief method of protection taking the form of making large parts of the town off-limit to Palestinians. In other words, 200,000 are held hostage to the whims of 500- 600 thugs who demand that non-Jews be enslaved, expelled or exterminated.
Needless to say, this causes immense hardship to Palestinian inhabitants whose freedom of movement and economic activities are harshly restricted. In some cases, a Palestinian living, say, in the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque, is forced to travel several miles in order to get home from a nearby school or grocery store. The reason for such draconian restrictions is to make ordinary life so unbearable for ordinary Palestinians that they would leave their homes "voluntarily" so that the settlers could then seize them without the need of murdering the inhabitants.
As usual, the Israeli government continues to treat the settlers with the greatest temerity, refusing to take decisive action to stop their almost daily acts of violent and terror against Palestinians.
There are three main reasons contributing to the soft-glove policy towards the settlers. First, many of the soldiers serving in the occupied territories, particularly in the Hebron region, are themselves settlers and reluctant to arrest their colleagues. After all, the soldiers and settlers often have the same rabbi and attend the same Yeshiva, and worship at the same synagogue. Moreover, soldiers who are also settlers are effectively answerable first and foremost to their local rabbis, and only secondarily to their army superior. Second, the Israeli state itself views the settlers as a strategic asset that will prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state, guaranteeing the continuity of Israeli control over the West Bank. This is despite all official propaganda that Jewish settler violence is carried out in spite of the government. Third, the proximity of the upcoming Israeli elections, slated to take place on 10 February, makes the government, especially Defence Minister Ehud Barak (head of the Labour Party) think twice before alienating the settlers, even by carrying out High Court rulings.
Last week, the Israeli High Court ordered the state to vacate Jewish settlers from an Arab building they had seized after forging ownership documents. However, the settlers and their supporters, including 48 Knesset members (out of 120) and former ministers, vowed to confront the army and police "be it as it may". Moreover, the settlers were planing to hold a large rally in Hebron to protest against the court decision and to underscore their determination to have their way.
Israeli President Shimon Peres, the godfather of Jewish settlements in the West Bank who is falsely portrayed as a man of peace, was quoted as saying during a visit to London last week that "Israel will find it difficult to evacuate the settlements without civil war." Yossi Sarid, a former minister, spoke of "a state within a state that has arisen in the territories."
Writing in Haaretz on 21 November, Sarid wrote, "a new custom has come to the country: High Court rulings are one thing, reality is another. One has not the slightest thing to do with the other. The settlements and the outposts are planted firmly in place and refuse to be uprooted; private land of Palestinians is being freely stolen; whole neighbourhoods born in sin are being populated; homes that have been stolen are filled with people; a brazen fence stands according to its original, arbitrary plan with only minimal changes."
Sarid's remarks may even be an understatement of reality.
One noted Israeli journalist intimated to this writer last week that Israel was facing two nightmarish scenarios in light of the settlers' determined refusal to leave the West Bank: "We have two alternatives, either we go into civil war or become a fascist or Nazi state. These two choices are becoming starker with the passage of each day."
C a p t i o n : Clockwise from top left: Israeli settlers teach their children to kill Palestinians; the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid Mosque, threatened by Jewish fanatics; a Muslim cemetery desecrated by settlers
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/924/re81.htm
When will Israel wake up to its gruesome legacy, asks Khaled Amayreh
Unconcerned about arrest by the police or prosecution by the Israeli justice system, fanatical Jewish settlers in the Palestinian town of Hebron (Al-Khalil) have been attacking Palestinians, damaging and ransacking their property, exactly like Nazi thugs did to Jewish-owned property in Germany 80 years ago.
The settlers, who claim to be acting in the name of true Judaism, espouse a messianic doctrine advocating violence and terror against non- Jews in Israel-Palestine for the purpose of creating a pure Jewish kingdom that would be ruled by Halacha, or Jewish religious law.
The settlers, who represent the core of religious Zionism, believe that the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in the Holy Land will eventually usher the messianic age and accelerate the appearance of the Jewish Messiah, or Redeemer, who would bring about redemption for Jews and rule the entire world from Jerusalem.
In recent weeks, these thugs have been attacking Palestinian homes, smashing cars, vandalising property and fostering a general atmosphere of fear and terror throughout this town of nearly 200,000 people.
Al-Ahram Weekly has inspected the damage inflicted by settlers and spoken with thoroughly terrorised victims who complained that the Israeli authorities and army were effectively giving the paramilitary terrorists a carte blanche to terrorise Palestinians. "They [the settlers] are Nazi, and if there was a stronger epithet, I would not hesitate to use. You can't imagine the ugliness and brutality of their behaviour," said Ahmed Al-Jamal, a frequent target of settler terror and vandalism.
"Every Friday night and Saturday, dozens of settlers, including kids, descend on our neighbourhood to smash our cars, windows and property and shout 'Death to the Arabs!' This is their way of sanctifying the Sabbath and pleasing God."
Al-Jamal said dozens of settlers, some of them masked, last week attacked his and his brother's and neighbour's homes around 2.30am, smashing windows and windshields of parked cars. "We informed the police, and the police told us they would look into the matter. This is pretty much what they have been telling us since 1970 when these 'Nazis' came to live here."
Mohamed Daana, who lives in Wadi Al-Nasara, located just south of the Jewish colony of Kiryat Araba, said he submitted at least 500 complaints to the Israeli police in a desperate effort to put an end to settler violence and terror against him and his family.
"The last time I went to submit a police complaint in Kiryat Araba one policeman took me to the next room and told me 'I want to advise you, there is no point in submitting all these complaints. We simply can't do anything to help you. The settlers control the state and the army can do little to protect you from them.'" Asked what he would do next to protect his family, Daana said, "I have no choice but to remain steadfast. A harmful neighbour will either die or move away," said Daana quoting an old Arabic proverb.
Last week, dozens of young settlers, many of them wearing masks and armed with submachine guns, rampaged through the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid neighbourhood, not far from the colony of Kiryat Araba. There the settlers, who reportedly were dressed in religious attire, vandalised a Muslim cemetery and scrawled the Star of David on Muslim graves.
On the walls of the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid Mosque, the rampaging thugs scrawled the following phrase: "Mohamed is a pig." This is the new slogan the settlers are mouthing to offend and provoke the Palestinians. The other slogan is Mavet le Arabim or "Death to the Arabs!"
These obscenities are infuriating the Palestinians who warned that settlers were trying to instigate a religious war in the Middle East. "What does the Prophet Mohamed have to do with the conflict? Why are they deliberately provoking us? We have never, and never will speak ill of their prophets and religious figures," said Hassan Jaber, a neighbour of the mosque.
"When someone touches a Jewish cemetery anywhere in the world, the Jews make a big outcry about anti-Semitism. But when Jews commit blasphemous acts against Islam and Christianity, it is freedom of speech."
This is not the first time self-righteous settlers, who claim to be following the Torah, seek to offend Muslim religious sensibilities. According to local Palestinians, settlers have markedly escalated their anti-Islam discourse, mainly by way of scrawling sacrilegious epithets that are deeply offensive to the Islamic faith, such as cursing the Arabic name of God (Allah) and the Prophet Mohamed. Several years ago, a Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union pasted on the doors of Arab stalls and shops in downtown Hebron drawings depicting the prophet of Islam as a pig writing the Quran.
Such sacrilegious acts generally go unpunished by the Israeli government, allowing the settlers and their supporters to feel powerful and immune from government action.
The bulk of Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories follow the teachings of Abraham Kook, the first rabbi of Israel, who taught that Jews should seek to expedite the appearance of the "redeemer" or Jewish Messiah by way of carrying out acts of violence and bloodshed. In 1994, a Jewish settler terrorist, an American immigrant by the name of Baruch Goldstein, murdered at least 29 Arab worshipers who as they were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Goldstein, who was eventually killed by survivors, became a national hero among religious Zionists and Jewish extremists in general, and his tomb in Kiryat Araba became a pilgrimage site for religious Zionists from around the world. The settlers adopt a manifestly genocidal ideology with regard to how non-Jews living in Israel ought to be treated.
This ideology, which settlers say is based on the Talmud and is taught at the Mirkaz Harav religious Zionist college in Jerusalem, and gives Palestinians in Israel-Palestine three choices: first, comprehensive enslavement whereby non- Jews, or goyem, would have to accept their inferior status, second, outright expulsion, "lest they remain a thorn in your side," and third, Old Testament-style physical extermination.
The settler community in Hebron is not large in terms of numbers. According to Israeli government statistics, no more than 500-600 settlers and Yeshiva (religious school) students live in the old quarter of Hebron among the town's 180,000--200,000 Palestinian inhabitants. However, thousands of Israeli soldiers and paramilitary troops guard and protect the settlers around the clock, with the chief method of protection taking the form of making large parts of the town off-limit to Palestinians. In other words, 200,000 are held hostage to the whims of 500- 600 thugs who demand that non-Jews be enslaved, expelled or exterminated.
Needless to say, this causes immense hardship to Palestinian inhabitants whose freedom of movement and economic activities are harshly restricted. In some cases, a Palestinian living, say, in the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque, is forced to travel several miles in order to get home from a nearby school or grocery store. The reason for such draconian restrictions is to make ordinary life so unbearable for ordinary Palestinians that they would leave their homes "voluntarily" so that the settlers could then seize them without the need of murdering the inhabitants.
As usual, the Israeli government continues to treat the settlers with the greatest temerity, refusing to take decisive action to stop their almost daily acts of violent and terror against Palestinians.
There are three main reasons contributing to the soft-glove policy towards the settlers. First, many of the soldiers serving in the occupied territories, particularly in the Hebron region, are themselves settlers and reluctant to arrest their colleagues. After all, the soldiers and settlers often have the same rabbi and attend the same Yeshiva, and worship at the same synagogue. Moreover, soldiers who are also settlers are effectively answerable first and foremost to their local rabbis, and only secondarily to their army superior. Second, the Israeli state itself views the settlers as a strategic asset that will prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state, guaranteeing the continuity of Israeli control over the West Bank. This is despite all official propaganda that Jewish settler violence is carried out in spite of the government. Third, the proximity of the upcoming Israeli elections, slated to take place on 10 February, makes the government, especially Defence Minister Ehud Barak (head of the Labour Party) think twice before alienating the settlers, even by carrying out High Court rulings.
Last week, the Israeli High Court ordered the state to vacate Jewish settlers from an Arab building they had seized after forging ownership documents. However, the settlers and their supporters, including 48 Knesset members (out of 120) and former ministers, vowed to confront the army and police "be it as it may". Moreover, the settlers were planing to hold a large rally in Hebron to protest against the court decision and to underscore their determination to have their way.
Israeli President Shimon Peres, the godfather of Jewish settlements in the West Bank who is falsely portrayed as a man of peace, was quoted as saying during a visit to London last week that "Israel will find it difficult to evacuate the settlements without civil war." Yossi Sarid, a former minister, spoke of "a state within a state that has arisen in the territories."
Writing in Haaretz on 21 November, Sarid wrote, "a new custom has come to the country: High Court rulings are one thing, reality is another. One has not the slightest thing to do with the other. The settlements and the outposts are planted firmly in place and refuse to be uprooted; private land of Palestinians is being freely stolen; whole neighbourhoods born in sin are being populated; homes that have been stolen are filled with people; a brazen fence stands according to its original, arbitrary plan with only minimal changes."
Sarid's remarks may even be an understatement of reality.
One noted Israeli journalist intimated to this writer last week that Israel was facing two nightmarish scenarios in light of the settlers' determined refusal to leave the West Bank: "We have two alternatives, either we go into civil war or become a fascist or Nazi state. These two choices are becoming starker with the passage of each day."
C a p t i o n : Clockwise from top left: Israeli settlers teach their children to kill Palestinians; the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid Mosque, threatened by Jewish fanatics; a Muslim cemetery desecrated by settlers
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/924/re81.htm
Former Georgian envoy to Moscow puts blame for war on his own country By Olesya Vartanyan and Ellen Barry
International Herald Tribune
Former Georgian envoy to Moscow puts blame for war on his own country
By Olesya Vartanyan and Ellen Barry
Thursday, November 27, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/26/europe/georgia.php
TBILISI, Georgia: A parliamentary hearing on the origins of the war between Georgia and Russia in August ended in tumult after a former Georgian diplomat testified that the Georgian authorities were responsible for starting the conflict.
Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Tbilisi's former ambassador to Moscow, testified Tuesday for three hours before he was shouted down by members of Parliament.
A former confidant of President Mikheil Saakashvili, Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials had told him in April that they planned to start a war in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions at issue in the war, and had received a green light from the U.S. government to do so. He said the Georgian government later decided to start the war in South Ossetia, the other region, and continue into Abkhazia.
He would not identify the officials who he said had told him about the planned actions in Abkhazia, saying that identifying them would endanger their lives.
American officials have consistently said that they had warned Saakashvili against taking action in the two enclaves, where Russian peacekeepers were stationed.
Kitsmarishvili's testimony in front of a parliamentary commission, shown live on Georgian television, met with forceful and immediate denials. One commission member, Givi Targamadze, threw a pen and then lunged toward Kitsmarishvili, but was restrained by his colleagues.
The chairman of the commission, Paata Davitaia, said he would initiate a criminal case against Kitsmarishvili for "professional negligence."
Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, who appeared on short notice to comment on Kitsmarishvili's testimony, called the allegations "irresponsible and shameless fabrication," and said they were "either the result of a lack of information or the personal resentment of a man who has lost his job and wants to get involved in politics." Kitsmarishvili was fired in September by the president.
