Rami Khouri on Obama's "300"

As ever, Rami Khouri tells it like it is - in this instance, reminding us that it was Mr. Bush's Iraq escapade, and its enforcers, that lit the fire that threatens to consume Iraq altogether.  He also spotlights the hypocrisy of Obama's warning Iran that it must play a constructive role:

Obama’s comments on Iran are truly offensive. He resorts to his hallmark “audacity” in saying that Iran can be part of the regional diplomatic action needed to bring calm to Iraq if Iran plays a constructive role in Iraq. There is zero credibility in such statements coming from the president of a country whose war on Iraq probably created the most destruction there since the Mongol invasion and sacking of Baghdad in 1258. If there were a global award for willful and criminal destruction of a sovereign state by a foreign power, the U.S. and the United Kingdom would have to share that prize for their policies in Iraq.

Obama’s disdainful treatment of Iran reflects, however, a pattern of American attitudes that the U.S. can do anything around the world and not be held accountable for the death and destruction it causes, while smaller and darker states in the South must conform to behavioral norms set in Washington (and sometimes in Tel Aviv, though Israel usually is exempt from adhering to the same norms, as we witness today in the mass arrests, collective punishments and continued arrest and killing of children in Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands).

Indeed.  Well said.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2014/Jun-21/260957-what-obama-didnt-say-about-iraqs-mess.ashx#ixzz35HyK4cJJ 

 

(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb) 

The Pathetic Figure that is Dick Cheney

Amy Davidson's New Yorker post spotlights the recent column by the Cheneys (Dick and Elizabeth) calling out Mr. Obama for not manning up and reinserting US forces into Iraq.  As Davidson puts it:

On Tuesday, Dick and Liz Cheney published a column in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that it was a shame and a failure that the American war—which the elder Cheney had helped start—had not gone on and on. American soldiers, they suggested, should be there right now. “It is time the president and his allies faced some hard truths: America remains at war, and withdrawing troops from the field of battle while our enemies stay in the fight does not ‘end’ wars. Weakness and retreat are provocative.”

 

In the Cheneys’ contorted diagram of history, going to war is itself a victory. They seem to see Iraq’s wreckage as a vindication of that war, not an indictment of it. It is difficult, otherwise, to explain their contempt for Obama’s withdrawal of troops. (“President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch.”) On this question, the Cheneys appear to be out of touch even with many in their own party. When Megyn Kelly, interviewing the Cheneys on Fox News, told Cheney that he had made a historic mistake in Iraq, he seemed startled enough to address her as “Reagan.” Perhaps the Cheneys and other conservatives do realize that the American public has come to view the Iraq War as a disaster, and have simply persuaded themselves that the only way to void that judgment is to get the war going again.

Sad, isn't it, that such a once-powerful public figure is utterly unable to imagine a world stage without American full-spectrum dominance.  Nor can he imagine - much less accept - that the actions he encouraged, and policies he advocated (torture, anyone?), merit his own disgrace and banishment from the cohorts of serious discussion.  (One might consider Tony Blair as a similar case in point.)

Watching CNN's broadcast special on the Vietnam War last night, I couldn't help noticing its serendipitous timing with a new  insertion (in this instance, re-insertion) of American military forces into a region whose cultural dynamics they and their leaders cannot comprehend, and into a conflict in which (contra Dick Cheney and John McCain) they cannot "prevail" (to borrow General Westmoreland's promise of almost 50 years ago). 

Holocaust Denial - in California?!

There are times when all you can do is scratch your head and wonder about the idiocy of some people.

Noted Holocaust scholar and expert Deborah Lipstadt has an important essay at Tablet about a report that 8th-grade students in the school district of Rialto, California, were provided an assignment in which they are to debate whether or not the Holocaust actually happened.

Seriously?

This is scary stuff.  Thankfully (see Below), the district dropped the assignment after protests began to roll in.

But what were they thinking?  Who were these people who dreamed up this assignment?  Who would let them within a mile of a school building?

And how many numbskulls are now wondering, "golly, why did they pull the assignment? Isn't it important to hear both sides?"

Related articles

• 'Holocaust Denial' Lesson Dropped by School District

Apartheid in the West Bank

Peter Beinart distinguishes between apartheid as indeed practiced under Israeli hegemony in the West Bank versus what Israeli Arabs must contend with day-to-day in Israel itself.   Beinart doesn't recognize how consistently Israeli Arabs have to deal with discrimination, not to mention the increasing calls for their expulsion and the blatant racism with which many Israeli Jews regard them.  But given all of that, you have to credit Beinart for calling it like it is in the West Bank:

. . .  there’s a territory—the West Bank—where Israel is practicing apartheid right now. The International Criminal Court defines “apartheid” as “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups.”  Yes, Jews and Palestinians aren’t races. They’re peoples. But what matters is that the boundary between them is sealed. For all practical purposes, West Bank Palestinians cannot become Jews and because they cannot, they are barred from citizenship in the state that controls their lives, cannot vote for its government, live under a different legal system than their Jewish neighbors and do not enjoy the same freedom of movement. That’s “systematic oppression and domination” by one group over another. And it’s been going on for 46 years.  . . .   Apartheid is not a problem Israel must avoid in the future. It’s the reality West Bank Palestinians face today. For Jews and non-Jews who care about justice, that should be all the incentive we need. 

So, kudos then to Beinart.  But even more kudos to Gideon Levy, who shares my disgust with John Kerry's retreat from his claim, not that Israel was, at present, an apartheid state, but that it was on the road to becoming one.  Here's Levy, in full:

Is Israel at risk of becoming an apartheid state, as John Kerry said on Friday, or not, as he said on Tuesday? Who knows? Given his feeble performance as U.S. secretary of state and his disgraceful apology, maybe it no longer matters what Kerry thinks or says. Given the aggressiveness of the Jewish lobby and the weakness of the Obama administration, which capitulates to every “pro-Israel” whim, Israel doesn’t need enemies with friends like these. Look what happened to its genuine friend, who was only trying to warn it from itself.


