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Friday, February 13, 2009
Obama and the Great Game
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The day before Richard Holbrooke arrived in Kabul, eight suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Justice and Education ministries, killing 26 and wounding 57.
Kabul was paralyzed, as the Taliban displayed an ability to wreak havoc within a hundred yards of the presidential palace.
The assault came as President Obama is both conducting a strategic review and deciding how many additional U.S. troops to send.
Earlier, there was talk of 30,000, bringing the U.S. total to 63,000. Now, there are reports Obama may commit no more than the three brigades promised in 2008, and only one brigade now.
Clearly, the United States is checking its hole card. Can we draw to a winning hand? Or is this hand an inevitable loser – and we must cut our losses and cede the pot? No longer, anywhere, is there talk of "victory."
Nor is the diplomatic news good.
Last week, Kyrgyzstan gave us six months to vacate Manas, the air base used to resupply U.S. forces. A week before, guerrillas blew up a bridge in the Khyber, cutting the 1,000-mile supply line from Karachi to Kabul. Before that, guerrillas bombed U.S. truck parks in Pakistan.
While in Pakistan, Holbrooke was told by all to whom he spoke that, while U.S. Predator strikes may be killing Taliban and al-Qaeda, the deaths among tribal peoples are turning Pakistan against us.
What would winning Afghanistan for democracy profit us, if the price were losing a nuclear-armed Pakistan to Islamism?
The expulsion from Manas, after Kyrgyzstan received a reported $2 billion in aid from Moscow, raises a question.
Is Russia restarting "The Great Game" she played against Victoria's Empire in Central Asia, which ended in 1907 with a British-Russian entente, dividing Iran into spheres of influence, with both sides agreeing to keep hands off Afghanistan?
As Russia has as great an interest in preventing an Islamist Kabul, and has assisted NATO's resupply of its forces, why would Moscow seek to expel us from a base vital to the war effort?
Does Russia simply seek to be recognized by the United States as the hegemon of Central Asia, the sole great power that decides who can and who cannot use former Soviet bases?
For if Manas is closed and the Karachi-Khyber-Kabul supply line is compromised or cut, Obama would seem to have but three options.
First would be to go back, hat-in-hand, to Islam Karimov, the Uzbek ruler charged with grave human rights violations, and ask him to reopen the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) air base, from which we were expelled in 2005. And what would be Karimov's asking price?
Second is the Russia option. If Moscow now holds the whip hand in the old Soviet republics, what is Moscow's price to let us remain in Manas or use other Soviet bases over which it wields veto power?
The answer is obvious. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is to be brought into NATO. The independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, won in the August war with Georgia, is not to be challenged. The U.S. anti-missile missiles planned for Polandare not to be deployed.
In turn, Russia will cancel any missile deployment in Kaliningrad, recommits to the terms of all conventional forces agreements in Europe and assist in the effort in Afghanistan. Russia rejoins the West, and the West stays off Russia's front porch.
Be not surprised if the Russians come trolling before an overextended American empire an end to the Great Game in Central Asia like the one the ministers of Nicholas II offered the ministers of Edward VII.
And the third option? It is Iran.
Before 9/11, Iran was more hostile to the anti-Shia Taliban than we, and it has no desire to see them return. Indeed, Tehran was a supporter of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as both were ruled by mortal enemies.
The long way for U.S. and NATO war materiel to reach Kabul via Iran would be through a Turkey-Kurdistan-Iran supply line. The shorter would be from Iranian ports straight into Afghanistan.
Price of an entente? An end to the 30-year U.S.-Iranian cold war and a strategic bargain whereby Iran is allowed to develop peaceful nuclear power, under supervision, the United States lifts its embargo, and regime change is left to the Iranian people.
President Ahmadinejad, no fool, and facing an uncertain election this year, is already signaling interest in negotiations with Obama.
A complication. How would "Bibi" Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman regard a U.S.-Iran rapprochement – to prevent a Taliban triumph in Kabul?
Yet, if the Taliban's enemies in Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia will not assist us, this war cannot end well. And if they will not help, Obama should cut America's losses, come home and let their neighbors deal with a triumphant Taliban.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Global Economy Top Threat to U.S., Spy Chief Says
By MARK MAZZ
WASHINGTON — The new director of national intelligence told Congress on Thursday that global economic turmoil and the instability it could ignite had outpaced terrorism as the most urgent th
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, outlined a variety of security threats during his testimony on Thursday.
The assessment underscored concern inside America’s intelligence agencies not only about the fallout from the economic crisis around the globe, but also about long-term harm to America’s reputation. The crisis that began in American markets has already “increased questioning of U.S. stewardship of the global economy,” the intelligence chief, Dennis C. Blair, said in prepared testimony.
Mr. Blair’s comments were particularly striking because they were delivered as part of a threat assessment to Congress that has customarily focused on issues like terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Mr. Blair singled out the economic downturn as “the primary near-term security concern” for the country, and he warned that if it continued to spread and deepen, it would contribute to unrest and imperil some governments.
“The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he said.
Mr. Blair also used his testimony to deliver a withering critique of the Afghan government’s inability to halt the spread of the Taliban, and he said corruption in Kabul and throughout the country had bolstered support for the Taliban and warlords.
The stark assessment of the security picture in Afghanistan laid bare the obstacles facing the Obama administration as it aims to direct more American troops and attention toward quelling the violence in the country.
Mr. Blair delivered his assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in what was the new administration’s first public recitation of the national security challenges facing the United States.
In a departure from recent years, when the heads of several intelligence agencies joined the director of national intelligence to deliver the testimony on the threats facing the nation, Mr. Blair faced the committee alone, a sign that the Obama administration plans for him to take on a more public role at the top of the intelligence pyramid.
Mr. Blair reiterated the oft-stated idea that no significant improvement in Afghanistan was possible unless Pakistan gained control of its own border areas, but he said that Pakistan’s government was losing authority over that territory and that even more developed parts of Pakistan were coming under the sway of Islamic radicalism.
He linked Pakistan’s problems, in part, to the fact that it was among the countries most badly hurt by the economic crisis. Already, he said, roughly a quarter of the world’s nations have experienced “low-level instability such as government changes” as a result of the current slowdown in the global economy.
American officials say Pakistan’s tribal areas remain hdronesome to the core leadership of Al Qaeda, though Mr. Blair said that its leadership had been battered in recent months by what he called “a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.” The attacks have been carried out by C.I.A. remotely piloted aircraft, which Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, said were operating out of a base in Pakistan.
Still, American intelligence officials have long said that dismantling Al Qaeda’s haven in Pakistan would take more than a campaign of airstrikes against the group’s leadership.
But Mr. Blair also spread around the blame for Afghanistan’s problems. A day after a brazen attack by Taliban gunmen in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Mr. Blair named the American-backed government of President Hamid Karzai as part of the problem in Afghanistan.
“Kabul’s inability to build effective, honest, and loyal provincial- and district-level institutions capable of providing basic services and sustainable, licit livelihoods erodes its popular legitimacy and increases the influence of local warlords and the Taliban,” Mr. Blair said.
Speaking about North Korea, he cited renewed concern among American intelligence officials that the country could be using a covert uranium enrichment program to produce fissile material that could be used to build nuclear weapons. American intelligence officials have previously estimated that the North has harvested enough plutonium for six or more bombs, although it has never been clear whether the North built the weapons.
Officials in Washington believe that North Korea is preparing for another long-range missile test, in an attempt to demonstrate an ability to threaten cities along the West Coast of the United States.
Iran is another nation that Mr. Blair cited as getting closer to mastering advanced missile technology, one aspect of what he told senators at the hearing was Iran’s “dogged development of a deliverable nuclear weapon.”
He repeated the assessment made by Bush administration officials that Iran was likely to be using thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium to produce material for a nuclear weapon. (Iran says its nuclear program is for energy generation.) But he said that a political decision ultimately awaited Iranian leaders about whether or not to turn Iran into a full-fledged nuclear power. “I don’t think it’s a done deal either way,” he said at the hearing.
Mr. Blair’s focus on the world economy was a surprise to some senators. At one point, he assured one senator that he had no plans to turn the focus of American intelligence agencies away from threats like Iran and North Korea. “I won’t be turning satellites to look at G.D.P. accounts,” he said.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, outlined a variety of security threats during his testimony on Thursday.
The assessment underscored concern inside America’s intelligence agencies not only about the fallout from the economic crisis around the globe, but also about long-term harm to America’s reputation. The crisis that began in American markets has already “increased questioning of U.S. stewardship of the global economy,” the intelligence chief, Dennis C. Blair, said in prepared testimony.
Mr. Blair’s comments were particularly striking because they were delivered as part of a threat assessment to Congress that has customarily focused on issues like terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Mr. Blair singled out the economic downturn as “the primary near-term security concern” for the country, and he warned that if it continued to spread and deepen, it would contribute to unrest and imperil some governments.
“The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he said.
Mr. Blair also used his testimony to deliver a withering critique of the Afghan government’s inability to halt the spread of the Taliban, and he said corruption in Kabul and throughout the country had bolstered support for the Taliban and warlords.
The stark assessment of the security picture in Afghanistan laid bare the obstacles facing the Obama administration as it aims to direct more American troops and attention toward quelling the violence in the country.
Mr. Blair delivered his assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in what was the new administration’s first public recitation of the national security challenges facing the United States.
In a departure from recent years, when the heads of several intelligence agencies joined the director of national intelligence to deliver the testimony on the threats facing the nation, Mr. Blair faced the committee alone, a sign that the Obama administration plans for him to take on a more public role at the top of the intelligence pyramid.
