The Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Snowden, and his suggestion that the NSA operation is actually a corporate espionage scam are two potentially huge breakthroughs. I found the interview in which Snowden alluded to the latter. It is tantalizing but there is little meat to it. Yet it is pretty clear that they aren't apprehending terrorists. Just what is it that they are bee-hiving about at NSA? Can no one tell us? Congress, of course, should be digging into it but it is a broken institution and also a part of the problem. Sy Hirsh and Bamford are capable of it.
By the way, Scarlett's spoof did reach the Super Bowl audience during the fourth quarter, but I felt it was swallowed up by the general noise and hype. It's almost as if all this sturm und drang took place for nothing and everyone involved in it has been a loser.
No one here has provided anything showing that Scarlett Johansson knew about the SodaStream West Bank factory before she signed the contract and worked on the Super Bowl advertising spoof. The company has 13 installations at least, only one in the West Bank. I believe it unjust to presume that she broke the boycott maliciously without some proof.
I don't have a problem supporting her except regarding Middle-Eastern policy. I don't remember her ever saying anything about it other than routine bromides and worry about her tenure as the Senator for Manhattan.
Come on, Bodden. There are times when I can't believe you guys. Of course she sells her fame via endorsements. So what? So do lady athletes. Poets and artists would do so if they could. Professors do an equivalent all the time. It's called consulting. So your complaint that she works for a living is frivolous.
You guys are the mock prosecutors of Miss Scarlett Johansson. You're going to have egg on your faces if you can't prove *intent*. You might even have to pay her costs and legal fees.
You'll only have some sort of a moral grip on this young woman if you can show she signed a contract with an Israeli owner knowing he manufactured the product to be touted on the Occupied West Bank. Only then will your witch hunt have been a symbolic success.
The analogy is to the law of crimes. Most of them have mens rea ( guilty knowledge) as a necessary element. If mens rea is not proved, the Defendant may not be convicted, and if, by a jury of ideological kangaroos the charming young lady IS convicted nevertheless, the appellate court must overturn it. It has no discretion in the matter.
You guys have the burden. What did she know and when did she know it? I'll be happy to accept the outcome. I just won't get out ahead of it.
By the way, I don't respect the timidity of the boycotters when they limit their prohibitions to Jewish West Bank producers. Why isn't everything Israeli boycotted? Who puts right wing Zionists in office after all?
When and how did she *knowingly* choose money over principle? And if she did not do that where do you stand? I understand that the company has assets in Israel proper too. I just don't think that critics of Israeli policy should jump to conclusions about Scarlett Johansson which may not warranted.
Aren't there any limits to these things? I support BDS........but Juan is right about Johansson at the individual level, she's a victim who has made a tactical error probably without malice and is paying a disproportionate price because of her celebrity?
What does one imagine her contract is worth? And then ask how many of her critics have made personal sacrifices anything equivalent to it.
Judges attempt to combine justice with mercy. She has contractual obligations. Leave her alone. She's done nothing justifying these political disruptions in her life. She should be permitted to go and sin no more.
But, if her compensation is a function of ratings? Hard cases make bad law.
I asked myself the same question and discovered that Gould's review in its entirety is available at the WSJ on line through a google search. It does not comport with typical professorial civility, so I can understand why Professor Drake appears a bit out of sorts and labels Gould a "neoconservative".
As Gould IS described as a neoconservative I, for the first time ever, looked for a definition and found this description which I would like to share, Dr. Cole willing:
"To neoconservatives, real-world conditions are not of great importance. By exerting their will, they change reality, in fact create their own reality. To the neoconservative movement, the reality-based community is a thing of the past. There is, in other words, a kind of neoconservative “triumph of the will.”
"The recent election may have relegated the neoconservatives to academia, but the impact they have had on America and the world since the disputed 2000 presidential election is dramatic."
(From Andrew E. Kersten's review of The First Cold Warrior.... by Spalding, E.E., Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, p. 764, date not available on the one page preview)
I couldn't bring myself to open this thread. Instinctively I just know that everything which weakens him diminishes our ability to push out of these alien swamps we wallow in. We can muddle through anything but these crises in foreign policy. They are profoundly dangerous. Who else is there for the next three years?
