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| Iraq + war on terrorism + Middle East conflict + critical perspectives |
 Battle for Baghdad 'has already started'By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, March 25, 2006 The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest. "The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun. Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines. [complete article]  Iraq is the 51st stateBy Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, March 22, 2006 Amid all the Bush dissembling that marked the third anniversary of his Iraq invasion, it might be easy to forget that we got into this mess because the Democrats and the media were not prepared to challenge the Big Lie used to justify it. It was plain as daylight even four years ago that Iraq was absolutely no threat to the U.S. or to anyone else in the region, for that matter. (Today, too much of the media still seems to let Bush get away with claiming that the intelligence services of the world shared his assessment of the Iraqi threat: That, quite frankly, is a cow pat -- yes, the intelligence services of the world may have had a similar assessment to that of the U.S. about what Iraq had in its arsenal. And on that basis, they deduced that Iraq was no threat, as did U.S. intelligence until the Duckhunter and the neocons began to lean on them to change the conclusions they were drawing from the same facts.) Still, Bush seems to get very little by way of skeptical questioning when he offers a new palliative to suit the new situation: Even as he makes absolutely clear that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq after his presidency, he offers the seductive promise that "progress" is being made because Iraqi security forces are being deployed to replace their U.S. counterparts, which supposedly will allow them to leave. Now, if in social situations, we judge people not by what they say about themselves but by their behavior, then surely we should apply the same standard in the realm of politics? Although this idea of Iraqi forces deployment allowing U.S. forces to leave has been reported for months, there have been no signs in the behavior of U.S. forces in Iraq that the way is being prepared for a departure of its forces for the foreseeable future. [complete article] Russians helped Iraq, study saysBy Ann Scott Tyson and Josh White, Washington Post, March 25, 2006 Russian officials collected intelligence on U.S. troop movements and attack plans from inside the American military command leading the 2003 invasion of Iraq and passed that information to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to a U.S. military study released yesterday. The intelligence reports, which the study said were provided to Hussein through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad at the height of the U.S. assault, warned accurately that American formations intended to bypass Iraqi cities on their thrust toward Baghdad. The reports provided some specific numbers on U.S. troops, units and locations, according to Iraqi documents dated March and April 2003 and later captured by the United States. [complete article] U.S. avoids embarrassing its favorite dictatorBy Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, March 25, 2006 The Bush administration has withdrawn an invitation to a Pakistani lawmaker and a prominent critic of President Pervez Musharraf who was to arrive in the United States today as a guest of the State Department, setting off charges that the action came at the behest of the Pakistani government. Sana Ullah Baloch, who had been invited by the State Department last year and issued a visa, was told recently by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad that he could not attend a State Department-sponsored program on accountability in government and business and that a visa he had already received had been revoked. American officials first told Baloch in a letter sent March 13 that they had taken the action because of "a recent withdrawal in funding which made it necessary for us to scale back the program." In an interview Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said the problem was not funding but rather new information that was received after Baloch had been approved that "led us to believe he was not eligible for a visa." She declined to elaborate. The incident has drawn sharp parallels with the case of Mukhtar Mai, a woman gang-raped in 2002 by a village council in Pakistan, who was prevented by the Pakistani government from traveling to the United States last summer to publicize her story. The government later relented. [complete article] Iran's nuclear steps quicken, diplomats sayBy Alissa J. Rubin and Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2006 With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the program. If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years, the diplomats said. Iran insists that it is interested only in producing electricity, which requires low-grade enrichment of uranium. [complete article] Disgraced defense contractor planned to promote democracy in IranBy Warren P. Strobel, Knight Ridder, March 24, 2006 In a new example of disgraced defense contractor Mitchell Wade's attempts to exert influence in Washington and beyond, Wade and two business partners formed a nonprofit group in 2004 to promote democracy in Iran, according to documents and interviews. Wade and the two partners, who have been large contributors to Republican political campaigns, formed the Iranian Democratization Foundation in April 2004, according to incorporation papers filed in Washington. The timing coincides with a push by opponents of the theocratic regime in Tehran to appropriate more money for democracy programs. [complete article] Scholars' attack on pro-Israel lobby met with silenceBy Ori Nir, The Forward, March 24, 2006 In the face of one of the harshest reports on the pro-Israel lobby to emerge from academia, Jewish organizations are holding fire in order to avoid generating publicity for their critics. Officials at Jewish organizations are furious over "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a new paper by John Mearsheimer, a top international relations theorists based at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, the academic dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In their report - versions of which appear on the Kennedy School Web site and in the March 26 issue of the London Review of Books - the scholars depict "the Israel lobby" as a "loose coalition" of politicians, media outlets, research institutions, Jewish groups and Evangelical Christians that steers America's Middle East policy in directions beneficial to Israel, even if it requires harming American interests. Despite their anger, Jewish organizations are avoiding a frontal debate with the two scholars, while at the same time seeking indirect ways to rebut and discredit the scholars' arguments. Officials with pro-Israel organizations say that given the limited public attention generated by the new study - as of Tuesday most major print outlets had ignored it - they prefer not to draw attention to the paper by taking issue with it head on. As of Wednesday morning, none of the largest Jewish organizations had issued a press release on the report. [complete article] Professor says American publisher turned him downBy Ori Nir, The Forward, March 24, 2006 John Mearsheimer says that the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and co-author Stephen Walt would never have been able to place their report in a American-based scientific publication. "I do not believe that we could have gotten it published in the United States," Mearsheimer told the Forward. He said that the paper was originally commissioned in the fall of 2002 by one of America's leading magazines, "but the publishers told us that it was virtually impossible to get the piece published in the United States." [complete article] See also, Israeli media condemn, discuss report on US-Israel ties (CSM) and Blaming the lobby (Joseph Massad).  