Mr. Blair reiterated the oft-stated idea that no significant improvement in Afghanistan was possible unless Pakistan gained control of its own border areas, but he said that Pakistan’s government was losing authority over that territory and that even more developed parts of Pakistan were coming under the sway of Islamic radicalism.
He linked Pakistan’s problems, in part, to the fact that it was among the countries most badly hurt by the economic crisis. Already, he said, roughly a quarter of the world’s nations have experienced “low-level instability such as government changes” as a result of the current slowdown in the global economy.
American officials say Pakistan’s tribal areas remain hdronesome to the core leadership of Al Qaeda, though Mr. Blair said that its leadership had been battered in recent months by what he called “a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.” The attacks have been carried out by C.I.A. remotely piloted aircraft, which Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, said were operating out of a base in Pakistan.
Still, American intelligence officials have long said that dismantling Al Qaeda’s haven in Pakistan would take more than a campaign of airstrikes against the group’s leadership.
But Mr. Blair also spread around the blame for Afghanistan’s problems. A day after a brazen attack by Taliban gunmen in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Mr. Blair named the American-backed government of President Hamid Karzai as part of the problem in Afghanistan.
“Kabul’s inability to build effective, honest, and loyal provincial- and district-level institutions capable of providing basic services and sustainable, licit livelihoods erodes its popular legitimacy and increases the influence of local warlords and the Taliban,” Mr. Blair said.
Speaking about North Korea, he cited renewed concern among American intelligence officials that the country could be using a covert uranium enrichment program to produce fissile material that could be used to build nuclear weapons. American intelligence officials have previously estimated that the North has harvested enough plutonium for six or more bombs, although it has never been clear whether the North built the weapons.
Officials in Washington believe that North Korea is preparing for another long-range missile test, in an attempt to demonstrate an ability to threaten cities along the West Coast of the United States.
Iran is another nation that Mr. Blair cited as getting closer to mastering advanced missile technology, one aspect of what he told senators at the hearing was Iran’s “dogged development of a deliverable nuclear weapon.”
He repeated the assessment made by Bush administration officials that Iran was likely to be using thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium to produce material for a nuclear weapon. (Iran says its nuclear program is for energy generation.) But he said that a political decision ultimately awaited Iranian leaders about whether or not to turn Iran into a full-fledged nuclear power. “I don’t think it’s a done deal either way,” he said at the hearing.
Mr. Blair’s focus on the world economy was a surprise to some senators. At one point, he assured one senator that he had no plans to turn the focus of American intelligence agencies away from threats like Iran and North Korea. “I won’t be turning satellites to look at G.D.P. accounts,” he said.
How Valentine's Day Can Ruin Your Relationship
Candlelit dinners. Champagne. Diamonds. Roses. Imported Chocolates.
A Non-Muslim Therapists' Perspective
By Dr. Bill Cloke
NOTE TO MEN: If you haven't planned or purchased something from this list, you're likely going to have a horrible night this Feb. 14th (and one without any lovemaking). Why? Blame it on romantic fantasy. It starts long before our first Valentine's purchase or our first kiss. We've heard "happily-ever-after" fairy tales since kindergarten. We've grown up viewing "diamonds-are-forever" commercials.
As adults, we experience the commercialization of Valentine's Day as a day of great expectations, and just as often, great disappointments when our beloved's gift-giving (or lack thereof) doesn't support our romantic dreams.
Mind you, I've bought my share of romantic gifts and loved doing so-I am a happily married man of 18 years and a couples' therapist for over 20. I am certainly not against gift giving, but if either a wife or a husband equates the big gift with a big heart, then we are defining the quality of our love by material expectation. In doing so, we risk creating a deep emotional rift in what may otherwise be a healthy, loving relationship.
In 1979, Ted Huston, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, began following 168 married couples for fourteen years to see what factors were present in successful long-term marriages. One significant discovery: Couples who entered their relationship with high expectations were far more likely to experience conflict and disenchantment through the years.
Huston concluded that the greatest foundation for couples is of all things friendship. Couples who kept their expectations realistic and concentrated more on positive interactions created enduring happy marriages.
But what's friendship got to do with romance? And why is friendship with our spouse important on Valentine's and every day of the year? What I have seen in my own marriage, and time and time again in the couples I work with in my private practice, is that long-term love is sustained not by romance alone but by the daily activities of following-through on promises, showing up both emotionally and physically when needed, owning up to responsibility for your part in any conflict, and by being the kind of person who is worthy of being loved. All of the above is the definition of being a friend. One of the true secrets to long-lasting marriages is that friendship amongst couples can deepen when each party acknowledges that there is work to be done on themselves and in how they treat each other.
I remember early in my marriage when my wife gave me a very generous Valentines Day gift. After expressing my thanks, but also discomfort at the over-the-top nature of the gift, she said to me "But I want to make you happy." I said, "It's not your responsibility to make me happy, that's my job." She was stunned and relieved at the same time. Feeling like we must make our mate happy is a tremendous weight to carry and many a Valentine is based on that premise. Valentine's Day is a celebration, not a responsibility. If we can carry that in our hearts and make each day a special Valentine by being loving, kind and concerned about one another, then we are actively creating true love.
With a "best-friends" vision for marriage, we will not lose our connection to our romantic life. But that's not so easy to accomplish. We must learn and understand what makes our relationship strong and what weakens it (like great expectations on Valentine's Day). In my new book, Love-Making from The Inside Out: Transform Complaints, Criticism, and Conflict into a Loving Relationship, I write that many defenses come into play during difficulties and conflicts. Conflict is normal but our ability to resolve difficulties without alienating our partner is one major step to long-term romance. The most common form of alienation lies in being defensive when our partner is trying to tell us how they feel.
Be on the lookout for these top romance-killers and common statements frequently said during arguments:
Globalization--"Everybody Does That"
Blame-Shifting--"And you do the same thing but worse."
The Victim--"I'm so good to you, and you treat me so badly."
Gas-lighting--"I was just kidding; Can't you take a joke?"
Entitlement--"You are the one who made me angry; You deserve it.
Denial--"I'm not angry."
Displacement--"Just because you had a bad day at work, don't take it out on me."
Guilt--"I work my ass off to give you everything and you can't even make me some tea."
Shame/Blame: "You are a human slug; you never do anything."
Stonewalling: "This is the way I am, take it or leave it."
Projection: "You think I'm stupid, don't you?"
Devaluation: "You really could lose some of that extra weight."
One of the most common reasons for divorce is the inability to accept influence from our mate. Acknowledging our partner is the most potent force for Valentine's success. To not defend ourselves, but instead hear what is being said, and then be able to express our understanding through acknowledgement will beat a box of chocolates any day.
How can we distinguish between realistic expectations and romantic ideals? Understand this foundation for realistic romance: Central to every couple's Valentine's wishes is embracing the reality of what it takes to make a relationship work over the long haul. Before an act of romance, in either giving or receiving, ask yourself the question, "Is this going to help sustain my relationship over time or not? If the answer is yes, you're in the realistic expectations spectrum. If it's no, you're living in romantic ideals la-la land.
And so, just what are realistic expectations on Valentine's Day and beyond? We can expect to be treated with respect, common courtesy, kindness, understanding, compassion and empathy. Expect the common courtesies, the helping hand, being reasonable, fair, open and emotionally connected, all of which are primary ingredients of true romance. When I speak to women in therapy about love, what they say is it's not so much hearts and flowers as it is about someone they can depend on. A good sense of humor, anger management, and a positive attitude trump romantic ideals every time.
At any Valentine's Day, it is not how much loot we come up with but how we treat one another that will save our experiences on Feb. 14th -and our relationships. Respect cannot be bought, and it's the same with friendship. Our ability to be kind, empathic, compassionate and tender will determine the strength and durability of our relationship over time. Relationship success is inevitably linked to our knowledge of what we truly need from one another and each party having made peace with our own fantasy expectations.
ANOTHER NOTE TO MEN: Interestingly enough, Ted Huston found that men who exhibited what were termed "feminine" traits were more often successful in their marriages. It appears that positive behaviors like nurturing, tenderness, and sweetness actually do work.
In the final analysis, enduring love does not solely lie in gift giving or in the lovey-dovey cooing and ogling between lovers. More often love is the result of the small things of every day life. That said, a rose in your teeth, a song in your heart and breakfast in bed is not a bad start to Feb. 14th or any other morning.
Bill Cloke, Ph.D
For more information on Dr. Bill Cloke's work with couples, visit www.billcloke.com
A Non-Muslim Therapists' Perspective
By Dr. Bill Cloke
NOTE TO MEN: If you haven't planned or purchased something from this list, you're likely going to have a horrible night this Feb. 14th (and one without any lovemaking). Why? Blame it on romantic fantasy. It starts long before our first Valentine's purchase or our first kiss. We've heard "happily-ever-after" fairy tales since kindergarten. We've grown up viewing "diamonds-are-forever" commercials.
As adults, we experience the commercialization of Valentine's Day as a day of great expectations, and just as often, great disappointments when our beloved's gift-giving (or lack thereof) doesn't support our romantic dreams.
Mind you, I've bought my share of romantic gifts and loved doing so-I am a happily married man of 18 years and a couples' therapist for over 20. I am certainly not against gift giving, but if either a wife or a husband equates the big gift with a big heart, then we are defining the quality of our love by material expectation. In doing so, we risk creating a deep emotional rift in what may otherwise be a healthy, loving relationship.
In 1979, Ted Huston, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, began following 168 married couples for fourteen years to see what factors were present in successful long-term marriages. One significant discovery: Couples who entered their relationship with high expectations were far more likely to experience conflict and disenchantment through the years.