But Juan shames me into acknowledging that the truth must out and that I'm just going to have to accept it.
"Ironic that they’re demanding a certain level of racial/religious purity, no?"
Tragic, certainly, as such views have driven them to the present pass. Like all the rest of us they display flaws. Some, however, are more interesting than most.
For example, they have many critics. A lot of them are generous and well informed, but they don't suffer them gladly. They tend to circle the wagons and attack without taking into account that many friends or potential friends *must* also be critics.
This is not a time when those friends and gentlemanly observers can remain discretely silent. Every one of us has a vested interest in the Palestinian peace process and in improvement of our relations with just about everyone in the Middle East. They are OUR interests, not just Israel's, not just those of our Jewish fellow citizens here in the U.S.
The criticisms raised in Israel about the young man's relationship with a Norwegian woman are based on imagined racial presumptions which have not held up under modern research.
The Jewish historical tradition which, for example, appears clearly in the "begats" of the Torah is based on race.
So are the later claims that the Hebrews were expelled en masse from Roman Palestine and have remained endogamous for 2,000 years. Those too are obviously racial and just as mistaken. That Exodus has been shown by the Israeli historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, never to have happened but to have been devised by early modern Zionists to support a right of return by analogy to inheritance of real estate. The term used by them today is redemption. It runs afoul of common sense as was described best by judges in the Rule Against Perpetuities.
And then finally we have the courageous work of the young Israeli geneticist Eran Elhaik, now of Sheffield University in the UK, who has broken through decades of squiddish ink emitted from within his own profession to discover that the origins of the Ashkenazi lie in Turkish tribes on the Steppe in Central Asia, not in the Hebrews of the Levant.
Were it not for the endemic crisis and recurrent tragedy in the Middle East I would be no more interested in these matters than is Dr. Cole, but they are just too dangerous to ignore. Correcting this false false narrative is critical to convincing Israel to consult her actual interests which lie in taking eight tenths of the loaf and settling with the Palestinians. Hubris, even chutzpah, can lead to disaster.
"How do you suggest we could have changed the behavior of the Soviet Union and Maoist China: both ideologically driven and implacably hostile to the United States at the time you mention?
I don't. Here's what I said:
"I harbor an acute sense of the West’s limitations and often of its submerged intentions. It has immense raw power when it comes to military and other coercive measures such as we’ve watched in the isolation and sanctioning of Iran.
"But there seems to be a profound lack of subtle, face-saving and civilized tools adapted to changing the internal behavior of regimes trapped in ideological rigidity and injustice."
I give you Israel as an example.
What I'm interested in is learning something new from social scientists, political scientists perhaps, about the generation and uses of soft power, influence if you, as alternatives to military interventions which I believe probably just make the overall situation worse.
I look back at the period since WWII and think that there must be a better way. Surely there was a better way in the Middle East after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I just want to presume that there is and find it. I don't want to be driven to the conclusion that we're incapable as a species of improving the ways we interface with other countries.
I'm not a pacifist. Not too many former Marines are. But I am a humanist.
” but neither Israel nor AIPAC bear any consequences for violating FARA or in Israel’s case for running a huge espionage effort against their ‘ally and closest friend.’”
And Bill replied:
And why don’t they suffer consequences for their actions? Because the highest levels of the Executive branch (which has the authority to impose consequences) acquiesces in and enables Israel and AIPAC in their nefarious activities that run counter to US interests.
You have just made my point for me.
Not exactly. You will recall that I explained in some detail how the oppressive system works. Today you agree with me while still maintaining your fatalism and making it seem even more impossible of remedy by lumping in the entire Executive and Legislative branches for fixing when all that's needed is a strong President, or a President capable of being strong in a crisis. What we need is a real world solution, a way to break the stalemate. And the key to that is simplicity.
We can't instill spine into a thousand petty legislators and timorous professional administrators. They all worry first and last about tenure and want to hide, especially from the ferocity of the Israel Lobby. It's something akin to a sociological law of nature set forth by Pareto. We shouldn't see that as a barrier, an excuse to throw our hands in the air and slink off as you seem to want to here:
"Until officials in our Executive and Legislative branches demonstrate the courage to stand up to Israel and its supporters, nothing will change."
