Chippshots: Comment on the "Middle East"

Racism, Xenophobia, and Fear-mongering in the McCain-Palin campaign

2008-10-08T14:38:00.004-04:00

The Washington Post today published what is at least its second piece from right-wing conservative columnist Kathleen Parker highly critical of Sarah Palin. (I've pasted it below.) But even more noteworthy is her mention of the rising stink of racism and xenophobia - and an implied threat of violence - at some of the Republican campaign stops.

A couple of days ago, MSNBC showed some very disturbing video and audio footage from McCain's New Mexico campaign stop and one of Palin's stop in Florida. When McCain asked the crowd, after a long lead-in to the question, "Who really is Barack Obama?", a Cro-Magnonish masculine voice yelled, "He's a terrorist!" The same day, when Palin insinuated that there was a sinister terrorist link between Barack Obama and former Weatherman William Ayers, another thuggish masculine voice yelled from the throng, "Kill him!"

We ought not be surprised, I suppose. Consider the new report that FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, the national media watchdog group) released today (and I quote from the press release):

profiling 12 of the leading Islamophobic pundits and media figures and examining the ways they've negatively influenced media coverage in the U.S. The report, "Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation," describes a loose network of right-wing, anti-Muslim partisans who regularly use innuendo, questionable sources of information and even lies to smear, and effectively marginalize, Muslims in the media.

And now we have the Republican candidates and their media clones trying so very hard to get the American public to connect the dots: Obama the man of mystery; Obama the closet Muslim, Obama the friend of terrorists; Obama the black racist (don't forget that nasty Rev. Wright!); but still, Obama the Princeton/Harvard East Coast liberal intellectual elitist. So completely the "Other." Most assuredly not one of US (or, for that matter, of U.S.). An insidious threat to the Republic, to American values, to our way of life. And even worse, in the eyes of all too many on the Christian evangelical Right, the Anti-Christ! Evil incarnate! He must be stopped!

What's an American patriot to do?

Kathleen Parker began her column thus: When Sarah Palin said she was taking off the gloves, she wasn't just whistling "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Or was she?

Consider that in the context of another especially surprising, scary development reported a few days ago by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now :

In a barely noticed development last week, the Army stationed an active unit inside the United States. The Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Team is back from Iraq, now training for domestic operations under the control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The unit will serve as an on-call federal response for large-scale emergencies and disasters. It’s being called the Consequence Management Response Force, CCMRF, or “sea-smurf” for short.

It’s the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to USNORTHCOM, which was itself formed in October 2002 to “provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts.” [my emphasis]

An initial news report in the Army Times newspaper last month noted, in addition to emergency response, the force “may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control.” The Army Times has since appended a clarification, and a September 30th press release from the Northern Command states: “This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control."

A public affairs officer for NORTHCOM said the force would have weapons stored in containers on site, as well as access to tanks, but the decision to use weapons would be made at a far higher level, perhaps by Secretary of Defense, SECDEF.

Progressive magazine editor Matthew Rothschild, a commentator on Goodman's show, noted that:

This is the 3rd Infantry, 1st Brigade Combat unit that has spent three of the last five years in Iraq in counterinsurgency. It’s a war-fighting unit, was one of the first units to Baghdad. It was involved in the battle of Fallujah. And, you know, that’s what they’ve been trained to do. And now they’re bringing that training here?

On top of that, one of the commanders of this unit was boasting in the Army Times about this new package of non-lethal weapons that has been designed, and this unit itself is going be able to use, according to that original article. And in fact, the commander was saying he had even tasered himself and was boasting about tasering himself. So, why is a Pentagon unit that’s going to be possibly patrolling the streets of the United States involved in using tasers?

The Army representative that Goodman brought onto the show countered, predictably, that these well-trained soldiers and their commanders can be trusted to do the right thing. But Goodman and Rothschild between them did an excellent job of showing how the line between civilian and military has lately been badly blurred, in ways of which the mostly non-reading American public knows little and understands less. (For instance, they note how NORTHCOM was also sharing intelligence with local police during the Republican convention in St. Paul.)

So, put all the pieces together, mes amis.

a bitter election season - perhaps the most bitterly contentious of my lifetime (and that includes the Vietnam era)
chauvinist, racism-and-religion-tinged patriotism and fear-mongering being spurred to the point of near-violence.
a financial crisis of monumental proportions and no end in sight, hundreds of thousands of jobs and homes lost, and public anger, frustration, and fear mounting by the day
gasoline costs astronomically high - and the costs of fuel for heating also high as we approach what some are predicting to be an unusually cold winter), at a time when incomes are being lost and people may not be able to afford filling their gas tanks (not to mention their stomachs) or pay their heating bills
fingers of blame being pointed at allegedly malingering blacks who ought not have gotten those mortgages in the first place, and at those shifty Jewish financiers on Wall Street whose "historically attested" penchant for greed once again threatens the lives of good Christian white people.
a combat-seasoned unit of the US army being made ready to deal with civil insurrection

Our president has repeatedly harped on the "goodness of the American people" - that we are a beacon of hope and opportunity to the world, a symbol of righteousness and harmony.

All of that may now be put to the ultimate test.

Call Off the Pit Bull

By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, October 8, 2008; 12:00 AM

When Sarah Palin said she was taking off the gloves, she wasn't just whistling "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

Or was she?

In the wake of the vice presidential debate, Palin has trained her moose-hunting sights on bigger trophies -- Barack Obama and the media.

In Colorado a few days ago, she told fans that Obama pals around with terrorists. Later in Clearwater, Fla., resplendent in white against a backdrop of red, white and blue, she said, "This is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America, as the greatest source for good in this world. I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country."

"Booooooooooooo."

On Monday, Bill Kristol wrote in his column that Palin thinks Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright needs to be discussed more.

Because hardly anyone ever mentioned it?

Palin also took the opportunity in Clearwater to deflect criticism of her interview with Katie Couric. First she joked that she was only working for Tina Fey's job security. Then she said the reason she did so poorly in the interview was that she was annoyed.

We are to infer that the reason Palin gave answers that ranged from ridiculous to nonsensical was that she was merely withholding her insights to demonstrate her pique? Right.

Nevertheless, "Yaaaaaaaaaaaay."

The real Sarah Palin is free at last. She's not just a hockey mom after all. She's Palin the Impaler. Pit bulls beware.

No one who watched the vice presidential debate should be surprised.

Palin's performance, notwithstanding her adorable dodges of questions she didn't like, was essentially a cri de coeur to America's non-elite.

Democrats and other critics distracted by her winks may have missed the message, but Palin's target audience heard it loud and clear. She is like the high-pitched whistle only dogs can hear. While Democrats heard non-answers, superfluous segues and cartoon words -- shout-out, I'll betcha, doggone, extra credit -- Republicans heard God, patriotism, courage, victory.

It's called code, and Republicans are fluent.

It isn't just the "maverick" word, which we now may consign to the Cliche Crematorium. Sprinkled throughout Palin's remarks were phrases that set the free associative mind in motion.

"Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again" was Ronald Reagan all over again.

