OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: In praise of the future

9/11 is over
By Thoma L. Friedman, New York Times, September 30, 2007

9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

It is not that I thought we had new enemies that day and now I don’t. Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the [presidential] candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.

Before 9/11, the world thought America’s slogan was: “Where anything is possible for anybody.” But that is not our global brand anymore. Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: “Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”

You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Tom Friedman has what I would call a uniquely American affliction: pathological optimism. One can argue that life is sustained by irrational hope — there is after all no happy ending. But excessive hope makes it much harder to anticipate failure and thereby avoid mistakes.

Friedman’s little pep talk on bringing back the good ol’ new times will appeal to lots of Americans. To say that “9/11 made us stupid” is to imply that the last six years have been nothing more than an aberration; that they did not reveal anything about America’s character, its political culture or its relationship with the world. All we have to do is vote for the right candidate in November 2008. If only it was going to be that easy!

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Myanmar revolution

UN envoy meets Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi
AFP, September 30, 2007

A UN envoy met Myanmar’s detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and leaders of the ruling junta Sunday, as he tried to broker an end to a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests.

Ibrahim Gambari met with Aung San Suu Kyi for more than an hour, the UN said in a statement. The rare encounter, seen as a sign of intense pressure on the regime, took place at a government guest house in the main city of Yangon. [complete article]

What makes a monk mad
By Seth Mydans, New York Times, September 30, 2007

As they marched through the streets of Myanmar’s cities last week leading the biggest antigovernment protests in two decades, some barefoot monks held their begging bowls before them. But instead of asking for their daily donations of food, they held the bowls upside down, the black lacquer surfaces reflecting the light.

It was a shocking image in the devoutly Buddhist nation. The monks were refusing to receive alms from the military rulers and their families — effectively excommunicating them from the religion that is at the core of Burmese culture.

That gesture is a key to understanding the power of the rebellion that shook Myanmar last week. [complete article]

How Junta stemmed a saffron tide
By Justin McCurry, Jonathan Watts, Alex Duval Smith, The Observer, September 30, 2007

The military crackdown on Burma’s monk-led opposition has emptied the streets and removed hope of regime change… for now. But dissent continues to seep out via the internet and from the army rank and file [complete article]

The people need the world to speak as one in its support
By Khin Maung Win, The Observer, September 30, 2007

The UN’s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, has arrived in Burma. It is not his first visit, but it needs to be more successful than the previous ones. It must result in a dialogue involving the junta, the opposition democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and other ethnic leaders. Such talks are the key.

If parts of the international community feel powerless, they shouldn’t. All that the people of Burma are asking of them is to speak with one voice. If this junta has survived for the past 19 years maltreating its people, it is partly because it has exploited international divisions. [complete article]

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OPINION: When anthropologists become counter-insurgents

Pledging to boycott the “war on terror”
By Roberto J. González and David Price, Counterpunch, September 28, 2007

The Pentagon is increasingly relying on the deployment of “Human Terrain System” (HTS) teams in Afghanistan and Iraq to gather and disseminate information on cultures living in the theatre of war. Some of these teams are assigned to US brigade or regimental combat units, which include “cultural analysts” and “regional studies analysts.” According to CACI International (one of three companies currently contracting HTS personnel for the Pentagon), “the HTS project is designed to improve the gathering, understanding, operational application, and sharing of local population knowledge” among combat teams. Required experience includes an MA or Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, sociology, or related social science fields, and applicants must obtain a secret security clearance to be eligible for employment.

In this environment it is not surprising that the Science Applications International Corporation-one of the top 10 US defense contractors-has begun describing anthropology as a “counter-insurgency related field” in its job advertisements. Prior to joining HTS teams, some social scientists attend military training camps. Recently, Marcus Griffin, an anthropology professor preparing to deploy to Iraq boasted on his blog that “I cut my hair in a high and tight style and look like a drill sergeant…I shot very well with the M9 and M4 last week at the range… Shooting well is important if you are a soldier regardless of whether or not your job requires you to carry a weapon.” The lines separating researchers, subjects, protectors, protected and target are easily confused in such settings, and the concerns of research ethics are easily set aside for more immediate concerns.