What a miserable secretary of state, up to his neck in denial. And how unfriendly to Israel he is to retract his frank, genuine and friendly warning merely for fear of the lobby. Now millions of ignorant Americans, viewers of Fox News and its ilk, know that Israel is in no risk of becoming an apartheid state. They believe the power of Hamas and the sophistication of Qassam rocket pose an existential danger to Israel .


But Kerry’s vacillations do not change the reality that shrieks from every wall. From every West Bank Palestinian village, from every reservoir and power grid that is for Jews only; apartheid screams from every demolished tent encampment and every verdict of the military court; from every nighttime arrest, every checkpoint, every eviction order and every settlement home. No, Israel is not an apartheid state, but for nearly 50 years an apartheid regime has ruled its occupied territories. Those who want to continue to live a lie, to repress and to deny are invited to visit Hebron. No honest, decent person could return without admitting the existence of apartheid. Those who fear that politically incorrect word have only to walk for a few minutes down Shuhada Street, with its segregated road and sidewalks, and their fear of using the forbidden word will vanish without a trace.


The history of the conflict is filled with forbidden words. Once upon a time, it was forbidden to say “Palestinians” was forbidden, after that came the prohibitions against saying “occupation,” “war crime,” “colonialism” or “binational state.” Now “apartheid” is prohibited.

The forbidden words paralyze debate. Did you let the word “apartheid” slip out? The truth is no longer important. But no political correctness or bowdlerization, however sanctimonious, can conceal reality forever. And the reality is an occupation regime of apartheid.


The naysayers can find countless differences between the apartheid of Pretoria and that of Jerusalem. Pretoria’s was openly racist and anchored in law; Jerusalem’s is denied and repressed, hidden beneath a heavy cloak of propaganda and messianic religious faith. But the result is the same. Some South Africans who lived under the system of segregation say that their apartheid was worse. I know South Africans who say that the version in the territories is worse. But neither group can find a significant difference at the root: When two nations share the same piece of land and one has full rights while the other has no rights, that is apartheid. If it looks like apartheid, walks like apartheid and quacks like apartheid, it’s apartheid.

The Bible and Oklahoma Public Education

from today's Politico Morning Education

HOBBY LOBBY PRESIDENT PROMOTES BIBLICAL CURRICULUM: Public schools in Mustang, Okla., will offer a Bible course next fall developed by Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby craft chain. It's the start of an ambitious bid by Green to introduce Scripture to public school students across the U.S. Within a few years, Green hopes thousands of schools will offer his curriculum - a sequence of four full-year classes exploring the Bible's content, history and impact on society. The classes will be electives in Mustang, but Green has said he hopes districts will one day make them mandatory.
- The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that it's legal for schools to teach the Bible as long as it's presented "objectively" as part of a "secular program of education." Green himself has said that he wants students to understand that the Bible is "true" and "good," but it's unclear if the classes will take that approach. The scholar Green tapped to run the program, Jerry Pattengale, told Religion News Service that the courses "may or may not espouse those views." More on the curriculum from RNS: http://wapo.st/P9ixbu

That more people don't see the threat that people like Steve Green represents to young Americans, and the US's future, stuns me.

Thomas Friedman's Simple Boxes

There he goes again.  Thomas Friedman reconstructs global politics (for the umpteenth time) with simple boxes.  (OK OK, so he calls them categories.)  This time it's

The first category . . . countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea, whose leaders are focused on building their authority, dignity and influence through powerful states.
The second category, countries focused on building their dignity and influence through prosperous people, includes all the countries in Nafta, the European Union, and the Mercosur trade bloc in Latin America and Asean in Asia.

And of course, he must have an all-the-others third box, lumped as "disorder":

a third and growing category of countries, which can’t project power or build prosperity. They constitute the world of “disorder.” . . . They are actually power and prosperity sinks because they are consumed in internal fights over primal questions like: Who are we? What are our boundaries? Who owns which olive tree? These countries include Syria, Libya, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Congo and other hot spots.

All of this, of course, as an entree for TF to briefly touch upon Ukraine's turmoil, and then conclude by noting that

we should have learned some lessons from our recent experience in the Middle East: First, how little we understand about the social and political complexities of the countries there; second, that we can — at considerable cost — stop bad things from happening in these countries but cannot, by ourselves, make good things happen; and third, that when we try to make good things happen we run the risk of assuming the responsibility for solving their problems, a responsibility that truly belongs to them.

Indeed.  Well said.  Agreed.

But not a word from TF, of course, about how his cheerleading (remember "suck on this?") in 2002 and 2003 helped rip Iraq from box 1 to dump it into box 3.

Roger Cohen's Disappointing Essay on BDS

The NYT's Roger Cohen writes this morning that the BDS movement is simply not to be trusted, even if its goal of ending Israeli occupation in the West Bank is laudable.  The reason?  BDS supporters ultimately wish to see the enforcement of the Palestinians' right to return (in Cohen's words, the "so-called" right to return).  For that reason, Cohen comes perilously close to arguing that BDS supporters are anti-Semites.  Undoubtedly some are, but Cohen ought to know better than to come as close as he does to tarring the entire movement with that brush.  It's not fair, and it doesn't help.

Cohen goes on to say that the UN gave an "unambiguous mandate" to a Jewish state in 1947.  Well, perhaps, although anyone who's read deeply into the history knows how much arm-twisting by the US went into that vote.  But if Cohen is going to cite that vote as the ultimate legitimizer of the creation of a Jewish state, he can't be permitted to dismiss at the same time those provisions of international law that state that the ethnic cleansing that was inflicted on Palestinians from 1946 on was illegal and that forbidding expelled Palestinians from returning was likewise illegal.