"I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?" Every evangelical Christian heard her rallying cry -- Onward, Soldiers!

"Because here you voted for the war and now you oppose the war." Did anybody hear flip-flop?

A television audience won't remember facts -- and most won't race to FactCheck.org -- but they'll remember impressions. Palin successfully conveyed to those she was targeting that she is a Ronald Reagan-ish outsider who puts God and country first. And The Other is just like that elitist, flip-flopping John Kerry.

That's a plateful of imagery and a buffet of touchstones familiar to those who distrust "elitists" and who recognize in Palin a kindred regularness.

Time magazine examined voting habits and concluded that most people do not vote for issues, but rather for the candidates. Specifically, they vote for people who are most like themselves. Which is why McCain and Palin have amped up their rhetoric of difference.

Neither McCain nor Palin would dare mention Obama's middle name, Hussein, but they can play up Obama's past associations and let others connect the dots. Terrorist. Muslim. Dangerous. Other.

It is legitimate to question character and dubious associations -- and William Ayers is certifiably dubious. The truth is, Obama should have avoided Ayers, and his denouncement of Wright was tardy. But this is a dangerous game.

The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist, but they're willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child.

But words can have more serious consequences than lost votes and we've already had a glimpse of the Palin effect.

The Post's Dana Milbank reported that media representatives in Clearwater were greeted with taunts, thunder sticks and profanity. One Palin supporter shouted an epithet at an African-American soundman and said, "Sit down, boy."

McCain may want to call off his pit bull before this war escalates.

kparker@kparker.com

http://

The US military's ongoing "collateral damage"

2008-10-08T14:06:00.000-04:00

Note that during the recent debates and on the stump, both McCain and Palin have blasted Obama for mentioning that US forced have air-raided villages and killed civilians.

Now, as the NY Times reports, the US military is owning up to it - and anyone who can read ought to have known by now that we've been "collateral damaging" Afghans - not to mention Iraqis and Pakistanis (and through our complicity in Israel's oppressive policies, Palestinians and Lebanese) for years.

October 8, 2008

30 Civilians Died in Afghan Raid, U.S. Inquiry Finds

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — An investigation by the military has concluded that American airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a village in western Afghanistan killed far more civilians than American commanders there have acknowledged, according to two American military officials.

The military investigator’s report found that more than 30 civilians — not 5 to 7 as the military has long insisted — died in the airstrikes against a suspected Taliban compound in Azizabad.

The investigator, Brig. Gen. Michael W. Callan of the Air Force, concluded that many more civilians, including women and children, had been buried in the rubble than the military had asserted, one of the military officials said.

The airstrikes have been the focus of sharp tensions between the Afghan government, which has said that 90 civilians died in the raid, and the American military, under Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American military commander in Afghanistan, which has repeatedly insisted that only a handful of civilians were killed.

The report was requested by General McKiernan on Sept. 7, more than two weeks after the airstrikes, in response to what he said at the time was “emerging evidence” about the raids. While American commanders in Afghanistan have contended that 30 to 35 militants were killed in the raid, the new report concludes that many among that group were in fact civilians, the military officials said.

According to the new report, fewer than 20 militants died in the raid, which was conducted jointly by American and Afghan forces, and in subsequent airstrikes carried out by an AC-130 gunship in support of the allied ground forces.

The revised American estimate for civilian deaths in the operation remains far below the 90 that Afghan and United Nations officials have claimed, a figure that the Afghan government and the United Nations said was supported by cellphone photos, freshly dug grave sites and the accounts of witnesses who saw the dead bodies.

But General Callan’s findings ran counter to those of the earlier American investigations. American Special Operations forces conducted an initial battlefield review, including a building by building search, and four days later, military investigators traveled to the vicinity of the raid. General Callan found that the people who conducted those investigations did not or could not do what was necessary to establish the full extent of the civilian killings, the military officials said.

In contrast, military officials said, General Callan was able to review the scene of the airstrikes more extensively. They said his team interviewed villagers, which the other military units had not done before, and examined new evidence, like cellphone videos and other images showing the bodies of women and children that were not available previously.

The report sticks to the military’s assertion that the compound was a legitimate target, a finding that is likely to rekindle tensions with the government of President Hamid Karzai. As a result of that finding, the report does not single out any individual for blame or recommend that any American troops be punished.

The report’s general findings were described by two American military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been made public, and Afghan officials have not yet been briefed on the matter.

In recent days, both General McKiernan and Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the acting commander of the military’s Central Command, who appointed General Callan on Sept. 9 to investigate the episode, have received briefings on the report’s findings.

The New York Times on Sept. 8 described freshly dug graves, lists of the dead, and cellphone videos and other images showing bodies of women and children in the village mosque seen on a visit to Azizabad. Cellphone images a Times reporter saw showed at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries, among some 30 to 40 bodies laid out in the mosque.

Afghan and United Nations officials backed this accounting of a higher civilian death toll, putting them in direct conflict with the American military’s version of events. In that account, American Special Forces troops and Afghan commandos called in airstrikes after they came under attack while approaching a compound in Azizabad, a village in the Shindand district of Herat Province. Among the militants killed, the military said at the time, was a Taliban leader, Mullah Sadiq.

By the next day, Afghan officials complained of significant civilian casualties and President Karzai strongly condemned the airstrikes. American military officials rejected the claim, saying that extremists who entered the village after the bombardment encouraged villagers to change their stories and inflate the number of dead.

The initial investigating officer, an Army Special Forces major, visited the village after the airstrikes. Guided by aerial photographs, he visited six burial sites within a six-mile range of the attack, a military spokesman said; only one had any freshly dug graves, about 18 to 20. Afghan villagers said there were other burial sites that the Americans did not visit.

One of the military officials who agreed to discuss the new report said the Special Forces troops who had called in the strikes could conduct only a limited assessment of the damage and casualties afterward because they were forced to leave the village soon after the strikes, fearing retaliation from the villagers.

“We were wrong on the number of civilian casualties partly because the initial review was operating under real limitations,” said one of the military officials, who said of the Special Forces soldiers, “They were definitely not welcome there.”

Even before he requested the more senior investigator, General McKiernan issued orders on Sept. 2 tightening the rules about when NATO troops in Afghanistan were authorized to use lethal force. The new rules emphasized putting Afghan forces out front in searches of homes and requiring multiple sources of information before attacking targets.

General McKiernan told reporters in Washington last week that one of his “top challenges” was “to try to make sure we have the right measures in place to minimize the possibility of civilian casualties.”

He said the American military was trying to work with the Afghan authorities to ensure that further allegations involving civilian casualties would be investigated jointly rather than separately.

On that flow of global wealth eastward

2008-10-06T12:27:00.002-04:00

I noted in my preceding post that global wealth was moving eastward, especially to the oil-producing states. The LA Times today runs a story on that very theme. And as the author points out, we're no longer talking about oil-rich playboys buying shiny new toys.

