Iran’s President ‘would support two-state solution’ for Israel
By Alex Spillius, Daily Telegraph, April 26, 2009

Asked if he would support an agreement between the Palestinians and Tehran’s arch enemy, he said: “Whatever decision they take is fine with us. We are not going to determine anything. Whatever decision they take, we will support that.

“We think that is the right of the Palestinian people, however we fully expect other states to do so as well.”

Given his frequently stated hostility to Israel’s existence – calling more than once for its “annihilation” – and his habit of capriciously offering threat and promises of friendship within the space of a few days, Mr Ahmadinejad’s words will not treated by Western diplomats as a permanent shift in policy. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — It’s often said that Iranian politics is a subject so complex that it often baffles the leading experts. Even so, there is one utterly predictable and dependable rule when it comes to the interpretation of statements from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: If he says something extreme and inflammatory then his words should be taken literally and treated with the utmost seriousness. If he says something reasonable and conciliatory then he obviously doesn’t mean what he’s saying and his words can be dismissed.

There you have it: Iran-watching made simple!

Israel’s secret plan for West Bank expansion
By Ben Lynfield, The Independent, April 27, 2009

Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem

The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim’s boundaries.

The expansion is on a highly sensitive piece of real estate that both sides see as holding the key to whether the Palestinians will have a viable state with their own corridor between the north and south parts of the West Bank. [continued…]

Clinton’s Mideast pirouette
By Roger Cohen, New York Times, April 27, 2009

The sparring between the United States and Israel has begun, and that’s a good thing. Israel’s interests are not served by an uncritical American administration. The Jewish state emerged less secure and less loved from Washington’s post-9/11 Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy.

The criticism of the center-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come from an unlikely source: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She’s transitioned with aplomb from the calculation of her interests that she made as a senator from New York to a cool assessment of U.S. interests. These do not always coincide with Israel’s. [continued…]

Lieberman: Israel will not attack Iran – even if sanctions fail
By Ofer Aderet, Haaretz, April 26, 2009

Israel will not attack Iran even if the international sanctions against Tehran fail to convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give up his country’s nuclear program, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Austrian daily Kleine Zeitung. In an interview published this weekend, Lieberman was asked whether Israel planned to strike Iran as a last resort.

“We are not talking about a military attack. Israel cannot resolve militarily the entire world’s problem. I propose that the United States, as the largest power in the world, take responsibility for resolving the Iranian question,” Lieberman told the paper. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — According to Jeffrey Goldberg, in an interview late in March, “Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.” Subsequently, President Shimon Peres has said that Israel will not go it alone in a military confrontation with Iran. And now Lieberman echoes Peres.

What are we to make of this? Is it Israeli tactical ambiguity whose purpose is to keep its enemies (and allies) guessing? Or is possible that Netanyahu simply dug himself into a rhetorical hole. Once you’ve presented yourself as a Churchillian figure ready to stand up to Hitler II, it’s hard to reposition yourself without appearing to swing in the direction of Chamberlain. The only alternative is to let the president and foreign minister say what the prime minister knows but daren’t utter.

‘Obama’s rabbi’: Support for Israel doesn’t mean blanket approval
By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, April 27, 2009

After Rabbi David Saperstein was appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama to a White House volunteer advisory council of religious and secular leaders and scholars, some called him “Obama’s rabbi.”

Saperstein, however, is more cautious with definitions. Named America’s top rabbi by Newsweek, Rabbi David Saperstein is quick to supply a disclaimer: “They have my mother on the committee.”

Saperstein has served for more than 30 years as a leader of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center and is the leader of the Washington D.C.-based lobbying arm of the North American Reform movement.

This week, he sat down to speak with Haaretz on Israel, the peace process, Iran, gay marriage and spirituality.

While he stressed the importance of the connection between U.S. Jews and Israel, the rabbi said he didn’t feel support for the country necessarily meant blanket approval of its actions.

“If I see my brother or sister doing something that I believe is truly harmful to them – I’m going to say something even if they are adults that make their own decisions,” he said. [continued…]

My country, caving to the Taliban
By Mohammed Hanif, Washington Post, April 26, 2009

The day after Pakistan’s government signed a peace deal with the Taliban allowing them to implement their own version of sharia in the Swat Valley, there was a traffic jam at a square in downtown Mingora, the main town in the region. The square, Green Chowk, has acquired the nickname Khooni Chowk, or Bloody Square, because the Taliban used to string up their victims there. “Look at this.” A shopkeeper pointed to the hubbub. “This is what people wanted, to get out and do business. Take the security forces away, take the Taliban away, and we can get on with our lives.” He, like many Pakistanis, believed that the deal with the Taliban was the only way to stop bullet-riddled bodies from turning up at Khooni Chowk.

Mingora is not a backwater, not part of the Wild West that foreign journalists invoke whenever they talk about the Taliban. It’s bursting with aspiration; it has law schools, a medical college, a nurses’ training institute. There is even a heritage museum. Yet when peace arrived on Feb. 16, all the women vanished. They were not in the streets or in the offices, not even in the bazaar, which sells nothing but fabric, bags, shoes and fashion accessories.

The music market vanished, too. All 400 shops. The owner of one had converted it into a kebab joint. “This is sharia,” he spat at his grill, which hissed with more smoke than fire. Across from his stand, a barber had hung the obligatory “No un-Islamic haircuts, no shaves” sign and was taking an early morning nap, his face covered with a newspaper.

This, I was told, was the price of peace. [continued…]

Taliban advance: is Pakistan nearing collapse?
By Aryn Baker, Time, April 23, 2009

The move by Taliban-backed militants into the Buner district of northwestern Pakistan, closer than ever to Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, have prompted concerns both within the country and abroad that the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million is on the verge of inexorable collapse. [continued…]

Taliban seize vital Pakistan area closer to the capital
By Jane Perlez, New York Times, April 23, 2009

Pushing deeper into Pakistan, Taliban militants have established effective control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, officials and residents said Wednesday.

The fall of the district, Buner, did not mean that the Taliban could imminently threaten Islamabad. But it was another indication of the gathering strength of the insurgency and it raised new alarm about the ability of the government to fend off an unrelenting Taliban advance toward the heart of Pakistan.

Buner, home to about one million people, is a gateway to a major Pakistani city, Mardan, the second largest in North-West Frontier Province, after Peshawar. [continued…]

U.S. questions Pakistan’s will to stop Taliban
By Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, April 24, 2009

As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government’s willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military’s decision to remain on the sidelines.

Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley. [continued…]

Obama’s sins of omission
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston Globe, April 25, 2009

The history of American liberalism is one of promoting substantively modest if superficially radical reforms in order to refurbish and sustain the status quo. From Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to Bill Clinton’s New Covenant, liberals have specialized in jettisoning the redundant to preserve what they see as essential. In this sense, modern liberalism’s great achievement has been to deflect or neutralize calls for more fundamental change – a judgment that applies to President Obama, especially on national security.

Granted, Obama has acted with dispatch to repudiate several of George W. Bush’s most egregious blunders and for this he deserves credit. In abrogating torture, ordering the Guantanamo prison camp closed, and setting a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, Obama is turning the page on a dark chapter in American statecraft. After the hectoring and posturing that figured so prominently in his predecessor’s style, the president’s preference for dialogue rather than preaching is refreshing.

But however much Obama may differ from Bush on particulars, he appears intent on sustaining the essentials on which the Bush policies were grounded. Put simply, Obama’s pragmatism poses no threat to the reigning national security consensus. Consistent with the tradition of American liberalism, he appears intent on salvaging that consensus.

