On This Veteran's Day -- WAKE UP, AMERICA!

I, for one, am old enough to remember (as a young boy) when Veterans Day was still called Armistice Day, in commemoration of the agreement of 11 November 1918 that ended the shooting of the "Great War" - though only after tens of thousands of doughboys (and, literally, millions of their British, German, French, Russian, Ottoman, and Anzac brothers-in-arms) had died often agonizing deaths, most of them in miserable trenches.  

I grew up on post-World War II movies (and played backyard war games) that celebrated American GIs  - especially heroes like the tiny Texan Audie Murphy (who went to his death in an airplane crash still tormented by nightmares of his combat experiences), reviled the Germans (and Italians) they fought, but  reserved a special (unequivocally racist) scorn for the "Japs" (or "Nips") and, in movies like "Pork Chop Hill," slightly later, the Chinese who for a while overwhelmed American forces in the UN "police action" that came to be known as the Korean War.

But ever since the mid-1960s, I've seen my government shove hundreds of thousands of young American men (and, in recent decades, women) into the maw of horrific combat in faraway places, to fight wars where the US had no business going in the first place (in Vietnam, and Iraq) and/or  tried to achieve a "victory" that was simply beyond its capacity (in Vietnam and, especially, Iraq and Afghanistan).  In the process, more tens of thousands of young Americans killed, maimed, disfigured, or emotionally scarred (like my brother-in-law Tony, a wonderful man whose brow beaded in sweat when, only months ago, he recounted for me - after years of never speaking about it, at least to me - his personal horrors of Vietnam combat).

So, on this Veterans Day 2011, I thank Tony, and honor his service and his sacrifice.  And I also thank, and honor the service, of my students Tim, Matt, Marshall, and Greg, all of whom laid their lives on the line in Iraq.

But I also don't want my government shovelling any more young Tony's into that gaping Great White Shark maw of Useless War.  . . .

which is exactly where they're going to be headed if those now beating an ever louder tattoo to drum up war have their way.  I speak of those like Billy Kristol, other neocon worthies like Gordon Chang, as well as rodeo clowns like Rick Perry (whose intellectual agility has been on display for weeks on national TV.  Really, Texans, you made this oaf your governor?!  This is the best you people can do?!) - and now, the GOP "moderate" Mitt Romney (Greg Scoblete at Compass provides the actual wording.  At least Romney can quote Latin.  I suppose the closest Perry ever got to that would have been from reading names on the Texas Rangers' roster.)  And let's not forget Netanyahu's cheerleaders at AIPAC - all of them intent on riling up Congress' blood lust against Bibi's new Hitler, those nefarious Iranians.

From M. J. Rosenberg - a commentator who professes a love for Israel as Israel was originally meant to be (which is not what it has now become; see Gershom Gorenberg's just released book - ) comes today an exhortation that we honor American veterans on this Veterans' Day by rejecting the continuing calls to go to war with Iran.

To put it simply. An attack on Iran by Israel or the United States would embroil the Middle East in war, would threaten the world's oil supply and economy, would likely unleash a massive missile attack by Hezbollah on Israel, would jeopardize 100,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East, would solidify the Iranian regime's waning support among the population, and still would delay the Iranian nuclear program by only 2-3 years.

Insanity.

So what's to be done about Iran?

An attack will not deter whatever motivation Iranians may have for a nuclear bomb. In fact, an attack is one way to ensure that the Iranians do get a bomb (to protect themselves from future attacks). And further sanctions, which AIPAC has made a litmus test for campaign support, will only hurt ordinary Iranian citizens without affecting the nuclear program.

No, there is only one way to deal with Iran and it is the one we have never tried: unconditional, comprehensive negotiations.

No, not the kind of baby step talks both sides occasionally propose, but real negotiations that puts everything on the table: Iran's nuclear program, Israel's refusal to sign the NPT, Iran's threats against Israel and its unremitting hostility to it, Iranian support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, U.S. attempts to overthrow the Iranian regime and our support for the assassination of its civilian scientists, and Iran's role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only comprehensive negotiations will end the Iran crisis without plunging the region, and possibly the world, into war. Only successful comprehensive negotiations can provide both Israel and Iran with the confidence to get off a course that could lead to mutual destruction. Nothing else will work and everything else has been tried. There is no alternative to diplomacy. Period.

Indeed.

The US's "Clean" Exit from Iraq

As reported in the NYT.
We're closing down "Camp Victory" - and none too soon.
But please begrudge me an observation on a rather myopic comments by an Army "historian" (whose impartiality about the US adventure in Iraq will, I'm so sure, be impeccable).  The man is quoted as saying:

“We’re not taking anything that the Iraqis had. We are only taking stuff that we put in, we utilized, and when we didn’t need it anymore, we took it home.”

Well, golly, Mr. Army Historian, before we went in, at least 100,000 Iraqis (some say closer to a million) still had their lives, and thousands more had all their limbs, both eyes, and a measure of sanity.  They also had homes, and even livelihoods.
They also had a lot more of the remnants and records of their history.  But, that's OK.  Being the swell people that we are, we've boxed a lot of it up - like the records of its Jewish community, and the records of the Saddam era - and we're keeping it in storage for them.  (Well, on the other hand, there are all those ancient cylinder seals that keep popping up on eBay.)
But, hey, other than that, it's all good, right.  Like they always told us in that paramilitary organization known as the BSA (Boy Scouts of America), our job is to leave it better than we found it.
And I'm so sure the people of Iraq would agree that we did that.
Aren't you?

