John McCain has been running mainly against Barack Obama in recent days, and has been running on the successes he says that the Iraqi government has racked up.
McCain is completely uninterested in the cost of the Iraq War. He hasn’t seemed to notice that oil has surged to $103 a barrel, in part on fears of the effect of the Turkish incursion into Iraq.
Back to McCain: Running on the efficiency and effectiveness of the failed state in Baghdad would be an extremely risky strategy if in fact the US corporate media were telling the American people the truth (or even just anything) about what is actually going on in Iraq and Iraqi politics. So here is a fact check on two of the claims McCain is making about supposed political progress in Iraq. He has been touting a new law on the treatment of ex-Baathists (who are mostly Sunni and have been treated harshly, contributing to the violence). And he has been ecstatic about the passing of a law on the provinces and some other measures, like the budget. But is any of these laws really likely to lead to ethnic reconciliation?
In his recent response to a measure introduced by Senator Russ Feingold aimed at ending the Iraq War, John McCain ridiculed Iraq War critics who doubted the surge and doubted provincial reconciliation (as at al-Anbar):
“In the face of these new facts, supporters of withdrawal changed their argument yet again. Maybe the surge had brought about greater security, they said . . . But this was irrelevant, they said, so long as national level political reconciliation is lacking – and since we can never expect that, the troops must leave. Yet they were wrong again. In January, the Iraqi parliament passed the long-awaited de-Baathification law that restores the eligibility of thousands of former party members for government jobs lost because of their Baathist affiliation.”
In fact, the so-called “debaathification law” passed in January was ruined by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr in the Iraqi parliament. Far from promoting reconciliation between Shiites, Kurds and ex-Baathists, it was roundly denounced by ex-Baathist parliamentarians such as Iyad Allawi and Salih Mutlak. The law may forcibly retire another 20,000 to 30,000 largely Sunni ex-Baathists from their jobs, and it excludes them from many important ministries. Allawi and others are afraid that its language aims at excluding them from politics altogether. The International Center for Transitional Justice warned (pdf) that the law would actually make for less reconciliation!
‘ Iraq’s parliament passed a new law on Jan. 12 amending de-Baathification legislation . . but critics say it is even stricter than the first and offers even fewer chances for thousands of embittered, high-ranking Baathists to return to the fold . . .
Izzat Shabender, a secular Shiite parliamentarian from the party of ex-prime minister Iyad Allawi, who was on the committee that dealt with the law, says senior Baathists that he’s in contact with, mainly in Jordan and Syria, have rejected the law. “It did not solve the problem politically, which is the core of the matter.” ‘
Now back to starry-eyed McCain (same link as above) on all that political reconciliation:
McCain: “Earlier this month, a provincial powers law passed that devolves a significant amount of power to the provinces and mandates new provincial elections by October 1 of this year. The parliament passed a partial amnesty for detainees that can facilitate reconciliation among the sects, and it completed a landmark 2008 budget.”
‘ Iraq’s presidential council Wednesday rejected a law on the powers of local government that was approved by parliament and touted by the Bush administration as a sign of reconciliation between the country’s ethnic and religious groups. The three-man council asked that parliament reexamine the complicated and multifaceted law when it reconvenes March 18. ‘
The LAT notes that the rejection of this law could place in jeopardy the package of laws passed in February, which McCain boasts about, including the budget and the prisoner amnesty.
At the time, the way the laws were passed, without an individual voice vote of the members of parliament, was decried as unconstitutional, in any case. Now the most important of the three has been rejected by the presidency council.
The law on the provinces allowed the prime minister to dismiss provincial governors. Since the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq controls the provincial governments of much of the Shiite south, it doesn’t want the federal government to be able to remove them and so weaken ISCI’s power base. Likewise, the Kurds are very suspicious of any move to strengthen the central government, because of their memory of Saddam Hussein’s brutal interventions against them from Baghdad.
But the law also had set provincial elections for October 1, and this was something the Sunni Arabs very much wanted, since they boycotted the first round of provincial elections and so their provinces don’t have representative governments.
The Islamic Supreme Council, in contrast, is afraid that if new provincial elections are held, it might be swept from power in Baghdad and much of the south by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who are Iraqi nativists and see ISCI as an Iranian cat’s paw.