For decades now, that consensus has centered on what we might call the Sacred Trinity of global power projection, global military presence, and global activism – the concrete expression of what politicians commonly refer to as “American global leadership.” The United States configures its armed forces not for defense but for overseas “contingencies.” To facilitate the deployment of these forces it maintains a vast network of foreign bases, complemented by various access and overflight agreements. Capabilities and bases mesh with and foster a penchant for meddling in the affairs of others, sometimes revealed to the public, but often concealed. [continued…]

The big sleep
By Nir Rosen, The National, April 24, 2009

On March 28, clashes erupted in Baghdad’s Fadhil district after Iraqi troops arrested the leader of the local Awakening Council, Adil al Mashhadani, one of many former Sunni insurgents who had allied with American forces in the fight against al Qaeda-inspired Salafi militants in Iraq. Mashhadani’s men staged a two-day uprising, which was put down by Iraqis with considerable help from American troops fighting against their former allies.

In Baghdad Mashhadani was a notorious figure, one of many Awakenings men suspected of serious crimes before he went on the American payroll and of continuing them afterwards. I had heard complaints about him since 2007 from Shiites, and especially from supporters of Muqtada al Sadr, who were outraged that a man they accused of the indiscriminate slaughter of Shiite civilians had been empowered by the Americans. An American intelligence officer in Washington told me that the US had possessed incriminating information on Mashhadani for several years – but that he had been one of the first insurgents to see which way the wind was blowing and sign on with the Americans.

Mashhadani’s men and their allies complained that the Americans had betrayed them, and threatened to renew their insurgency unless their leader was released; the clashes in Fadhil provoked new speculation that the failure to integrate the Awakenings into the Iraqi security forces would lead to renewed sectarian strife, if not a return to full-scale civil war. But the brief uprising was quickly put down, and Mashhadani’s arrest demonstrated quite clearly that the civil war is over: there is no organised force in Iraq today capable of challenging, or attempting to overthrow, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. [continued…]

How the horrors of war nearly destroyed me
By Peter Beaumont, The Observer, April 26, 2009

War’s most dreadful secret, banal and terrible at the same time, is not that men kill – that much is obvious – or even that many men enjoy their killing. That, too, has been well documented. It is more insidious than that. There exists a widespread envy of those who kill, and especially those who kill and kill again. There is a bitter resentment among men when others claim their kills, or their kills are denied. That deems some men “luckier” to have the opportunity to kill more than others.

Soldiers bitching. Another outpost, infested with rats that crawl across useless ceiling ducts that are connected to nothing in a former police station half-ruined by a bomb. The talk is about the young Texan lieutenant who has just left to lead a Small Kill Team on an overnight ambush, palefaced and tired. Top of his class at school, the soldiers say with pride. From what they say it is evident he likes killing and is motivated by opportunities to kill. His men like and respect him, admire his bravery, but sitting on their cots they resent him grabbing all the opportunities to rack up his kills. An activity so full of paradoxes, its meanings are hard to mine and even more difficult to understand. Killing, as Joanna Bourke explains in her study of combat, An Intimate History of Killing, for very many men is an exciting and pleasurable activity as well as a taboo. Being exciting, it is hidden on return to a civilian life that regards permissive killing, even in the high heat of conflict, as something “to be done”, an experience to be endured. But it is different in proximity to the battlefield – among your “buddies” – where all ordinary rules are deliberately suspended. There it becomes obvious that the business of killing is easily assimilated into the story-worlds that define men’s lives. It is integrated into all the other stories that I hear when the men are sitting in their hooches, or round their Saturday night barbecue pits with their cigars, drinking non-alcoholic beer or Gatorade with a shot of illicit spirits occasionally mixed in, after smoking a discreet bowl of hash. Then they talk about sex and cars and films; holidays and children. And sometimes combat and killing. [continued…]

A pirate in the dock, and the US in murky waters
By Tony Karon, The National, April 25, 2009

There’s nothing new about the United States making tragically misguided judgement calls in Somalia: think of the ill-fated attempt to arrest the Mogadishu warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in 1993 that turned into the Blackhawk Down bloodbath and prompted a US withdrawal.

Then there was the decision to back an Ethiopian proxy invasion in late 2006 to topple the Islamic Courts Union that had taken control of Mogadishu. That the ICU had restored a modicum of stability and security to a city long plagued by fighting among rival warlords and had managed to tamp down on offshore piracy was less important than one faction of the movement giving shelter to a handful of wanted al Qa’eda men. And of course, once the Islamists were scattered, piracy became a multimillion dollar industry that plagued global shipping.

Which brings us to what may be the latest misguided judgement call: the arraignment in a Manhattan court of Abduwali Abdulkhadir Muse, a Somali teenager captured in the course of a US military operation to free a hostage captured from the US-flagged freighter Maersk Alabama. Most Somalis captured by western navies in the course of anti-piracy operations are handed over for trial in Kenya; even if Muse is guilty as charged, staging his trial in New York is likely to turn him into a hero or martyr in his own community. Somalis tend to take a dim view of the United States to begin with, and many of the pirates that raid shipping off its shores are not viewed by their own communities as criminals. [continued…]

Divisions arose on rough tactics for Qaeda figure
By Scott Shane, New York Times, April 18, 2009

The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.

The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show.

Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.

Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.” [continued…]

Expedience and the torture amnesty
By David Bromwich, Huffington Post, April , 2009

President Obama’s statement on releasing the Bush-era torture memos is a curious and depressing document, but it bears the marks of having been revised with care by the president himself. He takes the occasion to assure the country that a dark age has passed. At the same time he assures the agents of that darkness that they will be exempt from prosecution. The statement betrays an odd mixture of frankness and caution; the appearance of resolution, with a good deal of actual equivocation; a wish to channel the conspicuous truth to one’s own cause without revealing a disadvantageous quantity of truth. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Opinion writers can debate questions about whether President Obama deserves praise for releasing the torture memos and whether he is exercising good or bad political judgment in his appeal that we now “move forward” and not waste “time and energy laying blame for the past.” As Manfred Nowak, the UN’s top torture investigator points out however, Obama has far less leeway here than he is attempting to exercise.

As president of the United States, Obama took an oath to uphold the constitution. The constitution requires that the United States complies with international treaties to which it is bound. This includes the United Nations Convention Against Torture which the US ratified in 1994. This convention requires that torturers be prosecuted. It specifically states: “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.”

CIA memos could bring more disclosures
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, April 18, 2009

Even as President Obama urges the country to turn the page, his decision to reveal exhaustive details about interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency could lead to a flood of new disclosures about secret Bush administration operations against Al Qaeda, current and former government officials said Friday.

At the same time, the new revelations are fueling calls by lawmakers for an extensive inquiry into controversial Bush administration programs, and Mr. Obama now faces a challenge making good on his promise to protect from legal jeopardy those intelligence operatives who acted within Justice Department interrogation guidelines.

Some members of Congress and human rights lawyers are likely to press for new disclosures about the period of several months in 2002 when C.I.A. interrogators began interrogating Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda operative captured in March of that year, before the Justice Department had officially endorsed the interrogation program. [continued…]

Plan for Palestinian state is ‘dead end,’ Israel tells U.S.
By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy, April 16, 2009

In a direct challenge to President Barack Obama’s commitment to rejuvenate moribund Mideast peace talks, Israel on Thursday dismissed American-led efforts to establish a Palestinian state and laid out new conditions for renewed negotiations.

