The mainstream media has been nearly unrelenting in its condemnation of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, forcing Senator Barack Obama to distance himself from someone he considered a mentor. But Obama’s “Wright problem” reveals a largely ignored national problem: the narrowing of public debate to exclude the possibility of speaking truthfully about the US role in the world. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Obama has said, “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.”
It’s a good line, but I don’t imagine he has any intention – at least not before getting elected – of digging too deeply into what that mindset really is.
Why?
Because that would require looking into what remains in many respects a taboo subject in American public discourse: the humiliation of 9/11.
The September 11 attacks are spoken of as an act of war, a day of infamy, an outrage, a tragedy, an attack on America, but not as a humiliation.
Yet the lust for revenge, the ubiquity of the “Power of Pride” bumper stickers, Bush’s declaration, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass” – all of these are expressions of wounded pride and humiliation.
The dust and rubble in which 3,000 people had met their hideous deaths was soon — and perhaps through some unwitting compulsion — to be likened to a place in which 60,000 Japanese civilians were killed by an American bomb 56 years earlier. No one said, this is our Hiroshima, but neither was there the suggestion that there might be something vaguely obscene about appropriating the name Ground Zero.
What was missing and through its absence enabled the formation of the mindset of war, was an open, honest and heartfelt acknowledgment of failure – failure of leadership, failure of understanding, failure of intelligence, failure of security, failure of engineering, failure of government.
When 9/11 called America to examine itself, it refused and that refusal set in motion everything that has followed.
Evidence-based bombing By Scott Ritter, The Guardian, April 25, 2008
It looks as if Israel may, in fact, have had reason to believe that Syria was constructing, with the aid and assistance of North Korea, a facility capable of housing a nuclear reactor. The United States Central Intelligence Agency recently released a series of images, believed to have been made from a videotape obtained from Israeli intelligence, which provide convincing, if not incontrovertible, evidence that the “unused military building” under construction in eastern Syria was, in fact, intended to be used as a nuclear reactor. Syria continues to deny such allegations as false.
On the surface, the revelations seem to bolster justification not only for the Israeli air strike of September 6 2007, which destroyed the facility weeks or months before it is assessed to have been ready for operations, but also the hard-line stance taken by the administration of President George W Bush toward both Syria and North Korea regarding their alleged covert nuclear cooperation. In the aftermath of the Israeli air strike, Syria razed the destroyed facility and built a new one in its stead, ensuring that no follow-up investigation would be able to ascertain precisely what had transpired there.
Largely overlooked in the wake of the US revelations is the fact that, even if the US intelligence is accurate (and there is no reason to doubt, at this stage, that it is not), Syria had committed no crime, and Israel had no legal justification to carry out its attack. Syria is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and under the provisions of the comprehensive safeguards agreement, is required to provide information on the construction of any facility involved in nuclear activity “as early as possible before nuclear material is introduced to a new facility”. There is no evidence that Syria had made any effort to introduce nuclear material to the facility under construction.
Editor’s Comment — If former UN weapons inspector and stalwart critic of the war in Iraq, Scott Ritter, says there’s no reason at this stage to doubt the accuracy of the intelligence on the Syrian reactor, is this enough to quieten those who seemed convinced that this must be a hoax? Maybe, maybe not.
The story at this point, as far as I’m concerned, is not about the intelligence — it’s political. And to delve into the political implications, we need to look at the context. On the one hand, the fact that this came out now clearly may have something to do with the efforts of those who want to undermine the six-party talks with North Korea. On the other hand, it may have as much to do with Israel and Syria’s moves towards peace. And while the story could have been pushed to undermine those moves, it could also have been a way of pushing the issue off the table. If at the end of the day Assad can claim victory in having reclaimed the Golan Heights, the loss of a clandestine nuclear program is one he has already had to quietly write off — it no longer risks being a knot that ties up negotiations. That isn’t to jusify Israel’s unilateralism, but it might explain, in part, why they did what they did.
Iraq’s dance: Maliki, Sadr and Sunnis By Mark Kukis, Time, April 25, 2008
…the idea of Sadr becoming a nonviolent actor in Iraqi politics is all but gone after a month of almost daily street fighting between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi government forces backed by the Americans. Sadr appears now more than ever a militia leader, and the door allowing him to step into Green Zone deal-making seems closed. That means Sadr and his Mahdi Army are quickly becoming the major hardened mass resistance group to the Iraqi government and its U.S. supporters. Even if Maliki strikes a reconciliation deal with Sunni factions, his government will know no peace — and hold little legitimacy in the eyes of many Iraqis. In addition to commanding up to 60,000 militia fighters, Sadr has a popular following throughout southern Iraq and Baghdad. Sadr is, quite simply, the most powerful political player in the country, and any government without some meaningful inclusion of his following is unlikely to succeed in consolidating authority on a national scale.
Mccain vs. Mccain By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, May 5, 2008
In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.
We have spent months debating Barack Obama’s suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain’s proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.
Global Briefing: Israel and Syria make moves towards peace By Paul Woodward, The National, April 28, 2008
Summary – Israel indicates readiness to give up the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria, while Turkey offers mediation through ‘proactive peace diplomacy’. In southern Lebanon, Hizbollah expands its fighting capabilities though UN peacekeeping general is not alarmed. The Afghanistan president Karzai survives assassination attempt and is critical of US and Britain’s conduct in the war. In Zimbabwe the crackdown on the opposition continues as Robert Mugabe fails to regain control of parliament, while Angola blocks Chinese arms shipment. The economics of the global food crisis.
For the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?
Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, John Edwards, I’m not surprised.
Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.
But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Though I salute Elizabeth Edwards in her call for a “vibrant, vigorous press,” I fear that the problem she outlines runs much deeper than she suggests.
We talk about “the press” as though it was an independent entity, yet institutionally and in its individual components it seems to have abandoned any genuine sense of independence. It is a branch of commerce that exists in an economic and political system whose smooth operation requires a populace suitably pacified with comfort and distractions.
The risk that this is the way that democracy would fall apart was clearly anticipated 150 years ago by Alexis de Tocqueville, when he wrote:
…the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
“What sort of despotism democratic nations have to fear,” Chapter VI, Section IV, Volume III, Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville.