So, the political progress of which McCain boasted, and which he threw in the face of Senator Feingold and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has largely been a chimera. Even where parliament has passed laws, there is no evidence that they have contributed or will contribute to actually reducing ethnic and sectarian hatred in Iraq.
McCain argues that violence is down in 17 of 18 provinces. That argument itself suggests the irrelevancy of the US to Iraq. There are no US troops to speak of in the 3 northern Kurdish provinces, or in the southern 4 provinces from which the British have largely withdrawn. There are few US troops in most of the 8 provinces where Shiites predominate. There was no troop escalation or “surge” in the Sunni al-Anbar province. So if violence has declined in 17 of 18 provinces, US policy cannot possibly have anything to do with most of that. General Petraeus has had significant successes in Baghdad, though at the unfortunate (an unintentional) cost of further turning it into a Shiite city from which most Sunnis have been ethnically cleansed. But Petraeus is doing the practical work of trying to make a bad situation better, and makes no claims for success in the political realm in Iraq. McCain is, in contrast, just doing US domestic politics with those hard won achievements of our suffering troops, and is mostly just running on pie in the sky.
I was surprised that the writers of comments over at Salon.com did not know the below. It is common knowledge to anyone interested in genealogy.
I know that it is hard for people invested in a hard East/ West dichotomy to imagine that the icon of Western civilization, the British royal family, has Arab Muslim antecedents (along with a host of other nationalities of course.) But it does.
The Greater Mediterranean got all mixed up over millennia. Most Sicilians (i.e. most Italian-Americans) also have Arab Muslim ancestors. It works the other way around, too. It is obvious that a lot of Egyptians, Lebanese and Jordanians have descent from the Christian European Crusaders.
This is connected to just pointing out that having ancestors named Hussein is more common among Europeans and Americans than is usually realized. Elizabeth II can’t be descended from the Prophet Muhammad without also being descended from his grandson, the original Husayn / Hussein, since that is the line of descent of the Sayyids.
‘United Press International October 10, 1986 MOSLEMS IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE
Mixed in with Queen Elizabeth’s blue blood is the blood of the Moslem prophet Mohammed, according to Burke’s Peerage, the geneological guide to royalty. The relation came out when Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke’s, wrote Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask for better security for the royal family. ”The royal family’s direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,” he said. Probably realizing the connection would be a surprise to many, he added, ”It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact.”
Brooks-Baker said the British royal family is descended from Mohammed through the Arab kings of Seville, who once ruled Spain. By marriage, their blood passed to the European kings of Portugal and Castille, and through them to England’s 15th century King Edward IV. ‘
So first came the question posed by Tim Russert and Barack Obama’s answer in Tuesday evening’s debate in Cleveland, which went like this according to the official transcript:
‘ MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?
SEN. OBAMA: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president — as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that’s true in other places. That’s part of my argument with respect to Pakistan. . .’
Note that Obama was simply responding to Russert’s hypothetical, which assumed that the US was already out of Iraq but that in the aftermath, there was “insurrection” or “civil war.” The world that Russert imagined was presumably one in which Iraq had firmed up enough for the US to get out, but then at some later time it developed substantial civil unrest. Russert was presumably attempting to find out if the Democratic candidates were adopting an isolationist position, of getting out and staying out. Obama implied that no, if al-Qaeda came back to Iraq and formed a new base years from now, he would “act” in such a way as to “secure American interests.” He is not an isolationist. Note that he was not specific about how exactly he would act.
‘ “…I am told that Senator Obama made the statement that if Al Qaeda came back to Iraq after he withdraws — after the American troops are withdrawn — then he would send military troops back, if Al Qaeda established a military base in Iraq. I have some news: Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Al Qaeda, it’s called Al Qaeda in Iraq, and my friends if we left they wouldn’t be establishing a base, they wouldn’t be establishing a base, they’d be taking a country. And I’m not going to allow that to happen my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to Al Qaeda.” ‘
But Obama had not said anything of the sort. He was answering a journalist’s question about the future. That McCain cannot be bothered to get the exact quote before he puts words in his opponent’s mouth and makes a lot of wild, inaccurate charges, doesn’t suggest he could be trusted with sensitive diplomacy or other presidential tasks.