What we need is no more than a single, strong and resolute President. And the jury is still out on whether Barack Obama can be that man in this ultimate test of wills. I believe he can, and one thing is quite clear. If he does intend to confront the Lobby and to redeem our democratic heritage he couldn't be positioning himself much better to accomplish it.
Walt Kelly and “Pogo” still have the last word: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
That's why I'm insisting that the problem be put into context and the actual power relationships be determined and tested resolutely by the President of the United States. He is not "us".
I harbor an acute sense of the West's limitations and often of its submerged intentions. It has immense raw power when it comes to military and other coercive measures such as we've watched in the isolation and sanctioning of Iran.
But there seems to be a profound lack of subtle, face-saving and civilized tools adapted to changing the internal behavior of regimes trapped in ideological rigidity and injustice.
It is not new. We complained bitterly about massive totalitarian oppression in the Soviet Union but in the end had to settle for accelerating its wholesale economic and political collapse, especially during the second term of Reagan. Collapse as the source of regime change proved to be another great tragedy for the long-suffering Russian people. Avoiding such compounded misery should have been central to our policy but in the end we could not accomplish it and probably didn't try.
In China, another priestly regime possessing that cultivated asset, ideology, we watched thirty million of Jasper Becker's 'Hungry Ghosts' die of starvation because we had no tools other than the military and sanctions with which to change the regime and ameliorate their condition. Again, we probably didn't try.
And so, regarding Iran, haven't the great powers already used their coercive option, sanctions? In the objective sense haven't they spent that asset on the protection of Israel's hydrogen bomb hegemony in the region? I believe we had better work on Israel and leave the Iranians alone for a while. After all, were we only to admit it, our position on Palestine is probably pretty close to what Iran and Hezbollah would accept, 20% of the country and a Palestinian State. Who is the problem here?
It is not at all 'isolationist' to recognize that there are decisive limits to American power. It's realistic. It keeps us out of trouble. But it's a shame we can't use that power in different ways.
How does one reply to a screed such as yours? As Joe says, we'll see how it works out.
But remember, we Americans have stupidly cultivated Iranian intransigence for a long time. Far too long. They are an ancient and justifiably proud people whether or not they wear clerical robes. We must follow our own national interests regarding normalization of the relationship. No one should be permitted to dictate to our government on that score, especially not a foreign country in the grip of a fanatical ideology such as Zionism.
Perhaps you heard the President this evening. He said he would veto AIPAC's latest legislative travesty which is designed to drive us to war on behalf of Israel if ISRAEL in her sole discretion and against our will attacks Iran. How's that for dog wagging my friend?
" Israel and AIPAC are not the elements with whom we must struggle within the confines of our own government. Israel and AIPAC are just acting in what they see as their interest, and they are succeeding."
They are certainly succeeding. I'm very pleased that you don't dispute that.
But what you don't seem aware of is that they are acting illegally with impunity, which impunity has in their case destroyed the protections against corruption of our political system through foreign intervention within it. Everyone should read the history of it at IRmep, especially materials written by Grant Smith. I believe him to be the deepest expert on this matter in the U.S. He is certainly the most courageous.
I had provided specific context regarding a particular issue:
"Domestic liberalization in Iran is an obviously important American interest.
"With whom must we struggle most violently within the confines of our own government to create conditions for that liberalization? Israel, of course, and her unregistered American lobby including AIPAC."
Surely you don't disagree that domestic liberalization in Iran is an American national interest?
And I would add that normal diplomatic relations should be a goal too. So I'll pass those matters for the moment so that you may respond.
Of course you are perfectly correct about the failure of our political class to look after the country's interests in the face of a powerful domestic lobby for a foreign country. But you don't take the circumstances into account.
That failure of statesmanship is lamentable, but the flesh is weak and most congressmen and women like their work and would like to send their kids to Harvard and to stay in their positions until retirement time.
By speaking out in opposition to Israeli policy or resisting AIPAC-backed legislation or resolutions they endanger their very careers. There is no question about how it works, including campaign donations filtered in from the outside, primary challenges, recruitment of opponents,
whispering campaigns and accusations of the ultimate social kiss of death, anti-Semitism. The classic study is Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy."