Stephen Walt on the "Special Relationship"

At a time when Israeli officials have gone to a full-court press on the need to squelch the "existential threat" and impending "new Holocaust" that is Iran, and pundits are scribing sky-is-falling stuff in the wake of the IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, comes a much needed analysis from Stephen Walt.  Using a recent report from WINEP (officially an "academic" think-tank arm of Israel's propaganda machine) that preaches the gospel of Israel as indispensable ally of the US, Walt examines the "special relationship" more closely.  Nothing all that new especially, but as some commentators try to bull-rush the US into attacking Iran, what Walt writes needs to be read, and disseminated, and discussed.

Some of the essence:

the real question is not whether the United States derives certain benefits from cooperating with Israel, just as it derives benefits from cooperating with other allies. Rather, it is whether the current "special relationship" of unconditional U.S. support is in America's national interest.

The answer is no. For one thing, B&S overstate some so-called benefits -- such as military technology developed in Israel -- by failing to mention that U.S. military aid paid for lots of it instead of being given to U.S. firms. But more importantly, many of the strategic benefits that B&S describe would still be available if the United States had a normal relationship with Israel. After all, if our interests are as closely aligned as B&S maintain, it would still be in both countries' interest to share some types of military technology, to share some intelligence information, and to coordinate responses to common problems like WMD proliferation or counter-terrorism. But if we had a normal relationship, then U.S. leaders would also be free to criticize Israeli policies that don't make sense and that are not in the U.S. interest, like the continued expansion of settlements and the denial of Palestinian rights. And in a normal relationship (i.e., akin to those we have with other democracies), U.S. leaders would be free to use U.S. leverage to try to get Israel to change policies with which we disagreed.

Second, B & S understate the costs of the special relationship by a wide margin. They do this in part by ignoring or downplaying issues such as Israel's sale of advanced U.S. technology to adversaries such as China, and by its extensive espionage efforts inside the United States. But their main error is to dismiss the impact of the special relationship on our terrorism problem. They devote a single sentence to this crucial issue, saying that "U.S. support for Israel is not the primary-and probably not even the dominant-reason Islamist terrorists target the United States." This line of argument has been a familiar lobby talking point since 9/11, but it is at odds with the enormous body of evidence suggesting that U.S. support for Israel was a key cause (though not the only one) of our terrorism problem.

For example, the architect of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Ramzi Yousef, mailed letters to several newspapers taking credit for the deed and demanding that the United States terminate aid to Israel. According to Steve Coll's prizewinning book Ghost Wars, Yousef also told the U.S. agents who flew him to the United States after his arrest in Pakistan that his reservations about killing innocent civilians were "overridden by the strength of his desire to stop the killing of Arabs by Israeli troops." According to Coll, Yousef "mentioned no other motivation during the flight and no other issue in American foreign policy that concerned him."

Similarly, an abundance of evidence confirms that the issue of Palestine was important to the late Osama bin Laden, and from very early in his political career. Family members have testified that he was troubled by this issue as a young man, and it is a prominent theme in his earliest political statements. As Max Rodenbeck of the Economist wrote in a review of two books on bin Laden's writings: "the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent in bin Laden's speeches."

As for 9/11 itself, the 9/11 Commission noted that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed -- whom it described as the "principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" -- was primarily motivated by the Palestinian issue. In the commission's words: "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The commission also reported that bin Laden intervened several times in the planning process for the 9/11, in (11 in = 27.9 cm) an attempt to link the attacks more closely to U.S. support for Israel.

To be sure, terrorists like bin Laden and KSM had other grievances as well -- such as U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and for the Mubarak regime in Egypt -- but these issues are not unrelated to the "special relationship" with Israel. As both Trita Parsi and Ken Pollack have shown, the Clinton administration's strategy of "dual containment" (itself the brainchild of WINEP co-founder Martin Indyk), was adopted in good part to reassure Israel. Dual containment led the United States to keep large numbers of troops in Saudi Arabia during the 1990s, and their presence there is one of the key reasons that bin Laden turned his attention to attacking the United States.

Thus, the special relationship contributes significantly to our terrorism problem-and to all the costs associated with the war on terror-by two separate pathways. And it is one reason why former president Bill Clinton told one audience that solving the Israel-Palestine conflict would "take about half the impetus in the whole world -- not just the region, the whole world -- for terror away ... It would have more impact by far than anything else that could be done."

Third, B/S also overlook the fact that some of the problems for which Israel's help is useful are also problems that Israel helped create or exacerbate. Israel has been a useful asset for some counter-proliferation activities -- such as the bombing of a Syrian reactor site and the development of the STUXNET virus that infected Iran's enrichment facilities -- but Israel's own nuclear arsenal (which it developed in defiance of U.S. pressure) is one reason why countries such as Syria or Iran are interested in WMD in the first place. And instead of putting pressure on Israel to join the NPT or get rid of its own nuclear arsenal, the United States has consistently blocked efforts to raise this issue within the International Atomic Energy Agency, even as it has been moving heaven and earth to isolate and sanction states such as North Korea or Iran. Unfortunately, the obvious double-standard displayed on this issue has made that diplomatic effort significantly more difficult.

