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Archive: POLITICS

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That's Six Thousand in two months

The report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq said nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and June in a wave of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation.

Nice job George, Dick, et al.

The full AP story

symmetry and equivalence

Ahmad Khalidi, a senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a former Palestinian negotiator, has written a powerful editorial in today's Guardian (UK).

...what is at stake here is not proportionality or the issue of self-defence, but symmetry and equivalence. Israel is staking a claim to the exclusive use of force as an instrument of policy and punishment, and is seeking to deny any opposing state or non-state actor a similar right. It is also largely succeeding in portraying its own "right to self-defence" as beyond question, while denying anyone else the same. And the international community is effectively endorsing Israel's stance on both counts.

From an Arab point of view this cannot be right. There is no reason in the world why Israel should be able to enter Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and eliminate its perceived foes - repeatedly, with impunity and without restraint - while the Arab side cannot do the same. And if the Arab states are unable or unwilling to do so then the job should fall to those who can.

It is important to bear in mind that in both the case of the Hamas raid that led to the invasion of Gaza and the Hizbullah attack that led to the assault on Lebanon it was Israel's regular armed forces, not its civilians, that were targeted. It is hard to see how this can be filed under the rubric of "terrorism", rather than a straightforward tactical defeat for Israel's much-vaunted military machine; one that Israel seems loth to acknowledge.

Some of this has to do with the paradox of power: the stronger the Israeli army becomes, the more susceptible and vulnerable it becomes to even a minor setback. The loss of even one tank, the capture of one soldier or damage done to one warship has a negative-multiplier effect: Israel's "deterrent" power is dented out of all proportion to the act itself. Israel's retaliation is thus partly a matter of restoring its deterrence, partly sheer vengeance, and partly an attempt to compel its adversaries to do its bidding.

But there is also something else at work: Israel's fear of acknowledging any form of equivalence between the two sides. And it is precisely this that seems to provide the moral and psychological underpinning for Israel's ongoing assault in both Gaza and Lebanon - the sense that it may have met its match in audacity, tactical ingenuity and "clean" military action from an adversary who may even have learned a thing or two from Israel itself, and may be capable of learning even more in the future.

[snip]

...there is nothing in the history of the region to suggest that Israel's destruction of mass popular movements such as Hamas or Hizbullah (even if this were possible) would drive their successors closer to western-style democracy, and every reason to believe the opposite. Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 did away with the PLO and produced Hizbullah instead, the incarceration and elimination of Arafat only served to strengthen Hamas, and the wars in Afghanistan, the Gulf and Iraq gave birth to Bin Ladenist terrorism and extended its reach and appeal. And we should not be surprised if the summer of 2006 produces more of the same.

However Israel's latest adventure ends, it will not produce greater sympathy and understanding between west and east, or a downturn in extremism. Indeed the most likely outcome is that a new wave of virulent and possibly unconventional anti-western terrorism may well crash against this and other shores. We will all - Israelis, Arabs and westerners - suffer as a result.

Read Khalidi's full piece here

boondoggle Extraordinaire

If you were to gather together the finest, most creative minds and ask them to come up with a plan to outsource the reconstruction of Iraq that would guarantee shoddy work, overcharges, unfinished projects and overt graft, they would probably devise a system very similar to what U.S. taxpayers have enjoyed -- to the tune of about $30 billion -- for the past three years.

In Baghdad, basics like electricity, sanitation and clean drinking water are at lower levels today than they were before the war. A poll last year found that after more than two years of work, only 30 percent of Iraqis had any idea that there was any kind of reconstruction effort at all.

The reconstruction of Iraq has become a boondoggle of historic proportions, but make no mistake: It's a boondoggle by design.

[snip]

A good example was the mammoth "Iraq Infrastructure II" contract recently awarded to Bechtel Corp. (along with a few other well-connected corporate partners). It included "electric power systems, municipal water and sanitation services, road networks and rail systems, selected public buildings, ports and waterways, and airports."

