Category Archives: Editor’s comments

Questioning the New York Times

When Electronic Intifada contacted the New York Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner to ask him if it was true his son had just joined the Israeli army and if so whether he thought this would create a conflict of interest, the newspaper avoided giving a straight answer. It gave what has become so familiar — a response which in the paper’s scrupulously measured but condescending tone implicitly said: who are you to question our judgment?

“Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”

To be oblique and not simply say, yes, Bronner’s son is in the IDF, but to instead say he “makes his own decisions,” is in effect to say: What gives you the audacity Mr Abunimah to think that we should be obliged to directly answer your meddlesome questions?

Similarly, the paper’s own public editor Clark Hoyt gets waved off by executive editor Bill Keller who simultaneously clearly feels obliged to pay mock homage to the public editor’s role. Lest readers be confused because they thought Hoyt is what the paper says — “the readers’ representative” — Keller gets all slimy and says that he actually has more respect for the readers than does Hoyt and that’s why Bronner won’t be getting reassigned. Keller, unlike Hoyt (Keller claims), believes that the paper’s readers are fully capable of distinguishing between appearance and reality. In this case that presumably means that they can see that the appearance of a conflict of interest for Ethan Bronner does not correspond with an actual conflict of interest.

There is one factual point, central to the discussion, that Hoyt gets wrong when he quotes a reader:

Linda Mamoun of Boulder, Colo., wrote that although she found Bronner’s coverage “impressively well-written and relatively even-handed,” his position “should not be held by anyone with military ties to the state of Israel.” His son has the direct ties, not Bronner. But is that still too close for comfort?

Actually, the reader was right: it is Bronner, not his son, who has ties to the state of Israel.

As minister of defense, Ehud Barak does not have ties to the state of Israel. He is part of the state. Likewise Bronner’s son, who happens to be at the other end of the chain of command, is now just as much a part of the state.

As for the question about the potential conflict of interest, I don’t take it as a given that Bronner’s connection to the IDF will necessarily cloud his judgment. On the contrary, it could sharpen his focus.

The next time Israel makes its case for war, Bronner may stand at risk of losing a son. Maybe that will drive this reporter to pose tougher questions.

On the other hand, when it comes to the IDF’s policy of seeking zero risk for Israeli soldiers, it’s hard to imagine Bronner covering that issue with any semblance of impartiality.

Ultimately, the story here is the perennial story of the New York Times. It’s not about conflicts of interest as much as it’s about the paper’s unremitting disdain towards its critics.

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The Siddiqui conviction: A verdict ‘based on fear, not on fact’

It should go without saying but yet again needs to be repeated: in an effective justice system, justice not only must be done but it must be seen to be done. In this respect the trial of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, which ended in New York on Wednesday was a miserable failure.

Although most Americans haven’t even heard the name of this MIT-trained neuroscientist, Dr Siddiqui’s case has captured the attention of much of her native Pakistan. Her conviction on two counts of attempted murder quickly led Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari to direct his government to offer her legal assistance.

AP reported:

Pakistanis shouted anti-American slogans and burned the Stars and Stripes on Thursday in protest of a New York jury’s conviction of a Pakistani woman accused of trying to kill Americans while detained in Afghanistan.

The protests drew thousands in at least four cities, demonstrating the widespread distrust, and even hatred, of the U.S. in this country whose cooperation Washington needs to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.

The New York Times said:

Defense lawyers argued that an absence of bullets, casings or residue from the M4 [– the rifle allegedly snatched and fired by the accused –] suggested it had not been shot. They used a video to show that two holes in a wall supposedly caused by the M4 had been there before July 18 [the date of the alleged crime].

They also pointed out inconsistencies in the testimony from the nine government witnesses, who at times gave conflicting accounts of how many people were in the room, where they were sitting or standing and how many shots were fired.

Ms. Siddiqui’s lawyers said they had not decided whether to appeal. They suggested that prosecutors had played to New Yorkers’ anxieties about terror attacks.

