MidEast Report

2004-06-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about Blogger being free is that I can start up new blogs whenever I feel the need, as I did with this one a few months ago.

I write to find out what I'm thinking, and as I've worked on this blog it's become apparent to me that there is one main question that contains within it a lot of my other questions about the era in which we are living, one main question which really distracts, animates and motivates me:

What is the War?

Events in the Middle East are obviously hugely significant to the answer to that question, so that will continue to be a major focus of the work, but I'm also very interested in the way we in the U.S. are dealing with the reality of this war, and whether many of us even feel that it is a war.

I hope you will join me over there.

2004-06-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

REVISIONISM
Ironic that Charles Krauthammer titles this column "Reagan Revisionism," given that he himself is engaged in revisionism of the worst sort, in a column which perfectly exemplifies the ongoing mythologization of Reagan.

In the early '80s, the West experienced a nuclear hysteria -- a sudden panic about imminent nuclear destruction and a mindless demand to "freeze" nuclear weapons. What had changed to bring this on? Reagan had become president. Like George W. Bush today, the U.S. president was seen as a greater threat to peace than was the enemy he was confronting.

The nuclear freeze and the accompanying hysteria are an embarrassment that liberals prefer to forget today. Reagan's critics completely misunderstood the logic and the power of his nuclear posture. He took a very hard line on the Soviets, who had broken the nuclear status quo by placing missiles in Europe. Backed by Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, Reagan faced the Soviets down -- despite enormous "peace" demonstrations throughout the West, including the largest one to date in U.S. history (New York City, 1982) -- and ultimately forced the Soviets to dismantle the missiles and begin their overall retreat.

The old familiar line: Reagan stared 'em down, scared 'em into surrendering. Good grief. Krauthammer's routine dismissal here of the international peace movement is especially egregious, given that the exchange between Eastern and Western European peace activists and the solidarity that grew from the international nuclear freeze movement laid essential groundwork for the eventual revolutions of 1989.

From Mary Kaldor's essay Who Killed the Cold War:

The role of peace movements in shaking the status quo in Europe seems to have been more or less written out of accounts of the 1980s. In the early 1980s, the peace movement in the West was considerably larger than the movements that eventually toppled the East European regimes. Five million people demonstrated in the capitals of Western Europe in 1981 and 1983. The movement was unprecedented in scale and in its transnational character.

What made the peace movement of the 1980s different from earlier movements was the explicit link between peace, and democracy and human rights. E.P. Thompson, the eminent historian whose writings inspired the new movement, called for a transcontinental movement of citizens. The European Nuclear Disarmament (END) Appeal of 1980, signed by millions of people all over Europe, called on its signatories, who included Vaclav Havel, Olof Palme, and George Konrad, not to "be loyal to East or West, but to each other." From the beginning, this new movement sought links with individual dissidents and groups in Eastern Europe.

Something parallel was happening in Eastern Europe. The period of détente gave rise to new forms of opposition. The most important new movement was Solidarity in Poland. But other groups, like Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and the Democratic Opposition in Hungary, were also significant. The starting point for Charter 77 was the Helsinki Accords and the commitment to human rights contained in the Final Agreement.

It's important for a couple of reasons to recognize the role played by the peace movement during the Cold War. First as a corrective to the "Reagan defeated the Soviet Empire" myth, which discounts the invaluable work done by non-governmental organizations, and second because it offers something of a blueprint for cultivating reform in the Middle East. Real change won't come from Grand Plans announced Grandly by Grand Men, it will come from cultural and academic exchanges between societies, support for indigenous reform movements, and appeals to international human rights conventions.

Treating Reagan as "victor" in the Cold War both disrespects history and handicaps democratic efforts in the future, as Bush is clearly trying to cast himself as the New Reagan, intending to "win" the War in Terror in the way he imagines Reagan "won" the Cold War, by talking tough and having bigger guns than everyone else. That's not the way it went then, and it won't go that way now. When change does come to the Middle East, it will have been the result of work done and solidarity created by and between thousands of dedicated individuals, most of whose names we'll never know.

Years later, of course, conservatives will claim that George W. Bush should get the credit.

2004-06-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

CHALABI
Last week's New Yorker had this piece on Ahmad Chalabi, and I have to say that, after reading it, I almost admire the guy. This man is a veritable Mozart of bullshit. He paid attention in class, learned how the U.S. foreign policy game was played, kissed the right behinds, and knew when to blow sunshine and when to blow smoke. I enjoyed this bit:

Six weeks before the U.S. invasion, in a February 5, 2003, address to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell—who had initially found the intelligence on W.M.D.s inconclusive—spoke of unnamed eyewitnesses, one of whom had supplied “firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and rails.” It was, he testified, “one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq.”

Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, of the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that the source of this intelligence was an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, who is allegedly the brother of one of Chalabi’s aides. (Chalabi says that the defector is not related to anyone in his organization.) Curveball is said to have approached German intelligence officials and provided them with detailed maps and descriptions of mobile weapons labs. Curveball neglected to tell German officials that before fleeing Iraq he had been jailed for embezzlement. Moreover, U.S. and U.N. experts searched every corner of Iraq for the mobile labs; all they found were two trucks, whose function is still in dispute. Last January, Cheney cited those trucks as conclusive proof that Iraq had mobile weapons labs, but experts have said that they more likely contained equipment for weather balloons.

By the time I asked Chalabi about Curveball, the defector had become a sore subject. “These are the sorts of reports we are expected to deny?” he asked, his voice rising. “Anonymous reports about anonymous people? No one even knows who this person is! How are we supposed to know?” Chalabi questioned why he was being blamed for defectors’ inaccuracies, when it was the U.S. intelligence community’s job “to check these people out.” He asked, “What would you want us to do? Hush it up when these people tell us these things?”