Kitsmarishvili walked out amid the furor Tuesday.
"They don't want to listen to the truth," he said.
The hearings are part of an official Georgian inquiry, whose full name is the Temporary Commission to Study Russia's Military Aggression and Other Actions Undertaken With the Aim to Infringe Georgia's Territorial Integrity. Many senior Georgian officials have already testified, and the president is scheduled to appear Friday.
Kitsmarishvili had petitioned to appear, saying a refusal to hear him would show that the inquiry was hollow.
In his comments, the former diplomat said that Saakashvili was responding to Russian provocation, but that he had long been planning to take control of the enclaves, which won de facto independence from Georgia in fighting in the early 1990s.
Kitsmarishvili said the president aimed to start an offensive in 2004, but met with resistance from Western and other Georgian officials.
Among the catalysts for the offensive, Kitsmarishvili said, was the belief that U.S. officials had given their approval. When he tried to verify that information with the American diplomats in Tbilisi, Kitsmarishvili said, he was told no such approval had been given.
Olesya Vartanyan reported from Tbilisi and Ellen Barry from Moscow.
Former Georgian envoy to Moscow puts blame for war on his own country
By Olesya Vartanyan and Ellen Barry
Thursday, November 27, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/26/europe/georgia.php
TBILISI, Georgia: A parliamentary hearing on the origins of the war between Georgia and Russia in August ended in tumult after a former Georgian diplomat testified that the Georgian authorities were responsible for starting the conflict.
Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Tbilisi's former ambassador to Moscow, testified Tuesday for three hours before he was shouted down by members of Parliament.
A former confidant of President Mikheil Saakashvili, Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials had told him in April that they planned to start a war in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions at issue in the war, and had received a green light from the U.S. government to do so. He said the Georgian government later decided to start the war in South Ossetia, the other region, and continue into Abkhazia.
He would not identify the officials who he said had told him about the planned actions in Abkhazia, saying that identifying them would endanger their lives.
American officials have consistently said that they had warned Saakashvili against taking action in the two enclaves, where Russian peacekeepers were stationed.
Kitsmarishvili's testimony in front of a parliamentary commission, shown live on Georgian television, met with forceful and immediate denials. One commission member, Givi Targamadze, threw a pen and then lunged toward Kitsmarishvili, but was restrained by his colleagues.
The chairman of the commission, Paata Davitaia, said he would initiate a criminal case against Kitsmarishvili for "professional negligence."
Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, who appeared on short notice to comment on Kitsmarishvili's testimony, called the allegations "irresponsible and shameless fabrication," and said they were "either the result of a lack of information or the personal resentment of a man who has lost his job and wants to get involved in politics." Kitsmarishvili was fired in September by the president.
Kitsmarishvili walked out amid the furor Tuesday.
"They don't want to listen to the truth," he said.
The hearings are part of an official Georgian inquiry, whose full name is the Temporary Commission to Study Russia's Military Aggression and Other Actions Undertaken With the Aim to Infringe Georgia's Territorial Integrity. Many senior Georgian officials have already testified, and the president is scheduled to appear Friday.
Kitsmarishvili had petitioned to appear, saying a refusal to hear him would show that the inquiry was hollow.
In his comments, the former diplomat said that Saakashvili was responding to Russian provocation, but that he had long been planning to take control of the enclaves, which won de facto independence from Georgia in fighting in the early 1990s.
Kitsmarishvili said the president aimed to start an offensive in 2004, but met with resistance from Western and other Georgian officials.
Among the catalysts for the offensive, Kitsmarishvili said, was the belief that U.S. officials had given their approval. When he tried to verify that information with the American diplomats in Tbilisi, Kitsmarishvili said, he was told no such approval had been given.
Olesya Vartanyan reported from Tbilisi and Ellen Barry from Moscow.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Bush's Follies Will Destroy Obama If He Lets Them
Bush's Follies Will Destroy Obama If He Lets Them
Bush's Follies Will Destroy Obama If He Lets Them
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081125_bushs_follies_will_destroy_obama_if_he_lets_them/
Posted on Nov 25, 2008
By William Pfaff
One might think that if Barack Obama believes he can make a success of his new administration by largely reconstituting the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton included, he should know better than to take on the reckless ambitions and commitments of the George W. Bush administration as well: the government that gave America the Mideast and Asian crises, blunders and humiliations of the past 6 1/2 years.
The world has witnessed a futile, destructive and illegal American invasion of Iraq, a war conducted on false pretenses, supposedly against terrorists, accompanied by worldwide actions that have made American policy in Bush's "global war on terror" seem to many Muslims an attack on Islamic society itself.
Obama is now taking on the quasi-impossible tasks of bringing to a successful and responsible conclusion the Bush government's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as what shows signs of becoming another military intervention of grave and unforeseeable consequences in Pakistan. He is doing so without challenging the assumptions and goals of Bush administration policy.
It has been the mindset of the Bush administration—and, unfortunately, of much of the neoconservative-influenced foreign policy establishment in Washington—that international society's problems are reducible to wars that American armies will win. They are wrong on both counts. But some still argue that this is the way to a better and more democratic world.
Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for these American crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?
Iraq has been a victim of the United States. Washington had no legal or moral justification for invading the country and destroying its infrastructure, killing an uncounted number of Iraqis and displacing millions more to ruined lives while setting off the sectarian conflicts that have wracked the country since 2003.
There is a heavy American responsibility to do no more harm, however well-intentioned. The present volatile situation in the country is for the moment a largely political shoving match between the divided and possibly ephemeral Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his rivals, who include the Shiite radicals of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Sunni, and largely ex-Baathist, Awakening Movement, sponsored by the U.S. Army to defend Sunni tribal regions against the foreigners of the fundamentalist al-Qaida. In addition, are the two Kurdish movements that together control, and plan to make independent and permanent, a Kurdistan nation incorporating—if they have their way—the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
One can make the political—and moral—argument that as the American invasion is responsible for the Iraqi upheaval, Washington should somehow settle it. The answer is that it's impossible for Americans to do so. The U.S. cannot do it by continued military occupation and intervention in the country's affairs.
Only the Iraqis themselves can settle this, and doing so may entail even more religious and ethnic struggle. The neighboring Shiite great power, Iran, will play its cards in the country. The Saudis will play theirs. Israel will do everything in its power to prevent an American withdrawal. All of this will probably add still more tragedies to those of the last six years, but at least the U.S. responsibility will have become only indirect, which is bad enough.
Barack Obama started off his presidential campaign by saying that he would get American troops out of Iraq by mid-2010. That was a strong, simple position that, if resolutely carried out, would make it clear to the Iraqis what they have to do to save themselves, and how long they have in which to do it.
Since the early campaign, the president-elect has been forced to qualify his position, weaken it, blur it, say that actually many U.S. troops probably will stay on, the dates may change, American involvement will continue, and so on. He has been forced back toward the Washington consensus opinion, the centrist and "responsible" position, close to the Bush opinion.
Nearly everyone is against his sticking to his original policy: The Iraq factions all plan to exploit American ambiguities to strengthen their own positions and maneuver the American command to favor them. The Kurds want time to make their proto-Kurdistan even more impregnable (while encouraging their reluctance to deal with Turkish and Iranian hostility to a sovereign Kurdistan, as well as deal realistically with their fellow Iraqis).
In Washington, the Pentagon is against withdrawal on Obama's terms. It still wants permanent bases in Iraq. It claims Obama's timetable is logistically impossible. The Republicans will shout "treason" and "betrayal." American oil companies and the corporations that are already part of the occupation, as well as those that have big ambitions for moving into an American-secured Iraq, will demand that the U.S. stay.
All this must be resisted if Obama is to be his own man. He has to rid himself of George Bush's folly. He must make Iraq truly independent. If he doesn't, it could destroy his administration.
© 2008 Tribune Media Services Inc.
_______________________________________________
Salon mailing list
http://mailman.listserve.com/listmanager/listinfo/salon
Posted on Nov 25, 2008
By William Pfaff
One might think that if Barack Obama believes he can make a success of his new administration by largely reconstituting the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton included, he should know better than to take on the reckless ambitions and commitments of the George W. Bush administration as well: the government that gave America the Mideast and Asian crises, blunders and humiliations of the past 6 1/2 years.
The world has witnessed a futile, destructive and illegal American invasion of Iraq, a war conducted on false pretenses, supposedly against terrorists, accompanied by worldwide actions that have made American policy in Bush's "global war on terror" seem to many Muslims an attack on Islamic society itself.
Obama is now taking on the quasi-impossible tasks of bringing to a successful and responsible conclusion the Bush government's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as what shows signs of becoming another military intervention of grave and unforeseeable consequences in Pakistan. He is doing so without challenging the assumptions and goals of Bush administration policy.
It has been the mindset of the Bush administration—and, unfortunately, of much of the neoconservative-influenced foreign policy establishment in Washington—that international society's problems are reducible to wars that American armies will win. They are wrong on both counts. But some still argue that this is the way to a better and more democratic world.
Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for these American crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?
Iraq has been a victim of the United States. Washington had no legal or moral justification for invading the country and destroying its infrastructure, killing an uncounted number of Iraqis and displacing millions more to ruined lives while setting off the sectarian conflicts that have wracked the country since 2003.
There is a heavy American responsibility to do no more harm, however well-intentioned. The present volatile situation in the country is for the moment a largely political shoving match between the divided and possibly ephemeral Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his rivals, who include the Shiite radicals of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Sunni, and largely ex-Baathist, Awakening Movement, sponsored by the U.S. Army to defend Sunni tribal regions against the foreigners of the fundamentalist al-Qaida. In addition, are the two Kurdish movements that together control, and plan to make independent and permanent, a Kurdistan nation incorporating—if they have their way—the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
One can make the political—and moral—argument that as the American invasion is responsible for the Iraqi upheaval, Washington should somehow settle it. The answer is that it's impossible for Americans to do so. The U.S. cannot do it by continued military occupation and intervention in the country's affairs.
Only the Iraqis themselves can settle this, and doing so may entail even more religious and ethnic struggle. The neighboring Shiite great power, Iran, will play its cards in the country. The Saudis will play theirs. Israel will do everything in its power to prevent an American withdrawal. All of this will probably add still more tragedies to those of the last six years, but at least the U.S. responsibility will have become only indirect, which is bad enough.
Barack Obama started off his presidential campaign by saying that he would get American troops out of Iraq by mid-2010. That was a strong, simple position that, if resolutely carried out, would make it clear to the Iraqis what they have to do to save themselves, and how long they have in which to do it.
Since the early campaign, the president-elect has been forced to qualify his position, weaken it, blur it, say that actually many U.S. troops probably will stay on, the dates may change, American involvement will continue, and so on. He has been forced back toward the Washington consensus opinion, the centrist and "responsible" position, close to the Bush opinion.
Nearly everyone is against his sticking to his original policy: The Iraq factions all plan to exploit American ambiguities to strengthen their own positions and maneuver the American command to favor them. The Kurds want time to make their proto-Kurdistan even more impregnable (while encouraging their reluctance to deal with Turkish and Iranian hostility to a sovereign Kurdistan, as well as deal realistically with their fellow Iraqis).
In Washington, the Pentagon is against withdrawal on Obama's terms. It still wants permanent bases in Iraq. It claims Obama's timetable is logistically impossible. The Republicans will shout "treason" and "betrayal." American oil companies and the corporations that are already part of the occupation, as well as those that have big ambitions for moving into an American-secured Iraq, will demand that the U.S. stay.
All this must be resisted if Obama is to be his own man. He has to rid himself of George Bush's folly. He must make Iraq truly independent. If he doesn't, it could destroy his administration.
© 2008 Tribune Media Services Inc.
Bush's Follies Will Destroy Obama If He Lets Them
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081125_bushs_follies_will_destroy_obama_if_he_lets_them/
Posted on Nov 25, 2008
By William Pfaff
One might think that if Barack Obama believes he can make a success of his new administration by largely reconstituting the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton included, he should know better than to take on the reckless ambitions and commitments of the George W. Bush administration as well: the government that gave America the Mideast and Asian crises, blunders and humiliations of the past 6 1/2 years.
The world has witnessed a futile, destructive and illegal American invasion of Iraq, a war conducted on false pretenses, supposedly against terrorists, accompanied by worldwide actions that have made American policy in Bush's "global war on terror" seem to many Muslims an attack on Islamic society itself.
Obama is now taking on the quasi-impossible tasks of bringing to a successful and responsible conclusion the Bush government's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as what shows signs of becoming another military intervention of grave and unforeseeable consequences in Pakistan. He is doing so without challenging the assumptions and goals of Bush administration policy.
It has been the mindset of the Bush administration—and, unfortunately, of much of the neoconservative-influenced foreign policy establishment in Washington—that international society's problems are reducible to wars that American armies will win. They are wrong on both counts. But some still argue that this is the way to a better and more democratic world.
Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for these American crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?
Iraq has been a victim of the United States. Washington had no legal or moral justification for invading the country and destroying its infrastructure, killing an uncounted number of Iraqis and displacing millions more to ruined lives while setting off the sectarian conflicts that have wracked the country since 2003.
There is a heavy American responsibility to do no more harm, however well-intentioned. The present volatile situation in the country is for the moment a largely political shoving match between the divided and possibly ephemeral Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his rivals, who include the Shiite radicals of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Sunni, and largely ex-Baathist, Awakening Movement, sponsored by the U.S. Army to defend Sunni tribal regions against the foreigners of the fundamentalist al-Qaida. In addition, are the two Kurdish movements that together control, and plan to make independent and permanent, a Kurdistan nation incorporating—if they have their way—the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
One can make the political—and moral—argument that as the American invasion is responsible for the Iraqi upheaval, Washington should somehow settle it. The answer is that it's impossible for Americans to do so. The U.S. cannot do it by continued military occupation and intervention in the country's affairs.
