MidEast Report: 05/01/2004

Monday, May 31, 2004

WHAT IS THE WAR?
Here's what the White House says.

I enjoyed this, at the very end:

"We are not at war with Muslims. We don't have a beef with Muslims. We want to be friends with Muslims and Muslim children."

Maybe this phrase comes across better in Arabic. In English it sounds a little creepy.

Friday, May 28, 2004

Here's Matt Yglesias with a piece at the Center for American Progress about the current conservative attempt to blame the media for Bush's failures in Iraq. I stared into my crystal ball and spotted this trend a couple weeks ago. Yglesias provides examples.

Responding to Yglesias charge, or rather not responding to the charge itself but taking issue with the historical comparison, National Review's Jonah Goldberg says that Yglesias' reference to Weimar Germany obviously casts conservatives in the role of Nazis, and is therefore out of line. Maybe, maybe not, says I. I used the same phrase in my earlier post, but my immediate reference was not to Weimar Germany, but to Vietnam, and the belief of many supporters of that war that the U.S. was "stabbed in the back" by stoopid hippy protesters aided by an anti-American media.

Also, Goldberg's little hissy fit might be a bit easier to take if professional ex-Leftist David Horowitz hadn't made precisely this charge, using precisely that phrase, a few months ago in a column about Iraq.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH
Yeah, I know I'm late on this, but I've been busy and wanted to give the president's speech on 5/24 the attention it deserved.

After having done so, I can report that, apart from announcing plans for destruction of Abu Ghraib prison, the president didn't say much that was new. I'm glad that he finally (finally!) saw fit to actually comunicate with the American people about what's going on in Iraq and what he plans to do about it, which apparently mostly involves saying the word "freedom" a lot.

It's obvious that the president is still operating under his "with us or agin' us" schema for the War on Terror, which I think tends to cloud for him the fact that, at this point, many if not most Iraqis want to be free from U.S. domination every bit as much as they want to avoid theocratic authoritarianism. That's not to imply moral equivalence between U.S. forces and the jihadists, but there is something to be said for a native enemy versus one from a foreign (and historically invasive) culture.

This is a problem for reformers across the Middle East, as many liberal-minded Arabs try to walk a line between Islamism, with its populist appeal, and overt, outright Western secularism, which many see as requiring a rejection of their heritage. Reformers don't want to be seen as puppets of the West, indeed they must avoid this at all costs if their reforms are to make any headway toward popular support. So how do the U.S. and the West work to encourage these reformers without tainting them in the eyes of potential supporters? How does the West involve itself in the development of "liberalism with an Arab face"?

If I had the answer to that, my team of assistants would be writing this and I would be making my secondary assault on the buffet at a think-tank seminar somewhere.

Thomas Friedman has some good ideas, though. He's wicked smart.

(small gripe about the Friedman article: I think the idea of a gas tax is good, it's a notion that's been gaining a lot of support (most notably from Andrew Sullivan and Charles Krauthammer, two free-market conservatives) and is way past due. But I'm strongly against calling it the "Patriot Tax," as Friedman suggests. I don't think the term 'patriot' should be tied to one or another political platform or ideology, because the implication there is that if one does not agree with said ideology, then one is not a patriot. Case in point: The Patriot Act. Whatever one thinks of its specific provisions, I think it has degraded the concept of patriotism by attempting to moor it to a particular time and attitude ("It's 9/11! We're all freaked out! Who's not a patriot? We'll use this law to find out!") Well, I'm a patriot, and I think the Patriot Act was poorly and hastily written. So there.)

Here's an account from Dan de Luce, a journalist who was recently expelled from Iran, that indicates that democratic revolution may not be as close at hand as many conservatives believe.

Contrary to the fantasies of neo-conservatives, Iran is not on the verge of revolution and, if it was, the US wouldn't be able to orchestrate it. There is no coherent political opposition or leader able to harness public discontent. A significant number of Iranians are profiting from an economic boom and are not ready to risk their livelihood for democracy protests.

If more foreign journalists were allowed to work in Iran, western societies would see that Iran is no longer trying to export its theocracy. It has enough problems of its own now, including an epidemic of drug abuse, and rising inflation and unemployment.

Monday, May 24, 2004

NEW LINK
I've added a link to Bitterlemons, which presents Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints on the conflict and the peace process. Worth checking out.

NOT SO GREAT EXPECTATIONS
(from the Daily Star)

At least the talk has changed - and that is a start. But regional cooperation and coordination are simply nonexistent, and the Arab League - in any case always an indirect arm of Egyptian foreign policy - is not effective, nor even viable. On these latter points all informed observers, and the Arab people who are acquainted with the labyrinthine maneuverings of their politicians, hold fast to well-established assessments.