Comment -- The Forward reports that:Mearsheimer and Walt also seem to be resisting further publicity.True. It is very easy to say the wrong thing, but suggesting that a debate should be opened up and then declining to participate in this debate simply makes Mearsheimer and Walt look like cowards. How do they expect to encourage anyone else to speak up if they themselves are unwilling to join the fray?  ILLEGAL DETENTION IN IRAQ... AND THE UNITED STATES Challenge for U.S.: Iraq's handling of detaineesBy Edward Wong, New York Times, March 24, 2006 The blindfolded detainees in the dingy hallway line up in groups of five for their turn to see a judge, like schoolchildren outside the principal's office. Each meeting lasts a few minutes. The judge rules whether the detainee will go free, face trial or be held longer at this Iraqi base in northern Baghdad. But Firas Sabri Ali, squeezed into a fetid cell just hundreds of yards from the judge's office, has watched the inmates come and go for four months without his name ever being called. He is jailed, along with two brothers and his father, solely as collateral, he says. The Iraqi forces are hunting another brother, suspected of being an insurgent. The chief American medic here says that he believes Mr. Ali to be innocent but that it is up to the Iraqi police to decide whether to free him. The Iraqis acknowledged that they were holding Mr. Ali until they captured his brother. "I hope they catch him, because then I'll be released," said Mr. Ali, 38, a soft-spoken man who until his arrest worked for a British security company to support his wife and three sons. "They said, 'You must wait.' I told them: 'There's no law. This is injustice.' " [complete article] We don't need reason to hold you, Hammoudeh toldBy Meg Laughlin, St. Petersburg Times, March 22, 2006 Government attorneys finally told Sameeh Hammoudeh, Tuesday, the main reason they're keeping him imprisoned: because they can. This explanation was their response to a lawsuit filed by Hammoudeh's lawyer, Stephen Bernstein, against U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and others. The suit claims that Hammoudeh's continued incarceration in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing of the Manatee County Jail is unconstitutional because he has been acquitted in the Sami Al-Arian case and received no jail time in a separate tax fraud case, in which he agreed to be deported. But government attorneys argued in their written response Tuesday that the overriding reason Hammoudeh remains in jail is because ICE can legally keep him for six months, according to a U.S. Supreme Court decision. In the Zadvydas case, the Supreme Court said it was illegal to keep a deportee in jail for more than six months without justification. The government, relying on an 11th Circuit appellate reading of Zadvydas, says the opposite also is true: Hammoudeh "cannot state a claim for unreasonable detention" until the six months is up. Hammoudeh's argument that his continued imprisonment is unconstitutional is "premature," says the government. [complete article] Comment -- The day after federal prosecutors made this outrageous argument, a federal judge ruled that:Sameeh Hammoudeh should not have to wait six months before challenging the constitutional right of immigration officials to keep him in custody while awaiting deportation.Nevertheless, the mere fact that a prosecutor can present such an argument for imprisoning someone begs the question: What kind of government do these prosecutors think they are representing? Is this a democracy or a police state? (For background on this case, see Sami Al-Arian trial coverage (St. Petersburg Times).)  Surviving to tell the tale of tortureBy Olga Talamante, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2006 The burlap bag felt rough and scratchy against my cheek, but it also smelled earthy and deceptively comforting. Thick tape already covered my eyes, so the bag's only purpose was to frighten me. And it worked. I knew I had entered another dimension. A day earlier I had been a not-too-unusual 24-year-old American student from UC Santa Cruz, working with the Peronist Youth organization for social change in Azul, Argentina. For the next 16 months, I would become one of thousands of political prisoners and torture victims taken into custody as Argentina first declared martial law and then later suffered a right-wing military coup. But I was one of the lucky ones -- a survivor, thanks to family and friends in the United States who won my release on March 27, 1976. When I returned home to California and testified about the torture, my stories horrified listeners. But we could feel safe here because torture was the province of brutal, unsophisticated despots. It was a time when the average American could not imagine our soldiers abroad participating in anything remotely similar. Now, three years into the Iraq war, we have seen the images of Abu Ghraib and read accounts of the atrocities at Baghdad's Camp Nama. [complete article] Near Paul Revere country, anti-Bush cries get louderBy Michael Powell, Washington Post, March 25, 2006 To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush. Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture. Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon. "Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- so don't lie to me." It would be a considerable overstatement to say the fledgling impeachment movement threatens to topple a presidency -- there are just 33 House co-sponsors of a motion by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to investigate and perhaps impeach Bush, and a large majority of elected Democrats think it is a bad idea. But talk bubbles up in many corners of the nation, and on the Internet, where several Web sites have led the charge, giving liberals an outlet for anger that has been years in the making. [complete article] Israel's superfluous electionBy Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly, March 23, 2006 Elections in Israel usually circle around a big idea. In 1992, it was peace. In 1996 it was security. In 1999 it was peace again, combined with the desire to end Israel's 20-year occupation of Lebanon. In 2003 it was the Intifada and how Israel was to deal with the Palestinians' second national revolt in less than a decade. Ariel Sharon insisted that any retreat -- territorial or otherwise -- would be a "victory for terrorism". The Labour Party leader, Amran Mitzna, called for negotiations and/or a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Sharon won the elections and implemented Mitzna's policy, minus the negotiations. There is no big idea for the Israeli elections on 28 March. There is a continuation of existing government policy. It's called separation and carries Sharon's imprimatur. All that his successor, acting Prime Minister and Kadima leader Ehud Olmert, has done is provide the details: the West Bank wall will be Israel's eastern border, including its concrete envelop around occupied East Jerusalem; the West Bank settlements will be "converged" into three vast blocks; Israel will retain security control over the Jordan Valley; and there will be a permanent severance between the West Bank and Gaza, with the latter under Israel's total control. The same will be the fate of the West Bank cantons. [complete article] See also, Kadima lays bare it's plan for dividing Jerusalem (Haaretz). Israeli restrictions create isolated enclaves in West BankBy Amira Hass, Haaretz, March 24, 2006 The regime of restriction on movement imposed by Israel on the Palestinians has crumbled the West Bank into dozens of closed or partially closed enclaves isolated from each other despite their geographical proximity. Permanent and mobile checkpoints, along with physical barriers of various kinds, fenced-off main roads, limitations on Palestinian traffic on east-west and north-south arteries, have cut off direct transportational links between areas of the West Bank. Thus, a new geographic, social and economic reality has emerged in the West Bank. Hundreds of exits from Palestinian communities to main and regional roads are blocked. Traffic among the enclaves is directed to secondary roads and a small number of main roads passing through Israel Defense Force-controlled bottle-necks. Entry to the Jordan Valley, Palestinian East Jerusalem and to enclaves between the separation fence and the Green Line is barred to all Palestinians except those registered as residents of those areas. To enter such areas, special authorization to "non-residents" must be obtained, which is rarely given. [complete article] See also, Hamas says it won't arrest militants who attack Israel (Haaretz). Good versus evil isn't a strategyBy Madeleine Albright, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2006 The Bush administration's newly unveiled National Security Strategy might well be subtitled "The Irony of Iran." Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the invention of the phrase "axis of evil," the administration now highlights the threat posed by Iran -- whose radical government has been vastly strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. This is more tragedy than strategy, and it reflects the Manichean approach this administration has taken to the world. It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The administration's penchant for painting its perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences. For years, the president has acted as if Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein's followers and Iran's mullahs were parts of the same problem. Yet, in the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq and Iran fought a brutal war. In the 1990s, Al Qaeda's allies murdered a group of Iranian diplomats. For years, Osama bin Laden ridiculed Hussein, who persecuted Sunni and Shiite religious leaders alike. When Al Qaeda struck the U.S. on 9/11, Iran condemned the attacks and later participated constructively in talks on Afghanistan. The top leaders in the new Iraq -- chosen in elections that George W. Bush called "a magic moment in the history of liberty" -- are friends of Iran. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bush may have thought he was striking a blow for good over evil, but the forces unleashed were considerably more complex. [complete article] Salvadorans ambushed by memories in IraqBy N.C. Aizenman, Washington Post, March 25, 2006 The convoy of Salvadoran troops was rumbling along a highway in southern Iraq when a bomb exploded under the first Humvee, slicing the driver's neck with shrapnel. As a medic scrambled to reach him, insurgents hiding nearby unleashed a torrent of small-arms fire. It was the soldiers' first taste of combat in Iraq. But for those who had fought in El Salvador's fierce civil war as teenagers two decades earlier, the skirmish near Diwaniyah last September felt uncomfortably familiar. Once again, they were crouching for cover against the deafening rat-a-tat-tat of AK-47 assault rifles. Once again, they were firing back with weapons and ammunition supplied by the U.S. government. "Suddenly all these memories of the civil war came back to me," recalled Gustavo, a 35-year-old sergeant who returned to his village in northern El Salvador last month. Like other soldiers interviewed, he asked that his full name not be published because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "It was strange," he said. "I started remembering all these ambushes and battles I hadn't thought about in so long." [complete article] Iraq Qaeda chief seems to pursue a lower profileBy Dexter Filkins, New York Times, March 25, 2006 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist and the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has sharply lowered his profile in recent months, and his group claims to have submitted itself to the leadership of an Iraqi. In postings on Web sites used by jihadi groups, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the terrorist network's arm in Iraq, claims to have joined with five other guerrilla groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura, or Council of Holy Warriors. The new group, whose formation was announced in January, is said to be headed by an Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi. Since then, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has stopped issuing its own proclamations. The Mujahedeen Shura, which continues to call for attacks against American and Iraqi forces, has stopped taking responsibility for large-scale suicide attacks against civilians, and it has toned down its fierce verbal attacks against Iraq's Shiite majority. [complete article] Military should reveal media payments, Pace saysAP (via LAT), March 24, 2006 The U.S. military should reveal when it pays foreign journalists for favorable news, and the Defense Department should review policies that let it secretly pay Iraqi media, the Pentagon's highest-ranking officer said Thursday. In an interview, Marine Gen. Peter Pace said that although the United States needed to get its message out to Iraqis, Pentagon programs should be reviewed so readers would know what to believe. "We should be more clear so people will understand what they're reading," said Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I think there are ways to get your message out, but get it out in a form that people understand how the message got there." [complete article] Espionage law's merits tied into ex-lobbyists' caseBy Walter Pincus, Washington Post, March 24, 2006 The federal judge presiding over the prosecution of two former lobbyists has focused attention on the imprecise nature of the law they are charged with breaking, the 1917 Espionage Act that restricts the dissemination of national defense information that could harm U.S. interests. In January, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III raised the possibility that the law may not be sensibly written, as he sentenced a former Defense Department employee, Lawrence A. Franklin, to 12 years in prison for giving classified information to the two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Despite the law's possible shortcomings, Ellis said in an unusual statement from the bench, it is up to Congress, not the court, to decide if the statute needs to be changed. [complete article] Losing faith in AfghanistanBy Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, March 25, 2006 Even as the Bush administration steps up pressure on Afghanistan over the plight of a Christian convert, thousands of youths are descending on Kabul to demand that he be hanged for renouncing Islam. US President George W Bush and other Western leaders have latched onto the case of Abdul Rahman, 41, who was arrested last month and accused of apostasy for converting to Christianity in 1990, saying that the issue was one of "honoring the universal principle of freedom". For many Afghans, though, it is just another rallying point to step up pressure for a broader alliance against the presence of foreign forces in the country, while for the Bush administration and its allies it is an opportunity to rethink their position on Afghanistan. The United States has more than 18,000 troops in the country, while the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force numbers about the same. Germany and Italy have already hinted they may reassess military support for Afghanistan. And German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble suggested that Afghanistan could lose aid or technical support for reconstruction because of the case. The US begun reducing its troop strength in Afghanistan this year and has indicated that it will continue to do so. Bush said this week that US forces did not help liberate Afghanistan from Taliban rule so that conservative Islamic judges could issue death sentences against people because of their religious beliefs. He added that he was "deeply troubled" by the case, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai to call for a "favorable resolution to this case at the earliest possible moment". The masses in Afghanistan are not listening, though. [complete article] For Afghans, allies, a clash of valuesBy Pamela Constable, Washington Post, March 23, 2006 The case of an Afghan man who could be prosecuted and even put to death for converting to Christianity has unleashed a blizzard of condemnation from the West this week and exposed a conflict in values between Afghanistan, a conservative Muslim country, and the foreign countries that have helped defend and rebuild it in the four years since the fall of the Taliban. The case of Abdul Rahman, a longtime Christian