From this story, the Pentagon's process of "vetting" defectors seems a bit like Navin R. Johnson method for establishing the identity of Mrs. Nussbaum in The Jerk:

CURVEBALL: Saddam has mobile weapons factories. I've seen them firsthand.

WOLFOWITZ: How do we know if we can trust you?

CHALABI: I'll vouch for him.

WOLFOWITZ: Okay, as long as you've got a voucher!

2004-06-09T22:11:00.001-07:00

NOW PLAYING: THE MIDDLE EAST REFORM PLAN
(BBC)
(al Jazeera)

An early draft of this plan was apparently "leaked", and it's been well-reported in Arab media

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are against it, calling shenanigans.

Turkey's Abdullah Gul won't support it.

A good suggestion in this Daily Star editorial:

The poster child for US President George W. Bush's regime change-driven agenda in this region is Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whom the US holds up as an example of a wise change of heart in turning away from developing weapons of mass destruction. Libya has been transformed from an evil and dangerous land for the West to a friendly and responsible polity, and an attractive investment venue. It should also be the place where Bush and his G8 colleagues could most easily and quickly promote democracy in an Arab country, without war, regime change, Congressional resolutions or cooking the books on intelligence evidence. If the US and friends truly seek to promote Arab democracy, they should start in Libya, which has proved amenable to accepting US suggestions on other issues.

Maybe if the U.S. treats Gadhafi really, really well...Ironic that this week we're burying a president who made war with him.

In any case, it's very good to see the Israel/Palestine conflict brought to the fore. Maybe someone in the Bush Administration finally recognize that that is the issue most holding back reform. Leaving aside who hit who first, the I/P conflict is one of the engines of jihadism, and the U.S. has to be seen as taking a less-biased approach before any initiative gets off the ground.

p.s. Here's Bush's Freedom Gap Speech (Warning: Contains confident references to non-existent WMD)

2004-06-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER MYSTERY SOLVED
Have you, like me, ever wondered what, exactly, Lionel Richie was chanting during the middle eight of "All Night Long?" I know that you have. Well, friends, wonder no longer. Via retrocrush, here it is:

Tom bo li de say de moi ya
Yeah, jambo jumbo
Way to parti' o we goin'
Oh, jambali
Tom bo li de say de moi ya
Yeah, jambo jumbo!!

2004-06-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

TOOTHPASTE THEORY
For those who aren't aware, there is consistently better, more critical coverage of the Israeli occupation to be found in the Israeli press than in the U.S. press. From Yoel Marcus in Haaretz:

There is only one other historical precedent for what Sharon is doing. It was when Charles de Gaulle was summoned home by the party in the hopes that he would keep Algeria under French dominion. Upon his election, he appeared before a roaring crowd of a million French settlers in Algeria, who welcomed him with cheers of "Long live French Algeria." He waved his long, lanky arms and told them: "I understand you!" Then he went back to France and did the opposite of what everyone expected of him, thumbing his nose at his party, the settlers and the far right. Later, when they complained that he had lied to them, he said: "I did understand you, but I did what was good for France."

Where in the mainstream U.S. media would you ever see the (entirely appropriate and instructive) comparison between the Israeli occupation and French colonialism in Algeria?

Sharon has come a long way since he insisted that Israel could not leave settlements like Netzarim and Kfar Darom because "every settlement is critical for our defense." As someone who had the privilege of hearing the details of Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan straight from the horse's mouth four months ago, I believe that despite his checkered past, he is not playing games now. This is not a gimmick or some trick to hang on to his seat, which is safe, in any case, until 2007. We are talking about a mental switch. Sharon has come to the conclusion that there is no future for occupation; that terror cannot be wiped out by force; that in the end, Israel could face a humiliating imposed solution in which it would lose everything.

Marcus is definitely taking a "glass is half-full" view, but I agree that despite whether Sharon is serious about a Palestinian state, and I believe he is not, Sharon has made a significant political conversion from being the hardest of the hardcore settlement builders to recognizing the futility, because of security costs, in maintaining the Gaza settlements. There's really no way for him to go back now and rejoin those who assert that the settlements are morally justified.

2004-06-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

REAGAN
I came of political age in the Reagan Era, so he will always occupy a special place in my consciousness, though I'll never mistake this for admiration. He talked a good game about freedom, but supported some of the foulest, most inhumane tyrannies on earth. He raised political dishonesty to incredible new levels with made-up stories of welfare-queens, pollution-causing trees, and tax cuts which actually increase government revenues.

Reagan was right that Communism was a destructive, inhumane ideology that required active opposition. He was not the first to realize this, indeed his opposition to Communism rested on international institutions and agreements that were developed and written by liberal Democrats. This fact will probably not be mentioned as conservatives rend their clothes and pour ashes on their heads.

I recognize that Reagan's strident anti-Communism did, to some extent, give moral support to the Eastern European dissidents who did the real work of defeating Communism. It's also inescapable that his belligerent rhetoric entrenched and empowered Communist hardliners, thus making the work of those dissidents more difficult.

As you prepare to face the "moral clarity" brigades in the coming weeks, don't forget that Reagan illegaly sold arms to terrorists, Iran, and then funneled the proceeds to terrorists, the Nicaraguan Contras. Is that morally clear?

From around the web:

Nick Confessore:

As for Reagan's legacy, it should have been clear then, and is increasingly clear now, that for the most part Reagan the president was more popular than Reaganism the politics.

