As Iraq tilts towards March 7th elections, there are disconcerting trends unfolding inside the Maliki-run government that portend serious problems and potentially civil war in the not distant future.
Iraq expert and military affairs specialist Tom Ricks recently commented on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room on CNN that he believed that there was a 50-50 chance Iraq would erupt in civil war, and a 10-15% chance that the growing tensions in and around Iraq could become a regional war involving several of the other major states around Iraq.
maliki.jpgPart of the growing trouble inside Iraq stems from the growing sense that politically empowered Shiites in the Iraq Government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are still carrying on campaigns against Sunni political interests.
Iran said on Tuesday it was ready to send its uranium abroad for further enrichment as requested by the U.N.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the decision in an interview with state Iranian television.
He said Iran will have “no problem” giving the West its low-enriched uranium and taking it back several months later when it is enriched by 20 percent.
The decision could signal a major shift in the Iranian position on the issue.
A U.S. attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile mimicking an attack from Iran failed after a malfunction in a radar built by Raytheon Co (RTN.N), the Defense Department said.
The abortive test over the Pacific Ocean coincided with a Pentagon report that Iran had expanded its ballistic missile capabilities and posed a “significant” threat to U.S. and allied forces in the Middle East region.
The Missile Defense Agency said that in Sunday’s test both the target missile, fired from Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, and the interceptor, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, had performed normally.
“However, the Sea-Based X-band radar did not perform as expected,” the agency said on its web site. Officials will investigate the cause of the failure to intercept, it said.
In Nader Mousavizadeh‘s interesting analysis on America’s failure to deal effectively with so-called “rogue states”, he begins by pointing out that the world that created such states is gone:
Obama came into office thinking that a more responsive diplomacy could rally global support for the old Western agenda, but that’s not enough. What’s needed, more than a change in tone or a U.S. policy review, is a new set of baseline global interests—neither purely Western nor Eastern—defined in concert with rising powers who have real influence in capitals like Rangoon, Pyongyang, and Tehran. This requires a painful reconsideration of America’s place in the world. But it promises real help from rising powers in shouldering the financial and military burden of addressing global threats.
Today countries large and small, well behaved and not, are looking for partners, not patrons. Where Washington looks to punish rogues, seeking immediate changes in behavior, rival powers are stepping in with investment and defense contracts, and offering a relationship based on dignity and respect. This is the story of China in Burma, Russia in Iran, Brazil in Cuba, and so on down the line. And given that the core institutions of global governance—the U.N. Security Council, the World Bank, and the IMF—are unwilling to grant the new powers a seat at the decision-making table, it’s not surprising that they feel no obligation to back sanctions they’ve had no say in formulating.
Far from being coy about their newfound independence, the rising powers are asserting their status with increasing strength. During a recent state visit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stood beside President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and declared bluntly: “We don’t have the right to think other people should think like us.” These words resonate more deeply outside the Western world than new calls for unity against the rogues. Days earlier, Ahmadinejad had been hosted by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had embraced his neighbor at a summit of Islamic nations and insisted that Iran’s nuclear program was “peaceful.” Predictably, the Western press attacked both Lula and Erdogan for betraying democratic values and solidarity, missing the point entirely. Established democrats like Lula and Erdogan are not siding with Ahmadinejad, supporting his government’s violent crackdown on protesters or its covert nuclear programs. Rather, they are demonstrating their intention—and, more important, their ability—to have a say in who the rogues are and how they should be dealt with.
Israel has reprimanded two senior army officers who were responsible for firing white phosphorus artillery shells at a UN compound during last year’s offensive in Gaza.
In the first admission of any wrongdoing the Israeli military found that Brigadier-General Eyal Eisenberg and Colonel Ilan Malka were guilty “of exceeding their authority in a manner that jeopardised the lives of others”.
The Israeli report was in response to a damning UN investigation into the Gaza war, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian group, had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity and which called on both sides to investigate the conduct of their forces.
