Robert Dreyfuss Robert Dreyfuss
Tue Apr 28, 8:31 am ET
The Nation -- President Obama got some strongly worded advice yesterday on how to deal with Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who'll be making his first visit to the United States as Israel's new leader in mid-May. The Obama-Netanyahu meeting promises to be a showdown.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the veteran strategist and hardliner -- who was Jimmy Carter's national security adviser -- told a conference yesterday that in the history of US peacemaking in the Middle East, the United States has never once spelled out its own vision for what a two-state solution would look like. That, said Brzezinski, is exactly what President Obama needs to do. And fast.
Brzezinski was speaking at a conference on US-Saudi relations sponsored by the New America Foundation and Saudi Arabia's Committee on International Trade. Brzezinski, who advised Obama early in the presidential campaign, was exiled from Obamaland after his less-than-devout support for Israel made him a liability.
"The United States has to spell out the minimum parameters of peace," said Zbig. Perhaps in deference to the conference's Saudi sponsors, Brzezinski said that there is an "urgent need for a US-Saudi alliance for peace in the Middle East." Other speakers on a star-studded opening panel were Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska and Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served for decades as the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service.
Turki, who also served as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, warned Obama to preempt Netanyahu, who intends to tell the president that there can't be progress in the Israel-Palestine conflict until the United States solves the problem of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons to Israel's satisfaction. Obama, said Turki, should tell the Israeli leader: "Mr. Netanyahu, you have to listen to me first." Rita Hauser, the veteran conservative strategist on the panel, agreed: "Netanyahu has to learn very quickly that the president means business."
Hauser, long associated with the RAND Corporation and other thinktanks, also said bluntly that the United States is going to have to deal with Hamas, which she called a "central element" of Palestinian politics. "Hamas will control Gaza," she said. She urged the administration to take steps to encourage the formation of a Palestinian unity government, involving Hamas and Fatah, the central pillar of the old Palestine Liberation Organization.
Obama, said Hauser, will find it politically difficult to talk to Hamas. (Translated: She means that the Israel lobby and its friends in Congress would go ballistic.) So she recommends that Washington encourage the Europeans in their dialogue with Hamas and allow Saudi Arabia to help broker a deal. (Egypt is already trying to swing a Fatah-Hamas deal.) The current chaos in Palestinian circles benefits Israel, she said, and she accused former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of deliberately splintering the Palestinians by withdrawing from Gaza, an action that allowed Gaza to fall to Hamas.
A Hamas-Fatah accord is an important, even crucial, first step in making any progress toward an Israel-Palestine two-state solution, which Obama says he supports strongly -- and which Netanyahu opposes. Getting it done won't be easy, however. At the conference, Turki pointed out that "the popularity of Hamas skyrocketed" after the December-January invasion of Gaza by Israel. "In the eyes of the Palestinians," he said, "Hamas came out a winner." As a result, it might be a lot harder to convince Hamas to make concessions.
But both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, of course, are suspicious of Hamas, not only because of its radicalism but because of its ties to Iran. According to the Egyptians, who are sponsoring talks in Cairo between the two Palestinian factions, Iran is pressing Hamas to resist a deal. Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Abdel Monem Said Ali of Egypt's premier thinktank said:
After the war [in Gaza] ended, Egypt resumed its efforts to reach a long-term cease-fire. Iran pressured the Hamas leadership to resist. Cairo's ongoing effort to build a Palestinian unity government, by bringing together Fatah and Hamas, has also been undermined by intense Iranian pressure on Hamas.
Obama needs to tell Netanyahu, in public or privately, that he supports a Hamas-Fatah accord and that the United States will deal with a Palestinian unity government. He needs to explain to Netanyahu that he won't be diverted by Israel's alarmist cries about Iran, instead maintaining the focus on the two-state solution. And, as Brzezinksi says, Obama needs to outline his vision for a deal. The world knows what it means: the removal of Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank, the withdrawal of Israel to its '67 borders, the partition of Jerusalem in some fashion to allow the Palestinians to have their capital in East Jerusalem, and an equitable deal over the Palestinians right-to-return to the former Palestine, involving a hefty financial compensation to those who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 and 1967. The world knows it. Now, Obama has to say it.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
No more make-believe in the Middle East
By Norman H. Olsen Norman H. Olsen
Mon Apr 27, 5:00 am ET
Cherryfield, Maine – Let's not be so hard on Bibi.