Although proponents of this form of applied anthropology claim that culturally informed counter-insurgency work will save lives and win “hearts and minds,” they have thus far not attempted to provide any evidence of this. Instead, there has been a flurry of non-critical newspaper accounts in publications including the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor that portray these HTS anthropologists as heroically serving their nation without bothering to report on the ethical complications of this work. Missing are discussions of anthropologists’ ethical responsibilities to disclose who they are and what they are doing, to gain informed consent, and to not harm those they study. Portraying counter-insurgency operations as social work is naive and historically inaccurate. [complete article]

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NEWS: Tribal members join in effort to assist U.S., Iraqi forces

30,000 volunteers to serve with police and military units
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, September 30, 2007

More than 30,000 tribal members in Iraq have come forward to work with U.S. and Iraqi forces over the past six months, a phenomenon that is spreading beyond Anbar province to Baghdad and other regions of the country, according to U.S. commanders.

The Iraqi government, at the urging of U.S. authorities, this month ordered Iraqi army and police units to integrate the volunteers into their operations. “That is huge. This gives them the approval that we are looking for,” said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, deputy commander of the U.S. military in Baghdad.

However, questions remain over whether alliances with fractious tribal sheiks will hold, whether they can improve security in mixed-sectarian areas such as Diyala province and Baghdad, and whether they will promote stability and national reconciliation or spur Iraq’s fragmentation by proliferating armed groups. [complete article]

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FEATURE: America’s merchants of death

Making a killing
By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, September 27, 2007

Four days after being grounded, Blackwater was back on Iraqi streets. After all, Blackwater is not just any security company in Iraq; it is the leading mercenary company of the US occupation. It first took on this role in the summer of 2003, after receiving a $27 million no-bid contract to provide security for Ambassador Paul Bremer, the original head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Since then, it has kept every subsequent US Ambassador, from John Negroponte to Ryan Crocker, alive. It protects Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits the country, as well as Congressional delegations. Since its original Iraq contract, Blackwater has won more than $700 million in “diplomatic security” contracts through the State Department alone.

The company’s domestic political clout has been key to its success. It is owned by Erik Prince, a reclusive right-wing evangelical Christian who has served as a major bankroller of the campaigns of George W. Bush and his allies. Among the company’s senior executives are former CIA official J. Cofer Black, who once oversaw the extraordinary-rendition program and led the post-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden (and who currently serves as GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s top counterterrorism adviser), and Joseph Schmitz, the Pentagon Inspector General under Donald Rumsfeld.

So embedded is Blackwater in the US apparatus in Iraq that the incident in Nisour Square has sparked a crisis for the occupation that is both practical and political. Now that Blackwater’s name is known (and hated) throughout Iraq, the bodyguards themselves are likely to become targets of resistance attacks, perhaps even more so than the officials they are tasked with keeping alive. This will make their work much more difficult. But beyond such security issues are more substantive political ones, as Blackwater’s continued presence on Iraqi streets days after Maliki called for its expulsion serves as a potent symbol of the utter lack of Iraqi sovereignty. [complete article]

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OPINION: Guantanamo forever

Guantanamo’s not closing
By Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch, September 27, 2007

“Some people have said, we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.” — Mitt Romney, Republican presidential debate, May 15, 2007

Take a breath, Mitt. Whatever you may think, your bravado statements about doubling the size of Guantanamo — part of your bid to lead the American people faster and farther into the Global War on Terror — are by no means completely off-the-wall. True, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Gates have both stated that closing Guantanamo might be the best way out of the legal limbo we’ve been in ever since that facility opened five and half years ago as the crown jewel of the administration’s offshore network of secret prisons. But forget what they say. Check out what they’re doing. The closing of Guantanamo — and a winding down of the administration’s detention and interrogation policies — may be farther away than most of us think. As elsewhere in this administration’s record, casual talk of refashioning a failed policy masks an inflexible commitment to “staying the course.” [complete article]

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OPINION: Stumbling into another war

Iran: Chronicle of a war foretold?
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, September , 2007

… the Israeli domestic political equation is worrying: Olmert has seen his own approval ratings climb out of the toilet as a result of having bombed something in Syria a couple of weeks ago. Nobody knows what he bombed, but his numbers have climbed from about 3% a few months ago to over 35% today. That’s why the scoundrels to the left and right of him, Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu, have been scrambling to claim some paternity over the mysterious Syria raid.