An Israeli defence official said that its internal investigation could lead to further disciplinary action against soldiers involved in the 22-day offensive. The two officers disciplined yesterday were served a mild reprimand and had a “note” placed in their personal files noting their involvement. One defence official described the punishment as a “slap on the wrist.”
As one pompous ass said to another on Monday: “I can think of few peoples who have contributed more to Western civilization than our two peoples. In both Rome and in Jerusalem, the foundations of Western culture were laid.”
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, at the beginning of a three-day tour of Israel, responded to this self-flattering compliment from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by saying: “We are here to show our recognition and our pride in the fact that we are part of a Judeo-Christian culture that is the basis for European culture.”
Many Israelis might express political contempt for Europe — a reputed well-pool of rising anti-Semitism — yet they still cling to European culture. To be told by a European, as an Israeli diplomat recently was, “we have nothing in common with you,” cuts right to the bone. Without its cherished European and Western identity, Israel has nothing.
This doesn’t say much about European virtues, yet the fact that with increasing frequency prominent Israelis struggle to maintain even a superficially civil bearing, is pushing them outside Europe’s cultural embrace. Israelis are becoming the new barbarians.
In a speech at a conference not long ago, an Israeli diplomat serving in a European capital touted Israel’s hoary PR line, distinguishing between “the only democracy in the Middle East” and its autocratic Arab neighbors. “We share common values,” the Israeli told the Europeans. To his surprise, a member of the audience stood up and replied to him: “What common values? We have nothing in common with you.”
In diplomatic conversations, Europeans are critical of Israel because of the Gaza blockade, the construction in the Jewish settlements, the home demolitions in East Jerusalem, the pervasive loathing of the right-wing government and even the social gaps and the way Israel is moving away from the European welfare-state model.
The Netanyahu-Lieberman government is nearly always described as “hard-line” in the foreign media. This is not entirely fair: The government of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni went to war in Lebanon and Gaza and built thousands of apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement blocs – many more than did Netanyahu, who has refrained from employing military force and has declared a 10-month freeze on settlement construction. But they liked the Kadima government because Olmert and Livni made the right noises about their desire for peace and a final status agreement, whereas they don’t believe Netanyahu when he talks about “two states for two peoples.” The fact that Olmert and Livni achieved nothing in the negotiations makes no difference. It’s the intentions that count.
Netanyahu and his aides have answers to the accusations against Israel. The blame for the Gaza blockade lies squarely with the Palestinians, who chose Hamas to reign over them and kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. “You are worrying about the humanitarian rights of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. You should be worrying about one Israeli who is being held there,” Netanyahu’s people tell UN representatives.
In East Jerusalem, the government is hiding behind Mayor Nir Barkat and the planning and construction institutions, which are approving building plans for Jews and home demolitions for Palestinians. And for the diplomatic stagnation, it is blaming Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is refusing to renew the talks.
There is one little problem: The world isn’t buying Israel’s explanations and it isn’t prepared to condemn Palestinian obduracy.
Political scientists Shaul Mishal and Doron Mazza warn of a “white intifada” — apparently they didn’t notice: the West isn’t white anymore — but even if their warning is misnamed, their fear is not misplaced.
The threats to Israel’s legitimacy emanating from the West, may well turn out to be much potent than loudly heralded threats to Israel’s existence coming from the East.
[Rush Limbaugh] said on his radio show that President Obama may be appealing to anti-Semitism with his recent populist criticism of banks and bankers. “There are a lot of people,” Limbaugh said, “when you say banker, people think Jewish.” He didn’t mention Goldman Sachs. Abe Foxman, longtime head of the B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, declared that Limbaugh’s remark was “offensive and inappropriate” and “borderline anti-Semitic.” Limbaugh and his defenders protest that Limbaugh clearly was referring to other people, “people who have–what’s the best way to say–a little prejudice about them,” and not endorsing such views himself. And the transcript bears him out.
By Foxman’s standard, even to mention that many bankers are Jewish is anti-Semitic (even though it’s true), and attributing this view to others (while professing to be worried about it) is no excuse This may be over-the top. We live in a culture of umbrage, in which everybody seems to be taking offense at something somebody else says. Foxman is one of the nation’s foremost umbragists.