It’s a nightmare. It’s the Bataan Death March. It’s mutually assured Armageddon. “Both of them are already losing the general to John McCain,” declared a Newsweek columnist last month, predicting that the election “may already be over” by the time the Democrats anoint a nominee.
Not so fast. If we’ve learned any new rule in the 2008 campaign, it’s this: Once our news culture sets a story in stone, chances are it will crumble. But first it must be recycled louder and louder 24/7, as if sheer repetition will transmute conventional wisdom into reality.
When the Pennsylvania returns rained down Tuesday night, the narrative became clear fast. The Democrats’ exit polls spelled disaster: Some 25 percent of the primary voters said they would defect to Mr. McCain or not vote at all if Barack Obama were the nominee. How could the party possibly survive this bitter, perhaps race-based civil war?
But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama. [complete article]
I expected a roaring debate in the political blogosphere this morning, and on cable news after the Friday night Bill Moyers interview with Rev Jeremiah Wright. Instead, there’s eerie quiet.
The most I could find was this post on Protein Wisdom saying that Moyers didn’t play hardball with Wright. It’s true, he didn’t. Instead he did what I wish more journalists would, he interviewed him in a way that helped us get to know the person. He let him speak his piece, so we could listen. [complete article]
The nomination of Gen. David Petraeus to be the new head of the Central Command not only ensures that he will be available to defend the George W. Bush administration’s policies toward Iran and Iraq at least through the end of Bush’s term and possibly even beyond.
It also gives Vice President Dick Cheney greater freedom of action to exploit the option of an air attack against Iran during the administration’s final months. [complete article]
Petraeus’ ascension By Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent, April 23, 2008
Reaffirming his status as his generation’s most respected general officer, David H. Petraeus was nominated today to head U.S. Central Command (Centcom), the command responsible for all U.S. military operations in the Middle East. The move puts the U.S. military’s premier advocate, theorist and practitioner of counterinsurgency operations — once shunned by a Vietnam-stung military — at the helm of the military’s most important regional command.
But many military analysts — even those closely associated with the counterinsurgency theories that Petraeus has long championed — viewed the move as a mixed blessing. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Time is running out! There’s only six months left to keeping pushing the argument that Dick Cheney is going to start another war. After that, the only hope for the war-fearmongers is a McCain or Clinton presidency… Pardon the sarcasm.
So why do I question the idea that Petraeus’ promotion lets Cheney off the leash? Firstly, I doubt that Gates had his arm twisted into doing this. Indeed, to the extent that Petraeus was guilty of promoting operations in Iraq at the expense of meeting needs in Afghanistan, this seems to present quite a strong argument in favor of his being moved to CentCom. As commander in Iraq, it wasn’t his job to be an advocate for meeting pressing needs in any other arena. But as head of CentCom, Petraeus will become answerable for both Iraq and Afghanistan. And this time around The White House is hardly likely to go around the CentCom commander and deal directly with the commander in Iraq. By appointing U.S. Army Gen. Raymond Odierno to that position, Gates has ensured that Petraeus retains control in both commands. And Petraeus’ own ambitions surely stretch beyond 2008. He won’t merely want to please this president, but he also knows he’s going to be answerable to the next.
And as William Arkin argued last month, beyond the occasional bellicose piece of rhetoric (and there really hasn’t even been much of that in recent months), there is no practical evidence that the US military is readying itself or capable of starting another war. Blaming Iran for problems in Iraq seems to have less to do with making a case for attacking Iran than it does with resisting pressure to withdraw troops.
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.
If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.” [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — The New York Times is clearly experiencing buyer’s remorse about its endorsement of Hillary Clinton when it says her negative campaigning “undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.”
Well, the New York primary may be over and done with, but even so, if the Times wants to put its name unequivocally where it is already placing its sentiment, how about withdrawing the endorsement and switching to Obama?
Clinton threatens to ‘obliterate’ Iran By Robert Scheer, Huffington Post, April 23, 2008
How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. The tactics used to kneecap Barack Obama are the same as had been turned on Bill Clinton in earlier times, from radical-baiting associates to challenging his resolve in protecting the nation from foreign enemies. Sen. Clinton’s eminently sensible and centrist–to a fault–opponent is now viewed as weak and even vaguely unpatriotic because he is thoughtful. Neither Karl Rove nor Dick Morris could have done a better job.
Obama’s gloves are off — and may need to stay off By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, April 23, 2008
Unable once again to score a knockout, Sen. Barack Obama is likely to make his new negative tone even more negative — with a sharp eye on trying to end the Democratic presidential nomination fight after the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victory yesterday in Pennsylvania has only accentuated the quandary that Obama faces: Stay negative and he risks undermining the premise of his candidacy. Stay aloof and he underscores Clinton’s argument that he will not be able to beat a “Republican attack machine” sure to greet him this summer.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe indicated last night which of those options they would take. “We’ve done a lot of counterpunching. We’ve been swift and effective,” he said. “For Democrats judging how we’re going to perform as the nominee, we have been relentless.”
Obama himself took up the cudgel after Clinton delivered a victory speech in Philadelphia devoid of attack lines. Without naming Clinton, he suggested in Evansville, Ind., that she is a captive to the oil, pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies, that she “says and does whatever it takes to win the next election,” and that she exploits division for political gain.
Clueless in America By Bob Herbert, New York Times, April 22, 2008
We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.
The nation’s future may depend on how well we educate the current and future generations, but (like the renovation of the nation’s infrastructure, or a serious search for better sources of energy) that can wait. At the moment, no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S.
An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.
Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.
Carter spreads a new doctrine By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, April 23, 2008
The Arabs first heard of Jimmy Carter when he was elected president of the United States in November 1976. They were skeptical at first, thinking he would pursue Middle East policies no different from those of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, which were very sympathetic to Israel.
Making things more worrying was that Carter confessed that prior to his election, he had never met an Arab. The new president, however, promised to be different from previous American leaders. From day one, he made it loud and clear that he did not see the world through the narrow alliances of the Cold War; the world was not “you are either with us or with the Soviet Union”.
That is why he invited Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, King Hussein of Jordan, Hafez al-Assad of Syria and Anwar Sadat of Egypt to visit him in Washington.
