Setback for Sunni-Shii Reconciliation in Iraq

According to this AFP analysis, the veto of the election law by Sunni VP Tareq al-Hashemi has backfired.  His veto was intended to secure more votes for the Sunnis of Iraq, especially those who were forced into exile (either internal or external) by the sectarian blood-letting of 2006-2008.  Instead, the parliament went ahead with an amendment that will likely leave the Sunnis with even less representation.

Meanwhile, in another development that may exacerbate some Sunnis' frustration, a "mysterious" new Saddam Hussein channel is popping up on Iraqis' TV screens.

Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Iran

The WaPo reports on the IAEA censure of Iran for not being more forthcoming on its nuclear program.  At least Ray Takeyh sounds a voice of reason:

Ray Takeyh, a Council on Foreign Relations scholar who until recently was a senior adviser on Iran policy in the State Department, said, "There is a certain degree of impatience in American diplomacy. We have elevated Iran to a level of extreme danger, which it is not, and created a crisis atmosphere, which is unwise." When President Richard M. Nixon first reached out to China, it took that country a year and half to respond positively, he noted.

"The Iranians may come back in March with a counterproposal," he said. "No deal ever dies in Tehran. The Iranians never say yes or no."

Meanwhile, Iran has responded with a threat to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Not exactly a hopeful sign as Obama prepares to escalate the Afghan war.

Netanyahu's "settlement freeze"

The ever-so-magnanimous Mr. Netanyahu has declared a 10-month freeze in settlement construction in the West Bank.  Predictably, he's being hammered from the Right, including the pro-settlement portion of his electoral base, who are screaming betrayal and, ominously indeed, are saying it's time to go after him the way they went after earlier PMs who entertained compromise on the issue of Jewish settlements.  (One of those PMs, of course, was Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a pro-settlement extremist.)

But please read the fine print on this magnanimous declaration:

• existing construction will continue
• there will be no halt to construction of schools, synagogues, and similar infrastructure
• there will be no halt in construction in East Jerusalem, which is part of "our sovereign capital."

This is a joke.

But the timing is perfect for Mr. Obama, who now can say that his patience and policies have helped bring about "progress" in the "peace process" - at a time, of course, when he desperately needs to embellish his foreign-policy creds, now that he's about to announce (from West Point, no less) a major escalation of the US military effort in Afghanistan.

Obama's Mega-Crapshoot

End of semester crunch (and looming book deadline) leave me little time for blogging, but I might recommend this piece from Dan Balz in Sunday's WaPo. Obama has no good options, at least among the ones evidently up for serious consideration.  He's going to get hammered politically, no matter what he decides on the size of his "surge."  But I'm afraid that once he boosts troop numbers - unless some measurable "progress" is made soon, with little loss of life, and a big light starts shining at the end of the proverbial tunnel - his Afghan war is going to become "in for a dime, in for a dollar."  If Lyndon Johnson were still alive, he could tell Obama all about that.  Speaking of which . . .

A must-read is William Polk's magisterial guest contribution at Juan Cole's Informed Comment site . . .

Hillary and warlord Dostum party together

OK, perhaps I'm being a bit flippant in putting it this way, but the fact of the matter is that many citizens of Afghanistan are going to be repulsed by the fact that the Secretary of State of the USA is a guest at a (post-Karzai-inauguration) "gala" where another of the guests is Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom this McClatchy report describes as

the Afghan warlord who's become a symbol of cronyism and government corruption" and who "was stripped of his top military post after he was accused of war crimes and investigated for enacting vigilante justice on the streets of Kabul."

Not a problem for Hillary though.  As today's AfPak report from Foreign Policy notes:

when asked whether the U.S. would support a Karzai administration with warlords, she said, "Well, there are warlords and there are warlords."

Lovely.

Meanwhile, after weeks of hammering "re-elected" President Karzai on corruption and poor leadership, the US now seems to be trying a new approach = making nice with him, including getting Richard Holbrooke out of his face and replacing him with Hillary herself as chief contact. (See today's WaPo and NY Times for related stories.)