Eric Alterman:

To me the most astounding thing about Reagan was his ability to convince the many members of the media and much of the country that his fantasies mattered more than reality did. In this regard, I think we can point to his presidency as the moment the country went off the rails in terms of a willingness to address its real problems, rather than the ones we wish we had. The news is more nonsense than normatively significant national problems, and while there has always been some of this, I think with Reagan we hit a tipping point. Listening to Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts wax nostalgically about how wonderful it was that Reagan made stuff up and a bunch of silly journalists had the temerity to (briefly) call him to account, brought back an almost physical wave of nausea as I involuntarily experienced the beginning of the period when facts and truth ceased to matter to their alleged guardians.

Juan Cole:

Reagan's policies thus bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan's blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan's gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed.

Christopher Hitchens:

The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn't like him all that much. He met his second wife—the one that you remember—because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon.

Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns, and Money takes apart Andrew Sullivan's claim that Reagan conservatism was somehow less bigoted and intolerant than Bush conservatism.

Meanwhile, in National Review's the Corner, which was always a bit of a Reaganoid circle-jerk when the Gipper was alive, is now shading over into something resembling cyber-group-necrophilia:

Jonah Goldberg:

It's fun and worthwhile to point out that liberals and leftists detested Reagan not too long ago. But what's more important than any gotchyas on their hypocrisy is the fact that many of these folks may now be sincere. The fact that America seems largely united in its admiration for Ronald Reagan is a sign of his success in changing the country. It's funny, today there's this tendency among liberals and not a few conservatives to talk about FDR as if he was this great unifying figure. He was for a majority of people, but he was also one of the most deeply reviled and detested political figures in American history, including among a great many people we would call liberals and leftists today. For good or ill, it's a sign of FDR's success at bending the society to his will that we now think he was some sort of revered demi-god when he was in the Oval Office. It is an astounding tribute to his accomplishments that today -- less than two decades after his profoundly controversial presidency -- a majority of Americans, including the elite, are on roughly the same page about his greatness.

Roughly on the same page, huh? Maybe Goldberg is attempting to pay special tribute to Reagan by presenting his own fantasies as fact. Fitting indeed.

It may be inconvenient for conservatives to remember this, but there was a similar show of decent respect, sentimentality, and nostalgia when Nixon died (or rather, when he was delivered to Hell by the Devil's own personal giant rodent-drawn hell-carriage), but that didn't mean that people didn't still remember Nixon's mendacity and criminality.

One bright side to Reagan's passing is NOONAN! NOONAN! NOONAN! That's right, in the wake of the Gipper's departure, former Reagan speechwriter and All*Star conservative fluffer Peggy Noonan has been making the talk-show rounds, dutifully performing her singular brand of hagiographic fellatio for anyone who asks. This is the moment for which she's been preparing since Reagan left office. I had the distinct pleasure last night of switching back and forth between Peggy on Meet the Press, Peggy on Hardball, and Peggy on C-SPAN! That woman is hilarious.

Here's a great example of Peggy's brand of goofballery, regarding Elian Gonzales (remember him?) and the rumour that the boy had been aided by friendly dolphins as he floated in the sea:

From the beginning it was a story marked by the miraculous. It was a miracle a six-year-old boy survived the storm at sea and floated safely in an inner tube for two days and nights toward shore; a miracle that when he tired and began to slip, the dolphins who surrounded him like a contingent of angels pushed him upward;

And some of us, in our sadness, wonder what Ronald Reagan, our last great president, would have done. I think I know...Mr. Reagan would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God’s creatures had been commanded to protect one of God’s children.

Now, this is funny in two ways. First, there's the admission by Noonan that Reagan would have taken seriously the idea that magical dolphins helped young Elian to stay afloat. Second, there's the assertion by Noonan that this belief in divinely guided Roman Catholic dolphins was a good thing, something that revealed, yet again, Reagan's greatness. Keep it coming, Peg.

2004-05-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

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.)

2004-05-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

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."

2004-05-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

"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.

2004-05-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

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."

2004-05-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

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."

2004-05-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

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."

2004-05-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-05-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-05T11:27:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-05-04T14:02:00.000-07:00

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."

2004-05-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

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

2004-05-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-04-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

STUMBLING BLINDLY THROUGH HISTORY
It's difficult to divine what George W. Bush's actual policy is regarding the Palestine-Israel conflict, given that he seems to be trying to state things in a way which can be interpreted differently by either side. On April 14, Bush met with Ariel Sharon and made this statement:

"The United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations. That matter is for the parties."

Bush then blithely proceeded to prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations:

"But the realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly over the last several decades, and any final settlement must take into account those realities and be agreeable to the parties. The goal of two independent states has repeatedly been recognized in international resolutions and agreements, and it remains the key to resolving this conflict. The United States is strongly committed to Israel's security and well being as a Jewish state. It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, as part of any final status agreement, will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than Israel."

The Palestinian right of return and the illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank have long been two of the main impediments to any lasting peace agreement, and with his statement President Bush attempted to unilaterally resolve both of those issues in favor of Israel.

"As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders which should emerge from negotiations between the parties, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. And all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

Huh? How can Bush simultaneously affirm UN Security Council Resolution 242 which states, in no uncertain terms, that Israel must withdraw from territory siezed in the 1967 War, and affirm Israel's occupation and annexation of huge portions of that territory?