Moreover, the allegation that he makes about there being ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. The Sunni Arabs are no more than 20% of the Iraqi population. How could a tiny minority from within them take over the whole?
The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.
So there isn’t any “al-Qaeda” in Iraq in the technical sense. There are “Excommunicating Holy Warriors” (Takfiri Jihadis), i.e. devotees of political Islam who are violent and willing to deploy terror for political purposes. They declare other Muslims who disagree with them “not Muslims,”– thus the “excommunicating” bit. But there are only a few hundred foreign fighters. A small minority of Iraqis has associated with them. They don’t call themselves ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq.’ The major such group is “The Islamic State of Iraq.” And to say that they have “bases” in Iraq is pretty grandiose. They have some safe houses and try to take and hold neighborhoods, so far with indifferent success.
The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven’t even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad– the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias.
So the Shiites would not allow an “al-Qaeda” takeover of Iraq. Neither would the Kurds. Nor would most Sunni Arabs (as in al-Anbar Province, where the Dulaim tribe is at daggers drawn with the Excommunicating Holy Warriors).
Moreover, the neighbors would not allow the radical Sunnis to take over. Iran would sit on its hands while Shiites were massacred in Baghdad? Secular Turkey would allow this development? Baathist Syria? Hashemite Jordan (which played a major role in tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)?
McCain’s assertions that “al-Qaeda” has a strong position in Iraq or has any chance of taking over the country if the US leaves are both inaccurate. One is an error, the other is a dark but insubstantial fantasy.
Obama replied:
‘“I’ve got some news for John McCain, that is there was no such thing Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade.
“I’ve got some news for John McCain. I’ve got some news for John McCain. He took us into a war, along with George Bush that should have never been authorized, never been waged. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001. I’ve been paying attention John McCain!
“John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But so far all he’s done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that’s cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars and that I intend to bring to an end so that we can actually start going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan, like we should have been doing in the first place. That’s the news John McCain! ‘
Obama is correct that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush overthrew the Iraqi government. I haven’t been able to get anyone interested in it, but there is proof positive that the Baath authorities were very scared of al-Qaeda and that when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi showed up in Iraq, they put out an APB on him and branded him dangerous. (Dick Cheney told fairy tales about how Zarqawi was put up in fancy hotels by a solicitous Saddam.)
So to sum up, McCain shot from the hip. He grossly mischaracterized Obama’s stance. He hadn’t bothered to get the exact quote. Then he made wild and implausible statements about “al-Qaeda” in Iraq, alleging that they are capable of taking over the country. Then Obama let him have it with both barrels.
At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT, who “introduced presidential candidate John McCain at a rally here today accused Barack Obama of sympathizing with ‘world leaders who want to kill us’ and invoked Obama’s middle name — three times calling him ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’ ” John McCain repudiated Cunningham’s low tactics and said that using the middle name like that three times was “inappropriate” and would never happen again at one of his rallies.
I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama’s name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving from Semitic languages!
Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And, American English contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.
Barack is a Semitic word meaning “to bless” as a verb or “blessing” as a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible. It first occurs in Genesis 1:22: “And God blessed (ḇāreḵə ) them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.”
Here is a list of how many times barak appears in each book of the Bible.
Now let us take the name “Hussein.” It is from the Semitic word, hasan, meaning “good” or “handsome.” Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form.
Barack Obama’s middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of Husseins in history, from the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a hero who touched the historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America’s most steadfast allies in the 20th century. The author of the beloved American novel, The Kite Runner, is Khaled Hosseini.
But in Obama’s case, it is just a reference to his grandfather.
It is worth pointing out that John McCain’s adopted daughter, Bridget, is originally from Bangladesh. Since Hussein is a very common name in Bangladesh, it is entirely possible that her birth father or grandfather was named Hussein. McCain certainly has Muslim relatives via adoption in his family. If Muslim relatives are a disqualification from high office in the United States, then McCain himself is in trouble. In fact, since Bridget is upset that George W. Bush doesn’t like her “because she is black,” and used her to stop the McCain campaign in South Carolina in 2000, you understand why McCain would be especially sensitive to race-baiting of Cunningham’s sort. The question is how vigorously he will combat it; he hasn’t been above Muslim-taunting in the campaign so far. (And, the McCains really should let Bridget know that she is Asian, not “black.” The poor girl; Bush and Rove have done a number on her, and Cindy’s confusion can’t help.)
