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Archive: POLITICS >please note: some links may no longer be active.
the Seeds of Terror: Yet Another Example Israel’s enduring use of Palestinian collaborators to entrench the occupation and destroy Palestinian resistance was once the great unmentionable of the Middle East conflict. Does this sort of behavior excuse terrorism? Of course not, but it damn well helps to explain why people would be driven to commit such desperate acts. more from Jonathan Cook
Beyond The Platitudes BEIRUT – In this week marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attack on the United States, three noteworthy events related to the US and the Middle East caught my eye: Al-Qaeda’s number two man Ayman Zawahiri released a new videotape; Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin started her foreign policy education by meeting with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an extremist organization that puts Israeli interests above American interests; and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting and dealing with the heads of state of Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, three of the most authoritarian figures in the world, not just in the Middle East. Why is this worldwide web of extremism noteworthy? It helps clarify that the terrorism scourge persists because its root causes continue to thrive. Those causes are multiple, complex, and ever changing, and relate primarily to events in four orbits: the Arab-Asian region, Europe, Israel, and American foreign policy. It is impossible in analytical or historical terms to separate the four main strands of sentiment and policy that have given birth to the contemporary Salafist terrorist movements we all suffer today: dictatorial or merely corrupt and incompetent Arab and Asian governments; violent and colonial Israeli policies; hypocritical and Israeli-influenced American policies that often manifest themselves in warfare; and, the consequent, more recent, phenomenon of demeaned and disoriented young Arab-Asian immigrants in Europe, often second and third generation immigrants. None of these four principal reasons by itself is likely to cause a person to become a terrorist. The combination of two or more often drives otherwise normal young men or women to embrace wild ideologies that promise an escape from the degradation, confusion and despair that define their lives. [snip] Terrorism is a symptom of other ailments and distortions, and a tool that fanatics use to express themselves and change conditions in society. It is not an ideology that springs out of purely religious milieus. It can be defeated and eliminated only if its underlying causes are recognized and seriously addressed. Two major trends have remained constant since that terrible day of death and destruction on 9/11: First, those who practice terror in the lands and the wider orbits of the Middle East and South Asia continue to proliferate and dissipate, making it harder to stop their criminal acts. Second, the American-led “global war on terror” persists in a mistaken emphasis on police and military actions to tackle problems that only get worse -- in part because of the political foreign policies that Washington pursues. more from Rami G. Khouri at Agence Global
"She's hunted moose. That's pretty impressive to the people in Massachusetts." – Mitt Romney, without any hint of humor, explaining to Andrea Mitchell why Sarah Palin appeals to Massachusetts voters. via Cunning Realist
The Real McCain (as opposed to McCoy) It's November 19, 2004, a mere two weeks after the election that returned George W. Bush to power, and Senator John McCain has traipsed off to New Hampshire to give a speech calling for 50,000 more troops to be sent into the quagmire of Iraq, press flesh and raise money for an expected run at the presidency in 2008. John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor and Bush family consigliere, wryly quipped about McCain's junket to the Granite State, "What took him so long?" The press corps, already bored with Bush and election post-mortems, tags along. McCain's the darling of the moment, the opinion press's favorite senator, a media-made maverick, who was sedulously courted by both John Kerry and George Bush. McCain, true to form, flirted with them both and sniped at them both, but in the end remained wedded to the GOP, even as the party fell further under the sway of neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists that McCain publicly claims to abhor. But that's all part of the McCain profile. He is the senator of the hollow protest. McCain is nothing if not a political stunt man. His chief stunt is the evocation of political piety. From his pulpit in the well of the senate, McCain gestures and fumes about the evils of Pentagon porkbarrel. He rails about useless and expensive weapons systems, contractor malfeasance, and bloated R&B budgets. But he does nothing about them. McCain pontificates, but never obstructs. Few senators have his political capital. But he does nothing with it. Under the arcane rules of the senate, one senator can gum up the works, derail a bad (or good, though those are increasingly rare in this environment) bill, dislodge non-germane riders, usually loaded with pork, from big appropriations bills. McCain is never that senator. He is content to let ride that which he claims to detest in press releases and senate speeches. A recent example. In late October, McCain went on 60 Minutes to decry a footnote in the Defense Appropriations Bill of 2004 that transferred billions of dollars from so-called Operations and Maintenance accounts for US troops in Iraq to porkbarrel projects, such as gold mines and museums, in the states of powerful senators. In his stern voice before the cameras, McCain made congressional looting sound like a treasonable offense. But what he failed to disclose is the fact that he actually voted for the bill. Not only that, he was personally approached by each senator who wanted just such a transfer of funds and gave it his seal of approval. McCain the Maverick is a merely a fine-honed act, underscored by these kinds of casual hypocrisies. more from Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch
The Backstory Behind the Conflict in Georgia Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin's jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores. Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea basin – with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best. The ultimate prize in this contest is control over the flow of oil and natural gas from the energy-rich Caspian basin to eager markets in Europe and Asia. According to the most recent tally by oil giant BP, the Caspian's leading energy producers, all former "socialist republics" of the Soviet Union -- notably Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- together possess approximately 48 billion barrels in proven oil reserves (roughly equivalent to those left in the U.S. and Canada) and 268 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (essentially equivalent to what Saudi Arabia possesses). During the Soviet era, the oil and gas output of these nations was, of course, controlled by officials in Moscow and largely allocated to Russia and other Soviet republics. After the breakup of the USSR in 1991, however, Western oil companies began to participate in the hydrocarbon equivalent of a gold rush to exploit Caspian energy reservoirs, while plans were being made to channel the region's oil and gas to markets across the world. read the rest of Michael T. Ware's trenchant analysis at TomDispatch