Huston concluded that the greatest foundation for couples is of all things friendship. Couples who kept their expectations realistic and concentrated more on positive interactions created enduring happy marriages.
But what's friendship got to do with romance? And why is friendship with our spouse important on Valentine's and every day of the year? What I have seen in my own marriage, and time and time again in the couples I work with in my private practice, is that long-term love is sustained not by romance alone but by the daily activities of following-through on promises, showing up both emotionally and physically when needed, owning up to responsibility for your part in any conflict, and by being the kind of person who is worthy of being loved. All of the above is the definition of being a friend. One of the true secrets to long-lasting marriages is that friendship amongst couples can deepen when each party acknowledges that there is work to be done on themselves and in how they treat each other.
I remember early in my marriage when my wife gave me a very generous Valentines Day gift. After expressing my thanks, but also discomfort at the over-the-top nature of the gift, she said to me "But I want to make you happy." I said, "It's not your responsibility to make me happy, that's my job." She was stunned and relieved at the same time. Feeling like we must make our mate happy is a tremendous weight to carry and many a Valentine is based on that premise. Valentine's Day is a celebration, not a responsibility. If we can carry that in our hearts and make each day a special Valentine by being loving, kind and concerned about one another, then we are actively creating true love.
With a "best-friends" vision for marriage, we will not lose our connection to our romantic life. But that's not so easy to accomplish. We must learn and understand what makes our relationship strong and what weakens it (like great expectations on Valentine's Day). In my new book, Love-Making from The Inside Out: Transform Complaints, Criticism, and Conflict into a Loving Relationship, I write that many defenses come into play during difficulties and conflicts. Conflict is normal but our ability to resolve difficulties without alienating our partner is one major step to long-term romance. The most common form of alienation lies in being defensive when our partner is trying to tell us how they feel.
Be on the lookout for these top romance-killers and common statements frequently said during arguments:
Globalization--"Everybody Does That"
Blame-Shifting--"And you do the same thing but worse."
The Victim--"I'm so good to you, and you treat me so badly."
Gas-lighting--"I was just kidding; Can't you take a joke?"
Entitlement--"You are the one who made me angry; You deserve it.
Denial--"I'm not angry."
Displacement--"Just because you had a bad day at work, don't take it out on me."
Guilt--"I work my ass off to give you everything and you can't even make me some tea."
Shame/Blame: "You are a human slug; you never do anything."
Stonewalling: "This is the way I am, take it or leave it."
Projection: "You think I'm stupid, don't you?"
Devaluation: "You really could lose some of that extra weight."
One of the most common reasons for divorce is the inability to accept influence from our mate. Acknowledging our partner is the most potent force for Valentine's success. To not defend ourselves, but instead hear what is being said, and then be able to express our understanding through acknowledgement will beat a box of chocolates any day.
How can we distinguish between realistic expectations and romantic ideals? Understand this foundation for realistic romance: Central to every couple's Valentine's wishes is embracing the reality of what it takes to make a relationship work over the long haul. Before an act of romance, in either giving or receiving, ask yourself the question, "Is this going to help sustain my relationship over time or not? If the answer is yes, you're in the realistic expectations spectrum. If it's no, you're living in romantic ideals la-la land.
And so, just what are realistic expectations on Valentine's Day and beyond? We can expect to be treated with respect, common courtesy, kindness, understanding, compassion and empathy. Expect the common courtesies, the helping hand, being reasonable, fair, open and emotionally connected, all of which are primary ingredients of true romance. When I speak to women in therapy about love, what they say is it's not so much hearts and flowers as it is about someone they can depend on. A good sense of humor, anger management, and a positive attitude trump romantic ideals every time.
At any Valentine's Day, it is not how much loot we come up with but how we treat one another that will save our experiences on Feb. 14th -and our relationships. Respect cannot be bought, and it's the same with friendship. Our ability to be kind, empathic, compassionate and tender will determine the strength and durability of our relationship over time. Relationship success is inevitably linked to our knowledge of what we truly need from one another and each party having made peace with our own fantasy expectations.
ANOTHER NOTE TO MEN: Interestingly enough, Ted Huston found that men who exhibited what were termed "feminine" traits were more often successful in their marriages. It appears that positive behaviors like nurturing, tenderness, and sweetness actually do work.
In the final analysis, enduring love does not solely lie in gift giving or in the lovey-dovey cooing and ogling between lovers. More often love is the result of the small things of every day life. That said, a rose in your teeth, a song in your heart and breakfast in bed is not a bad start to Feb. 14th or any other morning.
Bill Cloke, Ph.D
For more information on Dr. Bill Cloke's work with couples, visit www.billcloke.com
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama’s Afghan Trap
By Amy Goodman
President Barack Obama on Monday night held his first prime-time news conference. When questioned on Afghanistan, he replied, “This is going to be a big challenge.” He also was asked whether he would change the Pentagon policy banning the filming and photographing of the flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he was reviewing it. The journalist who asked the question pointed out that it was Joe Biden several years ago who accused the Bush administration of suppressing the images to avoid public furor over the deaths of U.S. service members. Now Vice President Joe Biden predicts that a surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan will mean more U.S. casualties: “I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be. There will be an uptick.” Meanwhile, the Associated Press recently cited a classified report drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommending a shift in strategy from democracy-building in Afghanistan to attacking alleged Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And the campaign has clearly begun. Days after his inauguration, Obama’s first (known) military actions were two missile strikes inside Pakistan’s frontier province, reportedly killing 22 people, including women and children. Cherif Bassiouni has spent years going back and forth to Afghanistan. He is a professor of law at DePaul University and the former United Nations human rights investigator in Afghanistan. In 2005, he was forced out of the United Nations under pressure from the Bush administration, days after he released a report accusing the U.S. military and private contractors of committing human rights abuses. I asked Bassiouni about Obama’s approach to Afghanistan. He told me: “There is no military solution in Afghanistan. There is an economic-development solution, but I don’t see that coming. ... Right now, the population has nothing to gain by supporting the U.S. and NATO. It has everything to gain by being supportive of the Taliban.” Bassiouni’s scathing 2005 U.N. report accused the U.S. military and private military contractors of “forced entry into homes, arrest and detention of nationals and foreigners without legal authority or judicial review, sometimes for extended periods of time, forced nudity, hooding and sensory deprivation, sleep and food deprivation, forced squatting and standing for long periods of time in stress positions, sexual abuse, beatings, torture, and use of force resulting in death.” I also put the question of the military surge to former President Jimmy Carter. He responded: “I would disagree with Obama as far as a surge that would lead to a more intense bombing of Afghan villages and centers and a heavy dependence on military. I would like to see us reach out more, to be accommodating, and negotiate with all of the factions in Afghanistan.” Carter should know. He helped create what his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, called “the Afghan trap,” set for the Soviets. This was done by supporting Islamic mujahedeen in the late 1970s against the Soviets in Afghanistan, thereby creating what evolved into the Taliban. Brzezinski told the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” More than 14,000 Soviet troops were killed, and the Afghan toll exceeded 1 million. Osama bin Laden got his start with the help of the CIA-funded Afghan operation. Bassiouni suggests that a military solution is doomed to failure, noting that the Taliban “realized they could not defeat the American forces, so they went underground. They put their Kalashnikovs under the mattresses, and they waited. A year ago, they resurfaced again. They can do the same thing. They can go back in the mountains, push the Kalashnikovs under the mattress, wait out five years. They have been doing that since the 1800s with any foreign and every foreign invader.” As Carter told me, “To offer a hand of friendship or accommodation, not only to the warlords but even to those radicals in the Taliban who are willing to negotiate, would be the best approach, than to rely exclusively on major military force.” Have we learned nothing from Iraq? “When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the president on another tried-and-failed policy.” That was Sen. Barack Obama in January 2007. With his Joint Chiefs now apparently gunning for more fighting and less talk in Afghanistan, President Obama needs to be reminded of his own words. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
ttp://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090210_obamas_afghan_trap/
© 2009 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
President Barack Obama on Monday night held his first prime-time news conference. When questioned on Afghanistan, he replied, “This is going to be a big challenge.” He also was asked whether he would change the Pentagon policy banning the filming and photographing of the flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he was reviewing it. The journalist who asked the question pointed out that it was Joe Biden several years ago who accused the Bush administration of suppressing the images to avoid public furor over the deaths of U.S. service members. Now Vice President Joe Biden predicts that a surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan will mean more U.S. casualties: “I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be. There will be an uptick.” Meanwhile, the Associated Press recently cited a classified report drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommending a shift in strategy from democracy-building in Afghanistan to attacking alleged Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And the campaign has clearly begun. Days after his inauguration, Obama’s first (known) military actions were two missile strikes inside Pakistan’s frontier province, reportedly killing 22 people, including women and children. Cherif Bassiouni has spent years going back and forth to Afghanistan. He is a professor of law at DePaul University and the former United Nations human rights investigator in Afghanistan. In 2005, he was forced out of the United Nations under pressure from the Bush administration, days after he released a report accusing the U.S. military and private contractors of committing human rights abuses. I asked Bassiouni about Obama’s approach to Afghanistan. He told me: “There is no military solution in Afghanistan. There is an economic-development solution, but I don’t see that coming. ... Right now, the population has nothing to gain by supporting the U.S. and NATO. It has everything to gain by being supportive of the Taliban.” Bassiouni’s scathing 2005 U.N. report accused the U.S. military and private military contractors of “forced entry into homes, arrest and detention of nationals and foreigners without legal authority or judicial review, sometimes for extended periods of time, forced nudity, hooding and sensory deprivation, sleep and food deprivation, forced squatting and standing for long periods of time in stress positions, sexual abuse, beatings, torture, and use of force resulting in death.” I also put the question of the military surge to former President Jimmy Carter. He responded: “I would disagree with Obama as far as a surge that would lead to a more intense bombing of Afghan villages and centers and a heavy dependence on military. I would like to see us reach out more, to be accommodating, and negotiate with all of the factions in Afghanistan.” Carter should know. He helped create what his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, called “the Afghan trap,” set for the Soviets. This was done by supporting Islamic mujahedeen in the late 1970s against the Soviets in Afghanistan, thereby creating what evolved into the Taliban. Brzezinski told the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” More than 14,000 Soviet troops were killed, and the Afghan toll exceeded 1 million. Osama bin Laden got his start with the help of the CIA-funded Afghan operation. Bassiouni suggests that a military solution is doomed to failure, noting that the Taliban “realized they could not defeat the American forces, so they went underground. They put their Kalashnikovs under the mattresses, and they waited. A year ago, they resurfaced again. They can do the same thing. They can go back in the mountains, push the Kalashnikovs under the mattress, wait out five years. They have been doing that since the 1800s with any foreign and every foreign invader.” As Carter told me, “To offer a hand of friendship or accommodation, not only to the warlords but even to those radicals in the Taliban who are willing to negotiate, would be the best approach, than to rely exclusively on major military force.” Have we learned nothing from Iraq? “When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the president on another tried-and-failed policy.” That was Sen. Barack Obama in January 2007. With his Joint Chiefs now apparently gunning for more fighting and less talk in Afghanistan, President Obama needs to be reminded of his own words. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
ttp://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090210_obamas_afghan_trap/
© 2009 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Obama's New World Order and Israel
Writer's advise to Israel
By Caroline B. Glick
As Israel goes to the polls today, the world around us is quickly changing in new and distressing ways. The challenges the international system will present the government The Jewish state elects will be harsher, more complicated and more dangerous than the ones its predecessors have faced.