As so many commentators have noted, the crux of the issues that continue to separate Israelis and Palestinians is not the events of 1967, but the events of 1947-1948.  For Cohen to dismiss the concerns and claims of those Palestinians who were victimized then, even in the interests of securing a Jewish refuge and homeland, is - again - not fair, and it doesn't help.

About Those US Demands That Maliki Include Sunnis

At Bloomberg, former Bushie Meghan O'Sullivan calls upon Mr. Obama and his officials to head off a new Iraq war by making better use of the US's "new leverage" to convince Iraq PM Nuri al-Maliki to make his government more inclusive of Sunni representation.

She, of course, is not the only notable former official/expert/pundit calling for this.  And anyone who's been paying attention in recent years knows that much of Iraq's malaise post-US pullout stems from Maliki's failure to bring Iraq's Sunnis alongside.  Indeed, it's been more than a failure to simply include them.  Rather, in dealing with Sunni opposition, Maliki has resorted to the kind of repressive tactics - intimidation, torture, executions - that, even if we've no evidence of mass burials of people killed by the government, could have come from Saddam Hussein's manual of How to Run Iraq.

We all know that Iraq's chances of remaining a relatively unitary state (I say relatively because the Kurds have been out that door since even before 2003) hinge upon the ability of the Iraqi leadership, and Iraq's people, to create a political-social contract that will enable them to rise above the sectarian divisiveness that Saddam fostered (despite his supposed Baathist secularism) and that the Coalition Provisional Authority and its aftermath exacerbated and helped solidify, including  in the new Iraqi constitution.  Many have noted that non-sectarian Iraqi nationalism still runs deep in some elements of Iraqi politics and society.  How long that can persist if Iraq's current  cacophany of violence persists remains to be seen.

But all the American calls for Maliki to change his ways, seems to me, fail to take into account certain realities:

Nuri al-Maliki, besides being Iraq's prime minister since 2006, has also been the head of a Shi'ite religious party, al-Da'wa.  Members of that party were persecuted and executed, brutally, under Saddam's Sunni-led Baathist regime.  Maliki himself was forced into exile during that time.  The current members of al-Da'wa, and members of other Shi'ite religious parties, bear deeply seared memories of what they and their families suffered at the hands of a predominantly Sunni government.  American politicians like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who so stridently demand that Maliki change his ways cannot possibly understand the extent to which such deeply seated fear, as well as feelings of revenge, might motivate Maliki and those who back him - including millions of Iraqi Arab Shi'ites.

Although the US has professed to be a friend and ally of Maliki, much more important - and potentially much more useful - to him is the support of the friend and ally next door: the Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran.  That, of course, is the same Shi'ite republic that Saddam attacked in 1980, launching an eight-year war during which the Sunni-led Baathist regime of Iraq was supported by the U.S. under Ronald Reagan.  And with U.S. backing, Saddam's forces inflicted hundreds of thousands of deaths and maimed lives on Iranian soldiers and civilians, using poison gas as well as more "conventional" weapons of mass destruction.  But the more important point here is that, given the awfulness of that war, the very last thing the Iranian leadership can countenance is the re-empowerment of Sunni parties or politicians in Iraq.

All of this means that Mr. Maliki is going to be inclined to turn a very tinnish ear to U.S. entreaties and demands that he bring Sunni elements within anything close to striking distance of effective power in Iraqi politics.  Given Iraq's history over the last several decades, this ought to be obvious.  McCain, Graham, Boehner - all of those now demanding more of Maliki, as well as more of Obama - need to wise up.

McCain and Graham Pave Path to New Intifada

Disturbing report from WashPo about how Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have lined up with Mr. Netanyahu in expressing grave reservations about proposals emerging from the recent John Kerry-led "peace process."  Per usual for the vast majority of US congressmen, their concerns hinge almost entirely on Israel's security needs - which, in their minds (and, of course, Bibi's), can only be served by an agreement that permits the IDF almost unhindered access to the West Bank.

Graham's comments are especially worrying:

Graham said that despite detailed security proposals for the West Bank developed by a special U.S. envoy, retired Marine Gen. John R. Allen, senior Israelis remain unconvinced. “Here’s the one thing that I think dominates the thinking in Israel: that once you withdraw, then the ability to go back is almost impossible,” Graham said. “Look at Gaza. What’s the chance of going back into Gaza militarily?”

 

Israel can defend itself against rocket attacks from that formerly Israeli-occupied territory, but withdrawal meant giving up the “ability to chart your own destiny,” Graham said.

 

 

“I really do believe that the idea of withdrawing has to be considered in light of Gaza,” Graham said.

 

None of the above indicates that Graham and his ilk are going to accept any kind of Palestinian state that would also be acceptable to Mr. Abbas or any other of the more moderate Palestinian political leaders, not to mention those of a more militant stripe - i.e., a return to pre-1967 borders (with suitable land swaps) and a Palestinian government with responsibility for maintaining security with its own security forces.  That others in Netanyahu's govermnent are also insisting on Israeli control of the Jordan Valley - something that, I'd bet, McCain and Graham are prefectly okay with - further dims the prospects for Kerry's success.

I'm also struck by Graham's focus on Gaza as the template for what Israel ought not to do in the West Bank.  Implicit in his comments is the assumption that Israel had been justified in occupying and colonizing Gaza in the first place, and that Israel ought never to have left Gaza, but instead ought to have ramped up the number of settlements there as well as the degree of military occupation.

All of this, of course, plays into the established and well-justified perception that the US political leadership as a whole will accept a Palestinian state only if such a state remains completely under the security domination of Israel.  Equally justifiably, most Palestinians will view Kerry's efforts as little better than a smokescreen while Netanyahu and his right-wing government cement the creation of "Greater Israel."

