The plot for the Sept. 11 attacks was set in motion in late 1999 from a cluster of Al Qaeda training camps near Kandahar.
In those dusty Afghan compounds, Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants signed off on the plan, set up a special training program, and selected lead members of the hijack team.
Ten years later, could Al Qaeda return to Afghanistan and use it again as a launching pad for terrorist strikes?
The question has taken on heightened urgency as the Obama administration searches for a new war strategy, and Pakistan carries out its first major military offensive in the tribal region that Al Qaeda has called home since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. [continued…]
When Sand said that Israel was not a democracy, and a Zionist called out, “It is a flawed democracy,” Sand bellowed. No: a democracy is founded on the idea that the people are the sovereign, that the people own the state. That is the first principle of a republic going back to Rousseau. Liberalism and civil rights are not the core [of Israel]. Yes, Israel is a liberal society. It tolerates Shlomo Sand’s heresy, for instance, and puts him on TV. But it is a liberal ethnocracy.
Down the row from me were two Arabs. I recognized the man from other events I have been to. I noticed how fulfilled they were by the talk, how quietly approving, and it was in this connection that we saw Sand’s passion: on behalf of the Palestinians. This part of the lecture brought tears to my eyes, it was so forceful and unapologetic. The idea that Joe Lieberman has a right to move to Israel tomorrow and a Palestinian whose ancestors have lived there for centuries cannot is an outrage, Sand said. But for 50 years the Palestinian Israelis were afraid to speak out.
“They were afraid because of the Nakba. They were afraid because of the military regime. Today this is a generation of young Palestinian Israelis that stop to be afraid. They become more anti-Israel in their politics the more they become Israelis.” [continued…]
Sen. John Kerry cautioned President Obama Saturday against raising troop levels in Afghanistan, saying it would be “entirely irresponsible” to do so while the Afghan government remains in turmoil following national elections.
“It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country, when we don’t even have an election finished and know who the president is and what kind of government we’re working in, with,” Kerry told CNN’s John King in an interview set to air Sunday at 9 a.m. on State of The Union. [continued…]
There is a growing fear among Western officials in Afghanistan that President Hamid Karzai and the nation’s Independent Election Commission will not accept the findings of a United Nations-backed fraud investigation that is expected to call for a runoff to settle Afghanistan’s disputed presidential election.
Such a decision by Karzai would deepen Afghanistan’s political crisis and leave no clear method for resolving the allegations of massive fraud that have undermined the credibility of the election, which was held nearly two months ago. It would also be a setback for the Obama administration, which has urged the candidates to follow the electoral process to yield a legitimate winner.
“That’s the brick wall,” said one Western official in Kabul familiar with the process. “It’s going to be quite chaotic and confusing.” [continued…]
There were also reports that foreign envoys were pressing both sides to work out a power-sharing deal. A senior American official noted that Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah together won more than 70 percent of the votes cast in the first round, enough to give a unity government credibility.
But the Obama administration is adamant that it is not pushing for a deal.
“We’re not trying to prevent a second round,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “The issue is not about a runoff. The issue is getting a legitimate president.”
It was unclear how seriously either candidate was taking the idea of a unity government. Neither candidate has completely ruled it out, but each insists that the current process play out first.
Meanwhile, preparations for a second round of voting are well under way. Ballots for a second round were printed in London and shipped to Kabul, the American official said. [continued…]
For years Israel has acted as if the unconditional support of the US would be enough to shield it for ever from the consequences of its behaviour – which is why last week was an unusually traumatic one for them.
No suicide bombers detonated themselves and no rockets or mortar shells fell, but the double whammy of a Turkish snub and a UN Human Rights Council vote shook Israelis even more than any aimless shelling would have done. Those two events signal profound changes that leave Israel paying a growing political price for the attack last winter that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and reduced Gaza to rubble.
It was the brutal pummelling of Gaza that prompted Turkey’s democratically elected government to break the silence among the region’s moderates and stand up for the Palestinians. At the time, the prime minister, Recep Erdogan, condemned the Israeli actions as war crimes, in language deemed intemperate and inappropriate by western leaders.
Curiously, Erdogan’s “intemperate” language was endorsed by the findings of a UN Human Rights Council investigation headed by the Jewish South African judge Richard Goldstone, known as a friend of Israel – findings that were adopted by the Council on Friday despite the efforts of the US and France to shield Israel from being formally accused of war crimes in an international body. [continued…]
Senator George Mitchell is one of America’s most impressive public servants.