Bluntly stated, the world that will challenge the next government will be one characterized by the end of US global predominance. In just a few short weeks, the new administration of President Barack Obama has managed to weaken the perception of American power and embolden US adversaries throughout the world.
In the late stages of the presidential race, now Vice President Joseph Biden warned us that this would happen. In a speech before supporters he said, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama... [We're] gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy... They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the subcontinent. They may emanate from Russia's newly emboldened position."
As it happens, Biden's warning had two inaccuracies. Rather than six months, America's adversaries began testing Obama's mettle within weeks. And instead of one crisis from Russia, the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent, Obama has faced and failed to meet "generated crises" from all three.
TAKE RUSSIA for example. Since coming into office, Obama has repeatedly tried to build an alliance with the "newly emboldened" Russian bear. A week after entering office, he announced that he hoped to negotiate a nuclear disarmament agreement with Russia that would reduce the US's nuclear stockpiles by 80 percent. At a security conference in Munich last weekend, Biden stated that the administration wishes to push the "reset button" on its relationship with Russia and be friends.
Responding to these American signals, the Russians proceeded to humiliate Washington. Last week President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Kyrgyzstan's President Kurmanbak Bakiyev in Moscow. After their meeting the two announced that Russia will give the former Soviet republic $2 billion in loans and assistance and that Kyrgyzstan will close the US Air Force base at Manas which serves American forces in Afghanistan.
After cutting off one of the US's major supply routes for its forces in Afghanistan, Russia agreed to permit the US to resume its shipment of nonlethal military supplies for Afghanistan through Russian territory. Those shipments were suspended last summer by NATO in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Georgia. And now they are being resumed - on Moscow's terms. The US, for its part, couldn't be more grateful to Moscow for lending a helping hand.
THE US ITSELF WOULDN'T have found itself needing Russian supply lines had the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan not deteriorated as it has in recent months. Much of the situation in Pakistan today is due to the Bush administration's incompetent bungling of US relations with the failed state. For years the US gave tens of billions of dollars to the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf in turn used the money to build up Pakistan's military presence along the border with India, while allowing al-Qaida and the Taliban to relocate their headquarters in Pakistan after being ousted from Afghanistan by US forces.
Vigilant in maintaining his power, for years Musharraf repressed all voices calling for democratic transformation. For their part democrats in places like Pakistan's Supreme Court were not friends of the West. They did not oppose the Taliban and al-Qaida. Rather their enemies were Musharraf and the US which kept him in power.
Responding to a sudden urge to encourage the forces of democracy in Pakistan, while advocating their abandonment throughout the Arab world, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice compelled Musharraf first to resign as head of the Pakistani military - thus ending his control over the country's jihadist ISI intelligence services and over the pro-jihadist military. Then she forced him to accept open elections, which unsurprisingly, he lost.
The democrats who replaced him had absolutely no influence over either the ISI or the military and realized that their power and their very lives were in the Taliban's hands. Consequently, since Pakistan's elections last year, the new government has surrendered larger and larger areas of the country to the Taliban. Indeed, today the Taliban either directly control or are fighting for control over the majority of Pakistani territory. Moreover, the Taliban and al-Qaida have intensified their war in Afghanistan and are making significant gains in that country as well.
This would have been a difficult situation for the US to contend with no matter who replaced George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, due to Obama's stridently anti-Pakistani rhetoric throughout the campaign - rhetoric untethered to any coherent strategy for dealing with Pakistan - the Pakistanis no doubt felt the need to test his mettle as quickly as possible.
For his part, Obama gave them good reason to believe he could be intimidated. By letting it be known that he intended for his special envoy to the region Richard Holbrook's job to include responsibility for pressuring US ally India to reach a peace agreement with Pakistan over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir province in spite of clear proof that Pakistani intelligence was the mastermind of the December terror attacks in Mumbai, Obama showed that he was willing to defend Pakistan's "honor" and so accept its continued bad behavior.
LAST FRIDAY, the Pakistanis tested Obama. The Supreme Court freed Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove - A.Q. Khan - from the house arrest he had been under since his nuclear proliferation racket was exposed by the Libyans in 2004. Through his nuclear proliferation activities, Khan is not only the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - but of North Korea's and Iran's as well.
Khan's release casts a dark shadow on Obama's plan to dismantle much of America's nuclear arsenal, because with him free, the prospect that Pakistan is back in the proliferation business becomes quite real. Already on Sunday Khan announced his plan to travel abroad immediately. For its part, the court in Islamabad specifically stated that Khan is free to resume his "scientific research."
Pakistan's open contempt for the US and its weakness in the face of the Taliban's takeover of the country has direct consequences for the US's mission in Afghanistan - and for its new dependence on Russia. This week the Taliban bombed a bridge on the Khyber Pass along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan that served as a supply line to US forces in Afghanistan. As US Brig.-Gen. James McConville stated in Kabul, the latest attack simply underlines how important it was for the US to resume its shipments through Russia.
MANY HAVE POINTED to Pakistan as an example of why Israel and the West have no reason to be concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear arms. To date, they claim, Pakistan has not used its nuclear arms, and indeed has been deterred by both India and the West from doing so.
While it is true that Pakistan has yet to use its nuclear arsenal, it is also true that since its initial nuclear test in 1998, Pakistan has twice brought the subcontinent to the brink of nuclear war. In both 1999 and 2002, Pakistan provoked India into a nuclear standoff.
Moreover, due to its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan successfully deterred the US from taking action against it after the September 11 attacks showed that al-Qaida and the Taliban owed their existence to Pakistan's ISI. Although Pakistan's government is not an Islamic revolutionary one like Iran's, the fact is that since it became a nuclear power, Pakistan has moved away from the West, not toward it. Indeed, its nuclear deterrent against India - and the West - has empowered and strengthened the jihadists and brought them ever closer to taking over the regime in a seamless power grab.
Far from arguing against preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Pakistani precedent argues for taking every possible action to prevent Iran from acquiring them. After all, unlike the situation in Pakistan, Iran's regime is already controlled by jihadist revolutionaries. And like their counterparts in Pakistan, these forces will be strengthened, not weakened in the event that Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
Indeed, since Obama came into office waving an enormous olive branch in Teheran's direction, the regime has become more outspoken in its hostility toward the US. It has humiliated Washington by refusing visas to America's women's badminton team to play their Iranian counterparts. It has announced it will only agree to direct talks with Washington if it pulls US forces out of the Middle East, abandons Israel and does nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It has rudely blackballed US representatives who are Jewish, like House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, at international conclaves. And it has announced that it will refuse to deal with Obama's suggested envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, who is also a Jew. In all of its actions, Iran has gone out of its way to embarrass Obama and humiliate America. And Obama, for his part, has continued to embrace Teheran as his most sought-after negotiating partner.
MOVING AHEAD, the question of how our next government should handle America's apparent decision to turn its back on its traditional role as freedom's global defender becomes the most pressing concern. It is clear that we will need to embrace the burden of our own defense and stop expecting to receive much from our alliance with the US. But it is also clear that we will need a new strategy for dealing with the US itself.
In formulating that policy, the next government should draw lessons from fellow US-ally India. Once it became clear to the Indians that the Obama administration intended to treat them as the strategic and moral equivalent of Pakistan, they struck back hard. When the administration signaled that it would agree to Pakistan's assertion that its problems with the Taliban were linked to India's refusal to cede Jammu and Kashmir to Islamabad, New Delhi essentially told Washington to get lost.
In an interview on Indian television last week, ahead of Holbrook's first visit to the area this week, India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said that Obama would be "barking up the wrong tree" if he were to subscribe to such views. He added that India would be unwilling to discuss the issue of Jammu and Kashmir with Holbrook and so compelled Obama to remove the issue from Holbrook's portfolio.