convert who lived in Germany for years and was arrested last month in Kabul, has also highlighted the volatile debate within Afghanistan over the proper role of Islam in Afghan law and public policy as the country struggles to develop a democracy. Diplomats from several countries said yesterday that Rahman, 41, now seems unlikely to be tried or executed. Prosecutors in Kabul said he might be mentally unfit to stand trial, a sign that the government may be seeking to avoid confronting its Western allies without giving ground on Islamic law, under which conversion to another religion is punishable by death. [complete article] Envoy accuses Iran of duplicity on IraqBy Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, March 24, 2006 Iran is publicly professing its support for Iraq's stalemated political process while its military and intelligence services back outlawed militias and insurgent groups, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Thursday. Iranian agents train and arm Shiite Muslim militias such as the Mahdi Army, linked to one of Iraq's most powerful clerics, Khalilzad said, and also work closely with Sunni Arab-led insurgent forces including Ansar al-Sunna, blamed for dozens of deadly attacks on Iraqi and American soldiers and Shiite civilians. "Our judgment is that training and supplying, direct or indirect, takes place, and that there is also provision of financial resources to people, to militias, and that there is presence of people associated with Revolutionary Guard and with MOIS," the Afghan-born Khalilzad said, referring to Iran's main military force and its Ministry of Intelligence and Security. [complete article] Bush's requests for Iraqi base funding make some wary of extended stayBy Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2006 Even as military planners look to withdraw significant numbers of American troops from Iraq in the coming year, the Bush administration continues to request hundreds of millions of dollars for large bases there, raising concerns over whether they are intended as permanent sites for U.S. forces. Questions on Capitol Hill about the future of the bases have been prompted by the new emergency spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last week with $67.6 billion in funding for the war effort, including the base money. Although the House approved the measure, lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon explain its plans for the bases, and they unanimously passed a provision blocking the use of funds for base agreements with the Iraqi government. [complete article] U.S.: Iraq on own to rebuildBy Thomas Frank, USA Today, March 23, 2006 The head of the U.S.-led program to rebuild Iraq said Thursday that the Iraqi government can no longer count on U.S. funds and must rely on its own revenues and other foreign aid, particularly from Gulf nations. "The Iraqi government needs to build up its capability to do its own capital budget investment," Daniel Speckhard, director of the U.S. Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, told reporters. The burden of funding reconstruction poses an extraordinary challenge for a country that needs tens of billions of dollars for repairing its infrastructure at the same time it's struggling to pay its bills. Iraq's main revenue source -- oil -- is hampered by insurgent attacks on production facilities and pipelines, forcing the country to spend $6 billion a year on oil imports. Iraq's deputy finance minister, Kamal Field al-Basri, said it was "reasonable" for the United States to sharply cut back its reconstruction efforts after spending about $21 billion. "We should be very much dependent on ourselves," al-Basri said in an interview. Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the U.S. reconstruction effort "a dismal failure. It hasn't met any of its goals. It's left a legacy of half-built projects, built to U.S. standards, which Iraq doesn't have the capability to maintain." [complete article] See also, Breaking the silence - former head of USAID speaks out (Newsweek). Comment -- Even if Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable's claim -- "We're building permanent bases in Iraq for Iraqis" -- is taken at face value, what's the message the Pentagon wants to send to the people of Iraq? We wasted billions of dollars on a bungled effort to rebuild your infrastructure but we are going to make sure that we leave you with state-of-the-art military bases. Is this what "liberation" is supposed to look like? The Iraqi brain drainBy Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, March 24, 2006 Still ashen-faced six days after escaping death, Dr Ali Faraj pulls his hair aside to display a scar above his left ear. One of Iraq's top cardiologists, he was seeing a patient when a group of kidnappers wearing ski-masks stormed into his Baghdad clinic, knocked his receptionist to the floor and when he emerged to investigate the noise, ordered him to come with them. To his surprise, they said they were taking him to the Interior Ministry. "I know the minister so I said I would check if it was really necessary. I put out my hand to pick up the phone, but they knocked my arm aside and struck me on the head with a pistol butt. They dragged me to the front gate where a car was waiting," he says, safe now in Jordan. "It was about 7pm, already dark. Suddenly we heard shots. I couldn't tell where they were coming from. One of the kidnappers fell to the ground. He had been hit. Three of them started to lift him up. The fifth man ordered me into the car but I ran back to the clinic in the darkness." Faraj was not totally unprepared for what has become a normal risk of Baghdad life. "I had a Kalashnikov in the clinic. My driver took it and started shooting. I also had a pistol in my drawer. The kidnappers drove off." [complete article] 58 dead as violence continues in IraqBy Steven R.Hurst, AP (via The Guardian), March 23, 2006 The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq asserted Thursday that major violence is largely confined to just three of the country's 18 provinces, but fighting there raged on with at least 58 people killed in execution-style slayings, bombings and gunbattles. For the third straight day, Sunni insurgents hit a major police and jail facility - this time with a suicide car bombing that killed 25 in central Baghdad. The attacker detonated his explosives at the entrance to the Interior Ministry Major Crimes unit in the Karradah district, killing 10 civilians and 15 policemen, authorities said. [complete article] See also, Most of Iraq peaceful (AP). Iraq abuse trial is again limited to lower ranksBy Eric Schmitt, New York Times, March 23, 2006 With the conviction on Tuesday of an Army dog handler, the military has now tried and found guilty another low-ranking soldier in connection with the pattern of abuses that first surfaced two years ago at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But once again, an attempt by defense lawyers to point a finger of responsibility at higher-ranking officers failed in the latest case to convince a military jury that ultimate responsibility for the abuses lay farther up the chain of command. Some military experts said one reason there had not been attempts to pursue charges up the military chain of command was that the military does not have anything tantamount to a district attorney's office, run by commanders with the authority to go after the cases. "The real question is, who is the independent prosecutor who is liberated to pursue these cases," said Eugene Fidell, a specialist in military law. "There is no central prosecution office run by commanders. So you don't have a D.A. thinking, I'm going to follow this wherever it leads." [complete article] Ex-Iraqi official unveiled as spyBy Walter Pincus, Washington Post, March 23, 2006 Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's last foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was a paid spy for French intelligence, which later turned him over to the CIA to supply information about Iraq and its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs more than six months before the war began in March 2003, according to former senior intelligence officials. Although some CIA officials met informally