Only the Iraqis themselves can settle this, and doing so may entail even more religious and ethnic struggle. The neighboring Shiite great power, Iran, will play its cards in the country. The Saudis will play theirs. Israel will do everything in its power to prevent an American withdrawal. All of this will probably add still more tragedies to those of the last six years, but at least the U.S. responsibility will have become only indirect, which is bad enough.
Barack Obama started off his presidential campaign by saying that he would get American troops out of Iraq by mid-2010. That was a strong, simple position that, if resolutely carried out, would make it clear to the Iraqis what they have to do to save themselves, and how long they have in which to do it.
Since the early campaign, the president-elect has been forced to qualify his position, weaken it, blur it, say that actually many U.S. troops probably will stay on, the dates may change, American involvement will continue, and so on. He has been forced back toward the Washington consensus opinion, the centrist and "responsible" position, close to the Bush opinion.
Nearly everyone is against his sticking to his original policy: The Iraq factions all plan to exploit American ambiguities to strengthen their own positions and maneuver the American command to favor them. The Kurds want time to make their proto-Kurdistan even more impregnable (while encouraging their reluctance to deal with Turkish and Iranian hostility to a sovereign Kurdistan, as well as deal realistically with their fellow Iraqis).
In Washington, the Pentagon is against withdrawal on Obama's terms. It still wants permanent bases in Iraq. It claims Obama's timetable is logistically impossible. The Republicans will shout "treason" and "betrayal." American oil companies and the corporations that are already part of the occupation, as well as those that have big ambitions for moving into an American-secured Iraq, will demand that the U.S. stay.
All this must be resisted if Obama is to be his own man. He has to rid himself of George Bush's folly. He must make Iraq truly independent. If he doesn't, it could destroy his administration.
© 2008 Tribune Media Services Inc.
_______________________________________________
Salon mailing list
http://mailman.listserve.com/listmanager/listinfo/salon
Posted on Nov 25, 2008
By William Pfaff
One might think that if Barack Obama believes he can make a success of his new administration by largely reconstituting the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton included, he should know better than to take on the reckless ambitions and commitments of the George W. Bush administration as well: the government that gave America the Mideast and Asian crises, blunders and humiliations of the past 6 1/2 years.
The world has witnessed a futile, destructive and illegal American invasion of Iraq, a war conducted on false pretenses, supposedly against terrorists, accompanied by worldwide actions that have made American policy in Bush's "global war on terror" seem to many Muslims an attack on Islamic society itself.
Obama is now taking on the quasi-impossible tasks of bringing to a successful and responsible conclusion the Bush government's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as what shows signs of becoming another military intervention of grave and unforeseeable consequences in Pakistan. He is doing so without challenging the assumptions and goals of Bush administration policy.
It has been the mindset of the Bush administration—and, unfortunately, of much of the neoconservative-influenced foreign policy establishment in Washington—that international society's problems are reducible to wars that American armies will win. They are wrong on both counts. But some still argue that this is the way to a better and more democratic world.
Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for these American crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?
Iraq has been a victim of the United States. Washington had no legal or moral justification for invading the country and destroying its infrastructure, killing an uncounted number of Iraqis and displacing millions more to ruined lives while setting off the sectarian conflicts that have wracked the country since 2003.
There is a heavy American responsibility to do no more harm, however well-intentioned. The present volatile situation in the country is for the moment a largely political shoving match between the divided and possibly ephemeral Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his rivals, who include the Shiite radicals of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Sunni, and largely ex-Baathist, Awakening Movement, sponsored by the U.S. Army to defend Sunni tribal regions against the foreigners of the fundamentalist al-Qaida. In addition, are the two Kurdish movements that together control, and plan to make independent and permanent, a Kurdistan nation incorporating—if they have their way—the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
One can make the political—and moral—argument that as the American invasion is responsible for the Iraqi upheaval, Washington should somehow settle it. The answer is that it's impossible for Americans to do so. The U.S. cannot do it by continued military occupation and intervention in the country's affairs.
Only the Iraqis themselves can settle this, and doing so may entail even more religious and ethnic struggle. The neighboring Shiite great power, Iran, will play its cards in the country. The Saudis will play theirs. Israel will do everything in its power to prevent an American withdrawal. All of this will probably add still more tragedies to those of the last six years, but at least the U.S. responsibility will have become only indirect, which is bad enough.
Barack Obama started off his presidential campaign by saying that he would get American troops out of Iraq by mid-2010. That was a strong, simple position that, if resolutely carried out, would make it clear to the Iraqis what they have to do to save themselves, and how long they have in which to do it.
Since the early campaign, the president-elect has been forced to qualify his position, weaken it, blur it, say that actually many U.S. troops probably will stay on, the dates may change, American involvement will continue, and so on. He has been forced back toward the Washington consensus opinion, the centrist and "responsible" position, close to the Bush opinion.
Nearly everyone is against his sticking to his original policy: The Iraq factions all plan to exploit American ambiguities to strengthen their own positions and maneuver the American command to favor them. The Kurds want time to make their proto-Kurdistan even more impregnable (while encouraging their reluctance to deal with Turkish and Iranian hostility to a sovereign Kurdistan, as well as deal realistically with their fellow Iraqis).
In Washington, the Pentagon is against withdrawal on Obama's terms. It still wants permanent bases in Iraq. It claims Obama's timetable is logistically impossible. The Republicans will shout "treason" and "betrayal." American oil companies and the corporations that are already part of the occupation, as well as those that have big ambitions for moving into an American-secured Iraq, will demand that the U.S. stay.
All this must be resisted if Obama is to be his own man. He has to rid himself of George Bush's folly. He must make Iraq truly independent. If he doesn't, it could destroy his administration.
© 2008 Tribune Media Services Inc.
The Slow Death of Gaza The collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population is illegal. But international law was tossed aside long ago By Andrea
The Slow Death of Gaza
The collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population is illegal. But international law was tossed aside long ago
By Andrea Becker
November 24, 2008 "The Guardian" -- -It has been two weeks since Israel imposed a complete closure of Gaza, after months when its crossings have been open only for the most minimal of humanitarian supplies. Now it is even worse: two weeks without United Nations food trucks for the 80% of the population entirely dependent on food aid, and no medical supplies or drugs for Gaza's ailing hospitals. No fuel (paid for by the EU) for Gaza's electricity plant, and no fuel for the generators during the long blackouts. Last Monday morning, 33 trucks of food for UN distribution were finally let in - a few days of few supplies for very few, but as the UN asks, then what?
Israel's official explanation for blocking even minimal humanitarian aid, according to IDF spokesperson Major Peter Lerner, was "continued rocket fire and security threats at the crossings". Israel's blockade, in force since Hamas seized control of Gaza in mid-2007, can be described as an intensification of policies designed to isolate the population of Gaza, cripple its economy, and incentivise the population against Hamas by harsh - and illegal - measures of collective punishment. However, these actions are not all new: the blockade is but the terminal end of Israel's closure policy, in place since 1991, which in turn builds on Israel's policies as occupier since 1967.
In practice, Israel's blockade means the denial of a broad range of items - food, industrial, educational, medical - deemed "non-essential" for a population largely unable to be self-sufficient at the end of decades of occupation. It means that industrial, cooking and diesel fuel, normally scarce, are virtually absent now. There are no queues at petrol stations; they are simply shut. The lack of fuel in turn means that sewage and treatment stations cannot function properly, resulting in decreased potable water and tens of millions of litres of untreated or partly treated sewage being dumped into the sea every day. Electricity cuts - previously around eight hours a day, now up to 16 hours a day in many areas - affect all homes and hospitals. Those lucky enough to have generators struggle to find the fuel to make them work, or spare parts to repair them when they break from overuse. Even candles are running out.
There can be no dispute that measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are illegal under international humanitarian law. Fuel and food cannot be withheld or wielded as reward or punishment. But international law was tossed aside long ago. The blockade has been presented as punishment for the democratic election of Hamas, punishment for its subsequent takeover of Gaza, and punishment for militant attacks on Israeli civilians. The civilians of Gaza, from the maths teacher in a United Nations refugee camp to the premature baby in an incubator, properly punished for actions over which they have no control, will rise up and get rid of Hamas. Or so it goes.
And so what of these civilian agents of political change?
For all its complexities and tragedies, the over-arching effect of Israel's blockade has been to reduce the entire population to survival mode. Individuals are reduced to the daily detail of survival, and its exhaustions.
Consider Gaza's hospital staff. In hospitals, the blockade is as seemingly benign as doctors not having paper upon which to write diagnostic results or prescriptions, and as sinister as those seconds - between power cut and generator start - when a child on life support doesn't have the oxygen of a mechanical ventilator. A nurse on a neo-natal ward rushes between patients, battling the random schedule of power cuts. A hospital worker tries to keep a few kidney dialysis machines from breaking down, by farming spare parts from those that already have. The surgeon operates without a bulb in the surgery lamp, across from the anaesthetist who can no longer prevent patient pain. The hospital administrator updates lists of essential drugs and medical supplies that have run out, which vaccines from medical fridges are now unusable because they can't be kept cold, and which procedures must be cancelled altogether. The ambulance driver decides whether to respond to an emergency call, based on dwindling petrol in the tank.
By reducing the population to survival mode, the blockade robs people of the time and essence to do anything but negotiate the minutiae of what is and isn't possible in their personal and professional lives. Whether any flour will be available to make bread, where it might be found, how much it now costs. Rich or poor, taxi drivers, human rights defenders, and teachers alike spend hours speculating about where a canister of cooking gas might be found. Exhaustion is gripping hold of all in Gaza. Survival leaves little if no room for political engagement - and beyond exhaustion, anger and frustration are all that is left.
Andrea Becker is head of advocacy for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
The collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population is illegal. But international law was tossed aside long ago
By Andrea Becker
November 24, 2008 "The Guardian" -- -It has been two weeks since Israel imposed a complete closure of Gaza, after months when its crossings have been open only for the most minimal of humanitarian supplies. Now it is even worse: two weeks without United Nations food trucks for the 80% of the population entirely dependent on food aid, and no medical supplies or drugs for Gaza's ailing hospitals. No fuel (paid for by the EU) for Gaza's electricity plant, and no fuel for the generators during the long blackouts. Last Monday morning, 33 trucks of food for UN distribution were finally let in - a few days of few supplies for very few, but as the UN asks, then what?
Israel's official explanation for blocking even minimal humanitarian aid, according to IDF spokesperson Major Peter Lerner, was "continued rocket fire and security threats at the crossings". Israel's blockade, in force since Hamas seized control of Gaza in mid-2007, can be described as an intensification of policies designed to isolate the population of Gaza, cripple its economy, and incentivise the population against Hamas by harsh - and illegal - measures of collective punishment. However, these actions are not all new: the blockade is but the terminal end of Israel's closure policy, in place since 1991, which in turn builds on Israel's policies as occupier since 1967.
In practice, Israel's blockade means the denial of a broad range of items - food, industrial, educational, medical - deemed "non-essential" for a population largely unable to be self-sufficient at the end of decades of occupation. It means that industrial, cooking and diesel fuel, normally scarce, are virtually absent now. There are no queues at petrol stations; they are simply shut. The lack of fuel in turn means that sewage and treatment stations cannot function properly, resulting in decreased potable water and tens of millions of litres of untreated or partly treated sewage being dumped into the sea every day. Electricity cuts - previously around eight hours a day, now up to 16 hours a day in many areas - affect all homes and hospitals. Those lucky enough to have generators struggle to find the fuel to make them work, or spare parts to repair them when they break from overuse. Even candles are running out.
There can be no dispute that measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are illegal under international humanitarian law. Fuel and food cannot be withheld or wielded as reward or punishment. But international law was tossed aside long ago. The blockade has been presented as punishment for the democratic election of Hamas, punishment for its subsequent takeover of Gaza, and punishment for militant attacks on Israeli civilians. The civilians of Gaza, from the maths teacher in a United Nations refugee camp to the premature baby in an incubator, properly punished for actions over which they have no control, will rise up and get rid of Hamas. Or so it goes.
And so what of these civilian agents of political change?
For all its complexities and tragedies, the over-arching effect of Israel's blockade has been to reduce the entire population to survival mode. Individuals are reduced to the daily detail of survival, and its exhaustions.
Consider Gaza's hospital staff. In hospitals, the blockade is as seemingly benign as doctors not having paper upon which to write diagnostic results or prescriptions, and as sinister as those seconds - between power cut and generator start - when a child on life support doesn't have the oxygen of a mechanical ventilator. A nurse on a neo-natal ward rushes between patients, battling the random schedule of power cuts. A hospital worker tries to keep a few kidney dialysis machines from breaking down, by farming spare parts from those that already have. The surgeon operates without a bulb in the surgery lamp, across from the anaesthetist who can no longer prevent patient pain. The hospital administrator updates lists of essential drugs and medical supplies that have run out, which vaccines from medical fridges are now unusable because they can't be kept cold, and which procedures must be cancelled altogether. The ambulance driver decides whether to respond to an emergency call, based on dwindling petrol in the tank.
By reducing the population to survival mode, the blockade robs people of the time and essence to do anything but negotiate the minutiae of what is and isn't possible in their personal and professional lives. Whether any flour will be available to make bread, where it might be found, how much it now costs. Rich or poor, taxi drivers, human rights defenders, and teachers alike spend hours speculating about where a canister of cooking gas might be found. Exhaustion is gripping hold of all in Gaza. Survival leaves little if no room for political engagement - and beyond exhaustion, anger and frustration are all that is left.