We will not hold our breath waiting for reforms to be implemented, and any expectations centering on the next summit, to be hosted by Algeria, must be circumspect. The Algiers summit, in fact, is likely to assume the aura of an emergency. Waiting for Algiers to deliver the goods, if the result of the Tunis summit is anything to go by, will be like waiting for Godot. Much will happen between now and then, and the Arab League, as in the past, is unlikely to keep abreast of new crises as they evolve, let alone deal with a long-standing backlog of pledges to initiate something resembling reform.

Okay, nothing much of substance achieved. But at least they've got a snazzy website!

Haaretz is a bit more optimistic:

The summit called upon each state to do its best, under the prevailing circumstances, to promote reform toward more democratic and liberal rule. Except for the expected rejection of external (i.e. American) interference in the promotion of internal reform in Arab countries, the wording confirms the cultural, social and political differences that separate Arab countries.

The resolution passed states that comprehensive reform will be implemented only when all of the region's conflicts are resolved, in other words, sometime around eternity. Even Egypt's attempt to create a unified framework within the Arab League, through which to conduct dialog with the United States on the subject of reform failed utterly.

In operative terms, the resolutions passed are striking for their condemnation of harm done to civilians on all sides, including Israelis, but Arab leaders were careful to distinguish between legitimate uprising and terrorism.

It's worth noting that such condemnation is not necessarily the product of leaderly endeavor but mainly born of public debate among Arabs in the past two years, in which harsh criticism was directed at suicide attacks and terror attacks in Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

This may be the summit's most significant development: it revealed a great attentiveness to public discourse and a willingness, even if imperfect, to respond to it.

(italics added)

One of the main things holding back reform in the Arab world, aside from the obvious reluctance of authoritarian rulers to relinquish power, is the fear that, rather than resulting in political moderation, political reform and greater openness will lead to the domination of politics by radical Islamists. It's a bit of a Catch-22: by having prohibited traditional political organizations over the past half century and denying their populations any sort of voice in the way they are governed, Arab rulers have effectively made the very practice of politics itself revolutionary, thus strengthening radical voices and weakening moderate ones. This fact is then used as an argument, and not an unreasonable one, against reforms that are anything more than cosmetic.

It's obvious that the West cannot impose democracy by force. I think it can, to some extent, use selective force to create conditions for the growth of democracy, and the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime was an important achievement in this respect, though the benefits of removing the destabilizing factor that was Saddam are slowly being lost in the fog of the botched occupation. To state the blindingly obvious, the real initiative and the real changes in the Arab world will have to come from the various Arab states themselves, one at a time, little by little. Even if frustratingly weak on substance, this most recent summit still represents some movement in response to public (that is, democratic) pressure.

And that, as St. Martha says, is a good thing.

PERSPECTIVE
(from Lebanon's Daily Star)
WARNING: Harsh stuff.

Ibrahim Idrissi has mixed feelings about the recent uproar caused by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib under the US occupation. "As a humanitarian organization, we oppose this," he says. "But these are soldiers who have come to Iraq to fight, not to be prison guards. It was to be expected. Of course, if there are innocent people in there ... it is possible, I guess, that some of them are innocent."

If Idrissi seems a bit callous about the fate of the Iraqis in US-run jails, he has probably earned the right to differ. He recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad:

"They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a 'celebration.' We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen."

"This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us."

"Amer's wife didn't lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer's throat." There is a moment of silence. Then Idrissi says: "What we have seen about the recent abuse at Abu Ghraib is a joke to us."

The Idrissis, and many families like them, feel that people in Iraq have too quickly relegated the horrors of the old regime to the annals of history. "But it is not the past to us," says Idrissi. "The mother of the person who was killed, his brothers and sisters, they are alive. We are still living the nightmare every day."

None of this, of course, diminishes the crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, but, like the execution of Nick Berg, it serves to remind us of the character of the enemy. Somehow I doubt that the murders of Amer al-Tikriti and his wife and child, or the 147,000 other political executions which have been confirmed by Ibrahim al-Idrissi's group, were followed upon by televised investigative hearings.

Sunday, May 23, 2004

ARAB SUMMIT ADOPTS REFORM DOCUMENT
(al Jazeera)

The 13-point blueprint approved on Sunday affirms the determination of Arab leaders to pursue and intensify the process of political, economic, social and educational reforms according to the choice of their individual societies, their cultural and religious values and their own possibilities.

Other points call for fighting terrorism and expanding the bases of democracy and promoting human rights as well as women's rights.

In its preamble, the document links reforms to a just settlement of the conflicts facing the region, particularly the Palestinian conflict.

ARAB LEADERS ADOPT AGENDA ENDORSING SOME CHANGE
(The New York Times)

In hammering out the agreements at the Arab League meeting, there were endless arguments among members over everything from semantics to how the response to the Americans would be organized. It even delayed the final session for two hours on Sunday. Arab diplomats said, for example, that Syria had objected to the use of the word "reform," since its antonym in Arabic is "corruption" - implying by default that all current Arab governments are corrupt. So the final document stresses "development and modernization."