The Israeli electorate likes the flexing of military muscle, particularly after last summer’s humiliation in Lebanon, and even more so in the face of a steady stream of hysterical nonsense about a new Hitler on the march in the east.

The danger of Israel’s leaders’ own rhetoric painting themselves into a corner where military action becomes inevitable is reinforced by reports that Dick Cheney’s neocon jihadists have actually been planning to goad Israel into doing something this stupid, precisely in order to set off an Iranian response that would force the U.S. into a war with Iran. (Talk about a scorched-earth presidency!) [complete article]

See also, Key nations agree to delay Iran action (AP).

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NEWS: Shutting down the revolution

Myanmar monks’ protest contained by junta’s forces
By Seth Mydans, New York Times, September 28, 2007

Myanmar’s armed forces appeared to have succeeded today in sealing tens of thousands of protesting monks inside their monasteries, but they continued to attack bands of civilian demonstrators who challenged them in the streets of the main city, Yangon.

Witnesses and diplomats reached by telephone inside Myanmar said troops were now confronting and attacking smaller groups of civilians around the city, sometimes running after them through narrow streets, sometimes firing at protesting groups. [complete article]

See also, UK fears Burma toll ‘far higher’ (BBC), Myanmar: Internet blocked (Global Voices), and The Burma road to ruin (The Guardian).

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NEWS: In Kirkuk, security comes first

Security may trump ethnicity in Kirkuk
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2007

A staunch Arab nationalist, Ismail Hadidi once dreaded the possibility that his ethnically diverse city would be swallowed up by the neighboring semiautonomous Kurdish region and cut off from the Baghdad government.

But the provincial councilman is also a practical man. And when he compares the chaos and violence in the Iraqi capital with the prosperity and peace next door in the three-province Kurdistan Regional Government area, teaming up with the Kurds doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. He’s even considering buying some property in the Kurdish enclave.

“The people of Kirkuk were afraid of this,” said Hadidi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader. “But given the situation, I believe most people will move toward being part of Kurdistan, because what the people want above all is security.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Blackwater’s role in boosting violence

Blackwater ‘mistakes’ led to surge of Iraqi violence
By James Macintyre, The Independent, September 28, 2007

Blackwater, one of the largest American security firms in Iraq, has come under criticism in the US for its role in a 2004 ambush in Fallujah that left four of its staff killed and the region in deadly chaos.

A House of Representatives report outlined the “unprepared and disorderly” build-up to the incident on 31 March, 2004, resulting in the employees – who were escorting a convoy – being executed and having their charred bodies hung from a bridge.

The disturbing attack was seen as a turning point for US public opinion after images of the charred bodies were shown around the world by the media. A few days later, the US military launched a major offensive in Fallujah, leading to one of the bloodiest periods since the 2003 invasion. [complete article]

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OPINION: Robert Gates – the anti-Rumsfeld

Bob Gates’s victory
By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, September 27, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is, quite by choice, the anti-Rumsfeld—a man so low-key and consensus-oriented that it’s hard to find his fingerprints on any particular policy. But no one can win internal battles the way Gates has been doing in Washington lately without leaving a few traces. To scant notice in recent weeks, Gates seems to have scored a significant victory in the Bush administration’s internal fight over troop withdrawals from Iraq, and he has been perhaps the key player in quelling moves toward a military confrontation with Iran.

You may remember all the hullabaloo over Gen. David Petraeus’s report on the Iraq “surge” a couple of weeks ago. By most media accounts, he came, he testified and then he conquered Capitol Hill. Not so. In the days after the testimony, Gates appears to have won a crucial debate behind the scenes with Petraeus and administration hard-liners who were pushing to keep U.S. deployments at current or at least “pre-surge” levels for the forseeable future. The proof is that he seems to be bringing the president onto his side (in his speech on the Petraeus report, Bush suggested that he wants the reductions to go deeper, as well). [complete article]

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NEWS: Saudis revive hope for Palestinian national unity government

Saudis urge Hamas and Fatah to form new coalition
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, September 28, 2007

Saudi Arabia – potentially a key player in current diplomatic moves on the Middle East – has warned that Fatah and Hamas will have to form a new coalition if any peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians is going to work.