with Sabri, who traveled extensively outside Iraq, the French and the CIA used a third-country intermediary when attempting to get information from him about Hussein's inner circle and weapons programs, according to the retired officials who refused to be identified because the information is classified. [complete article] Three abducted peace activists rescued in IraqBy John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, March 24, 2006 British and U.S. troops rescued three kidnapped Christian peace activists early Thursday in a military operation that was based on information provided by two men detained only three hours earlier by U.S. forces, according to a U.S. military official. The freed captives -- Norman Kember, 74, of London, and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada -- were members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, a Chicago- and Toronto-based group that advocates nonviolence and is opposed to the war in Iraq. They were kidnapped in Baghdad on Nov. 26 along with a fourth member of their group, Tom Fox of Clear Brook, Va. The well-being of the three abductees had been a cause for concern ever since Fox's body was discovered on a trash-strewn street in Baghdad two weeks ago, with his hands bound and shot multiple times. [complete article] See also, CPT statement: CPTers freed (Christian Peacemaker Teams). Islamic activism sweeps Saudi ArabiaBy Faiza Saleh Ambah, Washington Post, March 23, 2006 More than a dozen women in black cloaks, some with colorful head scarves, others with only their eyes visible through slits in black veils, filed into the dining room after sunset prayers. They sat around a long table set up with paper, pencils and thermoses of Arabic coffee, across from a small group of men, including that evening's guest, Sadeg al-Malki. The women -- homemakers, physicians and college students -- had sought out Malki, a consultant at the Islamic Education Foundation, because they wanted help on a project they were embarking on: how to talk to non-Muslim co-workers and acquaintances about Islam and the prophet Muhammad. The women, who have since taken several mini-courses with Malki on discussing their religion with non-Muslims, are part of a loosely knit grass-roots movement that has sprung up across the kingdom since January, when anger over cartoons of Muhammad sparked riots in Europe and several Muslim countries. The movement is made up of a diverse cross section of women, students, businessmen, lawyers and clerics, all campaigning under the banner of Nusrat al-Rasool, or Victory for the Prophet. [complete article] Chertoff says ports would have been safer under DubaiReuters, March 23, 2006 U.S. ports would have been safer with an Arab company running the terminals than they will be now that a political firestorm killed the deal, the chief of U.S. homeland security said on Thursday. [...] "The irony of this is, that had the deal gone forward, we would have had greater ability to impose a security regime worldwide on the company than we have now," Chertoff said. [complete article] U.S. port deal collapse may hurt, not help, securityBy Michael Christie, Reuters, March 21, 2006 The debacle over a Dubai company's thwarted attempt to take over some U.S. port operations may end up undermining U.S. security because of its impact on counter-terrorism cooperation with Arab states, maritime experts said on Tuesday The experts said the furor that led to state-owned Dubai Ports World promising to sell its interest in six U.S. ports it would acquire by buying the global assets of Britain's P&O had been driven by politics, ignorance and bigotry, and not by honest security concerns. [complete article] A warning from AmericaEditorial, Haaretz, March 22, 2006 America's unhesitating support for Israel and its willingness to restrain itself over all of Israel's mistakes can be interpreted as conflicting with America's essential interests and are liable to prove burdensome. The fact that Israelis view the United States' support for and tremendous assistance to Israel as natural, causes excess complacence, and it fails to take into account currents in public opinion that run deep and are liable to completely change American policy. Instead of strengthening the Jewish and Israeli lobby and causing it to influence American policymakers to support Israel unreservedly, the Israeli government must understand that the world will not wait forever for Israel to withdraw from the territories, and that the opinions expressed in the article [The Israel Lobby] could take root in American politics if Israel does not change the political reality quickly. [complete article] Comment -- While The Israel Lobby has yet to be deemed worthy of discussion on a single op-ed page in any major American newspaper*, its impact is clearly being taken much more seriously in Israel. Indeed, it's noteworthy that the editors of Haaretz -- a newspaper that is Israel's equivalent to the New York Times -- recognize that Israel is not well served by unconditional American support. On the contrary, that support has often had the effect of slowing down a political process that becomes increasingly urgent.Even so, if that process should -- as Haaretz suggests -- be directed towards winning international support for a unilateral withdrawal from the occupied territories, it's clear that most Israelis now regard a real resolution to their conflict with the Palestinians as unattainable. The goal is to physically and psychologically isolate a whole people so effectively that their existence can be purged from Israeli awareness. Yet a fifth of Israel's citizenry are Arabs. The physical barrier that is being built up around their kin on the other side of The Wall, is mirrored in a social barrier that condemns Israeli Arabs to second-class status. What does this say about Israel's much vaunted claim to be a beacon of democracy or its hope for sustainable peace? *Note - Since writing this, a reader has directed me to an op-ed appearing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (Israel Lobby by Ruth Wisse). She writes: ...it would be a mistake to treat this article on the "Israel Lobby" as an attack on Israel alone, or on its Jewish defenders, or on the organizations and individuals it singles out for condemnation. Its true target is the American public, which now supports Israel with higher levels of confidence than ever before. When the authors imply that the bipartisan support of Israel in Congress is a result of Jewish influence, they function as classic conspiracy theorists who attribute decisions to nefarious alliances rather than to the choices of a democratic electorate. Their contempt for fellow citizens dictates their claims of a gullible and stupid America. Their insistence that American support for Israel is bought and paid for by the Lobby heaps scorn on American judgment and values.This is quite a charge: Mearsheimer and Walt launched an attack on America! If other American opinion writers follow suit, I guess we could be in for a new round of hysteria that might even surpass that port operations brouhaha -- at least in pitch, if not volume. Gaza rations food as Israel cuts suppliesBy Chris McGreal, The Guardian, March 22, 2006 Widespread bread rationing has been introduced in the Gaza Strip because Israel has cut off deliveries of flour and other foodstuffs to the Palestinian territory for most of the past two months. The military reopened the main cargo crossing into Gaza yesterday under US pressure to allow in humanitarian supplies, but the UN said the terminal was working at only a fraction of capacity. The Israelis say that the closure has been forced by security warnings but the Palestinians accuse them of using the crossing as a political tool after the Hamas election victory, and in breach of pledges to the US. "The bakeries are rationing bread," said John Ging, director of UN operations in Gaza. "People queue and they're given a coupon and a rationed amount ... The shelves are quite empty. There's no sugar, oil, milk, the basics. The shops are really depleted on those essential items." [complete article] See also, Gaza bakeries feel brunt of territory closure (AFP). Strangled in GazaBy Amira Hass, Haaretz, March 22, 2006 In the elections [on March 28], Israelis will not be voting just for themselves. Not only will they choose parties that affect their own lives for four years, but also those of 3.5 million occupied Palestinians - as they have done for 39 years now. The winners in Israel will form a government that will determine the most minute details of every Palestinian's life. This is the essence of occupation. One people casts its votes and thereby authorizes its democratic government to be a dictator in a place that it rules by military hegemony. In that place there lives a separate nation that is entirely excluded from any rights in this democratic game. [complete article] See also, Politicians court a not-so-silent minority: Israeli Arabs (NYT). Poll: 68% of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in same building as an ArabBy Eli Ashkenazi and Jack Khoury, Haaretz, March 22, 2006 Sixty-eight percent of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in the same apartment building as an Israeli Arab, according to the results of an annual poll released Wednesday by the Center for the Struggle Against Racism. The "Index of Racism Towards Arab Palestinian Citizens of the State of Israel," conducted by Geocartographia, revealed only 26 percent of Jews in Israel would agree to live with Arab neighbors in the same building. Forty-six percent of Jews would refuse to allow an Arab to visit their home while 50 percent would welcome an Arab visitor. Forty-one percent of Jewish support the segregation of Jews and Arabs in places of recreation and 52 percent of such Jews would oppose such a move. [complete article] Comment -- These polls not only reveal growing hostility towards those Arabs who make up 20% of Israel's citizenry but also the intractable contradiction between a state that defines itself as Jewish yet also maintains the trappings of a Western secular democracy. Again, the parallels between Israel and South Africa come to mind. As The Guardian's Chris McGreal wrote earlier this year in a two-part series on Israel and apartheid South Africa:Some Jewish South Africans and Israelis who lived with apartheid - including politicians, Holocaust survivors and men once condemned as terrorists - describe aspects of modern Israel as disturbingly reminiscent of the old South Africa. Some see the parallels in a matrix of discriminatory practices and controls, and what they describe as naked greed for land seized by the fledgling Israeli state from fleeing Arabs and later from the Palestinians for the ever expanding West Bank settlements. "Apartheid was an extension of the colonial project to dispossess people of their land," said the Jewish South African cabinet minister and former ANC guerrilla, Ronnie Kasrils, on a visit to Jerusalem. "That is exactly what has happened in Israel and the occupied territories; the use of force and the law to take the land. That is what apartheid and Israel have in common." Alienated Arabs shun role in 'Jewish game'By Sharmila Devi, Financial Times, March 22, 2006 Nowhere is the voter apathy that has characterised the run-up to next Tuesday's Israeli elections more apparent than among the country's Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of the population and voice marked feelings of alienation from the main Zionist parties. Opinion polls show a clear majority for the Kadima party led by Ehud Olmert, acting prime minister, which failed to include an Arab candidate high enough on its party list to stand a chance of entering the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament. Most Zionist parties speak of a "demographic problem" and the threat posed by the Arabs to Israel's Jewish majority. The policy prescriptions of Zionist parties range from making Israel a state for all its citizens, with a separation of church and state, to advocating the "transfer" of Arabs out of the state. "It's stupid to give us the vote when in all other areas of life we're not made part of the state and are called a 'demographic problem'," says Sayed Kashua, an award-winning Israeli Arab author who writes in Hebrew. "I won't vote because the whole thing is a Jewish game and I don't have any faith in politicians, especially the Arab parties, which fight each other." [complete article] 'Settlers don't know when the knock on the door will come and they have to leave'By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, March 23, 2006 Three decades ago, a small group of religious pioneers installed themselves on a bare hillside to reclaim the biblical town of Beit El for the modern state of Israel. A few miles inside the occupied West Bank, Beit El offered a special symbolism. Its name, meaning House of God, was chosen by Jacob 4,000 years ago because it was there that the Lord told him the land belonged to the Jews. The modern community grew into a settlement of 6,000 people, its residents certain no one could take from them what God had said was rightfully theirs. Israel's voters appear ready to differ. If, as expected, next week's general election returns a government led by the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and his Kadima party, Beit El and other settlements home to tens of thousands of Jews are probably doomed. Mr Olmert says he will sacrifice many isolated and smaller colonies - often the ones most dear to the religious community - to hold on to the settlements on the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier that will mark its future border. [complete article] Between Iran and Israel, try a bomb for a bombBy David Hirst, Daily Star, March 21, 2006 There is widespread international agreement that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is an alarming prospect. But very little attention is paid to the most obvious reason why: There already is a Middle Eastern nuclear power, Israel, insistent on preserving its monopoly. So the crisis has been foreseeable for decades; it would be automatically triggered by the emergence of a second nuclear power, friendly or unfriendly to the West. Iran is the unfriendliest possible, encouraging a widespread assumption that it alone is responsible for creating the crisis - and settling it. But is it? It certainly isn't blameless. First, its nuclear arming would deal a major blow to an already fraying international non-proliferation regime. Second, it would involve a huge deceit. Third, the United States broadly divides actual or potential nuclear powers into responsible and irresponsible ones. Iran would be irresponsible par excellence, being already the worst of "rogue states." Typically, a rogue state, as well as being domestically oppressive, ideologically repugnant and anti-American, unites an aggressive nature with disproportionate military strength, thereby posing a constant, exceptional threat to an established regional order. What could now more emphatically consign Iran to such company than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his calls to "wipe Israel off the map?" Yet, in nuclear terms, Israel is the original sinner in the Middle East. Non-proliferation must be universal; if, in a zone of potential conflict, one party goes nuclear, its adversaries can't be expected not to either. No matter how long ago it was, by violating that principle, Israel must bear a heavy responsibility for what has since happened. [complete article] The power of saying noBy Jeff Halper, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, March 23, 2006 As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian Authority, we might ask: What would bring a people, the most secular of Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal corruption doesn't go far enough. While warning Hamas that their vote did not constitute a mandate for imposing an Iran-like theocracy on Palestine, the Palestinians took the only option left to a powerless people when all other avenues of redress have been closed to them: non-cooperation. Gandhi put it best: "How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master's bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done. Non-cooperation is directed not against…the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non-cooperation lie not in hatred but in justice." [complete article] See also, Hamas has a government, so now what? (Daoud Kuttab). "A model democracy is not emerging in Iraq"Francis Fukuyama interviewed in Der Spiegel, March 22, 2006 Fukuyama: I was partly unsure whether the United States could handle the transition to a democratic government in Iraq. But the biggest problem I had was that the people pushing for the intervention lacked self-knowledge about the US. When I look back over the 20th century history of American interventions, particularly those in the Caribbean and Latin America, the consistent problem we've had is being unable to stick it out. Before the Iraq war, it was clear that if we were going to do Iraq properly, we would need a minimum commitment of five to 10 years. It was evident from the beginning that the Bush administration wasn't preparing the American people for that kind of a mission. In fact, it was obvious the Bush people were trying to do Iraq on the cheap. They thought they could get in and out in less than a year. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where did this belief come from? Was it naivete, hubris or just plain ignorance? Fukuyama: A lot of the neo-conservatives drew the wrong lessons from the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism. They generalized from that event that all totalitarian regimes are basically hollow at the core and if you give them a little push from the outside, they're going to collapse. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, most people thought that communism would be around for a long time. In fact, it disappeared within seven or eight months in 1989. That skewed the thinking about the nature of dictatorships and neo-conservatives made a wrong analogy between Eastern Europe and what would happen in the Middle East. [complete article] Blair sees Iraq as 'clash about civilisation'By Matthew Tempest, The Guardian, March 21, 2006 Tony Blair has marked the third anniversary of the war on Iraq with his most combative defence yet of the conflict, declaring victory there to be part of "a clash about civilisation". In the first of three foreign policy speeches - with the other two to be made on undisclosed dates in Australia and the US - the prime minister said there was now a worldwide "battle about modernity", some of which "can only be conducted and won within Islam itself". In 40-minute speech which aimed to reshape the debate about the UK's "activist" foreign policy from Sierra Leone, to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr Blair warned Iran that when it "gives support to such terrorism, it becomes part of the same battle with the same ideology at its heart". [complete article] Iraq: three years of waropenDemocracy, March 20, 2006 openDemocracy presents the views of Iraqis on the third anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq -- Riverbend (Iraqi blogger in Baghdad), Dlawer Ala'Aldeen (academic), Firas Al-Atraqchi (journalist), Zeyad A (Baghdad dentist), and Tahrir Abdul Samad Numan (Iraqi exile and peace activist). [complete article] Anatomy of a rebel strikeBy Richard Boudreaux and John Johnson Jr., Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2006 Since last year, the city of Muqdadiya had not been considered especially vulnerable. There were shootings and bombings from time to time, but police would round up suspected rebels in nearby villages, as they did last weekend, and haul them to cells in the downtown courthouse. Then at dawn Tuesday, masked men came to break the detainees out. Descending from a dozen cars and pickup trucks laden with mortars and grenades, they surrounded the judicial compound and blasted away, killing at least 17 policemen and guards and freeing 33 prisoners in one of Iraq's boldest insurgent raids in months. The highly coordinated attack, which featured car bombs to repel reinforcements, was a potent reminder of the Sunni-led insurgency's capacity to strike at Iraqi government and U.S. targets, despite almost constant sweeps against guerrilla forces and President Bush's frequent assertions of progress in combating the rebellion. [complete article] Iraqi insurgents attack police paramilitary unitBy Edward Wong, New York Times, March 22, 2006 Insurgents laid siege today to the headquarters of a police paramilitary unit near the capital, lobbing a volley of mortars that killed at least one senior officer and injured at least five, Interior Ministry officials said. The police fought back, killing at least five insurgents, a commander in Baghdad said. By nightfall, the police were holding at least 76 people for questioning. The predawn attack, on an infamous paramilitary force, unfolded as 14 mortars pummeled the former governorate center in the Sunni Arab-dominated town of Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad. [complete article] Need for new U.S. nuclear arsenal disputedBy James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 2006 Scientists say evidence is mounting that the radioactive plutonium used in nuclear weapons could have a far longer useful life than previously estimated, raising questions about the need for an expensive Bush administration program to build more than a thousand replacement warheads. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars potentially at stake, the research on the aging of this dangerous and complex weapons ingredient, being conducted at the nuclear weapons laboratories, is being followed closely by Bush administration officials, lawmakers and nuclear weapons experts. [complete article] No breach seen in work in Iraq on propagandaBy Thom Shanker, New York Times, March 22, 2006 An inquiry has found that an American public relations firm did not violate military policy by paying Iraqi news outlets to print positive articles, military officials said Tuesday. The finding leaves to the Defense Department the decision on whether new rules are needed to govern such activities. The inquiry, which has not yet been made public, was ordered by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, after it was disclosed in November that the military had used the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company, to plant articles written by American troops in Iraqi newspapers while hiding the source of the articles. [complete article] Iranian leader reaffirms offer of talksBy Alissa J. Rubin, Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2006 Iran pushed ahead on its nuclear program Tuesday as the country's most powerful figure reaffirmed its willingness to hold face-to-face talks with the United States on Iraq -- sending a somewhat mixed message to the international community. Talks at the United Nations Security Council about a response to Iran's nuclear program remained stalled as diplomats from Russia and China argued with representatives of the European Union and the United States over how hard to press Iran to halt its efforts to start uranium enrichment. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the ultimate say in Tehran on all state matters, said Iran was prepared to discuss ways to stabilize Iraq with an American delegation. [complete article] Revolution in the Pakistani mountainsBy Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, March 23, 2006 The Taliban have established a foothold in the Pakistani tribal areas of North and South Waziristan along the Afghanistan border, but it is not simply a question of their having marched in and established their writ. Their ability to impose themselves, which is the result of a virtual revolution in the region, has far-reaching consequences for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. News reports tend to focus on the renewed capabilities of the Taliban, in terms of their reorganization, their base in Pakistan, improved weaponry and their mass of suicide bombers. What is overlooked in the troubled tribal areas is an astonishing change in local dynamics, which neither the British Raj nor successive Pakistani or Afghan governments had been able to engineer, the ramifications of which threaten the existing order of the whole region. [complete article] Islamist voices rise on Pakistani campusesBy David Montero, Christian Science Monitor, March 22, 2006 Like many students at Punjab University, Mohammed Abid Faran worries about living costs almost as much as his studies. To