Andrea Becker is head of advocacy for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Islamabad tries to take military out of politics By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and James Lamont in New Delhi
FT.com logo
Pakistan
Islamabad tries to take military out of politics
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and James Lamont in New Delhi
Published: November 24 2008 19:15 | Last updated: November 24 2008 19:15
Pakistan's government has disbanded the political wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the notorious military-run spy agency, in a bold move intended to reduce sharply the military's influence in politics.
The effort to refocus the intelligence agency came a day after Asif Ali Zardari made one of the strongest overtures of any Pakistani president to India. He offered to abandon Pakistan's first-strike nuclear threat, sign a South Asian nuclear non-proliferation treaty and join India in an economic union.
The ISI is one of the most powerful forces in Pakistan. Often described as a "state within a state", it has a domestic and international remit that has helped the army tighten its grip on the country.
The agency played a role in supporting insurgents in Kashmir and militants in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation of the country. However, military rule during much of Pakistan's short history has encouraged its political wing to expand its role deep into domestic affairs.
"The ISI is a precious national institution and it wants to focus fully on counter-terrorism activities," said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, foreign minister, in a statement. He described the change as a "positive development".
Mr Zardari's latest initiative will be welcomed in Washington, where the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama is preparing for a renewed engagement with Islamabad to counter the Islamist threat. A senior US official this year appealed to the newly elected Pakistani government to bring the ISI under greater control to prevent it aiding terrorist attacks and supporting the Taliban.
Mr Qureshi's announcement coincided with the arrival of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's former military ruler, in London. His visit has fuelled speculation that he may be scouting for residence outside Pakistan.
"The direct consequence of this decision [on the ISI] should be the evolution of democracy without interference from the military," said Nasim Zehra, a Pakistani newspaper columnist.
However, Tariq Azim, a former minister and now leader of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid e Azam, warned that a permanent end to the military's role in politics would only be achieved when civilian governments were more robust and effective.
"The quality of governance remains very weak in Pakistan and the government today has failed to take charge on a number of fronts," he said.
"We must always remember . . . that every time a civilian government has become weak and controversial, the military has used that as a pretext to take charge in the name of improving the country's outlook."
Indian officials have met the reforming mood in Islamabad with caution. They are doubtful of the extent to which the fragile democratic government can exert authority over a military establishment that is hostile to the country's eastern neighbour.
"The [Pakistani] army realises it's taking a battering within the country. Now it is saying 'If anything goes wrong, don't blame us'. And there's plenty that could go wrong," said G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian high commissioner to Islamabad.
India suspects the ISI's hand in the bombing of its embassy in Kabul in July, when 41 people were killed and 140 injured.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
Pakistan
Islamabad tries to take military out of politics
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and James Lamont in New Delhi
Published: November 24 2008 19:15 | Last updated: November 24 2008 19:15
Pakistan's government has disbanded the political wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the notorious military-run spy agency, in a bold move intended to reduce sharply the military's influence in politics.
The effort to refocus the intelligence agency came a day after Asif Ali Zardari made one of the strongest overtures of any Pakistani president to India. He offered to abandon Pakistan's first-strike nuclear threat, sign a South Asian nuclear non-proliferation treaty and join India in an economic union.
The ISI is one of the most powerful forces in Pakistan. Often described as a "state within a state", it has a domestic and international remit that has helped the army tighten its grip on the country.
The agency played a role in supporting insurgents in Kashmir and militants in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation of the country. However, military rule during much of Pakistan's short history has encouraged its political wing to expand its role deep into domestic affairs.
"The ISI is a precious national institution and it wants to focus fully on counter-terrorism activities," said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, foreign minister, in a statement. He described the change as a "positive development".
Mr Zardari's latest initiative will be welcomed in Washington, where the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama is preparing for a renewed engagement with Islamabad to counter the Islamist threat. A senior US official this year appealed to the newly elected Pakistani government to bring the ISI under greater control to prevent it aiding terrorist attacks and supporting the Taliban.
Mr Qureshi's announcement coincided with the arrival of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's former military ruler, in London. His visit has fuelled speculation that he may be scouting for residence outside Pakistan.
"The direct consequence of this decision [on the ISI] should be the evolution of democracy without interference from the military," said Nasim Zehra, a Pakistani newspaper columnist.
However, Tariq Azim, a former minister and now leader of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid e Azam, warned that a permanent end to the military's role in politics would only be achieved when civilian governments were more robust and effective.
"The quality of governance remains very weak in Pakistan and the government today has failed to take charge on a number of fronts," he said.
"We must always remember . . . that every time a civilian government has become weak and controversial, the military has used that as a pretext to take charge in the name of improving the country's outlook."
Indian officials have met the reforming mood in Islamabad with caution. They are doubtful of the extent to which the fragile democratic government can exert authority over a military establishment that is hostile to the country's eastern neighbour.
"The [Pakistani] army realises it's taking a battering within the country. Now it is saying 'If anything goes wrong, don't blame us'. And there's plenty that could go wrong," said G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian high commissioner to Islamabad.
India suspects the ISI's hand in the bombing of its embassy in Kabul in July, when 41 people were killed and 140 injured.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
Battling the Somali Pirates: The Return of the Islamists by Tony Karon
TIME
11/25/08
Battling the Somali Pirates: The Return of the Islamists
Tony Karon
T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") famously compared counterinsurgency warfare to "eating soup with a knife". The same might apply to the efforts of Western navies to protect commercial shipping from the marauding pirates of Somalia, except for the fact that soup is typically contained within a bowl — and the pirates have the freedom of a vast ocean in which to move. They recently captured a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million in crude oil, by striking hundreds of miles away from the shipping lanes being patrolled by some of the world's most powerful navies. But if the pirates have the wind at their backs out at sea, they got some bad news back on shore last weekend, when five armored vehicles loaded with fighters of the Islamist Shabab militia arrived in the port town of Harardhere, where the pirates who seized the Sirius Star are based.
The Islamic Courts Union, which had controlled Mogadishu until it was ousted in a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006, denounced the seizure of the Saudi vessel as a "major crime," and its erstwhile affiliate, the more militant Shabab movement, was even more forthright. "Saudi is a Muslim country and it is very big crime to hold Muslim property," Sheikh Abdulaahi Osman, a commander of the group in Harardhere, told the Bloomberg news service on Sunday. "I warned again and again, those who hold the ship must free it unconditionally or armed conflict should be the solution. If they don't free the ship, we will rescue it by force." (See pictures of Somalia's pirates.)
Some locals believed the Islamists had come to confront the pirates; others speculated that the Shabab may simply be seeking a share in the booty. The pirates didn't wait around to find out, reportedly high-tailing it out of town and onto the high seas to avoid an encounter with the Shabab. While the presence of NATO and allied navies on the high seas has failed to stamp out piracy, the emergence of an authority more powerful than the buccaneers themselves in their on-shore sanctuaries could clearly be a game-changer.
Piracy has thrived along the Somali coastline not because commercial shipping is poorly defended, but because Somalia is a failed state where anarchy has prevailed for most of the past two decades. The Transitional Government currently backed by the U.S. is a loose coalition of rival clan warlords fighting among themselves, and whose authority is tenuous. Mogadishu and southern Somalia were a little more stable during the brief reign in 2006 of the Islamic Courts Union, whose militia fighters drove out the warlords and imposed a peace generally welcomed by the local population even if they chafed under the resultant sharia law. And the Islamists cracked down on piracy in areas under their control, including Harardheere.
The Islamists, however, were giving shelter to a handful of al-Qaeda operatives wanted in connection with terror attacks in East Africa, so the U.S. threw its weight behind the beleaguered Transitional Government and helped direct an Ethiopian invasion aimed at dislodging the Islamists. Although the invasion scattered the Islamists, the Transitional Government remains deeply unpopular and unable to cement its control. The government's security is largely dependent on an Ethiopian occupation that is itself growing weary of the cost of fighting the resurgent Islamists, led by the radicalized Shabab movement. The government and its allies arguably control only two Somali cities. It is now involved in U.N.-brokered power-sharing talks with more moderate elements among the Islamists.
But the clock cannot be turned back to 2006 when the more cohesive Islamist authority in Mogadishu had some success in stamping out piracy. Some analysts suggest that the Shabab have themselves lately made use of pirate groups to ferry weapons and train their fighters in naval combat, in exchange for protection. There is no solid evidence to back this claim, however, and other analysts insist that the Islamists remain the best bet for policing piracy. (It is also alleged that some pirate groups are in league with warlords who form part of the transitional government.) But both the Islamists and the Transitional Government are riven by internal power struggles, further complicating the task of forging a law-and-order consensus necessary to combat the pirates. (See pictures of the brazen pirates of Somalia.)
Establishing order on shore, however, remains the key to stamping out the problem, for the simple reason that keeping a dozen or more vessels from the navies of the U.S. and its allies engaged in escort missions for all commercial shipping in the area is too costly to sustain over the long term. As long as the pirates remain unmolested on shore and flush with cash —Kenya last week suggested the pirates have extorted as much as $150 million over the past year in ransom payments — they will find ways around the protection offered by sophisticated warships.
By moving into Harardhere, the Islamists are signaling an intent to reassert control over the coastline. They recently took control of the key southern port city of Kismayo. That could help tamp down the incidence of piracy — although only if the Shabab are committed to doing that, rather than seeking to profit from the lucrative industry. In that way, it can be compared to the Taliban in Afghanistan that stamped out opium production when it was in power and seeking international recognition. Today, as it wages an insurgency, the Taliban sustains itself by taxing the poppy trade. The key players in Somalia are likely to police piracy only when the political and economic incentives for doing so outweigh the gains to be made from encouraging and taxing it.
11/25/08
Battling the Somali Pirates: The Return of the Islamists
Tony Karon
T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") famously compared counterinsurgency warfare to "eating soup with a knife". The same might apply to the efforts of Western navies to protect commercial shipping from the marauding pirates of Somalia, except for the fact that soup is typically contained within a bowl — and the pirates have the freedom of a vast ocean in which to move. They recently captured a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million in crude oil, by striking hundreds of miles away from the shipping lanes being patrolled by some of the world's most powerful navies. But if the pirates have the wind at their backs out at sea, they got some bad news back on shore last weekend, when five armored vehicles loaded with fighters of the Islamist Shabab militia arrived in the port town of Harardhere, where the pirates who seized the Sirius Star are based.
The Islamic Courts Union, which had controlled Mogadishu until it was ousted in a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006, denounced the seizure of the Saudi vessel as a "major crime," and its erstwhile affiliate, the more militant Shabab movement, was even more forthright. "Saudi is a Muslim country and it is very big crime to hold Muslim property," Sheikh Abdulaahi Osman, a commander of the group in Harardhere, told the Bloomberg news service on Sunday. "I warned again and again, those who hold the ship must free it unconditionally or armed conflict should be the solution. If they don't free the ship, we will rescue it by force." (See pictures of Somalia's pirates.)
Some locals believed the Islamists had come to confront the pirates; others speculated that the Shabab may simply be seeking a share in the booty. The pirates didn't wait around to find out, reportedly high-tailing it out of town and onto the high seas to avoid an encounter with the Shabab. While the presence of NATO and allied navies on the high seas has failed to stamp out piracy, the emergence of an authority more powerful than the buccaneers themselves in their on-shore sanctuaries could clearly be a game-changer.
Piracy has thrived along the Somali coastline not because commercial shipping is poorly defended, but because Somalia is a failed state where anarchy has prevailed for most of the past two decades. The Transitional Government currently backed by the U.S. is a loose coalition of rival clan warlords fighting among themselves, and whose authority is tenuous. Mogadishu and southern Somalia were a little more stable during the brief reign in 2006 of the Islamic Courts Union, whose militia fighters drove out the warlords and imposed a peace generally welcomed by the local population even if they chafed under the resultant sharia law. And the Islamists cracked down on piracy in areas under their control, including Harardheere.
The Islamists, however, were giving shelter to a handful of al-Qaeda operatives wanted in connection with terror attacks in East Africa, so the U.S. threw its weight behind the beleaguered Transitional Government and helped direct an Ethiopian invasion aimed at dislodging the Islamists. Although the invasion scattered the Islamists, the Transitional Government remains deeply unpopular and unable to cement its control. The government's security is largely dependent on an Ethiopian occupation that is itself growing weary of the cost of fighting the resurgent Islamists, led by the radicalized Shabab movement. The government and its allies arguably control only two Somali cities. It is now involved in U.N.-brokered power-sharing talks with more moderate elements among the Islamists.
But the clock cannot be turned back to 2006 when the more cohesive Islamist authority in Mogadishu had some success in stamping out piracy. Some analysts suggest that the Shabab have themselves lately made use of pirate groups to ferry weapons and train their fighters in naval combat, in exchange for protection. There is no solid evidence to back this claim, however, and other analysts insist that the Islamists remain the best bet for policing piracy. (It is also alleged that some pirate groups are in league with warlords who form part of the transitional government.) But both the Islamists and the Transitional Government are riven by internal power struggles, further complicating the task of forging a law-and-order consensus necessary to combat the pirates. (See pictures of the brazen pirates of Somalia.)
Establishing order on shore, however, remains the key to stamping out the problem, for the simple reason that keeping a dozen or more vessels from the navies of the U.S. and its allies engaged in escort missions for all commercial shipping in the area is too costly to sustain over the long term. As long as the pirates remain unmolested on shore and flush with cash —Kenya last week suggested the pirates have extorted as much as $150 million over the past year in ransom payments — they will find ways around the protection offered by sophisticated warships.