And so it IS a two-sided coin. First the political class as individuals swear an oath which, loosely interpreted, requires them to do the right thing for the American people despite political pressure by, for example, agents of a foreign power and, second, the Israel and AIPAC gentlemen who organize against Congress to accomplish something very different on behalf of a Foreign country are obliged to obey the Foreign Agents Registration Act which requires them to Register and to keep out of electoral politics including the flow of "campaign contributions," but they DON'T because as to THEM it is not enforced and hasn't been since the 1960s.
Compare the two. The politicians who stand up in the American interest are at personal risk of loss of their professions and, I suppose, violate their oaths, but neither Israel nor AIPAC bear any consequences for violating FARA or in Israel's case for running a huge espionage effort against their "ally and closest friend." Neither the oaths nor the law being violated by Israel's agents working in our Congress are enforced as they should be. Again, Grant Smith, IRmep.
Think about it, the politicians are at serious risk, but the Lobby and the spies are almost immune due to the immense power deployed by the Lobby against our government.
As to the latter, recall again that FARA has not been enforced against the unregistered Israel Lobby since the time of Jack Kennedy. And that matter was simply dropped by the LBJ Administration after Kennedy's death.
Domestic liberalization in Iran is an obviously important American interest.
With whom must we struggle most violently within the confines of our own government to create conditions for that liberalization? Israel, of course, and her unregistered American lobby including AIPAC.
Similar conflicting American and Israeli interests are replicated all over the region. The imprisonment and occupation of the Palestinians against our will, our policy and against common decency are primary examples. The Israeli annexation of the Golan is another.
Are we ever to regain control of our own policy there? Or will this brutal bullying of our political class continue indefinitely?
The Justice Department has the tools with which to bring AIPAC and the rest of the Lobby to heel under the Foreign Agents' Registration Act. It can not bring itself to do it though presented with everything it needs in the evidentiary sense and historically by IRmep and other sources.
It simply can not be said that Justice is unaware that it fails to enforce the law and why. A few months ago a very smart and courageous guy, Grant Smith, the founder of IRmep, took all the necessary material to a meeting with administrators in the Department. They have not acted. I don't know whether he has written-up the history of that effort or not but he concludes that they will do nothing.
In the early 20th Century we broke up the then most powerful trusts and combinations which threatened the future of the country. Today we collectively face far greater dangers but for the most part can't even speak openly about defending ourselves.
Let's make this easier by approaching it directly.
It is a fact that Iranian-supported Hezbollah confronts Israel, the aggressor, illegal occupier and would be permanent colonial master of West Bank Palestine, which in turn is part of the homeland of the Palestinians, not the Zionist European Jews of Israel.
The vast bulk of Israelis are Ashkenazi with no biological or historical connection to Palestine or for that matter to what is today known as Israel. Their connections to Israel/Palestine are based on religion and conquest. In other words they are not based on law or fact.
Despite a colonial paper trail going back to 1917, Israel exists today primarily because of the Holocaust of the 1940s, one of many immense tragedies associated with World War II.
The difficulty with that is the transparent injustice of paying-off the debt of Europeans with the coin of an Asian people's homeland when the latter were not involved in those crimes at all. It is this profound injustice compounded by the great Zionist crimes against humanity represented by the Nakba of 1948 and its sequel of 1967 which fuel the present day hostility to Israel throughout the region if not globally.
The most bizarre aspect of it is, perhaps, that the Zionists' claim to what today is called israel shares all of the defects inherent in the occupation of the West Bank and the other scraps of Palestinian land appropriated by Israel in 1967. It was accomplished through multiple crimes against humanity.
It appears that the rest of the world including the entire Arab region is prepared to pardon those crimes and to confirm Israel's post-Nakba and pre-1967 title to 80% of the country if only it it will disgorge the last 20% so a resolution is possible.
And what does the Israeli leadership do, firm as it is in its grip on the United States? It demands more and more and more while the region boils in a nuclear arms race and insurrectionist violence and its only ally turns in the wind with no way to protect its own interests.
"This theory that the United States pursues a policy of destabilization in the MENA region runs contrary to the historical record."