“This is not a just and right verdict,” Elaine Sharp, one of Ms. Siddiqui’s lawyers, said outside the courtroom. “In my opinion this was based on fear but not fact.”

If the views of jurors were shaped by irrational fears, it seems as though Judge Richard M. Berman suffered the same frailty. Far from recognizing that the conduct of the trial had wider implications for the relations between the US and Pakistan, so-called security considerations meant that journalists with the least interest in covering the case had the best access while those with the greatest interest weren’t allowed into the court room.

As Petra Bartosiewicz reported for Time magazine early in the proceedings:

[Dr Siddiqui’s] case has been major news in much of the Muslim world — and a crush of journalists from Pakistan have been struggling to gain access to a trial hemmed in by security-conscious New York City officials. How the foreign press is able to follow the court proceedings — and thus perceive the fairness of the trial — will have an impact on upcoming high-profile terrorism trials like that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 plotters, likely to be held in the same courthouse as the Siddiqui case.

“If we were able to file a transcript of the proceedings they’d probably print it,” Iftikhar Ali, a reporter with the Associated Press of Pakistan, said of the Siddiqui trial. “That’s how much interest there is in this case.” But Ali, like many other reporters from overseas, has been hampered in gaining access to the live proceedings. Journalists from Pakistan on assigment in New York have been largely excluded from the courtroom. Because of tight restrictions observed by the presiding Judge Richard Berman, not a single Pakistani reporter had been granted a press credential when opening statements began on Tuesday. They were instead sent to an overflow courtroom to watch the proceedings via video link.

In the overflow room this week I met journalists from Pakistan with United Nations and U.S. State Department issued press credentials. They work for some of the biggest outlets in their countries, including BBC Urdu, the Associated Press in Pakistan, Jang, Dawn, Geo and Haj TV. None were issued credentials for the trial, though some had applied weeks ago. We watched the proceedings on a flat screen television. The view didn’t include any of the exhibits being offered into evidence, among them multiple diagrams of the scene of the shooting and incriminating documents allegedly written by Siddiqui. At one point a key government eyewitness stepped off the witness stand and out of range of both the camera and microphone to use a visual aid to demonstrate where he was during the shooting. He was permitted to give much of his testimony off camera.

Ali, who has been at the court every day of the trial — including jury selection — was granted access to the main courtroom for about five minutes on the first day, but was escorted out when court security guards realized he was not on the list of approved media. At the time the only other occupants of the four-row press box, which covers half the available seating in the courtroom with room for about 20 individuals, were one each from the The New York Times, The New York Post and the New York Daily News. The court has officially recognized only media who carry New York Police Department issued press passes, traditionally reserved for reporters who regularly cover crime scenes and certain public events in the city. Out of the approximately 30 such individuals from U.S. news outlets who were eligible to attend the trial, most were not present for opening statements.

“We’ve been coming to all the pretrial hearings and we were never told there was going to be a different system for the trial. We were told the press will be allowed,” Ayesha Tanzeem, a journalist with Voice of America Urdu said. After TIME made inquiries on Thursday, individuals in the overflow room, including the Pakistani journalists, were for the first time ushered into the main courtroom during the afternoon session. But with the exception of a BBC Urdu reporter and a Samaa TV reporter who received official passes, none have been granted a press credential that would guarantee them a seat on future days.

The decision to accept solely the NYPD pass for the Siddiqui trial came from the judge’s chambers, says Elly Harrold of the District Executive’s office, the administrative arm at the federal courthouse. “Of course there are exceptions,” Harrold said, “but I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

Although Siddiqui is not charged with any terrorism-related crime, security concerns are paramount though the procedures seem to be unevenly enforced. During the lunch break on the first day of the Siddiqui trial a group of Muslim men praying in the waiting areas outside the courtroom were afterwards asked to leave the floor. That prevented them from securing a place in line for the afternoon session. Several Muslim women in hijabs were also given similar instructions, but others in the same area, dressed in business attire, including this reporter, were permitted to stay. On the second day of the trial metal detectors were posted outside the courtroom and individuals were asked for photo identification and their names and addresses were logged by court security officers. At the close of proceedings on Thursday defense attorney Charles Swift protested the practice. “The suggestion is that the gallery may be a threat,” said Swift, calling the measure “highly prejudicial.”