Reckless Indeed I've been thinking all day about McCain's surprising (shocking really) selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, and the more I think about it, the more absurd it seems to me. There's no question that, relative to John McCain and some prior notable presidential candidates, Barack Obama isn't all that experienced. That said, he's been a member of the U.S. Senate for the last four years, and during that time, he's had to grapple seriously with every issue, domestic and foreign, that he'll have to deal with if he's elected president. He's traveled the world and met with most major foreign leaders. And by all accounts, he's a very intelligent and curious person who has a deep understanding of policy issues. Indeed, he has significantly more experience dealing with national and foreign policy issues than several recent presidents did when they took office (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush). But Palin's level of experience is not even in the same ballpark. She became the governor of the 3rd smallest state in the union after John McCain launched his current campaign for president. And prior to that she was the mayor of a town of 9000 people (and according to this TNR writer, seemed to be in over her head even then). Furthermore, there's no evidence whatsoever that Palin has ever given much thought to any national, much less foreign policy issues. She has no record of scholarship and no record of having voiced opinions on major issues. That makes her, by a country mile, the least qualified person to ever find her way on to a national ticket, a reality that McCain's age and health history makes all the more significant. And it would one thing if she was someone that McCain knew well and could vouch for. But it was reported today that McCain only met Palin once--and briefly at that--before choosing her to be his running mate. Yet he's willing to put her one heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world? That's really hard to take seriously. In fact, it can't be taken seriously. It's a transparently political move, a gimmick. And it's reckless as all hell. Maybe Sarah Palin would be a brilliant leader, but McCain certainly doesn't know that. He doesn't know her at all. What does that say about his judgment? It says he's willing to take a major gamble on behalf of the country, and that's scary. That's not a quality I want in a president.
Candidate of Change? Not. I've received a few e-mails from readers wondering why I would be critical of Obama, when the alternative would be such a disaster. To be clear, I agree that a McCain Presidency would be a continuation – if not a deepening – of the national nightmare which the U.S. has experienced for the past seven years. However, I do not believe that it is healthy to pretend that Obama will make dramatic changes in our system of government. In fact, I see rapidly mounting evidence that it will, for the most part, be (corporate) business as usual, and in some ways that is more insidious than the brazen transgressions of the Bush administration. Gary Leupp provides just one on many recent examples of what I mean: I will tell you having visited Israel just a month and a half ago, their general attitude is, ‘We will not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.’ My job as president would be to try to make sure we are tightening the screws diplomatically on Iran, that we mobilize the world community to go after Iran’s nuclear program in a serious way. … We have to do it before Israel feels its back is against the wall. – Barack Obama, 8/25 The candidate of “change,” having just selected the ultimate Washington insider as his running mate, again makes clear how thoroughly he embraces the Lobby and the foreign policy establishment. He might have said: Well, as I understand it, the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, stated with a high degree of confidence that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Some Bush administration officials, especially those around Vice President Cheney, act as though they know that there is one and it threatens the whole world. But they’ve pulled that act before, haven’t they?–scaring us all about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction which, it turned out, didn’t exist. I visited Israel a month and a half ago, and I know there are some people there who see Iran as their main enemy. They’d like the U.S. to bomb Iran. But I frankly question their judgment. My foreign policy will be based upon my administration’s assessment of America’s interests, which do not include antagonizing more Muslim nations or reinforcing the perception that the U.S. gives Israel everything it wants, even as it ceaselessly expands illegal settlements on the occupied West Bank and— lets’s speak frankly—treats Palestinians as blacks in South Africa were treated under apartheid. I’d like to remind you that in the summer of 2003 the Iranian government through the Swiss ambassador to Tehran proposed talks with the U.S. The Iranians were willing to exchange support for the Arab League proposal for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, withdrawal of military support for Hamas and Hizbollah, and resolution of U.S. concerns about its nuclear program in exchange for normalized diplomatic and trade relations with the U.S. Although Secretary of State Colin Powell was interested in the offer, Vice President Cheney rejected it out of hand. The initiative was not even reported in the press at the time. read on at Dissident Voice
Corporate Media Bias: An Egregious Example TIME FOR THE AP TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR.... About half way through Barack Obama's convention speech last night, he told his audience, "That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now. So let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am President." He did just that, with an emphasis on depth. Taxes, healthcare, energy policy, education -- Obama left little doubt about what he would do if elected. Indeed, the emphasis on details, which his detractors have said is a weak point in his campaign, was hard to miss. Chris Cillizza said, "Obama's speech was more substance than style; more specifics than rhetorical flourish." Greg Sargent said the speech "was strong because of its specificity." Robert Gordon and James Kvaal added, "In its depth and detail, his speech resembled a State of the Union address more than a typical stump speech." And yet, there was the Associated Press, doing what it's been doing far too often: parroting the Republican line. Barack Obama, whose campaign theme is "change we can believe in," promised Thursday to "spell out exactly what that change would mean." But instead of dwelling on specifics, he laced the crowning speech of his long campaign with the type of rhetorical flourishes that Republicans mock and the attacks on John McCain that Democrats cheer. [...] The crowd at Invesco Field cheered deliriously, but Republicans almost surely will decry the lack of specifics. This is utter nonsense. Obama detailed his policy vision in a way few convention speeches of the modern era have. What, exactly, did the AP's Charles Babbington expect Obama to do? Break out a chalk board and some pie charts? Start reading white papers? read on in the Washington Monthly