Two days later, in a joint appearance with Tony Blair, Bush reiterated this statement regarding final status negotiations:

"As I said Wednesday, all final status issues must still be negotiated between the parties. I look forward to the day when those discussions can begin, so the Israeli occupation can be ended and a free and independent and peaceful Palestinian state can emerge. "

In their statements, both Bush and Blair seemed enamored of the idea of "movement," the idea being that Sharon's plan, for all of it's faults, represents "movement" after years of stalemate, and thus should be welcomed. But what good is "movement" if it only moves one closer to the cliff's edge? And what does Bush mean by recognizing Israel's claim to huge portions of Palestinian land and the denial of the Palestinian right of return, but then stating that "all final status issues must still be negotiated between the parties?" It's almost as if he...didn't have a clue.

In today's Jerusalem Post:

"The White House announced that President George W. Bush stands by both the oral and written commitments he provided Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with earlier this month.

Bush will likely present Jordan's King Abdullah II, when he visits Washington next week, with a letter reaffirming Washington's commitment to a two-state solution negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians.

But the letter will in no way contradict the assurances provided to Sharon by Bush earlier this month on final-status issues, Israel's top diplomat in Washington said Wednesday after speaking to senior US officials.

"There may be a letter but in no way or shape will it detract, dilute, from the assurances given to Israel. There will certainly be no backtracking. I got the fullest and most authoritative assurances for that," Israel's ambassador to the US Daniel Ayalon said."

So the Israelis seem to believe that, despite Bush's comments about not prejudicing the final outcome, the right of return and West Bank settlement issues are essentially settled in favor of Israel, final status negotiations be damned.

But King Abdallah may have other ideas:

"Jordan’s King Abdallah told Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei yesterday that Israel’s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip should be part of a “total Israeli withdrawal” from all Palestinian areas.

“Israel’s plan envisaging a unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip should be part of a total Israeli withdrawal in accordance with the provisions of the road map,” King Abdallah said during talks with Qorei who visited Jordan during a tour of the region."

King Abdallah's father, King Hussein, played an indispensable part in the peace process in the mid-1990s. Hopefully his son will begin following that lead. Looking way forward, I think it's possible that, just as it seems to have united large parts of Iraq's Shi'a and Sunni communities against the U.S occupation, President Bush's diplomatic incompetence could have the unintended (though certainly happier) result of spurring Arab states to play a larger and more constructive part in resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict.

But I may be letting hope get the better part of my reason there.

2004-04-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

AL-SADR
Here's a really good profile of Moqtada al-Sadr from the Christian Science Monitor. (thanks to Kevin Drum)

Another interesting article from CSM on why the Iraq Governing Council has failed.

"We sit in the council while the country is burning and argue over procedure,'' says Sheikh Yawar, a Sunni tribal leader who lived abroad until last year. "We're like the Byzantines in Constantinople, debating whether angels are male or female with the barbarians at the gate."

Procedure is, of course, important when writing a new constitution and designing a system of representative government. When used correctly, it can help cultivate a sense of legitimacy for a new government. When abused in various stalling measures, as seems to have happened with the council, it destroys legitimacy. It's somewhat understandable that the various religious and tribal factions would be arguing over procedure in an attempt to safeguard their own future power, as it's not clear from day to day or hour to hour how the new Iraq will look or which faction will eventually dominate, which is a direct result of the Bush Gang's poor planning.

2004-04-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

WMD FOUND IN IRAQ! (not quite)
Writing on NRO's "the Corner", Jonah Goldberg has this to say:

"Don't pop the champagne quite yet, but this story certainly could use some wider play:

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.

In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official tells Insight. "There is a long list of charges made by the U.S. that have been confirmed, but none of this seems to mean anything because the weapons that were unaccounted for by the United Nations remain unaccounted for."

Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the last of 17 resolutions that promised "serious consequences" if Iraq did not make a complete disclosure of its weapons programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner. The United States cited Iraq's refusal to comply with these demands as one justification for going to war.....

Pop the champagne? Uh, sorry. If you read the whole article, not that you have to, given that the excerpt above pretty neatly contradicts itself, you'll see that this is much of the same old BS on a new shovel. Despite what the article claims, WMD have not been found. What has been found is evidence that Saddam was intent on obtaining weapons in the future, and that he was in material breach of various UN resolutions regarding the capability of his missile arsenal. Thing is, I don't know of anybody who is claiming those things weren't so. We all knew that Saddam was in material breach, and that he probably wanted to develop WMD in the future. But the President rested his case for invasion, invasion now, on the argument that Saddam currently posessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, not that Saddam wanted to get them later, but that Saddam had them now, and that this required the U.S. to act, rather than to wait.

Additionally, if WMD had, in fact, been found in Iraq, don't you think we'd be hearing about it in a breathless press conference from the White House, rather than from an obscure right-wing website?

2004-04-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

MEANWHILE, IN MERRY OLDE ENGLAND...
Prime Minister Tony Blair has come in for severe criticism for his support of Bush's Middle East policy, particularly his support of Bush's endorsemement of Ariel Sharon's plan to annex large portions of the Palestinian West Bank into Israel. I can understand why Blair is sticking with Bush on Iraq, but I'm confounded as to why he would stand by Bush's extremely ill-advised endorsement of Sharon's expansionism. Hopefully we'll get some answers when Blair responds to these criticisms.

Also in England, the New York Times reports:

The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.

In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.

They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.

Isn't that sweet?

The Guardian reports that moderate Muslims in Luton demonstrated for peace, seeking to counter impressions of radical, anti-Western Islam. We need more of these kind of marches.

UPDATE: Here's the text of the letter sent to Blair.

2004-04-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

THE LIMBAUGH OF THE LEFT
Just as I think it is the responsibility of sensible conservatives to call out and criticize the rhetorical excesses of such right-wing pests as Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter, I think it's important that sensible liberals look out for the poop in their own yard. Here's some commentary from left-wing clown Michael Moore:

"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win."