However, Limbaugh’s supporters make too much of the fact that, read literally, his remarks took the form of defending Jews against unfair maligning. There can be something creepy about “philo-semitism,” or a professed special fondness for Jews. Even when it is sincere (as it may well be in Limbaugh’s case), it rests on an acute feeling of “otherness” about Jews that makes many Jewish Americans rightly uncomfortable.
Sometimes the stereotype about Jews and money takes a harsher form: Jews are greedy, they lie, cheat and steal for money, they have undue influence with the government, which they cultivate and exploit ruthlessly, and so on. In recent weeks, many have said this sort of thing about Goldman Sachs, but with no reference to Jews. Are they all anti-Semites? No. It ought to be possible to criticize Goldman in the harshest possible terms–if you think that’s warranted–without being tarred as an anti-Semite. (Many of Goldman’s harshest critics, unsurprisingly, are Jewish. Jews can be anti-Semites, too.)
Yesterday, I made the pointed observation that Goldman Sach’s CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, appears to meet the CIA’s requirements for becoming the target of a Predator attack: that such an individual poses “a continuing threat to US persons or interests.”
That observation deserves three points of clarification:
1. No, I am not suggesting that the CIA or anyone else “take out” Blankfein. I neither support extrajudicial killing nor even the death penalty.
2. I freely confess that I harbor a prejudice – but it’s not against Jews; it’s against greedy bastards. I don’t give a fig whether any particular greedy bastard happens to be a Jew or a Gentile.
3. My loathing for greedy bastards does not rest on a simple Marxist belief in a need for the equitable distribution of material wealth. Rather, it springs from seeing the corrosive effect on human culture that derives from attaching excessive value to material things.
Yes, we have been fleeced by men like Blankfein, but much worse we have been led to believe that they are models of success – that they and their values deserve the power to shape the society in which we live and the culture that we create. We have been led to forget that the things of real value are things we can certainly lose, but never buy or own.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, was detained for questioning by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) in connection with the burning of a mosque in Yasuf, a village near Nablus, in December. He is head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in Yitzhar, and is a disciple of Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsberg. The Jerusalem Post reports:
While religious Zionists are primarily concerned with the issue of evacuating settlements, the students at Od Yosef Chai also see IDF ethics as problematic because they are based on “western” or “Christian” morality that equates Jewish lives with those of non-Jews.
In sharp contrast to the Goldstone Report, which criticizes the IDF for purportedly committing “war crimes” against Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead, Od Yosef Chai’s criticism of the IDF is totally different.
IDF battlefield ethics are seen as immoral not because they allow for the killing of innocent bystanders but because they force Jewish soldiers to needlessly endanger themselves to protect gentiles.
The measures taken by the IDF to protect non-combatants, such as using ground forces to weed out terrorists embedded in highly populated civilian areas so as to minimize collateral damage, are viewed by Shapira as downright evil, because they lead to the needless injury or death of Jewish soldiers.
In his preface to the controversial book Torat Hamelech [The King’s Torah], authored by Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Ginsberg points out the tremendous need to illuminate the fundamental differences between Jew and gentile “at a time when we are obligated to conquer [the land of Israel] from our enemies so that we can act as we need to in the spirit of Torah and so that we can strengthen the spirit of the nation and its soldiers.”
Some of the guidelines mentioned at the back of the book in a section entitled “Conclusions – Chapter Five: The Killing of Gentiles in War,” include the following: “There is a reason to kill babies [on the enemy side] even if they have not transgressed the seven Noahide Laws [to believe in God, not to commit idolatry, murder, theft or adultery, to set up a legal system, and not to tear a limb from a live animal] because of the future danger they may present, since it is assumed that they will grow up to be evil like their parents….”
Euronews, Ali Ishan Aydin: How do you see the future of Turkey-Israel relations? After all that has happened, do you still think Turkey can mediate between Israel and Syria, and other Arab states?
Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Israel should give some thought to what it would be like to lose a friend like Turkey in the future. The way they recently treated our ambassador has no place in international politics. We have done our best for Israel-Syria relations. But now we see Benjamin Netanyahu saying ‘I do not trust Erdoğan, but I trust Sarkozy’. Do you have to give a name? This is diplomatic inexperience, too. Because when you say this… How can I trust you if you say you don’t trust me? We have important ongoing agreements between us. How can these agreements be kept going in this climate of mistrust? I think Israel had better take another look at its relations with its neighbours if it believes it is a world power.
Euronews Nial O’Reilly: In recent days the Israeli foreign ministry has accused you of being a cause of the rising tension between your two countries. In fact, it has accused you of anti-semitism. When you review how you handled this incident, do you feel YOU could have handled it more diplomatically?
Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: I am telling the truth…And I will keep telling the truth. Turkey has an age-old history as a state. When you talk to such a state you must be careful. When innocent civilians are ruthlessly killed, struck by phosphorus bombs, infrastructure is demolished in bombing and people are forced to live in an open-air prison… we can not see this as compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, simply human rights, and we can not close our eyes to all this happening. 1-30-10
When Obama took office, many citizens of this nation (including me) let out a sigh of relief, comforted by the thought that a reckless fool had been replaced a calm and sometimes inspiring realist.
How can a year seem like such a long time ago?
Engagement turned out to a piece of campaign pap that fizzled out when the administration discovered that face-to-face contact with Americans does not in the eyes of America’s adversaries have the irresistible appeal it was supposed to have. When you come to the table a smile and a handshake turns out not to be enough.
So what’s Obama’s fallback plan when it comes to confronting Iran?
First we should note that Obama never really challenged the Bush/neocon paradigm in the first place: confrontation with Iran.
Now, since talks went nowhere we’re into the phase escalation: Obama ditched the European missile defense plans (which might have been a smart way of placating the Russians) but now he’s sending in Patriot missiles to be positioned right on Iran’s doorstep. The New York Times reports:
“Our first goal is to deter the Iranians,” said one senior administration official. “A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well.”
Adhmadinejad, on the other hand, promises a February 11 “telling blow to global powers.” What kind of blow? I predict it’ll be something symbolic and not quite as dramatic as his language suggests, but who knows.
Meanwhile, Gen James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, has warned that Iran might lash out at Israel through its surrogates, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Sorry, but this is exactly the kind of regurgitated conventional wisdom we should expect from a man who gives every appearance of functioning on autopilot.
What’s my point? Hariri, who might view Hezbollah warily nevertheless recognizes that it is not an Iranian surrogate waiting to be unleashed on Israel. The Islamist party’s primary focus is on its own domestic constituency and the wider interests of Lebanon.
If a war with Iran was to erupt, would Hezbollah and Hamas have a role? Quite likely, but that doesn’t mean that these groups are sitting around awaiting their commands from masters in Tehran. They have their own political agendas that are not subordinate to the interests of the Iranians.
And if my comments about Jones sound harsh, just watch his keynote address at the J Street conference in October last year where he said: “Of all the problems the administration faces globally, that if there was one problem that I would recommend to the president that if he could do anything he wanted, he could solve one problem, this [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] would be it.”
Ah, if only he was in a position to make such a recommendation. If only he had the president’s ear…
If only Obama’s push for Middle East peace hadn’t turned out to epitomize a wasted year in office.
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said: “… in the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008.”
He could have said “we have killed…” just to make it clear that he includes himself as an actor, not an observer, in the killing process. And he could also have said “and we killed a bunch of innocent bystanders as well.” But maybe when it comes to al Qaeda, there is in Obama’s mind no such person as an innocent bystander. Maybe the children, wives and grandparents are “affiliates”.
In Pakistan the concept of an innocent bystander has not been abandoned and what Obama touts as great success is perceived as an ongoing unrelenting massacre.
Here are some of the latest damning numbers – numbers that no doubt many an American journalist will hesitate to report because they haven’t been confirmed by the holiest of sources, the Pentagon:
Afghanistan-based US predators carried out a record number of 12 deadly missile strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan in January 2010, of which 10 went wrong and failed to hit their targets, killing 123 innocent Pakistanis. The remaining two successful drone strikes killed three al-Qaeda leaders, wanted by the Americans.