The Important Question Lawyers for an Ethiopian national who lived in Britain -- housed at Guantanamo since 2004 and now scheduled for a military commission trial for war crimes -- have asked a British court to order the British government to provide Mohamed's lawyers with information about Mohamad's interrogations in Pakistan and Morocco. Last week, the British High Court of Justice concluded that British intelligence officers had unlawfully assisted the United States in interrogations as part of an unlawful incommunicado detention. Mohamad also alleges that he was tortured, and that the confessions he gave -- the principal evidence in his war crimes trial -- were the subject of unlawful coercion. He is seeking Britain's evidence of his interrogations. Today, the State Department sent an e-mail that was provided to the British court, arguing that the disclosure of the information would cause "serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence-sharing relationship and thus the national security of the UK." Which is no doubt true: If the UK court publicly reveals that the United States rendered Mohamad to Morocco and Pakistan in order that he could be tortured, the U.S. government will be none too pleased, and will naturally be reluctant to trust the British in the future with secret evidence of torture and other war crimes. Which will in turn mean that the U.S. will be much more wary about conscripting the British to assist in such crimes. The important question, of course, is whether "lasting damage" to that sort of unlawful US-UK "relationship" is something that we should regret, and that the British court should endeavor to avoid. via Marty Lederman's and Jack Balkin's blog
Biden Moira Whelan makes an important, subtle point about Obama's choice for VP: I, like others, have been impressed with his mastery of the broad range of national security issues and his early identification of emerging challenges. He knows how various factors fit together and his judgment is for the most part, excellent. But what has impressed me most, for years, is his staff. He knows how to pick ‘em, and that’s no small thing. Brilliant people come and go in DC, but rarely do they also have the ability to pick quality staff the way Biden does. His folks always are among the brightest from a policy standpoint, but also possess a sophisticated political acumen. It’s a rare but valuable combination. I’ve had the privilege of working for, and with, many of these folks, and count them among my friends. I’ve always gotten the sense that their boss respected them for their abilities and listened to their ideas rather then them simply having to implement his. They were encouraged to push hard and dig deep on issues. They were challenged by Biden, but in a good way. The Boss reads, talks to experts, and asks questions. He challenges his staff and calls them to the carpet. Why? Because the most important thing is to get the answer right and to be honest about the challenges we face. As a result of having a staff that is so good, Biden is almost never behind the curve of policy developments. He’s proactive, not reactive.That’s a huge strategic advantage, and as a result, becoming a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a badge of validation among foreign policy folks. Further than that, you’ll hear from many foreign policy experts how closely they work with Biden. They’re not making it up. Biden counts on a broad range of people to get the job done right. Many, many people feel they have influence on his approach and as a result when the final product is announced, they feel invested, but the view is all Biden, and usually better. Biden collects the best. Simple as that. This translates in a big way to an executive branch position. If Obama-Biden is the winning ticket, lots of people will be brought in to reverse the reckless policies of the past 7 years and put America on the right track. With such a small window of time and so much to do, picking the right people is critical. Biden recognizes talent, and has learned how to pick people with sound policy judgment but who can also navigate the interagency, and the multiple political roadblocks thrown in the path of even the purest of intentions. This could be his greatest contribution to an Obama administration. If Obama-Biden takes command on January 20, it will be with the most talented people available to implement what needs to be done, not just the people who campaigned well.
The Rapidly Evolving Arab World BEIRUT -- The memorandum of understanding for easing sectarian tensions signed in Beirut Monday between Hizbullah and an obscure Lebanese Salafist (Sunni fundamentalist) Islamist movement isn’t likely to have a major impact on anything. But it is highly symbolic in revealing the constantly evolving line-up of major political actors throughout the Arab world. Key forces in the Arab world are very different from what they were a generation ago, and new actors keep emerging, representing different constituencies, and embracing new tactics and strategies. Dealing with this new line-up of players in the region by applying old rules -- from the Cold War or the Arab-Israeli conflict of the 1970s to 90s -- only generates failure and frustration. There is indeed a “new Middle East” being born, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted in mid-2006, but its contours and protagonists are very different from what she had in mind. These days, any attempt to address the many issues that define the Middle East and its often tense relations with the West will get nowhere unless it comes to grips with changing political sentiments, activism, legitimacy, and representation throughout the region. This is especially relevant for those who experience persistent failure, or stalemate, or just befuddlement in their dealing with the Arab world. And that would include Israel and the United States -- but increasingly, Europe. [snip] Sunni Salafist Islamist movements are most diverse in their ideologies and tactics. They range from criminal terror groups like Al-Qaeda, and smaller cousins like Fateh el-Islam, to community-based peaceful movements that focus on education, charity, and other faith-based service activities that are as popular among American presidential candidates in the United States as they are among Islamists in the Arab world. What does this mean in everyday life? If you are a stranger walking around South Beirut or South Lebanon with a camera today, you will have to clear your movements with Hizbullah. If you do the same in parts of Tripoli, you will need to do the same with an assortment of Sunni Salafist movements. If you try this in the Jordanian provinces, tribal groups will enquire about you. In central Damascus or other Syrian towns, the security services will check you out. In Dubai, Bahrain or Doha, you will likely encounter a person offering you a cell phone deal or a 30-year low-cost mortgage on a new apartment overlooking a replica of Windsor Castle. more from Rami G. Khouri at Agence Global