The squealing on the Israeli and American left is making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu out to be a minority radical, a warmonger among the majority progressives who want a just peace with the Palestinians.
In reality, the bad news – and the good – is that Mr. Netanyahu doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker.
Let's look at the record.
Settlement construction, including the massive developments encircling Jerusalem, has continued for four decades. All of Bibi's predecessors – even the "doves" – never once slowed settlement construction, despite their repeated assurances. Throughout, despite intensive US monitoring and reporting on growth, the US has always pretended to believe them.
In the early 1990s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the US that settlement sites such as Har Homa were merely in the planning stages. When site work began, he claimed that it was only preparatory work with no approval for construction. When ministry approvals for construction were given, he and his successors claimed that they would prevent construction. Today Har Homa stands as one of the many monuments to the success of deny, deny, deny.
The latest and final major link in the chain of Jerusalem-encircling settlements, known as E1, has followed exactly the same progression. E1 is important, because if it is allowed to become a town, it will effectively split the West Bank in two, ending hopes for a two-state solution. US observers, myself included, reported during the past six years the clear evidence of site preparation, only to be told by the highest levels of the Israeli government that roadbeds, drainage systems, terracing, and other clearly observable major works were "erosion control." Again, the US pretended to believe the official spin.
Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert told the US repeatedly that the separation barrier would not be used for political purposes, and that its route through the West Bank, rather than along the internationally accepted "Green Line," was to provide security "setback" for towns on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Again, the US pretended to believe them.
Today, the tens of thousands of acres of West Bank land between the Green Line and the separation barrier are the fastest-growing areas for settlement construction, all built right up against the barrier, with no security setback, ensuring Israeli facts on the ground.
This pattern of pretending holds true for promises to ease travel for Palestinians within the West Bank. At the time of the Nov. 15, 2005, Agreement on Movement and Access, which was pressed on the Israelis and Palestinians by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, there were some 320 roadblocks. At the time, some US embassy staff openly termed the agreement toothless. Secretary Rice and her team termed it a historic achievement. Today, there are 632 roadblocks.
Ditto for the growth in Israeli-settler-only road systems in the West Bank, the thousands of Palestinians held prisoner for years without charge in Israeli "administrative detention," and the continuing blockage of Palestinian commercial traffic into and out of the Occupied Territories.
Ditto, too, for the talk in the late 1990s – by Bibi no less! – about weaning Israel from the billions in US aid it gets each year. The Israelis assured progress and the US pretended to believe them. For cash-strapped American taxpayers, the 10-year agreement signed in 2007 for $30 billion in military assistance to Israel, plus another billion or so a year in assorted other US-funded programs, amounts to a lot of pretending.
Palestinians, unlike Americans, are under no illusion about change under a Netanyahu government; hence the lack of public outcry over the Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman alliance. Despite the regular meetings that the US insisted take place since 2002 between Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Abbas never won a single substantive, realized concession. Israel and the US pretended that meetings equaled progress, but, each time, Abbas returned to Ramallah weakened, the object of increasing scorn not only from Hamas, but from his own Fatah supporters.
From the field, the relationship was always reminiscent of the scene from the 1967 comedy "A Guide for the Married Man," where a man and his mistress, caught in flagrante by the wife, simply deny, deny, deny until they have calmly dressed and the mistress has departed, leaving the wife wondering whether to believe her eyes.
Once he became prime minister in the 1990s, even firebrand Netanyahu played the "we pretend, you pretend" game, signing on to the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which, among other things, provided billions in US funding for Israel's redeployment out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, though, Netanyahu appears to have ended the charade, although perhaps only until political expediency warrants another metamorphosis. His policies may be misguided, but his intellectual honesty may prove salutary. The Israeli right and its American supporters have a hard time claiming Israeli moderation and reasonableness when Netanyahu and his ministers openly oppose a two-state arrangement; affirm the blockade of Gaza, preventing reconstruction there; tout settlement expansion; brag of undermining US efforts to talk with Iran; and threaten an attack on Iran – across US-controlled Iraqi airspace – that could jeopardize US troops and interests throughout the region.
In lifting the veil on Israeli policy and the criticism-stifling fiction of US-Israeli mutual interest, Netanyahu leaves the US open, finally, to voice and pursue its own positions and interests.
Finally, Washington can say, clearly and forcefully, that Israel's occupation harms US interests; that an attack on Iran is unacceptable and will get no US support, even in the UN Security Council; that settlement construction must stop and barriers be removed; that meetings are no substitute for progress; that Palestinians must be granted the opportunity – a real one – to form a viable state; and that the time has come for one of the world's wealthiest countries to be weaned off American largess.
