Daily Archives: February 3, 2008

NEWS, CAMPAIGN 08 & OPINION: The bankruptcy of American military power

Pentagon seeks record level in 2009 budget
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, February 3, 2008

As Congress and the public focus on more than $600 billion already approved in supplemental budgets to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for counterterrorism operations, the Bush administration has with little notice reached a landmark in military spending.

When the Pentagon on Monday unveils its proposed 2009 budget of $515.4 billion, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II.

That new Defense Department budget proposal, which is to pay for the standard operations of the Pentagon and the military but does not include supplemental spending on the war efforts or on nuclear weapons, is an increase in real terms of about 5 percent over last year.

Since coming to office, the administration has increased baseline military spending by 30 percent over all, a figure sure to be noted in the coming budget battles as the American economy seems headed downward and government social spending is strained, especially by health-care costs. [complete article]

Downsizing our dominance
By Fred Kaplan, Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2008

It should be no surprise that the presidential campaigns have barely touched on foreign policy. One reason is that no candidate of either party has a solution to the nation’s most pressing foreign problem, the war in Iraq (perhaps because there are no good solutions).

A larger reason, however, may be that no ambitious politician is willing to mention the discomfiting reality about America’s place in the world — that we are weaker today than we were a decade or two ago, and that we need a new foreign policy that acknowledges and builds on that fact.

President Bush’s follies have accelerated the decline of U.S. influence, but he can’t be blamed for its onset. It started, ironically, at the moment of our late-century triumph, when the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War victory was ours. Some proclaimed that the United States was now “the sole superpower.” But, in fact, the end of the Cold War left the very concept of a “superpower” in tatters. [complete article]

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CAMPAIGN 08: Who can get America moving again?

Clinton’s “35 years of change” omits most of her career
By Matt Stearns | McClatchy, February 3, 2008

To hear Hillary Clinton talk, she’s spent her entire career putting her Yale Law School degree to work for the common good.

She routinely tells voters that she’s “been working to bring positive change to people’s lives for 35 years.” She told a voter in New Hampshire: “I’ve spent so much of my life in the nonprofit sector.” Speaking in South Carolina, Bill Clinton said his wife “could have taken a job with a firm . . . . Instead she went to work with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund.”

The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless do-gooder. The whole story is more complicated — and less flattering.

Clinton worked at the Children’s Defense Fund for less than a year, and that’s the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she’s ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career — 15 of those 35 years — at one of Arkansas’ most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards. [complete article]

Ask not what J.F.K. can do for Obama
By Frank Rich, New York Times, February 3, 2008

Kennedy bet his campaign on, as he put it, “the single assumption that the American people are uneasy at the present drift in our national course” and “that they have the will and strength to start the United States moving again.”

For all the Barack Obama-J. F. K. comparisons, whether legitimate or over-the-top, what has often been forgotten is that Mr. Obama’s weaknesses resemble Kennedy’s at least as much as his strengths. But to compensate for those shortcomings, he gets an extra benefit that J. F. K. lacked in 1960. There’s nothing vague about the public’s desire for national renewal in 2008, with a reviled incumbent in the White House and only 19 percent of the population finding the country on the right track, according to the last Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. America is screaming for change.

Either of the two Democratic contenders will swing the pendulum. Their marginal policy differences notwithstanding, they are both orthodox liberals. As the party’s voters in 22 states step forward on Tuesday, the overriding question they face, as defined by both contenders, is this: Which brand of change is more likely, in Kennedy’s phrase, to get America moving again? [complete article]

See also, Maria Shriver backs Obama (NYT).

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NEWS: Iraq “still terrible”; British veterans desperate for help

A week in Iraq: ‘People say things are better, but it’s still terrible here’
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, February 3, 2008

Iraq is less violent than a year ago, but the country is still the most dangerous in the world. So it was no surprise to anyone in Baghdad, where people have long dreaded a renewal of al-Qa’ida’s savage bombing campaign directed at Shia civilians, that there should be suicide attacks on two bird markets, killing 92 people on Friday.

For all President George Bush’s claims of progress, cited in his final State of the Union address last week, Baghdad looks like a city out of the Middle Ages, divided into hostile townships. Districts have been turned into fortresses, encircled by walls made out of concrete slabs. Police and soldiers check all identities at the entrances and exits.

“People say things are better than they were,” says Zainab Jafar, a well-educated Shia woman, “but what they mean is that they are better than the bloodbath of 2006. The situation is still terrible.” [complete article]

They’re back from the front line – so why are these ex-soldiers still fighting their own wars?
By Mark Townsend, The Observer, February 3, 2008

Last year, the Royal British Legion took 1,485 calls from homeless ex-service personnel desperate for help. By law, former forces personnel should be offered accommodation as a priority, yet councils fail to honour their obligations, largely because of long waiting lists. Others are denied a chance to own a home because the heightened risk of suicide among those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan means they can’t get life insurance to guarantee a mortgage.