All of them – with the exception of Syria’s Assad – responded promptly. Rabin, himself a Washington insider for nine years, was furious at the new US president. Carter was taking Middle East initiatives without clearing them first with Israel. Even worse, he was promising statehood to the Palestinians and calling for an end to Syrian-US tension.
Our Gilded Age and theirs By Steven Fraser, TomDispatch, April 22, 2008
Google “second Gilded Age” and you will get ferried to 7,000 possible sites where you can learn more about what you already instinctively know. That we are living through a gilded age has become a journalistic commonplace. The unmistakable drift of all the talk about it is a Yogi Berra-ism: it’s a matter of déjà vu all over again. But is it? Is turn-of-the-century America a replica of the world Mark Twain first christened “gilded” in his debut bestseller back in the 1870s?
Certainly, Twain would feel right at home today. Crony capitalism, the main object of his satirical wit in The Gilded Age, is thriving. Incestuous plots as outsized as the one in which the Union Pacific Railroad’s chief investors conspired with a wagon-load of government officials, including Ulysses S. Grant’s vice president, to loot the federal treasury once again lubricate the machinery of public policy-making. A cronyism that would have been familiar to Twain has made the wheels go round in these terminal years of the Bush administration. Even the invasion and decimation of Iraq was conceived and carried out as an exercise in grand-strategic cronyism; call it cronyism with a vengeance. All of this has been going on since Ronald Reagan brought back morning to America.
Reagan’s America was gilded by design. In 1981, when the New Rich and the New Right paraded in their sumptuous threads in Washington to celebrate at the new president’s inaugural ball, it was called a “bacchanalia of the haves.” Diana Vreeland, style guru (as well as Nancy Reagan confidante), was stylishly blunt: “Everything is power and money and how to use them both… We mustn’t be afraid of snobbism and luxury.”
Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on “Good Morning America” Tuesday. ABC News’ Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Oy vey! Where to start? Let’s set aside the idea that a promise to incinerate millions of Iranians could be a vote winner in middle America, and let’s instead carefully parse what Clinton said.
Jake Tapper, true to form, cuts the quote off to make it as sensational as possible, so its important to add the sentence that followed:
In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.
Interestingly, Clinton is distinguishing herself from the neocons here because she accepts the idea that the behavior of Iran’s leadership can be influenced by the power of deterrence. Given that she believes this, when the question was posed, “What would you do if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel,” she (or anyone else) who wanted to level with the American people should have given the honest answer:
Iran is not going to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, because if it did, it would suffer devastating retaliation from Israel itself. With a nuclear arsenal estimated to be around 200 warheads, Israel is perfectly capable of defending itself from, and deterring, a nuclear attack.
If in his confirmation hearings Robert Gates could be straightforward enough to skip the game of pretending that no one knows Israel is a nuclear state, then maybe it’s time for everyone else to give an honest account of Israel’s strengths and its weaknesses. Israel, as a nuclear state, is the military Goliath of the Middle East.
Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal on Monday said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along Israel’s pre-1967 borders, and would grant Israel a 10-year hudna, or truce, as an implicit proof of recognition if Israel withdraws from those areas.
Meshal’s comments were one of the clearest outlines Hamas has given for what it would do if Israel withdrew from the territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War. He suggested Hamas would accept Israel’s existence alongside a Palestinian state on the rest of the lands Israel has held since 1948.
However, Meshal told reporters in Damascus that Hamas would not formally recognize Israel.
“We agree to a [Palestinian] state on pre-67 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital with genuine sovereignty without settlements but without recognizing Israel,” Meshaal said.
“We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition,” he said. He said he made the offer to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during talks Friday and Saturday in the Syrian capital. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — It’s not going to happen, but just suppose Israel was to accept Hamas’s offer of a 10-year truce for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Imagine that without the burden of an Israeli occupation or an economic siege that Palestinians could devote their attention to the construction of their own sovereign state. The responsibility of a Palestinian government would then fall squarely on its ability to adequately serve its own people – not its capacity to negotiate with or resist the Israelis. The challenge of that decade would clearly be to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians. The test of whatever political leadership held power would be its ability to deliver on its promises. To imagine that Hamas would use the peace in order to put together a longterm military plan to later challenge Israel seems fanciful. If they did so they would swiftly marginalize themselves out of existence.
So why should all of this be something we can only imagine? Because the real political challenge is not to persuade Hamas to accept a two-state solution, renounce violence or recognize Israel. The real challenge is for Israel to dismantle the settlements. It’s far easier to perpetually blame the Palestinians than to wrestle with an issue that has been relentlessly expanded towards a point where it could be regarded as irreversible.
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — This article describes a triangle of complicity comprising Pentagon officials, retired military leaders, and television news networks. The New York Times essentially gives the networks a free pass. The final paragraphs of the article summarize the perfunctory answers the paper received in response to questions about conflicts of interest, yet the mere fact that the networks might have been unaware about the Pentagon briefings their analysts were receiving or the way these generals were cashing in on their connections, does not explain away what was always glaringly obvious: the chasm separating war news reporting on the one hand, and the military analysis being presented by the networks’ prize generals on the other hand. The networks had no interest in closing this gap. That fact in and of itself merits another investigative report but that will only happen if mainstream journalism opens itself up to some critical self-examination — and what are the chances of that happening?!
When the Haynes memo reached Guantánamo on December 2 [2002], Detainee 063 was in an isolated, plywood interrogation booth at Camp X-Ray. He was bolted to the floor and secured to a chair, his hands and legs cuffed. He had been held in isolation since August 8, nearly four months earlier. He was dehydrated and in need of regular hook-ups to an intravenous drip. His feet were swollen. He was urinating on himself.
During Detainee 063’s first few months at Guantánamo, the interrogators had followed established practices for military and law enforcement interrogations. Building rapport is the overriding aim of the US Army Field Manual 34-52, the rule book for military interrogators, colloquially referred to as “FM 34-52”. Legality was also essential, which meant operating in accordance with the rules set out in the US military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice and international law, in particular the four Geneva conventions.
At the heart of them lies “Common Article 3”, which expressly prohibits cruel treatment and torture, as well as “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment”. Tactics that had conformed to these principles changed dramatically. The interrogation log describes what happened immediately after Rumsfeld signed the Haynes memo.