Iraqi detainees and the US's need for good will

2008-10-06T11:33:00.002-04:00

I note this story in today's Washington Post. It brings to mind the fact that thousands of such men - the vast majority of them innocent of any wrongdoing (or, as the Bush administration might phrase it - if it's indeed speaking up about anything anymore - "evildoing") continue to languish at places like Camp Bucca, and that their families continue to suffer in their absence. These men traditionally are the protectors and breadwinners of their families, who have had to do without that protection and sustenance, usually for years given the snail's pace of American justice when's it come to detainees. They've also had to endure incarceration and countless humiliations at the hands of US troops. All in all, I think it's safe to say that the hearts and minds of them and their families have hardly been won over by their experience at the hands of the USA. And you can bet that Arabs across the Middle East and beyond have been taking note.

The Dow-Jones has fallen this morning by another 600 points, and the day's trading is not done. The US economy is at the precipice, and may well drag down most of the global economy with it. The US is massively in debt, people are losing their homes and their livelihoods, while global wealth (what's left of it) has been shifting eastward.

You have to wonder how much, in the years ahead, the USA will need to reach out its hand to the newly emerging economies - many of them in the oil-producing states of the Middle East. You also have to wonder how hard many across the world will want to smack that hand, now that the US's policies and actions over the past eight years (indeed, much longer than that; the blame extends deeply into our history) have squandered, not only our pretensions to leadership, but whatever moral and ethical capital the USA might once have possessed.

A Joyful Welcome Home for Detainees

By Andrea Bruce
Washington Post Staff Photographer
Monday, October 6, 2008; A10

Flipping back a canvas tarp, 12 men squint at the dusty sun and jump, one by one, off the bed of a U.S. military transport truck, dropping to their knees in prayer. They are free.

Before their arrival at the Iraqi police headquarters in Baghdad, they were transported, hands tied, from the U.S. detention facility Camp Bucca, in southern Iraq -- a full day's drive from here. Their ironed pants and stiff new shoes were donated for their homecoming, replacing the orange jumpsuits from Bucca.

Slowly, they pull each other up, their tears falling, uncontrollable after years of waiting.

And then they are forced to wait a little more. Temporarily in Iraqi police custody, the men wade through an hour of bureaucracy while their families mill about just outside the compound. For security reasons, they are then transported in Iraqi police vehicles to another neighborhood.

The trip becomes a parade. Horns blare. Kids cheer. Women pelt the police pickups with hard candy. The detainees stand and wave in the truck beds, crying as they pass old men drinking tea and selling vegetables on the streets. One family follows behind in a rusted car, yelling, driving haphazardly, eyes on their loved ones and barely on the road.

Haqi Ismaeel Awad was detained more than two years ago because, he says, the U.S. military suspected his brother of participating in the insurgency. Now he has been cleared of involvement.

Awad, eyes closed, faces into the wind, feeling its force on his face as the smells and sounds of Baghdad become a reality.

When the truck pulls into a neighborhood park, Awad's parents run alongside it with their arms open. The truck's rear gate is not opened fast enough. The men jump over it and down to the road, into the embraces of mothers, wives, brothers and fathers.

Weeping, Awad's wife grabs him, holding his face in her hands, kissing one cheek, then the other.

"You look old," she says, but she smiles.

He scans the crowd past her.

Their two children are waiting for them at home, she tells him, bringing his eyes down to hers. It is still too dangerous for them to be out on the streets.

Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce is documenting the lives of people in Iraq in a feature, Unseen Iraq, appearing regularly in the World pages. For a photo gallery and previous columns, visit http://blog.washpost.com/unseen-iraq.

Don't look now, but Iraq still simmers

2008-09-28T19:41:00.003-04:00

As Senator McCain continued his chest-thumping about the "success" of the Surge, and how we're on the road to victory in Iraq, during Thursday's debate, the bombings continue, millions of Iraqis remain either in foreign exile or as refugees within their own country, and, as the story appended here relates, tensions between Arabs and Kurds are high, especially over the still unsettled issue of Kirkuk. Republican commentators seem convinced that the US has rounded the far turn and is at the top of the stretch on the road to Iraq's freedom, and the more often they hammer that point, the more likely that Mr. and Mrs. American Citizen are going to buy into it. Yes, US combat fatalities are down, but Iraqi military and police are being killed every day, at an alarming rate. And today, Marc Lynch posted at his Abu Aardvark site (which I highly recommend) a link to a report from the Iraqi Arabic press that al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to reach out to the members of the Sunni Awakening, whom the Maliki government has begun to target are who are slowly being hung out to dry by the US (despite US military commanders' protests to the contrary). Remember, the Sunni Awakening began as rejection of al-Qaeda's heavy-handedness, but the local militias that comprised it (1) accepted US help only as an alliance of convenience, and (2) harbored a deep distrust of the Shiite-dominated Maliki government, which they saw as too much a tool of the Iranian regime.

It's not at all clear that those who fought al-Qaeda as part of the Sunni Awakening are going to remain onside. They hope to be able to gain some measure of political voice when (or if) the provincial elections take place, but a lot could happen before then - and if the elections do come off (the hope seems to be for January 2009), there's no assurance that they will come off without major hitches and resulting complaints about unfairness . . . which could be more than enough to set off a new round of violence.

Sorry to be such a pessimist, but I see too many signs of what I might very inelegantly term "re-destabilization" to start breathing easy about Iraq's future. ((And now see the new essay by Peter Galbraith in the 23 Oct. 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080927/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq_4

Iraq: Kurdish politician killed in disputed region

By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press WriterSat Sep 27, 2:04 PM ET

Iraqi police fatally shot a Kurdish politician in one of Iraq's most volatile provinces Saturday, a killing that underlines the growing tensions between Kurds and Arabs in parts of the north.

Even as Iraq has seen a sharp decline in Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence, hostility is deepening between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq's north as Kurdish authorities begin to exert more authority beyond the boundaries of their autonomous region.

Riya Qahtan, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, was killed Saturday morning in Jalula, a small town 80 miles (125 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala, said Jabar Yawer, a spokesman for the Kurdish military, or peshmerga. Jalula has a mostly Sunni Arab population with a substantial Kurdish minority.

The incident occurred after two Sunni Arab policemen stopped three members of the Kurdish secret service at a market and demanded they show identification. They refused, and within minutes police reinforcements arrived at the scene, arrested them and took them to police headquarters, Yawer said.

Qahtan then went to the police station and persuaded officers to release the detainees, who had been working as guards for his party. But as the group was leaving, two policemen opened fire and shot Qahtan, Yawer added.

The two policemen were being investigated as suspects in the shooting, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Also Saturday, the U.S. military arrested five suspected Iranian-backed Shiite extremists accused in recent rocket attacks on Iraqi and American forces.

The military said it captured the five suspects in three separate locations in a largely Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, acting on intelligence information.

The extremists are suspected of links to the Hezbollah Brigades, a Shiite extremist group that the U.S. believes is backed by Iran. Tehran denies U.S. allegations that it is supporting violence in Iraq.

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.

Is the two-state solution in Palestine dead?

2008-09-26T10:45:00.002-04:00

In a word . . . yes. And anyone who's been following the growth of the settler movement in the West Bank knows that this is hardly "news."