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Christopher Hitchens on the Europeans' embrace of Michael Moore:

"Speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they‘ve taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities. "

Gold.

HOW TO CREATE TERRORISTS
I'm not one who tosses around terms like "war crimes" lightly, but I don't see how this can be described as anything but.

Collective punishment: Farmland destroyed, streets torn up, they even demolished the Gaza Zoo fer chrissakes. The IDF claims it was searching for tunnels used to smuggle arms. The story does not mention whether they found any.

UPDATE: BBC reports that the Israeli Defense Force claims to have found a tunnel. 40 dead, including several children, but they found a tunnel. Dozens of homes destroyed, hundreds of people made homeless, farmland razed, but they found a tunnel.

Was it worth it? Not to find one tunnel it wasn't. It's obvious, though, that tunnels weren't the only, or even the main, reason for the Rafah operation. The main reason for the incursion, the levelling of homes, the destruction of city streets and farmland, is to send a message to the Palestinians of Gaza: "We may be planning, eventually, to pull out of here, but don't think you've won. We still control you, and just to make that pure and sparkling clear, we'll bulldoze a few of your neighborhoods and shoot a few of your kids. And also destroy your zoo. So there."

more:
New York Times: Gaza Paradox.

Also:
Israeli official compares Rafah actions to World War II. (MSNBC)

[Justice Minister Yosef] Lapid spoke during a Cabinet debate over Israel's demolition of dozens of homes in the Rafah refugee camp along the Gaza-Egypt border.

After the meeting, Lapid gave two radio interviews in which he was careful not to liken army actions to the Holocaust.

But he said that television footage of an elderly Palestinian woman searching on hands and knees through the rubble of her home for her medicine "reminded me of my grandmother."

And the view from Al Jazeera.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

WHY BUSH SHOULD NEVER SPEAK OFF THE CUFF, pt.627
In a statement that's sure to win the hearts and minds of Arabs everywhere, President Bush stated that Iraqis are now ready to "take the training wheels off" and assume power from the U.S.

Couple things. First, I generally agree with the idea, clumsily expressed by Bush, that countries without strong democratic traditions do need, to some extent, to be "taught" democracy. That's not to say that anyone's cultural heritage makes one unfit for democracy, only that democracy is a pretty complicated process, something that most Americans don't really recognize since we've seen it practiced all our lives and were brought up in its norms and procedures. But couldn't Bush have found a better metaphor than the 'father teaching his child to ride a bike' one? We all know now from the Abu Ghraib mess that humiliation is a major factor in Arab culture, at least those of us who actually read the newspaper rather than have it summarized for us by our aides do, and did it occur to Bush that comparing an entire Arab country to a bunch of children just might tweak the humiliation bone a bit? Time to go back on Arab TV and apologize again...

Second, a few weeks ago, the President slyly and ridiculously implied that critics of his Iraq operation were racists:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly."

Smell that? That's straw. I only bring it up because it makes today's condescension seem all the more goofy.

CUTTING CHALABI LOOSE
(from the Washington Post)

BAGHDAD, May 20 -- U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police on Thursday raided the home of Ahmad Chalabi, a Governing Council member who was once the Pentagon's pick to run post-war Iraq, and two office buildings used by his Iraqi National Congress.

U.S. troops detained three guards and seized computers, dozens of rifles, and files from the offices of the INC, a coalition of parties headed by Chalabi that opposed Saddam Hussein from exile.

Wow, when the Pentagon cuts someone loose, they really cut them loose. I'm very suspicious, though, about the speed at which Chalabi seems to have gone from being the neocons' Number One Guy to just another Iraqi who gets his door kicked in.

Chalabi was, for a long time, the Bush Gang's pick to run Iraq after Saddam. They flew him in to southern Iraq not long after the fighting started and set him up with his own private army to hunt Ba'athists in an attempt to help him cultivate legitimacy among Iraqis, which didn't happen.

When I first saw this story, I thought it might be possible that the U.S. was trying help bolster Chalabi's legitimacy by taking this new stance toward him. Josh Marshall doesn't think too much of this idea, with good reason:

Something quite that orchestrated would, I suspect, be far too difficult to pull-off. And are we dealing here with smooth operators? Answers itself, doesn't it?

One other point: You only have to look next door to see what happens to American puppets after they have their fallings-out with the Americans. Clue: They don't get embraced by the other side. In fact, that guy from nextdoor was lucky to get out of the country in one piece.

The first point is the strongest argument against the reverse-psychology theory: the Bush Gang is simply too inept to pull something like this off. The second argument is somewhat less strong, as the situation in Iraq right now is rather different from 1979 Iran. There is no single party or leader who commands the allegiance of the Iraqi people as Khomeini did in Iran, it's a much more fluid situation in Iraq, and the make-up of the future Iraqi government is still very much unknown. It's not entirely inconceivable that Chalabi could still cobble together something resembling credibility in the eyes of Iraqis.