Fourth, B&S are silent about the other burdens that the special relationship imposes, burdens that would be substantially lighter if the U.S. had a normal relationship with Israel. Just think of the amount of time and effort that U.S. presidents and their advisors have spent on this issue over the past several decades, not to mention that vast amount of attention expended on the fruitless post-Oslo "peace process." As UN Ambassador Susan Rice admitted earlier this year, dealing with Israel-related issues at the United Nations is "a significant part of my job. It's not the majority of my time ... [b]ut it is never the smallest piece. It is always there ... It's a lot." Needless to say, her ability to advance other items on the U.S. foreign policy agenda would be enhanced were she not spending so much effort to putting out fires on Israel's behalf.

Furthermore, a normal relationship would not require the United States to veto literally dozens of U.N. Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel's occupation, including resolutions that are in fact consistent with stated U.S. policy. Nor would it require the United States to expend political capital pressing other states to oppose initiatives such as the recent resolution permitting the Palestinians to join UNESCO. And in a classic case of cutting one's nose to spite one's face, that decision triggered an lobby-inspired law requiring Congress to cut off funds to any UN agency that recognized the Palestinians. Here's what U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) had to say about that issue (my emphasis):

"This could be catastrophic for the U.S.-U.N. relationship. This could be the tipping point. . . There's a lot of bipartisan support for cutting off funding to any political U.N. organization that would do this . . . .What you are going to do is eventually lose congressional support for our participation in the United Nations. That's what's at risk here. That would be a great loss. I don't think that's in our near-term or long-term interest, but that's what's going to happen, that's where this thing is headed." 

What Graham is saying, in short, is that the "special relationship" leads to decisions that are not in America's interest. But you wouldn't know that reading B&S.

Fifth, B&S's claim that unconditional support for Israel does not preclude close ties with Arab states is misleading, as well as increasingly out of date. Countless surveys of Arab opinion confirm that U.S. policy is deeply unpopular throughout the Arab world, and President Obama's steady retreat from his original Cairo speech commitment to "two states for two peoples" has driven the U.S. image in the region to a level even lower than it was under George W. Bush in 2008. This situation does not prevent some Arab states from working with Washington, but it makes it politically costly for them to be openly associated with the United States.

Why does this matter? In the past, the United States was able to ignore Arab opinion because its primary strategic relationships in the Arab world have been with authoritarian regimes whose policies did not reflect the opinions of their citizens. The Arab awakening in 2011 has rendered this aspect of U.S. policy untenable. The final outcome of these upheavals is unknown, but most Arab states are likely to become significantly more responsive to public sentiment than heretofore. This is obviously true in the case of any new Arab democracies, but even surviving autocrats are likely to govern with a greater fear of mass upheavals and with greater responsiveness to the views of their citizens. If the United States wants the policies of Arab states to be congenial to its core interests, therefore, it will have to make its own policies more congenial to Arab peoples, and not just a handful of potentates.

Although the recent demonstrations in the Arab world were inspired primarily by local concerns and not by anti-Israel or anti-American sentiment, U.S. support for Israel and its tolerance of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians remains a powerful source of popular Arab animus. Nor should we forget that leaders such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt were despised in part because they were seen as subservient to Washington and complicit in Israel's blockade of Gaza. As Turkey's behavior under the AKP government illustrates, governments that become more sensitive to public opinion are likely to favor policies more at odds with traditional U.S. policies. In particular, we can expect these states to be less willing to accept the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza and to be less deferential to Washington's preferences. And that means that the cost of the "special relationship" is going to go up, not down, and B&S's call for ever-closer cooperation with an increasingly isolated Israel is a recipe for the progressive erosion of U.S. influence.

Finally, B&S never ask where this whole situation is headed, and whether the "special relationship" is good for Israel itself. The window of opportunity created by the Oslo Accords in 1993 has closed, and it is now abundantly clear that the United States cannot be an effective steward of the peace process while maintaining a "special relationship" with one side. So there isn't going to be a two-state solution, and once this reality becomes unmistakable, the United States will have to figure out which of the available alternatives it is going to support. Should the United States bind itself ever-more-tightly and unconditionally to an increasingly hardline Israel, even if that state continues to treat its Arab minority as second-class citizens and denies its Palestinian subjects on the West Bank all political rights? Should Washington instead press Israel to adopt the principle of "one person, one vote" throughout the territory it controls, thereby hastening the end of a "Jewish state?" Or should it continue to turn a blind eye to the steady expansion of settlements and the continued evictions, home demolitions, and coercion that this policy requires?

It is hard to see how unconditional U.S. support for this approaching train wreck is in Israel's interest, let alone America's. A better approach would be to treat Israel like a normal country and have a normal relationship with it. In other words, make U.S. support conditional on Israel's conduct and limited to those areas where our interests are genuinely aligned. In other words, deal with Israel the same way we deal with other democracies around the world. Unfortunately, organizations like WINEP were created to keep the special relationship alive and to prevent U.S. leaders from pursuing a more sensible course, even when our current approach is increasingly harmful to the United States and Israel alike.

 

OOOPS! Kuwait: No plans to host more US troops

from the AP.  This may put a twist in some shorts at the Pentagon . . .

Kuwait: No plans to host more US troops

(AP) – 3 hours ago  

KUWAIT CITY (AP) — A top Kuwaiti official has thrown doubt on American proposals to station at least 4,000 additional soldiers in the Gulf nation following the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq at the end of the year.

Sheik Jaber Al Mubarak Al Sabah, who is also defense minister, was quoted Sunday as saying there is no plan to increase U.S. troop levels in the country.