The stories of Brown, Hayley Murdoch, Dave Hart and Andy Julien, told here for the first time, lend weight to the consensus that the military covenant – the guarantee of a duty of care between the government and the armed forces – has faltered. Collectively, they present a tale of broken marriages, thwarted careers, psychological breakdown and isolation. Next month marks the fifth anniversary of the opening salvos of an Iraqi conflict steeped in controversy and confusion. Now it is the war in Afghanistan that is muddied in a quagmire of uncertainty. The intractability of fighting in Helmand province promises British casualties for years to come. [complete article]

See also, Iraq’s Sunni VP won’t block Baath Party law (LAT) and Former Hussein supporters live in fear in Iraq (LAT).

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: Trusting Hamas

All power to Hamas …
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, February 2, 2008

During the years 2000-2006, Hamas obtained all the war medals it needed by steering what has become called the al-Aqsa Intifada. There was no higher reward for the leaders of Hamas than an esteemed reputation in the Islamic world, the ability to inflict pain on Israel, discredit Yasser Arafat, and achieve martyrdom; the ultimate goal of jihadis worldwide. By 2006, it was clear that something was still missing for Hamas. It was the opportunity to rule; the chance to dictate policy and be recognized not only by Arabs and Muslims but by the international community as well.

That, of course, in addition to their conviction that they could run a state, combat corruption and find jobs for the Palestinians. They sincerely believed – and still do – that they can deliver if given the chance. This is actually why they were voted into office in 2006. Palestinians did not vote for them because they promised to annihilate the state of Israel. They actually did not use that during their parliamentary race but rather, campaigned on a social agenda, banking on the bankruptcy of Fatah and the numerous shortcomings that surfaced after the death of Arafat in November 2004. It was a pragmatic victory rather than an ideological one. The Palestinians voted for Hamas because they promised better schools, more security, less bureaucracy and no corruption. Voters included seculars and Christians.

Giving them the full burden of government would have sidelined them from the resistance – the way it did to Fatah after 1993. They would have been too busy cleaning up house in the civil service, inspecting schools, and building roads, to lead a proper resistance. They made several important gestures towards Israel and the Americans, however, crying “Uncle” without actually saying it, because they wanted recognition as statesmen rather than guerilla warriors. Decision-makers in Washington, however, refused to listen, seeing Hamas as no different from al-Qaeda, because of its Islamic program. Instead of taking advantage of the situation, Israel brought Hamas back to the fold of the resistance (what they know how to do best). [complete article]

Egypt: Hamas, Fatah should control Gaza border together
By Yoav Stern, Avi Issacharoff and Barak Ravid, Haaretz, February 3, 2008

Cairo wants Hamas and Fatah to jointly operate the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a spokesman for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the border was closed yesterday by mutual agreement of Egypt and Hamas, 12 days after the Islamic organization blew up the wall that sealed it.

Speaking after a meeting between Mubarak and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said that Egypt would not allow the border to reopen. “Egypt is a respectable country,” he said. “You can’t break open its borders and throw stones at its soldiers.”

What Egypt would prefer, he said, is for the Rafah crossing to reopen under the same arrangements that were in place before Hamas took over Gaza last June – namely, under Palestinian control alongside EU monitors. The monitors left after the Hamas takeover, causing the crossing to be shut. Now, said Awad, “the ball is in the Europeans’ court.” [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: Debatable targets

Al-Qaida claims responsibility for shooting attack near Israeli Embassy in Mauritania
Haaretz, February 3, 2008

Al-Qaida claimed responsibility early Sunday morning for Friday’s shooting attack near the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania that wounded three French nationals.

The international terrorist organization urged Muslim states to cut all ties to Israel. Mauritani, an Islamic republic that straddles black and Arab Africa, is one of the few Arab League states to have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Israeli sources said they believe the embassy was not in fact the target of the attack, but rather an adjacent restaurant frequented by foreign diplomats. The attack followed recent public calls by political parties in Mauritania for the government to sever ties to Jerusalem. [complete article]

Al Qaeda said to focus on WMDs
By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2008

After a U.S. airstrike leveled a small compound in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions in January 2006, President Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence officials announced that several senior Al Qaeda operatives had been killed, and that the top prize was an elusive Egyptian who was believed to be a chemical weapons expert.

But current and former U.S. intelligence officials now believe that the Egyptian, Abu Khabab Masri, is alive and well — and in charge of resurrecting Al Qaeda’s program to develop or obtain weapons of mass destruction.

Given the problems with previous U.S. intelligence assessments of weapons of mass destruction, officials are careful not to overstate Al Qaeda’s capabilities, and they emphasize that there is much they don’t know because of the difficulty in getting information out of the mountainous area of northwest Pakistan where the network has reestablished itself. [complete article]

Al-Qaeda ‘killing’ spawns doubts
By Rahimullah Yusufzai, BBC News, February 2, 2008

It was unusual for Islamist websites to break the news of the death of an important al-Qaeda operative as they did this week in the case of Abu Laith al-Libi.

Two such websites – Ekhlaas.org and as-Sahab – which usually carry statements from al-Qaeda leaders, reported the story.

These websites and al-Qaeda and its affiliates usually deny any report of their operatives’ deaths because the loss of a leading member of the network could be demoralising for its rank and file.

This change could mean one of two things. [complete article]

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