Rather than the reverse-psychology model, it's more likely that Chalabi himself has taken a more adversarial stance against the U.S. in an attempt to cultivate that legitimacy for himself, to get himself, at the very least, a place at the table in the new government. And he's made his former Pentagon sponsors very angry in doing this, and they don't like being made to look like fools. They do that quite well enough by themselves, thank you very much.

(Juan Cole has a good post on this, too.)

The underlying reality to all this is A) the only way to avoid having Iraq implode into a civil war is to find a leader (or group of leaders) with enough credibility to get people talking rather than shooting, and B) at this point, it seems the best way for such a leader (or group of leaders) to establish that credibility is for them to stand up to, or be perceived as having stood up to, the U.S.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

"We declared war on terror—it’s not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I’m sure we’ll take on that bastard ennui."
-John Stewart, from his commencement address at the College of William and Mary.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
There's no other way to describe the Israeli Army's massive sweep through the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. You know it's bad when even the U.S. issues one of its all too rare criticisms of Israeli policy.

Thomas Friedman in yesterday's New York Times:

On May 2, the Jewish settlers mobilized enough members of the right-wing Likud Party to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and all its Jewish settlements (7,500 Israelis live on 35 percent of Gaza, while 1.3 million Palestinians are squeezed into the other 65 percent). Polls in Israel consistently show a large majority of Israelis want to get out of Gaza. Nevertheless, Mr. Sharon, for now, has submitted to the Likud Party vote — even though Likud is only one faction in his ruling coalition and his coalition represents only a little over half the country.

The ability of the settler minority to impose its will on the Israeli majority means that Israel is not staying in Gaza to defend itself anymore — its own defense minister says it would be safer to leave. It is now staying in Gaza to preserve a settler fantasy — that Israel can and must keep every settlement everywhere.

As Ari Shavit, the Haaretz essayist, wrote on Friday: "The current war has been redefined since the events of May 2. On that day, the current war ceased to be a war on terror. It ceased to be a war for Israel's existence. May 2, 2004, the war became a war of not-a-single-settlement [is to be given up]. The young guys of Givati [an Israeli army unit] who were blown up with their armored personnel carrier on Tuesday in Gaza differ from all of their comrades who have been killed there since September 2000. They differ, because they are no longer the victims of extremist Islam. They are no longer the victims of Arafat's insanity. They are the victims of the settlement enterprise. The attempt of the organized settlement movement to force on the citizens of Israel a war that is not their war is unforgivable."

Shivat makes an excellent point, but I'd suggest that he has his dates wrong. Israel lost the "security" justification for occupying Gaza the moment it made peace with Egypt in 1978, just as it lost the "security" justification for occupying the West Bank when it made peace with Jordan in 1994. Since 1994 there has been no justification for the occupation other than outright Israeli expansionism, the "settler fantasy." To make things even more absurd, Israel is demolishing homes in Gaza apparently as part of an attempt to secure land from which Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has already signalled his intention to withdraw. That is, Palestinians are being driven from their homes and their children shot through the head in order to achieve a political, rather than military, objective.

ABU GHRAIB (cont'd)
I think Fred Kaplan hits the nail on the head here as to why the Abu Ghraib story has turned into an all-out feeding frenzy, the likes of which I haven't seen since Bill Clinton didn't have sex with that woman:

"Seymour Hersh seems to be on his hottest roll as an investigative reporter in 30 years, and the editors of every major U.S. daily newspaper aren't going to stand for it. "We're having our lunch handed to us by a weekly magazine!" one can imagine them shouting in their morning meetings. Scoops and counterscoops will be the order of the day."

A juicy story about the heinous abuse of prisoners is one thing, but nothing lights a fire underneath the collective media arse like getting scooped. Three times in three weeks, no less.

I'm happy to say that it is now too late for Bush to dump Rumsfeld. Had he asked for the Don's resignation three weeks ago, just as the story was breaking, Bush likely would've been able to divert much of the subsequent attention and digrace onto his former Secretary of Defense. I don't think that's possible any more.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

AHH, THE RIGHT
Here's National Review's John Derbyshire, performing his function as the despicable old bigot who is kept around to make the rest of the National Review staff seem almost rational by comparison:

"The Abu Ghraib "scandal": Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let's have a couple of courts martial for appearance's sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB."

Very classy. And this:

The US press blowing up the Abu Ghraib business: Fury at these lefty jounalists doing down America. They just want to re-live the glory days of Vietnam, when they brought down a president they hated. (PS: They hated him because he was an anticommunist, while they themselves tought communism was just fine.)