So here we are, snuggling up even tighter with warlords and crooks in Kabul, even as we encourage the arming of local tribal militias in the Afghan countryside - many of whose members will have no love lost for either the warlords or the crooks.

Again, channeling General Petraeus: "Tell me how this ends."

Odierno says Al-Qaeda in Iraq now More Iraqi

Noteworthy report from Reuters, and if accurate, a disturbing development, especially if AQI people are working with Baathist hold-overs. I have to say, I don't completely trust Odierno's motives here.  For months he's been making statements to the effect that Obama ought to reconsider the withdrawal timetable in Iraq because the Iraqi security forces aren't ready to take over, and because the threat from AQI and Baathists is still significant.

Iraq is by no means home free.  I'll say it again: the Surge didn't "work" to do anything more than dampen down the violence that was raging, especially around Baghdad.  The ethnic and sectarian fissure are still there, and parties that are not happy with the status quo are going to try to widen them.

Plan for Expanded Jewish Settlement in Jerusalem "Angers" US

Thus reads the headline in today's NY Times, but the actual word used by Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs is "dismayed."

"Dismayed."  Oh my goodness!  The US must be really angry.  Better watch out, Mr. Netanyahu.

(Actually, as Haaretz correspondent Akiva Eldar notes today, Netanyahu knows that when it comes to construction in East Jerusalem, he can do just about whatever he wants.  His history with Bill Clinton during the late 1990s, when he had his first term as PM,  tells him so.  And besides, Israel need to do what it needs to do, because, after all, says Netanyahu, it's "the most threatened country in the world"   Hey, did you hear that, Mr. Karzai?  How about you, Ahmadinejad?  You listening, Mr. Zardari?  Huh, what'd you say, Nuri al-Maliki?  No worries about your new Iraq being torn apart when the US forces leave?. 

(Well, that's actually IF they leave.  One of Iraq's VPs has just vetoed the much-ballyhooed new election law - which could slow down US withdrawal.)

Obama did at least say to Fox News that such settlement expansion would not make Israel safer, and would only embitter the Palestinians and make it tougher to achieve peace.  Bu then, of course, he hastened to add:

I've said repeatedly and I'll say again, Israel's security is a vital national interest to the United States, and we will make sure they are secure."

Whew!  Thank goodness!  That statement that you were actually dismayed really had us worried that you might really do something about it, like not have the US veto the attempt to bring a Palestinian statehood proposal to the UN Security Council.

Naaaaah!

Speaking of which, the usual suspects are piling on to thwart the Palestinian proposal to unilaterally declare an independent state - although Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat has clarified their intention, which is ". . .to take to the United Nations Security Council a request that the international community re-endorse the two-state solution based on the pre-Jun. 5, 1967 borders." Netanyahu has one-upped Mahmud Abbas' move by threatening to annex parts of the West Bank.

And it seems that an ever-larger part of the IDF will be ready to help.  Six soldiers have refused orders to evacuate settlers from illegal outposts.  Perhaps understandable, when  rabbis are telling them that soldiers are not allowed to take part in such operations. Take note:

An extremist right-wing group calling itself the Organization for Saving the Nation and the Land has already announced that it will pay each soldier NIS 1,000 for every day they spend in military prison.

IDF sources said that in both incidents, the soldiers were egged on and abetted by right-wing activists from outside the army: Both acts were filmed, and the material was disseminated by right-wing activists and settlers involved in the efforts to reestablish the West Bank settlement of Homesh, which was evacuated during the disengagement in the summer of 2005.

The soldiers' commanders believe the protesters were also prepared in advance for the ensuing trials. For example, the officers noted, the soldiers all reiterated the same arguments in support of their actions.

And in both instances, some of the soldiers came from the two extremist hesder yeshivas: The most recent protest was the work of graduates of the Elon Moreh yeshiva, while the previous one was carried out by graduates of Har Bracha. Both yeshivas are located in settlements in the Nablus area.

The book published by Rabbi Melamed of Har Bracha was entitled "Revivim." In it, he offered answers to halakhic questions pertaining to "nation, land, army."

Melamed has repeatedly urged troops to refuse to obey orders during the evacuation of settlements, and he reiterated this in his book.