If Charles Swift sounds like a familiar name it’s because he has the rare distinction of having stood up and successfully defended his country while its Constitution faced attack from the Bush administration. In Hamdan vs Rumsfeld, Swift won a major victory for the rule of law.

The case of Dr Siddiqui exposes a moral fallacy that has haunted America throughout the war on terrorism. It is this: that injustice is something that can only be done to the innocent.

We have abandoned what used to be the universally recognized foundation of a just legal system: that it treats the guilty and the innocent with fairness and impartiality.

—

(For fascinating background on the Siddiqui case, read Declan Walsh’s November 2009 report in The Guardian.)

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The war of terror

At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick writes:

…what was once tough on terror is now soft on terror. And each time the Republicans move their own crazy-place goal posts, the Obama administration moves right along with them.

It’s hard to explain why this keeps happening. There hasn’t been a successful terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. The terrorists who were tried in criminal proceedings since 9/11 are rotting in jail. The Christmas Day terror attack was both amateurish and unsuccessful. The Christmas bomber is evidently cooperating with intelligence officials without the need to resort to thumbscrews. In a rational universe, one might conclude that all this is actually good news. But in the Republican crazy-place, there is no good news. There’s only good luck. Tick tock. And the longer they are lucky, the more terrified Americans have become.

I’ve always argued that it’s misleading and dangerous to treat “terror” and “terrorism” as synonyms.

As “the war on terrorism” quickly became “the war on terror” — a contraction that generally seems to have been be viewed as nothing more than a tabloid construction — terror was treated as an inescapable consequence of terrorism, such that there was supposedly no reason to distinguish between the objects of our fear and the fear itself.

The problem with arguing that our fears have grown out of proportion to the threats is that all it will take is for there to be another major terrorist attack in America (note in, not on — the whole country is never in jeopardy of attack) and the fear-mongers will trumpet that they have been vindicated. Indeed, they will inevitably blame — alongside the attackers — those who previously suggested that America’s fears were overblown.

The alternative argument — one that no populist has the courage to press — is that in response to the 9/11 attacks, America plunged into a shameful state of national hysteria.

Al Qaeda presented a challenge to this country in 2001. It tried to find out whether nineteen men were capable of making 600 million knees wobble. It accomplished that feat with resounding success.

The spectacle of a whole nation being so easily terrorized had two immediate effects.

It demonstrated to jihadists that their presupposition that it is quite easy to make Americans afraid was well-founded.

And it led others (mostly Americans themselves) to view American fear as fertile ground in which commercial, political and military opportunities of incalculable value could easily be cultivated.

At no point did anyone of national stature step up and say to the American people: get a grip on yourselves. You should neither capitulate to the terrorists nor to the fear-mongers since they both have the same objective: they want to make you live in fear.

The fear-mongers say that the only way of averting fear is to feel safe and secure. That’s true — but only for about the first ten years in life. After that, as we mature we must learn how to live in a dangerous world without becoming enslaved by our own fears.

So, the first rule when it comes to dealing with terrorism is to remember that we are adults and that life demands a sufficient measure of courage such that we don’t shriek every time someone shouts boo!

Once we have a national consensus on our need to act like adults, then we proceed with all the practical and necessary steps to avoid becoming sitting ducks. Counter-terrorism then becomes a matter of prudence — not a vice for gripping the national psyche.

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Off with his head!