This is worse than despicable, it's ahistorical. I don't recall any Minutemen blowing up schoolchildren. But we know by now that Moore never lets inconvenient facts get in the way of his sweaty polemics. As much as I hate the charge of "anti-Americanism" that right-wingers so often throw, more often slyly imply, at liberals, there's really no way to describe Moore's comments here as anything but that. When he blows his trumpet for the Iraqi "revolution," such as it is, he is communicating his wish for the continued maiming and death of Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. It's one thing to disagree with the U.S. government and advocate a change in policy. It's entirely another to wish for the death of your countrymen.

(On the other hand, Moore may have been referring to these Minutemen. But I don't know that any of the Iraqi fighters were particularly influenced by Southern California jazz-punk, so Moore would still be wrong. And still be a fool.)

2004-04-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

AND NOW, PLAN "G" (COMING SOON: PLAN "H")
This was long overdue:
(from the Washington Post)
The United States and the top U.N. envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of the Iraqi politicians the U.S.-led coalition has relied on over the past year when they select an Iraqi government to assume power on June 30, U.S. and U.N. officials said yesterday.

At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned is Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favorite of the Pentagon and the office of Vice President Cheney, and who was once expected to assume a powerful role after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials acknowledged.

Here's a Frontline interview with Chalabi from July, 2003 which suggests that he has taken spin and dance lessons from the Bush Gang:

FRONTLINE: You had argued for a long time that [Iraq was] tightly connected with Al Qaeda, as far back as 1998. I remember meeting with you--

CHALABI: Yes.

You told me there were lots of connections.

Yes, there were.

Well, those have not quite been demonstrated.

Well, they should look further. We can--

But you haven't successfully been able to demonstrate--

We have very strong leads on that, and we have very strong evidence that they have.

You have strong evidence that there's links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?

Yes. You see, the point is that the U.S.--

Where are these? Where is this evidence though?

In U.S. hands.

Why hasn't it been--

Because I have not been able to talk to the people, or get the information out of the people they have in their hands.

But this is not material that you've provided to the press at any time?

No.

But you're certain that there is this information?

Yes.

It just hasn't been released to the public?

Yes. But I don't think they have it. They have not gotten it. You see--

I thought you gave it to them.

It is not. It's the U.S.. Look, the US has several thousand detainees from Saddam's regime. They should do a better job of getting information out of them. The information is there. We know it is.

So it's in Guantanamo?

No. In Iraq.

It's in Iraq, where they have detainees?

Yes.

And those people can tell them, but they just haven't told them?

Yes. Yes.

But you, as far back as 1998, were arguing that there was a strong link between Al Qaeda--
Yes.

But I never saw concrete evidence.

We gave the names of the people who we knew were doing the links. What is the kind of thing that you want? There were visits of Al Qaeda here and there was money that changed hands between them and--

What kind of money changed hands between--

Funds were given to Al Qaeda.

From--?

From Saddam ...

To--?

To Al Qaeda. …

... But you say you have actual evidence that there was money--

We have people who say they did it.

Do you have any documentary evidence of any kind?
Of what?

I was told ... that you had a document that states -- it was instructions from the intelligence office in Saddam's government to destroy--
Yes. There is such a document.

That is a document that you could show us?

Well, I've seen it. But I do not have it in my possession. They could show it to you, I think.

Who can show it to me?

Our intelligence people.

Your intelligence people?

[Yes].

So after this interview, we can--

I don't know if you can do it right now.

Well, I think its very important to make this -- this is something you've talked about since 1998, and I think it's a very important point. It's one of the points that drew America to this war.

Yes.

Correct? So it's very important to establish the truth of it.

Yes.

I mean, if there is such a document, it makes sense for you to share it, no?

I'm not saying no. No, I'm saying that I can't--

I'm somehow not getting the feeling that I'm going to see the document.

Well, you are erroneous.

OK. Great. I hope to see it.

Well, we expect to show it to you.

Almost a year later...nothing. I wonder if Chalabi still expects to show us this evidence? Is he holding on to it until the very last minute? Somehow I doubt it. I expect that a year from now, we'll still be waiting for it.

As the Post article notes, for the past few years Chalabi has been the favorite of the Cheney-Pentagon crowd, that is, of the exact people who have bungled the occupation of Iraq at every turn, and would have bungled it even further by trying to install this self-serving double-talker in a position of permanent power in Iraq. Even ignoring the allegations of financial corruption against Chalabi, the guy hasn't lived in Iraq since 1953, and thus has no legitimacy among Iraqis who've spent the last thirty-five years of their lives suffering under Ba'athist Party rule, and probably wouldn't be too excited about having this expatriate rich kid as their new leader.

2004-04-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

JORDANIAN KING CANCELS TALKS WITH BUSH
And the fallout of Bush's cave-in to Sharon begins.
(Al Jazeera)
"The reason behind cancelling the trip is clear as Bush's backing of the Sharon plan made the king's visit embarrassing and meaningless," Jordanian political analysts Jamil al-Nimri told Aljazeera.net

"Jordan was hoping to make the disengagement plan part of the 'road map' and not eradicate the peace initiative completely by legalising settlements and scrapping the right of return," added al-Nimri who writes for al-Arab al-Yawm daily.

RELATED:
Israel Planning Big Investment in West Bank Settlements
(New York Times)

"Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel could now "fortify our hold" on blocs of West Bank settlements. He told Israel radio on Monday that he would approve investment for settlements that would not be enclosed on Israel's side of the new barrier it is building against West Bank Palestinians.