The rapid increase in the US drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan can be gauged from the fact that only two such strikes were carried out in January 2009, which killed 36 people. The highest number of drone attacks carried out in a single month in 2009 was six, which were conducted in December last year. But the dawn of the New Year has already seen a dozen such attacks.
Note that all of these Predator attacks came after the CIA team widely reported as having been responsible for Predator targeting had been killed in the Khost bombing.
Now if it became known that the US government was responsible for sending gunmen into restaurants where mafia-style they left their targets riddled with bullets in front of horrified onlookers, even if there were no innocent bystanders killed, there would be public outrage. The government would be accused of having stooped to using the methods of gangsters.
Instead, we fire missiles, destroy the restaurant and kill everyone in it and even if it turns out the target had already left, somehow it’s OK. It was an innocent mistake. It happened in a distant country. We’ll never hear the names of the dead.
In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.
In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.
The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.
But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.
OK, I know it’s supposed to be a fundamental law in free-market economics that the only way of finding and holding on to talent is through high “compensation” but whatever else we might have learned from the Wall Street debacle, isn’t it that the bright minds there turned out not to have wisdom commensurate with their pay checks.
Isn’t this the only sure thing that can be said: that those who seek the highest paying jobs are the people who want to make the most money and their talent, such as it is, consists most reliably in this: their ability to enrich themselves.
For the last eight years we’ve been told that the CIA is staffed by heroic patriots who’ve dedicated their careers to protecting America. Mistakes, they’ve made a few, but they did it their way.
Are we now supposed to add the caveat – so long as they can make as money as possible in the process.
Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.
Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times yesterday they understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts. “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals.
Goldman Sachs is becoming the focus of an increasingly acrimonious political and financial showdown over the payment of multimillion-pound bonuses. Last week the US President described bonuses paid out by some banks as “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful”.
The LA Times reports that Anwar al Awlaki, an American radical cleric, may be about to have his name added to the CIA’s hit list. In other words, if it is determined on the basis of current intelligence that he poses “a continuing threat to US persons or interests” then the CIA has, under a presidential order, the legal authority to kill him. Al Awaki has been linked to the Ft Hood massacre and the failed Christmas Day airline plot.
So here’s the question: is Anwar al Awlaki capable of doing more harm to America than the CEO of Goldman Sachs?
Let’s face it, Goldman Sachs might have weathered the financial crisis better than any of its competitors but that’s not by virtue of being squeaky clean. And let’s be objective, the harm done to the US economy and to millions of American families as a result of the rapacious business practices of Wall Street’s investment bankers far exceeds the damage done by al Qaeda.
When the economic bomb exploded, America was the point of impact with collateral damage strewn across the planet. Tall buildings might not have suddenly fallen, nor airliners exploded in balls of fire, yet lives have been lost, futures destroyed and security shattered while individuals like Lloyd Blankfein are still able to cast their eyes across the wasteland and conclude: sure, I deserve a $100 million more. It’s mine for the taking.
In accordance of the diplomatic norms of the era, it was seen as preposterous that Israel would send its agents onto the streets of a neighboring friendly capital to murder one of its enemies and for them to do so while posing as Canadians. Moreover, Israeli agents had been caught in the act and were in custody. The Jordanians had been embarrassed and an antidote to the deadly poison injected into Meshaal would have to be promptly administered if Israel wanted its operatives released. Only under US pressure did Netanyahu yield.
“Are there any useful lessons for the United States here Mr Prime Minister?”
It turns out that contract killing — something that President George W Bush opened the door to but didn’t pursue with vigor — has been embraced with surprising passion by his successor.
Is it for that proverbial reason that dead men don’t talk or equally that dead al Qaeda operatives don’t present the many legal conundrums as do those caught alive? Is it that detention below rather than above ground has simply become a matter of political expedience?
There are now officers in the CIA who supposedly have the legal authority to sign a death warrant on the basis that an individual is “deemed to be a continuing threat to U.S. persons or interests.”