Matthew Yglesias writes:

If the President wants to do something like implement a domestic policy proposal he campaigned on—charge polluters for global warming emissions, for example—he faces a lot of hurdles. He needs majority support on a House committee or three. He also needs majority support on a Senate committee or three. Then he needs to get a majority in the full House of Representatives. And then he needs to de facto needs a 60 percent supermajority in the Senate. And then it’s all subject to judicial review.

But if Scooter Libby obstructs justice, the president has an un-reviewable, un-checkable power to offer him a pardon or clemency. If Bill Clinton wants to bomb Serbia, then Serbia gets bombed. If George W Bush wants to hold people in secret prisons and torture them, then tortured they shall be. And if Barack Obama wants to issue a kill order on someone or other, then the order goes out. And if Congress actually wants to remove a president from office, it faces extremely high barriers to doing so.

Whether or not you approve of this sort of executive power in the security domain, it’s a bit of a weird mismatch. You would think that it’s in the field of inflicting violence that we would want the most institutional restraint. Instead, the president faces almost no de facto constraints on his deployment of surveillance, military, and intelligence authority but extremely tight constraint on his ability to implement the main elements of the his domestic policy agenda.

This kind of presidential power looks “weird” if viewed from a constitutional vantage point but maybe not as weird as an expression of American culture.

Having moved to this country twenty years ago from the country that America successfully wrestled its independence from, it’s often struck me that Americans did not fully reject the concept of monarchical rule; they simply wanted a kind of modified monarchy.

First off, the monarch would need to be a native — a vehement “no” to foreign rule.

Next, the monarch would need to be one of the people, be elected and not restricted to a line of inheritance. It wasn’t that Americans did want a king; they simply wanted everyone to be able to nurture the fantasy that some day they too might become the king.

But dynasties are OK. In fact, the occasional dynasty helps burnish the executive’s regal image.

And what’s more befitting of the powers of an American king than that he should be able to occasionally proclaim: “Off with his head!”

Who knows, maybe in a few years the old regal custom of hosting public executions will be re-instituted. No doubt they’d get excellent ratings on cable news.

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The CIA: a continuing threat to U.S. persons or interests?

The Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reassured the House Intelligence Committee yesterday that he understands that killing Americans is a “very sensitive issue” and that the agency must always “get specific permission” to do so.

I wonder how much comfort that provides to the family of Jim and Veronica “Roni” Bowers and their two children, six-year-old son Cory and infant daughter Charity, who under the CIA’s watch were shot down by the Peruvian Air Force while flying over Peru in 2001. Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity were killed. The video below shows what happened:

ABC News reports:

…for almost nine years, the CIA misled Congress, the White House and the dead woman’s parents about how and why the agency defied the rules established to make sure innocent people were not killed.

“I want to know the truth,” Garnett Luttig, father of Roni Bowers, told ABC News. “I want to know why. I wonder why my baby’s gone. Don’t they understand that?”

Said Gloria Luttig, Roni’s mother, “I want somebody to have to stand up and say I was responsible. I want him to know what a mother’s heart is like.”

On Wednesday, the CIA said its nine-year long investigation had determined that 16 CIA employees should be disciplined, including the woman then in charge of counter-narcotics.

Many of them are no longer with the CIA, and one of those involved said his discipline was no more than a letter of reprimand placed in his file, which he was told would be removed in one year.

So what are we to understand from DNI Blair? That while the CIA engages in extrajudicial killings, it does so with great caution but if mistakes are made, those responsible certainly face the risk of receiving a letter of reprimand?

Either we live in a land governed by law or we don’t. A determination by an intelligence operative is by no stretch of the imagination a substitute for due process.

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‘It’s better to join the Taliban; they pay more money.’


When President Obama announced his 30,000-strong troop surge in December he said: “these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

It was another example of what has become all too familiar: Obama’s ability to govern like Bush without sounding exactly like Bush. He might as well have simply reused Bush’s line and said: “As Afghan forces stand up, we will stand down.” The difference in language is trivial. The real difference between now and 2005 when Bush said that in reference to Iraqi forces is that it turns out Bush’s objective was a bit more realistic.