Leaders of Israel’s hawkish new government told former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, the special U.S. envoy, that they aren’t going to rush into peace talks with their Palestinian neighbors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he’d require Palestinians to accept Israel as a Jewish state in any future negotiations — a demand that Palestinians have up to now rejected — Israeli government officials said. [continued…]

The reawakened specter of Iraqi civil war
By Michael Wahid Hanna, Middle East Report, April 17, 2009

April has already been a cruel month in Iraq. A spate of bombings aimed at Shi‘i civilians in Baghdad has raised fears that the grim sectarian logic that led the capital to civil war in 2005-2007 will reassert itself. On April 6, a string of six car bombs killed at least 37 people; the next day, shortly after President Barack Obama landed in Baghdad, another car bomb killed eight; and on the morrow, still another bomb blew up close to the historic Shi‘i shrine in Kadhimiyya just northwest of the capital’s central districts, taking an additional seven civilian lives. Worryingly for Iraqis, the bombings occurred following gun battles between the security forces of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shi‘i-led government and Sunni Arab militiamen, fueling rumors that the disgruntled militiamen have spearheaded the violent campaign. [continued…]

U.S. experts: Pakistan on course to become Islamist state
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, April 16, 2009

A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there’s little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan’s terrorist haven did before 9/11.

“It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Pakistan’s fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.

“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration. [continued…]

The battle against piracy begins in Mogadishu
By Ben Macintyre, The Times, April 16, 2009

We call them “pirates”, because that is how they most easily translate into Western culture, but the Somali marauders currently terrorising Indian Ocean shipping might better be termed ocean-going shiftas, heirs to a long and uniquely African tradition of banditry.

The term shifta may be unfamiliar, yet it is a key to understanding what is happening off the coast of Somalia, and how it might possibly be resolved. Shifta, derived from the Somali word shúfto, can be translated as bandit or rebel, outlaw or revolutionary, depending on which end of the gun you are on.

In the roiling chaos that is Somalia, the killers and criminals are variously pirates, warlords, kidnappers, fanatics or Islamic insurgents. Most are young, angry men with no prospects, no education and a great deal of heavy weaponry. But all are historically descended from the shiftas who have plundered the Horn of Africa for decades. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — When the Daily Show turns on some triumphalist, hot-blooded American nationalism (not withstanding some token irony) it makes me wonder how differently a Democratic president would have handled 9/11 from the way George Bush did.

The event of three teenage Somali pirates being shot has been treated as though President Obama has successfully traversed a national security rite of passage. Three scalps held aloft, he can now be hailed by his followers as a blood-anointed chieftain. The ghosts of Mogadishu has been exorcised.

Less attention has given to the fact that the lifeboat containing the pirates and their hostage was tethered no more than 80 feet behind the USS Bainbridge, presenting a bobbing but not very distant target. Or, that we really have no way of knowing whether the critical moment came dramatically with Capt Phillips’ life in immediate danger or whether it came clinically when three pirates simultaneously found themselves in the snipers’ cross hairs.

As for the administration’s broader response to what has been dubbed “the scourge of piracy”, Hillary Clinton’s statement sounds horribly like a piece of vacuous off-the-shelf diplomacy.

What we will do is first send an envoy to attend the international Somali peacekeeping and development meeting scheduled in Brussels. The solution to Somali piracy includes improved Somali capacity to police their own territory. Our envoy will work with other partners to help the Somalis assist us in cracking down on pirate bases and in decreasing incentives for young Somali men to engage in piracy.

Second, I’m calling for immediate meetings with our partners in the International Contact Group on Piracy to develop an expanded multinational response. The response that came to our original request through the Contact Group for nations to contribute naval vessels has turned out to be very successful. But now we need better coordination. This is a huge expanse of ocean, four times the size of Texas, so we have to be able to work together to avoid the pirates. We also need to secure the release of ships currently being held and their crews, and explore tracking and freezing pirate assets.

Third, I’ve tasked a diplomatic team to engage with Somali Government officials from the Transitional Federal Government as well as regional leaders in Puntland. We will press these leaders to take action against pirates operating from bases within their territories.

And fourth, because it is clear that defending against piracy must be the joint responsibility of governments and the shipping industry, I have directed our team to work with shippers and the insurance industry to address gaps in their self-defense measures. So we will be working on these actions as well as continuing to develop a long-term strategy to restore maritime security to the Horn of Africa.

The elephant in the room here is that Somalia effectively has no government. Where there is no rule of law, there are in a practical sense no law breakers. Pressing leaders of a powerless government to “take action against pirates” is really a rather transparent way sidestepping the core political issue: the need to help in the establishment of an effective Somali government whose legitimacy is accepted by the majority of the population.

Netanyahu’s false promises
By Henry Siegman, The Guardian, April 14, 2009

Tony Blair, who now serves as the Middle East Quartet’s envoy, has told Time magazine he has concluded that the return to power of the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu – universally seen as a near-fatal setback to prospects for a two-state solution – may be a blessing.

Blair informs us that he had a serious chat with Netanyahu in which it became clear that far from putting Palestinian statehood beyond reach, Netanyahu intends to become the father of the Palestinian nation. Like his friend George W Bush, Blair apparently looked into his interlocutor’s soul and concluded that this man aspires to nothing less than “to build the [Palestinian] state from the bottom up”.

Of course, there is the annoying matter that Netanyahu refuses to affirm his support for a two-state solution; indeed, Netanyahu considers a Palestinian state a plague to be avoided. However, Blair would like all of us to understand that “circumstances must be right” for Netanyahu before he can let the world in on his secret passion for Palestinian nation-building. [continued…]

IDF planning largest-ever drill to prepare Israel for war
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, April 7, 2009

The Home Front Command is preparing to hold the largest exercise ever in Israeli history, scheduled to take place in about two months, in hopes of priming the populace and raising awareness of the possibility of war breaking out.

Should there be a war, Israel would have insufficient emergency and rescue response units, according to a senior Home Front Command officer.

Speaking with Haaretz, Col. Hilik Sofer, who is in charge of the Department for Population at the Home Front Command, said that “in wartime there will be insufficient Magen David Adom, rescue and chemical and biological warfare units. Even if we call up the reserves of the Home Front Command, we will have to rely on the population itself.”

“We need to train for a reality in which during war missiles can fall on any part of the country without warning,” he said.

The Home Front Command is hoping to convince the population that in a future war the entire country can become a front without warning. [continued…]

Aid rots outside Gaza
By Erin Cunningham, IPS, April 15, 2009

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is piling up in cities across Egypt’s North Sinai region, despite recent calls from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled territory in the wake of Operation Cast Lead.

Food, medicine, blankets, infant food and other supplies for Gaza’s 1.5 million people, coming from governments and non-governmental agencies around the world, are being stored in warehouses, parking lots, stadiums and on airport runways across Egypt’s North Sinai governorate.

Egypt shares a 14-kilometre border with Gaza that has been closed more or less permanently since the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the territory in June 2007.

Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars, juice, chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other humanitarian- based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points in and around Al- Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometres from Gaza’s border.

Three months after the end of the war, much of the aid has either rotted or been irreparably damaged as a result of both rain and sunshine, and Egypt’s refusal to open the Rafah crossing. [continued…]

Iran treating Obama declarations as policy
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, April 16, 2009

It appears Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun treating the declarations of U.S. President Barack Obama as policy, and this is a substantive response to the new American strategy, coordinated with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Contrary to previous Iranian declarations, Ahmadinejad is dropping the precondition to dialogue that the United States first change its policy.

The new American strategy assumes that Iran will continue developing nuclear technology and enriching uranium, and says the Bush policies toward Iran have failed. As such, Washington has decided to do away with Bush’s preconditions, which refused dialogue with Iran as long as Tehran enriched uranium. It appears Obama is willing to allow Iran to continue enriching a limited amount of uranium under strict supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The lifting of this precondition was perceived by Tehran as American recognition of its nuclear program and its right to pursue nuclear technology. Iran also assumes that the threat of further sanctions is now on hold, at least during the dialogue. Iran may be encouraged that the dialogue is not limited in time, and that the U.S. president’s rhetoric does not include ultimatums or threats. Moreover, Washington has decided that there is no point in waiting until the Iranian elections are over, both because Ahmadinejad has a very good chance of being reelected, and because the Iranian people fully support the country’s nuclear program. [continued…]

Gates warns against Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2009

Amid increasing suggestions that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned this week that such a strike would have dangerous consequences, and asserted that Tehran’s acquisition of a bomb can be prevented only if “Iranians themselves decide it’s too costly.”