"There, we are going to invest," he said. "I myself am going to approve hundreds of millions of shekels to invest in the settlements beyond the main fence." "

That's right, friends. Not satisfied with the assurances they obtained from Bush that they may annex West Bank settlements into Israel, Israel plans to continue to invest in settlements outside their now-expanded borders. Boggles the mind. As expected, Bush's knuckleheaded endorsement of Sharon's plan, rather than provide any opening for peace, has only emboldened Israel's hardliners.

Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum always has interesting things to say about the Middle East, even if I disagree with much of it, but he's flat-out, dead wrong on the issue of settlements and their significance in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Some analysts consider Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza to be one of the leading obstacles to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I disagree with this argument,and for two main reasons. First, it assumes that Palestinian Arabs seek only to gain control over the West Bank and Gaza, whereas overwhelming evidence points to their also aspiring to go further and control Israel proper. Therefore, pulling Israelis from the territories does no good.

In fact, it probably does harm. Imagine that Israelis were uprooted and the Israel Defense Forces pulled back to the 1967 boundaries — what then? Messrs. Friedman, AbiNader, and Kucinich assume the Palestinian Arabs would be grateful and reward Israel by tending to their own gardens, permitting Israel quietly to go its separate way.

But I expect a quite different reaction : Palestinian Arabs will see a pullback signaling that Israel is weak, appeasing, and vulnerable. Far from showing gratitude, they will make greater demands. With Jenin and Ramallah in the maw, Jerusalem will be next on the agenda, followed by Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Ahh, so the issue is not morality, but credibility. The best argument that Pipes can produce for keeping the settlements is that to abandon them would make Israel appear weak. I find that quite revealing. What Pipes has given us here, then, is mere intellectual cover for the more honest hardline Israeli expansionists and radical settlers.

Pipes goes on to refer to the settlements issue as a "political triviality," which makes me wonder whether he's ever actually visited the Occupied Territories and seen the constant, everyday oppression of the Palestinian population which the maintenance and protection of the settlements requires. Trivial? I wonder if he would consider it trivial if it was his home that was bulldozed and his family's land that was confiscated to make room for new settlements? I wonder if he would consider it trivial if he was forced to wait for two hours in the hot desert sun at an Israeli checkpoint every time he wanted to go to work, or take his children to school, or to visit his relatives in the next town? I don't that he would.

I think that Palestinians may be more prepared to accept the existence of the Jewish State than Pipes realizes, though that is arguable. What is inarguable is that the continued settlement activity and Israeli military presence which it requires only weakens Palestinian moderates and strengthens Palestinian extremists.

2004-04-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

SECOND THOUGHTS? NOT REALLY
Christopher Hitchens on what he got wrong on Iraq:

"The thing that I most underestimated is the thing that least undermines the case. And it's not something that I overlooked, either. But the extent of lumpen Islamization in Iraq, on both the Khomeinist and Wahhabi ends (call them Shiite and Sunni if you want a euphemism that insults the majority), was worse than I had guessed.

...When fools say that the occupation has "united" Sunni and Shiite, they flatter the alliance between the proxies of the Iranian mullahs and the Saudi princes. And they ignore the many pleas from disputed and distraught towns, from Iraqis who beg not to be abandoned to these sadistic and corrupt riffraff. One might have seen this coming with greater prescience. But it would have made it even more important not to leave Iraq to the post-Saddam plans of such factions. There was no way around our adoption of Iraq, as there still is not."

Here's an essay by the former Polish dissident Adam Michnik, published in March 2003. It remains, in my opinion, the most concise and elegant defense of the war against Saddam published anywhere:

"I aim to avoid double standards in thinking about the world. I thus aim to use the same criteria in assessing the arrogance of all great powers, not just the Bush administration.

I remember my nation’s experience with totalitarian dictatorship. This is why I was able to draw the right conclusions from Sept. 11, 2001. Just as the murder of Giacomo Matteotti [leader of Italy’s United Socialist Party] revealed the nature of Italian fascism and Mussolini’s regime; just as the great Moscow trials showed the world the essence of the Stalinist system; just as “Kristallnacht” exposed the hidden truth of Hitler’s Nazism, watching the collapsing World Trade Center towers made me realize that the world was facing a new totalitarian challenge. Violence, fanaticism, and lies were challenging democratic values.

This is not the place to analyze the ideology that, while disfiguring the religion of Islam, creates a crusade against the democratic world. Saddam Hussein takes part in this just as Hitler and Stalin did before him. He asserts that in the holy war with the “godless West” all methods are permitted. Waiting for this sort of regime to obtain weapons of mass destruction would be plain recklessness."

2004-04-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

ARE ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY COMPATIBLE?
That is the central question of this conference in Istanbul. The consensus among the participants seems to be that Islam is indeed compatible with democracy, and that instability in the Islamic world is caused by illegitimate authoritarian regimes, rather than by anything intrinsic to the Muslim faith.

There is also consensus among the conferees that the West should not seek to impose Western-models of democracy onto the Middle East. I think it's true that we in the West should prepare ourselves to accept an Islamic democracy that may not look like Western democracy, but there are specific qualities of democracy which must transcend culture and ethnicity, such as freedom of speech and of the press, women's suffrage, and, most importantly, secularism. It's been argued that secularism, the separation of Church and State, is the single most important historical factor which allowed the West to develop and eventually overtake the Islamic world. Whether or not Muslims can adopt some measure of secularism in their own societies will dictate how successful democracy will be in those regions.

To put it simply, religion is about assurance; politics is about compromise. The West has learned, through hundreds of bloody years, that the two aren't a very good mix.