He has served the state of Maine well, chaired any number of commissions for various presidents since his senate retirement and patiently plodded through years of work and negotiations with historically opposed foes in the Northern Ireland peace process and achieved peace.
However, he may not be the right envoy to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Mitchell telegraphed the problem from the day that Barack Obama, the US president, announced his appointment on the first work day of the new administration.
Mitchell said that all parties would have to be patient and that it takes years for a process such as the one being envisioned – to create peace between two eventually viable states of Israel and Palestine – to come to fruition.
However, he failed to acknowledge that the negotiations over what Palestine would eventually become have been taking place for decades and have involved many US presidents.
He is not starting at zero and there is not much time left to achieve a new and more constructive ‘equilibrium’ between Israel and Palestine. I prefer the term ‘equilibrium’ over the more hopeful and naïve goal of ‘peace’. [continued…]
A team of Obama administration officials, joined by officials from France and Russia, will begin negotiating in Vienna on Monday with Iranian diplomats over terms of an unusual deal that could remove a significant amount of Tehran’s low-enriched uranium from the country.
The administration views the deal — which would convert the uranium into fuel for a research reactor used for medical purposes — as a test of Iranian intentions in the international impasse over the nation’s nuclear program. The reactor is running short of fuel, according to Iran, and so the administration proposed that 80 percent of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile be sent to Russia for conversion into reactor fuel. France would then fashion the material into metal plates, composed of a uranium-aluminum alloy, used by this reactor.
U.S. officials argue that if Iran fails to follow through on a tentative agreement on this deal, then it will help strength the case for sanctions. But the negotiations already have highlighted splits between the United States and two of the key players — Russia and China — in the effort to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. [continued…]
Since you’re probably not a regular reader of the trade publication Nucleonics Week, let me summarize an article that appeared in its Oct. 8 issue. It reported that Iran’s supply of low-enriched uranium — the potential feedstock for nuclear bombs — appears to have certain “impurities” that “could cause centrifuges to fail” if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.
Now that’s interesting. The seeming breakthrough in negotiations on Oct. 1 in Geneva — where Iran agreed to send most of its estimated 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment — may not have been exactly what it appeared. Iran may have had no alternative but to seek foreign help in enrichment because its own centrifuges wouldn’t work. [continued…]
As discussed previously, the Iranians can still enrich to any level they want, but if a certain level of impurities remains in the product, that makes the process more laborious. The product would have to be hauled back to the UCF [Uranium Conversion Facility] for further purification after partial enrichment, then returned for further enrichment, and so on. That really does put a kink in rapid breakout scenarios.
On the other hand, compared to the technical hurdles that the Iranians have already overcome, perfecting purification at the UCF doesn’t seem like a great challenge, and we should expect the AEOI [Atomic Energy Organization of Iran] to solve that one sooner or later, if they haven’t already.
One other point is worth considering, too. If the Iranians were to build a parallel fuel cycle, they’d probably be smart enough to collocate the parallel UCF with the parallel enrichment facility, which would make it a lot easier to do backing-and-forthing if necessary. Certainly, it will be interesting to learn what turns up at Qom during the inspections later this month, although we’re unlikely to learn before the next Board of Governors meeting, scheduled for late November. [continued…]
Iran’s expanding nuclear program poses one of the Obama administration’s most vexing foreign policy challenges. Fortunately, the conditions for containing Tehran’s efforts may be better today than they have been in years. The recent disclosure of a secret nuclear facility in Iran has led to an apparent agreement to allow in U.N. weapons inspectors and to ship some uranium out of the country, and the United States and Europe seem to be closing ranks on the need for sanctions and engagement.
Of course, the matter is far from resolved; Russia and China are sending mixed signals on their position, while even a weakened Iranian regime remains duplicitous. But the prospects for developing a strategy with a solid chance of success improve if we dispose of five persistent myths about Iran’s nuclear program: [continued…]
A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard and at least 26 others Sunday near the Pakistani border in the heartland of a potentially escalating Sunni insurgency.