And that, of course, feeds a growing probability of another intifada - something that the WashPo report likewise points out. 

Time for a Deal with Iran is Now

Kudos to Thomas Friedman for his piece in today's NY Times (quoted, in full, below).  With all the boo-hooing about how such a deal would be a betrayal of our Israeli and Saudi "allies," as Friedman notes, a deal that might lead to a detente with Iran would be a huge boon to US interests across the Middle East.

On the other hand, the imposing of a new, crippling round of sanctions on Iran - one that might completely eliminate Iran's ability to export its oil - could very likely stop negotiations in their tracks and in so doing, deal a potential death-blow to any chance of averting war with Iran or securing Iran's help in bringing an end to the holocaust that is Syria (and that threatens to engulf Lebanon and Iraq as well).  Yet the GOP-dominated House of Representatives is aching to impose those sanctions, as are some of the usual suspects in the Senate.  (I'm looking at you, Lindsey Graham - and you ought to be embarrassed by your bogus comments that if we do it just "right", sanctions can work even better.  Ask the people of Iran about that. For that matter, ask the people of Iraq about how that worked out for them.  Or just go read some of Joy Gordon's reports on how wonderfully sanctions have worked, in both countries.)

The NYT reports that AIPAC and its ilk are wearing out the carpets in Congressional offices, insisting that harsher sanctions go forward.  Other of the usual suspects have hastened to the dailies to pound the same point: WINEP honcho Patrick Clawson (in the WashPo) hastens to remind us that "Israel, the Gulf states and Iranian democrats will be reassured only by vigorous U.S. actions to address their concerns" - and that besides, and despite evidence to the contrary, all that Iranians really want is regional "hegemony" (not, of course, that the US and Israel have ever aspired to that).  The ever-pesky Elliott Abrams, hoping to drive his own nail into the coffin into which Bibi's amen chorus wants to put the negotiations,  also chimes in (likewise in the WashPo) with a reminder of how nasty the Iranian government has been to the Baha'is.  No argument; they have been brutal; but, gee, why did Abrams pick this particular time to make that point?

To my mind, none of this carping is enough to override Friedman's point: detente with Iran can serve US interests much better than would ratcheting up sanctions.  And along the waym detente just might lead to a more stable, more peaceful Middle East.  So . . .

I'm reminded of the oft-used expression about how one should "lead, follow, or get out of the way."  Congress is both too divided and too discredited (shut-down, anyone?) to lead.  As Bibi knows, though, they're good at following.  But where Bibi wants to take them, American interests - and, I should think, those of the planet - won't be well served.  That leaves only one option.

Get out of the way. Please.

 

November 12, 2013

What About US?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

It goes without saying that the only near-term deal with Iran worth partially lifting sanctions for would be a deal that freezes all the key components of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, and the only deal worth lifting all sanctions for is one that verifiably restricts Iran’s ability to breakout and build a nuclear bomb.

 

But there is something else that goes without saying, but still needs to be said loudly: We, America, are not just hired lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs, which they alone get the final say on. We, America, have our own interests in not only seeing Iran’s nuclear weapons capability curtailed, but in ending the 34-year-old Iran-U.S. cold war, which has harmed our interests and those of our Israeli and Arab friends.

 

Hence, we must not be reluctant about articulating and asserting our interests in the face of Israeli and Arab efforts to block a deal that we think would be good for us and them. America’s interests today lie in an airtight interim nuclear deal with Iran that also opens the way for addressing a whole set of other issues between Washington and Tehran.

 

Some of our allies don’t share those “other” interests and believe the only acceptable outcome is bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and keeping Iran an isolated, weak, pariah state. They don’t trust this Iranian regime — and not without reason. I don’t begrudge their skepticism. Without pressure from Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the global sanctions on Iran they helped to spur, Iran would not be offering to scale back its nuclear program today.

 

But that pressure was never meant to be an end itself. It was meant to bring Iran in from the cold, provided it verifiably relinquished the ability to breakout with a nuclear weapon. “Just because regional actors see diplomacy with Iran as a zero-sum game — vanquish or be vanquished — doesn’t mean America should,” said Karim Sadjadpour, the expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment.

 

Why? Let’s start with the fact that Iran has sizable influence over several of America’s most critical national security concerns, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, terrorism, energy security, and nuclear proliferation. Whereas tension with Iran has served to exacerbate these issues, détente with Tehran could help ameliorate them. Iran played a vital role in helping us to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and can help us get out without the Taliban completely taking over again.

 

 “Iran has at least as much at stake in a stable Iraq, and a stable Afghanistan, as we do — and as an immediate neighbor has a far greater ability to influence them, for good or ill,” said Nader Mousavizadeh, the Iranian-American co-founder of Macro Advisory Partners and a former top aide to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

 

There is a struggle in Tehran today between those who want Iran to behave as a nation, looking out for its interests, and those who want it to continue behaving as a permanent revolution in a permanent struggle with America and its allies. What’s at stake in the Geneva nuclear negotiations — in part — “is which Iranian foreign policy prevails,” argued Mousavizadeh. A mutually beneficial deal there could open the way for cooperation on other fronts.

 

Moreover, there is nothing that threatens the future of the Middle East today more than the sectarian rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. This rift is being used by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Hezbollah and some Arab leaders to distract their people from fundamental questions of economic growth, unemployment, corruption and political legitimacy. It is also being used to keep Iran isolated and unable to fully exploit its rich oil and gas reserves, which could challenge some Arab producers. But our interest is in quelling these sectarian passions, not taking one side.