The New York Times runs a story today that spotlights first the apparent assassination attempt against Prof. Zeev Sternhell (a prominent Israeli academic and critic of the settlement movement), but then takes a more in-depth look at the messianic, violent, settler movement in the West Bank. (I've pasted the story below.) Although the Times as well as the Washington Post have published some informative (and occasionally incisive) pieces on this subject in recent years, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan have pushed stories about the situation in the Palestinian territories under the radar for most Americans. And that's a shame, because across the Middle East (and the larger Islamic world)), people have pointed to the US's acceptance of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank (which is now more than 40 years old) as one of the most blatant examples of how the US stands for prejudice and hypocrisy rather than for justice and fairness.

But, at this point, to expect Israel to dismantle its huge settlements in the West Bank is supremely unrealistic. And to expect any Israeli government to truly go after the settler movement in the West Bank - to dismantle the illegal settlements and "outposts" - is just as unrealistic.

Why? Remember that Kadima, the party that heads up the current governing coalition in Israel, cannot maintain its hold without the support (and Knesset votes) of Shas, an ultra-Orthodox religious party whose leader, the rabbi Ovadia Yosef, stands squarely behind the settlers. If she is to succeed to the prime ministership (now that the disgraced Ehud Olmert has resigned), new Kadima leader Tzipi Livni cannot risk alienating Shas.

Furthermore, any dismantling of the outposts will require the Israeli army's active participation. Once a bastion of the secularism that Israel's socialist-inclined founding fathers avowed, the IDF now includes a substantial cadre of religious officers and soldiers, many of whom would resist orders to tear down outposts and confront (perhaps violently) their occupants. (In fact, when they were required to do so at the West Bank outpost of Amona in 2005, many soldiers found themselves very "conflicted." That would only be worse by now.)

The religious settlers are both dug in and moving on to new "frontiers" in what they see as their "Promised Land." (And tens of thousands of American Christian fundamentalist evangelicals are cheering them on.) Put simply, any sustained move by the government against the religious settlers would threaten the unity and integrity of the Israeli army, and would quite possibly plunge Israel into a civil war.

A growing number of Palestinians recognize that the two-state solution is no longer workable. That leaves, of course, only a few alternatives:
1. A truly binational state, in which all citizens (Arabs and Jews) have equal political and social rights and standing. That, of course, is the most just and fair solution. It would also mark, for too many, the end of the Zionist "dream."
2. An even more apartheid state, with a fast-growing Palestinian population subsumed as an underclass under the domination of a Jewish minority.
3. The forced transfer of Palestinians out of the West Bank (and Gaza?). A significant number of Israelis (and, for that matter, American Christian evangelicals) have been calling for this for years.

How this situation resolves itself - and how that resolution spills over into Middle Eastern and global geopolitics - are going to have huge impact for decades to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/world/middleeast/26settlers.html?em=&pagewanted=print

September 26, 2008

Radical Settlers Take On Israel

By ISABEL KERSHNER

YITZHAR, West Bank — A pipe bomb that exploded late on Wednesday night outside the Jerusalem home of Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University professor, left him lightly wounded and created only a minor stir in a nation that routinely experiences violence on a much larger scale.

But Mr. Sternhell was noted for his impassioned critiques of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, once suggesting that Palestinians “would be wise to concentrate their struggle against the settlements.” And the authorities found fliers near his home offering nearly $300,000 to anyone who kills a member of Peace Now, a left-wing Israeli advocacy group, leading them to suspect that militant Israeli settlers or their supporters were behind the attack.

If so, the bombing may be the latest sign that elements of Israel’s settler movement are resorting to extremist tactics to protect their homes in the occupied West Bank against not only Palestinians, but also Jews who some settlers argue are betraying them. Radical settlers say they are determined to show that their settlements and outposts cannot be dismantled, either by law or by force.

There have been bouts of settler violence for years, notably during the transfer of Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Now, though, the militants seem to have spawned a broader, more defined strategy of resistance designed to intimidate the state.

This aggressive doctrine, according to Akiva HaCohen, 24, who is considered to be one of its architects, calls on settlers and their supporters to respond “whenever, wherever and however” they wish to any attempt by the Israeli Army or the police to lay a finger on property in illegally built outposts scheduled by the government for removal. In settler circles the policy is called “price tag” or “mutual concern.”

Besides exacting a price for army and police actions, the policy also encourages settlers to avenge Palestinian acts of violence by taking the law into their own hands — an approach that has the potential to set the tinderbox of the West Bank ablaze.

Hard-core right-wing settlers have responded to limited army operations in recent weeks by blocking roads, rioting spontaneously, throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles and burning Palestinian orchards and fields all over the West Bank, a territory that Israel has occupied since 1967. They have also vandalized Israeli Army positions, equipment and cars.

In Jewish settlements like Yitzhar, an extremist bastion on the hilltops commanding the Palestinian city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, a local war is already being waged. One Saturday in mid-September a Palestinian from the neighboring village of Asira al Qibliya climbed the hill to Shalhevet, a neighborhood of Yitzhar, set fire to a house whose occupants were away for the weekend and stabbed a 9-year-old settler boy, the Israeli Army said.

Hours later, scores of men from Yitzhar rampaged through the Palestinian village, hurling rocks and firing guns, in what the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, described as a “pogrom.” Several Palestinians were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

“The army was complaining that we were bothering them in their efforts to catch the terrorist,” said Ephraim Ben Shochat, 21, a resident of Shalhevet Ya, an illegal outpost consisting of three permanent houses and a trailer halfway down the slope between Yitzhar and Asira al Qibliya.

“To us, deterrence is more important than catching the specific terrorist. We’re fighting against a nation,” Mr. Ben Shochat said.

As he spoke, soldiers were in the process of reinforcing a small army post at the end of the path with concrete slabs. “We would rather fight and kill the enemy,” Mr. Ben Shochat said, adding scornfully that the army, which guards Yitzhar and its satellites from the lookout post, “would rather hide.”

Ten months ago in Annapolis, Md., Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledged to make every effort to reach a historic agreement for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza by the end of this year. The Palestinians further promised to dismantle all terrorist networks, and the Israelis agreed to freeze all settlement activity and immediately remove settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

In practice, only a handful of the 100 or so outposts, at least half of which were erected since 2001, have been removed, and construction in the official West Bank settlements goes on.

At the same time, the religious, ideological wing of the settlement movement has grown more radical. Those on the extremist fringe — like Mr. Ben Shochat, who belong to the so-called hilltop youth — are increasingly rejecting any allegiance to the state, backed up by an older generation of rabbis and early settler pioneers.

In Samaria, the biblical name for the northern West Bank, and in Binyamin, the central district around the Palestinian city of Ramallah, settlers recently ousted their more mainstream representatives in local council elections, voting in what they called “activist” mayors instead.

These new mayors, like the Samaria council’s Gershon Mesika, reject what they see as the more compromising policies of the Yesha council, the settler movement’s longstanding umbrella group. They are particularly incensed by the Yesha council’s willingness to negotiate with the government over the removal or relocation of some West Bank outposts in exchange for official authorization of others.