The attack — which also left dozens wounded — was the most high-profile strike against security forces in an outlaw region of armed tribal groups, drug smugglers and Sunni rebels known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised sharp retaliation. But a sweeping offensive by authorities is unlikely. [continued…]
Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, imprisoned in Tehran since June 21, was released from Evin Prison on bail Saturday. Iranian authorities did not specify the reasons behind the release, but Bahari, 42, is expecting his first child on Oct. 26 and the mother has experienced serious health complications. Humanitarian considerations were presumed to have played a role in the decision. In a statement, the magazine said, “We are relieved that Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari is home with his family today. We would like to thank all of those who supported Maziar through this long and uncertain period.” [continued…]
Now that Europe and the United States are officially reunited, it seems worth asking: is this necessarily a good thing? The Nobel Committee, which awarded the prize specifically for Obama’s embrace of “multilateral diplomacy,” is evidently convinced that US engagement on the world stage is a triumph for peace and justice. I’m not so sure. After nine months in office, Obama has a clear track record as a global player. Again and again, US negotiators have chosen not to strengthen international laws and protocols but rather to weaken them, often leading other rich countries in a race to the bottom.
Let’s start where the stakes are highest: climate change. During the Bush years, European politicians distinguished themselves from the United States by expressing their unshakable commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. So while the United States increased its carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels, the European Union countries reduced theirs by 2 percent. Not stellar, but clearly a case where the EU’s breakup with the United States carried tangible benefits for the planet.
Flash forward to the high-stakes climate negotiations that just wrapped up in Bangkok. The talks were supposed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen this December that significantly strengthens the Kyoto Protocol. Instead, the United States, the EU and the rest of the developed countries formed a unified bloc calling for Kyoto to be scrapped and replaced. Where Kyoto set clear and binding targets for emission reductions, the US plan would have each country decide how much to cut, then submit its plans to international monitoring (with nothing but wishful thinking to ensure that this all keeps the planet’s temperature below catastrophic levels). And where Kyoto put the burden of responsibility squarely on the rich countries that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. [continued…]
There is a vital development — a new ruling from the British High Court — in a story about which I’ve written many times before: the extraordinary joint British/U.S. effort to cover up the brutal torture which Binyam Mohamed suffered at the hands of the CIA while in Pakistan and while he was “rendered” by the U.S. to various countries. While Mohamed, a British resident, was in American custody, the CIA told British intelligence agents exactly what was done to him, and those British agents recorded what they were told in various memos. Last year, the British High Court ruled that Mohamed — who was then at Guantanamo — had the right to obtain those documents from the British intelligence service in order to prove that statements he made to the CIA were the by-product of coercion.
The High Court’s original ruling in Mohamed’s favor contained seven paragraphs which described the torture to which Mohamed was subjected. It has been previously reported that those paragraphs contain descriptions of abuse so brutal that not even our own American media could dispute that it constitutes “torture”: [continued…]
Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.
Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.
I had written about the ties between Pakistan’s intelligence services and the Taliban while covering the region for The New York Times. I knew Pakistan turned a blind eye to many of their activities. But I was astonished by what I encountered firsthand: a Taliban mini-state that flourished openly and with impunity.
The Taliban government that had supposedly been eliminated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was alive and thriving.
All along the main roads in North and South Waziristan, Pakistani government outposts had been abandoned, replaced by Taliban checkpoints where young militants detained anyone lacking a Kalashnikov rifle and the right Taliban password. We heard explosions echo across North Waziristan as my guards and other Taliban fighters learned how to make roadside bombs that killed American and NATO troops.
And I found the tribal areas — widely perceived as impoverished and isolated — to have superior roads, electricity and infrastructure compared with what exists in much of Afghanistan. [continued…]
Pakistan’s generals have called the offensive the “mother of all battles” for the survival of a country under siege.
There were reports of Taliban compounds coming under aerial bombardment from Pakistan gunships as troops moved out in three columns from Razmak to the north, Jandola to the east and Shakai in the west, and advanced on notorious Taliban target towns like Makeen and Ladha.
The significance of Pakistan’s army having Makeen in its sights will not have been lost on Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari: the late Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was in Makeen when he was allegedly recorded on a telephone intercept claiming responsibility for the assassination of Mr Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister. [continued…]
The attacks in advance of the army’s ground offensive in South Waziristan were widespread, taking place in three of the country’s four provinces and involving not just Taliban tribesmen from the Pashtun ethnic group, but extremist Punjabi factions who were until recently trained by the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) to fight India in Kashmir.
Several of the militants killed had direct connections to the army or the ISI. ‘Dr Usman’, the leader of the group that attacked the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend and held 42 hostages for 22 hours inside the compound, was a member of the army’s medical corps.