Norman H. Olsen is a former senior United States Foreign Service officer. He served at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1991 to 1995, and from 2002 to 2007, including four years as chief of the political section.
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Mon Apr 27, 5:00 am ET
Cherryfield, Maine – Let's not be so hard on Bibi.
The squealing on the Israeli and American left is making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu out to be a minority radical, a warmonger among the majority progressives who want a just peace with the Palestinians.
In reality, the bad news – and the good – is that Mr. Netanyahu doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker.
Let's look at the record.
Settlement construction, including the massive developments encircling Jerusalem, has continued for four decades. All of Bibi's predecessors – even the "doves" – never once slowed settlement construction, despite their repeated assurances. Throughout, despite intensive US monitoring and reporting on growth, the US has always pretended to believe them.
In the early 1990s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the US that settlement sites such as Har Homa were merely in the planning stages. When site work began, he claimed that it was only preparatory work with no approval for construction. When ministry approvals for construction were given, he and his successors claimed that they would prevent construction. Today Har Homa stands as one of the many monuments to the success of deny, deny, deny.
The latest and final major link in the chain of Jerusalem-encircling settlements, known as E1, has followed exactly the same progression. E1 is important, because if it is allowed to become a town, it will effectively split the West Bank in two, ending hopes for a two-state solution. US observers, myself included, reported during the past six years the clear evidence of site preparation, only to be told by the highest levels of the Israeli government that roadbeds, drainage systems, terracing, and other clearly observable major works were "erosion control." Again, the US pretended to believe the official spin.
Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert told the US repeatedly that the separation barrier would not be used for political purposes, and that its route through the West Bank, rather than along the internationally accepted "Green Line," was to provide security "setback" for towns on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Again, the US pretended to believe them.
Today, the tens of thousands of acres of West Bank land between the Green Line and the separation barrier are the fastest-growing areas for settlement construction, all built right up against the barrier, with no security setback, ensuring Israeli facts on the ground.
This pattern of pretending holds true for promises to ease travel for Palestinians within the West Bank. At the time of the Nov. 15, 2005, Agreement on Movement and Access, which was pressed on the Israelis and Palestinians by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, there were some 320 roadblocks. At the time, some US embassy staff openly termed the agreement toothless. Secretary Rice and her team termed it a historic achievement. Today, there are 632 roadblocks.
Ditto for the growth in Israeli-settler-only road systems in the West Bank, the thousands of Palestinians held prisoner for years without charge in Israeli "administrative detention," and the continuing blockage of Palestinian commercial traffic into and out of the Occupied Territories.
Ditto, too, for the talk in the late 1990s – by Bibi no less! – about weaning Israel from the billions in US aid it gets each year. The Israelis assured progress and the US pretended to believe them. For cash-strapped American taxpayers, the 10-year agreement signed in 2007 for $30 billion in military assistance to Israel, plus another billion or so a year in assorted other US-funded programs, amounts to a lot of pretending.
Palestinians, unlike Americans, are under no illusion about change under a Netanyahu government; hence the lack of public outcry over the Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman alliance. Despite the regular meetings that the US insisted take place since 2002 between Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Abbas never won a single substantive, realized concession. Israel and the US pretended that meetings equaled progress, but, each time, Abbas returned to Ramallah weakened, the object of increasing scorn not only from Hamas, but from his own Fatah supporters.
From the field, the relationship was always reminiscent of the scene from the 1967 comedy "A Guide for the Married Man," where a man and his mistress, caught in flagrante by the wife, simply deny, deny, deny until they have calmly dressed and the mistress has departed, leaving the wife wondering whether to believe her eyes.
Once he became prime minister in the 1990s, even firebrand Netanyahu played the "we pretend, you pretend" game, signing on to the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which, among other things, provided billions in US funding for Israel's redeployment out of the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, though, Netanyahu appears to have ended the charade, although perhaps only until political expediency warrants another metamorphosis. His policies may be misguided, but his intellectual honesty may prove salutary. The Israeli right and its American supporters have a hard time claiming Israeli moderation and reasonableness when Netanyahu and his ministers openly oppose a two-state arrangement; affirm the blockade of Gaza, preventing reconstruction there; tout settlement expansion; brag of undermining US efforts to talk with Iran; and threaten an attack on Iran – across US-controlled Iraqi airspace – that could jeopardize US troops and interests throughout the region.