Yes, I can see the right-wing meme forming even now. It is two-part: 1) The media overhyped the Abu Ghraib atrocities, lost us our credibility, and "stabbed us in the back" again, just like Vietnam. 2) Things in Iraq were going more or less okay until those Abu Ghraib photos showed up, after which point we couldn't recover. And it's the media's fault.

This will be placed upon the shelf next to other dearly held conservative myths, such as "Reagan won the Cold War," and "the Liberal Media."

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

NICK BERG
I watched just enough of the video of Berg's execution to say that it's the most brutal and disgusting thing I've ever seen. This was a 26 year American from Pennsylvania who went to Iraq, as far as I can tell, simply to do some good. He had previously done development work in Kenya and Ghana.

Partisans on both the right and the left are shamefully trying to use Berg's death to prop up their arguments. Some on the left claim that Berg's death is a direct result of the Iraq invasion, as if the Jihadists weren't brutally murdering civilians before the invasion. Some on the right claim that Berg's execution is the direct result of the media's (it's always the damn media with them) infatuation with the Abu Ghraib atrocities, as as if Jihadists weren't brutally murdering civilians before the Abu Ghraib photos showed up.

As Andrew Sullivan points out, this was a very stupid move on the part of al Qaeda. The U.S. is in the middle of a process of intense, public self-criticism over the Abu Ghraib atrocities, at the near nadir of its international credibility, and here comes al Qaeda to put things in perspective for everyone.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

THE WRONG MORONS
(from the Army Times)

"Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.

Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons."

Amen. (Thanks to Professor Tim Rhodes for the link.)

Since the beginning of this War on Terror, Secretary Rumsfeld has openly treated the Geneva Conventions as something to be circumvented whenever possible. There can be no doubt that that philosophy has been felt and imitated all the way down the chain of command.

And, by way of skull-clutching irony, here's this interview with Rumsfeld from March, 2003, in reference to Americans captured by the Iraqis:

"I will say this, the Geneva Convention indicates that it's not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war, and if they do happen to be American or coalition ground forces that have been captured, the Geneva Convention indicates how they should be treated."

Monday, May 10, 2004

POST-ZIONISM?
(from Haaretz)

The Jewish settlers in the territories replaced loyalty to the state with loyalty to the Torah. Today it can be said with certainty that there is hardly any discourse between the secular public and the Jewish settlers in the territories that is based on rational arguments. In a desperate attempt to convince the settlers, their secular interlocutors warn them about the loss of the Jewish majority and the danger to democracy. The trouble is that these arguments arouse scorn among the settlers. All the talk about demography and democracy and human rights looks like nonsense to those who have sworn loyalty to the Torah of Israel.

The public of settlers in the territories and its leaders have changed. They are the real post-Zionists in the sense that they have adopted a stance according to which the Jewish people is outside the perimeter of human history. Therefore earthly considerations and liberal values - like demography and democracy - do not apply to it. Facing them stands a secular public in which there are very many who believe that Israel belongs to the family of nations and therefore is subject to the rules that guide the international community, among them the demand to pull out of most of the territories. This is why in advance of the big battle for the future of the territories, secular right-wingers are expected to follow Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert and Dan Meridor in their understanding of the danger that the land of the Jewish settlements poses to the state of Israel.

The national religious public, which in the past made great efforts to be a part of practical Zionism, has abandoned it. In the eyes of this public, practical Zionism has surrendered to exhaustion and universal values.

Interesting formulation there: practical Zionism has surrendered to universal values, that is, it has abandoned the idea of Jewish exceptionalism and the goal of a "Greater Israel" stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, which they claim God promised to them some 3000 years ago.

It's not very often reported in U.S. media what a destabilizing force the settler movement represents in Israel, and thus by extension to the entire Middle East. We see endless stories of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, violence which should be condemned and rejected, but I don't think many in my country understand the daily harassment and violence committed by settlers against Palestinians, and more importantly, that it is the presence of the settlements on Palestinian lands which makes the occupation necessary.

Israel's State-Assisted Terrorism: "Settlers" as Armed Combatants.

Settler Violence against Palestinian School Children in Hebron.

Settler fined for clubbing Arab boy to death.
That's right, friends, he was fined. As if he had parked in a damn loading zone.

Sunday, May 09, 2004

IMPEACHABLE?
NEWSWEEK: In Recent Months, Some Senior Members of Congress Given Highly Classified Briefings Indicating U.S. Interrogators Not Necessarily 'Going to Stick With The Geneva Convention'

One American intelligence officer admitted as much, telling Newsweek: "The U.S. government and military capitalizes on the dubious status [as sovereign states] of Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and aircraft carriers, to avoid certain legal questions about rough interrogations. Whatever humanitarian pronouncements a state such as ours may make about torture, states don't perform interrogations, individual people do. What's going to stop an impatient soldier, in a supralegal location, from whacking one nameless, dehumanized shopkeeper among many?"

International treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions, which are ratified by the U.S. Congress effectively become U.S. law. If President Bush permitted the violation of the Conventions then that seems to me a pretty straightforward case for impeachment and removal.

It seems likely that, by continuing to stand by Rumsfeld, even in the face of mounting conservative criticism, Bush will draw criticism to himself rather than stemming the criticism of Rumsfeld.

GO AHEAD, FAREED
"On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility."

ABU GHRAIB, cont'd
In trying to figure out what could lead American soldiers to disgrace themselves so completely as those who committed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, it occurs to me that those soldiers probably had images of 9/11 dancing through their heads as they committed their crimes, and may have seen themselves as "taking revenge" in some respect. After all, some 60% of the American public still (still!) believes that Iraq was involved with the 9/11 attacks, and Bush and Cheney haven't done much to disturb that mistaken belief.

MORE FISH! MORE JOBS! LIKE MAGIC!
I know this isn't foreign policy related, but I bring it up because I think it perfectly illustrates both the brazen mendacity and the absolute committment to ideology of the Bush Administration, and also because it's a Northwest regional issue.

Three years ago, Mark C. Rutzick was the timber industry's top lawyer trying to overturn fish and wildlife protections that loggers viewed as overly restrictive. Back then, he outlined to his clients a new strategy for dealing with diminishing salmon runs. By counting hatchery fish along with wild salmon, the government would help the timber industry by getting salmon off the endangered species list, Mr. Rutzick wrote.

Now, as a high-ranking political appointee in the Bush administration who is a legal adviser to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Mr. Rutzick is helping to shape government policy on endangered Pacific salmon. And in an abrupt change, the Bush administration has decided for the first time to consider counting fish raised in hatcheries when determining if some species are going extinct.

And thus, with a wave of the magic regulatory wand, POOF! Northwest salmon are no longer endangered! Who knew species protection could be so easy? The revealing thing here is that Rutzick doesn't attempt to counter the scientific evidence in any way, he just makes vague allegations of regulatory overreach and environmental zealotry and then proceeds to enact a policy that runs counter to the vast majority of scientific research regarding the health of salmon runs.

This is reminiscent of another innovative idea of the Bush Gang, to reclassify service sector jobs as "manufacturing" in order to make it look like Bush's policies had actually created manufacturing jobs.

This is the way Bush and his crew work: when the facts don't support their policies, as they clearly don't in this case, rather than adjust their policies, they try to change the facts.

Saturday, May 08, 2004

ABU GHREIB
Just a thought on Abu Ghreib atrocities, of which, according to Donald Rumsfeld, we haven't yet seen the full extent. This may be obvious to most, but I think it's worth mentioning. The reservists in the photos seemed to know precisely how to humiliate those Iraqi men, feminizing them, placing them in homosexual positions, putting leashes around their neck like dogs. The fact that these methods were based in precise Arab cultural prejudices indicates that the reservists were specifically instructed by others who were both schooled in Arab history and culture and smart enough to avoid being photographed, most likely U.S. Military Intelligence, as the Taguba Report suggests. I doubt that some reservist from Bull Rectum, Arkansas, is going to have a very detailed knowledge of Arab cultural mores. Not to cast aspersions on anyone from Bull Rectum, mind you, it's a very nice little town full of nice people. But come on, this reservist (from Alexandria, VA, not Bull Rectum) couldn't even spell "rapist" correctly. I can't even begin to unpack the irony there.

Making matters (much, much) worse, many former Palestinian prisoners report that the methods seen in the Abu Ghreib photos are reminiscent of methods used in Israeli interrogations of Palestinians. Unsuprising, given that the U.S. has been training with the Israelis to learn how to run an occupation. Way to win those hearts and minds, guys.

Friday, May 07, 2004

PREEMPTIVE, PREVENTIVE
I've noticed a tendency in much of the news media to refer to Bush's invasion of Iraq as a "preemptive war." Bob Woodward does it in his new book Plan of Attack, and Hendrik Hertzberg does it in his review of that book. The term is incorrect. The Iraq invasion was not preemptive, it was preventive, and this is a very significant distinction.

Jeffrey Record writes in his examination of the Bush Doctrine:

The Pentagon's official definition of preemption is "an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent." In contrast, preventive war is "a war initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that to delay would involve great risk."

The difference between preemption and preventive war is important. As defined above, preemptive attack is justifiable if it meets Secretary of State Daniel Webster's strict criteria, enunciated in 1837 and still the legal standard, that the threat be "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation." Preemptive war has legal sanction. Preventive war, on the other hand, has none, because the threat is neither certain nor imminent. This makes preventive war indistinguishable from outright aggression, which may explain why the Bush Administration insists that its strategy is preemptive, although some Cabinet officials have used the terms interchangeably.