At the same time it has expressed cautious optimism about the international Middle East conference called by George Bush for November – without yet committing itself to attend, as Israel and the United States would like it to.

The latest, relatively candid, summary of the Saudi position came during the meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York on the fringes of which the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, met the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and top officials from Gulf states. [complete article]

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NEWS: Hamas ready to fight IDF

Hamas: 50,000 gunmen are ready to fight IDF, defend the Gaza Strip
By Avi Issacharoff and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz, September 28, 2007

Fifty thousand Palestinian gunmen and hundreds of suicide bombers are ready to repel or at least impede any large-scale Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, an official from the ruling Hamas faction said on Friday.

The statement came one day after 12 Palestinians were killed in separate Israel Defense Forces and Israel Air Force strikes within the coastal territory.

Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas leader, promised Israel “a painful response” should it send troops and tanks en masse into the Gaza Strip. [complete article]

See also, Palestinians face an emerging paradox in Gaza (Haaretz).

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ANALYSIS: Will Barghouti be Fatah’s savior?

Would Barghouti’s release save Fatah?
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, September 28, 2007

The brainstorming in Israel on how to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has again raised the possibility of releasing Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti from prison. Several members of Ehud Olmert’s government regard clemency as a wonder drug that would instantly bolster the popularity of Abbas (Abu Mazen) and save Fatah from collapse. But it is doubtful that Barghouti can be his movement’s savior. To save Fatah, more is needed than the reemergence of this or that charismatic leader. In certain circumstances, freeing Barghouti could definitely help Abu Mazen in the internal Palestinian arena, but in other conditions it is even likely to hurt him. [complete article]

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NEWS: Pakistan court bows to Musharraf

Pakistan court rules Musharraf can run for reelection
By Griff Witte, Washington Post, September 28, 2007

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf scored a badly needed victory Friday when the Supreme Court cleared the way for him to run for another term, despite a challenge from opponents who say he is ineligible.

The 6-to-3 ruling, which dismissed a series of petitions seeking to knock Musharraf off the ballot, will make it difficult for rivals to keep him from winning another five years in office. The national and provincial assemblies are due to vote Oct. 6, and Musharraf is widely believed to have the support he needs. [complete article]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Israel and the world can live with a nuclear Iran

The world can live with a nuclear Iran
By Martin van Creveld, The Forward, September 24, 2007

In case Bush does decide to attack Iran, it is questionable whether Iran’s large, well-dispersed and well-camouflaged nuclear program can really be knocked out. This is all the more doubtful because, in contrast to the Israeli attacks on Iraq back in 1981 and on Syria three weeks ago, the element of surprise will be lacking. And even if it can be done, whether doing so will serve a useful purpose is also questionable.

Since 1945 hardly one year has gone by in which some voices — mainly American ones concerned about preserving Washington’s monopoly over nuclear weapons to the greatest extent possible — did not decry the terrible consequences that would follow if additional countries went nuclear. So far, not one of those warnings has come true. To the contrary: in every place where nuclear weapons were introduced, large-scale wars between their owners have disappeared.

General John Abizaid, the former commander of United States Central Command, is only the latest in a long list of experts to argue that the world can live with a nuclear Iran. Their views deserve to be carefully considered, lest Ahmadinejad’s fear-driven posturing cause anybody to do something stupid. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Martin van Creveld, a world-renowned professor of military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has a habit of being bluntly truthful. This is what he said in an interview earlier this year:

“We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons … thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany.”

“Our armed forces are not the 30th strongest in the world, but rather the second or third… We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets that can launch them at targets in all directions. Most European capitals are targets of our air force … We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.”

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: Iran – an enemy of convenience

Senate urges Bush to declare Iran Guard a terrorist group
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, September 27, 2007

The Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.