That attack and three subsequent co-ordinated strikes in Lahore on Thursday on police training compounds and an intelligence office also appeared to be inside jobs, as the terrorists knew the lay out and security arrangements of all the complexes. The intelligence building and one police compound had been attacked by militants in 2008 and 2009 and since then their security arrangements had been improved, but still the attackers knew how to bypass security.
While the army is unwilling to admit what many Pakistanis now believe – that there is penetration by extremist sympathisers within its ranks – the government also refuses to admit that the largest province of Punjab has become the major new recruiting ground for militants. [continued…]
The Netanyahu government’s campaign to obstruct both the Goldstone inquiry and the report that it produced has been waged in the name of protecting Israel’s right of self-defense.
But Israel’s defenses are actually far weaker than the Goldstone critics care to admit: Israel is so vulnerable that it cannot withstand critical scrutiny or self-examination.
Gone are the days when an Israeli defense minister could be found by Israelis to “bear personal responsibility” for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, as the Kahan Commission found Ariel Sharon after investigating his role in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre.
Now, Israel cannot even take the risk of conducting an independent investigation into alleged war crimes, let alone deal with the unpredictable outcome of such an investigation.
Instead, the defense of Israel now requires that all those who remain loyal to its interests and concerned about its preservation, maintain solidarity in a single mission: do everything possible to silence the Jewish state’s critics.
The underlying assumption seems to be that Israel will remain eternally an object of enmity; that the best it can hope for is that its enemies remain weak.
This is not merely the condition of a national identity; it percolates through to the outlook of individuals — an outlook that is inevitably misanthropic. It is to assume an existential orientation which regards the bulk of humanity as a harbor of ill-will.
For Israelis and many of their supporters, this situation ought to provoke a profound inquiry into the nature of antisemitism.
From where in the world does this ancient bigotry now draw most of its life?
In a pandemic of anti-Israel hostility?
Or might it find its most vital form of traction much closer to home, inside those very minds that perceive the rest of the world as other?
Are the Goldstone critics trying to defend Israel, or are they trying to sustain the image of an embattled state too fragile to survive the corrosive impact of investigation?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thesis is that Israel, like the Soviet Union, is destined to self-destruction. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, seems susceptible to a similar fear.
The breakdown of public morality, in my view, poses the greatest single existential threat to Israel. It is this threat that undermines Israel’s ability to cope with other threats; that saps the willingness of Israelis to fight, to govern themselves, and even to continue living within a sovereign Jewish state. It emboldens Israel’s enemies and sullies Israel’s international reputation. The fact that Israel is a world leader in drug and human trafficking, in money laundering, and in illicit weapons sales is not only unconscionable for a Jewish state, it also substantively reduces that state’s ability to survive.
Oren’s view has apparently subsequently shifted and he now seems to regard the results of the UN investigation as posing a greater threat to Israel than any other: “The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves.”
The ambassador might pause to consider this: A breakdown in public morality and an unwillingness to investigate alleged war crimes may in fact be intimately connected.
The endorsement of the Goldstone Report by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) does not necessarily mean that it will be reviewed by the Security Council, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Friday.
Earlier, the UNHRC voted to refer the report to the Security Council, possibly setting up international prosecution of Israelis and Palestinians accused of war crimes.
The report accused both Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas of committing war crimes in Gaza in their December-January conflict.
Kelly told reporters in Washington that the resolution had “an unbalanced focus and we’re concerned that it will exacerbate polarization and divisiveness.” [continued…]
Israel’s increasingly troubled relations with its main ally in the Muslim world took a turn yesterday when it formally protested to Turkey over the “incitement” generated by a television series featuring fictional scenes of barbaric acts by Israeli soldiers.
The airing of the series, on Turkish
state television, coincides with tensions triggered by a decision last week by Ankara to exclude Israel – which it has severely criticised over last winter’s war in Gaza – from a planned Nato air exercise.
The acting Turkish ambassador, Ceylan Ozen, was summoned yesterday to the Israeli foreign ministry in protest at the drama series Ayrilik which shows soldiers brutalising Palestinians. In one abbreviated sequence shown on YouTube, a soldier is seen gratuitously shooting a girl at close range, killing her. In another, Palestinians are apparently about to be executed by a firing squad. [continued…]
On one level, it is indeed an ordinary place. People curse the traffic, follow their stocks, Blackberry, go to the beach and pay their mortgages. Stroll around in the prosperous North Tel Aviv suburbs and you find yourself California dreaming.