There is a level of accountability. We’re not told who signs these death warrants but we can rest assured that those who sit on Obama’s death panels must sign their names in ink. These are not a death sentences delivered by email or text message.
Former officials involved in the program said it was handled with sober awareness of the stakes. All memos are circulated on paper, so those granting approval would “have to write their names in ink,” said one former official. “It was a jarring thing, to sign off on people getting killed.”
Jarring perhaps, yet the greatest human frailty is that moral judgment so easily yields to the legitimizing power that flows from normality. And nothing shapes normality more effectively than bureaucracy.
Set up a bureaucratic process and — as the Nazis proved — anything becomes possible. Through faithfulness to a government-endorsed procedure almost anyone will sooner or later become willing to suspend the timid dictates of their own conscience.
The LA Times describes in clinical terms the process that runs from signature to incineration:
The CIA sequence for a Predator strike ends with a missile but begins with a memo. Usually no more than two or three pages long, it bears the name of a suspected terrorist, the latest intelligence on his activities, and a case for why he should be added to a list of people the agency is trying to kill.
The list typically contains about two dozen names, a number that expands each time a new memo is signed by CIA executives on the seventh floor at agency headquarters, and contracts as targets thousands of miles away, in places including Pakistan and Yemen, seem to spontaneously explode.
No U.S. citizen has ever been on the CIA’s target list, which mainly names Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, according to current and former U.S. officials. But that is expected to change as CIA analysts compile a case against a Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico but now resides in Yemen.
When America’s contract killers target their first US citizen, will his fellow citizens pay much attention? Probably not. He has an Arabic name and dark skin — he’s suitably other. If Anwar al Awlaki is eliminated, the CIA’s hit list will briefly get shorter.
A female soldier in Sachlav Military Police unit, stationed in Hebron, recalled a Palestinian child that would systematically provoke the soldiers by hurling stones at them and other such actions. One time he even managed to scare a soldier who fell from his post and broke his leg.
Retaliation came soon after: “I don’t know who or how, but I know that two of our soldiers put him in a jeep, and that two weeks later the kid was walking around with casts on both arms and legs…they talked about it in the unit quite a lot – about how they sat him down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair.”
Even small children did not escape arbitrary acts of violence, said a Border Guard female officer serving near the separation fence: “We caught a five-year-old…can’t remember what he did…we were taking him back to the territories or something, and the officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said ‘don’t cry’ and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile – and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? ‘Don’t laugh in my face’ he said.”
Speeches, so it turns out, are an excellent substitute for policy. There’s no solution to the problem of radical Islam? Talk about reaching out in friendship to moderate Islam. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is stuck? Talk about the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. The war on Al-Qaida is not progressing? Speak of building a nation in Afghanistan. Iran is being impudent? Issue an elegant warning. Wait a year. Let it be forgotten and then make another speech. Erase all that did not succeed, bypass the major crises and continue on to the next year.
Indeed, President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address reveals that what stirred the world’s imagination during the past year, what led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, what caused sandstorms in Middle Eastern and Muslim states and sowed terror in Israel – simply popped like a bubble. Not a single word on the Middle East peace process. Only a restrained “promise” to Iran’s leaders of “growing consequences.” No new outstretched arm to moderate Islam. A word about human rights? Nothing. Just let us make it through the year in peace.
The great vision came down to local politics. To fighting against tribes, gangs, or, in the case of Israel, nationalist parties. Whoever thought that Obama would fulfill the message of Arab-Israeli peace can, like Obama, kick himself for nurturing lofty expectations. But if Obama can chalk up his meager achievements in the Middle Eastern marketplace to inexperience – as if every U.S. president has to reinvent the wheel – that doesn’t absolve the Israelis from paying the bill.
Looking at the way the right acts makes one go green with envy and want to learn from them. Four hundred criminal cases opened against opponents of the 2005 Gaza Strip disengagement, people who threw oil, acid, garbage and stones at soldiers and police, were closed last week and their criminal record expunged. Fifty-one MKs voted in favor of the closure, nine against. That is the true map of Israeli politics (and society). Only about seven percent of the lawmakers believed that this was a worthless and dangerous decision. All the rest agreed with it, or did not bother to vote or take an interest.