At the same time, the Indian government released a dossier substantiating its claim that the December attacks on Mumbai were planned in jihadist terror training camps in Pakistan and enjoyed the support of the ISI. Moreover, in response to Khan's release from house arrest on Friday, India called for the international community to list Pakistan as a terror state.
In acting as it has, India has made two things clear to the Obama administration. First, it will not allow Washington to appease Pakistan at its expense. Second, it will do whatever it believes is necessary to secure its own interests both diplomatically and militarily.
A sound example for the next government to follow.
As Israel goes to the polls today, the world around us is quickly changing in new and distressing ways. The challenges the international system will present the government The Jewish state elects will be harsher, more complicated and more dangerous than the ones its predecessors have faced.
Bluntly stated, the world that will challenge the next government will be one characterized by the end of US global predominance. In just a few short weeks, the new administration of President Barack Obama has managed to weaken the perception of American power and embolden US adversaries throughout the world.
In the late stages of the presidential race, now Vice President Joseph Biden warned us that this would happen. In a speech before supporters he said, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama... [We're] gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy... They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the subcontinent. They may emanate from Russia's newly emboldened position."
As it happens, Biden's warning had two inaccuracies. Rather than six months, America's adversaries began testing Obama's mettle within weeks. And instead of one crisis from Russia, the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent, Obama has faced and failed to meet "generated crises" from all three.
TAKE RUSSIA for example. Since coming into office, Obama has repeatedly tried to build an alliance with the "newly emboldened" Russian bear. A week after entering office, he announced that he hoped to negotiate a nuclear disarmament agreement with Russia that would reduce the US's nuclear stockpiles by 80 percent. At a security conference in Munich last weekend, Biden stated that the administration wishes to push the "reset button" on its relationship with Russia and be friends.
Responding to these American signals, the Russians proceeded to humiliate Washington. Last week President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Kyrgyzstan's President Kurmanbak Bakiyev in Moscow. After their meeting the two announced that Russia will give the former Soviet republic $2 billion in loans and assistance and that Kyrgyzstan will close the US Air Force base at Manas which serves American forces in Afghanistan.
After cutting off one of the US's major supply routes for its forces in Afghanistan, Russia agreed to permit the US to resume its shipment of nonlethal military supplies for Afghanistan through Russian territory. Those shipments were suspended last summer by NATO in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Georgia. And now they are being resumed - on Moscow's terms. The US, for its part, couldn't be more grateful to Moscow for lending a helping hand.
THE US ITSELF WOULDN'T have found itself needing Russian supply lines had the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan not deteriorated as it has in recent months. Much of the situation in Pakistan today is due to the Bush administration's incompetent bungling of US relations with the failed state. For years the US gave tens of billions of dollars to the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf in turn used the money to build up Pakistan's military presence along the border with India, while allowing al-Qaida and the Taliban to relocate their headquarters in Pakistan after being ousted from Afghanistan by US forces.
Vigilant in maintaining his power, for years Musharraf repressed all voices calling for democratic transformation. For their part democrats in places like Pakistan's Supreme Court were not friends of the West. They did not oppose the Taliban and al-Qaida. Rather their enemies were Musharraf and the US which kept him in power.
Responding to a sudden urge to encourage the forces of democracy in Pakistan, while advocating their abandonment throughout the Arab world, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice compelled Musharraf first to resign as head of the Pakistani military - thus ending his control over the country's jihadist ISI intelligence services and over the pro-jihadist military. Then she forced him to accept open elections, which unsurprisingly, he lost.
The democrats who replaced him had absolutely no influence over either the ISI or the military and realized that their power and their very lives were in the Taliban's hands. Consequently, since Pakistan's elections last year, the new government has surrendered larger and larger areas of the country to the Taliban. Indeed, today the Taliban either directly control or are fighting for control over the majority of Pakistani territory. Moreover, the Taliban and al-Qaida have intensified their war in Afghanistan and are making significant gains in that country as well.
This would have been a difficult situation for the US to contend with no matter who replaced George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, due to Obama's stridently anti-Pakistani rhetoric throughout the campaign - rhetoric untethered to any coherent strategy for dealing with Pakistan - the Pakistanis no doubt felt the need to test his mettle as quickly as possible.
For his part, Obama gave them good reason to believe he could be intimidated. By letting it be known that he intended for his special envoy to the region Richard Holbrook's job to include responsibility for pressuring US ally India to reach a peace agreement with Pakistan over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir province in spite of clear proof that Pakistani intelligence was the mastermind of the December terror attacks in Mumbai, Obama showed that he was willing to defend Pakistan's "honor" and so accept its continued bad behavior.
LAST FRIDAY, the Pakistanis tested Obama. The Supreme Court freed Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove - A.Q. Khan - from the house arrest he had been under since his nuclear proliferation racket was exposed by the Libyans in 2004. Through his nuclear proliferation activities, Khan is not only the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - but of North Korea's and Iran's as well.
Khan's release casts a dark shadow on Obama's plan to dismantle much of America's nuclear arsenal, because with him free, the prospect that Pakistan is back in the proliferation business becomes quite real. Already on Sunday Khan announced his plan to travel abroad immediately. For its part, the court in Islamabad specifically stated that Khan is free to resume his "scientific research."
Pakistan's open contempt for the US and its weakness in the face of the Taliban's takeover of the country has direct consequences for the US's mission in Afghanistan - and for its new dependence on Russia. This week the Taliban bombed a bridge on the Khyber Pass along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan that served as a supply line to US forces in Afghanistan. As US Brig.-Gen. James McConville stated in Kabul, the latest attack simply underlines how important it was for the US to resume its shipments through Russia.
MANY HAVE POINTED to Pakistan as an example of why Israel and the West have no reason to be concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear arms. To date, they claim, Pakistan has not used its nuclear arms, and indeed has been deterred by both India and the West from doing so.
While it is true that Pakistan has yet to use its nuclear arsenal, it is also true that since its initial nuclear test in 1998, Pakistan has twice brought the subcontinent to the brink of nuclear war. In both 1999 and 2002, Pakistan provoked India into a nuclear standoff.
Moreover, due to its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan successfully deterred the US from taking action against it after the September 11 attacks showed that al-Qaida and the Taliban owed their existence to Pakistan's ISI. Although Pakistan's government is not an Islamic revolutionary one like Iran's, the fact is that since it became a nuclear power, Pakistan has moved away from the West, not toward it. Indeed, its nuclear deterrent against India - and the West - has empowered and strengthened the jihadists and brought them ever closer to taking over the regime in a seamless power grab.
Far from arguing against preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Pakistani precedent argues for taking every possible action to prevent Iran from acquiring them. After all, unlike the situation in Pakistan, Iran's regime is already controlled by jihadist revolutionaries. And like their counterparts in Pakistan, these forces will be strengthened, not weakened in the event that Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
Indeed, since Obama came into office waving an enormous olive branch in Teheran's direction, the regime has become more outspoken in its hostility toward the US. It has humiliated Washington by refusing visas to America's women's badminton team to play their Iranian counterparts. It has announced it will only agree to direct talks with Washington if it pulls US forces out of the Middle East, abandons Israel and does nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It has rudely blackballed US representatives who are Jewish, like House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, at international conclaves. And it has announced that it will refuse to deal with Obama's suggested envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, who is also a Jew. In all of its actions, Iran has gone out of its way to embarrass Obama and humiliate America. And Obama, for his part, has continued to embrace Teheran as his most sought-after negotiating partner.
MOVING AHEAD, the question of how our next government should handle America's apparent decision to turn its back on its traditional role as freedom's global defender becomes the most pressing concern. It is clear that we will need to embrace the burden of our own defense and stop expecting to receive much from our alliance with the US. But it is also clear that we will need a new strategy for dealing with the US itself.
In formulating that policy, the next government should draw lessons from fellow US-ally India. Once it became clear to the Indians that the Obama administration intended to treat them as the strategic and moral equivalent of Pakistan, they struck back hard. When the administration signaled that it would agree to Pakistan's assertion that its problems with the Taliban were linked to India's refusal to cede Jammu and Kashmir to Islamabad, New Delhi essentially told Washington to get lost.
In an interview on Indian television last week, ahead of Holbrook's first visit to the area this week, India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said that Obama would be "barking up the wrong tree" if he were to subscribe to such views. He added that India would be unwilling to discuss the issue of Jammu and Kashmir with Holbrook and so compelled Obama to remove the issue from Holbrook's portfolio.
At the same time, the Indian government released a dossier substantiating its claim that the December attacks on Mumbai were planned in jihadist terror training camps in Pakistan and enjoyed the support of the ISI. Moreover, in response to Khan's release from house arrest on Friday, India called for the international community to list Pakistan as a terror state.
In acting as it has, India has made two things clear to the Obama administration. First, it will not allow Washington to appease Pakistan at its expense. Second, it will do whatever it believes is necessary to secure its own interests both diplomatically and militarily.
A sound example for the next government to follow.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak
Just as many call for Olmert, Barak, Livni and the generals and soldiers who participated in this war to be prosecuted for violating international law and committing war crimes, Mubarak’s own complicity makes him equally liable in facing similar charges, says Rannie Amiri.