The War in Georgia: Further Perspective Many are drawing analogies between the U.S.-led attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 and the Russian attack on Georgia earlier this month. Most, including Russian officials, do so to highlight the hypocrisy of Washington’s criticism of Russia’s action. Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, went so far as to state last week, “If we had the territorial integrity of Serbia in the case of Kosovo, then we would have the territorial integrity of Georgia . . . with regard to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.” He added that NATO’s war in 1999 “takes away the right to criticise Russia for any present or future action.” Surely one can ask: What right has the U.S., which led the assault on Yugoslavia ostensibly to protect the beleaguered Albanians of Kosovo, to condemn the Russians for advancing into Georgia to protect the South Ossetians who’d just been subjected (as AP acknowledges) to “a massive assault”? What right does the U.S., which led the bombardment of Belgrade, have to criticize Russia’s bombardment of Gori (sparing the Georgian capital of Tbilisi)? What right does the U.S., which this year recognized Kosovo as an independent country, have to challenge the Russian foreign minister’s pronouncement that Tbilisi can “forget about” retaining South Ossetia and Abkhazia whose citizens plainly want out of the Georgian state? There are many parallels between these two situations, the first and second wars in Europe since 1945. In 1989 Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic exploiting Serbian nationalism revoked Kosovo’s autonomous status. In that same year the Soviet Republic of Georgia’s parliament abolished South Ossetian autonomy, soon imposing Georgian as the only official language throughout the country. In both cases the withdrawal of autonomy was met with resistance, and ethnic violence and repression produced tens of thousands of refugees. In both cases a major power intervened, ostensibly to help the victims, with overwhelming military force. But without justifying either attack it’s important to recognize some important differences. Kosovo is thousands of miles away from the U.S., whereas South Ossetia borders Russia. Kosovo has little relationship to U.S. national security, while the situation in South Ossetia impacts the security of the whole Caucasus region including southern Russia. Milosevic sent federal troops into Kosovo in 1998 to back up police in suppressing the separatist movement; Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili bombed the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali in an effort to destroy the autonomous government and occupy the city with tanks. When the U.S.-led NATO forces attacked Yugoslavia, Kosovo was under Belgrade’s control. NATO had to bomb Kosovo and Sarajevo to force the Serbian troops out. When Russia attacked Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia had acquired de facto independence and South Ossetia’s legislature had requested integration into the Russian Federation. Milosevic and Saakashvili both felt justified in attacking secessionist movements in their countries. But the former attacked a disordered province lacking effective leadership while the latter attacked what was in essence a country effectively divorced from Georgia since 1992. Bill Clinton acted in 1999 to show the world what happens when a third-rate power defies U.S. demands. (These had included a demand for Belgrade to allow NATO forces access to the roads and airspace not only of Kosovo but the entire country of Yugoslavia in order to avoid a U.S. attack.) He acted to expand NATO’s reach as global policeman; one of the largest U.S. bases in the world has since been established in Kosovo and 15,000 NATO-led forces remain there. Ostensibly the U.S. moved to protect the Kosovars from “ethnic cleansing” at the hands of the Serbs, but it was clear within a year that the pre-war allegations of hundreds of thousands of victims of Serbian violence, disseminated by the likes of U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen, were pure disinformation. Only about 2000 persons in Kosovo (including Serbs and Roma) had been killed before the bombing started. The real ethnic bloodletting began with the war. In part., the Russian leadership acted on August 7 to show what happens when the leader of a neighboring country hostile to itself launches missile attacks against Russia’s friends (and in the South Ossetian case, for the most part Russian passport-bearers). It acted to assure its friends that Moscow has the will and might to protect them. On the face of it, the Russian action against Georgia seems more justifiable and understandable than the U.S. action against Yugoslavia. But that of course is not saying much. Both the U.S. and Russia are imperialist powers whose rulers go to war for reasons of profit and geopolitical strategizing that have little to do with the stated casus belli. more from Gary Leupp at Counterpunch and a follow-up from Leupp and a typically fine overview from billmon
TakE The Gloves Off! An astute reader of Josh Marshall's site makes the point very well: I find it disconcerting that Obama, after all this time, is still playing with kid gloves with McCain on issues of security and national defense. If Obama thinks he can win with McCain cornering the market on security issues, he and Kerry will have lots to talk about next year in the Senate Cloakroom. McCain's first reaction to the Georgia crises was to urge action that would commit the United States to war with Russia (by having Georgia immediately admitted to NATO). Obama needs to point out that, in this test for whether McCain is ready to be commander in chief, McCain grossly overreacted. Indeed, several days later, after McCain had time to cool down, he retracted his statements, saying that military intervention should not be considered. McCain fundamentally does not understand the purpose of NATO. Obama needs be repeating this series of events like a broken record. McCain overracted, and then changed his mind 3 days later. A President has no such luxury. McCain is no match for the calm and calculated actions of a player like Putin. Words such as "confused," "hot headed," "overreacting" and "indecisive" need to become synonymous with the Obama campaign's portrayal of McCain. Don't just answer back with Celebrity ads. McCain is playing his Georgia actions as a victory in every speech, and unless unanswered, it will become common wisdom. We keep waiting for Obama to do what we were promised he'd do: take McCain down at the knees on his one point of perceived strength. It is so much harder to do this after the narrative continues to harden. Josh's TPM