 

The Iran-U.S. cold war has prevented us from acting productively on all these interests. It is easy to say we should just walk away from talks if we don’t get what we want, but isolating Iran won’t be as easy as it once was. China, Russia, India and Japan have different interests than us vis-à-vis Iran. The only man who could unite them all behind this tough sanctions regime was Iran’s despicable previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The new president, Hassan Rouhani, is much more deft.  “Our sanctions leverage may have peaked,” said Sadjadpour. “Countries like China won’t indefinitely forsake their own commercial and strategic interests vis-à-vis Iran simply to please the U.S. Congress.”

 

All this is why the deal the Obama team is trying to forge now that begins to defuse Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and tests whether more is possible, is fundamentally in the U.S. interest. “The prize of détente with Iran is critical to allowing the U.S. a sensibly balanced future foreign policy that aligns interests with commitments, and allows us to rebuild at home at the same time,” said Mousavizadeh. There are those in the Middle East who prefer “a war without end for the same tribal, sectarian, backward-looking reasons that are stunting their own domestic development as open, integrated, pluralist societies,” he added. “They can have it. But it can’t be our war. It’s not who we are — at home or abroad.”

 

 

 

 

Bibi Pissing in the Geneva Punchbowl

With growing signs (John Kerry has flown to Geneva to take part) that a deal between Iran and the US-led P5+1 is steadily being pieced together, Mr. Netanyahu's attempts to demean and trash the process are becoming more insistent.  As reported at WashPo, Bibi "utterly rejects" the deal that seems to be emerging.  (Of course, we hoi poloi are not privy to the details, but we can assume that Bibi is being kept abreast of where things stand.)

Kerry, however, seems content to fob him off with some comments to the effect that the US is going into any deal with its "eyes open" and is looking for results, not just words.  He has gone a step further by putting Bibi on notice that the Israelis need to give ground in the current negotiations with the Palestinians, or else, as Kerry warned, face a "third intifada."  Such an eventuality seems a bit less remote now, what with Palestinians' patience running out, West Bank settlers' shameless destruction of Palestinian olive groves increasingly exposed, and troubling new evidence suggesting that former PA president Yasser Arafat's death was the result of massive polonium poisoning.  At this point, the Israelis are the only logical perpetrator - especially in light of recent reminders of how much former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon hated Arafat and would have loved to have had him liquidated.

What Netanyahu means by "utterly rejects" will become clear very soon.  What we all ought to fear, though, is that the troops at AIPAC, the brain trust at WINEP (and, of course, Elliott Abrams at the Council on Foreign Relations), and the pastors aligned with the Rev. John Hagee and the useful idiots of CUFI will be rallied to the halls of Congress, websites at Foreign Policy, and pulpits of Christian Zionist congregations across the land in a crusade to stop the negotiations in their tracks.

Mr. Obama will likely need to play all the cards in his grasp, and any new ones he can draw, to win this hand.  The stakes are enormous.  If Bibi and pals succeed in derailing this train, they may also succeed in blowing up the tracks leading to any peaceful and timely resolution, not only of the issue of Iran's nuclear program, but also the issue of the horrific war in Syria, and the rekindled civil war in Iraq.

Elliott Abrams and Hasan Rouhani's siren song

My latest at Your Middle East.  Here's the tease:

Elliott Abrams' intention – as is Mr. Netanyahu's – is to do whatever he can to sabotage any chance of a diplomatic accommodation with Iran that might leave that country any shred of a nuclear program - and, for that matter, any shred of dignity on the international stage, writes John Robertson.

On the Hubris of American Syria Hawks

Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic - with an assist from Dan Larison at American Conservative - excoriates Michael Totten for his recent essay proposing that the US first align itself with the Syria jihadists against Assad, then once Assad is out, turn on the jihadists.

Totten and other Syria hawks predictably ignore the deaths of thousands and the misery of millions of Syrians. His entire argument smacks too much of the atrocity of Condi Rice's "birth pangs of a new Middle East" comment in 2006. As long as Arabs dying serves the ends of preserving American and Israeli pre-eminence in the Middle East, no problem. Except in this case, Totten is recommending a most cynical and brutal inducing of that birth at a time and pace purely to suit US interests. The whole thing reminds me of why I stopped taking Totten seriously years ago.

Negotiations with Iran

Nicholas Burns (in the Boston Globe) provides his assessment of US negotiations with Iran (including a rather chest-thumping thumbs-up for devastating of Iran's economy via sanctions), and concludes with the following:

Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if Republicans as well as Democrats stood by the president as he executed this very challenging diplomatic endgame on the most critical war and peace issue of 2014? Or is that too much to expect in the hyper-partisan Washington that brought us the shutdown?

Uh huh, it would be extraordinary - and I wouldn't count on it.  The GOP-controlled House wants to take down Obama any way it can, and I can only imagine how much the Tea Partiers want payback for their humiliating defeat over ACA/"Obamacare."  Just for those reasons, stymying Obama's attempts to work with Iran would be, if nothing else, wicked fun.

Meanwhile, if any more promising signs emerge after negotiations resume, Mr. Netanyahu will surely pull out a fire-hose to drench it all in very cold water.  That dozens of senators and Congressmen - especially GOP, but including some powerful Dems like Chuck Schumer - have sworn fealty to Bibi over the issue of Iran's nuclear program (not to mention Israel's strategic domination of the Middle East in general) can only mean that Obama is likely to find it impossible to get Congress's support for any deal that Iran could accept - or should even be asked to accept.  And, of course, even if Congress can be convinced to hold off on imposing new sanctions (which Bibi wants), it probably will not agree to significant sanctions relief - which by itself could deep-six any chance of a meaningful deal with Iran.

All of which is a shame . . . and shameful . . . because without some major compromise and breakthrough in these negotiations, the odds of war with Iran will increase almost exponentially.  That spells disaster, and ruin, any way you look at it. . . . for Iran certainly, but Israel, and the US, will pay a huge price as well.