That kind of big, bundled contract represents a perfectly circular argument. In the 1980s and 1990s, Big Business pushed a model of government that shifted a whole chunk of the public sector's functions their way, promising it would spur competition. That resulted in both an explosion of new contracting and steep cuts in the agency staff that oversee those contracts (up to 35 percent in the Bush years alone). With less staff, more projects get bundled into fewer super-sized contracts, and then we're told that there are only a couple of Beltway behemoths that can compete for them.

Now imagine for a moment that you wanted to hire a contractor to babysit your kids, reshingle the garage, teach your sister Swahili and sue a pesky neighbor who's just gotten on your last nerve. The chances are there wouldn't be a lot of firms qualified. But say a few contractors came to you and said they could handle the gig, but they wouldn't be able tell you how much it will cost or when the job will be finished. After a good laugh, you'd probably show them the door.

Your government, on the other hand, would send them to Iraq.

Read Joshua Holland's full, excellent article on AlterNet

No Excuse. None.

An Israeli missile incinerated a van in south Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the four-day-old campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight.

Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes.

[italics mine]

Reuters

No Queensbury Rules in Politics

Josh Marshall has recently been posting thoughts from one of his readers. That reader, DK, really gets to the heart of the current Hamdan decision/Arlen Specter bill progression. I've reprinted his post in its entirety.

How to explain the Democrats getting knocked back on their heels by Arlen Specter’s FISA proposal? I don’t have a complete explanation, but here’s what I think is a significant part of the answer.

After public outcry over domestic spying and other secret, extra-constitutional programs and a Supreme Court decision squarely against the Administration, many of us—myself included—at a deep and perhaps unconscious level presume that the Administration will have to cede some ground, compromise, reign itself it in.

The louder you argue, the more humble you should be when proved wrong, right? Argue loudly and wrongly enough times, and you start to lose credibility, right? By the unwritten Queensbury rules many of us live by, admission of error, of defeat, of poor judgment is the right and noble thing to do.

Democrats seem to have a highly evolved (and perhaps misplaced) sense of sportsmanship: magnanimous in victory; chastened in defeat. Whereas Dems will rise to a political fight when they deem circumstances warrant, Republicans consider politics nothing but a fight, with peace the exception, not the rule.

And so it is that many Democrats are unprepared to face an adversary who has a fallback position situated just inches behind the frontline, and a fallback position just inches behind that, and so on indefinitely.

When the Dems overrun a Republican position, they celebrate like drunken Hessians, only to sober up and realize they have gained very little ground at all and that the Republicans are still fighting.

I think Republicans have the more accurate view of politics. It is an ongoing battle. Power is a moving target, hard to seize, harder still to hold on to.

So rather than viewing Hamdan as a sweeping victory to be relished as a vindication of principle, Dems need to see it, as Republicans do, as a starting point for negotiations. Negotiation, like diplomacy, is war by other means.

The Republicans have opened negotiations with a demand, in the form of Arlen Specter’s proposal, which is as much as they can hope to achieve, in an effort to tilt the range of possible outcomes in their favor.

Specter’s proposal dramatically expands presidential power at the very moment that many Dems and most commentators mistakenly perceive expansive executive power to be on the wane.

There is a lesson here, and a fight to be fought, if the Democrats will sober up.

Thanks to Josh's TPM

Four Pairs

Rami G. Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and US citizen, is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. He is also an internationally syndicated political columnist and author. He currently has an insightful piece up at Salon.com. Here's an excerpt:

You need to understand the relationship among four pairs of actors to grasp the meaning of the escalating attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel in recent days. The four pairs are Hamas and Hezbollah; the Palestinian and Lebanese governments; Syria and Iran; and Israel and the United States.

Simplistically, President George W. Bush has depicted this latest round of war as a clash between good and evil, while the Israeli government has tried to blame Palestinians and Lebanese who only want to make war against a peace-loving Israel. The more nuanced and complex reality is that, collectively, these four pairs of actors play roles in the ongoing fighting, as we witness the culmination of four decades of failed policies that have kept the Middle East tense, angry and violent.

Hezbollah and Hamas emerged in the past decade as the main Arab political forces that resist the Israeli occupations in Lebanon and Palestine. They enjoy substantial popular support in their respective countries, while at the same time eliciting criticisms for their militant policies that inevitably draw harsh Israeli responses. We see this in Lebanon today as the Lebanese people broadly direct their anger at Israel for its brutal attacks against Lebanese civilian installations and fault Palestinians, other Arabs, Syria and Iran for perpetually making Lebanon the battleground for other conflicts—but more softly question Hezbollah’s decision to trigger this latest calamity.