Russian Aggression? Far From It... The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, declared that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered". George Bush denounced Russia for having "invaded a sovereign neighbouring state" and threatening "a democratic government". Such an action, he insisted, "is unacceptable in the 21st century". Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that in 2003 invaded and occupied - along with Georgia, as luck would have it - the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised Lebanon's infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers? You'd be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an all-out attack on South Ossetia to "restore constitutional order" - in other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor, amid the outrage at Russian bombardments, have there been much more than the briefest references to the atrocities committed by Georgian forces against citizens it claims as its own in South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali. Several hundred civilians were killed there by Georgian troops last week, along with Russian soldiers operating under a 1990s peace agreement: "I saw a Georgian soldier throw a grenade into a basement full of women and children," one Tskhinvali resident, Saramat Tskhovredov, told reporters on Tuesday. Might it be because Georgia is what Jim Murphy, Britain's minister for Europe, called a "small beautiful democracy". Well it's certainly small and beautiful, but both the current president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and his predecessor came to power in western-backed coups, the most recent prettified as a "Rose revolution". Saakashvili was then initially rubber-stamped into office with 96% of the vote before establishing what the International Crisis Group recently described as an "increasingly authoritarian" government, violently cracking down on opposition dissent and independent media last November. "Democratic" simply seems to mean "pro-western" in these cases. The long-running dispute over South Ossetia - as well as Abkhazia, the other contested region of Georgia - is the inevitable consequence of the breakup of the Soviet Union. As in the case of Yugoslavia, minorities who were happy enough to live on either side of an internal boundary that made little difference to their lives feel quite differently when they find themselves on the wrong side of an international state border. Such problems would be hard enough to settle through negotiation in any circumstances. But add in the tireless US promotion of Georgia as a pro-western, anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to bring Georgia into Nato, the routing of a key Caspian oil pipeline through its territory aimed at weakening Russia's control of energy supplies, and the US-sponsored recognition of the independence of Kosovo - whose status Russia had explicitly linked to that of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - and conflict was only a matter of time. The CIA has in fact been closely involved in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. But under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a fully fledged US satellite. Georgia's forces are armed and trained by the US and Israel. It has the third-largest military contingent in Iraq - hence the US need to airlift 800 of them back to fight the Russians at the weekend. Saakashvili's links with the neoconservatives in Washington are particularly close: the lobbying firm headed by US Republican candidate John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has been paid nearly $900,000 by the Georgian government since 2004. But underlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush administration's wider, explicit determination to enforce US global hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a resurgent Russia. That aim was first spelled out when Cheney was defence secretary under Bush's father, but its full impact has only been felt as Russia has begun to recover from the disintegration of the 1990s. Over the past decade, Nato's relentless eastward expansion has brought the western military alliance hard up against Russia's borders and deep into former Soviet territory. American military bases have spread across eastern Europe and central Asia, as the US has helped install one anti-Russian client government after another through a series of colour-coded revolutions. Now the Bush administration is preparing to site a missile defence system in eastern Europe transparently targeted at Russia. By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power. That a stronger Russia has now used the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should hardly come as a surprise. What is harder to work out is why Saakashvili launched last week's attack and whether he was given any encouragement by his friends in Washington. more from Seumas Milne in The Guardian (U.K.)
Rushing toward War As the Bush Administration begins its final months in office, it has embarked upon two courses of action that will pre-empt the scope of the incoming Obama or McCain administration and will plague America for years to come. The first of these is to solidify, literally in concrete, our occupation of Iraq. Despite frequent denials by senior officials and multiple prohibitions exacted by the Congress, we have constructed a string of permanent bases to house our military forces and apparently intend to keep them there. That is wrong and against our national interests. We were told some seven years ago that attacking Iraq was justified because Iraq had nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and was about to attack America. Iraq had none of these weapons and could not have attacked America. But our occupation of that little country has done us almost as much damage as though it actually had attacked us: One and a half million of our soldiers have served in Iraq. Over 4,100 of them are dead and about 400,000 have been wounded. (The official figure of 20,000 wounded is ridiculous: for this year alone, more than 300,000 will need medical treatment.) Our army is exhausted. To replenish it, we are scraping the bottom of our social barrel and bribing the disadvantaged, some even with criminal records, to enlist; meanwhile, our “best and brightest” middle grade officers, including West Pointers, are quitting in droves. We have now been in occupation of Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. The occupation already has cost us, even adjusted for inflation, more than the Vietnam war. Every minute costs our country nearly half a million dollars. the rest of William R. Polk's excellent piece can be read at Juan Cole's blog
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished - unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. – Voltaire