In an op-ed published yesterday, Daniel Pipes notes the historical incompatability of Islam and democracy, and asserts that this is unlikely to change in Iraq under the current conditions of U.S. occupation:

"...as a predominantly Muslim people, Iraqis share in the powerful Muslim reluctance to being ruled by non-Muslims. This reluctance results from the very nature of Islam, the most public and political of religions.

To live a fully Muslim life requires living in accord with the many laws of Islam, called the sharia. The sharia includes difficult-to-implement precepts pertaining to taxation, the judicial system and warfare. Its complete implementation can occur only when the ruler himself is a pious Muslim (although an impious Muslim is much preferable to a non-Muslim). For Muslims, rule by non-Muslims is an abomination, a blasphemous inversion of God's dispensation."

Pipes suggests that the only way for Iraq to find its way to democracy is for the U.S. to pull out and install "a democratically minded Iraqi strongman, someone who will work with the coalition forces, provide decent government, and move eventually toward a more open political system." I've had similar thoughts. What Iraq needs right now is an Ataturk, someone with unassailable legitimacy and a committment to republican government who is willing to make the hard choices that will set Iraq on the course to democracy. Unfortunately, right now it seems that the only way for any of Iraq's potential Ataturks to gain such legitimacy is to achieve victory against U.S.-coalition forces.

2004-04-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

THE END OF THE ROAD MAP
Today, George W. Bush effectively scuttled his own Middle East peace plan by endorsing Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout plan and tacitly approved Sharon's wish to hold on to large portions of the West Bank which contain illegal Jewish settlements.

(New York Times)...Bush said, the "realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly" and should be reflected in any final peace deal -- another concession, also sought by Sharon, to the fact that Israel has large groups of settlers in the West Bank.

It's very simple: in order to maintain the settlements, Israel must maintain the occupation. While the occupation continues, there will be no peace.

2004-04-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE
I thought he did relatively well, that is, according to the depressingly low expectations which we have all learned to bring to such appearances. Measured against the level of facility and command of facts which I think a modern society should be able to expect from its leaders, it was of course an embarassment from beginning to end. There were a lot of choice moments, I'll get to more of them later, but here was my hands-down favorite:

QUESTION: Mr. President, why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9-11 commission? And, Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.

And, secondly, because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.

BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them.

And I'm looking forward to hearing him answering them. So everybody's looking forward to something.

2004-04-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

THE SHARON PLAN
Interesting perspective from Edward S. Walker of the Middle East Institute:
"I had serious doubts when I first heard of Sharon’s Gaza proposal based on my concern that we not wind-up with a “Gaza first, Gaza only” solution. I have since come to believe, however, that what the Prime Minister is proposing may be the only way to break open the impasse that binds the West Bank and Gaza into a morass of violence. The reasons to embrace the Sharon proposal are numerous, particularly if there is linkage into the West Bank. Who could have imagined that it would be Arik Sharon who would propose giving up settlements? The precedential nature of this move is enormous, and the settler movement knows it. If Sharon goes forward with this plan, his right wing will very likely defect from the government and the party and Sharon will have to reconstitute his government with a new political alliance."

Sharon's proposal is radical for several reasons, the most notable of which is that he has always been one of the main political patrons of the Israeli Jewish Settler Movement since its beginnings in the wake of the 1967 war. Sharon's governing coalition depends upon the cooperation of ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement elements who are committed to a vision of Greater Israel, a Jewish State stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, and most of these have threatened to abandon him if he tries to withdraw from Gaza.

As Martin Indyk has pointed out, the Israeli government hates to give something for nothing, and it might seem at first glance that by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza and abandoning settlements which cost millions of dollars to erect, Sharon is giving the Palestinians something for nothing: ceding control of Gaza without demanding promises of a cease-fire or anything. But while Sharon may be getting nothing from the Palestinians in Gaza, his gesture is more likely intended to get something from Bush when the two meet this week. By giving up Gaza, Sharon probably wants to get Bush's support for essentially re-drawing the Green Line, the border between Israel and the future Palestine, to annex most of the West Bank settlements into Israel, precisely the “Gaza first, Gaza only” solution that Walker fears.

If so, this would be a very shrewd move by Sharon. All of the settlements in the occupied territories are illegal under international law, specifically Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. By giving up a small portion of land which was taken illegally, Sharon will try to hold on to the much larger portion of land which was taken illegally, and get to look like he's compromising in the bargain.

UPDATE: Looks like this is precisely what Sharon has in mind:
(from the New York Times)
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel on Monday listed five major settlement blocs in the West Bank that he promised to retain as part of his unilateral separation plan from the Palestinians and visited the largest of them.

Mr. Sharon spoke in Maale Adumim, a settlement just east of Jerusalem and home to more than 30,000 Israelis, shortly before his departure for the United States, where he will meet with President Bush at the White House on Wednesday.

"Only an Israeli initiative will assure the future of the large settlement blocs and the security zones," he told residents of Maale Adumim.

(Here's a picture of Maale Adumim I took when I visited Israel and the Palestinian Territories last summer. This is what Sharon refers to as "natural growth.")

Of course, the success of Sharon's plan depends a lot on his success in extracting promises of support from Bush. It's an election year, and Bush has been campaigning hard to capture some of the Jewish vote from the Democrats. Stay tuned on that.

One thing is for sure, though. Keeping the settlements in the West Bank, and maintaining the vast security apparatus, checkpoints, and system of Jewish-only highways and Palestinian Bantustans which that will require, will not achieve either peace or security. It will not come close.