That's my impression too, though it's not been the goal of the Israelis while we've been rampaging through the region on their behalf. They were on the ground massaging the Kurds of Iraq and there is talk of partitioning Syria too. They will be supporting whomever wants that. In both cases their rationale is to weaken a traditional enemy. They also are very fond of their great friend and ally's tendency to bomb them back into the stone age for the same reason. It's the suppressed central tenet of neoconservatism. One is known by his friends.
This is radical! We've been told all these years by our dear friend and ally in the region not to speak to terrorists. And she has also been so kind as to point them out for our convenience.
Farhang, thanks for the clarification. I had misunderstood.
After a tiny introduction I will ask you a question.
My personal interest is with the American role in the region since roughly 1967. That role and its spin-offs have been catastrophic for almost everyone concerned including Israel which has been far too clever to understand her own interests or to allow us to determine them for her.
As everything we touch there seems foredestined to fail, it's doubtful that the Syrian Civil War with all its factions and obscure motivations can be 'jawboned' by Americans into an enduring settlement any more readily than Iraq and Afghanistan have been.
On the other hand can't we see that the contradiction of American military involvement to bring peace to the country will lead to nothing but more intense and prolonged violence?
Given the American National catastrophe in your region, don't we need a fundamental reassessment of our interests there and of the militarization of our foreign policy in the developing world generally?
If we have legitimate interests there which can not be served by a 21st century version of "showing the flag" in the region once in a while, I am unaware of them.
I would appreciate it if you would suggest a few principles for a new American foreign policy in the region which would meet the tests of legitimacy and benefit all concerned.
What conclusion do you draw? Perhaps it's my background, but what I did see was an evaluation of the evidentiary quality of the smuggled photographs against the background of war crimes prosecutions.
We shouldn't expect much but short term self-interest from that quarter. When we search for principled behavior they respond by pointing out their typhoon aid to the Philippines.
Do I mean the U.S? Hell no! I want us out of there. I want the realists' off-shore policy.
I mean those members of the international community capable of acting effectively in a situation like this. Who might you prefer? I don't give a damn so long as the carnage stops.
Farhang uses the term 'international community'. Does it suit you? If not, define it any way you like. We'll let you designate the intervenors.
It's fine if you're against any and all interventions for humanitarian purposes. That's a defensible position on some sort of ideological grounds I'm sure. Perhaps you can explain it.
But it doesn't do anything at all for the Syrians. Are you really okay with that?
You will have to judge it by its logic and the credentials of its authors. We don't get anywhere casting aspersions on the Quataris. As far as I can see they just funded it. It was a London law firm which organized it.
We really ought to get on the right subject. And that's what the great powers ought to do about it and why.
Presume, arguendo, that the report from London is highly professional, unbiased and accurate. What positions do we take on Mr. Jahanpour's forthright challenge found in the first two sentences of his post? It could not be more direct and certainly deserves thoughtful responses.
Most of us appear to be Americans. As a nation we have an immense responsibility to get this right. Our overall track record in that region is miserable. And quite a few if not most of the participants here know a lot about the history of the Middle East.
"The proxy war in Syria is descending into total barbarism and violence by both sides. Instead of playing geopolitical games over the lives of millions of people it is time for the “international community” to come together and put an end to this carnage."
I think I agree with your conclusion, or the liberal and humane part of me does anyway. But we've become cautious regarding specifically American military interventions in that region. We weary of the burdens inherent in the blow-back from neoconservative doctrine and the unhealthy nature of our relationship with Israel. For most of us probably the idea of more boots on the ground in Syria after all that has happened seems obscene; it's as if we can not benefit from experience and are somehow doomed never to emerge from it.
You know both worlds. Have you anything to offer us which might benefit all concerned?
I come from way outside the Egyptian loop but I'm not so sure that matters too much as her situation is by no means unprecedented.
Militaries have often created conditions which resulted in democratization in the past. Washington was asked to ascend a throne. After years of bitter warfare, he did not. Military transitions to democracy have happened successfully in the aftermath of wars. In Japan it was the American military. Didn't MacArthur impose a constitution? He did indeed. And hasn't it been a success? Wasn't the same true with S. Korea and West Germany? Does Kosovo have a democratic system today? South Africa changed after an armed revolution.