By moving into Harardhere, the Islamists are signaling an intent to reassert control over the coastline. They recently took control of the key southern port city of Kismayo. That could help tamp down the incidence of piracy — although only if the Shabab are committed to doing that, rather than seeking to profit from the lucrative industry. In that way, it can be compared to the Taliban in Afghanistan that stamped out opium production when it was in power and seeking international recognition. Today, as it wages an insurgency, the Taliban sustains itself by taxing the poppy trade. The key players in Somalia are likely to police piracy only when the political and economic incentives for doing so outweigh the gains to be made from encouraging and taxing it.
Monday, November 24, 2008
'Nobody is Watching:' America's hidden war in Somalia by Paul Salopek
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
11/24/08
'Nobody is Watching:' America's hidden war in Somalia
Paul Salopek
To glimpse America's secret war in Africa, you must bang with a rock on the iron gate of the prison in this remote port in northern Somalia. A sleepy guard will yank open a rusty deadbolt. Then, you ask to speak to an inmate named Mohamed Ali Isse.
Isse, 36, is a convicted murderer and jihadist. He is known among his fellow prisoners, with grudging awe, as "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg."
That "thing" is a stainless steel surgical pin screwed into his bullet-shattered femur, courtesy, he says, of the U.S. Navy. How it got there — or more to the point, how Isse ended up in this crumbling, stone-walled hellhole at the uttermost end of the Earth—is a story that the U.S. government probably would prefer to remain untold.
That's because Isse and his fancy surgery scars offer what little tangible evidence exists of a bare-knuckled war that has been waged silently, over the past five years, with the sole aim of preventing anarchic Somalia from becoming the world's next Afghanistan.
It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts. (The raids' success or failure is almost impossible to verify.)
It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and—according to Isse and civil rights activists—secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.
Mostly, though, it is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that Washington appears to be losing, if it hasn't already been lost.
"Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11," said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. "By any rational metric, what we've ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted."
What the Bush administration wanted, when it tacitly backed Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006, was clear enough: to help a close African ally in the war on terror crush the Islamic Courts Union, or ICU. The Taliban-like movement emerged from the ashes of more than 15 years of anarchy and lawlessness in Africa's most infamous failed state, Somalia.
At first, the invasion seemed an easy victory. By early 2007, the ICU had been routed, a pro-Western transitional government installed, and hundreds of Islamic militants in Somalia either captured or killed.
But over the last 18 months, Somalia's Islamists—now more radical than ever—have regrouped and roared back.
On a single day last month, they flexed their muscles by killing nearly 30 people in a spate of bloody car-bomb attacks that recalled the darkest days of Iraq. And their brutal militia, the Shabab or "Youth," today controls much of the destitute nation, a shattered but strategic country that overlooks the vital oil-shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden.
Even worse, in recent days Shabab's fighters have moved to within miles of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, threatening to topple the weak interim government supported by the U.S. and Ethiopia.
At the same time, according to the UN, the explosion of violence is inflaming what probably is the worst humanitarian tragedy in the world.
In the midst of a killing drought, more than 700,000 city dwellers have been driven out of bullet-scarred Mogadishu by the recent clashes between the Islamist rebels and the interim government.
The U.S. role in Somalia's current agonies has not always been clear. But back in the Berbera prison, Isse, who is both a villain and a victim in this immense panorama of suffering, offered a keyhole view that extended all the way back to Washington.
Wrapped in a faded sarong, scowling in the blistering-hot prison yard, the jihadist at first refused to meet foreign visitors—a loathed American in particular. But after some cajoling, he agreed to tell his story through a fellow inmate: a surreal but credible tale of illicit abduction by the CIA, secret helicopter rides and a journey through an African gulag that lifts the curtain, albeit only briefly, on an American invisible war.
"Your government gets away with a lot here," said the warden, Hassan Mohamed Ibrahim, striding about his antique facility with a pistol tucked in the back of his pants. "In Iraq, the world is watching. In Afghanistan, the world is watching. In Somalia, nobody is watching."
From ashes of 'Black Hawk Down'
In truth, merely watching in Mogadishu these days is apt to get you killed.
Somalia's hapless capital has long been considered the Dodge City of Africa—a seaside metropolis sundered by clan fighting ever since the nation's central government collapsed in 1991. That feral reputation was cemented in 1993, when chanting mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. Army Rangers through the streets in a disastrous UN peacekeeping mission chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
Yet if Mogadishu was once merely a perilous destination for outsiders, visiting today is suicidal.
For the first time in local memory, the airport—the city's frail lifeline to the world—is regularly closed by insurgent mortar attacks despite a small and jittery contingent of African Union peacekeepers.
Foreign workers who once toiled quietly for years in Somalia have been evacuated. A U.S. missile strike in May killed the Shabab commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, enraging Islamist militants who have since vowed to kidnap and kill any outsider found in the country.
The upshot: Most of Somalia today is closed to the world.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way when Washington provided intelligence to the invading Ethiopians two years ago.
The homegrown Islamic radicals who controlled most of central and southern Somalia in mid-2006 certainly were no angels. They shuttered Mogadishu's cinemas, demanded that Somali men grow beards and, according to the U.S. State Department, provided refuge to some 30 local and international jihadists associated with Al Qaeda.
But the Islamic Courts Union's turbaned militiamen had actually defeated Somalia's hated warlords. And their enforcement of Islamic religious laws, while unpopular among many Somalis, made Mogadishu safe to walk in for the first time in a generation.
"It's not just that people miss those days," said a Somali humanitarian worker who, for safety reasons, asked to be identified only as Hassan. "They resent the Ethiopians and Americans tearing it all up, using Somalia as their battlefield against global terrorism. It's like the Cold War all over again. Somalis aren't in control."
When the Islamic movement again strengthened, Isse, the terrorist jailed in Berbera, was a pharmacy owner from the isolated town of Buro in Somaliland, a parched northern enclave that declared independence from Somalia in the early 1990s.
Radicalized by U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is serving a life sentence for organizing the killings of four foreign aid workers in late 2003 and early 2004. Two of his victims were elderly British teachers.
A dour, bearded man with bullet scars puckering his neck and leg, Isse still maintains his innocence. Much of Isse's account of his capture and imprisonment was independently corroborated by Western intelligence analysts, Somali security officials and court records in Somaliland, where the wounded jihadist was tried and jailed for murdering the aid workers. Those sources say Isse was snatched by the U.S. after fleeing to the safe house of a notorious Islamist militant in Mogadishu.
How that operation unfolded on a hot June night in 2004 reveals the extent of American clandestine involvement in Somalia's chaotic affairs—and how such anti-terrorism efforts appear to have backfired.
Interrogation aboard ship
"I captured Isse for the Americans," said Mohamed Afrah Qanyare. "The Americans contracted us to do certain things, and we did them. Isse put up resistance so we shot him. But he survived."
A scar-faced warlord in a business suit, Qanyare is a member of Somalia's weak transitional government. Today he divides his days between lawless Mogadishu and luxury hotels in Nairobi.
But four years ago, his militia helped form the kernel of a CIA-created mercenary force called the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in Somalia. The unit cobbled together some of the world's most violent, wily and unreliable clan militias—including gangs that had attacked U.S. forces in the early 1990s—to confront a rising tide of Islamic militancy in Somalia's anarchic capital.
The Somalis on the CIA payroll engaged in a grim tit-for-tat exchange of kidnappings and assassinations with extremists. And Isse was one of their catches.
He was wounded in a CIA-ordered raid on his Mogadishu safe house in June 2004, according to Qanyare and Matt Bryden, one of the world's leading scholars of the Somali insurgency who has access to intelligence regarding it. They say Isse was then loaded aboard a U.S. military helicopter summoned by satellite phone and was flown, bleeding, to an offshore U.S. vessel.
"He saw white people in uniforms working on his body," said Isse's Somali defense lawyer, Bashir Hussein Abdi, describing how Isse was rushed into a ship-board operating room. "He felt the ship moving. He thought he was dreaming."
Navy doctors spliced a steel rod into Isse's bullet-shattered leg, according to Abdi. Every day for about a month afterward, Isse's court depositions assert, plainclothes U.S. agents grilled the bedridden Somali at sea about Al Qaeda's presence.
The CIA never has publicly acknowledged its operations in Somalia. Agency spokesman George Little declined to comment on Isse's case.
For years, human-rights organizations attempted to expose the rumored detention and interrogation of terror suspects aboard U.S. warships to avoid media and legal scrutiny. In June, the British civil rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as "floating prisons" since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Calling such claims "misleading," the Pentagon has insisted that U.S. ships have served only as transit stops for terror suspects being shuttled to permanent detention camps such as the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But Tribune reporting on Isse indicates strongly that a U.S. warship was used for interrogation at least once off the lawless coast of Somalia.
The U.S. Navy conceded Isse had stayed aboard one of its vessels. In a terse statement, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden, said only that the Navy was "not able to confirm dates" of Isse's imprisonment.
For reasons that remain unclear, he was later flown to Camp Lemonier, a U.S. military base in the African state of Djibouti, Somali intelligence sources say, and from there to a clandestine prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Isse and his lawyer allege he was detained there for six weeks and tortured by Ethiopian military intelligence with electric shocks.
Ethiopia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and office of prime minister did not respond to queries about Isse's allegations.
However, security officials in neighboring Somaliland did confirm that they collected Isse from the Ethiopian police at a dusty border crossing in late 2004. "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg" was interrogated again. After a local trial, he was locked in the ancient Berbera prison.
"It doesn't matter if he is guilty or innocent," said Abdi, the defense lawyer. "Countries like Ethiopia and America use terrorism to justify this treatment. This is not justice. It is a crime in itself."
Tales of CIA "snatch and grab" operations against terror suspects abroad aren't new, of course. President George W. Bush finally confirmed two years ago the existence of an international program that "renditioned" terrorism suspects to a network of "black site" prisons in Eastern Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for the CIA's anti-terror mercenaries in Mogadishu, they may have kidnapped a dozen or more wanted Islamists for the Americans, intelligence experts say. But their excesses ended up swelling the ranks of their enemy, the Islamic Courts Union militias.
"It was a stupid idea," said Bryden, the security analyst who has written extensively on Somalia's Islamist insurgency. "It actually strengthened the hand of the Islamists and helped trigger the crisis we're in today."
In the sweltering Berbera prison, Exhibit A in Washington's phantom war in Somalia had finished his afternoon prayers. He clapped his sandals together, then limped off to his cell without a word.
A sinking nation
The future of Somalia and its 8 million people is totally unscripted. This unbearable lack of certainty, of a way forward, accommodates little hope.
Ethiopian and U.S. actions have eroded Somalis' hidebound allegiance to their clans, once a firewall against Al Qaeda's global ideology, says Bryden. Somalia's 2 million-strong diaspora is of greatest concern. Angry young men, foreign passports in hand, could be lured back to the reopened Shabab training camps, where instructors occasionally use photocopied portraits of Bush as rifle targets.
Some envision no Somalia at all.
With about $8 billion in humanitarian aid fire-hosed into the smoking ruins of Somalia since the early 1990s—the U.S. will donate roughly $200 million this year alone—a growing chorus of policymakers is advocating that the failed state be allowed to fail, to break up into autonomous zones or fiefdoms, such as Isse's home of Somaliland.
But there is another possible future for Somalia. To see it, you must go to Bosaso, a port 300 miles east of Isse's cell.
Bosaso is an escape hatch from Somalia. Thousands of people swarm through the town's scruffy waterfront every year, seeking passage across the Gulf of Aden to the Middle East. Dressed in rags, they sleep by the hundreds in dirt alleys and empty lots. Stranded women and girls are forced into prostitution.
"You can see why we still need America's help," said Abdinur Jama, the coast guard commander for Puntland, the semiautonomous state encompassing Bosaso. "We need training and equipment to stop this."
Dapper in camouflage and a Yankees cap, Jama was a rarity in Somalia, an optimist. While Bosaso's teenagers shook their fists at high-flying U.S. jets on routine patrols—"Go to hell!" they chanted—Jama still spoke well of international engagement in Somalia.
On a morning when he offered to take visitors on a coast patrol, it did not seem kind to tell him what a U.S. military think tank at West Point had concluded about Somalia last year: that, in some respects, failed states were admirable places to combat Al Qaeda, because the absence of local sovereignty permitted "relatively unrestricted Western counterterrorism efforts."
After all, Jama's decrepit patrol boat was sinking.
A crew member scrambled to stanch a yard-high geyser of seawater that spurted through the cracked hull. Jama screwed his cap on tighter and peered professionally at land that, despite Washington's best-laid plans, has turned far more desperate than Afghanistan.
"Can you swim?" Jama asked. But it hardly seemed to matter. Back on dry land, in Somalia, an entire country was drowning.
11/24/08
'Nobody is Watching:' America's hidden war in Somalia
Paul Salopek
To glimpse America's secret war in Africa, you must bang with a rock on the iron gate of the prison in this remote port in northern Somalia. A sleepy guard will yank open a rusty deadbolt. Then, you ask to speak to an inmate named Mohamed Ali Isse.
Isse, 36, is a convicted murderer and jihadist. He is known among his fellow prisoners, with grudging awe, as "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg."
That "thing" is a stainless steel surgical pin screwed into his bullet-shattered femur, courtesy, he says, of the U.S. Navy. How it got there — or more to the point, how Isse ended up in this crumbling, stone-walled hellhole at the uttermost end of the Earth—is a story that the U.S. government probably would prefer to remain untold.