"A simple halakha [law] is that it is forbidden for any person, whether a soldier or an officer ... to participate in the strictly forbidden act of expelling Jews from their homes and handing over any portion of the Land of Israel to enemies," he wrote. "Those who violate this violate several commandments of the Torah ... Moreover, anyone who considers the situation realistically knows with certainty that any such action encourages those who hate us and endangers the lives of many in Israel."

In another part of the book, Melamed wrote in favor of serving in the IDF, "in order to carry out the extremely important commandment of defending the nation and the land. However, we must reiterate that an order that facilitates an expulsion must be refused."

In response to the question, "What if many soldiers refuse; will that not cause the army to collapse?" Melamed wrote: "If many refuse, no such order will be given. At most, senior commanders will have to resign. On the contrary, it would be good if this happened. The majority of the senior officers are contaminated by politics. They are not commanders who can lead the army to victory, as was shown in the Second Lebanon War."

Have the UN Security Council Declare a Palestinian State

Isn't this something?  The Palestinians are saying they've had it up to here with the nonsense of the "peace process" (BRAVO!).  Mahmud Abbas is fed up with being run around by both the Israelis and the US, and is saying he won't run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority - and may even resign and just walk away.  Which means the entire PA may fall apart, which means no handy stooge for Netanyahu to bully - and which means no more inernational donors ponying up money for the PA, no more PA security forces to be paid (because there'll be no money to pay them, or bureaucracy to handle it all) - and which means that the entire mess gets dumped in Israel's lap.

This also means that Obama has a few more balls in the air.  Unfortunate, given the stakes in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq/Iran plus the health-care reform issues, etc. - but Obama has brought this one on himself, by punking out on holding Netanyahu's feet to the fire on the settlement issue, and then for trying to force Abbas to join the US in keeping the Goldstone report from going forward at the UN, and then letting Hillary stand beaming next to Netanyahu and talking about his "unprecedented concessions."  Not your most shining moments, Mr. President.

But now the Palestinians are actually upping the stakes, by pushing for the UN Security Council to recognize officially the independence of a Palestinian state.  Netanyahu's upset, saying

"There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority...any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel's side."

Shimon Peres is outraged (his line being, essentially, "What!  If there's an official independent Palestinian state, then what happens to our precious negotiations?"  To quote him,

 "A Palestinian state cannot be established without a peace agreement. It's impossible and it will not work. It's unacceptable that they change their minds every day. Bitterness is not a policy."

  Right.  There was a beautiful line in an essay in Haaretz today, by Akiva Eldar:

For 16 years, the soft murmur of the "peace process" that has been leading nowhere has drowned out the roar of the bulldozers that are deepening the occupation.

That Peres would lugubriously be bemoaning the demise of what's been essentially a sham ever since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin beggars credulity.

Anyway, The Independent has an excellent report on this new development.  It will more or less demand of an international community that says it wants an independent Palestinian state, "Here's a chance to do something about it."  There's also an interesting parallel between such a course of action by the UN, on the one hand, and the process whereby the new state of Israel was created and recognized in 1948:

 a UN resolution endorsing it in November 1947, the Declaration of Independence by David Ben Gurion in May 1948 and the subsequent swift recognition by the US and Soviet Union.

 Israel's only veto in the Security Council is the one that the US has so automatically cast for it in recent decades.  As The Independent notes, for the US to veto this - if it can get that far, of course - would expose once again the US's extreme bias.  As Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat noted:

 "We have taken an Arab foreign ministers' decision to seek the help of the international community," Mr Erekat told Reuters, adding that the US and other leading international players would be consulted before any UN move. "If the Americans cannot get the Israelis to stop settlement activities, they should also not cover them when we decide to go to the Security Council," he added.

It will be extremely interesting to see how much traction this proposal develops in the days ahead.  I imagine that, besides the Israelis, the US State Dept is furious that Palestinian leaders are taking matters so much into their own hands.  I can also imagine that Hillary's people will be pushing every guilt button and pressure point they can find to get them to back down.  I hope the Palestinian leaders can hold their ground.  Because it ought to be more than obvious by now that until Mr. Obama and his crew summon the courage to exert real pressure on Netanyahu/Lieberman/Peres et al., the US has nothing for them anymore.