2004-04-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

SOME GOOD SENSE
from Andrew Sullivan:
"It's worth saying here what we now know the president got wrong - badly wrong. There were never enough troops to occupy Iraq. The war-plan might have been brilliant, but the post-war plan has obviously been a failure. We needed more force and we needed more money sooner. The president has no excuses for not adjusting more quickly to this fact: he was told beforehand; he was told afterward; but he and the Defense Secretary were too pig-headed to change course. I still favor the war; but I cannot excuse the lapses and failures of the administration in the post-war. Yes, this was always going to be very very hard. And yes, Iraq was slowly imploding under Saddam and some version of what we are now witnessing was inevitable - and, without the war, it would have happened without our stabilizing presence. Yes, balancing keeping order and winning hearts and minds is not an easy operation to pull off. But with the troop levels we maintained - especially given the limited international support - we made things far harder than they might have been, and our beleaguered troops are dealing with the aftermath. We can still win this. We must still win this. But the president is in part responsible for making it even harder than it might have been."

In addition to having too few troops, the Bush Gang screwed up when they disbanded the Iraqi Army, thereby leaving thousands of unemployed, armed, bored men to wander the streets and eventually either turn to crime or hook up with an insurgent militia, or both. The hasty process of de-Ba'athification was also a mistake, throwing out thousands of government bureaucrats in the interest of making a clean break from the Saddam Hussein regime, but then having no potential replacements or any realistic plan to train them. Giving ex-Ba'athists a stake in a new, free Iraq would've probably been a good idea. Instead, many ex-Ba'athists have come to believe that a democratic Iraq is something to be feared.

2004-04-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

MUBARAK/BUSH SUMMIT AT CRAWFORD
(New York Times)
During their meeting, the two leaders discussed prospects for reviving Mideast peace efforts and Israel's plan to close 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza. Mubarak pledged that his country would do ``whatever it takes'' to revive efforts to strike a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

The proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will put Mubarak in what could easily become a very uncomfortable position. He would then have to maintain border security between Egypt and Gaza, which has been controlled by Israel since 1967, and prevent the inflow to Gaza of weapons and anti-Israeli fighters, all while having to contend with a population which is hugely pro-Palestinian.

2004-04-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

SIGH
President Bush: ``We also believe the future of the Middle East and the future of Iraq are closely linked,'' Bush said. ``The people of the greater Middle East have a right to be safe, secure, prosperous and free.''

That's very perceptive, don't you think? Especially since Iraq is, um, in the Middle East.

2004-04-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

THE WAR IS BACK, THE WAR IS BACK
(al Jazeera)
...just as the Shia of Iraq are preparing to celebrate Arba'een, which had previously been banned under Saddam's rule. Mass movements of celebrants does not bode well for the security situation.

2004-04-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

AGENDA FOR THE BUSH-MUBARAK SUMMIT
In his first visit to the United States in two years, Mubarak will be hosted by Bush at his private ranch in Crawford, Texas, a courtesy reserved for close US allies. "We look forward to President Mubarak's visit," said US Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield. "This is an important visit by a strategic ally and a friend," he added.

Mubarak's meeting with Bush will mark the beginning of what seems to be serious discussions held by the US president with regional leaders, mainly aimed at ironing out details in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to evacuate the Gaza Strip and a few West Bank settlements as a first step towards implementing the internationally-sponsored roadmap. Two days after Bush confers with Mubarak in Crawford, he will meet Sharon at the White House in Washington. On 21 April, he will hold similar talks with Jordan's King Abdullah.

2004-04-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

BUSH'S VIETNAM
In a speech at the Brookings Institution last Tuesday, Senator Teddy Kennedy said, among other things, that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam."

I think this was an extremely counter-productive thing for Kennedy to say. There may be similarities between Vietnam and Iraq, though right now I think the differences are more significant. More importantly, in American politics there is a very heavy subtext to any Vietnam reference, as that war and the divisions it created have come to stand for the broader cultural upheaval of the 1960s and early 70s. By making such a comparison, Kennedy is almost forcing people to take sides along that cultural divide, to see the debate over Iraq in those terms, rather than in current terms.

Also, comparing Iraq to Vietnam implies that the U.S. should pull out immediately, which would be a disaster. This is something even most of those who opposed the invasion recognize.

UPDATE: Al Jazeera reports that a U.S. Marine commander compared the fighting in Fallujah to Vietnam.

2004-04-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

SHIITE UPRISING?
This article in the New York Times claims that, despite what the White House says, the current unrest in Iraq has the makings of a broad Shiite uprising, something that was greatly feared by critics of the Iraq invasion.

On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they did not believe the United States was facing a broad-based Shiite insurgency. Administration officials have portrayed Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric who is wanted by American forces, as the catalyst of the rising violence within the Shiite community of Iraq.

But intelligence officials now say that there is evidence that the insurgency goes beyond Mr. Sadr and his militia, and that a much larger number of Shiites have turned against the American-led occupation of Iraq, even if they are not all actively aiding the uprising.

2004-04-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

ALGERIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
(from the Washington Post)
ALGIERS, April 8 -- Algerians voted on Thursday in a presidential election seen as a landmark for democracy in a Muslim country seeking to erase traumas of civil war and Islamic fundamentalism.

2004-04-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

WELCOME
Over the next few months I'll be developing this site into a resource for information and analysis on the Middle East.

I've chosen as my first post Osama bin Laden's 1998 declaration (fatwa) of jihad against the West. This is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the unfortunate state of relations between Western and Islamic societies.

Much more encouraging is the recent Alexandria Declaration, issued during the Arab Reform Conference, which was held in Alexandria, Egypt, in March, 2004. The statement details specific reforms which Arab governments must undertake in order to transform their societies. It's too soon to say how much this conference will affect the debate among Arab governments, but getting these things on paper and then getting them publicized and discussed are vital first steps to eventual reform.