That's because Isse and his fancy surgery scars offer what little tangible evidence exists of a bare-knuckled war that has been waged silently, over the past five years, with the sole aim of preventing anarchic Somalia from becoming the world's next Afghanistan.
It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts. (The raids' success or failure is almost impossible to verify.)
It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and—according to Isse and civil rights activists—secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.
Mostly, though, it is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that Washington appears to be losing, if it hasn't already been lost.
"Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11," said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. "By any rational metric, what we've ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted."
What the Bush administration wanted, when it tacitly backed Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006, was clear enough: to help a close African ally in the war on terror crush the Islamic Courts Union, or ICU. The Taliban-like movement emerged from the ashes of more than 15 years of anarchy and lawlessness in Africa's most infamous failed state, Somalia.
At first, the invasion seemed an easy victory. By early 2007, the ICU had been routed, a pro-Western transitional government installed, and hundreds of Islamic militants in Somalia either captured or killed.
But over the last 18 months, Somalia's Islamists—now more radical than ever—have regrouped and roared back.
On a single day last month, they flexed their muscles by killing nearly 30 people in a spate of bloody car-bomb attacks that recalled the darkest days of Iraq. And their brutal militia, the Shabab or "Youth," today controls much of the destitute nation, a shattered but strategic country that overlooks the vital oil-shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden.
Even worse, in recent days Shabab's fighters have moved to within miles of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, threatening to topple the weak interim government supported by the U.S. and Ethiopia.
At the same time, according to the UN, the explosion of violence is inflaming what probably is the worst humanitarian tragedy in the world.
In the midst of a killing drought, more than 700,000 city dwellers have been driven out of bullet-scarred Mogadishu by the recent clashes between the Islamist rebels and the interim government.
The U.S. role in Somalia's current agonies has not always been clear. But back in the Berbera prison, Isse, who is both a villain and a victim in this immense panorama of suffering, offered a keyhole view that extended all the way back to Washington.
Wrapped in a faded sarong, scowling in the blistering-hot prison yard, the jihadist at first refused to meet foreign visitors—a loathed American in particular. But after some cajoling, he agreed to tell his story through a fellow inmate: a surreal but credible tale of illicit abduction by the CIA, secret helicopter rides and a journey through an African gulag that lifts the curtain, albeit only briefly, on an American invisible war.
"Your government gets away with a lot here," said the warden, Hassan Mohamed Ibrahim, striding about his antique facility with a pistol tucked in the back of his pants. "In Iraq, the world is watching. In Afghanistan, the world is watching. In Somalia, nobody is watching."
From ashes of 'Black Hawk Down'
In truth, merely watching in Mogadishu these days is apt to get you killed.
Somalia's hapless capital has long been considered the Dodge City of Africa—a seaside metropolis sundered by clan fighting ever since the nation's central government collapsed in 1991. That feral reputation was cemented in 1993, when chanting mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. Army Rangers through the streets in a disastrous UN peacekeeping mission chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
Yet if Mogadishu was once merely a perilous destination for outsiders, visiting today is suicidal.
For the first time in local memory, the airport—the city's frail lifeline to the world—is regularly closed by insurgent mortar attacks despite a small and jittery contingent of African Union peacekeepers.
Foreign workers who once toiled quietly for years in Somalia have been evacuated. A U.S. missile strike in May killed the Shabab commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, enraging Islamist militants who have since vowed to kidnap and kill any outsider found in the country.
The upshot: Most of Somalia today is closed to the world.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way when Washington provided intelligence to the invading Ethiopians two years ago.
The homegrown Islamic radicals who controlled most of central and southern Somalia in mid-2006 certainly were no angels. They shuttered Mogadishu's cinemas, demanded that Somali men grow beards and, according to the U.S. State Department, provided refuge to some 30 local and international jihadists associated with Al Qaeda.
But the Islamic Courts Union's turbaned militiamen had actually defeated Somalia's hated warlords. And their enforcement of Islamic religious laws, while unpopular among many Somalis, made Mogadishu safe to walk in for the first time in a generation.
"It's not just that people miss those days," said a Somali humanitarian worker who, for safety reasons, asked to be identified only as Hassan. "They resent the Ethiopians and Americans tearing it all up, using Somalia as their battlefield against global terrorism. It's like the Cold War all over again. Somalis aren't in control."
When the Islamic movement again strengthened, Isse, the terrorist jailed in Berbera, was a pharmacy owner from the isolated town of Buro in Somaliland, a parched northern enclave that declared independence from Somalia in the early 1990s.
Radicalized by U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is serving a life sentence for organizing the killings of four foreign aid workers in late 2003 and early 2004. Two of his victims were elderly British teachers.
A dour, bearded man with bullet scars puckering his neck and leg, Isse still maintains his innocence. Much of Isse's account of his capture and imprisonment was independently corroborated by Western intelligence analysts, Somali security officials and court records in Somaliland, where the wounded jihadist was tried and jailed for murdering the aid workers. Those sources say Isse was snatched by the U.S. after fleeing to the safe house of a notorious Islamist militant in Mogadishu.
How that operation unfolded on a hot June night in 2004 reveals the extent of American clandestine involvement in Somalia's chaotic affairs—and how such anti-terrorism efforts appear to have backfired.
Interrogation aboard ship
"I captured Isse for the Americans," said Mohamed Afrah Qanyare. "The Americans contracted us to do certain things, and we did them. Isse put up resistance so we shot him. But he survived."
A scar-faced warlord in a business suit, Qanyare is a member of Somalia's weak transitional government. Today he divides his days between lawless Mogadishu and luxury hotels in Nairobi.
But four years ago, his militia helped form the kernel of a CIA-created mercenary force called the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in Somalia. The unit cobbled together some of the world's most violent, wily and unreliable clan militias—including gangs that had attacked U.S. forces in the early 1990s—to confront a rising tide of Islamic militancy in Somalia's anarchic capital.
The Somalis on the CIA payroll engaged in a grim tit-for-tat exchange of kidnappings and assassinations with extremists. And Isse was one of their catches.
He was wounded in a CIA-ordered raid on his Mogadishu safe house in June 2004, according to Qanyare and Matt Bryden, one of the world's leading scholars of the Somali insurgency who has access to intelligence regarding it. They say Isse was then loaded aboard a U.S. military helicopter summoned by satellite phone and was flown, bleeding, to an offshore U.S. vessel.
"He saw white people in uniforms working on his body," said Isse's Somali defense lawyer, Bashir Hussein Abdi, describing how Isse was rushed into a ship-board operating room. "He felt the ship moving. He thought he was dreaming."
Navy doctors spliced a steel rod into Isse's bullet-shattered leg, according to Abdi. Every day for about a month afterward, Isse's court depositions assert, plainclothes U.S. agents grilled the bedridden Somali at sea about Al Qaeda's presence.
The CIA never has publicly acknowledged its operations in Somalia. Agency spokesman George Little declined to comment on Isse's case.
For years, human-rights organizations attempted to expose the rumored detention and interrogation of terror suspects aboard U.S. warships to avoid media and legal scrutiny. In June, the British civil rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as "floating prisons" since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Calling such claims "misleading," the Pentagon has insisted that U.S. ships have served only as transit stops for terror suspects being shuttled to permanent detention camps such as the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But Tribune reporting on Isse indicates strongly that a U.S. warship was used for interrogation at least once off the lawless coast of Somalia.
The U.S. Navy conceded Isse had stayed aboard one of its vessels. In a terse statement, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden, said only that the Navy was "not able to confirm dates" of Isse's imprisonment.
For reasons that remain unclear, he was later flown to Camp Lemonier, a U.S. military base in the African state of Djibouti, Somali intelligence sources say, and from there to a clandestine prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Isse and his lawyer allege he was detained there for six weeks and tortured by Ethiopian military intelligence with electric shocks.
Ethiopia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and office of prime minister did not respond to queries about Isse's allegations.
However, security officials in neighboring Somaliland did confirm that they collected Isse from the Ethiopian police at a dusty border crossing in late 2004. "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg" was interrogated again. After a local trial, he was locked in the ancient Berbera prison.
"It doesn't matter if he is guilty or innocent," said Abdi, the defense lawyer. "Countries like Ethiopia and America use terrorism to justify this treatment. This is not justice. It is a crime in itself."
Tales of CIA "snatch and grab" operations against terror suspects abroad aren't new, of course. President George W. Bush finally confirmed two years ago the existence of an international program that "renditioned" terrorism suspects to a network of "black site" prisons in Eastern Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for the CIA's anti-terror mercenaries in Mogadishu, they may have kidnapped a dozen or more wanted Islamists for the Americans, intelligence experts say. But their excesses ended up swelling the ranks of their enemy, the Islamic Courts Union militias.
"It was a stupid idea," said Bryden, the security analyst who has written extensively on Somalia's Islamist insurgency. "It actually strengthened the hand of the Islamists and helped trigger the crisis we're in today."
In the sweltering Berbera prison, Exhibit A in Washington's phantom war in Somalia had finished his afternoon prayers. He clapped his sandals together, then limped off to his cell without a word.
A sinking nation
The future of Somalia and its 8 million people is totally unscripted. This unbearable lack of certainty, of a way forward, accommodates little hope.
Ethiopian and U.S. actions have eroded Somalis' hidebound allegiance to their clans, once a firewall against Al Qaeda's global ideology, says Bryden. Somalia's 2 million-strong diaspora is of greatest concern. Angry young men, foreign passports in hand, could be lured back to the reopened Shabab training camps, where instructors occasionally use photocopied portraits of Bush as rifle targets.
Some envision no Somalia at all.
With about $8 billion in humanitarian aid fire-hosed into the smoking ruins of Somalia since the early 1990s—the U.S. will donate roughly $200 million this year alone—a growing chorus of policymakers is advocating that the failed state be allowed to fail, to break up into autonomous zones or fiefdoms, such as Isse's home of Somaliland.
But there is another possible future for Somalia. To see it, you must go to Bosaso, a port 300 miles east of Isse's cell.
Bosaso is an escape hatch from Somalia. Thousands of people swarm through the town's scruffy waterfront every year, seeking passage across the Gulf of Aden to the Middle East. Dressed in rags, they sleep by the hundreds in dirt alleys and empty lots. Stranded women and girls are forced into prostitution.
"You can see why we still need America's help," said Abdinur Jama, the coast guard commander for Puntland, the semiautonomous state encompassing Bosaso. "We need training and equipment to stop this."
Dapper in camouflage and a Yankees cap, Jama was a rarity in Somalia, an optimist. While Bosaso's teenagers shook their fists at high-flying U.S. jets on routine patrols—"Go to hell!" they chanted—Jama still spoke well of international engagement in Somalia.
On a morning when he offered to take visitors on a coast patrol, it did not seem kind to tell him what a U.S. military think tank at West Point had concluded about Somalia last year: that, in some respects, failed states were admirable places to combat Al Qaeda, because the absence of local sovereignty permitted "relatively unrestricted Western counterterrorism efforts."
After all, Jama's decrepit patrol boat was sinking.
A crew member scrambled to stanch a yard-high geyser of seawater that spurted through the cracked hull. Jama screwed his cap on tighter and peered professionally at land that, despite Washington's best-laid plans, has turned far more desperate than Afghanistan.
"Can you swim?" Jama asked. But it hardly seemed to matter. Back on dry land, in Somalia, an entire country was drowning.
Who are Somalia's pirates?
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
11/24/08
Who are Somalia's pirates?
A Monitor Q&A reveals who's behind the modern-day pirates, how they got so good at taking ships, and what's being done to stop them.
Scott Baldauf
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - – Today's pirates are mainly fighters for Somalia's many warlord factions, who have fought each other for control of the country since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991.
Their motives? A mixture of entrepreneurialism and survival, says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called.
"From the evidence so far, these primarily appear to be fighters looking for predatory opportunities," says Mr. Jhazbhay. They operated "roadblocks in the past, which were fleecing people as a form of taxation. Now they've seen the opportunities on the high seas."
Initially, one of the main motives for taking to the seas – working first with local fishermen, and later buying boats and weapons with the proceeds of every ship they captured – was "pure survival," says Jhazbhay, explaining that armed extortion is one of the few opportunities to make a living in lawless Somalia.
"It's spiked more recently because of a spike in food prices," he says.
Now it has become a highly profitable, sophisticated criminal enterprise hauling in millions of dollars in ransom payments.
Whom do they work for?
The pirates mainly work for themselves.
Much of the piracy seems to be based out of the Puntland, a semiautonomous region on the northern shore of Somalia that broke away from Somalia soon after 1991.
Thousands of pirates now operate off Somalia's coast, although there are no accurate numbers on precisely how many there are.
United Nations monitoring reports on arms smuggling in the Horn of Africa have pointed to evidence that pirate gangs have established relations with corrupt officials of the Puntland government. They bribe port officials to allow the pirates to use Eyl and other ports as their bases of operation, and to bring some of their captured ships in for safekeeping while the pirates negotiate ransoms with the ships' owners.
There is also evidence that expatriate Somalis living in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Persian Gulf may be feeding information to the pirates about ships that have docked in those regions and may be heading toward the Gulf of Aden and other pirate-infested areas.
Who benefits from this piracy?
The money seems to be distributed by warlords to their families and friends, and then further outward toward their fellow clan-members, says Jhazbhay.
There have been charges recently that local Islamist groups may be linked to the pirate gangs, and may have begun to use piracy as a source of funds to buy weapons.