Read Khouri's full article here

Arlen SpectEr EXposed (again)

Not unlike the phony "maverick" John McCain, Arlen Specter has somehow developed the reputation of being tough and independent—unwilling to allow the Bush administration to go too far. That is, of course, utter nonsense. Jack Balkin thoroughly exposes the disingenuous and dangerous "compromise" NSA bill which Spector has authored.

Although the judicial review provision is worrisome, it is by no means the most troubling thing about this bill. Specter's proposed legislation, if passed in its present form, would give President Bush everything he wants. And then some. At first glance, Specter's bill looks like a moderate and wise compromise that expands the President's authority to engage in electronic surveillance under a variety of Congressional and judicial oversight procedures. But read more closely, it actually turns out to be a virtual blank check to the Executive, because under section 801 of the bill the President can route around every single one of them. Thus, all of the elegant machinery of the bill's oversight provisions is, I regret to report, a complete and total sham. Once the President obtains the powers listed in section 801, the rest of the bill is pretty much irrelevant. He will be free of Congressional oversight forever.

Read Balkin's full article here

Glenn Greenwald adds his thoughts here

Billmon on Israel's Dilemma

He who fights terrorists for any period of time is likely to become one himself.

—Israeli historian Martin van Creveld
The Transformation of War 1991

There is something qualitatively different about the latest cycle of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although I’m having trouble in my own mind hanging a label on it.

Maybe it’s the fact that the Israelis have more or less abandoned the pretense that they’re fighting specific “terrorist” groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and are openly waging war on the Palestinian people (and now the Lebanese people) as a whole.

Maybe it’s because the proximate triggers for the current fighting – the Palestinian raid on an Israeli outpost on the Gaza frontier and Hezbollah’s ambush of an Israeli patrol just inside the Israeli border -- were both military attacks against legitimate military targets, instead of explicit acts of terrorism, like the 2000-2001 Palestinian suicide bomb offensive. This suggests a major change in both tactics and capabilities (although terrorism, in the form of rockets randomly shot into Israeli towns and cities, obviously remains a key part of the Hezbollah and Hamas arsenals)

Maybe it’s simply the speed and scale of the escalation, which has progressed from a limited incursion in the Gaza Strip to the wholesale dismantling of the Hamas government to a full-scale blockade of Lebanon in just two weeks. If the Israeli expectation was that an initial display of overwhelming force would send a message to the other side that there are red lines that must not be crossed, then the operation has already failed. Indeed, the other side has sent some surprising messages of its own – one of which landed yesterday in downtown Haifa.

If I had to pin it down, I would say the big difference between this crisis and similar past episodes is how completely off balance the Israelis seem to be – lurching from reaction to reaction without any clear plan or strategy. The Gaza incursion was thrown together, more or less on the fly, which led to some embarrassing public squabbling within the Israeli cabinet. The attempt to decapitate Hamas’s civilian leadership by arresting the entire Palestinian cabinet smacked of improvisation, and largely failed. Hezbollah’s intervention clearly took Jerusalem by surprise, which is probably why the response has been so disproportionate: the Israelis are rather desperately trying to regain the initiative.

Read Billmon's full take here

"Back Off"

Steve Clemons has a terse, important update on the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. I've reproduced it in its entirety.

Headlines throughout the American media read:

MAJOR ESCALATION

as Israel has intensified its bombing campaign of the Beirut Airport and highways.

45 Lebanese civilians are reported dead.

Although I do not have independent confirmation, I heard the rumor from a well-placed source that Secretary of State Rice attempted to increase pressure on Israel to stand down and to demonstrate "restraint". The rumor is that she was told flatly by the Prime Minister's office to "back off".

Rice is not one to be told to back off without the other party paying a price. Israel's outrageous, over-the-top military escalations were exactly what the most militarist fanatics of Hamas wanted and exactly what Hezbollah wanted to prompt. Those in the middle of the extremists on all sides are getting crushed.