New Strategic Realities in the Middle East

Jim Lobe (IPS) provides nicely researched overview of the new strategic realities facing the US in the Middle East.  And it's especially nice to see him quote Chas Freeman, an experienced and well-informed former diplomat whose views on US-Israeli relations and on US Middle East policy in general got him into hot water with the D.C. establishment.  Both Lobe and Freeman point out that the US ties with two long-term allies - Turkey and Saudi Arabia - are on the skids.  The Saudis are more than irritated by the US's attempts at detente with Shi'ite rival Iran; Erdogan's Turkey has decided to buy its new missile-defense system from China, even though its technology doesn't jive with the ordnance of NATO - of which, of course, Turkey is one of the militarily more powerful members.

Freeman sums it up very well indeed:

“The simple world of colonial and superpower rivalries is long vanished. . . .  The notion that one is either ‘with us or against us’ has lost all resonance in the modern Middle East. No government in the region is prepared now to entrust its future to foreigners, still less to a single foreign power. So the role of great external powers is becoming variable, complex, dynamic, and asymmetric, rather than comprehensive, exclusive, static or uniform.”

On the other hand, one of the people whose views REALLY count - because he forks over huge sums of money to support politicians who actually influence policy decisions - continues to speak of the US's evidently rightful prerogative to throw its weight around in the Middle East as it pleases, especially when it comes to Israel.  I speak of Sheldon Adelson, Newt Gingrich's sugar-daddy and political life-support during the 2012 campaign.  Mondoweiss reports (with video) on Adelson's comments at a forum at Yeshiva University after the moderator (Rabbi Shmuley Boteach) raised the issue of US negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program:

What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ You pick up your cell phone, even at traveling rates. You pick up your cell phone, and– what are they called– [Boteach: roaming charges] Roaming charges. You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ So there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever.

 

And then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. [Applause] You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.’

Adelson goes on to say that American strength "is the only thing they understand."

That, of course, is the same kind of assumption of US military omnipotence that brought us Afghanistan, Iraq, and the knee-capping of America's economic future and global credibility.

On the other hand, Adelson's comments reportedly received fulsome applause.

Betcha Bibi would have been clapping right along, had he been there.

Tea Party's Obamaphobia

I don't generally post comments I've seen from other sources - in this instance, a comment appended to an article in today's WashPo.  But this one was too good to pass up:

To Tea Party Republicans: Please note that the Community Organizer; the Tan Man in the Black House; the wet-behind-the-ears innocent who has never worked a day in his life; the illegal alien who is ineligible for the presidency; the crook who lied about his educational background since he actually flunked out of college and only squeaked through law school on Affirmative Action; the happy-go-lucky boy who just wants to have a good time riding around on Air Force One while white people run the country; the Monkey Man who lives only to take goods from hard-working white people and hand it over to the darkies; Buckwheat, who should be cleaning the Oval Office and not sitting in it:
WON. 
PS: Every one of my descriptions above was taken from an online post about the President of the United States, who, it turns out, has earned a descriptor you-all Tea Party folks forgot: statesman.

These clowns have wasted billions of dollars, slowed down the economy, deprived thousands of federal workers of badly needed paychecks.  They claim to have done all of this as a matter of reclaiming some sort of high ground, in defense of regular Americans. For some of them, perhaps such considerations reflect their true motives.  But for many of them, and for thousands of their Confederate-flag waving, race-baiting, gay-hating, Jesus-is-my-strength supporters, it was all about an irrational, visceral hatred of a black president with an Arab middle name.

Shame on all of them.  And shame on us as a nation if we permit people of their ilk ever again to bring this country to such a low point. 

Thomas Friedman Misses the Elephant in the Room

Thomas Friedman's column "Hassan Does Manhattan" (catchy title, no?  Whoever created it seems intent on reminding us that Tommy has always been the brightest boy in the room) is all about Iran's politics, Tommy's chats with members of Mr. Rouhani's entourage, and what "we should do."  And what he suggests - in terms of what kind of deal Obama should offer Iran - is fine --- well within the mainstream of ideas that various onlookers have suggested.  But it what's Friedman leaves out that blows me away.

Not once - nowhere - in his essay does Friedman mention either of two words: "Israel" and "Netanyahu." Yet anybody who's been paying attention (and  I want to assume that Friedman numbers himself among that crowd) knows that Mr. Netanyahu is going to have a lot to say about all of this, and that what he's likely to say is not going to jive well with what Friedman thinks "we should do."  The last thing Netanyahu wants is a rapprochement between the US and Iran that leaves Iran with any semblance of political stature and respect on the world stage, and especially in the Middle East - which, in Bibi's mind and in the minds of Israel's hard-right establishment, is rightfully and properly Israel's stage, if not Israel's court.

Recently, Daniel Levy wrote a brilliant piece that Friedman really ought to read - or ought to have read before writing his latest.  I quote:

At the moment . . .  Netanyahu is signaling that there is no realistic deal that would be acceptable to Israel. For instance, a consensus exists among experts and Western officials that Iran's right to enrich uranium -- in a limited manner and under international supervision -- for its civilian nuclear energy program will be a necessary part of any agreement. Netanyahu rejects this.

 

If Iran is willing to cut a deal that effectively provides a guarantee against a weaponization of its nuclear program, and that deal is acceptable to the president of the United States of America, why would Netanyahu not take yes for an answer?

 

The reason lies in Netanyahu's broader view of Israel's place in the region: The Israeli premier simply does not want an Islamic Republic of Iran that is a relatively independent and powerful actor. Israel has gotten used to a degree of regional hegemony and freedom of action -- notably military action -- that is almost unparalleled globally, especially for what is, after all, a rather small power. Israelis are understandably reluctant to give up any of that.