“We are taking our fate into our own hands,” Mr. Mesika said of the price tag doctrine. “We won’t go like sheep to the slaughter.” He added that the recent settler violence was something he understood, though did not support.

For many in the religious, ideological settler camp the rude awakening came with the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005. Then, under the premiership of Ariel Sharon, a driving force of the settlement-building enterprise who turned more pragmatic, Israel evacuated all 21 Jewish settlements there, and razed four official settlements in the northern West Bank. Another watershed came in early 2006 when thousands of settlers clashed with Israeli police officers who had come to destroy nine houses built without government permission in Amona. Traumatized by the resistance, the government put plans for further evacuations on hold.

“Amona pretty much divided this public into two parts, the more militant activist part and the more passive part,” said Mr. HaCohen, an Orthodox hilltop youth pioneer and a founder of Shalhevet Ya. The people, he said, “have to decide whether they are on the side of the Torah or the state.”

Mr. HaCohen was speaking from a cousin’s house in Jerusalem. Identified by the Israeli security services as one of the authors of the price-tag doctrine, he has been banned by the army from entering the West Bank for four months.

Born in Monsey, N.Y., Mr. HaCohen came to Israel with his parents as a child. He dropped out of yeshiva, or religious seminary, at 16 and went to settle the hilltops, he said. He got married at 18 and has since been living in and around Yitzhar.

Representing the messianic, almost apocalyptic wing of the settler movement, Mr. HaCohen peppers his speech with talk of redemption and makes it clear that in his land of Israel, there is no place for Arabs.

Like Mr. Ben Shochat, Mr. HaCohen, who is disarmingly soft-spoken, said he was not drafted into the army because of his religious beliefs. As a member of Yitzhar’s first response security team, though, he receives regular combat training and has a personal weapon.

More than 250,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank among roughly 2.4 million Palestinians, not including East Jerusalem. The Samaria council represents 30 official settlements and 12 unauthorized outposts that it says were all founded before 2001; others, like Shalhevet Ya, have sprung up since then, at least partially on private Palestinian lands.

Local settler leaders argue that the only difference between an authorized settlement and an illegal outpost is the lack of the defense minister’s final signature on the planning papers, and that in any case, full authorization did not help the settlements razed in 2005.

They complain of government hypocrisy. Rahelim, a Samarian community of 45 families founded in 1991, has been labeled an illegal outpost even though the state Housing Ministry built 14 permanent homes here in 1998.

Avri Ran, a charismatic guru of the hilltop youth, formulated the concept of the outposts around the time that Israel started negotiating with the Palestinian leadership in the early 1990s. The idea was to populate empty spaces of the West Bank with Jews to preclude their being handed over to the Palestinians.

Mr. Ran and his wife, Sharona, started out in Itamar, a settlement just south of Nablus, and moved from hilltop to hilltop, finally establishing a private ranch more than a mile east of the mother settlement majestically named Givaot Olam, or hills of the universe.

Like many of the settlers in this area who see themselves as guardians of Joseph’s Tomb, a site sacred to Jews that lies in the heart of Nablus, the Ran family exudes a deeply religious, almost mystical attachment to the land.

The farm is said to be the largest Israeli producer of organic eggs. Mr. Ran’s son-in-law, Assaf Kidron, an artist who works in stone, says the inclement winds that used to whip around the mountain have dropped significantly since Jews came to live here, proof of a divine hand.

Outside the settlement of Har Bracha on Mount Grizim, settlers have taken over a former army lookout post on the ridge overlooking Nablus and Joseph’s Tomb, and just started operating a yeshiva to ensure a permanent presence there. Nobody has tried to remove the settlers, although there is an army position a short distance along the ridge.

In general, the relationship between the religious settlers of the area and the army is an ambiguous, if symbiotic one. Most young ideological settlers serve in the army and now make up an increasing portion of the elite combat units and the officers corps.

At the same time, two soldiers have been lightly wounded in recent settler riots.

“To go out and assault soldiers is wrong,” said David Ha’ivri, who handles foreign relations for the Samaria council. But, he said, “It is to be expected that when force is used, there will be counterforce.”

The army is appreciated when it sticks to providing security, Mr. Ha’ivri added, but, “We don’t respect them in the role of enforcing building codes.”

The army refused to comment on the effects of the price-tag doctrine, saying it was too sensitive.

A spokesman for the Israeli police, the party responsible for law enforcement among the settlers, said that in the last two months, at least half a dozen arrests had been made.

Is McCain actually canceling the debate?

2008-09-24T17:12:00.000-04:00

It's not my understanding that Obama is on board with canceling the debate - but I suppose that McCain has the option to do so unilaterally. I bet that if McCain ditches (to use fighter-pilot lingo), he may lose a few votes - especially in Oxford, Mississippi, where's put out quite a few people, especially at the university.

More importantly, I feel that McCain's decision here can be seen, not only as politically motivated and inspired, but as a seat-of-the-pants overreaction -the kind of impulsive act that McCain likes to think inspires people to admire him as a maverick, but that more realistically causes us to wonder about his judgment in a crisis. It communicates a sense of panic at a difficult time - and it contrasts markedly with the words of a great American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, when the US faced an even more daunting crisis as the Great Depression was under way, spoke of how "the only thing we have to fear is, fear itself."

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/09/24/in-risky-move-mccain-cancels-campaign-debate/

In risky move, McCain cancels debate appearance

The GOP candidate wants to concentrate on getting a financial bailout through Congress, but the economy's woes have so far favored Democrats.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer / September 24, 2008 edition

Reporter Alexandra Marks talks with csmonitor.com's Pat Murphy about reaction to Senator McCain's canceling his debate appearance in Oxford, Miss.

Washington

John McCain may be the first presidential candidate in US history to become as notable for canceling events as for holding them.

Senator McCain postponed the beginning of the Republican National Convention when hurricane Gustav threatened the Gulf Coast. Now he wants to call off the presidential debate scheduled for Friday, so that he (and rival Barack Obama) can return to Washington to focus on the nation’s financial problems.

“It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s [bailout] proposal,” said McCain in a statement. “I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.”

In political terms, this move could be a huge risk for the GOP nominee. He is thrusting himself into the center of an issue on which he has struggled to explain himself to voters. It only emphasizes that the economy is far and away the No. 1 issue in the election – and voters generally say that they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy well.

In addition, it’s not clear that the bailout proposal is in fact sinking with all hands on board.

It is true that lawmakers have been peppering Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with complaints that the plan helps Wall Street, not Main Street. And the administration has already signaled that it will retreat on some issues, notably agreeing with the Democrats’ insistence that any financial bailout contain some curbs on excessive executive pay.

But congressional leaders generally have indicated that they foresee passage of some kind of plan in the reasonably near future.

“We’re moving in a productive direction,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday.