The other thing to say about grandfathers named Hussein is that very large numbers of African-Americans probably have an ancestor ten or eleven generations ago with that name, in what is now Mali or Senegal or Nigeria. And, since so many thousands of Arab Muslims were made to convert to Catholicism in Spain after 1501, many Latinos have distant ancestors named Hussein, too. In fact, since there was a lot of Arab-Spanish intermarriage, and since there was subsequent Spanish intermarriage with other European Catholics, more European Americans are descended from a Hussein than they realize. The British royal family is quite forthright about the Arab line in their ancestry going back to Andalusia.
Obama, being a cousin of Dick Cheney on one side and having relatives in Kenya on the other, is just more and more typical of the 21st century United States.
So, anyway, Obama’s first two names mean “Blessing, the Good.” If we are lucky enough to get him for president, we can only hope that his names are prophetic for us.
Which brings me to Omar Bradley. Omar is an alternative spelling of Umar, i.e. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Sunni Islam. Presumably General Bradley was named for the poet Omar Khayyam, who bore the caliph’s name. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, in the “translation” of Edward FitzGerald, became enormously popular in Victorian America.
Would Mr. Cunningham see Omar Bradley as un-American, as an enemy because of his name?
What about other American heroes, such as Gen. George Joulwan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe? “Joulwan” is an Arabic name. Or there is Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander. Abizaid is an Arabic name. Abi means Abu or “father of,” and Zaid is a common Arab first name. Is Cunningham good enough to wipe their shoes? Is he going to call them traitors because they have Arabic names?
What about Congressman Darrell Issa of California? (“`Isa” means Jesus in Arabic). Former cabinet secretary Donna Shalala? (Shalala means “waterfall” in Arabic).
I won’t go into all the great Americans with Arabic names in sports, entertainment and business, against whom Cunningham would apparently discriminate on that basis. Does he want to take citizenship away from Kareem Abdul Jabbar [meaning "noble the servant of the Mighty"] and Ahmad Jamal [meaning "the most praised, beauty"]? What about Rihanna ["sweet basil," "aromatic"]? Tony Shalhoub [i.e. Mr. Monk]?
Let us take Benjamin Franklin. His first name is from the Hebrew Bin Yamin, the son of the Right (hand), or son of strength, or the son of the South (yamin or right has lots of connotations). The “Bin” means “son of,” just as in modern colloquial Arabic. Bin Yamin Franklin is not a dishonorable name because of its Semitic root. By the way, there are lots of Muslims named Bin Yamin.
As for an American president bearing a name derived from a Semitic language, that is hardly unprecedented.
John Adams really only had Semitic names. His first name is from the Hebrew Yochanan, or gift of God, which became Johan and then John. (In German and in medieval English, “y” is represented by “j” but was originally pronounced “y”.) Adams is from the biblical Adam, which also just means “human being.” In Arabic, one way of saying “human being” is “Bani Adam,” the children of men.
Thomas Jefferson’s first name is from the Aramaic Tuma, meaning “twin.” Aramaic is a Semitic language spoken by Jesus, which is related to Hebrew and Arabic. In Arabic twin is tau’am, so you can see the similarity.
James Madison, James Monroe and James Polk all had a Semitic first name, derived from the Hebrew Ya’aqov or Jacob, which is Ya`qub in Arabic. It became Iacobus in Latin, then was corrupted to Iacomus, and from there became James in English.
Zachary Taylor’s first name is from the Hebrew Zachariah, which means “the Lord has remembered.”
Abraham Lincoln, of course is, named for the patriarch Abraham, from the Semitic word for father, Ab, and the word for “multitude,” raham,. Abu, “father of,” is a common element in Arab names today.
So, Mr. Cunningham, Barack Hussein Obama fits right in this list of presidents with Semitic names. In fact, we haven’t had one for a while. We are due for another one.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie expressed concern that if the Turkish forces prolong their presence inside Iraq, eventually they would come into direct conflict with the Peshmerga, the paramililtary of the Kurdistan Regional Authority.