 

Israel's leadership seeks to maintain the convenient reality of a neighboring region populated by only two types of regimes. The first type is regimes with a degree of dependence on the United States, which necessitates severe limitations on challenging Israel (including diplomatically). The second type is regimes that are considered beyond the pale by the United States and as many other global actors as possible, and therefore unable to do serious damage to Israeli interests.

 

Israel's leadership would consider the emergence of a third type of regional actor -- one that is not overly deferential to Washington but also is not boycotted, and that even boasts a degree of economic, political, and military weight -- a deeply undesirable development. What's more, this threatens to become a not-uncommon feature of the Middle East: Just look at Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or Egypt before the July 3 coup, or an Iran that gets beyond its nuclear dispute and starts to normalize its relations with the West.

 

There are other reasons for Netanyahu to oppose any developments that would allow Iran to break free of its isolation and win acceptance as an important regional actor with which the West engages. The current standoff is an extremely useful way of distracting attention from the Palestinian issue, and a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran would likely shine more of a spotlight on Israel's own nuclear weapons capacity. But the key point to understand in interpreting Netanyahu's policy is this: While Obama has put aside changing the nature of the Islamic Republic's political system, Israel's leader is all about a commitment to regime change -- or failing that, regime isolation -- in Tehran. And he will pursue that goal even at the expense of a workable deal on the nuclear file.

 

Netanyahu's maximalism does not represent a wall-to-wall consensus within the Israeli establishment. There is another Israeli strand of thinking -- notably among retired security elites like former Mossad chiefs Meir Dagan and Efraim Halevy and former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin -- that holds that the challenges posed by Iran can be managed in different ways at different times. Others inside Israel's establishment acknowledge that the current period of unchallenged hegemony is unsustainable and that adjustments will have to be made. Some understand the efficacy of having an Iran more tied into the international system rather than isolated from it -- a deal on Iran's nuclear program, for instance, could also have its uses in limiting the maneuver room of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

 

But Netanyahu has rejected these positions. The prime minister is nothing if not consistent: He was similarly intractable when the Palestinian leadership and the Arab League put forth pragmatic proposals. While the PLO's leadership accepts Israel's existence, the 1967 lines, and an accommodation on Israeli settlements (including in East Jerusalem) by way of land swaps, Netanyahu has shifted the goal posts -- rejecting the 1967 lines and refusing to take yes for an answer. With the Arab League's "Arab Peace Initiative" offering recognition of Israel and comprehensive peace in exchange for withdrawal from the occupied territories, Netanyahu is again following this pattern of rejectionism.

 

Netanyahu is a deeply ideological leader with an unshakeable belief in a Greater Israel and regional hegemony. If this reading of him is accurate, it bodes ill for Israel's reaction to the nascent diplomacy between the United States and Iran. In the coming weeks and months, Netanyahu will likely dedicate himself to derailing any prospect for a diplomatic breakthrough.

 

In that mission he is, of course, not alone. He will be joined by American hawks and neoconservatives, Republicans who will oppose Obama on anything, and some Democrats with a more Israel-centric bent. Their efforts will be concentrated on escalating threats against Iran, increasing sanctions, and raising the bar to an impossibly high place on the terms of a nuclear deal. All this will serve -- intentionally, one has to assume -- to strengthen hard-liners in Tehran who are equally opposed to a deal.

 

 

Of course, the Iranian forces ranged against Rouhani's pragmatism do not need encouragement from Washington. But absent encouragement, they are not in the ascendancy -- and crucially, Rouhani appears to have the backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for his diplomatic outreach. Currently, the difference among the three capitals -- Washington, Tehran, and Jerusalem -- is that only in Jerusalem does a representative of the hard-line faction, rather than the pragmatic camp, hold the most senior political office.

 

None of these considerations receive any mention in Friedman's wide-eyed prattling about democracy breaking out in Iran.  Yet it beggars belief to assume that none of them occurred to him.  The fact of the matter is that Netanyahu may indeed want to bully Obama into backing away from Iran - at least far enough, and for long enough, that Khamenei and Iran's still-powerful hard-liners get fed up and decide to rein in Rouhani.  

And Bibi has a bunch of bullies lined up alongside him.  I speak, of course - and Levy mentions them as well - of the Obama-baiting, Iran-hating GOP congressmen in his back-pocket.  They are already poised to bring the federal government to a shut-down and heap the blame on Barack Hussein Obama.

Bibi would be glad to give them a two-fer.

Stabilizing Syria Means Engaging Iran

Both al-Monitor and Barbara Slavin (at al-Jazeera America) have published analyses that make it clear: In the absence of any effective military option, the only possible path to calming the situation in Syria is negotiations.  And those negotiations must include Iran.  As al-Monitor notes, 

Unless the US commits all-out to regime change in Syria, which Obama said he has no intention of doing, a strategy to end the war necessarily involves diplomacy with adversaries as well as allies. The NATO air campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo, often and rightly considered successes for US policy, included intensive direct diplomacy with all parties, including Yugoslav dictator and war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. You need a cease-fire by all sides to stop the killing. It was the Yugoslav government, after the Kosovo war, which arrested Milosevic and transferred him to the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia. There should be several lessons here for Syria.
Terrorism in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and maybe even Egypt would likely continue to surge even after a US strike absent a diplomatic strategy to end the war and address the now-rejuvenated terrorist threat in Syria.
It is the continuation of the war, the destruction of Syria, the rise of jihadists, the spread of terrorism to Syria’s neighbors and the waves of refugees that are the threats to US interests, and these are best handled by an immediate cease-fire and the start of negotiations — not by taking sides in the war. 
The administration could seize the opportunity of the congressional debate to lay out the endgame in Syria with some clear benchmarks, beyond missile strikes in response to chemical weapons use, including: a channel with Iran; calling out both the Assad regime and the opposition, and especially their respective regional patrons, to enact a cease-fire immediately; urgently convening the Geneva II conference to include both the Syrian government and non-jihadist opposition forces, no exceptions; and a crackdown and some accountability on those US allies which directly or indirectly support the flow of jihadists to Syria. . . .
Iran, more than any other power in the region, is the “dynamo” and broker of either war or peace.  It is time to put Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the test and bring the Syria war to a close.