It was not immediately clear whether this was Kuwait's final word to the Pentagon or a suggestion that nothing is yet resolved and negotiations are in progress. The reference to the issue of U.S. troops was mentioned as part of a lengthy statement on a variety of issues.

A rebuff from Kuwait would be a significant blow to U.S. efforts to boost the numbers of forces in the Gulf, where the U.S. and its Arab allies fear Iran's expanding military reach. Earlier this month, U.S. officials said the Pentagon hoped to shift at least 4,000 soldiers from Iraq to Kuwait at the end of the year, pending a final decision by military planners and Kuwaiti leaders.

Sheik Jaber was quoted by the official Kuwait News Agency as saying that Kuwait will be used only as a transit point for forces, including those leaving Iraq. Kuwaiti officials could not be reached Monday to elaborate on the comments.

Thousands of U.S. troops have been in Kuwait since the 1991 war that drove Iraqi forces out of the oil-rich Gulf state. A decade-old agreement has governed the number of U.S. troops in Kuwait, but it is believed to expire at the end of this year. That would open the possibility of talks on all provisions for U.S. forces in Kuwait.

The proposed relocation of troops to Kuwait is part of a still-developing Pentagon strategy that ends the Iraq war but positions a strong U.S. force just across the border. It also fits with wider U.S. attempts to challenge the growth of Iran's ground and naval forces.

Iran's Growing Influence in Iraq

The AP (in WaPo) explores the growing influence of Iranian "soft power" (without using that term) in Iraq, from Iranian yogurt on store shelves to Iran's supplying energy to Basra.  The report also notes, of course (it's become de rigeur in the US media)  Iranian support to anti-US Shii militias there.  (And it's refreshing to see a WINEP expert - Michael Knights - quoted as saying that Iran's influence in Iraq is "overblown."  WINEP's people tend to mirror the Likud's tone - that Iran is a horrible, terrible, existential threat that needs to be crushed.)

The report also provides some useful, and important, historical grounding by reference to the horrors of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, which killed hundreds of thousands on both sides.  Yet, mystifyingly (or am I being naive?), the report focuses exclusively on the impacts of Iranian shelling on Iraqis - including the very sad story of the Iraq bride killed during an Iranian bombardment of the northern city of Mandali.  

Nowhere is mentioned the fact that the war was launched by Saddam Hussein, who sent Iraqi forces into Khuzistan (the oil-bearing, predominantly Arab region of southwestern Iran) in hopes of overthrowing the then nascent Islamic Republic - and gaining control of a major portion of Iran's vast oil reserves.

Nor, of course, is it mentioned that the US supported Saddam throughout that war.

Truly mystifying (?) is Americans' complete inability to understand (a) the impact of all of this on Iranians' views of the United States' honor and trustworthiness, as well as (b) Iran's determination never to allow Iraq - and especially a Sunni-dominated Iraq - to emerge again as a threat.

Priceless Comment on Israel's Blockade of Gaza

A comment from "Diane" at Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog, on his post in re Israel's Strangulation of Gaza:

Percentage of households in Gaza that are food insecure: 61%

Percentage of Palestinian children in Gaza who are stunted from malnutrition: 15%

Complaining that Gilad Shalit was “poorly nourished” because his diet was “primarily Gazan”: Priceless.

Priceless, indeed.  Also, chutzpah.  The article to which she refers appeared at YNet News.  The Israelis complained that he was forced to eat too much hummus.

Seriously?  You couldn't make this stuff up.

Richard Goldstone's Latest Climbdown: No Apartheid in Israel?

For reasons that commentators have yet to divine fully (but that surely relate to the post-facto abuse he took - including exclusion from his grandson's bar-mitzvah), Richard Goldstone has been trying to climb down from his celebrated (or infamous - depending . . .) "Goldstone report" on the Israeli devastation of Gaza in the (truly infamous) "Operation Cast Lead" of 2008-2009.  This week, the NY Times published his latest apologia for Israeli policy, in which he rejects as "slander" accusations that Israeli policy entails a version of the apartheid regime formerly applied to black Africans in white-dominated South Africa.

No one - including I - is going to challenge Judge Goldstone's fundamental decency, including his heroic role in undermining apartheid in his South Africa homeland.  But several commentators have called him out for his parsing of words and straw-man arguments in making his case.  Paul Pillar (at The National Interest) lays it out:

Earlier in his piece Goldstone refers to a definition of apartheid in the 1998 Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. The core of that definition is “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” Even though these words describe exactly the current situation in the West Bank, Goldstone uses two strained arguments to contend that it does not. One is that the roadblocks, the walls, the restrictions on movement, and all the other aspects of the oppression and domination are a response to Israelis feeling threatened by terrorism. This is a dangerous and open-ended rationale, because almost every group of oppressors has used a threat from the oppressed group as justification for its own actions—at least as a public rationale, and often reflecting a genuinely felt threat. Many Afrikaners certainly felt threatened by the black majority in South Africa.

Goldstone's other argument is that the arrangement in the West Bank is not intended to be permanent; Israel, he says, has agreed “in concept” to a Palestinian state. But concepts do not displace realities. After forty-four years of the reality of Israeli occupation, how much longer will concepts suffice? Indeed, introducing the idea of Israeli concepts makes the comparison with South Africa all the more appropriate. Insofar as Israeli prime minister Netanyahu has given any indication of his concept of a Palestinian state, it looks a lot like the bantustans of South African apartheid. Underlying all this is the reality that Goldstone does not mention at all: the continued Israeli colonization of occupied territory that has now reached half a million settlers and is intended to create facts on the ground that will be the basis for making some version of the current arrangement permanent.