Using his strongest language on the subject to date, Gates told a group of Marine Corps students that a strike would probably delay Tehran’s nuclear program from one to three years. A strike, however, would unify Iran, “cement their determination to have a nuclear program, and also build into the whole country an undying hatred of whoever hits them,” he said.

Israeli officials fear that the Islamic Republic may gain the know-how to build a bomb as early as this year. Several of them have warned that Israel could strike first to eliminate what it considers an existential threat. [continued…]

Iran ‘to propose nuclear package’
BBC News, April 15, 2009

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran has prepared proposals aimed at resolving his country’s nuclear dispute with the West.

Speaking in southern Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad said that the package would ensure “peace and justice” for the world.

It would be offered to the West soon, he said, but gave no further details. [continued…]

Pakistan dodges a bullet
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, April 16, 2009

A month ago, Pakistan came close to a political breakdown that could have triggered a military coup. How that crisis developed — and how it was ultimately defused — illuminates the larger story of a country whose frontier region President Obama recently described as “the most dangerous place in the world.”

A detailed account of the March political confrontation emerged last week during a visit to Islamabad by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Adm. Mike Mullen. As described by U.S. and Pakistani officials, it’s a story of political brinkmanship and, ultimately, of a settlement brokered by the Obama administration.

At stake was the survival of Pakistani democracy. Allies of President Asif Ali Zardari attempted to cripple his political rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The opposition leader took to the streets in response, joining a “long march” to Islamabad to demand the reinstatement of Pakistan’s deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry. The march threatened a violent street battle that could have forced Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the army chief of staff, to intervene. [continued…]

Obama team mulls aims of Somali extremists
By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, April 11, 2009

Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach.

Al-Shabab, whose fighters have battled Ethiopian occupiers and the tenuous Somali government, poses a dilemma for the administration, according to several senior national security officials who outlined the debate only on the condition of anonymity.

The organization’s rapid expansion, ties between its leaders and al-Qaeda, and the presence of Americans and Europeans in its camps have raised the question of whether a preemptive strike is warranted. Yet the group’s objectives have thus far been domestic, and officials say that U.S. intelligence has no evidence it is planning attacks outside Somalia. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — One of the great soundbites of the Obama election campaign was: “I want to end the mindset that got us into war.”

So far, the Obama administration has paid more attention to linguistic adjustments (“war on terror” is out) without any clear evidence that it is willing to address the deeper issues of political transformation.

Somalia provides the perfect test case of whether the war on terror has truly ended or whether it is simply going to be repackaged.

The threat posed by al Shabab is a direct result of policies shaped by the war-on-terror mindset.

Al Shabab’s precursor, the Islamic Courts Union, brought the first period of peace and order experienced in Somalia for over a decade but this experiment in Islamist rule was cut short by the Bush administration because of it’s name: “Islamist.”

The mindset that all Islamists are cut from the same cloth made it inconceivable that any form of Islamist rule could be deemed tolerable. Moreover, the fact that the neocons deemed Somalia as having been the arena in which American weakness had emboldened al Qaeda in the nineties, meant that American toughness — even if primarily through Ethiopian proxies — would have to put on display.

The direct result of this misconceived policy is that Somalia is now largely under the control of the much more extreme al Shabab splinter group and during the political turmoil resulting from the US-backed Ethiopian invasion, Somali piracy has become the strongest sector in the economy.

As the Obama administration develops it regional policy towards the Horn of Africa, the first thing it needs to acknowledge is that military solutions rarely solve political problems. The second is that the Bush administration made a serious mistake in undermining the Islamic Courts Union. Supporting a movement that enjoys broad indigenous support is more important than determining whether the political complexion of that movement is appealing in the eyes of Americans. Moreover, the American tradition of choosing its allies on the basis of who they oppose rather than whether they have grassroots support has invariably been a miserable failure.

Requiem for the war on terror
By Ira Chernus, TomDispatch, April 9, 2009

This is the way the Global War on Terror (also known, in Bush-era jargon, as GWOT) ends, not with a bang, not with parades and speeches, but with an obscure memo, a few news reports, vague denials, and a seemingly off-handed comment (or was it a carefully calculated declaration?) from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “The administration has stopped using the phrase [“war on terror”] and I think that speaks for itself. Obviously.”

This is often the way presidents and their administrations operate when it comes to national security and foreign policy — not with bold, clear statements but through leaks, trial balloons, small gestures, and innuendo.

In this case, though, are we seeing the cleverly orchestrated plan of a shrewd administration, every move plotted with astonishing cunning? Or are the operators actually a bunch of newbies bumbling along from day to day, as a literal reading of press reports on the end of GWOT might suggest? Unless some historian finds a “smoking gun” document in the archives years from now, we may never know for sure. [continued…]

Obama to appeal detainee ruling
New York Times, April 11, 2009

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — One has to ask: where’s the push coming from to maintain extrajudicial power? Most likely, the CIA. CIA murder suspects like Mark Swanner seem no closer to facing charges. Swanner’s role in the homicide of an Abu Ghraib prisoner was supposedly being investigated by the Justice Department. But as Jeff Stein points out:

It’s not likely Swanner, who was not an undercover employee, was ever really under investigation by the Bush administration’s Justice Department, which constantly found loopholes for CIA interrogators to escape Geneva Convention and congressional strictures on torture.

Nor were CIA officers in charge of interrogations at Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan, where another prisoner died of hypothermia, ever held to account. CIA inspectors found that headquarters officials had carefully coached them on what to say in their official report. But the matter, including the names of the CIA’s Baghram base chief and his deputy, remains classified, and no one was punished, much less prosecuted.

Swanner’s name, too, might have remained secret, were it not for Mayer’s story. But it quickly slipped beneath the waves, not to surface again. Nor has the Justice Department announced it has decided not to pursue charges against him.

Swanner’s case has just been left to die quietly, without notice, a former CIA official involved in the matter observed, on condition of anonymity because it remains classified.

CIA to close secret prisons for terror suspects
By Scott Shane, New York Times, April 9, 2009

The Central Intelligence Agency announced on Thursday that it will no longer use contractors to conduct interrogations, and that it is decommissioning the secret overseas sites where for years it held high-level Al Qaeda prisoners.

In a statement to the agency’s work force, the director, Leon E. Panetta, said that the secret detention facilities were no longer in operation, but he suggested that security and maintenance have been continued at the sites at taxpayers’ expense.

“I have directed our agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process, and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated,” Mr. Panetta said. “It is estimated that our taking over site security will result in savings of up to $4 million.”

The C.I.A. has never revealed the location of its overseas facilities, but intelligence officials, aviation records and news reports have placed them in Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland, Romania and Jordan, among other countries. Agency officials have said that fewer than 100 prisoners were held in them over several years. [continued…]

Netanyahu returns
By Gershom Gorenberg, The American Prospect, April 9, 2009

We’ve learned that the Netanyahu character remains the same as it was during his previous three-year episode in power, in the late 1990s: He is, in principle, a hardliner. That said, the principle he holds most strongly is that he should be prime minister. And the public advocate of unbending diplomatic stances is, in fact, a weak negotiator who hands out contradictory concessions to whomever he meets. Barack Obama, take note: Netanyahu speaks loudly and carries a small stick.