Consider Rod Nordland’s portrayal or the way the Afghan National Police force is shaping up:

The NATO general in charge of training the Afghan police has some tongue-in-cheek career advice for the country’s recruits.

“It’s better to join the Taliban; they pay more money,” said Brig. Gen. Carmelo Burgio, from Italy’s paramilitary Carabinieri force.

That sardonic view reflects a sobering reality. The attempts to build a credible Afghan police force are faltering badly even as officials acknowledge that the force will be a crucial piece of the effort to have Afghans manage their own security so American forces can begin leaving next year.

Though they have revamped the program recently and put it under new leadership, Afghan, NATO and American officials involved in the training effort list a daunting array of challenges, as familiar as they are intractable.

One in five recruits tests positive for drugs, while fewer than one in 10 can read and write — a rate even lower than the Afghan norm of 15 percent literacy. Many cannot even read a license plate number. Taliban infiltration is a constant worry; incompetence an even bigger one.

Now consider this description of the resistance that US Marines are facing in Helmand Province:

In areas where they have built bases, the Marines have undermined the Taliban’s position. But the insurgents have consolidated and adapted, and remain a persistent and cunning presence.

On the morning of the sweep, made by Weapons Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, a large communications antenna that rose from one compound vanished before the Marines could reach it. The man inside insisted that he had seen nothing. And when the Marines moved within the compounds’ walls, people in nearby houses released white pigeons, revealing the Americans’ locations to anyone watching from afar.

The Taliban and their supporters use other signals besides car horns and pigeons, including kites flown near American movements and dense puffs of smoke released from chimneys near where a unit patrols.

“You’ll go to one place, and for some reason there will be a big plume of smoke ahead of you,” said Capt. Paul D. Stubbs, the Weapons Company commander. “As you go to the next place, there will be another.”

“Our impression,” he added, “is the people are doing it because they are getting paid to do it.”

The people are getting paid… right.

You don’t have to be a Holywood screenwriter to see this description — the smoke signals, pigeon alerts and so forth — as a classic image of resistance. The foreign fighters are better armed, but the resistance fighters have the home-turf advantage — they’re being protected by the civilian population. Do the civilians have to get paid for their services? Conceivably, but I kind of doubt it. More likely it simply comes down to knowing who are “our boys”.

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The New Intifada

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.

Aluf Benn writes:

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.

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Greedy bastards

Michael Kinsley, smart as always:

[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.

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Which is more dangerous: reckless or clueless?

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.

Did Jones happen to hear Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri warn last week that an attack on Hezbollah by Israel would be viewed as an attack on Lebanon? This from the poster-boy of the Cedar Revolution which five years ago was taken by the Bush administration as the herald of democracy spreading across the Middle East.

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.

General Jim Jones, President Obama’s National Security Advisor, addresses J Street’s first national conference from Isaac Luria on Vimeo.

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The immutable connection between greed and talent

From Politico:

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.

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Lloyd Blankfein: a continuing threat to U.S. persons or interests?


From The Times:

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.

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Fear of flying

So now we have what surely sounds like the worst imaginable terrorist threat: the bomber whose weapon is concealed inside their body. Are we going to need MRIs before boarding a plane?

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.

As things currently stand, bad weather (an avoidable threat) poses a greater danger than terrorism and the risk from human error vastly exceeds both.

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Why the Taliban won’t be bought off

Sun Tzu wrote:

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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The sanctity of military spending

The sanctity of military spending
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, January 26, 2010

In sum, as we cite our debtor status to freeze funding for things such as “air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks” — all programs included in Obama’s spending freeze — our military and other “security-related” spending habits become more bloated every year, completely shielded from any constraints or reality. This, despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for the U.S. to make meaningful progress in debt reduction without serious reductions in our military programs.