Profound political change is often messy and armies are often involved, but that doesn't mean that the results will be inevitably negative in the long term. For what it is worth I believe that's especially true today in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood botched its time in the sun. The Army saw it as an invitation to chaos and put an end to it. Most of the Egyptian parties support the Army's intervention. That looks something akin to "democratic" to me. It was heavy handed, but does that mean that it will not permit orderly democratic liberalization in Egypt? I don't think so. What I see doesn't indicate that the military wants to go back to the Mubarak system, quite the opposite.
There are times when the western democracies, preeminently the United States, tend to think that our sort of system ought to spring into being at the stroke of a pen. It's part of our Messiah complex. There is too much criticism of the Egyptian difficulties along the path and too little patience.
Didn't the Egyptian Army display a willingness for the country to be democratized by initially tolerating the Muslim brotherhood's victory? And didn't it act only when that crowd made a mess of it. And can't an argument be made that it is likely to be even more committed to it in the present? After all it has presided over the drafting of another constitution which under the circumstances seems pretty liberal to me.
You've used the cliche so I'll just say that we probably differ on that. That it is not easily said is my point.
Speech, more particularly the failure of protections for political speech, is at the heart of it. But it has effects in our system which one might not normally connect with it. More of that below.
It is the chilling and even worse the distortion of political speech with resultant institutional and legal paralysis which American Zionists have been able to create on behalf of a foreign country in disregard of their fundamental conflicts of interest. (Yes, we must use that term. Nothing about it is "anti-Semitic".)
They have succeeded in exempting themselves from following law and custom and instead follow Israeli interests without such burdens. And their tactics are brutal. They are clothed with impunity before our political system and the law through fear and thus intimidation.
Examples of the damage done are the disastrous failure of FARA, the even-handed bribery/financial intimidation of our political class regardless of party and the inability to enforce our espionage laws when Israel is involved. There is a lot more which is less visible, all of it done on behalf foreigners at the expense of Americans. (And no, saying that is not anti-Semitic either.")
Simply put the Israel Lobby uses a form of slash and burn politics implemented by a tiny minority OF a tiny minority which we haven't seen the likes of in our entire history. The damage has been immense, including but not limited to our having sent armies to the Middle East partially in an effort to bolster Israel's strategic position there as a de facto alternative to settling with the Palestinians.
We need to free political speech in this country so that both the electorate and our political class are out from under the boot of this little minority. We need to enforce the law in the very face of it. And unfortunately it is not easily said.
Very interesting. I agree that we Americans will in fact continue to support Israel once there are fundamental adjustments made , but I'm clear that we have no national obligation to do so, none. Neither moral nor based on contract. The Israelis need to get it straight that our support is terminable at will unilaterally, and until that time it will be based on respectful behavior and her willingness to take direction.
She needs to understand that her interests are both different and subsidiary to ours and that if she does not honor them we will bid her adieu. It is a compelling American national interest that we get the relationship under control, that is, under OUR control, not hers.
Israel will neither be supported on her terms as is the case now, nor without firmly enforced concessions so far as our national interests are concerned. The present situation is a pathetic humiliation of a great nation and we must put an end to her overreaching.
All it would take is for Congress to insert a provision in the annual aid bill which empowers the President to stop the flow at any time by filing a formal finding that the Israelis have violated American law as to use of our weapons or regarding continuing espionage against us or that they work with an illegally unregistered lobby for Israel. There are many other things he could do alone, administratively.
He is hanging in there. We can only hope that his boss won't let him be defeated. But then the two of them must, don't you think, have an understanding as to taking it as far as it takes?
"In most cases, they are on training missions, working with local forces to train them up on techniques, as well as to establish a degree of interoperability should it be necessary in the future."
JT: "Dare one ask what the national interest is in insinuating the US military presence into pretty much every corner of the planet? Are the threats so immanent and/or imminent, or is this just a bad habit grown very large and expensive?"
Bill seems to presume that the U.S. is going to be in the business of micro-managing outcomes militarily in poor countries for the indeterminate future as if our natural default setting must be a form of out-back neoconservativism.
JT questions whether the program is justified by our national interests, especially in light of the law of unanticipated consequences.