To build a coalition, Netanyahu cut deals with five parties besides his own Likud Party. Left out was the centrist Kadima, led by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, which actually won more seats in the Knesset than the Likud did in February’s election. Livni’s most public conditions for joining the government were that Netanyahu commit himself to a two-state solution and that he continue the negotiations with the Palestinians begun at the 2007 Annapolis conference. Reportedly, she also demanded a rotation agreement, under which she would serve as premier for part of the four-and-a-half-year term. (The precedent was the 1984-1988 agreement between the Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir and Labor’s Shimon Peres, after an electoral stalemate between the two parties.) Netanyahu was neither willing to share power with Livni in the Israeli government nor to divide the land now under Israeli rule into two states. [continued…]

The gathering storm
By Nir Rozen, The National, April 10, 2009

Six years to the day since the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, the war that has dominated American politics for half a decade and upturned an entire regional order is being not-so-gently forced from centre stage. Iraq specialists at the National Security Council in Washington have hung signs on their office doors declaring that theirs is now “the good war”; the Obama administration is eager to declare victory in Iraq and shift its attention to the long-neglected conflict in Afghanistan.

It is difficult to predict what will occur as the Americans reduce their troop numbers, but few Iraqis feel optimistic, despite the recent reduction in violence: whatever comes next, it is unlikely that Iraq will recover quickly from six years of chaos and bloodshed.

Iraq’s economy remains in tatters. The central government has bought a provisional peace by placing hundreds of thousands of military-age men on its payroll. But the drop in oil prices has forced the state to slash its budget at a time when it is almost the only source of employment.

The oil sector, still Iraq’s most significant industry, is plagued by a rotting infrastructure. Pipelines in Basra are being kept together by “duct tape and spit”, according to one concerned American official. “They can burst at any minute.” Most Iraqis today might say much the same about their country. They are grateful for the temporary respite from extreme violence, but certain it will not take much to reignite the flames. [continued…]

General Ray Odierno: we may miss Iraq deadline to halt al-Qaeda terror
By Deborah Haynes, The Times, April 9, 2009

The activities of al-Qaeda in two of Iraq’s most troubled cities could keep US combat troops engaged beyond the June 30 deadline for their withdrawal, the top US commander in the country has warned.

US troop numbers in Mosul and Baqubah, in the north of the country, could rise rather than fall over the next year if necessary, General Ray Odierno told The Times in his first interview with a British newspaper since taking over from General David Petraeus in September.

He said that a joint assessment would be conducted with the Iraqi authorities in the coming weeks before a decision is made. [continued…]

Israel cries wolf
By Roger Cohen, New York Times, April 9, 2009

“Iran is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option.”

Benjamin Netanyahu 2009? Try again. These words were in fact uttered by another Israeli prime minister (and now Israeli president), Shimon Peres, in 1996. Four years earlier, in 1992, he’d predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.

You can’t accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf. Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.

Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil… [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — In the interest of precision it’s worth pointing out that Netanyahu doesn’t merely liken Iran’s leaders to the Nazis — he says the Iranians are more dangerous. What happened in Germany was horrific but what the Iranians might do is even worse.

In the likes-to-be-called “progressive” Huffington Post, Mort Zuckerman offers some more scare-mongering on steroids:

Fundamentally, a nuclear Iran represents a unique threat. The fear of mutually assured destruction has long restrained other nuclear powers. There is a real risk that Iran is not rational, that driven by its mad hatreds it will act in ways that are irrational, even self-destructive. Anti-Americanism is a cornerstone of the ideology of this Islamic State. The virulence of Iran’s hostility is impervious to reason. “Death to America!” has provoked the Iranian street for over a quarter of a century and is the venom upon which an entire generation of Iranians has been raised.

Thank goodness the cool rational voices of Zuckerman and Netanyahu are speaking out to alert us to the diabolical threat. And let’s add another dispassionate voice: The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, announced on Tuesday that his office is making every effort to prosecute “perhaps the largest supplier of weapons of mass destruction to the Iranian government.”

Everyone’s been warning about the risk of Iran producing its own nuclear weapons and now we learn from the Manhattan DA that Iran has WMD suppliers — several of them — perhaps. This is terribly alarming — perhaps.

U.S. to join Iran talks over nuclear program
By Mark Landler and Nazila Fathi, New York Times, April 9, 2009

The Obama administration said Wednesday that the United States would start participating regularly with other major powers in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

The decision was a further step toward the direct engagement with Iran that President Obama has promised. It followed an invitation to Iran to join in a new round of talks, which would include Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. And it coincided with an unusual expression of conciliation toward the United States by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Mr. Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in a speech that his government would welcome talks with the Obama administration, provided that the shift in American policy was “honest.” [continued…]

Biden warns Israel off any attack on Iran
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2009

Vice President Joe Biden issued a high-level admonishment to Israel’s new government Tuesday that it would be “ill advised” to launch a military strike against Iran.

Biden said in a CNN interview that he does not believe newly installed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take such a step. Even so, his comment underscored a gap between the conservative new Israeli government and the Obama White House on a series of questions, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran. [continued…]

U.S. reiterates 2-state solution after Lieberman remarks
By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, April 8, 2009

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that Western-backed peace efforts with the Palestinians had reached a “dead end” and that Israel intended to present new ideas for diplomacy, prompting a response from the State Department re-emphasizing the American goal of establishing two states.

“There is definitely a regression here and we must understand and admit that we are at a dead end,” Lieberman told members of Yisrael Beiteinu during a party meeting. “We definitely intend to present new ideas.”

The Yisrael Beiteinu chairman also said that he planned to remain foreign minister for at least “four and a half years,” and vowed that his faction would stay a central component of the current government coalition until the next round of elections.

The State Department did not react directly to Lieberman’s statements, preferring instead to reiterate Washington’s commitment to a two-state solution. [continued…]

With ‘Annapolis,’ a warning to Israel
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, April 9, 2009

By forcefully rebutting Mr. Lieberman’s repudiation of Annapolis, and in such a public fashion, Mr. Obama is issuing a warning to Mr. Netanyahu that the United States will push for a two-state solution, and will expect him to publicly articulate his own support for such an initiative, many experts said.

“At a minimum, Bibi will need to disown these statements and come out explicitly in support of the two-state solution before his meeting with President Obama,” said Ghaith Al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who now works with the American Task Force on Palestine. “If not,” Mr. Al-Omari said, “the issue will become the focus of the meeting.” [continued…]

Lieberman’s paradoxical strength
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, April 5, 2009

In the absence of a peace process – a situation that did not start with Lieberman’s appointment – the Palestinian position is likely to improve, much to the dismay of Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu. When Israel becomes entrenched in the world’s eyes as an obstacle to the peace process, thanks to Lieberman’s shoot-from-the-hip statements, what will prevent Europe from easing the pressure on Hamas, funneling cash to Gaza without Israel’s approval, requesting that Egypt open the Rafah crossing, freezing the upgrade in Israel’s relations with the European Union (as the EU has hinted) and opening consulates in the West Bank? All this would be to signal that the Europeans recognize the principle of two states for two peoples.

What will happen if Washington does not automatically veto every resolution condemning Israel in the Security Council? Or worse, what if Washington decides to join the condemnation? After all, it will have a good excuse: Lieberman. Paradoxically, Lieberman is likely to become a part of Obama’s new doctrine of global arrangements: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not end, but Israeli obduracy will enhance, not diminish, the United States’ standing in the Middle East. While Lieberman can continue to bang on his tom-toms every time somebody mentions the phrase “diplomatic process,” he will not be able to direct forces much larger than him or Israel. He will be the perfect excuse for these forces to act. This is his strength, nothing more. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Whatever you might think of Lieberman, it’s hard not to find his bluntness refreshing. A peace process that’s reached a “dead end” is hard to rejuvenate. It really does provide an opportunity to open up debate instead of expending energy on giving CPR to a corpse.