As staggering as the statistics detailing Gaza’s destruction may be, they still do not present a complete picture of the unique travesties and tragedies suffered by individuals, families, neighborhoods and villages during Israel’s savage 22-day assault on the tiny territory. Yet, they bear repeating. From the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (http://www.pcbs.gov/.ps) and various NGOs:
• 1,334 killed, one-third of them children (more children than ‘militants’ were killed)
• 5,450 injured, one-third of them children
• 100,000 displaced, 50,000 made homeless
• 4,100 residential homes and buildings destroyed, 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza)
• 29 destroyed educational institutions, including the American International School
• 92 destroyed or damaged mosques
• 1,500 destroyed shops, factories and other commercial facilities
• 20 destroyed ambulances
• 35-60% of agricultural land ruined
• $1.9 billion in total estimated damages
In the face of such massive devastation and hardship—and this after the crippling 18-month siege had already reduced Gaza to a state of bare subsistence—the behavior and actions of the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak remain as contemptible after the war as they were before.
On Dec. 25, just two days prior to the onset of the vicious aerial bombardment of Gaza, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with Mubarak in Cairo. It is understood that Egypt gave the green light for the attack in the hope that the ruling (and democratically-elected) Islamist group Hamas would be toppled and the more pliant Fatah faction, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, would supplant it.
Rafah crossing sealed
The reasons for Mubarak’s animus toward Hamas, and by extension, for his reprehensible decision to keep the vital Rafah border crossing with Gaza closed to humanitarian supplies was explained earlier.
Apologists for the dictator will say the 2005 agreement between Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the European Union (EU) that regulates movement across the border prohibits it from being opened in the absence of PA and EU observers.
It makes no mention, however, of barring critical humanitarian goods from reaching the territory, where conditions were becoming ever more desperate. Additionally, Egypt was a non-signatory to the treaty, which had already expired after one year and was never renewed.
If keeping the Rafah crossing—the only gateway to non-Israeli territory from Gaza—closed before and during the war was not a criminal act, doing so in its aftermath must surely be.
Preventing Gaza’s children from obtaining medical care
Reporting for The National, Jonathan Cook details four cases of children in Gaza who required urgent, life-saving surgery in France, but were denied entry into Egypt via Rafah. As the aunt of the one of the war’s child casualties remarked, “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.”
Doctors accompanying the children were allowed to pass into Egypt, but the ambulances carrying them were not. Their exclusion was attributed to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah who did not authorize their exit, stating there was “no more reason to refer any more children for treatment abroad.” Egyptian authorities abided by their ruling, not wanting to create diplomatic trouble.
But that is no excuse.
First, Hamas, democratically elected to power in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, is the legitimate governing authority. Second, the term of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PA expired on Jan. 9. Finally, emergency medical situations always take precedent over (alleged) bureaucratic considerations. Those in control of the Rafah crossing must be held directly responsible.
Feeding Israeli soldiers, not Gaza’s people
In light of catastrophic circumstances due to lack of basic foodstuffs (75 percent of Gaza’s children are thought to be malnourished and 30 percent are stunted in growth), a recent report by the popular Egyptian weekly Al-Osboa was all the more shocking. It revealed that an Egyptian company was allowed to provide Israel Defense Force soldiers with food during the war while Gazans were starving.
Iranian Red Crescent ship kept offshore
An Iranian ship sent by the country’s Red Crescent Society carrying 2,000 tons of medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for Gaza continues to be anchored 15 miles off Gaza’s shore. It had already been intercepted and prevented by the Israeli navy from reaching Gaza. Now, it awaits permission to dock in the Egyptian port of Al-Areesh to unload its cargo. To date, permission has not been grated.
In light of the above, blistering criticism of the Egyptian regime’s behavior has come from Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah:
“[Egypt] told the Arab and Islamic world that the Rafah border was opened and it was not … The opening of the Rafah crossing is crucial to the Palestinian people, the Resistance and the living conditions there … its closure is one of the biggest crimes in history.”
The reply from the Egyptian government was all too predictable:
“Hassan Nasrallah's criticism of Egypt confirms once more that he is nothing more than an agent of the Iranian regime and takes his orders from Tehran.”
Irrespective of whether Nasrallah takes orders from Tehran or Tokyo, there were no substantive answers to his accusations. Instead, Egypt reverted to parroting tired anti-Iranian rhetoric which increasingly is falling on deaf ears.
Abetting the siege of Gaza, giving sanction to the Israeli onslaught and its crimes against humanity, and afterward, preventing aid from getting into the territory and the injured from getting out, are all egregious offenses.
Just as many call for Olmert, Barak, Livni and the generals and soldiers who participated in this war to be prosecuted for violating international law and committing war crimes, Mubarak’s own complicity makes him equally liable in facing similar charges.
Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Middle East. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com. This article appeared in CounterPunch.org.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=30204
As staggering as the statistics detailing Gaza’s destruction may be, they still do not present a complete picture of the unique travesties and tragedies suffered by individuals, families, neighborhoods and villages during Israel’s savage 22-day assault on the tiny territory. Yet, they bear repeating. From the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (http://www.pcbs.gov/.ps) and various NGOs:
• 1,334 killed, one-third of them children (more children than ‘militants’ were killed)
• 5,450 injured, one-third of them children
• 100,000 displaced, 50,000 made homeless
• 4,100 residential homes and buildings destroyed, 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza)
• 29 destroyed educational institutions, including the American International School
• 92 destroyed or damaged mosques
• 1,500 destroyed shops, factories and other commercial facilities
• 20 destroyed ambulances
• 35-60% of agricultural land ruined
• $1.9 billion in total estimated damages
In the face of such massive devastation and hardship—and this after the crippling 18-month siege had already reduced Gaza to a state of bare subsistence—the behavior and actions of the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak remain as contemptible after the war as they were before.
On Dec. 25, just two days prior to the onset of the vicious aerial bombardment of Gaza, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with Mubarak in Cairo. It is understood that Egypt gave the green light for the attack in the hope that the ruling (and democratically-elected) Islamist group Hamas would be toppled and the more pliant Fatah faction, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, would supplant it.
Rafah crossing sealed
The reasons for Mubarak’s animus toward Hamas, and by extension, for his reprehensible decision to keep the vital Rafah border crossing with Gaza closed to humanitarian supplies was explained earlier.
Apologists for the dictator will say the 2005 agreement between Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the European Union (EU) that regulates movement across the border prohibits it from being opened in the absence of PA and EU observers.
It makes no mention, however, of barring critical humanitarian goods from reaching the territory, where conditions were becoming ever more desperate. Additionally, Egypt was a non-signatory to the treaty, which had already expired after one year and was never renewed.
If keeping the Rafah crossing—the only gateway to non-Israeli territory from Gaza—closed before and during the war was not a criminal act, doing so in its aftermath must surely be.
Preventing Gaza’s children from obtaining medical care
Reporting for The National, Jonathan Cook details four cases of children in Gaza who required urgent, life-saving surgery in France, but were denied entry into Egypt via Rafah. As the aunt of the one of the war’s child casualties remarked, “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.”
Doctors accompanying the children were allowed to pass into Egypt, but the ambulances carrying them were not. Their exclusion was attributed to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah who did not authorize their exit, stating there was “no more reason to refer any more children for treatment abroad.” Egyptian authorities abided by their ruling, not wanting to create diplomatic trouble.
But that is no excuse.
First, Hamas, democratically elected to power in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, is the legitimate governing authority. Second, the term of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PA expired on Jan. 9. Finally, emergency medical situations always take precedent over (alleged) bureaucratic considerations. Those in control of the Rafah crossing must be held directly responsible.
Feeding Israeli soldiers, not Gaza’s people
In light of catastrophic circumstances due to lack of basic foodstuffs (75 percent of Gaza’s children are thought to be malnourished and 30 percent are stunted in growth), a recent report by the popular Egyptian weekly Al-Osboa was all the more shocking. It revealed that an Egyptian company was allowed to provide Israel Defense Force soldiers with food during the war while Gazans were starving.
Iranian Red Crescent ship kept offshore
An Iranian ship sent by the country’s Red Crescent Society carrying 2,000 tons of medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for Gaza continues to be anchored 15 miles off Gaza’s shore. It had already been intercepted and prevented by the Israeli navy from reaching Gaza. Now, it awaits permission to dock in the Egyptian port of Al-Areesh to unload its cargo. To date, permission has not been grated.
In light of the above, blistering criticism of the Egyptian regime’s behavior has come from Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah:
“[Egypt] told the Arab and Islamic world that the Rafah border was opened and it was not … The opening of the Rafah crossing is crucial to the Palestinian people, the Resistance and the living conditions there … its closure is one of the biggest crimes in history.”
The reply from the Egyptian government was all too predictable:
“Hassan Nasrallah's criticism of Egypt confirms once more that he is nothing more than an agent of the Iranian regime and takes his orders from Tehran.”
Irrespective of whether Nasrallah takes orders from Tehran or Tokyo, there were no substantive answers to his accusations. Instead, Egypt reverted to parroting tired anti-Iranian rhetoric which increasingly is falling on deaf ears.
Abetting the siege of Gaza, giving sanction to the Israeli onslaught and its crimes against humanity, and afterward, preventing aid from getting into the territory and the injured from getting out, are all egregious offenses.
Just as many call for Olmert, Barak, Livni and the generals and soldiers who participated in this war to be prosecuted for violating international law and committing war crimes, Mubarak’s own complicity makes him equally liable in facing similar charges.
Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Middle East. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com. This article appeared in CounterPunch.org.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=30204
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Turkish snub changes Middle East game
By M K Bhadrakumar
There are different ways of looking at the Justice and Democratic Party, or AKP, which rules Turkey. Militant secularists and Kemalists allege it is a Trojan horse of Salafists whose members masquerade as democrats. Others say the AKP is so extremely moderate that it might get ostracized as infidel if it were transplanted to Iran or Afghanistan. But it appears there could be a third way - looking at the AKP as a progeny of the 30-year-old Iranian revolution. At least, that is how Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri thinks. He is one of Iran's senior clerics, used to be a speaker of the Majlis (parliament) and now holds the exalted position of advisor to Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nouri explained last Sunday, "When Iranians talked of 'exporting' their revolution, they did not mean manufacturing something andthen exporting it to other countries by trucks or ships; rather, they meant transmitting the message of their revolution and conveying its doctrine." Nouri said he felt inspired to claim the AKP as a fine legacy of the Iranian revolution by the fact it is in Turkey that the "most beautiful demonstrations on the Gaza issue" were held in recent weeks. A mighty snub He may have gone slightly overboard by claiming that even the Turkish army "which had certain records, has changed now". All the same, the point is well taken that "things have changed" in Turkey, as Nouri put it, which is what the avalanche of popular support for Hamas in its battle with Israel showed. In particular, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's public snub of Israeli President Shimon Peres last Thursday in a television chat show on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meet in the Swiss resort of Davos has caught the imagination of the Islamic world and cuts across the Shi'ite-Sunni divide. All of a sudden, Erdogan takes the form of a latter-day Ottoman sultan with an empire that spreads all across the fertile Mesopotamian planes, the Arabian desserts, the Nile Valley, the Levant and the Maghreb, all the way into the heart of Africa. Erdogan, a back-street boy from the working-class district of Kasimpasa in Istanbul, has come a long way in his tumultuous political career. He is undoubtedly one of Turkey's most charismatic and gifted politicians. His place in Turkey's pantheon of leaders is secure. All the same, he couldn't have fancied that one day he would be proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize - or that his sponsor would be a revered religious figure in the world of Shi'ism. Addressing a gathering of theological students on Sunday in the holy Iranian city of Qom, Ayatollah Naser Makarem-Shirazi did precisely that. Erdogan's protest, the ayatollah said, has had a profound effect on regional security, and it has strengthened the Palestinian resistance and humiliated and further isolated the "Zionist regime". Erdogan's "claim" to a Nobel Prize tenuously hangs on the 56 words he spoke at the Davos television show, when he told off Peres, "You are older than me and your voice is very loud. The reason for your raising your voice is the psychology of guilt. I will not raise my voice that much. When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill. I know very well how you hit and killed children on the beaches." Muslim alienation It certainly speaks something of the profound alienation gripping the Middle East today that the resonance of a mere cluster of 56 words spoken in anguish about justice, honor and equity should so stubbornly refuse to die down. Erdogan overnight joins Lebanon's Hassan Nasrullah of Hezbollah and Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad who criss-cross with enviable abandon the historic sectarian divides in the Muslim world. Surely, some food for thought for US President Barack Obama. Erdogan returned from Davos to Istanbul to a hero's welcome. Opinion polls show that over 80% of Turks endorse his sharp retort and his "walkout" from the TV show. The AKP's popularity is soaring above 50%, so much so that the opposition parties, which had hoped to cash in on Turkey's economic problems in local elections in end-March, feel crestfallen. In Gaza itself, Erdogan has overnight become an iconic figure, so much so that the pro-West Arab rulers look embarrassed - as indeed is "Abu Mazen" (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas), who nonchalantly heads the Palestinian Authority. Of course, there is no way Saudi Arabia or Egypt will surrender the mantle of leadership to Turkey. But from now, they will need to seriously factor that Turkey's shadows are deepening on the Middle Eastern Sunni Muslim landscape. Iran is plainly delighted. The powerful head of Iran's Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, shot off a message to Erdogan, saying, "Your epic stand has pleased Hamas and its supporters and humiliated the lackey leaders of several Arab states." 'Neo-Ottomanism' gathers pace In Turkey itself, the ricochet has ripped open the country's split identity. The oligarchy of Westernized Turkish elites based in Istanbul feels scandalized that Erdogan might have marred the cultivated image of the civilized Turk in Europe. With his sense of history and culture, the Anatolian Turk, on the other hand, feels jubilant that Erdogan is reclaiming Turkey's long-lost habitation in its ancestral home in the Muslim Middle East. To be sure, the AKP's agenda of "neo-Ottomanism" took a quantum leap last week. An engrossing phase is about to commence where the primacy may incrementally come to lie on the rediscovery of Turkey's imperial legacy while the country continues its search for a new national consensus that can reconcile the Turk's many identities. Under the seven-year AKP rule, Turkey began the painful process of coming to terms with its Muslim and Ottoman heritage. Contrary to general impressions, neo-Ottomanism is neither Islamist nor imperialistic. Arguably, it uses the common denominator of Islam to derive a less ethnic idea of "Turkishness" that is much more in harmony than militant secularism ever could be with the multi-ethnic character of the Turkish state. But in foreign policy, "neo-Ottomanism" has a more grandiose agenda. As prominent columnist Omer Taspinar of Turkey's Zaman newspaper wrote, "Neo-Ottomanism sees Turkey as a regional superpower. Its strategic vision and culture reflects the geographic reach of the Ottoman and Byzantine empires. Turkey, as a pivotal state, should thus play a very active diplomatic, political and diplomatic role in a wide region of which it is the 'center'." Unsurprisingly, Erdogan's critics among the Westernized elites in Istanbul and Ankara view any such pan-Turkic or Islamic openings in foreign policy as adventurous and ultimately harmful to Turkey's interests. To quote a top Turkish commentator, Mehmet Ali Birand, of CNN Turk, Erdogan has "disturbed" a delicate balance in Ankara's foreign policy and "put himself and his country in a risky position ... It will be interpreted as a slow drift away from the Israel-United States-European Union-Egypt-Saudi Arabia camp ... Even if relations with Israel are not ceased, the color will start to change from now on and turn toward dislike. If not balanced immediately, relations between Israel and Turkey will not recover easily. The reflections will be seen in Washington and on the money markets." However, Birand's panicky prognosis seems presumptuous. There is no basis to the argument that "neo-Ottomanism" means Turkey turns its back on the West. As Taspinar pointed out, after all, the Ottoman Empire was known as the "sick man of Europe" and not of Asia or Arabia. The European legacy of being open to the West and Western influence was a constant feature of the Ottoman era. Erdogan's ambitious regional policy in the Middle East, therefore, should not be construed as sidestepping an active pursuit of European Union membership or good relations with Washington. Turkish-Israeli ties under cloud No doubt, Israel's Gaza offensive and Erdogan's Davos episode have created fractures in Turkish-Israeli strategic ties. But the question is whether the damage is serious enough to start a major realignment in the region. The high probability is that with the cooling of tempers, the Turkish-Israeli relationship as such will recover. The Turkish military has let it be known that there is no rollback in cooperation with Israel. It said Turkey's military cooperation with all countries, including Israel, was based on national interests and no difficulties were foreseen in the scheduled delivery by Israel of high-tech Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said, "There is a rift in our relations. This cannot be hidden. But these relations are very important for both countries." She took note that Ankara was "drawing a distinction between bilateral ties and the censure they are leveling at us over the [Gaza] operation". Jewish groups based in the US are also trying to calm the agitation in Turkish-Israeli relations. Conceivably, Erdogan harbors a sense of betrayal. He told the Washington Post that Turkish mediation had brought Israel and Syria "very close" to direct peace talks on the future of the Golan Heights. During the visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Ankara on December 23, not only did he hide from Erdogan that Israel was planning to attack Gaza four days later, but he assured the Turkish leader that as soon as he got back, he would consult his colleagues and come back on the talks with Syria. While Olmert was in Ankara, Erdogan telephoned Hamas leader Ismail Haniye in Gaza and consulted him on the issues to be discussed with the visiting Israeli prime minister. Quite understandably, Erdogan felt let down. "This operation [in Gaza] also shows disrespect to Turkey," he said. Israel is used to acting solely in its self-interest. But Erdogan is a proud Turk for whom loss of face is simply unacceptable. Israel's need of Turkey Meanwhile, Turkey erupted into massive anti-Israeli public demonstrations over reports of Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Turkey's highest policy-making body, the National Security Council, which is chaired by the president and comprises the prime minister and the military chiefs, said in a statement on December 30 that Israel should cease military operations immediately, give diplomacy a chance and allow humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza. But Israel took the Turkish criticism in its stride. Israel said Erdogan was being "emotional". Erdogan shot back: "I am not emotional. I am speaking as a grandson of the Ottoman Empire, which welcomed your forefathers when they were exiled ... History will accuse them [Olmert and Livni] of putting a stain on humanity ... It is unforgivable that a people who in their history suffered so profoundly could do such a thing." On balance, it hurts Israel more than Turkey that a trust deficit has developed. Turkey has many friends in the region, whereas Israel has hardly any. Turkey is an irreplaceable ally for Israel not only in the Middle East but in the entire Muslim world. With the expected US-Iranian engagement and the ensuing realignment in the region, Israel (and the pro-West Arab states) needs Turkey as a "balancer" more than any time before. Iraq cannot play that role anymore. As the effusive Iranian salute to Erdogan shows, Tehran is acutely conscious of the new imperatives, too. Beyond all that, an ageless concern that Israel ought to sit up and take note is that for the first time in the Anatolian heartland, a surge of anti-Semitism is visible. If the Ottoman era's fabulous record of providing asylum for any wandering Jew is indeed becoming a relic of history, don't ask who is responsible. Israel's leaders must take the blame for it.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany
, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB04Ak01.html
There are different ways of looking at the Justice and Democratic Party, or AKP, which rules Turkey. Militant secularists and Kemalists allege it is a Trojan horse of Salafists whose members masquerade as democrats. Others say the AKP is so extremely moderate that it might get ostracized as infidel if it were transplanted to Iran or Afghanistan. But it appears there could be a third way - looking at the AKP as a progeny of the 30-year-old Iranian revolution. At least, that is how Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri thinks. He is one of Iran's senior clerics, used to be a speaker of the Majlis (parliament) and now holds the exalted position of advisor to Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nouri explained last Sunday, "When Iranians talked of 'exporting' their revolution, they did not mean manufacturing something andthen exporting it to other countries by trucks or ships; rather, they meant transmitting the message of their revolution and conveying its doctrine." Nouri said he felt inspired to claim the AKP as a fine legacy of the Iranian revolution by the fact it is in Turkey that the "most beautiful demonstrations on the Gaza issue" were held in recent weeks. A mighty snub He may have gone slightly overboard by claiming that even the Turkish army "which had certain records, has changed now". All the same, the point is well taken that "things have changed" in Turkey, as Nouri put it, which is what the avalanche of popular support for Hamas in its battle with Israel showed. In particular, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's public snub of Israeli President Shimon Peres last Thursday in a television chat show on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meet in the Swiss resort of Davos has caught the imagination of the Islamic world and cuts across the Shi'ite-Sunni divide. All of a sudden, Erdogan takes the form of a latter-day Ottoman sultan with an empire that spreads all across the fertile Mesopotamian planes, the Arabian desserts, the Nile Valley, the Levant and the Maghreb, all the way into the heart of Africa. Erdogan, a back-street boy from the working-class district of Kasimpasa in Istanbul, has come a long way in his tumultuous political career. He is undoubtedly one of Turkey's most charismatic and gifted politicians. His place in Turkey's pantheon of leaders is secure. All the same, he couldn't have fancied that one day he would be proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize - or that his sponsor would be a revered religious figure in the world of Shi'ism. Addressing a gathering of theological students on Sunday in the holy Iranian city of Qom, Ayatollah Naser Makarem-Shirazi did precisely that. Erdogan's protest, the ayatollah said, has had a profound effect on regional security, and it has strengthened the Palestinian resistance and humiliated and further isolated the "Zionist regime". Erdogan's "claim" to a Nobel Prize tenuously hangs on the 56 words he spoke at the Davos television show, when he told off Peres, "You are older than me and your voice is very loud. The reason for your raising your voice is the psychology of guilt. I will not raise my voice that much. When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill. I know very well how you hit and killed children on the beaches." Muslim alienation It certainly speaks something of the profound alienation gripping the Middle East today that the resonance of a mere cluster of 56 words spoken in anguish about justice, honor and equity should so stubbornly refuse to die down. Erdogan overnight joins Lebanon's Hassan Nasrullah of Hezbollah and Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad who criss-cross with enviable abandon the historic sectarian divides in the Muslim world. Surely, some food for thought for US President Barack Obama. Erdogan returned from Davos to Istanbul to a hero's welcome. Opinion polls show that over 80% of Turks endorse his sharp retort and his "walkout" from the TV show. The AKP's popularity is soaring above 50%, so much so that the opposition parties, which had hoped to cash in on Turkey's economic problems in local elections in end-March, feel crestfallen. In Gaza itself, Erdogan has overnight become an iconic figure, so much so that the pro-West Arab rulers look embarrassed - as indeed is "Abu Mazen" (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas), who nonchalantly heads the Palestinian Authority. Of course, there is no way Saudi Arabia or Egypt will surrender the mantle of leadership to Turkey. But from now, they will need to seriously factor that Turkey's shadows are deepening on the Middle Eastern Sunni Muslim landscape. Iran is plainly delighted. The powerful head of Iran's Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, shot off a message to Erdogan, saying, "Your epic stand has pleased Hamas and its supporters and humiliated the lackey leaders of several Arab states." 'Neo-Ottomanism' gathers pace In Turkey itself, the ricochet has ripped open the country's split identity. The oligarchy of Westernized Turkish elites based in Istanbul feels scandalized that Erdogan might have marred the cultivated image of the civilized Turk in Europe. With his sense of history and culture, the Anatolian Turk, on the other hand, feels jubilant that Erdogan is reclaiming Turkey's long-lost habitation in its ancestral home in the Muslim Middle East. To be sure, the AKP's agenda of "neo-Ottomanism" took a quantum leap last week. An engrossing phase is about to commence where the primacy may incrementally come to lie on the rediscovery of Turkey's imperial legacy while the country continues its search for a new national consensus that can reconcile the Turk's many identities. Under the seven-year AKP rule, Turkey began the painful process of coming to terms with its Muslim and Ottoman heritage. Contrary to general impressions, neo-Ottomanism is neither Islamist nor imperialistic. Arguably, it uses the common denominator of Islam to derive a less ethnic idea of "Turkishness" that is much more in harmony than militant secularism ever could be with the multi-ethnic character of the Turkish state. But in foreign policy, "neo-Ottomanism" has a more grandiose agenda. As prominent columnist Omer Taspinar of Turkey's Zaman newspaper wrote, "Neo-Ottomanism sees Turkey as a regional superpower. Its strategic vision and culture reflects the geographic reach of the Ottoman and Byzantine empires. Turkey, as a pivotal state, should thus play a very active diplomatic, political and diplomatic role in a wide region of which it is the 'center'." Unsurprisingly, Erdogan's critics among the Westernized elites in Istanbul and Ankara view any such pan-Turkic or Islamic openings in foreign policy as adventurous and ultimately harmful to Turkey's interests. To quote a top Turkish commentator, Mehmet Ali Birand, of CNN Turk, Erdogan has "disturbed" a delicate balance in Ankara's foreign policy and "put himself and his country in a risky position ... It will be interpreted as a slow drift away from the Israel-United States-European Union-Egypt-Saudi Arabia camp ... Even if relations with Israel are not ceased, the color will start to change from now on and turn toward dislike. If not balanced immediately, relations between Israel and Turkey will not recover easily. The reflections will be seen in Washington and on the money markets." However, Birand's panicky prognosis seems presumptuous. There is no basis to the argument that "neo-Ottomanism" means Turkey turns its back on the West. As Taspinar pointed out, after all, the Ottoman Empire was known as the "sick man of Europe" and not of Asia or Arabia. The European legacy of being open to the West and Western influence was a constant feature of the Ottoman era. Erdogan's ambitious regional policy in the Middle East, therefore, should not be construed as sidestepping an active pursuit of European Union membership or good relations with Washington. Turkish-Israeli ties under cloud No doubt, Israel's Gaza offensive and Erdogan's Davos episode have created fractures in Turkish-Israeli strategic ties. But the question is whether the damage is serious enough to start a major realignment in the region. The high probability is that with the cooling of tempers, the Turkish-Israeli relationship as such will recover. The Turkish military has let it be known that there is no rollback in cooperation with Israel. It said Turkey's military cooperation with all countries, including Israel, was based on national interests and no difficulties were foreseen in the scheduled delivery by Israel of high-tech Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said, "There is a rift in our relations. This cannot be hidden. But these relations are very important for both countries." She took note that Ankara was "drawing a distinction between bilateral ties and the censure they are leveling at us over the [Gaza] operation". Jewish groups based in the US are also trying to calm the agitation in Turkish-Israeli relations. Conceivably, Erdogan harbors a sense of betrayal. He told the Washington Post that Turkish mediation had brought Israel and Syria "very close" to direct peace talks on the future of the Golan Heights. During the visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Ankara on December 23, not only did he hide from Erdogan that Israel was planning to attack Gaza four days later, but he assured the Turkish leader that as soon as he got back, he would consult his colleagues and come back on the talks with Syria. While Olmert was in Ankara, Erdogan telephoned Hamas leader Ismail Haniye in Gaza and consulted him on the issues to be discussed with the visiting Israeli prime minister. Quite understandably, Erdogan felt let down. "This operation [in Gaza] also shows disrespect to Turkey," he said. Israel is used to acting solely in its self-interest. But Erdogan is a proud Turk for whom loss of face is simply unacceptable. Israel's need of Turkey Meanwhile, Turkey erupted into massive anti-Israeli public demonstrations over reports of Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Turkey's highest policy-making body, the National Security Council, which is chaired by the president and comprises the prime minister and the military chiefs, said in a statement on December 30 that Israel should cease military operations immediately, give diplomacy a chance and allow humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza. But Israel took the Turkish criticism in its stride. Israel said Erdogan was being "emotional". Erdogan shot back: "I am not emotional. I am speaking as a grandson of the Ottoman Empire, which welcomed your forefathers when they were exiled ... History will accuse them [Olmert and Livni] of putting a stain on humanity ... It is unforgivable that a people who in their history suffered so profoundly could do such a thing." On balance, it hurts Israel more than Turkey that a trust deficit has developed. Turkey has many friends in the region, whereas Israel has hardly any. Turkey is an irreplaceable ally for Israel not only in the Middle East but in the entire Muslim world. With the expected US-Iranian engagement and the ensuing realignment in the region, Israel (and the pro-West Arab states) needs Turkey as a "balancer" more than any time before. Iraq cannot play that role anymore. As the effusive Iranian salute to Erdogan shows, Tehran is acutely conscious of the new imperatives, too. Beyond all that, an ageless concern that Israel ought to sit up and take note is that for the first time in the Anatolian heartland, a surge of anti-Semitism is visible. If the Ottoman era's fabulous record of providing asylum for any wandering Jew is indeed becoming a relic of history, don't ask who is responsible. Israel's leaders must take the blame for it.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany
, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB04Ak01.html
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