For what it's worth, like JT I think we should get out of the business. We've been getting it wrong since about 1945 at roughly a king's ransom per incident. We're nowhere near the country we would be if we had avoided that nonsense. Does anyone still remember the advisers Jack Kennedy sent to Vietnam? How did we handle the Patrice Lumumba matter? Why did we choose nation-building in Afghanistan? What could go wrong pretty much has gone wrong. And so far as I can see we've just amped-up the level of violence. And then there is the endless America-hatred that we now see all over the Middle East. If it is power we must have, the route to that is economic, not the sprinkling of tough guys and weapons and explosives all over the globe. It's hard to imagine that we have CHOSEN to do it ever since 1945.
I'm going to hang onto this view until someone explains why we've been doing it for nearly 70 years and quantifies its benefits. What we are right now is exhausted as a result.
Thank you for this reply and the interesting citation to the Katz article.
Saudi and Israeli claims that Iran can not be trusted are slender reeds on which to base an indefinite American containment policy. They mimic Israel's propaganda about the inherently devious nature of the Palestinian People.
Containment is an inherently hostile policy and can have all sorts of negative consequences which become more dangerous as time passes. There must be credible reasons to believe that such measures will be necessary more or less permanently to not even attempt to work on the relationship.
And then there is the odd fact that Israel and Saudi Arabia want to defeat a specifically American foreign policy initiative based on American interests and supported by the bulk of the governments and populations in the West. Uncivil, even racist claims about an entire nation will not carry the day against that.
So I am hoping that we may learn what it is in terms of strategic rivalries, economic interests and historic enmities, etc., which may drive this particular part of the conflict.
A United Jerusalem is not on the table.
It makes no sense to seek a two state solution with a united capital. We don't know what the status of the boundary negotiations is. And until that is resolved, the rest of this, especially land swaps, have to be on hold. Frankly, I don't think that Israel has accepted the 1967 Green Line as a basis for for negotiation.. If they were to do that with swaps, the rest of it could be over expeditiously. Most of the Israeli objections are phony.
Of course they prefer no deal! That's what they have preferred since shortly after 1967. What they should have been confronted with since the beginning is a steely American determination to show them that it will lose them "their deal" with the United States if they continue this petulant nonsense.
Our aid to Egypt is a pretty tidy sum, something like a thousand million paid out each year without fail as if it were a permanent entitlement, sort of like an annuity.
You might feel more comfortable if you thought of it as protection money for the benefit of our greatest ally, Israel, which we pay on her behalf to neutralize her vicious, terrorist enemies, the Egyptians.
So long as that's what we're paying for how may we cavil about who gets it once it's in Egypt? Is it even our business?
By the way, can you remember ever seeing a financial transaction wherein the money or other value flowed from Israel to the United States?
It's time for individual Egyptians to SEE if they can in fact live their lives free of oppression and turmoil. It is obvious there is a legitimate opportunity for them here. We should be helping them grasp it.
Okay Gary. Fair enough. I suppose I'm just tired of the turmoil I've been watching in that region for decades, almost as if it is a new normal, and would like the people of the Middle-East to live their own lives instead of someone else's. Constitutions are inert pieces of paper until they are reflected by institutions and expectations. That's gradual and the Egyptians aren't there yet. In the mean time they have a chance for peace.
The Egyptian Constitution doesn't have to be perfect at the get-go so long as the barriers against amendment don't make it too difficult or impossible. Adjusting a constitutional structure is healthy over time for depressurizing a society.
On the Turkish model I'm also not so sure that a Constitutional caretaker role for a secular Army is such a bad thing either. It would be called-upon in a crisis in any event. Aren't the people of Egypt going to have to build democratic institutions, a democratic temperament and the appropriate expectations over time?
Are the Rights of Egyptians to be the same as the rights of Englishmen when the latter don't even have a Constitution and get along just fine?
There is nothing centrist about CNNs failure to report the Middle East objectively. Wolf Blitzer and crew finesse their reporting to protect Israel and until recently anyway MSNBC essentially has hardly covered it at all which is somewhat more straight forward.
Neither is likely? I don't think so, Bill. The key to it lies in Washington because most individuals need cover if they are to speak out. But the inclination to do so is long since pent-up. These really are fascinating times, don't you agree?
We shouldn't forget that the arrogant attitudes of Sharon are largely shared by Netanyahu and by extension even the Israeli electorate. As we hear more about the memoir of Secretary Gates it becomes apparent that this pattern is not just individual, but is the leit motif of the regime as a whole.