Certainly, Islamist groups such as Al Shabab – an insurgent group formed after the Islamic Courts Union lost control of the country last year in the wake of a US-backed invasion by Somalia's neighbor, Ethiopia – have used pirate gangs to smuggle weapons into Somalia, which is currently under international weapons sanctions. But the evidence is thin, as yet, that Islamist groups are using piracy on the high seas as a funding mechanism.
"The last thing the Islamists want to do is give an unnecessary provocation to the major powers, who might come after them in a big way," says Richard Cornwell, a senior analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane. "What experience tells us is that if the Islamists did take control of Somalia, piracy would stop overnight. They don't want warlords gaining arms and money outside of their control."
Is there an Al Qaeda connection?
While the CIA's chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, suggested recently that Al Qaeda was beginning to expand its reach in the Horn of Africa, and possibly reaching out to radical local Islamist parties such as Al Shabab in Somalia, there appears to be little evidence of a connection between international Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda and piracy.
"There may be some loose elements among the Islamist groups that have tie-ups with the pirates, because the movement is fractured into six or seven different groups, and each may have its own problems getting funding," says Jhazbhay.
How did they get so good at taking ships?
Practice, practice, practice.
More than 90 ships have been attacked off the coast of Somalia this year. Seventeen ships remain in the hands of Somali pirates. The Saudi owners of the Sirius Star, the oil tanker taken Nov. 15, are reportedly in contact with the pirates, possibly to negotiate the release of the ship, its crew, and the estimated $110 million cargo of crude oil.
"What staggered the mind is that this capture was 400 nautical miles out to sea," says Mr. Cornwell. "That's far deeper water than anything we've seen before. But with a GPS they can hijack to order." Using a mother ship – often an old Russian trawler – to prowl deeper waters for their target, they can offload smaller boats to move in close and overtake the ship, and climb up with hooks and ladders, and submachine guns.
"With a fully laden tanker ship, you have a fairly low free board, so it is easy to get up on board from smaller boats," says Cornwell. "Tankers are an obvious target of opportunity."
How will it affect security and trade?
Somalia is under international weapons sanctions, and warlord groups continue to fight both against the Ethiopian peacekeeping mission and against each other. But an influx of money is likely to mean a further influx of weapons to an already wartorn land.
"Regionally, I think the major problem is that piracy has given some groups the chance to lay their hands on money," says Jhazbhay. "There may be $30 million in ransom money received in recent years. Once they [the various armed groups] get that kind of money, they can buy a ground-to-air missile. Getting [a hold of] arms can affect the struggle for freedom in Somalia, and that affects the whole region."
What's being done to stop them?
Currently, the NATO alliance, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and a host of other countries have ships patrolling the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden – an area of approximately 1.1 million square miles – to prevent piracy.
On Nov. 18, an Indian warship sank a suspected pirate mother ship off the coast of Yemen, after the pirates fired on them.
But given the size of the territory, and the amount of shipping traffic that flows past Somalia from the Suez Canal, naval patrolling cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels.
"Unless you have a warship in the immediate area, and, crucially, with a helicopter, you've got no chance of stopping them," says Cornwell.
While individual ships can protect themselves with everything from barbed wire around the ship itself to high-pressure hoses, coalition forces can also do more to track and neutralize suspected pirate mother ships. "I can't see why more work isn't being done with satellites to find the mother ships," says Cornwell.
Egypt hosted a Nov. 20 emergency meeting with Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Jordan to try to forge a joint strategy against piracy, which threatens a crucial international trade route through the Suez Canal in the Red Sea – Egypt's key source of revenue.
11/24/08
Who are Somalia's pirates?
A Monitor Q&A reveals who's behind the modern-day pirates, how they got so good at taking ships, and what's being done to stop them.
Scott Baldauf
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - – Today's pirates are mainly fighters for Somalia's many warlord factions, who have fought each other for control of the country since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991.
Their motives? A mixture of entrepreneurialism and survival, says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called.
"From the evidence so far, these primarily appear to be fighters looking for predatory opportunities," says Mr. Jhazbhay. They operated "roadblocks in the past, which were fleecing people as a form of taxation. Now they've seen the opportunities on the high seas."
Initially, one of the main motives for taking to the seas – working first with local fishermen, and later buying boats and weapons with the proceeds of every ship they captured – was "pure survival," says Jhazbhay, explaining that armed extortion is one of the few opportunities to make a living in lawless Somalia.
"It's spiked more recently because of a spike in food prices," he says.
Now it has become a highly profitable, sophisticated criminal enterprise hauling in millions of dollars in ransom payments.
Whom do they work for?
The pirates mainly work for themselves.
Much of the piracy seems to be based out of the Puntland, a semiautonomous region on the northern shore of Somalia that broke away from Somalia soon after 1991.
Thousands of pirates now operate off Somalia's coast, although there are no accurate numbers on precisely how many there are.
United Nations monitoring reports on arms smuggling in the Horn of Africa have pointed to evidence that pirate gangs have established relations with corrupt officials of the Puntland government. They bribe port officials to allow the pirates to use Eyl and other ports as their bases of operation, and to bring some of their captured ships in for safekeeping while the pirates negotiate ransoms with the ships' owners.
There is also evidence that expatriate Somalis living in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Persian Gulf may be feeding information to the pirates about ships that have docked in those regions and may be heading toward the Gulf of Aden and other pirate-infested areas.
Who benefits from this piracy?
The money seems to be distributed by warlords to their families and friends, and then further outward toward their fellow clan-members, says Jhazbhay.
There have been charges recently that local Islamist groups may be linked to the pirate gangs, and may have begun to use piracy as a source of funds to buy weapons.
Certainly, Islamist groups such as Al Shabab – an insurgent group formed after the Islamic Courts Union lost control of the country last year in the wake of a US-backed invasion by Somalia's neighbor, Ethiopia – have used pirate gangs to smuggle weapons into Somalia, which is currently under international weapons sanctions. But the evidence is thin, as yet, that Islamist groups are using piracy on the high seas as a funding mechanism.
"The last thing the Islamists want to do is give an unnecessary provocation to the major powers, who might come after them in a big way," says Richard Cornwell, a senior analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane. "What experience tells us is that if the Islamists did take control of Somalia, piracy would stop overnight. They don't want warlords gaining arms and money outside of their control."
Is there an Al Qaeda connection?
While the CIA's chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, suggested recently that Al Qaeda was beginning to expand its reach in the Horn of Africa, and possibly reaching out to radical local Islamist parties such as Al Shabab in Somalia, there appears to be little evidence of a connection between international Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda and piracy.
"There may be some loose elements among the Islamist groups that have tie-ups with the pirates, because the movement is fractured into six or seven different groups, and each may have its own problems getting funding," says Jhazbhay.
How did they get so good at taking ships?
Practice, practice, practice.
More than 90 ships have been attacked off the coast of Somalia this year. Seventeen ships remain in the hands of Somali pirates. The Saudi owners of the Sirius Star, the oil tanker taken Nov. 15, are reportedly in contact with the pirates, possibly to negotiate the release of the ship, its crew, and the estimated $110 million cargo of crude oil.
"What staggered the mind is that this capture was 400 nautical miles out to sea," says Mr. Cornwell. "That's far deeper water than anything we've seen before. But with a GPS they can hijack to order." Using a mother ship – often an old Russian trawler – to prowl deeper waters for their target, they can offload smaller boats to move in close and overtake the ship, and climb up with hooks and ladders, and submachine guns.
"With a fully laden tanker ship, you have a fairly low free board, so it is easy to get up on board from smaller boats," says Cornwell. "Tankers are an obvious target of opportunity."
How will it affect security and trade?
Somalia is under international weapons sanctions, and warlord groups continue to fight both against the Ethiopian peacekeeping mission and against each other. But an influx of money is likely to mean a further influx of weapons to an already wartorn land.
"Regionally, I think the major problem is that piracy has given some groups the chance to lay their hands on money," says Jhazbhay. "There may be $30 million in ransom money received in recent years. Once they [the various armed groups] get that kind of money, they can buy a ground-to-air missile. Getting [a hold of] arms can affect the struggle for freedom in Somalia, and that affects the whole region."
What's being done to stop them?
Currently, the NATO alliance, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and a host of other countries have ships patrolling the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden – an area of approximately 1.1 million square miles – to prevent piracy.
On Nov. 18, an Indian warship sank a suspected pirate mother ship off the coast of Yemen, after the pirates fired on them.
But given the size of the territory, and the amount of shipping traffic that flows past Somalia from the Suez Canal, naval patrolling cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels.
"Unless you have a warship in the immediate area, and, crucially, with a helicopter, you've got no chance of stopping them," says Cornwell.
While individual ships can protect themselves with everything from barbed wire around the ship itself to high-pressure hoses, coalition forces can also do more to track and neutralize suspected pirate mother ships. "I can't see why more work isn't being done with satellites to find the mother ships," says Cornwell.
Egypt hosted a Nov. 20 emergency meeting with Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Jordan to try to forge a joint strategy against piracy, which threatens a crucial international trade route through the Suez Canal in the Red Sea – Egypt's key source of revenue.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
2025 Global Trends Final Report text
For those who have yet to see it, the full 120-page unclassified text of the National Intelligence Council's 2025 Global Trends report may be viewed or downloaded at http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf
Eyes Wide Shut by Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery
22.11.08
Eyes Wide Shut
THE DAY before yesterday, two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz: a giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the results of a public opinion poll.
The proximity was accidental, but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim countries which have endorsed the offer.
The public opinion poll predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes every single word of the Saudi proposal.
THE PLO ad is a first of its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people directly.
The ad discloses to the Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full normalization of relations - in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The refugee problem would be solved by mutual agreement – meaning that Israel could veto any solution it considered unacceptable.
I have said it before: if this offer had been made on June 4, 1967, the day before the Six Day War, Israelis would have felt as if the Messiah had arrived. But when it was published in 2002, many Israelis saw it as a cunning Arab ploy to rob Israel of the fruits of its 1967 victory.
The Israeli government has never officially reacted to this historic offer. Public opinion and the media ignored it almost completely, walled in by the national consensus that there is no chance for peace.
Recently, the old offer woke up to new life. Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak discovered it suddenly, as if they had found a treasure in a hidden cave. Tzipi Livni discovered that it has some interesting points. That is the background to the blessed initiative of Saeb Erekat's "PLO Negotiation Department" to publish the ad.
Israeli public reaction: nil.
THE PUBLIC opinion poll, on the other hand, made a deep impression. It cast its shadow over the entire political arena.
True, there are still 80 days to go before election day, and in Israel 80 days is a very, very long time. Moreover, unlike American polls, Israeli polls conducted for the media are notoriously unreliable. Nonetheless, the poll caused a shock.
It says that if the elections were held this week, the Likud would have 34 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, three times more than it has now, and become the largest faction. Kadima would get only 28 seats, one less than in the present Knesset. (Explanation: Kadima would lose many voters, who would return to Likud, but gain almost the same number from Labor.) The Labor party would come down to 10 seats, half of their present miserable number. Shas would get the same number, as would the ultra-right Liberman. Meretz would rise from 5 to 7. (In Yediot Aharonot's competing poll, Likud got 32, Kadima 26 and Labor 8.)
THE DAZZLING ascent of Likud is an ominous phenomenon by itself, but even more important is the general picture: the bloc of all the parties that support peace, whether by paying lip service or sincerely (called "the Left") will have, according to the polls, 56 seats at most, as against the 64 seats of all the anti-peace parties combined (called "the Right").
Meaning: if the election had taken place this week, the outcome would have been a Knesset devoted to the continuation of the occupation, the settlements and the annexation. Binyamin Netanyahu would be Prime Minister and would be able to choose freely between a dozen possible compositions of the next government coalition.
How did Netanyahu achieve such a status? After all, 10 years ago he was shamefully thrown out of the Prime Minister's office by a public that had decided that they could not stand him for one more day. No other previous prime minister has attracted so much opposition, disgust and even loathing.
For several months now Netanyahu has been behaving like a model pupil. He kept silent when it was right to keep silent. He acted in a statesman-like manner. And then, like a magician at a children's birthday party, he pulled one rabbit after another from his top hat. Every few days another personality joined Likud with much fanfare, in a well controlled selection and dosage: Binyamin Begin, a man of the extreme right and Dan Meridor, of the moderate right, Assaf Hefetz, former police chief and Moshe ("Bogi") Yaalon, former army chief, and more and more. Big and small stars, who gave the impression that Likud is now regarded by everybody as the coming governing party. A multicolored party, a party of renewal, headed by an experienced and responsible leader. A party in which there are many shades of opinion, but which is united by a platform that says no to withdrawal, no to a Palestinian state, no to any compromise on Jerusalem, no to any meaningful peace negotiation. And, of course: no to the Arab peace offer.
Is there a yes? I almost forgot: Netanyahu proposes an "economic peace" – to ameliorate the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank, so that some day in the future, before or after the coming of the Messiah, Israel could perhaps reach an accommodation – and perhaps not. But economic amelioration under an occupation regime is, of course, an oxymoron. Occupation arouses resistance, resistance arouses repression, repression means economic punishment. Nobody is going to invest money in an occupied territory.
If Netanyahu is elected, we must expect four years in which we shall not only not advance toward peace by one single inch, but, on the contrary, the ongoing thrust of the settlement enterprise will push peace ever further away.
THE FLIGHT of Tzipi Livni, on the other hand, is not gaining any height. That is another clear conclusion of the polls.
She has had a few months of grace. When the whole country was mesmerized by the corruption affairs of Ehud Olmert, Livni looked, in comparison, like a shining white dove. An ideal candidate: also a woman, also honest, also speaking the language of ordinary human beings, also one who believes what she says.