Public opinion is not a legitimate excuse for this utterly irrational conduct, as large percentages of Americans are receptive to reducing — or at least freezing — defense spending. A June, 2009 Pew Research poll asked Americans what they would do about defense spending, and 55% said they would either decrease it (18%) or keep it the same (37%); only 40% wanted it to increase. Even more notably, a 2007 Gallup poll found that “the public’s view that the federal government is spending too much on the military has increased substantially this year, to its highest level in more than 15 years.” In that poll, 58% of Democrats and 47% of Independents said that military spending “is too high” — and the percentages who believe that increased steadily over the last decade for every group.

The clear fact is that, no matter how severe are our budgetary constraints, military spending and all so-called “security-related programs” are off-limits for any freezes, let alone decreases. Moreover, the modest spending freeze to be announced by Obama tomorrow is just the start; the Washington consensus has solidified and is clearly gearing up for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with the dirty work to be done by an independent “deficit commission.” It’s time for “everyone” to sacrifice and suffer some more — as long as “everyone” excludes our vast military industry, the permanent power factions inside the Pentagon and intelligence community, our Surveillance and National Security State, and the imperial policies of perpetual war which feed them while further draining the lifeblood out of the country. [continued…]

Obama liquidates himself
By Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 26, 2010

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.” [continued…]

Obama would ‘rather be really good one-term president’
By Mark Mooney, ABC News, January 25, 2010

President Obama, buffeted by criticism of his massive health care reform bill and election setbacks, said today he remained determined to tackle health care and other big problems despite the political dangers to his presidency.

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” he told ABC’s “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview today. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — As though he’s in a men’s store trying out a new suit for size, Obama’s trying on the One-Termer — wants to see if he likes the cut.

If as a bold political choice this president was to make a commitment not to run for re-election, that could be a decisive way of breaking free from the stranglehold of powerful interest groups. But with this statement, as in so many others, there’s nothing bold about what Obama is doing.

Bob Herbert, who is clearly clutching hold of the last straws of hope, sees tomorrow’s State of the Union speech as an slim opportunity for the renewal of faith: “Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he’ll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation. They want to know who their president really is.”

This really is the most damning statement: that after one year Americans have less of a sense of who occupies the White House than they did before he took office – back when he was perceived as an unknown.

The One-Termer — Obama doesn’t need to decide whether it’s a good fit or he can afford it — they’re giving them away for free. Try it on and it’s yours for keeps.

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U.S. mulls legality of killing American al Qaeda “turncoat”

U.S. mulls legality of killing American al Qaeda “turncoat”
By Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito and Brian Ross, ABC News, January 25, 2010

White House lawyers are mulling the legality of proposed attempts to kill an American citizen, Anwar al Awlaki, who is believed to be part of the leadership of the al Qaeda group in Yemen behind a series of terror strikes, according to two people briefed by U.S. intelligence officials.

One of the people briefed said opportunities to “take out” Awlaki “may have been missed” because of the legal questions surrounding a lethal attack which would specifically target an American citizen. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t this the way it works? If someone has an Arabic name, then citizenship is secondary. So long as they are “taken out” overseas, preferably in a state or area with a reputation for lawlessness, then legal process fits comfortably into the tip of a Hellfire missile. Extra latitude is of course provided when the “target” is not white.

But maybe the Justice Department could provide a little extra clarity — some new designations in citizenship status just so everyone understands which American citizens can be executed on the basis of a presidential order and which can’t. As for non-Americans, well, America has always reserved the right to kill them as and when it sees fit.

The drone surge
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch, January 24, 2010

One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, a missile blasted a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that slammed into a compound in Degan village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing three.

What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the Bush years have become commonplace under the Obama administration. And since a devastating December 30th suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an “unprecedented number” of strikes — which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike — have led to more fear, anger, and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most public “secret” war of modern times.