A Problem with Iraq's New Elections Law

One of Iraq's vice-presidents, the Sunni Arab Tareq al-Hashemi, is now insisting that the newly passed elections law be changed.  More important, he has the veto power to be able to stop the law in its tracks, thereby causing a postponement of the election (which has already been pushed back to later in January 2010 than was originally intended) and, as a result, some delay in the schedule for Obama's withdrawal of US combat forces from the country.

You can bet that Mr. al-Hashemi is taking some heat from Iraqi legislators, not to mention the US ambassador and other representatives of the US government.  But he has a point.

The new elections law makes no provision for representation for the 2 million Iraqis who have left the country since 2003, most of them Sunni Arabs, most of them forced into exile because of the threats they faced from Shii Arabs in Baghdad and the south.  And let's face it: Iraq as a political entity has about zero chance of survival if its Sunni citizens, who dominated Iraq's political establishment from the creation of the Hashemite kingdom in 1921 down to the ouster of Saddam and the mostly-Sunni Baath in 2003, feel as if they've not been given sufficient representation.

Coming up with a formula to do that will be difficult, but necessary if there's to be any chance for the new Shii-dominated government to stay on its feet.  On the other hand, the Shii, long disadvantaged in the Iraqi political system, now have the upper hand, know they have the upper hand, and are fearful that any significant concessions to Sunni representation will undercut their own new ascendancy.  Nor will Iran be happy to see concessions made to a Sunni element whose former leaders launched the devastating Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.

Stay tuned.

The Wall Street Journal's Sliming of Two Superb Archaeologists

Yesterday's WSJ published a horrendously sourced "report" accusing two prominent archaeologists, John Curtis and Elizabeth Stone, of falsely accusing the US of damaging Babylon and promoting the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq.

FWIW, I posted a response this morning in the piece's comments section:

• John Robertson wrote: (your comment)

A new low for the Wall Street Journal, to publish such a thinly sourced piece of garbage. Profs. Stone and Curtis have devoted their lives to the study of Iraq's ancient civilizations, and know as much about them, and about the current state of their remains, as anyone on the planet. Prof. Stone has dedicated the last several years to helping Iraq prepare a new generation of its own archaeologists, assisted by a federal grant (awarded under Bush, not Obama). Furthermore, Curtis and Stone are not the only archaeologists who have weighed in on this matter. Even the most basic Google search would have led Kaylan to other reports, sources, and images. (If he needs some help, have him google "Matthew Bogdanos" - a Marine officer who has been intensely involved in this issue, and who would know a hell of a lot more about it than Chaplain Marrero; or "Warka vase" - a famous stone vase, dating ca. 3200 BCE, broken during the looting of the Baghdad Museum; or "Isin" - an important site for which one can find post-2003 images of looters smiling for the camera. I, or anyone else who studies Ancient Iraq, could go on and on.)

Did Saddam inflict some damage? Yes. But the fact of the matter is that the 2003 invasion opened the floodgates for looting at a number of sites. Looted objects have appeared on eBay and elsewhere. Reports of attempts to smuggle collections out of Iraq appear regularly in the mainstream press.

Profs. Stone and Curtis have been working tirelessly to counter this damage. Iraq and the world owe them a debt of gratitude. Instead, the WSJ publishes a slanderous report that attempts to slime their reputation, based on the thinnest of sources - i.e., one Marine Chaplain, who spent only 3 months at Babylon, and who represents an organization called "Faith Walk" (gosh, no agenda there).

I might suggest that the WSJ repudiate Kaylan's "report" and publish instead a letter of apology - and even an expression of gratitude - to Drs. Curtis and Stone.

An Offer from Turkey - a Dilemma for the West?

The BBC reports that Turkey and the IAEA are discussing a proposal that would allow Iran to store some of its enriched uranium in Turkey.  The original deal, of course, was that Iran would ship that uranium to Russia, who might then send some of it to France for processing for use in Iran's medical reactor.  Iran has been backing away from that one, for reasons not completely transparent to Western diplomats, but including some degree of fear that once they sent it out, the US - Europeans - Israel just might make sure that Iran would never see it again.