It’s also possible, though, that McCain’s move will be seen by voters as an action undertaken by a forceful leader in a crisis. A Pew Research Center poll shows that Americans back the administration’s $700 billion bailout plan by a 2-to-1 margin (although a Rasmussen Reports telephone survey showed a more even split).

It was not immediately clear whether Senator Obama had agreed to the debate’s cancellation. Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that McCain had made a unilateral statement of his intentions moments after agreeing to joint action in support of the Treasury plan.

In Oxford, Miss. where Friday’s debate was to be held, officials with the Commission on Presidential Debates were stunned.

“The university has gone all out for this and the town has gone all out,” said one debate official, who was not authorized to speak to the press . “It will be an absolute tragedy if they call it off now.”

In Washington, Senate majority leader Harry Reid also criticized the idea of candidates trying to move the process forward. “It would not be helpful at this time to have them come back during these negotiations and risk injecting presidential politics into this process,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “We need leadership; not a campaign photo op.”

President Bush is set to address the nation on Wednesday evening on the bailout’s importance.

If McCain, Obama, and Mr. Bush agree to some sort of joint front or conference pushing aid for the financial system, it could mark a crucial push for the plan. At the least, the move on the debates marks another twist in a campaign that has been the most unpredictable in a generation.

Make that two generations.

– Staff writer Alexandra Marks contributed to this report from Oxford, Miss.

McCain to suspend campaign; wants to postpone debate

2008-09-24T16:02:00.000-04:00

Does this strike anyone else as a very cynical and self-serving move on McCain's part? The momentum has shifted away from him in the polls. Obama likely has a much better case to argue in the upcoming debate, especially in terms of labeling McCain as one of the worn-out "old-boys" crowd in Congress that helped put the country into this mess.

If Obama refuses or complains, McCain will try to remind us all of his self-serving war-hero oh-so-experienced country-first senator-self and accuse Obama of putting politics ahead of country.

I hope the American people will see through this garbage.

The Afghan Taliban have evolved. Can the US "win"?

2008-09-20T12:53:00.002-04:00

I link to an excellent - and very sobering - report from a top journalist who notes how the Taliban have both expanded and evolved as a political organization. She also makes the very telling point that many young men are joining the Taliban, not so much for Islamist reasons, but rather as freedom fighters who want to drive the US and NATO troops from their homeland. And the Taliban seem to have enough money and organization to give them hope that they can perhaps achieve that.

Meanwhile, Afghan president Karzai's popularity has plummeted (and his now planned meeting with Sarah Palin is not going to help him with that at all). His days are likely very numbered, and whatever days he has left, he basically has become not much more than the mayor of Kabul, who gets trotted out of his compound for the occasional command performance.

All of this, of course, begs the question: How can the US succeed in Afghanistan (or for that matter, Pakistan)? There really are very few troops available to be sent there, without a major drawdown in Iraq, the re-instituting of the draft here in the US, or other countries stepping up with more troops - none of which is going to happen. An Iraq-type "surge" is not going to work in Afghanistan (not to say that's it's really working in Iraq, in terms of achieving the ultimate goal of political reconciliation); indeed, in reading Bob Woodward's latest book, I came across a new term (one that the military brass use themselves) to describe what sending more US troops to Afghanistan would effectively be: a "troop sump." There really is no realistic path to "victory" in Afghanistan, as far as the US is concerned. Nor, for that matter, is there a simple straightforward way to define what "victory" would even be.

Catastrophe in Islamabad

2008-09-20T11:55:00.002-04:00

Appended below is the NYT's breaking story on today's massive bombing in Islamabad. There seem to be many more dead still inside the hotel - which, by the way, is a luxury hotel, the Marriott. You know how so many Americans tend to prefer "Western"-style hotels - so I expect that a number of Americans (and Europeans) were staying there.

You also know how so many of us, when such bombings have happened, have simply shrugged our shoulders and moved on when the victims have been Arabs, Iranians, not us . . . but if Americans are killed, there are paroxysms of outrage, newspapers publish long, heart-wrenching stories about the lives of those killed, etc. And don't think for one minute that people around the world don't notice the disparity.

You can also bet that the target was chosen because it is indeed a symbol of "Western" presence and influence; and perhaps - at least to some extent - as vengeance for the many innocent people that the US has killed since 2001 via bombs and Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan. Some Western diplomats and commentators will likely jump onto this as Pakistan's 9-11, as well as demand that the Pakistani military now fully get on board in the "war on terror" - and they may insist that if they don't, then the US will have every right to arrogate to itself the prerogative of bombing and ground incursions into Pakistan as it sees fit.

But the vast majority of Pakistanis won't be buying it.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-AS-Pakistan-Explosion.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

September 20, 2008

At Least 40 Killed in Huge Explosion at Pakistan Hotel

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:29 a.m. ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Police say at least 40 people have died in a massive explosion that destroyed the luxury Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital.

Senior police official Asghar Raza Gardaizi said he fears there are dozens more dead inside.

He said that the Saturday blast, which reverberated throughout Islamabad, was caused by more than a ton of explosives.

The blast left a crater some 30 feet deep in front of the main building.

Flames poured from the windows of the hotel and rescuers ferried a stream of bloodied bodies from the gutted building.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- A massive truck bomb ripped through part of the heavily guarded Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital Saturday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 25 -- a toll expected to rise significantly.

Ahmad Latif, a senior police official, said it was one of the biggest terrorist strikes in Pakistan history.

The Marriott is a favorite place for foreigners to stay and socialize in Islamabad, despite repeated militant attacks. A security guard at the scene, Mohammad Nasir, and several witnesses said a large truck had driven toward the gate before exploding.

The blast left a vast crater, some 30 feet deep in front of the main building, where flames poured from the windows and rescuers ferried a stream of bloodied bodies from the gutted building.

Mohammad Sultan, a hotel employee, said he was in the lobby when something exploded, he fell down and everything temporarily went dark.

''I don't understand what it was, but it was like the world is finished,'' he said.

An Associated Press reporter counted at least nine bodies scattered at the scene. Scores of people, including foreigners, were running out -- some of them stained with blood. At a hospital where many of the casualties were taken, official Raja Ejaz said at least two people had died and 25 were wounded.

Ambulances rushed to the area, where a fire burned, smoke hovered and the carcasses of vehicles were thrown about. Windows in buildings hundreds of yards away were shattered.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

But Pakistan, a U.S. ally in the war on terror, has faced a wave of militant violence in recent weeks following army-led offensives against insurgents in its border regions, though the capital has avoided most of the bloodshed.

In January 2007, a security guard blocked a suicide bomber who triggered a blast just outside the Marriott, killing the guard and wounding seven other people.

------

Associated Press Writer Zarar Khan contributed to this report.

Brave Conservatives defending the national interest

2008-09-17T15:09:00.002-04:00

The essay below from George Will is a couple of weeks old, but he sagely questions the wisdom of John McCain's having anointed Sarah Palin as his V-P candidate. Yesterday, another of the more thoughtful conservative columnists, David Brooks of the NYT, came forward with a similarly brave and honest assessment. McCain's people can assail them only at their own peril; their reputations and Republican bona fides are secure.