Unfortunately, given that the Obama administration has lately discovered some virtue in the so-called Annapolis “process”, I’m skeptical about how soon we’ll be hearing US officials openly referring to “Israeli obduracy”. Instead, I predict, in the coming months we’re going to hear officials, face cast down, chin withdrawn, saying that such-and-such a statement or development is “unhelpful”. And when it gets really, really bad the Israeli government might even be admonished for being, “frankly, unhelpful”.

The wild card here is whether there will emerge a significant split between the US and Europe. In that event, there may well be European-made fait accomplis to which Washington (with hidden relief) stoically acquiesce.

Obama team readying for confrontation with Netanyahu
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, April 9, 2009

In an unprecedented move, the Obama administration is readying for a possible confrontation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by briefing Democratic congressmen on the peace process and the positions of the new government in Israel regarding a two-state solution.

The Obama administration is expecting a clash with Netanyahu over his refusal to support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In recent weeks, American officials have briefed senior Democratic congressmen and prepared the ground for the possibility of disagreements with Israel over the peace process, according to information recently received. The administration’s efforts are focused on President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, which now holds a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. [continued…]

Obama saying Israel still bound to two-state solution
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, April 8, 2009

Dialogue between Jerusalem and Washington over the past week has been done via speech-making. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman swept aside the Annapolis process, and U.S. President Barack Obama swept it right back. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the two-state solution and Obama “clarified” that the United States not only “strongly” supports it, but he himself intends to advance it.

What’s going on here? Clearly the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration have not yet developed discrete communication channels to let them coordinate their policy and avoid statements that would embarrass the other party. The response from Netanyahu’s bureau after Obama’s speech was mainly intended to play for time “to formulate a policy.” [continued…]

Grappling with the ‘Problem of Lieberman’
By Omar Karmi, The National, April 7, 2009

… therein lies the Problem of Lieberman. It is tempting to characterise him as a radical populist, but his rhetoric clearly mirrors what many Israelis feel, namely that the Palestinian minority in Israel should be treated as a fifth column and that Israel should prioritise its Jewishness over democratic values.

To Palestinian citizens of Israel, the minority has always been viewed and treated that way and Mr Lieberman is only reaping the benefit of spelling out what are already both official and common attitudes. From 1948 to 1966, Palestinians in Israel lived under military rule that allowed them little freedom of movement and no recourse to civil law. Large swathes of land were confiscated to make room for new Jewish immigrants. The situation has improved since then, but Palestinians still complain of discrimination in budget allocations and in the health and education sectors, and the minority is the poorest and least educated sector in Israeli society.

“Lieberman only gives voice to what is already a very racist mentality [in Israel] against Palestinian citizens,” said Johnny Mansur, a Haifa historian. “This mentality exists because Israel has never resolved the question of whether it is possible to define itself as a Jewish state and at the same time offer full rights to non-Jewish citizens.” [continued…]

Rattling the cage: The threat from within
By Larry Derfner, Jerusalem Post, April 7, 2009

Lieberman talks a lot about “the threat from within” being more dangerous than the threat from without – that the Arabs inside our borders can destroy this country easier than the Arabs outside. He’s right about the threat from within, but it isn’t from Israeli Arabs, it’s from Lieberman himself and what he represents and the power he’s gained. He’s now taken over the Foreign Ministry. He’s gotten the stamp of approval from the leading parties of the right, center and center-left – the Israeli consensus. He’s being laundered and sanitized by virtually the entire American Jewish establishment.

And he’s not through by a long shot. At this point, he seems to have an even brighter future ahead.

Lieberman is more dangerous than Ahmadinejad because we have the military power to deter Iran’s threat to destroy us physically. I don’t know if we have the power to deter Lieberman from destroying us morally – from turning us into the image of what we claim to hate. [continued…]

Losing the ‘war on terror’
By Reza Aslan, Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2009

By lumping together the disparate forces, movements, armies, ideas and grievances of the greater Muslim world, from Morocco to Malaysia; by placing them in a single category (“enemy”), assigning them a single identity (“terrorist”); and by countering them with a single strategy (war), the Bush administration seemed to be making a blatant statement that the war on terror was, in fact, “a war against Islam.”

That is certainly how the conflict has been viewed by a majority in four major Muslim countries — Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and Indonesia — in a worldpublicopinion.org poll in 2007. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe that the purpose of the war on terror is to “spread Christianity in the region” of the Middle East.

Indeed, if the war on terror was meant to be an ideological battle against groups such as Al Qaeda for the hearts and minds of Muslims, the consensus around the globe seems to be that the battle has been lost. [continued…]

“I am under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD”
By Michael de Yoanna and Mark Benjamin, Salon, April 9, 2009

“Sgt. X” is built like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle he rode in while in Iraq. He’s as bulky, brawny and seemingly impervious as a tank.

In an interview in the high-rise offices of his Denver attorneys, however, symptoms of the damaged brain inside that tough exterior begin to appear. Sgt. X’s eyes go suddenly blank, shifting to refocus oddly on a wall. He pauses mid-sentence, struggling for simple words. His hands occasionally tremble and spasm.

For more than a year he’s been seeking treatment at Fort Carson for a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, the signature injuries of the Iraq war. Sgt. X is also suffering through the Army’s confusing disability payment system, handled by something called a medical evaluation board. The process of negotiating the system has been made harder by his war-damaged memory. Sgt. X’s wife has to go with him to doctor’s appointments so he’ll remember what the doctor tells him. [continued…]

For America, the problem is Pakistan
By Anatol Lieven, Financial Times, April 7, 2009

We will need to remind ourselves often in the next few years that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not the Obama administration’s fault. It inherited from George W. Bush a crisis so deep and so horribly complex that dealing with it would tax the powers of St Peter, let alone a US government with many other things on its mind and on its grossly overstrained budget. Improving the situation is the best that we can hope for. Finding a “solution” to the Afghan war and its repercussions in Pakistan is not even a possibility.

On Afghanistan itself, the administration’s new strategy, set out last week, strikes most of the right notes. In particular, it is correct to emphasise the critical importance of building up the Afghan National Army, without which nothing can be achieved in Afghanistan in the long term; and on the need for the US to work towards an exit strategy rather than engage in empty rhetoric about “staying the course”. Talk of creating a modern, western-style democracy in Afghanistan has been drastically scaled back.

The administration has also done something that should have been obvious from the very beginning and reached out to Afghanistan’s northern and western neighbours. When the US eventually leaves Afghanistan, regional powers – perhaps grouped in the Shanghai Co-operation Council – will have to try to manage Afghanistan’s ongoing conflict. [continued…]

Do U.S. drones kill Pakistani extremists or recruit them?
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, April 7, 2009

Even as the Obama administration launches new drone attacks into Pakistan’s remote tribal areas, concerns are growing among U.S. intelligence and military officials that the strikes are bolstering the Islamic insurgency by prompting Islamist radicals to disperse into the country’s heartland.

Al Qaida, Taliban and other militants who’ve been relocating to Pakistan’s overcrowded and impoverished cities may be harder to find and stop from staging terrorist attacks, the officials said.

Moreover, they said, the strikes by the missile-firing drones are a recruiting boon for extremists because of the unintended civilian casualties that have prompted widespread anger against the U.S. [continued…]

US bounty scheme struggles in Pakistan
By Frank Gardner, BBC, April 8, 2009

In Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal territories, where the Taleban and al-Qaeda are resurgent, the US does benefit from a loose network of informants.