Bush and his water-carriers have continually insisted that Bush never claimed the Iraqi threat was imminent (he only strongly implied it by using just about every synonym for "imminent" available in the English language), so it seems odd that journalists such as Woodward, Hertzberg, and others would cooperate in the recasting of the Iraq invasion as "preemptive" rather than "preventive" war, given that an "imminent" threat is the most important factor distinguishing one from the other.

That said, I agree with the Bush Administration that, in this age of transnational terrorism and more easily obtainable and transportable WMD, it would be irresponsible to have a policy of national self-defense that hinges on Webster's outdated 1837 definition of imminent threat. What I object to is that Bush and his minions clearly tried to create the impression of just such a threat to gain public support for, and reduce the political cost of, the Iraq invasion.

Thursday, May 06, 2004

STUMBLING BLINDLY, cont'd
More confusion from Bush on Israel-Palestine. In a joint statement today with Jordan's King Abdullah, Bush said:
"I support the plan announced by Prime Minister Sharon to withdraw settlements from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

This bold plan can make a real contribution to peace, particularly if reform-minded Palestinians will step forward and lead toward the establishment of a peaceful Palestinian state.

As I have previously stated, all final status issues must be negotiated between the parties in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the United States will not prejudice the outcome of those negotiations."

Bush still doesn't seem to understand that his support for Sharon's plan, which includes recognizing Israel's claim to large portions of the West Bank, is in direct contravention of UN 242. Somebody on his staff should really tell him this, because there's no way he can have this both ways.

King Abdullah:
"Jordan remains committed to a final and comprehensive permanent status agreement based on the foundations of the Madrid conference, the principles of land for peace, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242, 338 and 1397, agreements reached by the parties, and the Arab initiative endorsed by the Beirut Arab League summit.

Jordan also believes all final status issues, including borders, refugees, Jerusalem and settlements, should be a matter for the parties to decide.

I am encouraged by what I've heard from you today, sir, that these issues are not to be prejudiced and should be mutually agreed by the parties."

It's good news that Bush seems to be backing away from his clearly counterproductive assurances to Sharon, and also that he's making moves to include the Palestinian Authority in negotiations, something that is long, long overdue. The only way that Palestinian terror will cease is when Palestinians see that moderation and negotiation are more productive than violence.

CHUTZPAH
(from Haaretz)
DUBLIN - Israel told the European Union on Thursday it would lose its role as a mediator if it "takes the side of the Palestinians" in Middle East peace talks, officials and diplomats said.

..."The message was: 'If you take a one-sided approach you'll lose your role as a mediator,'" the Israeli official said.

Hmm, a one sided approach...like this?

In other news, the New York Times reports that Israel's Housing Authority has been illegally funding continued settlement activity. Would it be one-sided of me to suggest that continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's security interests, in addition to being, you know, illegal?

GOODNIGHT, SWEET DONALD?
Thomas Friedman is, in his own way, on fire today.

This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all.

That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — today, not tomorrow or next month, today. What happened in Abu Ghraib prison was, at best, a fundamental breakdown in the chain of command under Mr. Rumsfeld's authority, or, at worst, part of a deliberate policy somewhere in the military-intelligence command of sexually humiliating prisoners to soften them up for interrogation, a policy that ran amok.

Either way, the secretary of defense is ultimately responsible, and if we are going to rebuild our credibility as instruments of humanitarian values, the rule of law and democratization, in Iraq or elsewhere, Mr. Bush must hold his own defense secretary accountable. Words matter, but deeds matter more. If the Pentagon leadership ran any U.S. company with the kind of abysmal planning in this war, it would have been fired by shareholders months ago.

No kidding. I'd go even farther than Friedman and suggest that the only way to reestablish American credibility is to change the American regime. I doubt that there's really anything that Bush can say or do at this point which can repair the damage he and his administration have done to America's reputation. I wonder, though, if Bush has any sense whatsoever of the disaster which he has created? I'm not so sure that they include such things in the Cliff's Notes News of the World Briefings which are prepared for him every day and delivered with his Froot Loops. Jeez, he even claims to have learned of the Abu Ghraib atrocities from the news media, just like the rest of us schlubs. So either his subordinates kept the facts from him, foolishly hoping they could keep a lid on the situation, or it's just Standard Operating Procedure at Bush's White House not to bother the CEO with such trivial things as systematic major violations of the Geneva Conventions.

At this point it's hard to predict how high the blame for Abu Ghraib will go, but given that no one yet has even lost their job over 9-11, I'm guessing not so high. On the other hand, Joe Biden has also suggested that Donald Rumsfeld resign, so it's a possibility that we may finally be rid of that priapic mook. Fingers crossed.

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

GET IT TOGETHER
An editorial from the Lebanese Daily Star:

"As the Middle East region suffers continued stress, conflict and stalemate, Arab leaders over the next eight weeks have a rare opportunity to do a rare thing: take the initiative and "sell" to the world their vision of a Middle East that is considerably better off than it is today.