The pattern was always the same: 20-hour interrogation sessions, followed by four hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation appears as a central theme, along with stress positions and constant humiliation, including sexual humiliation. These techniques were supplemented by the use of water, regular bouts of dehydration, the use of IV tubes, loud noise (the music of Christina Aguilera was blasted out in the first days of the new regime), nudity, female contact, pin-ups. An interrogator even tied a leash to him, led him around the room and forced him to perform a series of dog tricks. He was forced to wear a woman’s bra and a thong was placed on his head.
Rumsfeld led the charge for war in Iraq; in part he did so because of Saddam Hussein’s contempt for human life. “Torture is systematic in Iraq, and the most senior officials in the regime are involved,” Rumsfeld said, a few months before Saddam was overthrown. “Electric shock, eye gouging, acid baths, lengthy confinement in small metal boxes are only some of the crimes committed by this regime.” He spoke those words one day after secretly signing the Haynes memo and approving his own techniques of aggressive interrogation at Guantánamo.
Ironically, it was the Iraq war – in particular, events at Abu Ghraib prison – that brought the Haynes memo into the open two years later. By the autumn of 2003, Abu Ghraib was being run by the US as a detention facility. On April 28 2004, a CBS television report revealed the nature and scale of abuse being inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners. Photographs taken by US military participants were published, including one, now notorious, showing a prisoner standing on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his fingers. Another showed Private Lynndie England holding a leash tied to the neck of a naked man on the floor.
Was there a connection between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the Bush administration’s secret interrogation policies at other places, including Guantánamo? In June 2004, President Bush, hosting the G8 summit in Savannah, Georgia, was asked by the media if he had authorised any kind of interrogation techniques necessary to pursue the “war on terror”? No, he said, his authorisation was that anything the US did would conform to US law and be consistent with international treaty obligations. “We’re a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books.”
Four days later, the administration unexpectedly declassified and released a number of documents relating to interrogation in the belief that this would reflect the thorough process of deliberation that, it was claimed, took place, and demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law. At the briefing, conducted by three lawyers from Bush’s inner circle, Alberto Gonzales, the president’s counsel, Jim Haynes from the Defence Department, and his deputy, Dan Dell’Orto, it was made clear that particular documents were crucial: the Haynes memo, and a decision taken a few months previously by the president, on February 7 2002, that none of the detainees at Guantánamo, whether Taliban or al-Qaida, could rely on any of the protections granted by the Geneva conventions, not even Common Article 3.
The second set of documents were legal opinions issued on August 1 2002. One of these, by two senior lawyers at the Justice Department, concluded that physical torture occurred only when the pain was “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death”. Mental torture required “lasting psychological harm”. The memo concluded that torture of suspected terrorists under interrogation would not be unlawful if it could be justified on grounds of necessity or self-defence.
On October 11 2002, Guantánamo had request that additional techniques beyond those in FM 34-52 be approved for use against high-value detainees, in particular a Saudi Arabian, Mohammed al-Qahtani – otherwise known as Detainee 063. The underlying message of the briefing was spelled out: Rumsfeld had merely responded to a request from Guantánamo, and in doing so had acted reasonably. By contrast, the abuses at Abu Ghraib were unauthorised and unconnected to actual policies.
Much later, in March 2006, Time magazine published on its website the interrogation log of Detainee 063. Some of the Abu Ghraib images bore a resemblance to what Detainee 063 had been through: humiliation, stress, hooding, nudity, female interrogators, shackles, dogs. Was this just a coincidence? [complete article]
With the 60th anniversary of Israel’s birth — and of the Palestinian Nakbah (catastrophe) — which are, of course the same event, almost upon us, I was reminded this week that April 9 was also the 60th anniversary of an event that has long epitomized the connection between the creation of an ethnic-majority Jewish state and the man-made catastrophe suffered by the Palestinian Arabs. That would be the massacre at Deir Yassein, a small village near Jerusalem where fighters of the Irgun, led by Menahem Begin, massacred up to 250 Palestinian civilians — in what later emerged as a calculated campaign of “ethnic cleansing,” using violence and the threat of violence to drive Palestinians to flee their homes and land, which were then summarily appropriated by the new state of Israel, which passed legislation forbidding the Palestinian owners from returning to their property. It was the events of 1948 that created the Palestinian refugee problem, and set the terms of a conflict that continues to define the State of Israel six decades later. No resolution of the conflict is possible without understanding the events of 1948 — something that precious few mainstream U.S. politicians do. The irony is that Israelis are far more likely to be familiar with the uglier side of their victory in 1948 than are their most enthusiastic supporters on these shores. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — I highly recommend watching the documentary “Deir Yassin Remembered.” The story is told slowly, thoughtfully, and methodically, explaining the significance of the Deir Yassin massacre in the context of the massive program of ethnic cleansing that laid the foundations for the creation of a Zionist state. This 33-minute documentary worth careful attention – especially for anyone not familiar with the story of how the modern state of Israel came into existence. The documentary was produced by Deir Yassin Remembered.
Former president Jimmy Carter plans to meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a direct rebuke of the Bush administration’s campaign to isolate it.
The disclosure of Carter’s plans by the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat and subsequent confirmation by sources familiar with his itinerary instantly placed the campaigns of Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in a political bind.
The campaign of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, was quick to blast Carter’s plans and called on both Obama and Clinton to condemn the meeting with what the State Department lists as a terrorist group.
Both Clinton and Obama issued statements with milder language, saying they “disagreed” or did “not agree” with Carter’s plans. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Simply because he had the supposed audacity to describe Israel as operating a system of apartheid in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Jimmy Carter is already irredeemable in the eyes of much of Washington. But what will shape the political impact of Carter’s meeting with Khaled Meshal may have as much to do with the make up of the delegation accompanying Carter, as it does with Carter’s own presence.
If, as Al Jazeera reports, Carter is joined by Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan, this would certainly capture the global media’s attention. But if this meeting is in part intended to challenge the conventional wisdom in America, then perhaps Carter should invite the former head of Mossad, Efraim Halevy.
This is a man, highly respected in Israel — and by no stretch of the imagination “soft on terrorism” — who like the majority of Israeli citizens supports the idea of talking to Hamas. If CNN was to broadcast a joint news conference between Carter, Meshal, and Halevy, perhaps a few more Americans might start to understand that the US government’s policy of shunning Hamas is not only ineffective, but it does not even reflect the will of the Israeli people. How can anyone claim to be loyal to Israel if they don’t pay attention to what Israeli’s themselves are saying?