But after Olmert's resignation, corruption disappeared as a central theme of the elections. So what does Tzipi have to offer?
She has no overpowering charisma. She is no orator (and that is perhaps to the good). She does not excite. She does not appeal to the emotions. She does not touch the heart of people. She is compelled to rely on rational arguments.
But what is her rationale? She is a great believer in "peace negotiations". But "peace negotiations", like the "political process", can easily become a substitute for peace itself.
Livni does not offer an exciting peace message. She does not draw up a peace proposal of her own. She is "diplomatic" and keeps her cards close to her chest. No clear solution for Jerusalem (Don't even mention it! It may provide ammunition for Bibi!), nor for the refugee problem (God forbid!). She has promised the No. 2 spot on her list to Shaul Mofaz, who could easily find his place between Bibi, Begin and Bogi. This is not the way to change the hearts of the hundreds of thousands of indifferent and/or tired citizens, who believe that "there is no partner for peace". Neither are there any new acquisitions: no new personalities are joining Kadima. There is no sense of an approaching victory. The chances don't look good.
THE SITUATION of the Labor party is even worse. Much worse. The polls give Labor 10 seats at most, perhaps only 8. The party that in its former incarnations kept absolute control over the Yishuv and the new state for 44 consecutive years may shrivel in the next Knesset to the status of fifth largest faction (after Likud, Kadima, Shas and Liberman.)
No wonder. Like an aging strip-teaser, the party has dropped all its garments. It has embraced "swinish capitalism" (a Peres coinage) like the other parties. As far as peace is concerned, it limps behind Kadima, and sometimes even tries to outflank Likud on the right. It seems that its real platform is down to one single clause: Ehud Barak must remain Minister of Defense under whoever will be the next Prime Minister, Netanyahu or Livni.
It is not an attractive sight: not only the rats are leaving the sinking ship, but also the admiral himself: Ami Ayalon, former commander of the Israeli navy, announced this week that he is leaving the party. The incumbent 19 Knesset members are squaring up for a fight to the death over the few remaining "real" seats, competing with each other and with the handful of new joiners (including the director of "Peace Now", Yariv Oppenheimer, and the journalist Daniel Ben-Simon).
Ehud Barak is a walking disaster. But he cannot be removed from the leadership of Labor before the elections. The party is crawling towards its rout with eyes wide shut.
SEVERAL MEN OF LETTERS, professors and political consultants, some of them refugees from Labor, have done something: they got together and announced that they would ally themselves to Meretz, in order to create a kind of super-Meretz.
They did raise an echo, but the recent polls still give the reinforced Meretz no more than 7 seats (compared to the present 5). Not quite a revolution.
Why? The initiators are well known. They are members of the Ashkenazi elite, like all of Meretz. The public got the impression that instead of the past and far-past leaders who have left the Meretz leadership one after another (Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin, Ran Cohen, all of them with positive credentials), other people are coming in, good people but not really different, with the same good but failed slogans. They have no new message for the new generation, for the Oriental Jews, for the Arab citizens, for Russian immigrants, for the secular people who want to fight against religious encroachment.
The active peace groups, with their young and enthusiastic members, were not invited, so as not to give the party a "radical" look. In the best case, the renewed party might take a few seats from Labor. As far as the general picture is concerned, that would be quite unimportant, since only changes in the balance between the two large blocs have any real effect. Many new voters must be mobilized.
There is a place for a new Left party, with a new name, a new spirit and a message of hope, that will do an Obama: arouse the masses of the young generation, infect them with enthusiasm, promise real change.
Such an experiment was conducted just now in the Tel-Aviv municipal elections with astonishing results. A new election list appeared out of nowhere, the young generation of Tel-Avivians joined it with gusto. It attracted the new voters, as well as voters who are disgusted with all politicians, people with a green agenda, people with a social conscience, gays and lesbians, and many others. Hundreds volunteered for it, their candidate attracted a third of the votes against a popular incumbent mayor.
Meaning: yes, it is possible. But it will not happen this time.
BARACK OBAMA will enter the Oval Office twenty days before the Israeli elections. He has still got a chance to have a decisive impact on the outcome. Nobody in Israel wants to quarrel with the United States.
If the new President announces immediately after taking office that he is determined to achieve peace between Israel and the Arabs in the spirit of the Saudi peace initiative, before the end of 2009, this will influence many voters.
If Netanyahu is elected, President Obama will be faced with a dilemma: either to enter into a serious conflict with the Government of Israel, with all the American domestic implications, or to leave peace in the freezer, like his predecessors.
The American elections were important for Israel. The Israeli elections will be important for America, too.
22.11.08
Eyes Wide Shut
THE DAY before yesterday, two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz: a giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the results of a public opinion poll.
The proximity was accidental, but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim countries which have endorsed the offer.
The public opinion poll predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes every single word of the Saudi proposal.
THE PLO ad is a first of its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people directly.
The ad discloses to the Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full normalization of relations - in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The refugee problem would be solved by mutual agreement – meaning that Israel could veto any solution it considered unacceptable.
I have said it before: if this offer had been made on June 4, 1967, the day before the Six Day War, Israelis would have felt as if the Messiah had arrived. But when it was published in 2002, many Israelis saw it as a cunning Arab ploy to rob Israel of the fruits of its 1967 victory.
The Israeli government has never officially reacted to this historic offer. Public opinion and the media ignored it almost completely, walled in by the national consensus that there is no chance for peace.
Recently, the old offer woke up to new life. Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak discovered it suddenly, as if they had found a treasure in a hidden cave. Tzipi Livni discovered that it has some interesting points. That is the background to the blessed initiative of Saeb Erekat's "PLO Negotiation Department" to publish the ad.
Israeli public reaction: nil.
THE PUBLIC opinion poll, on the other hand, made a deep impression. It cast its shadow over the entire political arena.
True, there are still 80 days to go before election day, and in Israel 80 days is a very, very long time. Moreover, unlike American polls, Israeli polls conducted for the media are notoriously unreliable. Nonetheless, the poll caused a shock.
It says that if the elections were held this week, the Likud would have 34 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, three times more than it has now, and become the largest faction. Kadima would get only 28 seats, one less than in the present Knesset. (Explanation: Kadima would lose many voters, who would return to Likud, but gain almost the same number from Labor.) The Labor party would come down to 10 seats, half of their present miserable number. Shas would get the same number, as would the ultra-right Liberman. Meretz would rise from 5 to 7. (In Yediot Aharonot's competing poll, Likud got 32, Kadima 26 and Labor 8.)
THE DAZZLING ascent of Likud is an ominous phenomenon by itself, but even more important is the general picture: the bloc of all the parties that support peace, whether by paying lip service or sincerely (called "the Left") will have, according to the polls, 56 seats at most, as against the 64 seats of all the anti-peace parties combined (called "the Right").
Meaning: if the election had taken place this week, the outcome would have been a Knesset devoted to the continuation of the occupation, the settlements and the annexation. Binyamin Netanyahu would be Prime Minister and would be able to choose freely between a dozen possible compositions of the next government coalition.
How did Netanyahu achieve such a status? After all, 10 years ago he was shamefully thrown out of the Prime Minister's office by a public that had decided that they could not stand him for one more day. No other previous prime minister has attracted so much opposition, disgust and even loathing.
For several months now Netanyahu has been behaving like a model pupil. He kept silent when it was right to keep silent. He acted in a statesman-like manner. And then, like a magician at a children's birthday party, he pulled one rabbit after another from his top hat. Every few days another personality joined Likud with much fanfare, in a well controlled selection and dosage: Binyamin Begin, a man of the extreme right and Dan Meridor, of the moderate right, Assaf Hefetz, former police chief and Moshe ("Bogi") Yaalon, former army chief, and more and more. Big and small stars, who gave the impression that Likud is now regarded by everybody as the coming governing party. A multicolored party, a party of renewal, headed by an experienced and responsible leader. A party in which there are many shades of opinion, but which is united by a platform that says no to withdrawal, no to a Palestinian state, no to any compromise on Jerusalem, no to any meaningful peace negotiation. And, of course: no to the Arab peace offer.
Is there a yes? I almost forgot: Netanyahu proposes an "economic peace" – to ameliorate the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank, so that some day in the future, before or after the coming of the Messiah, Israel could perhaps reach an accommodation – and perhaps not. But economic amelioration under an occupation regime is, of course, an oxymoron. Occupation arouses resistance, resistance arouses repression, repression means economic punishment. Nobody is going to invest money in an occupied territory.
If Netanyahu is elected, we must expect four years in which we shall not only not advance toward peace by one single inch, but, on the contrary, the ongoing thrust of the settlement enterprise will push peace ever further away.
THE FLIGHT of Tzipi Livni, on the other hand, is not gaining any height. That is another clear conclusion of the polls.
She has had a few months of grace. When the whole country was mesmerized by the corruption affairs of Ehud Olmert, Livni looked, in comparison, like a shining white dove. An ideal candidate: also a woman, also honest, also speaking the language of ordinary human beings, also one who believes what she says.
But after Olmert's resignation, corruption disappeared as a central theme of the elections. So what does Tzipi have to offer?
She has no overpowering charisma. She is no orator (and that is perhaps to the good). She does not excite. She does not appeal to the emotions. She does not touch the heart of people. She is compelled to rely on rational arguments.
But what is her rationale? She is a great believer in "peace negotiations". But "peace negotiations", like the "political process", can easily become a substitute for peace itself.
Livni does not offer an exciting peace message. She does not draw up a peace proposal of her own. She is "diplomatic" and keeps her cards close to her chest. No clear solution for Jerusalem (Don't even mention it! It may provide ammunition for Bibi!), nor for the refugee problem (God forbid!). She has promised the No. 2 spot on her list to Shaul Mofaz, who could easily find his place between Bibi, Begin and Bogi. This is not the way to change the hearts of the hundreds of thousands of indifferent and/or tired citizens, who believe that "there is no partner for peace". Neither are there any new acquisitions: no new personalities are joining Kadima. There is no sense of an approaching victory. The chances don't look good.
THE SITUATION of the Labor party is even worse. Much worse. The polls give Labor 10 seats at most, perhaps only 8. The party that in its former incarnations kept absolute control over the Yishuv and the new state for 44 consecutive years may shrivel in the next Knesset to the status of fifth largest faction (after Likud, Kadima, Shas and Liberman.)
No wonder. Like an aging strip-teaser, the party has dropped all its garments. It has embraced "swinish capitalism" (a Peres coinage) like the other parties. As far as peace is concerned, it limps behind Kadima, and sometimes even tries to outflank Likud on the right. It seems that its real platform is down to one single clause: Ehud Barak must remain Minister of Defense under whoever will be the next Prime Minister, Netanyahu or Livni.
It is not an attractive sight: not only the rats are leaving the sinking ship, but also the admiral himself: Ami Ayalon, former commander of the Israeli navy, announced this week that he is leaving the party. The incumbent 19 Knesset members are squaring up for a fight to the death over the few remaining "real" seats, competing with each other and with the handful of new joiners (including the director of "Peace Now", Yariv Oppenheimer, and the journalist Daniel Ben-Simon).
Ehud Barak is a walking disaster. But he cannot be removed from the leadership of Labor before the elections. The party is crawling towards its rout with eyes wide shut.
SEVERAL MEN OF LETTERS, professors and political consultants, some of them refugees from Labor, have done something: they got together and announced that they would ally themselves to Meretz, in order to create a kind of super-Meretz.
They did raise an echo, but the recent polls still give the reinforced Meretz no more than 7 seats (compared to the present 5). Not quite a revolution.
Why? The initiators are well known. They are members of the Ashkenazi elite, like all of Meretz. The public got the impression that instead of the past and far-past leaders who have left the Meretz leadership one after another (Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin, Ran Cohen, all of them with positive credentials), other people are coming in, good people but not really different, with the same good but failed slogans. They have no new message for the new generation, for the Oriental Jews, for the Arab citizens, for Russian immigrants, for the secular people who want to fight against religious encroachment.
The active peace groups, with their young and enthusiastic members, were not invited, so as not to give the party a "radical" look. In the best case, the renewed party might take a few seats from Labor. As far as the general picture is concerned, that would be quite unimportant, since only changes in the balance between the two large blocs have any real effect. Many new voters must be mobilized.
There is a place for a new Left party, with a new name, a new spirit and a message of hope, that will do an Obama: arouse the masses of the young generation, infect them with enthusiasm, promise real change.
Such an experiment was conducted just now in the Tel-Aviv municipal elections with astonishing results. A new election list appeared out of nowhere, the young generation of Tel-Avivians joined it with gusto. It attracted the new voters, as well as voters who are disgusted with all politicians, people with a green agenda, people with a social conscience, gays and lesbians, and many others. Hundreds volunteered for it, their candidate attracted a third of the votes against a popular incumbent mayor.
Meaning: yes, it is possible. But it will not happen this time.
BARACK OBAMA will enter the Oval Office twenty days before the Israeli elections. He has still got a chance to have a decisive impact on the outcome. Nobody in Israel wants to quarrel with the United States.
If the new President announces immediately after taking office that he is determined to achieve peace between Israel and the Arabs in the spirit of the Saudi peace initiative, before the end of 2009, this will influence many voters.
If Netanyahu is elected, President Obama will be faced with a dilemma: either to enter into a serious conflict with the Government of Israel, with all the American domestic implications, or to leave peace in the freezer, like his predecessors.
The American elections were important for Israel. The Israeli elections will be important for America, too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)