It is appropriate to look beyond the present to the future in discussing the use of the term apartheid, because in addition to describing the current situation it can fairly be used to assess the choices Israel must make when facing the reality of demographic trends. Over the long term, Israel cannot be a Jewish state and retain all the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River and be free and democratic. If it chooses in favor of the first two, it will be an apartheid state indefinitely. In thinking about the future, we also should remember that apartheid in South Africa ended—not just as a “concept,” but as a reality. But Israel has still not produced an F. W. de Klerk (and the Palestinians have not produced a Nelson Mandela).

Apartheid has such significance in the history of South Africa—and because of the importance of that experience, in the history of human oppression generally—that it is understandable if a South African would be sparing in applying the term to other situations. Maybe out of respect to South Africa, any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian situation could eschew the term and instead say “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” But that's twelve words rather than one. And if the one word fits—as it certainly does in this instance—it will be used, and appropriately so.

Jerome Slater (at his "On the US and Israel" blog, which I heartily recommend as a source of informed, astute, eloquent analysis) likewise takes Mr. Goldstone to task:

 Goldstone wishes to distinguish between Israel’s policies within its own borders, towards the Israeli Arabs, and its policies in the occupied territories. Inside Israel, he asserts, “there is no apartheid,” and “nothing there comes close” to the international legal definition of apartheid: “systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group…”

True, the situation of the Israeli Arabs is not nearly so bad as that of the South African black population under apartheid—but (as others have pointed out) the argument is a straw man, since few if any serious critics of Israel have claimed that its policies and behavior towards its own Arab minority—as opposed to those in the occupied territories—is equivalent to apartheid. Nonetheless, while Goldstone concedes that there is too much “de facto separation" between the Jewish and Arab populations, and some Israeli “discrimination,” he ignores the proven facts that the Israeli Arabs are distinctly second-class citizens, systematically denied equal economic, social, cultural, and increasingly even legal rights.

“The situation in the West Bank is more complex,” Goldstone allows, but—and this he obviously believes is his trump card—“there is no intent to maintain an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by oneracial group” (my emphasis), a “critical distinction” in Goldstone’s view, because “South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority,” whereas “by contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.”

Here and elsewhere, close attention must be paid to Goldstone’s language: characteristically he asserts something that is clearly designed to give a certain impression, but at the same time, if read literally and the ambiguities are ignored, might provide him with an out when he is challenged on the facts, allowing him to claim he has been misunderstood.

In the first place, one may suspect that Goldstone's emphasis on the racial component of apartheid--as opposed to systematic oppression that may not be essentially racial in intention--is designed to support the argument that Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians does not constitute apartheid.  Even if not, of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that Israeli oppression is less onerous than was that of South Africa--or indeed, even worse, as a number of former South African antiapartheid activists have written. 

Perhaps my suspicion of Goldstone's true intentions in this case is mistaken--but surely not in other cases.  For example, consider again Goldstone's bald statement that “Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters”--a perfect example of a statement that is literally true but in all essentials a lie. Yes, Israel has agreed to the “concept” of a two-state settlement, but as every serious observer of the conflict understands, not the reality. Further, of course, the statement is clearly designed to convey the impression that it is only the Palestinian refusal to negotiate that is blocking a settlement—another lie embedded in a perhaps technically and narrowly true statement.

In another example of Goldstone’s polemical techniques, he writes: “The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in many cases to refute it to minimize unreasonable hardship.” You almost have to admire the technique, for in one literally true statement it tells three lies.

First, as everyone knows, another and probably the main purpose of the “security barrier” was to grab more Palestinian land and to protect the illegal Jewish settlements beyond Israel’s accepted boundaries. Second, if the Supreme Court “in many cases” ordered a change in the route of the barriers, it follows that in other cases--probably most other cases--it has refused to do so. Third, in any event the Israeli government and military have often ignored Supreme Court rulings or "interpreted" them in such a way as to essentially defeat their purpose.

In characterizing the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Goldstone also makes technically true statements that nonetheless embody false symmetries and conceal the real truths. For example, he characterizes the conflict as one in which there “are claims and counterclaims,” where “attacks on one side are met by counterattacks from the other,” where there is “hostility and suspicion on both sides,” and in which Israel “sees” its behavior as “necessary for self-defense,” whereas the Palestinians “feel” oppressed. No realities then—no Israeli oppression, no Palestinian victimization, just conflicting perceptions.

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, Goldstone clearly wishes to provide an excuse for Israel's occupation and repression of the Palestinians when he writes that "Israel, unique among democracies, has been in a state of war with many of its neighbors who refuse to accept its existence.  Note that he doesn't say that Israel "is" in a state of war, just that it "has been;" yet he says Israel's neighbors "refuse"--as opposed to "refused"--to accept its existence.  The characteristic trickery is obvious: if he had put everything in the past tense, that would lead to the conclusion that Israel would no longer have any excuses—even assuming that in the past it had--for its occupation and repression of the Palestinians. So, there's scarcely any doubt that Goldstone once again is being deliberately misleading---and that's a polite way of putting it. 