To learn more about Halevy’s views on Hamas and the Palestinians and understand the thinking of this hard-headed realist, watch this March 19 interview (18 minutes) he did with Al Jazeera:
There were signs that Obama’s hard work and extensive television advertising were paying off: various polls showed the race tightening a bit. The talk-show muttering had migrated from Jeremiah Wright to Clinton’s Bosnian sniper-fire fantasy. Hordes of new voters were registering in Pennsylvania. It was not impossible that Obama would turn Clinton’s predicted victory into a closer-than-expected moral defeat.
But there was still something missing. I noticed it during Obama’s response to a young man who remembered how the country had come together after Sept. 11 and lamented “the dangerously low levels of patriotism and pride in our country, the loss of faith in our elected officials.” Obama used this, understandably, to go after George W. Bush. “Cynicism has become the hot stock,” he said, “the growth industry during the Bush Administration.” He talked about the Administration’s mendacity, its incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, its lack of transparency. But he never returned to the question of patriotism. He never said, “But hey, look, we’re Americans. This is the greatest country on earth. We’ll rise to the occasion.” [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Joe Klein refers to the “implicit patriotism of the Obama candidacy” but says, “to convince those who doubt him, Obama has to make the implicit explicit. He will have to show that he can be as corny as he is cool.”
Beyond, “we’re Americans – this is the greatest country on earth,” what other kinds of “explicit patriotism” does Klein have in mind? A flag lapel button? Stories about reciting the pledge of allegiance each morning with his wife and children? What kind of corny show of patriotism does Klein think would hit the mark and play best in the American heartland?
There’s little doubt that patriotism will at the very least figure as an insidious undercurrent in the general election and it’s important that the Obama campaign doesn’t fall into the position of being on the defense. But the way to do that is not to kowtow to those who push the conventional wisdom which says that political success in America requires a massive serving of red, white, and blue.
Patriotism should not be confused with its emblems. Too often these have been turned into the tools of a nationalism that paradoxically divides rather than unites the people.
When the flag wavers turn to the flag weary and say, “prove to us that you are American enough,” the implication is that even those who pass the test will remain less American than those requiring the test. The me-too patriot has capitulated to those who say: “It is we, not you, who understand what it means to be a real American.”
It’s not so much that Obama has a patriotism problem as much as that his opponents will, as he has said, use patriotism as a bludgeon. But what Obama has wisely done and I hope will continue to do is to insist that neither his critics nor commentators such as Joe Klein, be conferred with the privilege of framing each issue.
For four years Obama has been saying, “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” What could be more patriotic than a heartfelt embracing of the whole nation?
America belongs to the American people. So when any particular group asserts a claim that they above others know what it means to be “real Americans”, they are in effect attempting to disavow the national identity of other citizens. What could be less patriotic than to abandon fellow Americans?
The Iraqi military’s offensive in Basra was supposed to demonstrate the power of the central government in Baghdad. Instead it has proven the continuing relevance of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, stood its ground in several days of heavy fighting with Iraqi soldiers backed up by American and British air power. But perhaps more important than the manner in which the militia fought is the manner in which it stopped fighting. On Sunday Sadr issued a call for members of the Mahdi Army to stop appearing in the streets with their weapons and to cease attacks on government installations. Within a day, the fighting had mostly ceased. It was an ominous answer to a question posed for months by U.S. military observers: Is Sadr still the leader of a unified movement and military force? The answer appears to be yes.
In the view of many American troops and officers, the Mahdi Army had splintered irretrievably into a collection of independent operators and criminal gangs. Now, however, the conclusion of the conflict in Basra shows that when Sadr speaks, the militia listens.
That apparent authority is in marked contrast to the weakness of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. He traveled south to Basra with his security ministers to supervise the operation personally. After a few days of intense fighting he extended his previously announced deadline for surrender and offered militants cash in exchange for their weapons. Yet in the ceasefire announcement the militia explicitly reserved the right to hold onto its weapons. And the very fact of the ceasefire flies in the face of Maliki’s proclamation that there would be no negotiations. It is Maliki, and not Sadr, who now appears militarily weak and unable to control elements of his own political coalition. [complete article]
Why did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki attack the Mahdi army in Basra last week?
Despite the cease-fire called Sunday by Shiite leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the millions-strong Sadr Movement, last week’s battles between the Mahdi army and the Iraqi army revealed the continued weakness and instability of al-Maliki’s government. Al-Maliki went to Basra on Monday, March 24, to oversee the attack on city neighborhoods loyal to al-Sadr. By Friday, the Iraqi minister of defense, Abdul Qadir Jasim, had to admit in a news conference in Basra that the Mahdi army had caught Iraqi security forces off guard. Most Sadrist neighborhoods fought off the government troops with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire. At the same time, the Mahdi army asserted itself in several important cities in the Shiite south, as well as in parts of Baghdad, raising questions of how much of the country the government really controls. Only on Sunday, after the U.S. Air Force bombed some key Mahdi army positions, was the Iraqi army able to move into one of the Sadrist districts of Basra. [complete article]
The Iranian general who helped broker an end to nearly a week of fighting between Iraqi government forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen in southern Iraq is an unlikely peacemaker.
Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who helped U.S.-backed Iraqi leaders negotiate a deal with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to stop the fighting in Iraq’s largely Shiite south, is named on U.S. Treasury Department and U.N. Security Council watch lists for alleged involvement in terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology.
His role as peacemaker, which McClatchy first reported Sunday, underscores Iran’s entrenched political power and its alliances in Iraq, according to analysts. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — For five years, the US and its allies in Iraq have indulged in a modulated fantasy. To begin with it was that Moqtada al Sadr could be ignored — that he was an upstart deserving contempt. Once it became clear that he couldn’t be ignored, the aim turned to his destruction. Once it became clear that he and his movement could not be destroyed, hopes turned to his pacification. If he could be politically accommodated, he might lose his political fire and thence fall by the wayside. All along, the press has helped reinforce the administration’s efforts to brand Sadr by referring to him as radical, anti-American, rebel, fiery, militant, hardline, rabble-rousing, demagogue and a firebrand. What few have been willing to acknowledge is that over the span of the last five years, there is no one else in Iraq whose authority has been as durable or as demonstrable.