To move this vision forward, it is time to look back and relaunch the Arab Peace Initiative which was presented to the world at the Beirut Arab League summit of 2002. The formula was, and still is, simple: full Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state based on the land Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. In short, not only an end to the bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but a solution to the Israeli-Arab standoff and the closing of a chapter in Middle Eastern history that has poisoned decades and continues to destabilize the region."

This is a possible upside of Bush's incompetent diplomacy and incoherent regional policies: Arab leaders could finally realize that they must play a more constructive role in settling the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Or maybe this is part of Bush's brilliant plan. By acting like he's completely out to lunch, he scares Arab leaders into more positive engagement with each other.

CALLING COLIN POWELL, CLEANUP IN AISLE 7...
Once again, it's up to Colin Powell, who often seems like the lone adult in this administration, to step in and try to repair damage caused by his boss's incoherent foreign policy.

"The Bush administration on Tuesday joined in a high-level diplomatic statement that stressed that the key issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians must be negotiated by both sides, just weeks after President Bush pronounced that Israel could keep some West Bank settlements and Palestinian refugees should not resettle in Israel.

U.S. officials and foreign diplomats described the statement as an effort by the Bush administration to repair the international damage from the president's remarks last month, which had drawn sharp criticism in the Arab world and from European allies.

...the lengthy Quartet statement said that "any final settlement on issues such as borders and refugees must be mutually agreed to by Israelis and Palestinians" based on a long list of U.N. resolutions and other diplomatic initiatives, including a Saudi proposal that would have Israel give up all the occupied territories. The Quartet also stressed at several points that Israel must freeze settlement growth, that it "must end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967," and that "no party should take unilateral actions that seek to predetermine issues that can only be resolved through negotiation and agreement between the two parties." "

First, Bush angers the Arab world with his complete support of Sharon's plan. Next: Bush spends the subsequent weeks backpedaling furiously, sending in his surrogates to explain that he didn't quite mean exactly what everybody heard him say. This is leadership?

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT
from the Financial Times:

"Inspired by the attack of their British colleagues on Tony Blair's foreign policy, more than 50 former US diplomats have signed a letter to President George W. Bush protesting against his pro-Israeli stance.

The letter, expected to be further publicised on Tuesday at a press conference, accuses Mr Bush of reversing long-standing American policy in the Middle East by endorsing the demands of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, that Israel retain big settlements in the occupied West Bank and deny the right of return to Palestinian refugees."

RETHINKING ZIONISM
Excellent article by Paul Starobin in National Journal. Long-ish article, but well worth it.

ABU GHRAIB
Just when you think there can't be much more bad news...Here's Seymour Hersh's report on the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities. I don't think I need to dwell on how extremely bad this is, and the best and only way to deal with it is to make justice swift and punishment severe for all of those involved, as high up in the chain of command as possible. We need to see careers ruined over this.

There is possibly a tiny bit of lemonade to be made of these lemons: In Saddam Hussein's Iraq, torture was an accepted part of daily reality. Torturers were encouraged and promoted. The people of Iraq, and the Arab world, need to see that the U.S. punishes such people.

Monday, May 03, 2004

THINK AGAIN: AL QAEDA
Jason Burke has this article regarding misconceptions about al Qaeda in the current issue of Foreign Policy.

Islamic militants' main objective is not conquest, but to beat back what they perceive as an aggressive West that is supposedly trying to complete the project begun during the Crusades and colonial periods of denigrating, dividing, and humiliating Islam. The militants' secondary goal is the establishment of the caliphate, or single Islamic state, in the lands roughly corresponding to the furthest extent of the Islamic empire of the late first and early second centuries. Today, this state would encompass the Middle East, the Maghreb (North Africa bordering the Mediterranean), Andalusia in southern Spain, Central Asia, parts of the Balkans, and possibly some Islamic territories in the Far East. Precisely how this utopian caliphate would function is vague. The militants believe that if all Muslims act according to a literal interpretation of the Islamic holy texts, an almost mystical transformation to a just and perfect society will follow.

Nothing "almost" mystical about it, but even if the jihadists' goal is, as Burke claims, merely to reestablish the Caliphate of the Middle Ages, that's only slightly less realistic than Islamizing the world. So if it's not conquest, it's "reconquest," and though that is an important distinction to make in order to better understand what we're dealing with: hyper-revanchism.

In his 1998 fatwa, bin Laden specifically mentions the U.S. presence in "the lands of Islam in the holiest of places," and then states that to "kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim." To a fundamentalist Muslim like bin Laden, secularism is a blasphemy. Given that Muslims now live in significant numbers throughout the secular Western world, how does their future figure into bin Laden's goal of protecting all Muslims from Western oppression?

MidEast Report