Tag: us

If only

Charles Krauthammer, neo-con editorialist extraordinaire, does his part for the Bush re-election campaign today in Sacrificing Israel, a piece that I suppose is meant to scare supporters of Israel into voting for Kerry. This is his premise:

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

Krauthammer then does some deconstruction of Kerry’s foreign policy, including his plans to re-energize the Middle East peace process. So when America will “re-engage” with the peace process, according to Krauthammer this really means turning your back on Israel, embracing Yasser Arafat and encouraging Palestinian terrorism. The entire argument is of course ridiculous, especially when you consider that the two candidates basically have no difference on Middle East policy and that Kerry has done everything to please American supporters of Israel. (See Kerry Tries to Out-Sharon Bush by Ron Chepesiuk and Bush and Kerry Dance to the Tune of Ariel Sharon by Simon Tisdall for some examples.)

Incidentally, the Krauthammer piece may be part of a coordinated campaign by pro-Israeli right-wingers to discredit Kerry: take a look at this ridiculous editorial by Zev Chafets accusing Kerry of faking tears while visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel. Chafets relies on base manipulation of the Holocaust to spread the idea that anyone who doesn’t fully support Ariel Sharon wants to see Israel destroyed. Take a look at the depths to which he goes:

But the threat facing Israel now isn’t primarily military. Countries, including many Kerry prizes as members of “the international community,” are waging diplomatic war aimed at turning the Jewish state into a pariah. This is not a threat you can discern from the cockpit of a jet fighter, but it is real enough. And its desired effect is on display at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

In a time of jihad, an American president who doesn’t see that – and feel it – is a dangerous friend to have.

Joseph Lieberman has also raised the issue that Kerry is not taking a strong enough stance in Israel, particularly with the important Jewish population in Florida — the fourth largest outside of Israel.

If only it were true that Kerry wanted to re-engage in the peace process and apply pressure on the Israelis to finally get out of the Occupied Territories that they’ve held for 37 years. The truth is Kerry’s Middle East policy is uninspiring at best and as criminally negligent as Bush’s at worst. The only hope is that a Kerry administration, at least, may not have neo-con Likudniks in positions of influence.

The Secret in the CIA’s Back Pocket

I’ve always thought that one of the most astonishing about the way the Bush administration handled 9/11 is that no one was held to account. Not the people who didn’t get the warnings to the president, not the White House for ignoring that warning if it did get to it, not the Air Force personnel that failed to scramble in time to intercept the third plane, not the CIA for having lousy intelligence — nothing. And even the 9/11 Commission eschews assigning blame to specific institutions or people.

Apparently, the CIA has been working on its own report on 9/11 which does assign blame and treats some people pretty harshly. But, as Robert Scheer reports on Alternet, we’re not about to see it before the elections:

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17- month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been “stalled.” First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

“What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that,” said the intelligence official. “The report found very senior-level officials responsible.”

Let’s hope those senior-level officials will lose their jobs on November 2.

Regional endorsements

Micah Sifry tells us of a Bush campaign “Jewish outreach” message that “really made his blood boil.” It reported that John Kerry had received endorsements from the PLO. Here’s an excerpt:

Last spring, John Kerry boasted that a number of foreign leaders supported his campaign, but refused to name them. This week he received his first foreign-leader endorsement — from the Palestinian Authority. Congratulations, Mr. Kerry. An organization known the world over as the linchpin of terrorism has now awarded you its support. When Kerry was talking about his popularity in foreign capitals, he said “you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader” that supports him. Well, it’s unlikely that he met the leaders bestowing this week’s endorsement at Katz’s Deli.

This was supposed to be based on something Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, had said — according to the Jerusalem Post, which doesn’t actually quote him saying he supports Kerry, but rather lamenting the fact that the US elections were taking place at the Palestinians’ expense:

“I keep saying that we have many times to pay for these American elections unfairly,” Shaath told a news conference. “During an American election and the three months after, allies of the United States should do more work than they would do otherwise.”

This is what, for instance, Al Jazeera reported.

Other news sources that have reported on this also give the impression that the Palestinians would prefer Kerry, but despite bold headlines never really back up their claims. And in general, the real story with Shaath’s statement is that he was unhappy with how much attention the Bush administration is giving the roadmap — which is to say, none. Realistically speaking, no foreign leader is going to express a preference for one candidate or the other — it’s bad politics, and especially so if you’re the Palestinian Authority.

In fact, guess which Middle Eastern country has officially endorsed Bush in the region?

The answer: Iran.

The Middle East Awaits

It’s always good when an establishment newspaper points out the obvious even when it’s not part of the current election talking points. The NYT did so when it penned an editorial on the criminal neglect of the Middle East peace process, which should have been a priority after the 2000 election, after 9/11 and should be now.

Instead, they have joined in offering Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, virtually uncritical support for whatever military operations or settlement expansions he chooses to undertake. After pronouncing anathemas on the discredited Yasir Arafat, they have stood by waiting for a new, less compromised Palestinian leadership to somehow emerge miraculously to replace him. This is not a policy. It is an abdication of leadership that costs Israeli and Palestinian lives, deepens mistrust and makes an eventual peace that much harder to achieve. Washington cannot afford to remain on such a destructive course. It must work to rebuild its influence as a force for Middle East peace.