The American conceit was that by having ousted Saddam it acquired the ability to dispense or withhold political authority. The mistake was and remains a confusion about the difference between power and authority. For all its power, the US has never been able to wield any political authority in Iraq; it thus has no authority to dispense. Ironically, Sadr’s ability to acquire authority has in large part been assisted by the administration’s refusal to acknowledge his political weight.
Just over a month ago, US Central Command issued a press release in response to Sadr’s extension of his militia’s ceasefire. It said:
Those who continue to honor al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr’s pledge will be treated with respect and restraint. Those who dishonor the Sadr pledge are regrettably tarnishing both the name and the honor of the movement…. [We] welcome an opportunity to participate in dialogue with the Sadr Trend and all groups who seek to bring about reconciliation in building the new Iraq.
This might have just been empty rhetoric, but I think that it more likely reflects that the US military is slightly ahead of its political leadership in starting to recognize that it’s time to show Sadr more respect. If the idea that he was going to fade away has managed to be a very durable fantasy — especially among those who have had equally durable dreams of success in Iraq — the time to wake up to the reality of Sadr’s political authority is long overdue.
Bishop Paul Hinder, the Vatican’s representative in Arabia, was reluctant to criticize the pope, of course, but when I reached him in Abu Dhabi Wednesday morning he clearly had reservations about the way Allam was received into the Church. He said that local Christians took him aside at Easter services and asked him “why it had to be done in such an extraordinary way on a special night.” Hinder contrasted Allam’s conversion to Catholicism with former British prime minister Tony Blair’s, which “was done in a private chapel.”
“What I cannot accept is if it is done in a triumphalistic way,” said Hinder. That is, if Allam were not declaring only his personal beliefs but intentionally demeaning the faith of Muslims. Yet it is hard to read the spectacle of his conversion otherwise, because that’s exactly the tone in which Allam writes. He has made his career portraying Islam as a religion that terrorizes. Allam says he has lived in hiding and in fear for years because of reaction to his columns in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, which regularly denounce excesses by Muslims and praise Israel. Allam converted to Catholicism, he says, as he turned away from “a past in which I imagined that there could be a moderate Islam.” Speaking as if for the pope, Allam told one interviewer in Italy, “His Holiness has launched an explicit and revolutionary message to a church that, up to now, has been too prudent in converting Muslims.”
Allam claims he is hoping his public embrace of Catholicism will help other converts to speak out in public. But that hardly seems likely. The more probable scenario is that others will feel even more vulnerable, while Allam’s books, like many Muslim-bashing screeds that preceded them, climb the best-seller lists.
Unless — and this really would be news — the Muslim world just turns the page. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Take away all the trappings of sanctity and there’s no getting away from the perception that the Vatican’s answer to Dick Cheney has a devilish streak. Benedict is a shit-stirrer — you can see it in those devious eyes.
The Obama Doctrine By Spencer Ackerman, The American Prospect, March 24, 2008
[An] ability to see the world from different perspectives informs what the Obama [foreign policy] team hopes will replace the Iraq War mind-set: something they call dignity promotion. “I don’t think anyone in the foreign-policy community has as much an appreciation of the value of dignity as Obama does,” says Samantha Power, a former key aide and author of the groundbreaking study of U.S. foreign policy and genocide, A Problem From Hell. “Dignity is a way to unite a lot of different strands [of foreign-policy thinking],” she says. “If you start with that, it explains why it’s not enough to spend $3 billion on refugee camps in Darfur, because the way those people are living is not the way they want to live. It’s not a human way to live. It’s graceless — an affront to your sense of dignity.” [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Replacing democracy promotion with dignity promotion sounds good, but I would hope that an Obama administration would have the wisdom to get out the promotion business altogether — though in saying that, I’m not advocating isolationism.
America’s evangelical fervor is invariably a source of trouble. Among the most common explanation for why Americans spend extended periods overseas is either as soldiers or as missionaries. Americans have a habit of venturing into the rest of the world in order to change it.
But what many people from wealthy societies discover if they have the opportunity to delve into a Third World culture is that there is no correlation between wealth and dignity. Far from it: many of the most dignified people who grace this planet also happen to be the poorest. Their dignity invariably resides in pride in their own culture. Conversely, nothing more reliably strips people of their dignity than to feed the notion that their heritage is inferior to another.
If we want to consider dignity promotion, maybe we should focus on how to do it in our own society.
What is the impact of mass entertainment that creates a spectacle out of humiliation — the crux of so much reality TV? Does the promotion of product brands have a corrosive effect on self esteem? Who do you become when it matters so much what you wear or what you drive? Has social respect become inextricable from wealth acquisition? Have we demeaned ourselves by becoming a nation of material consumers while forgetting what it means to be a cultural producer?
A significant dimension of Obama’s appeal is that he carries himself with dignity — something sadly lacking in much of public life. While it will undoubtedly be a good thing if an appreciation of the importance of human dignity underpins American foreign policy, we would do well to consider what it takes to restore dignity to the American way of life.
While Barack Obama’s speech on race earlier this week was geared primarily toward domestic concerns, as an American of Middle Eastern origin, watching from a café in Jordan, I was struck by the possibilities it offered not only for race relations at home, but for our relationship with Arabs and Muslims abroad.
Obama declared that “the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding.” He was speaking, of course, about the legacy of slavery and segregation. But he might as well have been talking about the burgeoning anger toward America felt by millions of frustrated Muslims around the world. And the conversation Obama tried to initiate — contextualizing radicalism and seeking its source rather than merely denouncing it — is the sort of conversation that could also lay the groundwork for a long-overdue reassessment of our approach to the Middle East. [complete article]
What Muslims think By Alex Kingsbury, US News & World Report, March 14, 2008
[Interview of Prof. John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed — authors of, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think]
Have we learned more about Muslims than we knew in 2001?
We did a survey of Americans in 2002, asking what they knew about the beliefs and opinions of Muslims around the world. Fifty-four percent said they knew nothing or not much. We asked that same question in 2007, after we’ve had two wars and a great deal more media coverage of Muslims, and this time 57 percent said they knew nothing or not much. We are no closer to truly understanding this part of the world, even as we are more engaged with it.