But now Turkish PM Erdogan may be riding to the rescue with a mediating proposal.  Question is, will the US - Euros - Israel go for it?  Highly debatable.  Turkey and Iran are growing closer, Turkey and Israel have grown farther apart, especially since the Gaza invasion and Erdogan's subsequent public berating of Shimon Peres at the Davos Conference - followed by Turkey's backing out of a planned joint military exercise with the IDF a few weeks ago.  France and Germany have decided to oppose Turkey's proposed entry into the EU, and an appropriately miffed Turkey has lately been telling them to go stuff themselves.  Add to all this the fact that Turkey is emerging not only as a neo-Ottoman regional power, but also as a major player in the pipeline politics of the region . . . .

Would the US - Euros - Israel want Turkey to be the keeper of Iran's uranium if Turkey won't play ball in re their plans to keep Iran down?  On the other hand, would the US - Euros - Israel dare to say no to Erdogan's offer, and thereby risk alienating Turkey even more?

Stay tuned . . .

The Ever-Mounting Human Cost of Our Wars

The Washington Post reports on a story that's getting more and more traction, especially in the aftermath of the attacks at Fort Hood.  The morale of US troops in Afghanistan is down (even as morale of troops in Iraq is touted as on the rise), and soldiers dealing with emotional-health issues are having great difficulty getting help because the military is understaffed with mental-health professionals.  Combine that with the continuing stigma in the military for soldiers who admit to problems and seek help, and it's obvious that these guys are in a world of hurt.

And that's just the tip of the ice-berg.

Kelly Vlahos reported recently on the number of US casualties from both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars.  The total: 90,000.

That includes a tire-screeching 75,134 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 14,323 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

These numbers do not include suicides:

196 servicemembers took their own lives while serving in Iraq between March 2003 and Oct. 31, 2009, and there were 35 such suicides in Afghanistan. (These figures, of course, do not include the skyrocketing cases of suicides among all active-duty soldiers and veterans and cases of self-inflicted injury outside both war zones.)

And consider this:

some 454,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical care from the Veterans Administration (VA) when they came home. That’s 40 percent of the total OIF/OEF veteran population, which is a number that is of course in flux, considering that the war has no end and veterans have five years to apply for care after the end of their service.

As of this summer, of those veterans who sought healthcare at the VA, 45 percent were diagnosed with a mental health condition, according to VA statistics. Twenty-seven percent of these had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Based on available resources from the DOD and research by the RAND Corporation, VCS estimates that an estimated 370,000 (or 19.5 percent of) veterans have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) thanks to the high rate of accidents, roadside bombs, and other battlefield explosions and events – plus repeated deployments – in the war. VCS also estimates that some 18.5 percent of veterans come home with PTSD.

And consider the costs to come:

Looking at it in monetary terms – more numbers – may seem cold, but again, it puts the taxpayers’ burden into shocking perspective. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have identified two scenarios in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War (2008). One scenario estimates a long-term cost of $422 billion to the federal government for veterans’ health care and disability compensation (given 1.8 million men and women deployed and troop levels falling below 55,000 by 2012). In the other scenario, the U.S. stays in Iraq and Afghanistan another eight years and 2.1 million men and women are deployed, with a price tag of $717 billion

And not mentioned here are the social costs: lives ruined, families destroyed, children either without a parent or burdened with a parent who may be deeply emotionally disturbed, emotionally unstable men and women who, to some extent, are walking, ticking time-bombs re-introduced into an American society that goes on playing its video games and generally trying hard to ignore the evidence of the destruction its government's actions are wreaking.

And, of course, so many of us are in complete denial of the even larger human cost of those actions: the tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who've been maimed or killed by US intervention - and the (surely) hundreds of thousands of internal and external refugees, widows, orphans, families who have lost husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters.  Again, most Americans are oblivious to their loss, their personal catastrophes. 

Of course, when the US president who launched these wars insists that we're fighting people who don't value life like "we" do, it's easy for Americans to buy into some misguided notion that "their" lives don't really count, and that their feelings about all this need not be reckoned with.

Wanna bet?