Surely Goldstone knows the facts. Israel's closest neighbors are Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. The Israeli-Egyptian conflict ended 
with the 1979 peace settlement, and the Israeli-Jordanian conflict ended in 1994--in any case, both conflicts were not primarily over any refusal 
to accept Israel's existence. For the last thirty years, Saudi Arabia has been attempting to settle the overall Arab-Israeli conflict on terms which not only fully accept the "existence" of Israel but call for full normalization of diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and the Arab world--and all 20 states of the Arab League are now on record as supporting the Saudi plan. As for Lebanon, of course it is Israel which has engaged in repeated massive attacks on that country, not the other way around.

More "Terrorists" Killed by US Joystick Aces

If you haven't read this piece in today's NYT about the wondrous achievements of our marvelous drones and their oh-so-outstanding "pilots,"  you should.  And you should then forward it to your friends, your students, whomever.  

Here it is, in its entirety.

November 3, 2011

For Our Allies, Death From Above

By CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH

London

LAST Friday, I took part in an unusual meeting in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey.

The meeting was organized as a traditional jirga. In Pashtun culture, a jirga acts as both a parliament and a courtroom: it is the time-honored way in which Pashtuns have tried to establish rules and settle differences amicably with those who they feel have wronged them.

On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them.

When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision.

I told the elders that the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed. Three of the men, at considerable personal risk, had collected the detritus of half a dozen missiles; they had taken 100 pictures of the carnage.

In one instance, they matched missile fragments with a photograph of a dead child, killed in August 2010 during the C.I.A.’s period of supposed infallibility. This made their grievances much more tangible.

Collecting evidence is a dangerous business. The drones are not the only enemy. The Pakistani military has sealed the area off from journalists, so the truth is hard to come by. One man investigating drone strikes that killed civilians was captured by the Taliban and held for 63 days on suspicion of spying for the United States.

At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward; if he carried a camera he might attract the hostility of the extremists.

But the militants never had the chance to harm him. On Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.

My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory — as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970.

But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government.

And Tariq’s extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile — most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.

Clive Stafford Smith, an American lawyer, is the director of Reprieve, an organization that advocates for prisoners’ rights.

 

Would Obama Attack Iran?

Interesting analysis from David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy, whose relatively fair-minded appraisal of Obama's achievements in re foreign policy stands in stark (and welcome) contrast to the palpable hatred that drips from the (metaphorical) pen of Charles Krauthammer.  (Krauthammer has shown himself to be viscerally anti-Obama, in the most execrable sense of that term.  That the Washington Post gives him space to rant as he does only highlights the growing quality gap between its team of commentators and that at the NY Times.)

Rothkopf's major point is that it would be unwise to count out (as so many have) the possibility that Obama will launch a US strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, although he seems convinced that if Obama were to do so, domestic politics would not influence his calculations, much less constitute his chief motive.  Rather, Obama would do so out of a conviction that Iran must not be "allowed" to develop nuclear weapons - the underlying assumption being that Iran's leadership is so unpredictable (read: irrational Muslim fanatics) that the risks would simply be too great, and that Iran's acquisition of such weapons would spur a nuclear-arms race across the region.

Seems to me that Rothkopf is (a) buying into the "mad mullah" stereotype that neocons love to spotlight, and (b) is way too far out ahead of any realistic pace for Iran's progress toward such a goal  - assuming that that is indeed their goal.  The current wisdom seems to be that the about-to-appear report from the IAEA will bring some pretty damning evidence to bear on that score (here's the CSM's take).  Whatever may be the reality of all that, Rothkopf writes as if there's a real chance that a US military strike won't produce any unmanageable consequences; that the diplomatic and other blowback can be contained:

While an attack on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities almost certainly would produce a spike in oil prices, those prices would stabilize if the attacks were successful and did not produce a protracted war. Further, with the world economy in a slump, prices are feeling less upward pressure anyway these days. However, if Iran gained nuclear weapons, it might trigger a kind of uncertainty that would be protracted and would have a longer-term effect on oil prices.

 

But doesn't this fly in the face of the fact that Iran is depending on developing its oil industry and exporting its oil in order to build its economy and infrastructure?  Moreover, China is hugely invested in Iran's oil.  If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, doesn't it stand to reason that it would want to reassure the world that its purpose in doing so is not (as Netanyahu and his Christian Zionist allies insist) to "wipe out" Israel or hold global oil supply hostage, but rather to deter the kind of aggression that Saddam launched against it in 1980 (and that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranians), and that Bush-era neocons like Richard Perle so blatantly threatened it with only a few years ago?  Since 2003, Iran has found itself ringed by the military of a nuclear-armed United States (as well as a nuclear-armed Pakistan and India - and, for that matter, Russia, a country that was Iran's nemesis going back to the days of the Qajar shahs of the 18th-20th centuries) and threatened with attack by another, very aggressive regional power - Israel - that has its own powerful nuclear force.  That the West cannot bring itself to grasp the fact that Iranians have been living for so long with the threat of attack, and might want their own nuclear deterrent for the simple reason of security, speaks more to rampant Islamophobia than to an honest attempt to engage with Iranian insecurities.

Impending Israeli Attack on Iran?

Juan Cole says no; but in doing so, he also spotlights the danger of talking up such an attack:

No one knows if [Netanyahu and Ehud Barak] are just trying to create a threatening environment for Iran, in hopes of intimidating Tehran on a range of issues, or if they are preparing Israeli public opinion for an actual strike. The problem with talking big to scare an enemy, if that is the tactic, is that the talk can spiral into action whether one likes it or not. (This mistake was probably what got Gamal Abdel Nasser into the 1967 war: Israeli hawks such as Moshe Dayan took advantage of his saber rattling to launch an attack, which could be portrayed as preemptive.)