Editor’s Comment — In a January interview with the French magazine, Paris Match, Obama said: “Once I’m elected, I want to organize a summit in the Muslim world, with all the heads of state, to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West.”
Sounds like a smart idea, yet none of the other candidates have supported it and groups such as the Republican Jewish Coalition said that they regarded the proposal as deeply troubling. Small wonder so many people say they understand less about Muslims now than they did in 2002. There are political powers that have too heavy an investment in perpetuating the ignorance of ordinary Americans.
U.S. toll in Iraq reaches 4,000 By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2008
Four U.S. soldiers were killed when a bomb hit their vehicle in south Baghdad late Sunday, bringing the number of U.S. service members killed in the Iraq war to 4,000.
The grim milestone came at a time when attacks against the U.S. military are ebbing and officials have claimed significant progress against Iraq’s deadly insurgency and sectarian violence. It was reached about 10 p.m. on a day when more than 60 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured in attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital.
The Battle of Baghdad By Michael Schwartz, TomDispatch, March 23, 2008
Over the course of five years, Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq, has been transformed from a metropolis into an urban desert of half-destroyed buildings and next to no public services, dotted by partially deserted, mutually hostile mini-ghettos that used to be neighborhoods, surrounded by cement barriers reminiscent of medieval fortifications. The most prominent of these ghettos is the heavily fortified city-inside-a-city dubbed the Green Zone, where Iraq’s most fearsome militia, the United States military, is headquartered. It is governed by the Americans and by the American-sponsored Iraqi government, headed by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.
The remaining ghettos, large and small, are governed by local militias, most of them sworn enemies of the United States and the Maliki regime. In the expanding Shia areas of the capital, the local guardians are often members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that has opposed the American presence since the occupation began. In the shrinking Sunni-controlled parts of the city, the local guardians are usually members of the Sahwa forces (the “Awakening” or, in U.S. military jargon, “Concerned Local Citizens”). The Americans have ceded to them control of their cement-enclosed domains as long as they discontinue insurgent attacks elsewhere.
The U.S. Military Index Foreign Policy, March/April, 2008
In an exclusive new index, Foreign Policy and the Center for a New American Security surveyed more than 3,400 active and retired officers at the highest levels of command about the state of the U.S. military. They see a force stretched dangerously thin and a country ill-prepared for the next fight.
[…]
Sixty percent say the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. Asked why, more than half cite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pace of troop deployments those conflicts require. More than half the officers say the military is weaker than it was either 10 or 15 years ago. But asked whether “the demands of the war in Iraq have broken the U.S. military,” 56 percent of the officers say they disagree. That is not to say, however, that they are without concern. Nearly 90 percent say that they believe the demands of the war in Iraq have “stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin.”
Clinton backer points to Electoral College votes as new measure By Katherine Q Seelye, New York Times, March 24, 2008
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who backs Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, proposed another gauge Sunday by which superdelegates might judge whether to support Mrs. Clinton or Senator Barack Obama.
He suggested that they consider the electoral votes of the states that each of them has won.
“So who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes is an important factor to consider because ultimately, that’s how we choose the president of the United States,” Mr. Bayh said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
[…]
Many Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bayh, have opposed the Electoral College in the past, particularly after 2000, when Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush, who became president, even though Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, had won the popular vote nationwide.
At the time, Mrs. Clinton, who had just been elected to the Senate, said, “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”
Hillary’s Balkan adventures, part II By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, March 21, 2008
Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Clinton, could not go because they were “too dangerous.” When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about “landing under sniper fire” and running for safety with “our heads down.”
[…]
According to Sinbad, who provided entertainment on the trip along with the singer Sheryl Crow, the “scariest” part was deciding where to eat. As he told Mary Ann Akers of The Post, “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.'” Sinbad questioned the premise behind the Clinton version of events. “What kind of president would say ‘Hey man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.”
Obama Aide: Bill Clinton Like McCarthy By Matt Apuzo, AP, March 22, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign is trying to clarify comments by former President Clinton that seemed to question Barack Obama’s patriotism—comments an Obama aide likened to Joseph McCarthy.
Clinton’s campaign said the comments were being misinterpreted and quickly posted a clarification on its Web site. But retired Air Force Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak said he was disappointed by the comments and compared them to those of McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator.
The former president made the comments while speculating about a general election between his wife and Republican John McCain.
“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” said Clinton, who was speaking to a group of veterans Friday in Charlotte, N.C. “And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”
Story behind the story: The Clinton myth By Jim Vadndehei and Mike Allen, Politico, March 21, 2008
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.
Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.
Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.
Dick Cheney’s error By Mickey Edwards, Washington Post, March 22, 2008
On Wednesday, reminded of the public’s disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: “So?”
“So,” Mr. Vice President?
Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.
U.S. pushed allies on Iraq, diplomat writes By Colum Lynch, Washington Post, March 23, 2008
In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting “bitterness” and “deep mistrust” in Washington’s relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Munoz, Chile’s ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book “A Solitary War: A Diplomat’s Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons,” set for publication next month.
“In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished” for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein’s government, Munoz writes.
But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Munoz’s account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration’s standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.
Administration puts its best spin on Iran report By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, March 24, 2008
Comments last week by President Bush and Vice President Cheney suggested continuing White House unhappiness at the conclusions of last December’s national intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program.
Bush told U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi, that Iranian leaders have “declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people,” a statement that went well beyond the findings of the NIE.
Cheney, meanwhile, jousted with ABC’s Martha Raddatz when she tried to pin him down on whether he agreed with the NIE’s finding that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Despite having several opportunities to endorse this finding, the vice president said in an interview only that “I have high confidence they have an ongoing enrichment program.”
U.S. may relent on Hamas role in talks By Helene Cooper, New York Times, March 19, 2008
After ruling out talks with Hamas, the militant Islamist group, the Bush administration is using Egypt as an intermediary to open a channel between Israel and representatives of the group, in what some diplomats say could be a softening of the American stance.
While administration officials still say they do not plan to deal directly with Hamas, the United States has given tacit support to an attempt by Egyptian officials to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the mediation attempt with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit in Cairo early this month, and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, administration officials said. Egyptian civilian intelligence officials are the go-betweens, Arab diplomats said.
Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.