In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized “surge” of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS). [continued…]

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International Holocaust Day becomes Attack Goldstone Day

Israel: Goldstone Report anti-Semitic
By Roni Sofer, Ynet, January 25, 2010

The world will mark International Holocaust Day on Wednesday. Monday will see President Shimon Peres fly to Berlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leave for a visit to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. They will be joined by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Budapest and Information Minister Yuli Edelstein in New York.

Before meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Edelstein referred to the report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, calling it “anti-Semitic”.

Israel’s political echelon plans to slam then distortions in the Goldstone Report on International Holocaust Day of all days, in order to point to an anti-Semitic trend which blames the victims of Palestinian rockets. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — 2009 saw a record number of anti-Semitic attacks – especially after the release of the Goldstone Report… well, no, it was actually in the three months immediately after the war on Gaza. I guess Judge Goldstone just got swept up in the rise in anti-Semitism.

The war on Gaza couldn’t possibly have driven the rise in anti-Semitism. Or could it? I wonder…

Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel will never quit settlements
BBC, January 25, 2010

The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas.

Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel.

His remarks came hours after a visit by US envoy George Mitchell who is trying to reopen peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.

A Palestinian spokesman said the comments undermined peace negotiations.

“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity”, the prime minister said. [continued…]

Does Israel have an immigrant problem?
By Evan R Goldstein, Foreign Policy, January 25, 2010

TThe presence of a large, non-Jewish population [of foreign workers] in the Jewish state stirs great unease. In November, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz blamed foreign workers for a rise in unemployment and a “widening of social gaps”; the mayor of Eilat, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, recently called them a “burden on the welfare authorities.” He added: “They consume alcohol and have introduced cases of severe violence.” The situation is routinely described in the media as a ticking social time bomb. The military estimates that as many as 1 million Africans could try to cross into Israel (though the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees puts the number at 45,000).

Responding to such concerns, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Jan. 10 that Israel will build two fences along the Egyptian border — one around Eilat, the other near Gaza — in the hope of staunching the flow of “infiltrators and terrorists.” Construction is expected to take several years, and the fence will be entirely on Israeli territory. Netanyahu also directed the Justice Ministry to formulate a plan to sanction businesses that hire illegal immigrants. “This is a strategic decision to ensure the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “Israel will remain open to war refugees but we cannot allow thousands of illegal workers to infiltrate into Israel via the southern border and flood our country.” There is reason to be skeptical. For two decades, Israeli policy toward foreign workers and refugees, has been widely regarded as a complete failure.

Foreign workers first arrived in Israel in the late 1980s to address a sudden labor shortage caused by the outbreak of the first Intifada. Following the Six Day War in 1967, Israel issued work permits to Palestinians for menial, low-wage jobs, primarily in construction and agriculture. By 1987, the year the Intifada began, Palestinians comprised nearly 8 percent of the Israeli labor force. The uprising, which prevented Palestinians from traveling back and forth to jobs inside Israel, threw the economy into crisis. In response, the Israeli government began to import workers from abroad. By 2000, foreign workers comprised 12 percent of the Israeli workforce. [continued…]

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IDF to finally engage Goldstone, day late dollar short

IDF to finally engage Goldstone, day late dollar short
By Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, January, 2010

Ethan Bronner writes a N.Y. Times report on a new propaganda offensive by the IDF against the Goldstone Report. It seems Israel has finally decided to engage with the document’s claims that Israel may have committed war crimes during last year’s Gaza war. Of course, it could’ve done so by testifying to the UN investigative body so that Israel’s perspective could’ve been incorporated into the finished document. At the time, Israel evidently judged it could filibuster and disparage this effort, as they have so many previous international attempts to hold Israel accountable for its actions concerning the Palestinians. But for some reason, Goldstone has developed much more staying power than other similar past efforts. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Richard Silverstein does a nice job of critiquing the Bronner article — the only other thing I was struck by was the Netanyahu quote naming Israel’s three-pronged axis of evil: “We face three major strategic challenges: The Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our civilians and Goldstone.”

