Tag: us

Hillary Clinton on Israel

From Hillary Clinton’s website, her position on the two-state solution:

Hillary Clinton believes that Israel’s right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from violence and terrorism, must never be questioned.

The fact that the Clintons, after George W. Bush, are the worse thing that happened to US foreign policy in the Middle East must never be questioned.

Leaked doc shows open-ended US stay in Iraq

No clear end to occupation:

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

The authorisation is described as “temporary” and the agreement says the US “does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq”. But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces – including the British – in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries. The agreement is intended to govern the status of the US military and other members of the multinational force.

[From Secret US plan for military future in Iraq | World news | The Guardian]

US struggles to explain AFRICOM vision

US struggles to explain AFRICOM vision:

Gen Ward argued that AFRICOM ‘recognises the essential relationship between security, stability, economic development, political advances, things that address the basic needs of the peoples of a region and, importantly, the requirement to do those efforts in as collaborative a way as possible – not to take over the work of others, but to ensure the work that is being done complements the work that others are doing in pursuit of those same endeavours’.

However, the presentations at RUSI that followed that of Gen Ward made it clear that the US track record of intervention in the 20th Century – in Africa as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia – is making the promotion of AFRICOM as a benevolent force an uphill struggle.

‘We cannot ignore the notion that AFRICOM will be used to prop up friendly regimes given how this has happened in the past,’ said Dr David Francis, director of Bradford University’s Africa Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Francis cited US support for the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko from 1965-97 in Zaire (to which the US was the third largest donor despite Mobutu’s poor human rights record) and its close ties with Liberia during the 1980s (which the US saw as a bulwark against Marxist movements on the continent) as examples of how the US has pursued its own interests in Africa in the past.

The link above is only to a small part of the article, if anyone has access to the full thing, I’d appreciate an email…

Congress: 404 to 1 in giving Israel a free pass

This post is not about Ron Paul, since I am not a libertarian and do not agree with most of his views outside of foreign policy (specifically his argument for the end of American empire in the Middle East and major cuts in defense spending). But there is something deeply wrong with Congress when this kind of deeply flawed, lob-sided resolution can go through with only one vote against:

On Wednesday, March 5, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 951, which condemns the ongoing Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, holding both Iran and Syria responsible for “sponsoring terror attacks.” Additionally, the resolution claims that “those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields …”. For the full text of House Resolution 951, please click here.

This resolution problematically includes a strong defense of the recent Israeli incursions in Gaza. The following is one such exert: “Whereas the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups…”

The resolution passed the House with an unequivocal majority of 404 to 1 with four representatives voting present and nineteen abstaining. Who was the lone Member of Congress to stand up to the Israel Lobby? Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) not only voted against HR 951, but also made a very strong statement explaining why he opposed such a biased pro-Israel statement.

Below is Rep. Paul’s statement he gave to the House before the vote:

Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to H. Res. 951, a resolution to condemn Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. As one who is consistently against war and violence, I obviously do not support the firing of rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations. I believe it is appalling that Palestinians are firing rockets that harm innocent Israelis, just as I believe it is appalling that Israel fires missiles into Palestinian areas where children and other non-combatants are killed and injured.

Unfortunately, legislation such as this is more likely to perpetuate violence in the Middle East than contribute to its abatement. It is our continued involvement and intervention – particularly when it appears to be one-sided – that reduces the incentive for opposing sides to reach a lasting peace agreement.

Additionally, this bill will continue the march toward war with Iran and Syria, as it contains provocative language targeting these countries. The legislation oversimplifies the Israel/Palestine conflict and the larger unrest in the Middle East by simply pointing the finger at Iran and Syria. This is another piece in a steady series of legislation passed in the House that intensifies enmity between the United States and Iran and Syria. My colleagues will recall that we saw a similar steady stream of provocative legislation against Iraq in the years before the US attack on that country.

I strongly believe that we must cease making proclamations involving conflicts that have nothing to do with the United States. We incur the wrath of those who feel slighted while doing very little to slow or stop the violence.

The Gaza Bombshell

I haven’t had time to read the explosive Vanity Fair article on the US-Fatah coup attempt against Hamas yet, but from what I hear about it, it would confirm many of the allegations made around the time of Gaza takeover and that has been published in the Arabic press and elsewhere, not to mention some of the allusions made in the De Soto report leaked last year.

I was sent former Palestinian National Security Chief Mahmoud Dahlan’s response to the article, which he obviously denies. Dahlan has long been said to be at the center of the US-Israeli-Fatah plot against Hamas.

Dahlan’s response

More later.

The Myth of the Surge

From Nir Rosen’s The Myth of the Surge in Rolling Stone, on the co-optation of former insurgents that had caused a decline in violence over the past year in Iraq :

But loyalty that can be purchased is by its very nature fickle. Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.

“We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority,” says Chas Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. “Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-a-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future.”

Maj. Pat Garrett, who works with the 2-2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment, is already having trouble figuring out what to do with all the new militiamen in his district. There are too few openings in the Iraqi security forces to absorb them all, even if the Shiite-dominated government agreed to integrate them. Garrett is placing his hopes on vocational-training centers that offer instruction in auto repair, carpentry, blacksmithing and English. “At the end of the day, they want a legitimate living,” Garrett says. “That’s why they’re joining the ISVs.”

But men who have taken up arms to defend themselves against both the Shiites and the Americans won’t be easily persuaded to abandon their weapons in return for a socket wrench. After meeting recently in Baghdad, U.S. officials concluded in an internal report, “Most young Concerned Local Citizens would probably not agree to transition from armed defenders of their communities to the local garbage men or rubble cleanup crew working under the gaze of U.S. soldiers and their own families.” The new militias have given members of the Awakening their first official foothold in occupied Iraq. They are not likely to surrender that position without a fight. The Shiite government is doing little to find jobs for them, because it doesn’t want them back, and violence in Iraq is already starting to escalate. By funding the ISVs and rearming the Sunnis who were stripped of their weapons at the start of the occupation, America has created a vast, uncoordinated security establishment. If the Shiite government of Iraq does not allow Sunnis in the new militias to join the country’s security forces, warns one leader of the Awakening, “It will be worse than before.”

An interesting piece with a lot of surprisingly negative commentary by US forces and officials — read it all.