In lifting the veil on Israeli policy and the criticism-stifling fiction of US-Israeli mutual interest, Netanyahu leaves the US open, finally, to voice and pursue its own positions and interests.
Finally, Washington can say, clearly and forcefully, that Israel's occupation harms US interests; that an attack on Iran is unacceptable and will get no US support, even in the UN Security Council; that settlement construction must stop and barriers be removed; that meetings are no substitute for progress; that Palestinians must be granted the opportunity – a real one – to form a viable state; and that the time has come for one of the world's wealthiest countries to be weaned off American largess.
Norman H. Olsen is a former senior United States Foreign Service officer. He served at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1991 to 1995, and from 2002 to 2007, including four years as chief of the political section.
Read more...
Sunday, April 26, 2009
LET'S MESS WITH TEXAS
LET'S MESS WITH TEXAS
By Richard Reeves Richard Reeves
Fri Apr 24, 7:57 pm ET
DALLAS -- Rush Limbaugh, the entertainer, announced the other day that he was moving out of New York City because New York Gov. David Paterson proposed higher state taxes on the rich. Paterson reacted by saying that if he had known Limbaugh would go, he would have proposed the tax a long time ago.
I had about the same reaction when Texas Gov. Rick Perry began babbling about the Lone Star State seceding from the United States. His rebel yell prompted a scene that may not be remembered as long as the Alamo, but should be. There were a few dozen of Perry's constituents waving "Secede Now" signs in one hand and American flags in the other.
Perry, who had his facts and history all wrong -- practically a given for Texas politicians -- was reacting to his own interpretation of President Obama's stimulus packages. What made him maddest was that the federal plan would have given unemployed Texans more money than the state gives them now. Then he got even madder when Democrats and other Republicans -- Perry is a Republican -- joined together to override his veto of that part of the Obama package of state aid.
"Texas is a unique place," he shouted. No argument there. "When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that."
Wrong! In that respect, Texas is the same as every other state. In fact, if you remember, Texas did secede, or tried to, once before. That was in 1861, The War Between the States and all that.
Perry is not alone. In a quick state poll published by The Dallas Morning News, almost one in five Texans said they would vote for secession if they were given the chance. One of them was that great Texan (and American) Tom DeLay, who brought so much honor to the state during his years in Congress. DeLay praised Perry for upholding Texas "sovereignty." The editor of D Magazine, Wick Allison, complained in an editorial that the national recession was far worse than Dallas' economic problems, and why should relatively prosperous Texans help Americans who did not help them during a local slump in housing prices from 1987 to 1994.
"Now the rest of the country has decided to drag us down with it," wrote Allison. "I find that more than a little irritating."
As for local Democrats, they are having some fun with such talk. Said state representative Jim Dunnam of Waco: "Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It can be nothing else. It is the ultimate anti-American statement."
Both Democrats and newspapers are saying that what Perry is really afraid of is not the United States but only one woman in it, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has been talking about challenging him in the Republican primary for governor next year. He has been calling the lady a "Washington insider," ordinary stuff like that, but now maybe he intends to attack her as "an American." This is a state, after all, that booted its founder, Sam Houston, out of the governor's office because he suggested back in 1861 that it might not be such a good idea to take on the entire United States.
However serious Perry is, maybe the rest of us should take him at his word. Let Texas secede, keep its death sentences and become a buffer state between the drug wars of Mexico and the drug users of the United States. People like me with family in Texas will be bothered by getting visas to visit our own. But, presumably, anyone with half a brain will be heading north. We'll have a whole new illegal immigrant problem, Texans. Well, maybe we'll just have to build another border fence to keep them out.
Actually, what I regret about this messing with Texas is that it's just too late. If it had happened a few years ago, the rest of us, loyal Americans, would have been spared George W. Bush. He would have been president of the Republic of Texas. You can imagine the shape the former state would be in after its pre-emptive invasion of Mexico.
Read more...
By Richard Reeves Richard Reeves
Fri Apr 24, 7:57 pm ET
DALLAS -- Rush Limbaugh, the entertainer, announced the other day that he was moving out of New York City because New York Gov. David Paterson proposed higher state taxes on the rich. Paterson reacted by saying that if he had known Limbaugh would go, he would have proposed the tax a long time ago.
I had about the same reaction when Texas Gov. Rick Perry began babbling about the Lone Star State seceding from the United States. His rebel yell prompted a scene that may not be remembered as long as the Alamo, but should be. There were a few dozen of Perry's constituents waving "Secede Now" signs in one hand and American flags in the other.