How Obama Should Respond to the "Celebrity" Charge Over at the The New Republic, Michael Crowley writes: More handwringing about Obama's optics: I see that tickets for his acceptance speech at Denver's Invesco Field stadium sold out instantly. In light of the apparent traction Republicans got with their 'Celebrity' meme you have to wonder if the Obama team is reconsidering the wisdom of this move. I would recommend any possible stagecraft to minimize the event's scale. No. No. No. Crowley's instinctive response here demonstrates much of what's been wrong with the Democratic approach to politics over the last decade or so. Obama's ability to draw large enthusiastic crowds is one of his chief political strengths. It is ludicrous not to showcase that strength just because your opponent has--in classic Rovian style--tried to turn it into a liability. That's how you lose elections. The way to deal with the "celebrity" charge is not to lower your profile; it's to turn that charge back around on McCain. If I were advising Obama, I'd tell him to get up there in front of that sold out stadium and say the following... read the rest of Anonymous Liberal's excellent advice at his blog
ThinK Again When a bomb exploded in the Shaja’iyyah district of Gaza last month, killing four Hamas operatives and a 5-year-old girl, Hamas blamed Fatah, and moved violently against its remaining Gazan enclaves. Fatah forces then pursued retribution against Hamas in the West Bank. Another round of intra-Palestinian conflict and bloodletting ensued, with the leading pro-Fatah family in Gaza, the Hilles clan, fleeing to Israel in the hopes of making it to the West Bank. Think that Palestinians nearing civil war and the ongoing collapse of a central Palestinian governing entity serves Israel’s security interests? Think again. Those who are taking comfort in the televised images of Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence or in the “propaganda coup” of Human Rights Watch condemning both the Hamas government in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority are dangerously misguided. These events neither exonerate Israel for its own violations of human rights and international law in the territories nor improve Israel’s own strategic environment. Nearly 50 days ago, a cease-fire took hold in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Under the terms of the deal, which was mediated by Egypt, both Israel and Hamas would cease attacks against the other side’s territory, Hamas would prevent other Palestinian factions from firing rockets at Sderot and its environs, and Israel would gradually ease the closure that was devastating the economy and daily life of the Gazan population. The cease-fire is fragile, but largely effective — and the reality on both sides of the line is incomparably better, if far from normal. When Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama visited Sderot on July 23 and held an open-air press conference with the world’s media, he was flanked by an impressive display of rocket fragments. What went uncommented upon was that absent the cease-fire, such a press conference would have been unimaginable. Daniel Levy is one of the most perceptive and level-headed observers of the Israeli/Palestinian problem. His full piece can be read at his blog Prospects for Peace
Cross Your Fingers It is worth remembering where the blame for this neutering of fiscal policy lies: squarely with the Bush administration. At the start of this decade, the budget stood in surplus to the tune of 2.4 per cent of GDP. On unchanged policy, this was expected to grow to a surplus of 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2008. This year's actual deficit of 3 per cent of GDP therefore represents a worsening of more than 7 per cent of GDP, or roughly $1,000bn. Almost all of this deterioration is due to policy: to tax cuts, spending increases, and their associated debt-service costs. That projected surplus was a priceless gift to the White House. It offered the Bush administration ample scope for outlays on homeland security and other unforeseen priorities, and moderate tax cuts as well, all within a budget balanced over the course of the business cycle. Instead, the administration knowingly opted for outrageous fiscal excess - adding insult to injury with its phony tax-cut sunset provisions, designed for no other purpose than to disguise the long-term fiscal implications. Eight years on, this startling record of fiscal irresponsibility has all but taken fiscal policy off the table as an available response to the slowdown. The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left. read conservative Clive Cook's full piece in the Financial Times
RAND Confirms The Obvious The RAND Corpration, long associated with conservative and pro-military figures and analyses, has now completely and utterly rebuffed the essence of the Bush administration's fundamental post 9/11 policy – the idiotically named (and conceived) "War on Terror". How do terrorist groups end? The evidence since 1968 indicates that terrorist groups rarely cease to exist as a result of winning or losing a military campaign. Rather, most groups end because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they join the political process. This suggests that the United States should pursue a counterterrorism strategy against al Qa'ida that emphasizes policing and intelligence gathering rather than a “war on terrorism” approach that relies heavily on military force. [snip] What does this mean for counterterrorism efforts against al Qa'ida? After September 11, 2001, U.S. strategy against al Qa'ida concentrated on the use of military force. Although the United States has employed nonmilitary instruments — cutting off terrorist financing or providing foreign assistance, for example — U.S. policymakers continue to refer to the strategy as a “war on terrorism.” But military force has not undermined al Qa'ida. As of 2008, al Qa'ida has remained a strong and competent organization. Its goal is intact: to establish a pan-Islamic caliphate in the Middle East by uniting Muslims to fight infidels and overthrow West-friendly regimes. It continues to employ terrorism and has been involved in more terrorist attacks around the world in the years since September 11, 2001, than in prior years, though engaging in no successful attacks of a comparable magnitude to the attacks on New York and Washington. Al Qa'ida's resilience should trigger a fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy. Of course, this was quite clear to many at the very beginning of this long, sordid, misguided, and still ongoing "war". But it is somewhat heartening to see RAND produce such a clear and stinging rebuke. read the full rasearch brief at the RAND site
