Daily Archives: September 21, 2007

EDITORIAL: Deconstructing the neocon nuclear narrative

Deconstructing the neocon nuclear narrative
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 21, 2007

Why can the neocons never get their story straight?

Because they’ve figured out the ending but they’re still working on the plot.

The end is the end of the Islamic State of Iran, but the first draft of the narrative that was supposed to lead there — through Baghdad — took a major detour, providing Iran with the opportunity to become more powerful than ever.

Even so, a few lessons have been learned from the atrociously written Iraq story.

Don’t talk about “WMD,” is one such lesson. The only weapons worth talking about (as frequently as possible) are nuclear. Fortunately (if you’re a neocon) the press continues to be as obliging as ever in repeating whatever you say. Continue reading →

OPINION: Why the Israel lobby isn’t good for Israel

It’s lobbying, but is it really pro-Israel?
By M.J. Rosenberg, Haaretz, September 21, 2007

I spent almost 20 years as a Congressional aide and can testify from repeated personal experience that senators and House members are under constant pressure to support status-quo policies on Israel. It is no accident that members of Congress compete over who can place more conditions on aid to the Palestinians, who will be first to denounce the Saudi peace plan, and who will win the right to be the primary sponsor of the next pointless Palestinian-bashing resolution. Nor is it an accident that there is never a serious Congressional debate about policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, every president knows that any serious effort to push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on compromise by both sides will produce loud (sometimes hysterical) opposition from the Hill.

Walt and Mearsheimer mostly limit themselves to exploring whether all this is good for the United States (and to a lesser extent, Israel). The question I ask today, and not for the first time, is whether this type of behavior is good for Israel. Forty years after the Six-Day War, the occupation continues, the resistance to it intensifies, and Israelis in increasing numbers question whether they have a future in the Jewish state.

Has “pro-Israel” advocacy consistently produced “pro-Israel” ends? At several critical moments, it most certainly has not. [complete article]

NEWS: U.S. kidnaps another Iranian

Kurds denounce U.S. detention of Iranian
By Jay Price and Yaseen Taha, McClatchy, September 20, 2007

U.S. troops arrested an Iranian man during an early morning raid on a hotel in this northern Iraqi city Thursday and accused him of helping to smuggle a deadly type of roadside bomb into Iraq.

But the Kurdistan Regional Government in a statement called the arrest “illegitimate,” said the man was a member of a trade delegation that had been invited to Sulaimaniyah by the local government and demanded that he be released.

“Actions like these serve no one,” the statement said.

The United States has detained several Iranians in Iraq in the past year and accused them of training Iraqi insurgents and providing weapons to them. In January it took five Iranians into custody in Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, and accused them of being members of the Iranian military. They’re still being held. Eight other Iranians who were detained last month in Baghdad were quickly released, however. [complete article]

OPINION: The face of American extremism

Iranophobia hits Ground Zero
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, September 22, 2007

…the US media have once again fallen victim to an orchestration of “enemy image” that aims to vilify, intimidate, deface and demonize a Middle Eastern leader who, ironically, has been unusually forthcoming in his expressions of warm feelings toward the American people (though not the US government and its policies).

Never mind that Ahmadinejad has released a few Iranian-Americans who were suspected of instigating a “velvet revolution”, or that he has broken the ice of diplomatic non-dialogue with the US by consenting to direct meetings between Iranian and US ambassadors in Iraq, or that he has made the most far-reaching Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to date.

None of this matters the least to frenzied pundits and politicians who want to cash in on the feverish anti-Iran mood in the US, whose government has done nothing to quell this Iranophobic frenzy and, instead, is fanning the flames by escalating accusations against Tehran. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Televised images of street protests in Pakistan where effigies of George Bush are being burned and the US flag is being trampled on are standard fare when it comes to representations of anti-American Islamic extremism. The New York Daily News presents nothing less than a mirror image — our own xenophobic extremism.

OPINION: The international community can do business with Hamas

Hamas is the key
By Ahmed Yousef, Haaretz, September 21, 2007

While largely unnoticed in American discourse on the topic, much has been said and written to debunk the sanctions regime imposed on Hamas government administrations since its resounding victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 2006. These calls and reports show with compelling logic that the sanctions regime is wrong and misguided and, equally important, that it is a reaction to the excessively intense pressure that the U.S. administration has exercised over other nations to induce them to boycott and besiege a government democratically elected by the people and to punish the Palestinians for their democratic choice. The Quartet has been spearheading this campaign of isolation against Hamas, and in the process is advancing a U.S.-Israeli agenda whose goal is to delegitimize Hamas and prevent it from exercising its right to lead the Palestinian people, even though the latter have elected it in a transparent, internationally monitored electoral process. A variety of underhanded methods, both internal and external, have been used to undermine the Hamas-led government, including destabilization from within the fragile Palestinian political system. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to the “West Bank first” fable, Israeli and Western support for the “moderate” Abbas regime would pave the way for peace and something vaguely resembling a Palestinian state. But even while Condoleezza Rice endeavors to add delicate strokes to her picture of a political horizon, the Israelis, rather than dismantling roadblocks — one of the specified gestures intended to serve as a sign post pointing to that political horizon — have instead been busy constructing dozens of new roadblocks.

NEWS: Will the dollar collapse?

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, September 21, 2007

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

“This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar,” said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

“Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States,” he said. [complete article]

See also, Has the repudiation of the dollar begun? (Naked Capitalism).