Perry, who had his facts and history all wrong -- practically a given for Texas politicians -- was reacting to his own interpretation of President Obama's stimulus packages. What made him maddest was that the federal plan would have given unemployed Texans more money than the state gives them now. Then he got even madder when Democrats and other Republicans -- Perry is a Republican -- joined together to override his veto of that part of the Obama package of state aid.
"Texas is a unique place," he shouted. No argument there. "When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that."
Wrong! In that respect, Texas is the same as every other state. In fact, if you remember, Texas did secede, or tried to, once before. That was in 1861, The War Between the States and all that.
Perry is not alone. In a quick state poll published by The Dallas Morning News, almost one in five Texans said they would vote for secession if they were given the chance. One of them was that great Texan (and American) Tom DeLay, who brought so much honor to the state during his years in Congress. DeLay praised Perry for upholding Texas "sovereignty." The editor of D Magazine, Wick Allison, complained in an editorial that the national recession was far worse than Dallas' economic problems, and why should relatively prosperous Texans help Americans who did not help them during a local slump in housing prices from 1987 to 1994.
"Now the rest of the country has decided to drag us down with it," wrote Allison. "I find that more than a little irritating."
As for local Democrats, they are having some fun with such talk. Said state representative Jim Dunnam of Waco: "Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It can be nothing else. It is the ultimate anti-American statement."
Both Democrats and newspapers are saying that what Perry is really afraid of is not the United States but only one woman in it, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has been talking about challenging him in the Republican primary for governor next year. He has been calling the lady a "Washington insider," ordinary stuff like that, but now maybe he intends to attack her as "an American." This is a state, after all, that booted its founder, Sam Houston, out of the governor's office because he suggested back in 1861 that it might not be such a good idea to take on the entire United States.
However serious Perry is, maybe the rest of us should take him at his word. Let Texas secede, keep its death sentences and become a buffer state between the drug wars of Mexico and the drug users of the United States. People like me with family in Texas will be bothered by getting visas to visit our own. But, presumably, anyone with half a brain will be heading north. We'll have a whole new illegal immigrant problem, Texans. Well, maybe we'll just have to build another border fence to keep them out.
Actually, what I regret about this messing with Texas is that it's just too late. If it had happened a few years ago, the rest of us, loyal Americans, would have been spared George W. Bush. He would have been president of the Republic of Texas. You can imagine the shape the former state would be in after its pre-emptive invasion of Mexico.
Read more...
The danger of an Israeli strike on Iran
By Walt Rodgers Walt Rodgers
Fri Apr 24, 5:00 am ET
Oakton, Va. – The new Israeli prime minister recently appeared to give President Obama a blunt ultimatum: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – or we will.
Benjamin Netanyahu's challenge (intimated in an interview he gave to The Atlantic magazine) smacks of unrealistic bravado and, worse, it appears to be a crude attempt to bully an American president into bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
The world should hope it's a hollow threat.
The consequences of a unilateral Israeli strike would be enormous if not disastrous. Mr. Obama cannot allow himself to be intimidated by Mr. Netanyahu, nor can he wink if the Israeli air force bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.
Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program.
The fallout from Israel's strike on Osirak was serious but limited. But a preemptive strike on Iranian soil would border on catastrophic. Consider:
•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.
•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.
•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.
•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there.
Netanyahu is no fool. He is keenly aware of these global implications. He knows that a unilateral Israeli strike would not only accelerate Iran's nuclear ambitions but also legitimize them. He also knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map is bombast. It is the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who commands the armed forces and national security apparatus, not the populist president.
Domestic Israeli politics may have been a factor motivating Netanyahu's warnings. Talking tough soothes anxieties at home. Equally likely, Netanyahu was prodding the new Obama government. And in that sense he may feel the recent US-led invitation to Tehran to meet with Washington and five other major powers to discuss the disputed nuclear program was a result of his threat. Iran has agreed to "constructive dialogue," although it may be delusional for the Israeli prime minister – or any other Western leader – to believe that political or economic pressure can sway Iran's ruling clerics.
What's worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of "Bibi" in October 1997 under the headline "Israel's Serial Bungler." It described his governance of the Jewish state as a "calamity" for the peace process.