On another, it’s not. More than 60 years after the creation of the modern state, Israel has no established borders, no constitution, no peace. Born from exceptional horror, the Holocaust, it has found normality elusive. [continued…]
Human rights activists monitoring the West Bank report that despite commitments Israel made to President Barack Obama’s administration last month, widespread building activity commenced three weeks ago in at least 12 settlements.
The work consists of ground preparation, pouring concrete and drilling construction foundations.
This work is not part of the projects that Israel and the United States had reached an understanding on. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak had agreed with the administration to complete some 2,500 housing units that were already in various stages of construction at the time. The dozen sites do not appear on the list of 492 new housing units that the defense ministry issued after Barak approved their construction. Work on these units began after the list was released. [continued…]
The Zionist Organization of America is praising the Obama administration for “taking a principled stance” against the Goldstone Report.
The ZOA points to the remarks made at the UN Human Rights Council by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner, in which he said that “we believe that the document is deeply flawed and disagree sharply with its methodology and many of its recommendations, including their extraordinarily broad scope.” [continued…]
… he post-Oslo culture has espoused a class of contractors. These are businessmen who are either high-ranking officials in the PA and the Fatah Party, or both, or closely affiliated with them. Much of the billions of dollars of international aid that poured into Palestine following the signing of Oslo found its way into private bank accounts. Wealth generated more wealth and “export and import” companies sprung up like poison ivy amidst the poor dwelling of refugees throughout the occupied territories. The class of businessmen, still posing as revolutionaries, encroached over every aspect of Palestinian society, used it, controlled it, and eventually suffocated it. It espoused untold corruption and, naturally, found an ally in Israel, whose reign in the occupied territories never ceased.
The PA became submissive not out of fear of Israeli wrath per se, but out of fear that such wrath would disrupt business — the flow of aid and thus contracts. And since corruption is not confined by geographical borders, PA officials abroad took Palestinian shame to international levels. Millions marched in the US, Europe, Asia, South America and the rest of the world, chanting for Gaza and its victims, while some PA ambassadors failed to even turn out to participate. When some of these diplomats made it to public forums, it was for the very purpose of brazenly attacking fellow Palestinians in Hamas, not to garner international solidarity with their own people.
Readily blaming “American pressure” to explain Abbas’s decision at the UNHRC no longer suffices. Even the call on the 74-year-old Palestinian leader to quit is equally hollow. Abbas represents a culture, and that culture is self-seeking, self-serving and utterly corrupt. If Abbas exits (and considering his age, he soon will), Mohamed Dahlan could be the next leader, or even Habbash, who called on Gaza to rebel against Hamas as Israel was blowing up Palestinian homes and schools left and right.
Palestinians that are now calling for change following the UN episode must consider the Oslo culture in its entirety, its “revolutionary” millionaires, its elites and contractors. A practical alternative to those corrupted must be quickly devised. The Israeli annexation wall is encroaching on Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, and a new war might be awaiting besieged Gaza. Time is running out, and our collective shame is nearly complete. [continued…]
The government of President Hamid Karzai is preparing for the likelihood that he will have to face an election runoff with his main challenger, Afghanistan’s ambassador here said Thursday, acknowledging an outcome that Western diplomats had been pushing for but that could complicate the debate over whether to send more American troops.
The comments by the ambassador in Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, were the first in which Mr. Karzai’s government conceded that a runoff was likely, after weeks of investigation into stark cases of election fraud.
In an interview on Wednesday and in a follow-up telephone conversation on Thursday, Mr. Jawad said that although he had no direct contact with the commission auditing the vote, the Karzai government was preparing for the commission to announce Saturday that a runoff was necessary. [continued…]
The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.
The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.
Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate. [continued…]
U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.
The intelligence agencies’ rethink comes as pressure is mounting on Capitol Hill, and among U.S. allies, for the Obama administration to redo the 2007 assessment, after a string of recent revelations about Tehran’s nuclear program.
German, French and British intelligence agencies have all disputed the conclusions of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, in recent months, according to European officials briefed on the exchanges. [continued…]
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Thursday that his nation was committed to deepening its ties with Iran, a declaration that underscores the difficulty the United States will face in seeking broad economic sanctions against Tehran in an effort to rein in its nuclear program.
“The Sino-Iranian relationship has witnessed rapid development, as the two countries’ leaders have had frequent exchanges, and cooperation in trade and energy has widened and deepened,” Wen said at a meeting in Beijing with visiting Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, according to the official New China News Agency.