And it may take this kind of out of control danger that FINALLY wakes up some tough-minded strategists in the White House, Defense Department, and State Department to compel Israel to back off and all other parties to wind down their militant elements.

Note to George W. Bush, please call your father, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft for some advice. Also, get Elliott Abrams to recuse himself NOW from any further counsel on these matters as his perspective is too close to Israel -- and dispassionate counsel is needed.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Read Steve's excellent blog here

The Rape of a Girl; The Rape of a Country

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq, there have been several notable sources of intelligent, unfiltered, first-hand accounts of the war and its (mostly) awful repercussions. One of the best known, most intelligent and revealing of those accounts has come from the regular entries of a blogger who calls herself riverbend. When you read the following excerpt from her most recent post, bear in mind that it was written by an obviously bright, well-educated person who, while critical of the occupation all along, was at one time hopeful that the Americans would learn from their early mistakes, and that the situation would actually become better.

Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?

In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.

It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.

If you had any doubt that our actions in Iraq have, and will continue to radicalize countless thousands of people, and that we will be paying a heavy price for decades to come as a result, they should now be erased.

Read riverbend's full post here

Deconstructing the Iran Myth

Lawrence of Cyberia does a thorough job revealing the dishonesty of the most inflammatory hot-button U.S. claims about the current Iranian leaders. And while none of those leaders may be candidates for sainthood, LOC's well-documented research really does expose the insidious hyperbole of those who are attempting to demonize Iran.

There are some terms that people in Islamic and Western countries should never say to each other, because they confuse and inflame more than they clarify. The most obvious ones would be “jihad”, “crusade” and “great satan”. All of them are used in somewhat innocuous ways by the people who utter them, but mean something completely different – and much more inflammatory – to foreign ears.

I would like to propose a topical addition to the list of words that should never be used, and that would be “myth”. Specifically when it is used in the context in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Egyptian Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mehdi Akef have mentioned it in recent months, i.e. to speak of "the myth of the Holocaust" (Egyptian Islamists deny Holocaust; BBC News, 23 Dec 2005) . They know what they mean by the phrase, and I know what they mean, but if they think that most people over here are going to hear it and respond with anything more profound than “Holocaust deniers!” then they are deeply ignorant of how central is the Holocaust in U.S. perceptions of the Middle East, how superficial is the U.S. public discourse on relations with the Muslim world, and how much that discourse is framed by those who are pushing for a “clash of civilizations” and who are currently fixated on finding a justification to bring about regime change in Iran.

Everyone knows what a myth is, right? It’s just a fairytale; an unlikely, invented story featuring toga-clad heroes of the ancient past. So when Ahmadinejad and Akef talk of the “myth of the Holocaust” they are simply – as the BBC suggests in the report I linked to above – saying that the Holocaust never really happened, and can be written off as Holocaust deniers. Except that that’s not what a “myth” is. (And I must be getting old, because I actually remember the days when any reporter employed by the BBC would have known the meaning of the word, and made some effort to render it accurately).

Let me tell you what a “myth” really is.

Read the full, worthwhile article here

The Israeli/Palestinian Cycle of Violence

From TomDispatch:

Journalist Sandy Tolan has spent the last years writing The Lemon Tree, An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East -- a book focused on a single stone house in Ramla, a town that was once an Arab community and is now a Jewish one. His focus was on the two families, Arab and Jewish, that have successively inhabited the house -- and on the complex and difficult friendship that formed between a member of each family. It is a moving book that the distinguished Israeli historian Tom Segev has called, "a powerful account of Palestinians and Israelis who try to break the seemingly endless chain of hatred and violence. Capturing the human dimension of the conflict so vividly… Tolan offers something both Israelis and Palestinians all too often tend to ignore: a ray of hope."

Now, when we find Israelis and Palestinians in an even more desperate place on that "endless chain," Tolan takes a moment to remind us of how deep the abyss of pain and resentment is by focusing on the part of the story we almost never hear about -- the Palestinian one -- and an anniversary few of us have ever considered.

[Tolan's article begins.]