Iran has no need to nuke Israel. Its ruling clerics, whom Netanyahu described as a "messianic apocalyptic cult," believe time, history, and Allah are on their side. They believe the Jewish state, starting across the border in Lebanon, can be nibbled to death over the next century just as the Arabs did to the Crusader kingdoms 600 years ago.
It should surprise no one that Iran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. They live in a nuclear neighborhood: Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and Israel, which is estimated to have 200 nuclear bombs ready to use if it were attacked. The ayatollahs also remember Mr. Hussein's 1991 folly of going to war with the US without nuclear weapons.
Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: "No first strike." Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home. A messianic vision such as Mr. Ahmadinejad's is rife in much of the Islamic world. Bellicose rhetoric most often serves as an excuse for inaction. It does not denote suicidal inclinations on the part of Iran's more pragmatic leaders.
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column for the Monitor's weekly print edition.
Read more...
Fri Apr 24, 5:00 am ET
Oakton, Va. – The new Israeli prime minister recently appeared to give President Obama a blunt ultimatum: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – or we will.
Benjamin Netanyahu's challenge (intimated in an interview he gave to The Atlantic magazine) smacks of unrealistic bravado and, worse, it appears to be a crude attempt to bully an American president into bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
The world should hope it's a hollow threat.
The consequences of a unilateral Israeli strike would be enormous if not disastrous. Mr. Obama cannot allow himself to be intimidated by Mr. Netanyahu, nor can he wink if the Israeli air force bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.
Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program.
The fallout from Israel's strike on Osirak was serious but limited. But a preemptive strike on Iranian soil would border on catastrophic. Consider:
•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.
•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.
•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.
•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there.
Netanyahu is no fool. He is keenly aware of these global implications. He knows that a unilateral Israeli strike would not only accelerate Iran's nuclear ambitions but also legitimize them. He also knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map is bombast. It is the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who commands the armed forces and national security apparatus, not the populist president.
Domestic Israeli politics may have been a factor motivating Netanyahu's warnings. Talking tough soothes anxieties at home. Equally likely, Netanyahu was prodding the new Obama government. And in that sense he may feel the recent US-led invitation to Tehran to meet with Washington and five other major powers to discuss the disputed nuclear program was a result of his threat. Iran has agreed to "constructive dialogue," although it may be delusional for the Israeli prime minister – or any other Western leader – to believe that political or economic pressure can sway Iran's ruling clerics.
What's worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of "Bibi" in October 1997 under the headline "Israel's Serial Bungler." It described his governance of the Jewish state as a "calamity" for the peace process.
Iran has no need to nuke Israel. Its ruling clerics, whom Netanyahu described as a "messianic apocalyptic cult," believe time, history, and Allah are on their side. They believe the Jewish state, starting across the border in Lebanon, can be nibbled to death over the next century just as the Arabs did to the Crusader kingdoms 600 years ago.
It should surprise no one that Iran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. They live in a nuclear neighborhood: Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and Israel, which is estimated to have 200 nuclear bombs ready to use if it were attacked. The ayatollahs also remember Mr. Hussein's 1991 folly of going to war with the US without nuclear weapons.
Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: "No first strike." Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home. A messianic vision such as Mr. Ahmadinejad's is rife in much of the Islamic world. Bellicose rhetoric most often serves as an excuse for inaction. It does not denote suicidal inclinations on the part of Iran's more pragmatic leaders.
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column for the Monitor's weekly print edition.
Read more...
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Pakistan and the "Global War on Terrorism"
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation.
The process of US sponsored "regime change", which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the "international community" scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.
Read more here:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7705
Read more...
The process of US sponsored "regime change", which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the "international community" scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.
Read more here:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7705
Read more...
Taliban Advance: Is Pakistan Nearing Collapse?
Taliban Advance: Is Pakistan Nearing Collapse?
By ARYN BAKER/ISLAMABAD Aryn Baker
The move by Taliban-backed militants into the Buner district of northwestern Pakistan, closer than ever to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, have prompted concerns both within the country and abroad that the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million is on the verge of inexorable collapse.
On Wednesday a local Taliban militia crossed from the Swat Valley - where a February cease-fire allowed the implementation of strict Islamic, or Shari'a, law - into the neighboring Buner district, which is just a few hours drive from Islamabad (65 miles, separated by a mountain range, as the crow flies). ((See pictures on the frontlines in the battle against the Taliban.)