Wow! Richard Goldstone, the diminutive and rather modest judge from South Africa, now poses an existential threat to Israel!

Or am I reading that the wrong way round? Maybe Netanyahu is moderating his rhetoric and conceding that Israel does not actually face external existential threats. Existential threats may well persist, but these would be the ones of Israel’s own making.

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Helping the Haitians over there so that we don’t have to help them here

Haiti relocating homeless, port repairs needed
AP, January 22, 2010

Haitians are fleeing their quake-ravaged capital by the hundreds of thousands, aid officials said Friday, as their government promised to help nearly a half-million more move from squalid camps on curbsides and vacant lots into safer, cleaner tent cities.

Aid officials said some 200,000 people have crammed into buses, nearly swamped ferries and set out even on foot to escape the ruined capital. For those who stay, foreign engineers have started leveling land on the fringes of the city for tent cities, supposedly temporary, that are meant to house 400,000 people. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — As the US is in the process of sending 20,000 troops to Haiti, one has to wonder how their mission has been conceived. Is this first and foremost what it purports to be, a humanitarian endeavor? Or is the highest priority in the minds of US government planners to prevent a massive exodus? Is this all about helping the Haitians over there so that we don’t have to help them here? Is the Obama administration afraid of being accused of being soft on refugees?

Before there were even any American marines’ boots on the ground, the message from the skies was unambiguous: “Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country,” said Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador in Washington, in a broadcast to homeless and destitute Haitians repeated for hours on end. “If you do that, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”

To heal Haiti, look to history, not nature
By Mark Danner, New York Times, January 22, 2010

The sound of Haiti’s suffering is deafening now but behind it one can hear already a familiar music begin to play. Haiti must be made new. This kind of suffering so close to American shores cannot be countenanced. The other evening I watched a television correspondent shake his head over what he movingly described as a “stupid death” — a death that, but for the right medical care, could have been prevented. “It doesn’t have to happen,” he told viewers. “People died today who did not need to die.” He did not say what any Haitian could have told him: that the day before, and the day before that, Haiti had seen hundreds of such “stupid deaths,” and, over the centuries, thousands more. What has changed, once again, and only for a time, is the light shone on them, and the volume of the voices demanding that a “new Haiti” must now be built so they never happen again.

Whether they can read or not, Haiti’s people walk in history, and live in politics. They are independent, proud, fiercely aware of their own singularity. What distinguishes them is a tradition of heroism and a conviction that they are and will remain something distinct, apart — something you can hear in the Creole spoken in the countryside, or the voodoo practiced there, traces of the Africa that the first generation of revolutionaries brought with them on the middle passage.

Haitians have grown up in a certain kind of struggle for individuality and for power, and the country has proved itself able to absorb the ardent attentions of outsiders who, as often as not, remain blissfully unaware of their own contributions to what Haiti is. Like the ruined bridges strewn across the countryside — one of the few traces of the Marines and their occupation nearly a century ago — these attentions tend to begin in evangelical zeal and to leave little lasting behind.

What might, then? America could start by throwing open its markets to Haitian agricultural produce and manufactured goods, broadening and making permanent the provisions of a promising trade bill negotiated in 2008. Such a step would not be glamorous; it would not “remake Haiti.” But it would require a lasting commitment by American farmers and manufacturers and, as the country heals, it would actually bring permanent jobs, investment and income to Haiti.

Second, the United States and other donors could make a formal undertaking to ensure that the vast amounts that will soon pour into the country for reconstruction go not to foreigners but to Haitians — and not only to Haitian contractors and builders but to Haitian workers, at reasonable wages. This would put real money in the hands of many Haitians, not just a few, and begin to shift power away from both the rapacious government and the well-meaning and too often ineffectual charities that seek to circumvent it. The world’s greatest gift would be to make it possible, and necessary, for Haitians — all Haitians — to rebuild Haiti. [continued…]

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