The dollar’s crumpling, the recession’s thundering, the Dow’s bungee-jumping and the world’s disapproving, yet George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly, tap dancing and singing in a one-man review called “The Most Happy Fella.”
“I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Friday. His manner — chortling and joshing — was in odd juxtaposition to the Fed’s bailing out the imploding Bear Stearns and his own acknowledgment that “our economy obviously is going through a tough time,” that gas prices are spiking, and that folks “are concerned about making their bills.”
He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown “a interesting moment” and ended by saying that “our energy policy has not been very wise” and that there was “no quick fix” on gasp-inducing gas prices.
“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”
Dude, you’re already in the ditch.
Boy George crashed the family station wagon into the globe and now the global economy. Yet the more terrified Americans get, the more bizarrely carefree he seems. The former oilman reacted with cocky ignorance a couple of weeks ago when a reporter informed him that gas was barreling toward $4 a gallon. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — I imagine Bush learned his happy-go-lucky trick some time in his adolescence. It’s a familiar ruse everyone remembers from the classroom. There’s a kid who’s mediocre but proud and he thinks he can avoid being embarrassed by his poor performance. He parades his lack of seriousness as though to say, “You know I could really excel if I wanted to, but none of this matters to me so I can’t be bothered. You can study and I’ll party.” This is Bush’s exit strategy from the White House. He wants to tell us he fooled us; that when we thought he was doing badly because we thought he was incompetent, in truth he wasn’t even trying.
Coming together By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 15, 2008
For those of us who’ve never seen ourselves as part of the political mainstream (or maybe anything mainstream), it’s sometimes easy to forget that when Barak Obama talks about bringing the country together, he really means it.
Unity in opposition is a groove that’s easy to slide into. Solidarity that comes through facing the other can only be sustained because we choose not to face ourselves; we define what we are by declaring what we are not.
So at a moment when division seems to have become the substance of the presidential race, it’s worth listening to what Obama had to say today in Indiana:
The text of this part of Obama’s speech:
Let me just close my initial remarks by talking about bringing this country together. You know, Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most — gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis. Right after Dr. King was shot. Some of you remember reading about this speech. Some of you were alive when this speech was given. He stood on top of a car. He was in a crowd mostly of African Americans. And he delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed. And he said, at that moment of anguish, he said, we’ve got a choice. He said, we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have different stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes. And we can decide to walk down this road together. And remake America once again. And, you know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks – because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech at the convention in 2004, there is no Black America, or White America, or Asian America, or Latino America. There is the United States of America. But I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there’s been this shift. You know, that you’ve been seeing in the reporting. You’ve been seeing some of the commentaries of supporters on all sides. Most recently, you heard some statements from my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject, although I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships, but clearly had — but if all I knew was those statements that I saw on television, I would be shocked. And it just reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. That this country wants something different.
I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment, where we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget them. We have to acknowledge them and lift them up and when people say things like my former pastor said, you know, you have to speak out forcefully against them. But what you also have to do is remember what Bobby Kennedy said. That it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America. And that we have to do not just so that our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is the only way that we are going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country. We can’t solve health care divided. We cannot create an economy that works for everybody divided. We can’t fight terrorism divided. We can’t care for our veterans divided. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about. That’s why you are here. That’s why we’re going to win this election. That’s how we’re going to change the country.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama show few signs that they’re aware of it, but the general election campaign has already begun. And appropriately for the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, the pair have begun to destroy each other like the two crazy Irish cats of Kilkenny. The upshot is that both of them are already losing the general to John McCain. By the time the Democratic convention rolls around in August and the nomination is finally awarded, the battle may already be over.
Obama’s advisers point out, rightfully, that the Clinton campaign started this downward drift toward mutually assured destruction, Democratic-style, with its now infamous “red phone” ad before the critical Ohio and Texas primaries. Subtly but with devastating impact, the TV commercial raised questions about Obama’s preparedness to be commander in chief. The Obama campaign responded by effectively branding Hillary Clinton a liar about her own record. “As far as the record shows, Sen. Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue—not at 3 a.m. or at any other time of day,” top Obama adviser Greg Craig—a former close friend of Hillary’s—wrote this week in a widely circulated memo.
Winning elections is about setting the agenda and, while creating a positive image of oneself, negatively defining one’s opponent in the minds of the voters. This is happening for McCain—having Obama defined as unready and Hillary as lacking in integrity—without his having to lift a finger. If the current campaign keeps up—and there’s every sign it will—it’s likely that by summer irrepressible doubts about both Dems will have been lodged in the minds of the electorate. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Barak Obama — like most successful people — has been credited with possessing an excellent sense of timing. If there was ever a time when he desperately needed to seize the day, this is it. How can he do it?
Take the high road — no one should expect anything less from a candidate who presents himself as a unifier and natural leader — and call for a closed-door Democratic summit. He needs to reach out to Hillary Clinton and say, “I want to sit down with you and Howard Dean and for the three of us to arrive at a consensus about how we move forward in such a way that we ensure that when the party has a nominee, he or she will be able to lead a unified party.”
This isn’t about asking either campaign to accept defeat before they are ready to do so. It just means that they agree to pursue victory without doing so at the expense of the party.
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ormer president Jimmy Carter plans to meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a direct rebuke of the Bush administration’s campaign to isolate it.
here were signs that Obama’s hard work and extensive television advertising were paying off: various polls showed the race tightening a bit. The talk-show muttering had migrated from Jeremiah Wright to Clinton’s Bosnian sniper-fire fantasy. Hordes of new voters were registering in Pennsylvania. It was not impossible that Obama would turn Clinton’s predicted victory into a closer-than-expected moral defeat.
he Iraqi military’s offensive in Basra was supposed to demonstrate the power of the central government in Baghdad. Instead it has proven the continuing relevance of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, stood its ground in several days of heavy fighting with Iraqi soldiers backed up by American and British air power. But perhaps more important than the manner in which the militia fought is the manner in which it stopped fighting. On Sunday Sadr issued a call for members of the Mahdi Army to stop appearing in the streets with their weapons and to cease attacks on government installations. Within a day, the fighting had mostly ceased. It was an ominous answer to a question posed for months by U.S. military observers: Is Sadr still the leader of a unified movement and military force? The answer appears to be yes.