Residents streaming from Buner, home to nearly a million people, told local newspapers that armed militants are patrolling the streets. Pakistani television stations aired footage of Taliban soldiers looting government offices and capturing vehicles belonging to aid organizations and development projects. The police, say residents, are nowhere to be seen. The shrine of a local Muslim saint, venerated across the country, was closed. The Taliban, which adheres to a stricter version of Islam than is practiced in most of Pakistan, hold that worship at such shrines goes against the teachings of Islam.
Meanwhile courts throughout the Malakand division, of which Swat and Buner are a part, have closed in deference to the new agreement calling for the implementation Shari'a, law. "If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, head of one of the country's Islamic political parties, warned in Parliament Wednesday. Rehman said the Margalla Hills, a small mountain range north of the capital that separates it from Buner, appears to be "the only hurdle in their march toward the federal capital," The only solution, he said, was for the entire nation to accept Shari'a law in order to deprive the Taliban of their principal cause.
The fall of Buner is raising international alarm. Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton characterized the situation was a danger to Pakistan, the U.S. and the world. "We cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad, that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state," Clinton said. She also accused Pakistan's leaders of "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists" by signing the cease-fire agreement. (Read "Will Pakistan Toughen Up on the Taliban?")
Even before the fall of Buner, the capital was in a state of panic. Private schools were closed for two weeks for fear that militants would attempt a siege, along the lines of the Taliban attack on a police academy in Lahore last month. And an unspecified threat against foreigners two weeks ago resulted in the closure of the U.S. embassy and the British High Commission for a day.
On Sunday, just a week after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed a provision allowing for the implementation of Islamic law in Malakand, Sufi Mohammad, the local religious leader who negotiated the accord (and who is father-in-law to the local Taliban leader), announced that he would not recognize the Supreme Court of Pakistan, even in cases of appeal. He also said that while the Taliban fighters would adhere to the peace agreement, they would not give up their arms. (Read "Can Pakistan Be Untangled from the Taliban?")
Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, defended the government's concession to the Taliban, denying in an interview with CNN that the cease-fire agreement amounted to capitulation. He justified the action by comparing it to the 2006 U.S.-led Anbar Awakening in Iraq in which U.S. military commanders struck agreements with moderate jihadists. "We are open to criticism of that strategy, but to think that that strategy somehow represents an abdication of our responsibility toward our people and toward the security of our country and the region is incorrect," Haqqani said.
Also on Wednesday, a top adviser to Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani made an explosive announcement accusing a long-simmering separatist movement in the province of Baluchistan of being sponsored by archenemy India and Afghanistan. The mysterious deaths of several Baluch leaders over the past few weeks have renewed demands for Baluch independence from the nation of Pakistan.
The implication by Rehman Malik, Gilani's Interior Affairs adviser, that neighboring countries were fomenting instability in Pakistan will only heighten regional tensions at a moment when the country is least equipped to deal with them. Already columnists in several Pakistani newspapers are warning of a return to 1971, when a separatist movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, ended with a civil war that split the nation.
David Kilcullen, a counter-terrorism expert for both the Bush and the Obama administrations, warned that Pakistan is on the brink of collapse. "Afghanistan doesn't worry me," Kilcullen said in an April 12 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. "Pakistan does. We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now."
During an April 16 conference in Tokyo to raise donations for his beleaguered nation, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned that terrorists operating in the country posed a global threat. At that conference, countries including the U.S. and Japan pledged more than $5 billion to improve health, education and governance in Pakistan.
But with security and stability increasingly in doubt, it's becoming clear that more urgent action is needed beyond financial donations aimed at institution-building. Neither Zardari nor opposition leaders have been able to come up with answers to the insurgency. Columnist Kamila Hyat, writing in The News, called for an overhaul of current strategies, including reaching out to Pakistan's old foe, India. If Pakistan doesn't have to worry about protecting its eastern flank, she argued, it can concentrate on solving its internal problems. "The only option for Pakistan is to break free of the militant grip, focus on building a new relationship with India and realize the only hope for a brighter future lies in building regional harmony rather than waging war." It's a sound proposal for the long term, but with the Taliban already taking advantage of the peace deal in Swat to expand their reach, Pakistan may be forced into negotiating with militants first.
Read more...
By ARYN BAKER/ISLAMABAD Aryn Baker
The move by Taliban-backed militants into the Buner district of northwestern Pakistan, closer than ever to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, have prompted concerns both within the country and abroad that the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million is on the verge of inexorable collapse.