Half a House, Yet So Much More It must be the smallest Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories: just half a house. But Palestinian officials and Israeli human rights groups are concerned that it represents the first stage of a plan to eradicate the historical neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, cutting off one of the main routes by which Palestinians reach the Old City and its holy sites. The home of Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd has been split in two since 1999 when the Israeli courts evicted their grown-up son Raed from a wing of the property. The elderly couple has been trying to regain possession, but were stymied last week when an Israeli high court backed the petition of a group of settlers and ordered the immediate eviction of the Khurds. The decision paves the way for the takeover of 26 multi-storey houses in the neighborhood, threatening to make 500 Palestinians homeless. The verdict has been denounced by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and in the past few days the Khurds have been visited by foreign diplomats, including from the United States. In a letter to consulates in Jerusalem, including those of the United States, Britain, France and Germany, Rafiq Husseini, Mr Abbas’s aide, warned that the takeover of the Khurds’ home was part of a wider drive to change the geography of Jerusalem by forcing out Palestinians and replacing them with Israeli settlers. Such a development would deal a death blow to already-strained peace negotiations, he wrote. Today there are 250,000 Israeli Jews living illegally in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli government has announced that thousands more apartments are to be built — despite promises to the US government to freeze settlement growth. Israeli human rights groups and Palestinian solidarity activists, meanwhile, have been staging a 24hour vigil at the Khurds’ home in the hope of preventing the order’s enforcement. the rest of Jonathan Cook's piece at Dissident Voice
Surprise, Surprise: Wars Generate Terrorism It now seems clear that war -- at least these two wars -- generates the additional threat of increased Salafist terrorism, according to an important and ongoing study by an American scholar. Stephanie Kaplan’s PhD research at MIT has explored the linkages between war and terrorism, from the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had a chance to chat with her a few days ago at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, where we are both serving as visiting fellows and writing texts. What she had to say was enlightening, and should be heard by all Americans who care about how their leaders conduct foreign policy, including foreign wars. Starting from the premise that Iraq had never been a major front in the “Global War on Terror” before the US-led invasion in March 2003 made it so, now five years on, she wanted to explore a critical question for scholars and policymakers alike: Has the Iraq War increased or decreased the jihadist terrorist threat? She notes that American, European and other officials sometimes offer contradictory assessments of this matter, suggesting both that Iraq is a main driver of global terrorism or that blowback from Iraq is overstated. Assumptions prevail, she says, because empirical data and reliable research on the matter are in short supply. She touched on these issues in a brief article published in the spring 2008 issue of précis, the newsletter of the MIT Center for International Studies. Among the key points she makes: 1. We cannot assume the blowback from the Iraq war will exactly mirror the Afghanistan war. The quality and quantity of combat experience in Iraq are very different from the Afghan precedent, and many more jihadis went to fight in Afghanistan than in Iraq. 2. The Iraq war poses a threat in part through the linkages it has with other centers of jihadist activity, and by its generating and transferring capabilities (bomb-making and suicide bombers, for example) to other conflict zones (Algeria, or European cities where attacks have been launched). Counting the number of attacks globally is not a good measure of how the Iraq war impacts on terror threats elsewhere, because quantitative data alone cannot adequately measure Iraq’s impact on global jihadist movements. Victory” in Iraq will not necessarily erase the years of damage caused by the war. “That damage,” she says, “will take the form of additional jihadist capabilities generated on and off the battlefield. As an episode of organized violence, wars simulate the terrorist experience and prepare the surviving mujahedeen for a lifetime of post-war terrorist activity… Wars train a new cadre of battle-hardened fighters and leaders who return from the frontlines armed with a rolodex full of the most violent contacts on the planet. And wars serve as a magnet for money and weapons that can be deployed in the war zone and beyond. If the Iraq conflict creates more jihadist resources than it destroys, then the defeat of Al-Qaeda in Iraq will be tantamount to winning one of many battles but losing ground in the war against Islamist extremism.” more from Rami G. Khouri
Confused About Obama's Stance on Iraq? Not surprisingly, it requires a foreign citizen and news organization to spell it out. As November's American presidential elections approach, Barack Obama's message on Iraq is being widely interpreted as "flip-flopping" and a "retreat" from a previously unequivocal stance of fully withdrawing the US occupation forces. This is to misunderstand Obama, who is not someone who shoots from the hip. There is much more to his words than cursory reading could unravel. His remarks before the 2003 invasion resonated well within the American antiwar movement. His scathing references to the Bush administration's folly and his demands for "ending the war" were probably decisive in winning him the Democratic party nomination against Hillary Clinton, whose vote for war in 2003 ultimately crippled her credibility as the commander-in-chief who would bring it to an end. Obama himself has reacted angrily to claims of a policy U-turn: "For me to say I'm going to refine my policies is I don't think in any way inconsistent with prior statements and doesn't change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I'm going to end it as president." Earlier this month he resorted to an op-ed article in the New York Times to emphatically state: "On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war." As always in examining the words of politicians, let alone Obama (who now has 300 foreign policy advisers), the devil is in the details. Here, Obama's "ending the war" declarations begin to look far from reassuring, even before he "refines" his line after meeting the US commander, General Petraeus, in Iraq. Obama sees Iraq as part of a wider theatre of war and potential wars engulfing the entire Middle East, where US strategic goals and interests are at stake. So his obvious shift on the "surge" operations in Iraq (underlined by deleting criticisms of it from his website last week) is strengthening his call for "redeployment" from Iraq to Afghanistan. His current strategy could be summed up as: de-escalate the war in Iraq, escalate it in Afghanistan, and talk to Iran. On Iran, his offer of talks was coupled with an alarming, Bush-style threat. "I'll do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything," Obama told a gathering of the pro-Israel lobby group, Aipac, in April. He is echoing the sentiments of his famous anti-Iraq war speech in 2002, in which he repeatedly stressed that he was not opposed to all US wars. read the rest of Sami Ramadani's piece in The Guardian (U.K.)