Since last month, the White House has been weighing whether to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group or to take a narrower step focusing on only the Guard’s elite Quds Force. Either approach would signal a more confrontational posture by declaring a part of the Iranian military a terrorist operation. [complete article]

The secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
Trita Parsi interviewed on Democracy Now, September 25, 2007

TRITA PARSI: Israel has for a very long time been a critical factor in America’s formulation of a policy vis-à-vis Iran. But what’s really interesting is that the influence of Israel has gone in completely different directions, if we just go back fifteen years. During the 1980s, in spite of the Iranian Revolution, in spite of Ayatollah Khomeini’s many, many harsh remarks about Israel, far, far worse than what anything Ahmadinejad has said so far, Israel at the time was the country that was lobbying the United States to open up talks with Iran to try to rebuild the US-Iran relations, because of strategic imperatives that Israel had. Israel needed Iran, because it was fearing the Arab world and a potential war with the Arabs.

After 1991, ’92, that’s when you see the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations, because that’s when the entire geopolitical map of the Middle East is redrawn. The Soviet Union collapses. The last standing army of the Arabs, that of Saddam Hussein, is defeated in the Persian Gulf War. And you have an entirely new security environment in the Middle East, in which the two factors, the Soviets and the Arabs, that had pushed Iran and Israel closer together suddenly evaporate. But as their security environment improves, they also start to realize that they may be ending up in a situation in which they can become potential threats to each other. And that’s when you see how the Israelis shift 180 degrees. Now the Israeli argument was that the United States should not talk to Iran, because there is no such thing as Iranian moderates.

And ever since, the Israelis and the pro-Israel interest in the United States have lobbied to make sure that there is no dialogue or there’s no rapprochement between the United States and Iran. And the Iranians have done similar things. They have undermined every US foreign policy initiative in the Middle East that they feared would be beneficial to Israel. So the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations come after the Cold War, not with the revolution in 1979. [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: Breaking up Iraq – a neo-colonial fantasy

Senate backs separating Iraq into 3 regions
By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2007

Implicitly criticizing the Bush administration’s reliance on the Iraqi central government to unify the country, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly endorsed the decentralization of Iraq into semi-autonomous regions.

The nonbinding measure sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) — which supports a “federal system” that would divide Iraq into sectarian-dominated regions — won unusually broad bipartisan support, passing 75 to 23. [complete article]

The U.S. Senate votes to partition Iraq. Softly
By Reidar Visser, Historiae.org, September 27, 2007

All in all the Biden amendment serves as an alarming but useful numerical indication of the level of support for an “ethnic” approach to Iraqi politics in the US Senate. It does not bode well for the future that the challengers to President Bush seem to converge on a scheme that would be even more unpalatable to the Muslim world than Washington’s current policy. True, Bush invaded Iraq, and Paul Bremer weakened it severely. There are worrying signs that some in the State Department, like Ryan Crocker, are already indistinguishable from Biden by tirelessly “encouraging” Sunnis to think in terms of federalism. But if his partition plans were implemented, Joe Biden would be remembered by Muslims and Arabs around the world in an altogether different way. He would be considered alongside other historical personalities who routinely are being accused by Middle Easterners for having destroyed their region completely: Arthur Balfour, Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot. [complete article]

Iraq’s partition fantasy
By Reidar Visser, Open Democracy, May 19, 2006

…if the pundits who urge partition had bothered to check what actually happened when centrifugal forces were pushed to the maximum in the south of Iraq in the 1920s, they would have seen that regionalism, not sectarianism, has historically been the main competitor to Iraqi nationalism south of Baghdad – and a feeble one at that.

The idea of tripartite break-up, on the other hand finds little resonance in Iraqi history. In testimony to their sublime artificiality, contemporary partitionist misnomers like “Shi’istan” and “Sunnistan” are altogether absent from the historical record; like much of the pro-partition advocacy they exist solely in the minds of outsiders who base their entire argument on far-fetched parallels to European political experiences. [complete article]

See also, Thousands of Iraqi Arabs paid to leave Kirkuk (AFP).

Editor’s Comment — In a recent interview, Iraq expert, Toby Dodge, was particularly blunt in dismissing the Biden plan. “The idea that we have three neat communities is sociologically and politically illiterate. It has deliberately ignored the sociological complexities of Iraq in order to get a neat policy prescription that allows America to get out of Iraq. That is dangerous and reckless, and it isn’t the solution.”

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