Neither did anyone think to apply a similar rule to 800 protesters against Operation Cast Lead, who were arrested and charged, perhaps because they are Arabs, nor to the dozens arrested for protesting in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, perhaps because they are leftists. Left-wing demonstrators never acted as violently as the settlers do, but no one thinks about pardoning them. Not even a semblance of equality before the law, not even the appearance of justice for all – that is unnecessary in a place where public shame no longer exists.
Area C doesn’t sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and soft green valleys, it’s part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.
But look at the statistics and leaf through the pile of demolition orders lying on the table in front of Abed Kasab, head of the village council in Jiftlik, and it all looks like ethnic cleansing via bureaucracy. Perverse might be the word for the paperwork involved. Obscene appear to be the results.
Palestinian houses that cannot be permitted to stand, roofs that must be taken down, wells closed, sewage systems demolished; in one village, I even saw a primitive electricity system in which Palestinians must sink their electrical poles cemented into concrete blocks standing on the surface of the dirt road. To place the poles in the earth would ensure their destruction – no Palestinian can dig a hole more than 40cm below the ground.
He hops here and he hops there. Hops to Jerusalem and hops to Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut, Amman (but, God forbid, not to Gaza, because somebody may not like it). Hops, hops, but doesn’t take anything out of his pouch, because the pouch is empty.
So why does he do it? After all, he could stay at home, raise roses or play with his grandchildren.
This compulsive traveling reveals a grain of chutzpah. If he has nothing to offer, why waste the time of politicians and media people? Why burn airplane fuel and damage the environment?
Maybe it’s time to make the inevitable psychological shift from prevention to risk management.
Flying has always entailed risks – just as their are risks in driving a car or eating in a restaurant.
How’s this for what could be universally accepted as an acceptable level of risk: that the danger of being a victim in a catastrophic air flight is such that one is more likely to die because of mechanical problems or pilot error than because of a terrorist act.
At the close of the standard demonstration on how to secure your seat-belt, put on an oxygen mask, hold a flotation devise and find the emergency exits, this is all the flight attendant needs to add: “… Airlines wishes you a pleasant flight and we assure you that if we don’t reach our destination it will most likely be by accident.”
The risk of such an accident is one that we have all already learned to live with.
If, however, the greatest risk in flying turns out to be the risk of getting blown up, then we do indeed have an enormous problem.
It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
When people talk about buying off the Taliban on the principle that every man has his price, they are making what through the centuries has been recognized as the greatest mistake in warfare: to have inadequate respect for your enemy.
There’s no question that the adversary in Afghanistan fights with the conviction that he has God on his side and that an imbalance in military power has been more than compensated for by divine help. Why would such a fighter trade God for gold? To imagine that he would is to treat his faith as a charade.
Representatives from nearly 70 countries showed up in London on Jan. 28 for a one-day conference on how to save Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai was there, gamely offering “peace and reconciliation” to all Afghans, “especially” those “who are not a part of Al Qaeda or other terrorist networks.” He didn’t mention why the Taliban would accept such an offer while they believe they’re winning the war. Others at the conference had what they evidently considered more realistic solutions—such as paying Taliban fighters to quit the insurgency. Participants reportedly pledged some $500 million to support that aim. “You don’t make peace with your friends,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. True enough. But what if your enemies don’t want peace?
My Newsweek colleague Sami Yousafzai laughs at the notion that the Taliban can be bought or bribed. Few journalists, officials, or analysts know the Taliban the way he does. If the leadership, commanders, and subcommanders wanted comfortable lives, he says, they would have made their deals long ago. Instead they stayed committed to their cause even when they were on the run, with barely a hope of survival. Now they’re back in action across much of the south, east, and west, the provinces surrounding Kabul, and chunks of the north. They used to hope they might reach this point in 15 or 20 years. They’ve done it in eight. Many of them see this as proof that God is indeed on their side.
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