Update: It’s also heartening to see that most of the letters published in response to the editorial are supportive.

On the anti-Semitism report

Although its intention is worthwhile, I disagree with Tom Lantos’ bill requiring the State Department to prepare an annual report on global anti-Semitism that has been signed by President Bush.

Lantos, the sole Holocaust survivor in Congress, pushed the idea amid reports of increased anti-Semitic incidents in Europe and continued propaganda against Jews and Israel in the Arab media.

The State Department had opposed his proposal, saying it would send the wrong signal around the world to single out anti-Semitism for special treatment over other human rights problems and stressing the department was already reporting on the issue.

Bush signed the bill Saturday without comment. But his signature was expected, especially in an election year in which the Jewish vote in swing states could prove important to Bush’s re-election contest against Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry.

As the State Department argues, anti-Semitism is already covered in its reports, notably its human rights report. Singling out anti-Semitism as a special form of racism is a bad idea, if only because it dissociates it from racism and makes it something “special” — something that will fuel the arguments of the anti-Semites. Highlighting anti-Semitism like this also exaggerates the phenomenon. In the case of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism is admittedly rife and occasionally gets violent, as it did in Morocco in 2003 or in Tunisia in 2002, it will compound a common misperception that anti-Semitism is the biggest form of discrimination taking place.

Taking Egypt as an example, there has been much real state persecution against Shias or Ba’hais, but no case of anti-Jewish persecution. Furthermore, if we’re going by religious groups then the most persecuted people are those accused (often falsely) of being Sunni fundamentalists. There are 12-15,000 alleged fundamentalists being held in Egyptian jails, often without trial. The vast majority of them are non-violent. Yet we’re more likely to hear about anti-Semitic articles in the Egyptian state press or TV. Focusing on anti-Semitism over other groups’ rights simply distorts the picture, which is in nobody’s interests. They should get serious about promoting human rights for everybody — Jewish or not.

Winning Hearts and Minds

The Washington Post has an article about an as-yet-unreleased report on Radio Sawa, one of the Bush administration’s attempts–along with Hi Magazine and Al Hurra TV station–to change the hearts and minds in the Arab world. The article says the report–which was commissioned by the State Department’s inspector general– is highly critical of Sawa, which is one of the reasons it (the report) hasn’t been released yet. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (which oversees all of the above mentioned media channels, as well as Voice of America Radio) has strongly disagreed with the findings of the reports and is seemingly in the process of “watering” it down.

I do freelance work for VOA radio here in Cairo, so I know a little about this. A few years ago VOA’s Arabic radio service was discontinued, and Radio Sawa was created instead. Sawa features a blend of pop music and short news. In the opinion of most VOA journalists, Sawa is not a serious news station (not to mention that it’s an interloper). Instead of 3 to 4 minutes reports that used to air on VOA’s Arabic service, Sawa airs at the most 45 second long news items. Also, supposedly the quality of reporting has suffered (this is noted in the leaked State Department report as well). People also complain that while VOA Arabic had a solid, age-old reputation and wide-spread name recognition, Sawa does not enjoy the same esteem, and is seen as fluff and progaganda (Arabs have wondered why Sawa doesn’t openly state that it’s a US government station). I have heard of interviewees granting interviews to VOA and specifically stipulating that they not be aired on Sawa. If people are really refusing to give Sawa interviews then that really does speak to a generally low opinion of the station.

The Washington Post article quotes Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, “VOA unions are obsessed over knocking Sawa.” It’s certainly true that VOA employees have resented Sawa since its creation–they have even sent petitions to Congress about it. Part of this may be territoriality, but most of it I think is seasoned professional journalists watching a good news service get dismantled and a crappy radio station created in its place.

The whole way Sawa has been created has all the Bush administration trademarks:

1) Appoint an ideologically sympathetic businessman to run the operation (much as advertising mogul Charlotte Biers was appointed to her disastrous stint as head of public diplomacy). The guy running the whole Hi/Sawa/Hurra show is BBG member Norman J. Pattiz, a radio tycoon from California. With what I’m guessing is little experience in public diplomacy, journalism or the Middle East, he has focused single-mindedly on “building audience,” making Sawa a pop-music station to attract the huge under-25 audience in the Middle East.

2) Rely on simplistic, flawed and condescending assumptions. The idea that Arab audiences can’t be reached by a serious news channel, but rather have to be tricked into listening by a barrage of US pop music and then slipped a little bit of the news on the hour is insulting. Arabs are much more interested in current events and politics than Americans are, for one. Also, what does this approach gain? Even if the whole Middle East listens to Britney Spears, is that really going to make them start calling the invasion of Iraq a “liberation”? Arabs know when they’re being pandered to. They can listen to our music and still think our politics are bogus, and the only thing that could change that (besides the obvious, changing our politics) is to offer substantive news coverage, talk shows, in-depth reports, etc.

3) Don’t consult any of the seasoned professionals who have been working in the field, thus alienating them all (see my remarks about VOA employees above). Choose your staff based on loyalty to your vision rather than on competency.