But bringing Rouhani (and, by extension, of course, Khamenei) into a negotiation can happen only if Mr. Netanyahu is willing to give Mr. Obama the political space to reach out to Iran.  As the two reports note above make clear, some of that outreach has already begun.  But it can only go as far as Netanyahu and his confederates - both in Jerusalem and in D.C. - will let it.  Bibi has invested enormous energy and cubic-yards of hot air in demonizing Iran (even referring to Rouhani recently as a "wolf in sheep's clothing") and its "existential threat" to Israel.  Any attempt by Obama to bring Iran into putative cease-fire negotiations over Syria automatically lends respectability and legitimacy to the Iranian regime.  It also undercuts not only Bibi's demonizing of Iran, but also his insistence that the threat of a military strike against Iran needs to remain unholstered.

Yet, as is becoming clear, damping down Syria's violence and refugee flow - both of which have destabilized the countries bordering Israel and threaten thereby to impact Israel itself - is going to require Iran's acquiescence at the very least.  That means reaching out and offering Iran some kind of role partnering with other countries that are interested in restoring some modicum of stability within which Syria - or whatever "Syria" is to become - can be sorted out.

Is Bibi up to keeping his finger off the bash-Iran button?  Giving Iran a chance to help restore some peace to the heart of the Arab world just might win Israel a few friends therein.

Syria Needs a Political Solution, Not John Wayne

Excellent post, with links, at Qifa Nabkihttp://qifanabki.com/2013/08/31/syria-the-political-solution/ on the uselessness of trying to use military force to impose a settlement in Syria.  I might add:

1. Obama needs to walk back his "red line" misspeak . . . and the commentariat needs to let him, even encourage him, to walk it back.  He screwed up, and I'll bet he knows (and has been reminded umpteen times by his staff) that he screwed up.  That a lot of innocent Syrian people are likely to be made collateral damage just because a president chose his words poorly is a war crime in itself.

2. John McCain and any putative nuevos amigos need to get it through their heads: this is no longer a John Wayne America.  The US has no duty or prerogative - or, as Iraq and Afghanistan showed, capacity - to "get into the fight" and make the world right.  Too many of my generation still have their heads shrink-wrapped around the heroic World War II America of "Sands of Iwo Jima" or the crusading (early) Vietnam War America of "The Green Berets."  Asad is neither Tojo nor Ho Chi Minh (nor are Asad's backers - Vladimir Putin and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Leonid Brezhnev).  The US can't "fix" Syria with military might.  

But what it could do - if certain parties would allow Obama the domestic political space - is lead an effort to get all parties to come together and make some hard deals.  That means Iran, and Russia, and the Saudis, as well as Asad's people and representatives from the Syrian opposition, both Arabs and Kurds, both Islamists and not.  It means the UN.  It means the Arab League.   Optimally, it ought not mean hard-line jihadists like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS/ISIL (what exactly IS the appropriate acronym?), but with their presence now so firmly entrenched it would be difficult to shut them out completely.

And especially, it means the neighboring countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, including reps from the KRG) that are now straining under the humanitarian burden and responsibility of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugess.  Syria's fragmentation is probably too far along for even the most skilled political negotiations and daring compromises to patch together a unitary country.  Notwithstanding, the focus now needs to be on ending the violence, from all sides, damping down sectarian anger, and healing devastated bodies, spirits,  and communities.

On the Destruction and Revival of the Egyptian Revolution

At Pandaemonium, Kenan Malik publishes a superb piece that locates the 3 July military coup that overthrew the government of Muhammad Morsi, and Al-Sisi's crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood, within the long history of the Muslim Brotherhood's treatment at the hands of Egypt's series of military-backed regimes since Gamal Abdul Nasser.  

He sums up:

So what of the future for Egypt?  What the past few weeks have revealed is the weakness of all sides.  The Muslim Brotherhood is being crushed without too much resistance, exposing its lack of popular support. Liberal secularists, organizationally weak and politically incoherent, having failed to topple on Morsi on their own, have put faith in the military to do the job for them. The USA, and other Western powers, have discovered that they no longer possess much leverage over Cairo.  The power of the Egyptian military has certainly been entrenched, but largely because of the weakness of other social forces.

 

The revolution might have been strangled, but the yearning for democracy and freedom remains. If that yearning is eventually to be harnessed to help create a new, democratic Egypt, revolutionaries must learn the lessons of the current debacle. The real destruction of the Egyptian revolution did not come when the military seized power. It came when liberals and secularists backed the coup and justified the repression that followed. Democracy and freedom cannot be wielded in a sectarian fashion. And no one but the people themselves – not the military, not a foreign power – can be the harbinger of change.

Indeed.  But it has been well noted that Hosni Mubarak's overthrow by "the people" in 2011 was "allowed" by the military, who were concerned that he was grooming as his successor his son Gamal, whose penchant for neo-liberal economic reforms would have imperilled their well-entrenched domination of parts of the Egyptian economy.  Now "the people" need to regroup if they are to have any hope of reviving their revolution.  Yet the Islamist element of "the people" have been labelled "terrorists" and are being systematically crushed by al-Sisi and his junta - as Malik notes, largely courtesy of liberals/secularists who'd two years ago been their compatriots in Tahrir Square.  It stands to reason, does it not, that if they now - very belatedly - try to organize against the junta, the liberals/secularists will in their turn be smacked down.

So much for that "harbinger of change"?