On the other hand, Carly Fiorina - the Hewlett Packard CEO who once was touted as a possible running mate for McCain - has for all intents and purposes been thrown under the bus for being forthright enough to say out loud that neither Sarah Palin nor John McCain (nor, for that matter, Barack Obama or Joe Biden) was qualified to run a major corporation. Seems a reasonable assertion, but McCain's people have already cast her, if not into the outer darkness, then into a limbo of temporary excommunication; certainly, no more surrogate duty for awhile.

We can expect more pressure from the McCain campaign to keep loyal Republicans on-message. On the other hand, I would hope that other, older, wiser, less-impulse-driven Republican stalwarts (Chuck Hagel? Richard Lugar? Colin Powell?) would be willing to step up and take one for the country (if, for no other reason, the interest of - dare I say it? - Homeland Security, which would be under dire threat if Ms. Palin ever acceded to the presidency) by speaking out about the governor's eminently poor qualifications to navigate the shoals of global affairs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/02/AR2008090202441.html
Impulse, Meet Experience

By George F. Will
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; A15

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The word "experience" appears 91 times in the Federalist Papers, those distillations of conservative sense and sensibility. Madison, Hamilton and Jay said that truths are "taught" and "corroborated" by experience. These writers were eager to "consult" and be "led" by experience. They spoke of "indubitable" and "unequivocal" lessons from experience, the "testimony" of experience and "the accumulated experience of ages." "Accumulating" experience is "the parent of wisdom" and a "guide" that "justifies," "confirms" and can "admonish." America's Founders were empiricists and students of history who trusted "that best oracle of wisdom, experience," which is humanity's "least fallible guide."

A telling touch, that "least fallible." The Founders represented the sober side of the Enlightenment. They knew, as conservatives do, that all guides are fallible. Hence conservatism's inclination to discern prescriptions in traditions, which are mankind's slow adjustments to the accretion of experiences.

So, Sarah Palin. The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience.

Any cook can run the state, said Lenin, who was wrong about that, too. America's gentle populists and other sentimental egalitarians postulate that wisdom is easily acquired and hence broadly diffused; therefore anyone with a good heart can deliver good government, which is whatever the public desires. "The people of Nebraska," said the archetypal populist William Jennings Bryan, "are for free silver, and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later."

John McCain's opponent is by far the least experienced person to receive a presidential nomination in the 75 years since the federal government became a comprehensively intrusive regulatory state and modern weaponry annihilated the protection the nation derived from time and distance. Which is why McCain's case for his candidacy could, until last Friday, be distilled into two words: Experience matters.

McCain, who at 72 is 22 years older than Alaskan statehood, is 27 years and six months older than his running mate, who was 8 when Joe Biden was elected to the Senate. But in 1856, James Buchanan, 65, was 29 years and eight months older than his running mate, John Breckinridge, who was 35. Buchanan could run with that stripling because Buchanan was the most qualified person to run for president, before or since.

At least he was if varied experience in high offices fully defines who is "qualified." But it does not.

Buchanan had been a five-term congressman, then ambassador to Russia, then a two-term senator, then secretary of state, then ambassador to Britain. Buchanan then became perhaps the worst president.

Clearly, experience is not sufficient to prove a person "qualified" for the presidency. But it is a necessary component of qualification.

So are two other attributes. One is character. Richard Nixon was qualified by his experience as congressman, senator and vice president, but disqualified by character. The second is a braided mental rope of constitutional sense and political common sense.

In his Denver speech, Barack Obama derided the "discredited Republican philosophy" that he caricatured in four words -- "you're on your own." Then he promised to "keep . . . our toys safe." Among the four candidates for national office, perhaps only Palin might give a Madisonian answer -- one cognizant of the idea that the federal government's powers are limited because they are enumerated -- if asked to identify any provision of the Constitution, other than the First Amendment, that imposes meaningful limits on congressional or executive authority to act.

If so, she would be a good influence on Washington, including McCain. But is there any evidence that she has thought about such matters? McCain's selection of her is applied McCainism -- a visceral judgment by one who is confidently righteous. But the viscera are not the seat of wisdom.

In 1912, McCain's Arizona became the 48th state. In 1959, Palin's Alaska became the 49th. Western conservatism has the libertarian cast of a region still steeped in an individualism natural to frontier spaciousness. But American conservatism depends on what it calls "fusion," the collaboration of libertarians and social conservatives concerned that liberty unleavened by restraints creates a licentious culture. Palin supposedly is fusion in one person.

Many cultural conservatives, who are much of the GOP's base, consider McCain's adherence to their persuasion perfunctory. By his selection of Palin, he got the enthusiasm of the base. But what has he got in Palin? In coming days he and we will learn from a stern teacher, experience.

For This Result, All Those Thousands Killed?!

2008-09-16T20:09:00.002-04:00

So, perhaps a kind of end-game is indeed taking shape in Iraq. The US went in, in 2003, for a plethora of reasons, ranging from those pesky WMDs, to setting up "liberty" and "democracy," to getting control of a wondrous reservoir of petroleum, to keeping Israel safe.

More than five years - and hundreds of thousands dead and maimed - later, Mr. Bush remains 0 for 4. No WMDs, no US control of oil, a new Iraq that still regards Israel as the enemy (witness the scorn heaped upon an Iraq politician who recently went to Israel for a conference), a new Iraq where democracy seems to be a good thing only if you're a Shiite or Kurd, and where liberty (not to mention life itself) is hardly secure.

And now, we seem to have created our own Saddam-lite (complete with burgeoning army and security forces, and shiny new weapons - maybe even F-16 fighters - on the way), except that this one is Shii, and he has the backing of Iran, and he has the muscle to turn the tables and make life miserable for any Sunni whom he deems a threat.

Lovely.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-influence16-2008sep16,0,3957733,print.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Iraq's Nouri Maliki breaking free of U.S.

As the prime minister asserts his independence, Iran gains influence and America loses some.

By Ned Parker
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 16, 2008

BAGHDAD — Once dependent on American support to keep his job, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has consolidated power and is asserting his independence, sharply reducing Washington's influence over the future of Iraq.

Iraq's police and army now operate virtually on their own, and with Washington's mandate from the United Nations to provide security here expiring in less than four months, Maliki is insisting on imposing severe limits on the long-term U.S. military role, including the withdrawal of American forces from all cities by June.

America's eroded leverage has left Iran, with its burgeoning trade and political ties, in a better position to affect Iraqi government policies.

It also means that whichever U.S. presidential candidate is elected -- Republican John McCain, who insists on what some see as a vaguely defined American victory in Iraq, or Democrat Barack Obama, who has long called for a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops -- will have less ability to sway Baghdad than did the Bush administration.

"If the next president waits too long, our diminishing leverage will likely disappear altogether, leaving us with two strategic options: resign ourselves to 'ride the tiger' -- that is, accept that we have to simply accept what the Iraqi government does and, at most, mitigate or help buffer the consequences -- or jump off the tiger altogether," said Iraq expert Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security.