Turkey released new video of its aerial bombardment of Iraq on Monday. The voice over is Turkish, but it is worth watching at least some of it to gain a sense of the violence:
AFP reports that “Up to 10,000 protestors gathered in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, condemning the government for ordering the incursion. ‘Terrorist Erdogan, hypocrite Erdogan,’ they chanted.”
Opinion polling had been showing that the PKK was extremely unpopular among Turkish Kurds. (The PKK had often killed Turkish Kurds that it considered “collaborators” with the Turkish government; moreover, 99% of Turkish Kurds are not separatists.) But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erfogan is polarizing Turks and Turkish Kurds over this frontal attack on Iraqi Kurdistan.
This article in Today’s Zaman suggests that one of Turkey’s motivations for the operation was to divide Washington from its close alliance with Iraqi Kurdistan leader Massoud Barzani, and to begin repairing the frayed Turkish-US alliance. Since the Bush administration had no choice but to tacitly approve and cooperate with a Turkish strike against a terrorist organization that has been killing NATO troops, it has inevitably angered the Kurds.
The Guardian presents video of the Turkish military operation in Iraq, as well as of a riot in Istanbul between pro-invasion crowds and pro-Kurdish demonstrators:
Unlike corporate US media, Aljazeera English is actually covering the Turkish-Kurdish issue and this clip includes interviews with politicians in Ankara and Irbil at the same time. Since it is all in English, you can’t argue that the US news networks could not do the same thing if they cared to. It is sort of a racist practice in much of US corporate media that foreigners are almost never allowed to speak to an American audience with their own voices.
Reuters video on the Arba’in processions of the Shiites in Iraq:
AFP also says that Sunni Arab guerrillas ambushed an Iraqi army patrol near Buhriz in Diyala province, killing all 8 of them, including their comanding officer, a major. The Iraqi army is largely Shiite, but Diyala is majority Sunni, so this violence had a sectarian cast.
McClatchy reports other political violence on Monday:
‘ Baghdad . . . – Around 7:30 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Zafaraniyah neighborhood (east Baghdad) near Al-Noor mosque. No casualties recorded.
- Around 12:30 p.m., two roadside bombs exploded at the Qasim highway near the Shaab stadium (east Baghdad). Two people were injured in that incident.
- Around 2p.m., a roadside bomb exploded near Al-Dayer church. No casualties or damage reported.
- Around 4 p.m., mortars hit Qadisiyah neighborhood. No casualties recorded.
- Around 5:30 p.m., gunmen using Toyota sedan car opened fire on an army check point near the Um Al-Tibul mosque and ran away. No casualties recorded.
- Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad today. Two of them in Risafa bank : 1 in Ubaidi and 1 in Zafaraniyah while the third was found in Amil in Karkh bank.
Diyala
- Around 9 a.m., gunmen killed two civilians at the downtown Baquba bus station.
- Early morning, gunmen disguised in the Iraqi army uniform killed a woman at Dowasir village of Bhrz, six km south of Baquba.
- Diyala police found a mass grave for eight dead women at Salam village of Khalis, 16 km north of Baquba.
- Around noon, a roadside bomb targeted a civilian car on the way between Qara taba and Khanaqeen in the north east of Baquba. Both passengers of the vehicle were killed in that incident. . .
Salahuddin
- In the morning, a suicide bomber in a wheelchair targeted Brig. Gen. Abdul Jabar Rabiaa Salih, the assistant commander of Samarra operations. Salih was killed and an officer was injured.
Kirkuk
- Early morning, a roadside bomb targeted the patrol of Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir, the chief of police of districts and towns, near al-Jamhouri hospital in downtown Kirkuk. No casualties were reported, but there some damage to one of the vehicles.
Mosul
- Mortars hit a house at Tal Al-Ruman neighborhood in the city today. Three people were killed and four women were injured. All were from the same family.
Basra
- This morning, gunmen opened fire on three oil company guards at Bahadriya of Abu Al-Khaseeb, southeast of Basra. One guard was killed and the other two were seriously injured.
- Police found the body of the engineer Ali Mahmoud at Hamdan neighborhood in south Basra. Ali was kidnapped a month ago from his house at a residential compound by gunmen who were wearing police uniforms. ‘
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