There do indeed seem to be some sane minds in the IDF upper hierarchy (with "sane" being synonymous with opposed to attacking Iran), and as JC also notes, a lot of the current saber rattling may be a pressure tactic to try to force the Iranian leadership to back off its nuclear program.  But the fact of the matter is that we've crossed into some weird territory here.

Almost half the Israeli public seems OK with an IDF strike on Iran's nuclear installations.  (One of Cole's commenters references a recent essay by Norman Finkelstein claiming that the Israeli people are suffering from a kind of mass derangement.  I haven't seen that piece, but much of what I've been reading over the last couple of years tells me that it wouldn't be that difficult to make such a case.)

Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, seems to be feeling the heat from sanctions, growing popular dissatisfaction with his regime, and the ongoing internal struggle between his hard-line supporters and those of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  MA has steadily lost ground, and clout; but it's worthy of note that outside Iran, this man who's been castigated as a half-crazy extremist seems to be perceived increasingly as more open to the West and more liberal-minded in his approach to gender relations than is his boss, who's been clamping down in such matters.  (And note the recent imbroglio over the Iranian soccer team members whose "grab-ass" on-field celebrations may bring them a whipping by Iran's morality defenders.)  My point here is that leaders under relentless pressure - especially of a quasi-existential nature (who knows how far Netanyahu might be willing to go in an IDF strike against Iran?) - will sometimes react unpredictably, and dangerously.  Which allows me to segue to . . . 

America's silly season of presidential campaigns and elections.    We now have an embattled Mr. Obama, fighting for his own continued political existence, who's being savaged by both moderate and extremist Republicans for his alleged weaknesses on the international stage: "losing Iraq" (or so says the ever-fearful, predictably delusional Mr. Krauthammer today), "leading from behind" in Libya, being overly pusillanimous against Syria's Bashar al-Assad, coddling those upstart Turks, letting Pakistan diss the US so badly, and . . . God forbid,  failing Israel by trying to get Netanyahu to stop building colonies in the West Bank, by not preventing  Mahmud Abbas from taking the case for Palestinian statehood to the UN, . . .

. . . and, by coddling Iran.  At a time when the US economy is perhaps just beginning to revive (big news today that unemployment rate has dropped, atop earlier news that a double-dip recession seems unlikely; all bad news for the GOP), Obama's alleged failures in supporting Israel by not playing hardball with Iran are going to be rising to the top of GOP debaters' talking points.  Fox News, the WSJ, the neocons at National Review, Weekly Standard, and the Council on Foreign Relations -- all of them have begun to heat up the rhetoric about the existential threat that Iran supposedly is, not only to Israel, but the planet.

Obama will need to respond.  We can only hope that the mainstream and progressive Democrats, and thoughtful independents, who formed the core of his support in 2008 will stand by him if he tries to hold the line against the Bomb-Bomb-Iran bunch.  If they don't, Obama will have a powerful US fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf.  If the polls look bad, might he resort to some kind of "limited tactical strike" against Iran?  Or might he use that fleet to cover the IDF - and the Israel itself - in the wake of an IDF attack on Iran?

Israel and the US Congress: Funny If It Wasn't So Potentially Catastrophic

Two reports today that ought to give pause to anyone still hoping that the US can salvage some modicum of respect on the international stage.  And in each case, it's our Congress' slavish devotion to Netanyahu's hard-line doctrines and to their constituents' absurd sense of "what the Bible commands" that are setting us all up for potential catastrophe.

From the AP's Matthew Lee comes an analysis highlighting the rudderless quality of Obama's Middle East policies - and it's not so much that Obama has let go the rudder as it is the GOP refusing to let him come with 20 feet of it.  It was bad enough lo those many months ago when Bibi slapped down Barack's demand for a settlement freeze in the West Bank, only to see Congress rush to the support, not of the American president, but the prime minister of Israel.  Now the situation has become completely out of hand.

 Israel acted, announcing that it would accelerate housing construction in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state, and the West Bank. It also at least temporarily halted the transfer of $100 million in taxes that it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. Again, the U.S. response came in words only, with Carney and Nuland speaking from the same script to say that Washington was "deeply disappointed" by the steps.

Now, hamstrung in an uncertain budget and pre-election season by a Congress that refuses to censure Israel and is eager to punish the Palestinians for their U.N. aspirations, the administration is caught in a diplomatically weak and awkward position.

It could threaten to withhold the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid it provides the Palestinian Authority each year if the Palestinians don't stop their U.N. push. But it won't because it doesn't want to destabilize Palestinian institutions or endanger security gains the Palestinians have made and even the Israelis have applauded. In a bizarre twist, the administration has sought help from Israeli officials in lobbying Congress not to cut Palestinian aid, even as Israel itself is withholding tax money the Palestinians need to run their government.

It could try to threaten to withhold some of the roughly $3 billion in assistance that the U.S. provides to Israel each year if the Israelis don't halt housing construction in disputed areas or make some other gesture to the Palestinians. But Congress won't hear of it and such a step is politically unpalatable for a president seeking re-election next year.

The administration could forcefully press Congress to waive the ban on U.S. funding for U.N. agencies that recognize Palestine, arguing that it puts American and Israeli interests at risk. But, fearing a backlash from conservative lawmakers already intent on slashing foreign aid and operations spending, it cannot push the matter too hard. So once again, it is in the odd position of looking to Israel for help, urging Israeli officials to tell U.S. lawmakers that America's presence in U.N. bodies is important, especially because the U.S. is often Israel's sole ally in such forums.