On Wednesday a local Taliban militia crossed from the Swat Valley - where a February cease-fire allowed the implementation of strict Islamic, or Shari'a, law - into the neighboring Buner district, which is just a few hours drive from Islamabad (65 miles, separated by a mountain range, as the crow flies). ((See pictures on the frontlines in the battle against the Taliban.)
Residents streaming from Buner, home to nearly a million people, told local newspapers that armed militants are patrolling the streets. Pakistani television stations aired footage of Taliban soldiers looting government offices and capturing vehicles belonging to aid organizations and development projects. The police, say residents, are nowhere to be seen. The shrine of a local Muslim saint, venerated across the country, was closed. The Taliban, which adheres to a stricter version of Islam than is practiced in most of Pakistan, hold that worship at such shrines goes against the teachings of Islam.
Meanwhile courts throughout the Malakand division, of which Swat and Buner are a part, have closed in deference to the new agreement calling for the implementation Shari'a, law. "If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, head of one of the country's Islamic political parties, warned in Parliament Wednesday. Rehman said the Margalla Hills, a small mountain range north of the capital that separates it from Buner, appears to be "the only hurdle in their march toward the federal capital," The only solution, he said, was for the entire nation to accept Shari'a law in order to deprive the Taliban of their principal cause.
The fall of Buner is raising international alarm. Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton characterized the situation was a danger to Pakistan, the U.S. and the world. "We cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad, that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state," Clinton said. She also accused Pakistan's leaders of "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists" by signing the cease-fire agreement. (Read "Will Pakistan Toughen Up on the Taliban?")
Even before the fall of Buner, the capital was in a state of panic. Private schools were closed for two weeks for fear that militants would attempt a siege, along the lines of the Taliban attack on a police academy in Lahore last month. And an unspecified threat against foreigners two weeks ago resulted in the closure of the U.S. embassy and the British High Commission for a day.
On Sunday, just a week after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed a provision allowing for the implementation of Islamic law in Malakand, Sufi Mohammad, the local religious leader who negotiated the accord (and who is father-in-law to the local Taliban leader), announced that he would not recognize the Supreme Court of Pakistan, even in cases of appeal. He also said that while the Taliban fighters would adhere to the peace agreement, they would not give up their arms. (Read "Can Pakistan Be Untangled from the Taliban?")
Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, defended the government's concession to the Taliban, denying in an interview with CNN that the cease-fire agreement amounted to capitulation. He justified the action by comparing it to the 2006 U.S.-led Anbar Awakening in Iraq in which U.S. military commanders struck agreements with moderate jihadists. "We are open to criticism of that strategy, but to think that that strategy somehow represents an abdication of our responsibility toward our people and toward the security of our country and the region is incorrect," Haqqani said.
Also on Wednesday, a top adviser to Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani made an explosive announcement accusing a long-simmering separatist movement in the province of Baluchistan of being sponsored by archenemy India and Afghanistan. The mysterious deaths of several Baluch leaders over the past few weeks have renewed demands for Baluch independence from the nation of Pakistan.
The implication by Rehman Malik, Gilani's Interior Affairs adviser, that neighboring countries were fomenting instability in Pakistan will only heighten regional tensions at a moment when the country is least equipped to deal with them. Already columnists in several Pakistani newspapers are warning of a return to 1971, when a separatist movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, ended with a civil war that split the nation.
David Kilcullen, a counter-terrorism expert for both the Bush and the Obama administrations, warned that Pakistan is on the brink of collapse. "Afghanistan doesn't worry me," Kilcullen said in an April 12 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. "Pakistan does. We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now."
During an April 16 conference in Tokyo to raise donations for his beleaguered nation, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned that terrorists operating in the country posed a global threat. At that conference, countries including the U.S. and Japan pledged more than $5 billion to improve health, education and governance in Pakistan.
But with security and stability increasingly in doubt, it's becoming clear that more urgent action is needed beyond financial donations aimed at institution-building. Neither Zardari nor opposition leaders have been able to come up with answers to the insurgency. Columnist Kamila Hyat, writing in The News, called for an overhaul of current strategies, including reaching out to Pakistan's old foe, India. If Pakistan doesn't have to worry about protecting its eastern flank, she argued, it can concentrate on solving its internal problems. "The only option for Pakistan is to break free of the militant grip, focus on building a new relationship with India and realize the only hope for a brighter future lies in building regional harmony rather than waging war." It's a sound proposal for the long term, but with the Taliban already taking advantage of the peace deal in Swat to expand their reach, Pakistan may be forced into negotiating with militants first.
Read more...
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