But anyone caught betraying a fellow Muslim risks finding their family dishonoured for generations.

Mike Scheuer believes this explains why after all these years Osama Bin Laden is still a free man.

“It’s very unlikely that any Muslim is going to turn him in to the Americans for money,” says the former CIA officer, making reference to al-Qaeda’s attacks on the US in 2001.

“He’s been in Afghanistan since 9/11. It’s the third poorest place on the planet. We have $200m of reward money outstanding, including $50m for Osama and no-one has come forward to take a cent.

“I think we need in the West to grow up a little bit, everything doesn’t pivot on money.”

“In the Islamic world, at least when it comes to Osama Bin Laden, it pivots off of religion,” Mike Scheuer says. [continued…]

Report outlines medical workers’ role in torture
By Scott Shane, New York Times, April 7, 2009

Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.

Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.

Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had “condoned and participated in ill treatment.” [continued…]

The Red Cross torture report: what it means
By Mark Danner, New York Review of Books, April 2, 2009

When it comes to torture, it is not what we did but what we are doing. It is not what happened but what is happening and what will happen. In our politics, torture is not about whether or not our polity can “let the past be past”—whether or not we can “get beyond it and look forward.” Torture, for Dick Cheney and for President Bush and a significant portion of the American people, is more than a repugnant series of “procedures” applied to a few hundred prisoners in American custody during the last half-dozen or so years—procedures that are described with chilling and patient particularity in this authoritative report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.[2] Torture is more than the specific techniques—the forced nudity, sleep deprivation, long-term standing, and suffocation by water,” among others—that were applied to those fourteen “high-value detainees” and likely many more at the “black site” prisons secretly maintained by the CIA on three continents.

Torture, as the former vice-president’s words suggest, is a critical issue in the present of our politics—and not only because of ongoing investigations by Senate committees, or because of calls for an independent inquiry by congressional leaders, or for a “truth commission” by a leading Senate Democrat, or because of demands for a criminal investigation by the ACLU and other human rights organizations, and now undertaken in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Poland.[3] For many in the United States, torture still stands as a marker of political commitment—of a willingness to “do anything to protect the American people,” a manly readiness to know when to abstain from “coddling terrorists” and do what needs to be done. Torture’s powerful symbolic role, like many ugly, shameful facts, is left unacknowledged and undiscussed. But that doesn’t make it any less real. On the contrary.

Torture is at the heart of the deadly politics of national security. The former vice-president, as able and ruthless a politician as the country has yet produced, appears convinced of this. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Is Cheney convinced? I’m really not so sure. As a healthy young man, Dick Cheney made it a priority to avoid being sent to Vietnam. As an enfeebled former vice-president, Cheney’s priority these days is avoiding being sent to prison. His fear might not be great because at least so far he has been able to hide behind fairly strong institutional protection. But the emotive bedrock of his defense — and that of his co-conspirators — is that their actions were the expression of their concern for national security. I don’t buy it.

Cheney could always have made an argument in defense of the use of torture. He never has for the simple reason that he knows that the thin legal ice he’s already been walking on would at that point shatter. He has shied away from the T-word strictly for legal — not ethical — reasons. Cheney’s passion to defend America only goes so far — it does not mount to the level of personal risk.

The ticking-bomb scenario that so captured the limited imaginations of Cheney and his cohorts always had an obvious flaw. It’s easy enough to argue that an extreme situation might call for an extreme response but that extreme response could always include an individual’s willingness to ignore the law.

Here’s the way it goes:

FBI: Mr Vice President. We have the suspect. He knows where the dirty bomb is hidden and he’s already told us it’s going to explode in an hour but he won’t say any more. What can we do to force him to talk?

Cheney (national hero): Do whatever it takes and if we all end up in court I’m willing to pay that price to defend my country.

Cheney (the real one): Speak to my lawyer.

What Cheney actually did was to construct a quasi-legal culture within which individuals would not feel personally responsible and legally and ethically accountable for their own actions. By so doing, he populated a counter-terrorism institutional structure with Cheney-clones whose primary concern was to be able to hide themselves behind some mangled construction of the law.

The issue here is not national security; it’s how to save your ass.

Obama rejects the clash of civilizations
By Paul Woodward, The National, April 7, 2009

In 1993 with the era of the Cold War having ended and amid vociferous debate about how the future world order might take shape, the American political scientist Samuel P Huntington asserted: “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

For the neoconservatives who steered US foreign policy after 9/11, Mr Huntington’s views were regarded as prophetic. While the Bush administration insisted that its war on terrorism should not be seen as a war against Islam, for proponents of a the clash-of-civilizations view of history that distinction was often seen as nothing more than a matter of political correctness. As recently as last month, the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded, “we were never able to make clear that it was not a war against Islam”.

Without mentioning Mr Huntington or the expression “clash of civilizations”, Barack Obama went to Turkey, “a place where civilizations meet, and different peoples come together” and declared on Monday: “This is not where East and West divide – this is where they come together.” [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Obama’s speech was well-crafted as an exercise in redefining US relations with the Islamic world and in underlining the strategic importance of US-Turkish relations and in emphasizing the valuable role Turkey can play in Europe.

That said, there is still a serious gap between presidential rhetoric and administration actions. Emblematic of that gap in this instance (as I point out in the piece above) is that while a certified hate-monger like Geert Wilders is free to tour the United States promoting Islamophobia, Obama administration lawyers are in court defending a Bush administration ruling that the highly respected European Islamic scholar, Tariq Ramadan, be denied entry into this country.

Mitchell: Arab peace initiative will be part of Obama policy
By Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern, Haaretz, April 5, 2009

The Arab peace initiative will be part of the Obama administration’s policy toward the Middle East, the United States special envoy to the region said.

The 2002 initiative offers to normalize relations between the entire Arab region and Israel, in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories including East Jerusalem, the establishment of a Palestinian State and a “just settlement” for Palestinian refugees.

The envoy, George Mitchell, said the U.S. intends to “incorporate” the initiative into its Middle East policy. He made the statement at a meeting with Israeli, Arab American and European senior diplomats and officials in Washington a few weeks ago. [continued…]

Peres: ‘Devious’ Iran imitates Israel by hiding nuke ambitions
Haaretz, April 7, 2009

President Shimon Peres on Monday said a “sophisticated and devious” Iranian regime has managed to hide the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions from the world.

Speaking to a group of visiting U.S. members of Congress, Peres also said the United States must enlist Europe in its efforts to thwart those ambitions.

“The U.S. has a real partner in the European leadership and it must enlist it in the struggle against the Iranian nuclear [program],” the president said. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — “Nuclear ambiguity” — what a devious concept! Maybe it’s time for Israel to reframe its nuclear policy and start saying that for the sake of “nuclear modesty” it can’t divulge the size of its arsenal.

Israel not taking orders from Obama
By Gil Hoffman and Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2009

Israel does not take orders from [Barack] Obama,” Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) said on Monday, responding to an earlier statement by the US president in which he reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to all previous understandings between Israel and the Palestinians, including the process launched at Annapolis, Maryland, in 2007.

Erdan, who is also the liaison between the cabinet and the Knesset, praised Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Israel Beiteinu), who only last week said Israel was not bound by the Annapolis talks because it had never been approved by the cabinet or the Knesset. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — You tell ’em Gilad! It’s an Israeli prime minister’s right to dictate how the US votes in the UN Security Council but what kind of American president would be so arrogant as to insist that Israel abide by its own agreements? Really!