4) End up with a shallow, out-of-touch, low-quality, ideologically driven product.

5) Refuse to aknowledge criticism of the results. The Board of Governors is fighting the State Department report tooth and nail, and will probably succeed in having its conclusions re-written.

And the same issues apply to Hi magazine (which had one of the most dismal receptions I’ve ever seen) and Al Hurra, which is so in touch with the Middle East that it is run almost entirely by a cabal of pro-American Lebanese Maronites. These initiatives are all part and parcel of the Bush administration’s huge failure in public diplomacy–a failure to engage in any kind of open, substantive, respectful dialogue with people in the Middle East, because these people are not seen as valid interlocutors but rather as children that need to be brainwashed into agreement using whatever the most effective and shallow commercial means are available. (Hum, sounds like their attitude to the American public). And not only are these methods reprehensible, they don’t work.

Scowcroft on Bush and Sharon

That wishy-washy liberal,Brent Scowcroft, tells the Financial Times what he thinks of the relationship between Bush and Sharon:

But speaking to the FT, Mr Scowcroft, 79, went a step further in
attacking some of the president’s core foreign policies. “Sharon
just has him wrapped around his little finger,” Mr Scowcroft
said. “I think the president is mesmerised.”

“When there is a suicide attack (followed by a reprisal) Sharon
calls the president and says, ‘I’m on the front line of
terrorism’, and the president says, ‘Yes, you are. . . ‘ He (Mr
Sharon) has been nothing but trouble.”

Mr Scowcroft also cast doubt on Mr Sharon’s plan to withdraw from
the Gaza Strip, which last week Dov Weisglass, a leading Israeli
adviser, said was intended to prevent the emergence of a
Palestinian state.

“When I first heard Sharon was getting out of Gaza I was having
dinner with Condi (Rice) and she said: ‘At least that’s good
news.’ And I said: ‘That’s terrible news . . . Sharon will say:
‘I want to get out of Gaza, finish the wall (the Israelis’
security fence) and say I’m done’.”

Baghdad Year Zero

The essential Iraq article of September seems to be Baghdad Year Zero, a Harper’s piece by Naomi Klein, which is both an interesting political essay and a fine example of investigative business journalism. It’s all about the neo-cons’ dream of making Iraq a shining example of neo-liberal economic policy-making, and how that dream failed miserably in the face of reality and probably helped fuel the degeneration of the situation in Iraq.

The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer’s reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves. These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this must be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be stronger than greed itself. 

The era of tough oil

The Chronicle of Higher Education reviews two books on The End of Easy Oil and concludes that the “securitizing” of oil issues has led and could lead to more instability and war in the Middle East:

“Rather than develop a sustained strategy for reducing our reliance on such sources, he says, American leaders “have chosen to securitize oil – that is, to cast its continued availability as a matter of ‘national security,’ and thus something that can be safeguarded through the use of military force.”

Klare argues that our demands for energy and those of other major powers will require the petroleum-rich Gulf states to “boost their combined oil output by 85 percent between now and 2020. … Left to themselves, the Gulf countries are unlikely to succeed; it will take continued American intervention and the sacrifice of more and more American blood to come even close. The Bush administration has chosen to preserve America’s existing energy posture by tying its fortunes to Persian Gulf oil.”

Even more worrisome, Klare says, is the intense and growing competition among countries such as the United States, China, India, and those in the European Community over petroleum supplies. “This competition is already aggravating tensions in several areas, including the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea basins,” he writes. “And although the great powers will no doubt seek to avoid clashing directly, their deepening entanglement in local disputes is bound to fan the flames of regional conflicts and increase the potential for major conflagrations.”

“Muslims teach their children to hate”

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has sponsored a survey on perceptions of Muslims in the US, in which almost one third of respondents associate the term Muslim with a “negative image” (and only 2% with something positive). You can also see the entire survey here.

I find something like this interesting because it raises such a host of related questions. The way Islam is portrayed in the Western media for example, which is almost always as violent or irrational. Not to say that Islam can’t be very intolerant and isn’t used to spread intolerance (Muslims should ask themselves why about half of the American respondents said “Islam oppresses women.”) But I don’t think it’s the case with Islam more than with any other religion. I mean, when we talk about Islam as a violent religion, have we forgotten the Crusades? the Inquisition? Abortion clinic bombings?

Also, the way all conflict in the Middle East is reduced to religion. The Palestinians happen to be Muslims, but the violence in the Occupied Territories has to do with nationalism, not religion. That goes for a lot of Arab countries, where the roots of violent action are more political/social/economic, and religious terminology is used to frame and give legitimacy to grievances.

Finally, I think the current US administration bears a lot of responsibility for negative stereotypes about Muslims. Bush has made several disclaimers about how all Muslims are not terrorists. But if you want to be running a perpetual and amorphous war, and you want to drum up support for it, then you need a perpetual and amorphous enemy, and all the talk of “evil-doers” and “thugs” and “ideology of hate” has rendered the entire Middle East, in many Americans’ minds, one large hotbed of fanatical, freedom-hating, inhuman terrorists. This is convenient.