It is beyond pathetic - indeed, one might deem it treasonable - that the American president has been reduced to the position of having to beg Israel's leaders to intervene with his own Congress in order to give the president even a sliver of ability to take actions necessary to safeguard American interests.  And we're talking about the same Israeli leaders who embarrassed Obama and his vice-president over the settlements issue, and who now have authorized the ramping up of settlement construction despite US protests.  And as those settlements go up, over Obama's protests, it's the US - and Obama, the most identifiable symbol of the US abroad - who will be blamed for letting it happen.

And meanwhile, all the talk in Israel now is about the impending airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities (and, for all we know, Iranian cities, government buildings, mosques - who knows?).  The consequences of such an attack have been laid out for years by sober-minded experts, including higher-ups in the Israeli military.  No matter: Bibi and Barak (the other Barack, the one named Ehud) are beating the war drums.  Yet at a time when diplomacy with Iran - a mechanism for clarifying intentions and averting possible regional war and nuclear disaster - would seem to be most crucial . . . .

There goes Congress again.  Read M. J. Rosenberg's Huffington Post essay on how AIPAC's war with Iran bill has passed the House of Representatives.

The point of the Israeli threats is to get the United States and the world community to increase pressure on Iran with the justification that unless it does, Israel will attack.

Naturally, the United States Congress, which gets its marching orders on Middle East policy from the lobby which, in turn, gets its marching orders from Binyamin Netanyahu, is rushing to do what it is told. (If only Congress addressed joblessness at home with the same alacrity and enthusiasm.)

Accordingly the House Foreign Affairs Committee hurriedly convened this week to consider a new"crippling sanctions" bill that seems less designed to deter an Iran nuclear weapon than to lay the groundwork for war.

The clearest evidence that war is the intention of the bill's supporters comes in Section 601 which should be quoted in full. (It is so incredible that paraphrasing would invite the charge of distorting through selective quotation.)

What Rosenberg goes on to quote ought to be read by every American citizen who cares about America's good name (whatever that might even be anymore):

c) RESTRICTION ON CONTACT. -- No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that -- (1) is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran; and (2) presents a threat to the United States or is affiliated with terrorist organizations. (d) WAIVER. -- The President may waive the requirements of subsection (c) if the President determines and so reports to the appropriate congressional committees 15 days prior to the exercise of waiver authority that failure to exercise such waiver authority would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.

 

If I might channel John McEnroe? . . . .

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!!!

The president of the US would not be allowed to contact Iran's leadership, even during this period of rising crisis, unless he first came to Congress - hat in hand, as it were - to get its permission?!!  Unless he came before Congressional committees now run by the likes of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen?!!!  Rosenberg lays it out, masterfully:

To call this unprecedented is an understatement. At no time in our history has the White House or State Department been restricted from dealing with representatives of a foreign state, even in war time.

If President Roosevelt wanted to meet with Hitler, he could have and, of course, he did repeatedly meet with Stalin. During the Cold War, U.S. diplomats maintained continuous contacts with the Soviets, a regime that murdered tens of millions and, later, with the Chinese regime which murdered even more. And they did so without needing permission from Congress. (President Nixon was only able to normalize relations with China by means of secret negotiations which, had they been exposed, would have been torpedoed by the Republican right.)

But all the rules of normal statecraft are dropped when it comes to Iran which may, or may not, be working on developing a nuclear capacity. Of course if it is, it is obviously even more critical that the American government officials speak to Iranian counterparts.

But preventing diplomacy is precisely what Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA), leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee which reported out this bill, seek. They and others who back the measure want another war and the best way to get it is to ban diplomacy (which exists, of course, to prevent war).

Think back, for example, to the Cuban missile crisis. The United States and the monstrous, nuclear armed Soviet regime were on the brink of war over Cuba, a war that might have destroyed the planet.

Neither President Kennedy nor Premier Khrushchev knew how to end the crisis, especially because both were being pushed by their respective militaries not to back down.

Then, at the darkest moment of the crisis, when war seemed inevitable, an ABC correspondent named John Scali secretly met with a Soviet official in New York who described a way to end the crisis that would satisfy his bosses. That meeting was followed by another secret meeting between the president's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and a Soviet official in Washington. Those meetings led to a plan that ended the crisis and, perhaps, saved the world.

Needless to say, Kennedy did not ask for the permission of the House Foreign Affairs Committee either to conduct secret negotiations or to implement the terms of the deal. In fact, it was decades before the details of the deal were revealed.

It is this latitude to conduct diplomacy that the lobby and its cutouts on Capitol Hill want to take away from the White House. And it's latitude that is especially essential if it is determined that Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear arsenal.

This is so far beyond the realm of politics-as-usual as to be almost Kafkaesque.  American foreign policy is now held in thrall to the power of a lobby that is arguably acting as an agent of a foreign country.  And that lobby is able to hold that power because it has the full-throated support of a well-organized and financed quasi-messianic Christian Right that simply refuses to countenance any rational perspective that suggests that the Biblical "history" just might not be an appropriate basis for the guiding of US foreign policy.

A few decades from now, when it's all come crumbling down and the US is struggling to extricate itself from the rubble, I can only imagine how foolish - or impotent - those who come after us will find us to have been.