A War of Convenience? President Bush and Vice President Cheney could have reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in lots of ways. What they chose to do was launch a global war on terror -- potentially a war without end. This decision now seems like a big mistake. In the name of the war on terror, we have invaded and occupied a country that had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, we have emboldened our enemies, we have lost and taken many lives, we have spent trillions of dollars, we have sacrificed civil liberties, and we have jettisoned our commitment to human dignity. But was it an honest mistake? Did Bush and Vice President Cheney declare war because they believed it was the best way to guarantee the safety of the American people? Or did they do it in a premeditated -- and ultimately successful -- attempt to seize greater political power? New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals," offers evidence of the latter. (See yesterday's column for an overview.) In an online interview with Harpers blogger Scott Horton, Mayer sums up her findings this way: "After interviewing hundreds of sources in and around the Bush White House, I think it is clear that many of the legal steps taken by the so-called 'War Council' were less a 'New Paradigm,' as Alberto Gonzales dubbed it, than an old political wish list, consisting of grievances that Cheney and his legal adviser, David Addington, had been compiling for decades. Cheney in particular had been chafing at the post-Watergate reforms, and had longed to restore the executive branch powers Nixon had assumed, constituting what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called 'the Imperial Presidency.' "Before September 11, 2001, these extreme political positions would not have stood a change of being instituted -- they would never have survived democratic scrutiny. But by September 12, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were extraordinarily empowered. Political opposition evaporated as critics feared being labeled anti-patriotic or worse." Andrew J. Bacevich called attention to this point in his review of Mayer's book in The Washington Post on Sunday: "Mayer recognizes . . . the intimate relationship between the global war on terror and Addington's new paradigm. The entire rationale of the latter derived from the former: no war, no new paradigm. Hence, the rush to declare that after Sept. 11, 2001, everything had changed. The insistence that the gloves had to come off, that the so-called law enforcement approach to dealing with terrorism had failed definitively, that only conflict on a global scale could keep America safe: These provided the weapons that Addington's War Council wielded to mount its assault on the Constitution -- all of course justified as necessary to keep Americans safe. Dan Froomkin's full piece can be read in The Washington Post
Jimmy Carter, 29 Years Ago Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never... Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas... Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel... I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000. These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay... Point four: I'm asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our nation's utility companies cut their massive use of oil by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source... Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board... Point six: I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems... Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our nation's strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives... I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act. We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice. Doesn't quite match up with his right-wing, media driven reputation, does it? via Jon Schwarz's Tiny Revolution
Why not? IF YOU want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map - as Napoleon recommended. Anyone who wants to guess whether Israel and/or the United States are going to attack Iran should look at the map of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that carry between a fifth and a third of the world's oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and Israeli attack on Iran do not take account of this map. There is talk about a "sterile", a "surgical" air strike. The mighty air fleet of the United States will take off from the aircraft carriers already stationed in the Persian Gulf and the American air bases dispersed throughout the region and bomb all the nuclear sites of Iran - and on this happy occasion also bomb government institutions, army installations, industrial centers and anything else they might fancy. They will use bombs that can penetrate deep into the ground. Simple, quick and elegant - one blow and bye-bye Iran, bye-bye ayatollahs, bye-bye Ahmadinejad. If Israel attacks alone, the blow will be more modest. The most the attackers can hope for is the destruction of the main nuclear sites and a safe return. I have a modest request: before you start, please look at the map once more, at the Strait named (probably) after the god of Zarathustra. THE INEVITABLE reaction to the bombing of Iran will be the blocking of this Strait. That should have been self-evident even without the explicit declaration by one of Iran's highest ranking generals a few days ago. Iran dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it hermetically with their missiles and artillery, both land based and naval. If that happens, the price of oil will skyrocket - far beyond the 200 dollars-per-barrel that pessimists dread now. That will cause a chain reaction: a world-wide depression, the collapse of whole industries and a catastrophic rise in unemployment in America, Europe and Japan. In order to avert this danger, the Americans would need to conquer parts of Iran - perhaps the whole of this large country. The US does not have at its disposal even a small part of the forces they would need. Practically all their land forces are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The mighty American navy is menacing Iran - but the moment the Strait is closed, it will itself resemble those model ships in bottles. Perhaps it is this danger that made the navy chiefs extricate the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf this week, ostensibly because of the situation in Pakistan. This leaves the possibility that the US will act by proxy. Israel will attack, and this will not officially involve the US, which will deny any responsibility. Indeed? Iran has already announced that it would consider an Israeli attack as an American operation, and act as if it had been directly attacked by the US. That is logical. NO ISRAELI government would ever consider the possibility of starting such an operation without the explicit and unreserved agreement of the US. Such a confirmation will not be forthcoming. So what are all these exercises, which generate such dramatic headlines in the international media? continue reading Uri Avnery's piece at Gush Shalom
One of Many Problems The new FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance. It allows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The court will not be told specifics about who will be wiretapped, which means the law provides woefully inadequate safeguards to protect innocent people whose communications are caught up in the government's dragnet surveillance program. The law, passed under the guise of national security, ostensibly targets people outside the country. There is no question, however, that it will ensnare many communications between Americans and those overseas. Those communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments. This law will cripple the work of those of us who as reporters communicate regularly with people overseas, especially those in the Middle East. It will intimidate dissidents, human rights activists and courageous officials who seek to expose the lies of our government or governments allied with ours. It will hang like the sword of Damocles over all who dare to defy the official versions of events. It leaves open the possibility of retribution and invites the potential for abuse by those whose concern is not with national security but with the consolidation of their own power. read the rest of Chris Hedges' Op-Ed in the L.A. Times
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