Most in poll back outreach to Muslims
By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, Washington Post, April 6, 2009

Most Americans think President Obama’s pledge to “seek a new way forward” with the Muslim world is an important goal, even as nearly half hold negative views about Islam and a sizable number say that even mainstream adherents to the religion encourage violence against non-Muslims, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

There is still a broad lack of familiarity with the world’s second-largest religion — 55 percent of those polled said they are without a basic understanding of the teachings and beliefs of Islam, and most said they do not know anyone who is Muslim. While awareness has increased in recent years, underlying views have not improved.

About half, 48 percent, said they have an unfavorable view of Islam, the highest in polls since late 2001. Nearly three in 10, or 29 percent, said they see mainstream Islam as advocating violence against non-Muslims; although more, 58 percent, said it is a peaceful religion. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — I’d never be able to work as an opinion pollster. I just wouldn’t be able to resist responding to some of the answers I got by saying, “Are you serious?” “Do you really mean that?” “You’re just kidding. Now give me an honest answer.”

For instance, one of the numbers in this poll intrigues me. The question: Do you feel you do or do not have a good basic understanding of the teachings and beliefs of Islam, the Muslim religion?

45% of those polled answered that they do have a good basic understanding of Islam. This may correspond with the 47% who say they personally know a Muslim. The latter figure seems surprisingly high to me, considering that only one per cent of Americans are Muslims, but who knows? As for the nearly half of Americans who understand Islam, is it the case that they understand Islam, or that they believe they understand Islam, or that they believe that it’s the socially appropriate thing to be able to claim that one understands Islam in order to avoid looking ignorant?

Perhaps a follow up question would have been in order. Can you name the Five Pillars of Islam? No? Do you want to change the answer you gave to the previous question?

The poor must be included in a global economy
By Bob Geldof, Financial Times, April 1, 2009

In an age characterised by the death of trust we find comfort in being able to blame everyone. It is entirely reasonable that thousands will protest, hopefully peacefully, against bankers who stuck their noses in the trough, regulators who turned away and governments who kept smiling as the tax take grew. The truth is they could just as easily protest against themselves for blindly succumbing to this leveraged society. We must now clear up the mess. Amid all the experts who failed to call this disaster, only one got it right. It was Bob Dylan, who said: “Money doesn’t talk. It swears.”

The system was always skewed and its rewards asymmetric. We built a global economy that excluded half of the globe. We marginalised the productive capacity of the 3bn people who live on less than $2 a day. By excluding them, we deprived them of the income they need to buy our stuff and consigned them to ill-health, lack of education and conflict. Instability is inherent in asymmetry. It will topple over. The first task of the Group of 20 nations must be to bring the peripheral economies and their people into the centre. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — In the midst of an economic crisis, the spirit “charity begins at home” always prevails. But in America on top of that there is a near universal assumption that the United States leads the world when it comes to foreign aid. That might be true as a raw number, but when it comes to aid as a proportion of GDP the US lags way behind the leading nations.

A key element of the crisis is a deficit of ethics
A letter from Pope Benedict XVI to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, March 31, 2009

Financial crises are triggered when — partially due to the decline of correct ethical conduct — those working in the economic sector lose trust in its modes of operating and in its financial systems. Nevertheless, finance, commerce and production systems are contingent human creations which, if they become objects of blind faith, bear within themselves the roots of their own downfall. The only true and solid foundation is faith in the human person. For this reason all the measures proposed to rein in this crisis must seek, ultimately, to offer security to families and stability to workers and, through appropriate regulations and controls, to restore ethics to the financial world. [continued…]

Administration seeks an out on bailout rules for firms
By Amit R. Paley and David Cho, Washington Post, April 4, 2009

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials. [continued…]

‘Holy hell’ over torture memos
By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, April 3, 2009

A fierce internal battle within the White House over the disclosure of internal Justice Department interrogation memos is shaping up as a major test of the Obama administration’s commitment to opening up government files about Bush-era counterterrorism policy.

As reported by Newsweek, the White House last month had accepted a recommendation from Attorney General Eric Holder to declassify and publicly release three 2005 memos that graphically describe harsh interrogation techniques approved for the CIA to use against Al Qaeda suspects. But after the story, U.S. intelligence officials, led by senior national-security aide John Brennan, mounted an intense campaign to get the decision reversed, according to a senior administration official familiar with the debate. “Holy hell has broken loose over this,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of political sensitivities.

Brennan is a former senior CIA official who was once considered by Obama for agency director but withdrew his name late last year after public criticism that he was too close to past officials involved in Bush administration decisions. Brennan, who now oversees intelligence issues at the National Security Council, argued that release of the memos could embarrass foreign intelligence services who cooperated with the CIA, either by participating in overseas “extraordinary renditions” of high-level detainees or housing them in overseas “black site” prisons. [continued…]

Federal judge to Obama DOJ: You’re wrong, Bagram Prisoners do have rights
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet, April 2, 2009

Barack Obama’s Department of Justice made headlines in late February when it adopted the Bush administration’s notoriously unconstitutional stance on prisoners at Bagram Air Base, claiming that such “detainees” have no right to challenge their detention. As the Independent UK reported at the time, “less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed ‘Obama’s Guantanamo.'”

Four prisoners at Bagram, however, have been challenging this position in court since before Obama took office — and today, three of them won a major victory.

In a momentous, 53-page decision by Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a U.S. court concluded “for the first time,” according to the International Justice Network, “that detainees held indefinitely without charge in U.S. custody in Afghanistan are entitled to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts.” [continued…]

U.S. attacks ‘Sons of Iraq,’ its former allies
By Nathan Hodge, Danger Room, April 3, 2009

Less than a week after helping disarm and disband a Sunni paramilitary group that had once been on its payroll, the U.S. military has now directly clashed with some of its former allies.

Multi-National Division – Baghdad announced today that a U.S. aircraft targeted “Sons of Iraq” members who were spotted planting a roadside bomb last night north of Taji. According to a coalition news release, one man was killed in the strike; two others were found wounded in a nearby house. At least one of the men was identified has having served in the “Sons of Iraq.” That’s the largely Sunni tribal group, bankrolled by the U.S. to keep order in their neighborhoods — and to stop fighting American forces. Many of the “Sons” were former insurgents, and insurgent allies. If they flip back to being enemies of the government, the Iraq enterprise could be in deep, deep trouble. [continued…]

Outcry in Pakistan after video of a 17-year-old girl’s flogging by the Taliban is shown on TV
By Declan Walsh, The Guardian, April 4, 2009

The Pakistani government has ordered an inquiry into the flogging of a 17-year-old woman by Taliban militants in the troubled Swat valley, after public outrage triggered by shocking video footage of the punishment.

The images, played yesterday on private television channels, show a burka-clad woman being pinned to the ground by two men while a third whips her backside 34 times. The woman is seen screaming and begging for mercy as a crowd of largely silent men look on. She is accused of having had an illegal sexual relationship, according to local law. Her brother is among those restraining her.

President Asif Ali Zardari led a wave of public condemnation, and ordered the arrest of the perpetrators. Prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani termed it “shocking” and called for an immediate inquiry. At the supreme court, the newly reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, summoned officials to a hearing scheduled for Monday to investigate the incident. [continued…]

Britain says U.S. doesn’t object to efforts to engage Hezbollah
By Ziad Haidar and Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2009

The Obama administration is “comfortable” with the British government’s attempts to engage Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group that the U.S. labels a terrorist organization, a senior British diplomat asserts.

Bill Rammell, Britain’s minister of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs, said in a brief interview late last week in Damascus that despite protests to the contrary, the new U.S. administration does not object to the fledgling contacts with the political wing of the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim group, which also has a heavily armed militia.

Britain likens the attempt to engage Hezbollah, launched quietly this year, to its outreach to political leaders of the Irish Republican Army — a move that helped quell the Northern Ireland conflict. [continued…]