save rupees, he counts on an Islamist student organization, Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), which keeps prices at the university hostel artificially low. "Here a cup of tea costs three rupees," Mr. Faran, an engineering student, says. "Outside it costs six." But Faran worries that IJT dictates not only the price of tea but the proper comportment of Muslim students in this cosmopolitan city as well. "We are studying, and they are saying we should protest, without regard if we are busy and want to go or not," he says, referring to a recent demonstration on campus over the controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. "Why should they put pressure on us?" Such conflicted feelings underscore a heated debate on Pakistani campuses over the influence of groups like IJT. Islamist student unions are battling for the hearts and minds of young Muslims - receiving a boost from a growing student conservatism as well as IJT's ability to fill in gaps left by the poor funding of education here. [complete article] West works to free Christian AfghanReuters (via LAT), March 22, 2006 The United States and three NATO allies with troops in Afghanistan urged the Kabul government Tuesday to respect the religious freedom of an Afghan convert to Christianity who faces the death penalty there. The United States, which counts Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a key ally in the region, raised the case with visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah, calling on Kabul to uphold Afghan citizens' constitutional right to choose their faith. [complete article] A silent, crippling fearBy Paul Woodward, The War in Context, March 21, 2006 The prospect of American ports being run by an Arab company ignited a firestorm in the blogosphere -- and the mainstream media and Congress. Now two of America's leading political scientists allege that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is being skewed away from U.S. national interests by a "loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction." You'd imagine this would provoke, at the very least, a strong reaction. So far, the response to The Israel Lobby [hereafter TIL], by John J. Mearsheimer (professor of political science, University of Chicago) and Stephen M. Walt (academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard), has been predictable scorn from the Pro-Israel Right (typified by Power Line and The American Thinker), with little more than murmurings from the Left (such as these postings out in the quiet backwaters of Daily Kos and TPM Cafe). Even while leftwing bloggers seem hesitant to discuss the issues raised here, the noteworthiness of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper is evident in mainstream media coverage from UPI and Christian Science Monitor. And at Harvard, law professor, Alan M. Dershowitz (identified in TIL as an "apologist" for Israel) is ready to "debate" against Mearsheimer and Walt who he describes as "liars" and "bigots," while Walt's colleague Marvin Kalb knows how to cut an academic to the quick -- accuse him of engaging in second-rate journalism. In its opening paragraphs TIL asserts: Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country -- in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical.There have been times when such a claim would not garner much attention from domestically preoccupied Americans, but right now you'd have to be comatose not to recognize the grave implications as America and Israel speak with one voice on the threat from Iran. Only yesterday, President Bush confirmed that the U.S. will use military force to defend Israel from Iranian threats, yet neither the administration nor Congress acknowledge that Israel's own nuclear arsenal, its occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories, or its treatment of its own Arab citizens, are critical factors exacerbating Middle East tensions. It has thus never been more vital to open up debate on where U.S. and Israeli interests truly intersect and where they do not, yet so far the message from the Left is, we'd rather not talk about this sensitive issue. To understand why the American Left is now largely mute on this subject, I recommend reading The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions, by Jeffrey Blankfort. His article, published in May, 2003, begins: It was 1991 and Noam Chomsky had just finished a lecture in Berkeley on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was taking questions from the audience. An Arab-American asked him to explain his position regarding the influence of America's Israel lobby.Blankfort then points out that: What is noteworthy is that Chomsky's explanation for the financial and political support that the U.S. has provided Israel over the years is shared by what is generically known as the Israel lobby, and almost no one else.A new campaign to silence debate about the Israel Lobby is already following a predictable course. Efforts are being made to marginalize the issue by drawing attention to the fact that TIL has received praise from white supremicist David Duke along with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Nevertheless, Mearsheimer and Walt's effort to push the question of the Lobby's influence into mainstream political discourse is only one of several recent attempts. One such came from Michael Massing, writing in The Nation, in 2002. Several more came from Michael Lind, writing in The Prospect in April 2002, Newsweek the same month, and again The Prospect in October 2002. If the participation of the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government can't open up and legitimize this debate, it's hard to imagine what it might take to stir faint-hearted liberals into action -- but this is no time to remain silent. In recent years, the slogan, "What did you do in the war?", has been used to good effect by many antiwar campaigners, yet as the U.S. and Israel continue gearing up to take on Iran, how many of those same campaigners if asked, "What did you do to challenge the influence of the Israel Lobby?" would now have nothing to say? A PDF version of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (including 40 pages of endnotes) can be downloaded here. (Right click on the Adobe icon and select "save as...") Speaking to Tehran, with one voiceBy Jessica T. Mathews, New York Times, March 21, 2006 A nuclear Iran is dangerous enough, but this crisis is only proximately about Iran. More important, it is about the likely consequence of an Iranian bomb, namely, that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt would produce their own bombs, and, thanks to the concomitant international failure to deal with North Korea, the nonproliferation regime would collapse. What is at stake is not a choice between 9 and 10 nuclear weapons states, but a choice between 9 and 30 or more. The major powers may yet be able to unite to stop Iran at this late hour, but not without a decisive change in American policy. Washington's choice is simple: does it want to stop Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons badly enough to deal with Iran's present government? [complete article] See also, Security Council is stalled over Iran's nuclear program (NYT), Some U.S. officials fear Iran is helping al Qaeda (LAT), and Iran: time to leak (Katharine Gun). U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for years, Bush saysBy William Douglas, Knight Ridder, March 21, 2006 President Bush said Tuesday that U.S. troops will be in Iraq until after his presidency ends almost three years from now. Asked at a White House news conference whether there'll come a time when no U.S. forces are in Iraq, he said "that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq." Pressed on that response, the president said that for him to discuss complete withdrawal would mean he was setting a timetable, which he refuses to do. Bush's statement flies in the face of U.S. public opinion. A Gallup Poll released Friday found that a clear majority of Americans, 60 percent, think the war isn't worth the costs, 19 percent called for immediately withdrawing U.S. troops, another 35 percent favored a pullout by March 2007 and only 39 percent said troops should remain in I |