Under the pretext of forcing the release of a single soldier "kidnapped by terrorists" (or, if you prefer, "captured by the resistance"), Israel has done the following: seized members of a democratically elected government; bombed its interior ministry, the prime minister's offices, and a school; threatened another sovereign state (Syria) with a menacing overflight; dropped leaflets from the air, warning of harm to the civilian population if it does not "follow all orders of the IDF" (Israel Defense Forces); loosed nocturnal "sound bombs" under orders from the Israeli prime minister to "make sure no one sleeps at night in Gaza"; fired missiles into residential areas, killing children; and demolished a power station that was the sole generator of electricity and running water for hundreds of thousands of Gazans.

Besieged Palestinian families, trapped in a locked-up Gaza, are in many cases down to one meal a day, eaten in candlelight. Yet their desperate conditions go largely ignored by a world accustomed to extreme Israeli measures in the name of security: nearly 10,000 Palestinians locked in Israeli jails, many without charge; 4,000 Gaza and West Bank homes demolished since 2000 and hundreds of acres of olive groves plowed under; three times as many civilians killed as in Israel, many due to "collateral damage" in operations involving the assassination of suspected militants.

Read Tolan's full piece here

A Stark look at reality in Afghanistan

Christina Lamb, like Nir Rosen in Iraq, shows what real journalism is all about. From Sunday's London Times:

...while George W Bush and Tony Blair insisted on declaring Afghanistan a success — and a model for the pacification of Iraq — they apparently forgot one crucial lesson that the British had learnt years before. “Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over” were the sage words of Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of North West Frontier Province.

Far from Afghanistan being a model for Iraq, Iraq has become a model for Afghanistan. There have been 41 Afghan suicide bombings in the past nine months, compared with five in the preceding five years. IEDs — improvised explosive devices — have become a fact of life. Three were left in roadside handcarts in Kabul last week to detonate as buses went past.

According to United Nations officials, not a day passes without a school being burnt down or a teacher being murdered, often in front of schoolchildren.

[snip]

“We need to realise that we could actually fail here,” warns Lieutenant-General David Richards, British commander of the Nato-led peacekeeping force. “Think of the psychological victory for Bin Laden and his ilk if we failed and the Taliban came back. Within months we’d suffer terror attacks in the UK. I think of my own daughters in London and the risk they would be in.”

Read Lamb's full report here

Juan Cole on Israel's Gaza tactics

The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that "we have no one to talk to" a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.

This shortsighted "strategy," which both the United States and, to a slightly lesser degree, the strangely docile Europeans have signed off on, is a recipe for continued hatred, extremism, bloodshed, injustice and festering grievances. Unless Israel and its patron summon the wisdom to take the long view and hammer out an agreement that will give the Palestinians a viable state, rather than simply trying to smash them into submission, the world's most dangerous conflict will continue to rage, with dangerous consequences for all.

Read Cole's full essay at Salon.com

Bill "Ka-Ching!" Bennett: Windbag Extraordinaire

Bennett continues to insult the intelligence of every thinking American. From Glenn Greenwald:

On this weekend's Meet the Press, Bill Bennett ominously warned the panel of journalists that Americans were growing extremely angry over the disclosures of classified information by The New York Times and other newspapers. Riding this wave of massive public rage towards the NYT, a protest was organized for yesterday by Cliff Kinkaid of Accuracy in Media along with FreeRepublic.com. The protest was heavily promoted by Michelle Malkin (who announced that she would personally attend) and other pro-Bush bloggers, who urged all patriotic Americans to attend and make their anger at the NYT heard loudly and clearly.

The protest was scheduled to take place in front of the Times' Washington Bureau, where the Al Qaeda-lovers/traitors Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau work. The protest was over the fact that the NYT has, of course, been "giving aid and comfort to al Qaeda." The protest occurred yesterday and, on a beautiful July day in Washington, a grand total of 20 outraged Americans showed up (including Cliff Kinkaid, Michelle, one of her Hot Air workers, and Matt Stoller, who filed a photographic report of the historic event -- which means that 16 protestors actually showed up).

Quote of the Week

No sooner were the flag burners hustled offstage than a new traitor was unveiled for the Fourth: the press.

–Frank Rich

Exactly right. Read Rich's full editorial (sans firewall) here

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