The U.S. and its allies are counting on China and Russia, veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, for support in pressuring Iran to abandon activities the West fears could lead to the development of nuclear weapons. [continued…]
It is as hard as ever to know how much credence to give the report in today’s Kommersant newspaper that the Obama administration has done a backroom deal with Moscow in which it has agreed to self-censor on Russian human rights violations.
As The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding, points out, Hillary Clinton took time out of her Moscow trip this afternoon to meet human rights activists, which knocks a bit of a hole in the story.
But the Obama White House has indisputably put the Bush democracy agenda on the back burner, if not taken it off the stove altogether. In his speech to the UN general assembly last month, the president spelled out the four pillars of his foreign policy which were non-proliferation, the pursuit of peace, combating climate change and the rebuilding of the global economy.
This is a long way from Bush’s second inaugural speech, which made America’s new manifest destiny the promotion of democracy across the world. In Obama’s UN address, human rights made an appearance principally as the right to life under the peace and security heading.
As for the rest, Obama’s message was: “America will live its values, and we will lead by example”. For example, by closing Guantanamo. [continued…]
The historic reconciliation agreement signed Saturday between Turkey and Armenia constitutes further testament to the positive changes undergone by Turkey in recent year. A government with an Islamic orientation was able to impressively promote two highly sensitive issues for Turkish public opinion: Recognizing the cultural rights of the Kurdish minority and normalizing ties with Armenia.
The strong sense of Turkish nationalism previously prevented any compromise with the Kurds, for fear this will open the door for boosting their national demands and in turn for a renewed territorial disintegration by Turkey.
Tayyip Erdogan’s administration realized that it is precisely openness towards the Kurdish minority that will prompt a greater sense of belonging among them and weaken their aspiration to join other Kurdish areas, mostly in Iraq.
Erdogan faced a similar choice vis-à-vis Armenia: Perpetuating the frozen status-quo in the ties with Turkey’s neighbor would have boosted the global Armenian campaign for recognition of the massacre committed by the Turks as an organized and methodical genocide. Turkey would have been faced with all the possible implications of such recognition, especially if it would have also been backed by the US Congress.
Erdogan decided to preempt this blow, and while taking advantage of the weak Armenian economy (which suffered gravely as result of the closure of its borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan) managed to secure (with Swiss mediation) a reconciliation agreement that is difficult for both for the Turks and for the Armenians – yet postpones to an unknown future date the question of addressing the Armenian holocaust and entrusts future research on its scope in the hands of historians. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — The writer notes “the fact that precisely at a time when Turkey reaches out to its past enemies, the Turkish administration is adopting an increasingly hostile policy vis-à-vis its former great ally – Israel” and he cites this as a justification for Turkey’s entry into the European Union being blocked.
It’s interesting that an Israeli should be advising the EU who it should or should not be willing to consider as a future member. Of course Israelis who are concerned about keeping Turkey out of the EU merely need to do their bit in helping foment anti-Muslim bigotry across Europe to ensure that the Turks won’t get a fair hearing.
While Eldad Beck clearly admires Erdogan’s diplomatic successes, he falls back on an old cliche in assuming that the Turkish leader is merely taking advantage of popular hostility towards Israel in order to advance his political goals. The assumption, as always, is that such hostility would either not exist or be of minor proportions were it not being fomented. Israel remains the perpetual victim of a bad press.
The real lesson that Israelis should be drawing from observing Turkey is to note how stark the difference is between a diplomatically and democratically empowered nation as it pursues a policy of regional engagement, versus the inevitable isolation that Israel now faces as a diplomatically crippled nation.
It turns out that having just one friend isn’t enough.
… we have to recognize the fact that should the trend of isolation continue, we shall have to pay a heavy price – first and foremost on the economic front.
More than ever before, Israel’s growth and employment situation hinge on exporting goods to the global market. In case of isolation, we will find it difficult to engage in international trade, attract foreign investments, and acquire the credit we need.
The isolation will also undermine us strategically, as it would encourage Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran to provoke us. This is based on the assumption that the Israeli government will shy away from ordering the IDF to operate against them in full force, for fear of another Goldstone Report and possibly even UN Security Council sanctions.
Moreover, the isolation also serves to increase Israel’s depends on the American Administration to a dangerous degree; this dependence is too heavy as it is. [continued…]
o the innocent refuse to be questioned?