The Maliki government's assertion of power has brought an end to the aggressive approach of the U.S. during its troop buildup last year. American forces frequently intervened in warfare between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. They even challenged Maliki's Shiite-led government by striking alliances with former Sunni insurgents and arresting Shiite police and army commanders implicated in sectarian violence. Since enhancing his strength in a successful spring offensive against a rival Shiite militia, Maliki has insisted that all American troops leave by 2011, unless Iraq requests otherwise. Shiite officials give mixed signals on whether they would ask U.S. military advisors to stay.

During the summer, the prime minister shuttered a joint committee and demanded the U.S. military hand him jurisdiction over dealings with Sunni-dominated paramilitary units.

U.S. officials here acknowledge that their leverage is diminished. Active Iraqi army units came to outnumber U.S. troops in 2007 and started reporting back to Maliki directly through newly established regional command centers.

"They have more capability, so they don't have to listen to us as much as they used to," said a U.S. Embassy official who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

"We always knew this time would come," added the official, saying previous preparations to hand over power had been sabotaged by dysfunction in the Iraqi government.

The shift is largely rooted in Maliki's military victory against the radical Mahdi Army militia in the southern port city of Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City district. The offensive in Basra, launched against the recommendations of the U.S. military, reinvented the prime minister as a decisive commander in chief.

The turnaround came only months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rescued Maliki from political oblivion. In December, Rice met with leaders from Iraq's Kurdish bloc, the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, which had sought the tacit blessing of the White House to vote him out of power. Instead, Rice told the leaders that Maliki continued to have Bush's support, according to several Iraqi officials familiar with the meeting.

In March, Iran intervened on Maliki's behalf. Iranian leaders convinced the head of the Mahdi Army, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, to end his militia's fighting in Basra after an Iraqi delegation traveled to Iran and met with senior Iranian officials and Sadr, according to a participant, lawmaker Ali Adeeb, a leader in Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. A second trip to Tehran in May by Adeeb and others had a similar effect on Mahdi Army members fighting in Sadr City.

"Iran's help is paying off even now," Adeeb told The Times. "Sadr's speeches and announcements are more moderate than they used be."

In June, Maliki made his own visit to Tehran, a trip coinciding with a more hostile stance by the Iraqi government toward the Americans.

During that visit, Maliki's office ordered government employees not to attend a twice-yearly conference scheduled to take place in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, the same week. Iraqis had been expected to lead the majority of panels, but at least 15 Iraqi speakers skipped the event.

In August, Maliki shut down an Iraqi-American committee on basic services for security in Baghdad. "He terminated the group, saying there were too many Americans," said a Western advisor to the Iraqi government.

With more than 146,000 troops still on the ground in Iraq, the U.S. retains a sort of military veto power over any efforts to oust them before the White House is ready. America's ability to provide air power and help build an Iraqi air force also remain an enticing lure.

But Maliki and other Shiite leaders are juggling intense pressures, in part because of their close relationship with Iran. Maliki appears particularly leery of being branded an American puppet. This has been most prevalent in negotiations over the U.N. security agreement, meant to provide a legal mechanism for American troops to stay beyond this year.

"The prime minister has shown everyone he means business," said lawmaker Sami Askari, a close advisor to Maliki. "Not everything America wants, America can get."

The Iraqis are prepared to simply ask for an extension of the mandate of one year or less if Washington doesn't agree to Iraq's terms, said lawmaker Sheik Humam Hamoodi.

So far, the White House has balked at Iraq's demands for an unconditional U.S. troop withdrawal date and for Iraqi courts to have some jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers.

Asked about the prime minister's tilt, the U.S. Embassy official said Maliki was under pressure from Sadr and Iran.

"I don't think he is anti-American per se," the diplomat said. "I think he is trying to balance a variety of domestic and external pressures and he judges the American relationship from that context."

Maliki has pressed demands that the Americans had previously rebuffed, notably over the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq program, made up mainly of former Sunni insurgents. Though the program has received credit for the decrease in violence across Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government has resisted incorporating the force's members into the police and vowed to prosecute some leaders for past criminal acts.

Last week, U.S. officials announced they would hand the Iraqi government control of the estimated 54,000 fighters in Baghdad at the beginning of October. The Americans had previously shielded prominent Sunni paramilitary leaders from arrest warrants based on doubts about the charges.

Asked whether such fighters could be guaranteed a fair trial, the American diplomat said, "No, but we are in a transition period."

Some Iraqis are worried about America's deference toward Maliki.

"Unfortunately, the American government is not an active player in the Iraqi affairs as they were before. They participated previously in successful projects like national reconciliation and establishing the Sons of Iraq, but now they are only acting as spectators," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni bloc in parliament.

At the same time, Iraqi officials complain about the United States' failure to create a lasting foundation beyond its military presence. Iran has created more than $2 billion in trade with its neighbor, including fuel and electricity exports.

"The Iranians will stay in this place forever till the Judgment Day and the Americans will withdraw," said Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a senior Shiite politician. "The Americans built their status on their military and their political viewpoints. They didn't try to find shared lines of interest or common ground. . . . The Iranians dealt with this matter in a more positive way."

ned.parker@latimes.com

More evidence that the "Surge" hasn't "worked"

2008-09-15T10:48:00.003-04:00

The New York Times reports that a major Sunni Awakening figure was assassinated in Baghdad, after he refused to stop working and preaching ( he was an imam) to encourage Shia-Sunni reconciliation. Those in the US who tout the "success" of the Surge (the McCain-Palin camp, especially) harp on the decline in fatalities (both US military and Iraqi civilian) and the supposed restoration of normalcy in Baghdad, and insist that US forces need to stay and fight on to ensure "victory." Their myopic focus on stability (and stability in and of itself, of course, is surely a good thing for the people of Iraq, who have suffered too long and so underservedly) misses the point that even General David Petraeus has insisted upon all along. Stability and protecting the population are only instruments - required steps along the way - to achieve the desired result in Iraq: political reconciliation, resulting in an Iraqi political settlement that everyone can buy into.

And that's simply not happening. Car bombings and assassinations continue; Mosul and Kirkuk are tinderboxes of continuing Arab-Kurd tensions; the Shii-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki is keeping the Sunni "Sons of Iraq" at arm's length, and is more likely to round them up and arrest and detain them than to give them jobs in the army or police; and provincial elections, already once postponed, are likely to be plagued with violence between Sunni and Shii factions, and between factions within each of those communities.

Meanwhile, even as Mr. Bush has decided to maintain US troop eevels in Iraq at levels higher than before the Surge started, the US is facing a growing crisis in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. A report from Afghanistan indicates that the country is in its worst shape since 2001. And if that wasn't worrisome enough, Reuters reports that Pakistani troops yesterday fired on and drove away US Chinook helicopters that had entered Pakistani airspace and were evidently about to land US troops. Official sources from both sides deny it, but local officials and villagers insist that's what happened. And if that's indeed what happened, Mr. Bush may feel it necessary to send even more troops to Afghanistan, perhaps as his way of saying to the Pakistani government (as he so famously said early on in his "war on terror") that "what we say, goes."

Swell.