The rot has gone much too far. It has to be rooted out at the center. And the President is going to have to take the primary role which can't consist of a few verbal sallies. At that point everyone will be able to stand up, not just a few incredibly brave public intellectuals.
Fundamental, indeed. They go to the very heart of the falsified history designed by modern Zionists to justify the Jewish right of return to Palestine. Here it is in a nutshell.
We have the power to put an end to that in a hurry. It's nothing but hubris built up as the result of our long term weakness, our inability to speak the truth in public for fear of personal retribution at the social, professional and business levels..
When we start standing up and protect our political and intellectual classes it will disappear like a puff of smoke in the breeze.
Israel has a long history of gratuitous attempts to humiliate well-intentioned American leaders in public in order to reinforce the aura of the power of its American lobby over them. It's clear that they mistook James Earl Carter for a weakling and have paid the price for it.
"Professor Cole is engaging in political correctness asserting that a white dude automatically gets a free Get Out Of Jail card when he plays Monopoly."
Political correctness is not a term of art. And Dr. Cole made no "automaticity" argument either.
Irrespective of the accuracy of what you say he asserted, you seem not to have lingered over his conclusion: "If we are to emerge from the jungle, we must have a rule of law in international affairs as well as domestically. Impunity for war criminals only encourages war crimes."
How can you differ with that conclusion when it seems to agree with yours, i.e., that white war criminals do indeed seem escape prosecution, MacNamara, Nixon and LBJ being your examples?
All you've done is to add American whites to the list which supports the Cole thesis.
Your argument boils down to this: "You can't criticize Sharon's crimes because he is a white guy and other white guys have gotten away with it without such criticism.
That's incorrect because the Americans you name were in fact accused almost daily of being war criminals for many years. That they escaped prosecution is a different matter. So far, so have all the Israelis and you can bet that they will be looking for clemency in any settlement deal.
By the way, there has always got to be a time when we decide to behave ourselves and enforce International Criminal Law. How about NOW? The Middle-East is the crisis du jour. And a determination to do it might well cool-off to ardor of some of the players.
Joe, is this monstrosity merely one in the endless stream of non-binding AIPAC resolutions, or is it actually legislation? It does seem to contain crack pot language undermining the Executive's role in foreign policy which I wouldn't expect to find in legislation. Only if you know, I should be doing my own research.
A partial theocracy in Iran does not threaten American liberties. What the founders were about was preventing a theocracy from arising here in the United States.
We have far more at stake in engaging Iran than in whether or not rule there is by Mullahs.
Frankly, sir, the domestic oppression by American Zionists of the Israel Lobby certainly does threaten our liberties. Its purpose is precisely to do that very thing. It is a terrible precedent. In fact the Lobby's primary purpose is to dominate the national discourse on the *nature* our relationship with Israel and to oppress and intimidate her critics. It is extremely dangerous to let any powerful faction to get away with such a thing. FARA has criminal sanctions to prevent what I speak of. So does the espionage legislations. In neither case can we enforce our law in the face of Israel Lobby and Israeli transgressions.
Dr. Cole excuses nothing. He is a realist.
And you, sir, need to ask yourself some tough questions, e.g., why it is that you can not bring yourself to even mention Israel's role in the giant mess that today is the Middle-East.
This is a very fine article which first of all depicts the ancient Iranian people humanely and generously. We Americans very rarely read material written from this perspective. The distortions in our mainstream media are pervasive. The atmosphere in the United States regarding Iran has been systematically poisoned. And when she makes an obviously genuine effort to end the impasse it is met with obscurantist malevolence on the right in Washington.
I hope that the Leadership in Teheran will will see the shameful Israel-mandated and AIPAC-led efforts in our Senate for what they are and will draw no negative conclusions unless fully warranted when the fight is actually over.
Mark said: "The only material redeeming conduct toward peace that he can be credited with is the Gaza disengagement in 2005 which won him international praise...."
At the time I thought he withdrew from Gaza because he could apply even greater pressure on the Gazans from a distance through forcing them to take responsibility for governing the enclave and through a siege which would be "cleaner" and less expensive than an overt occupation. I also thought he would spin the withdrawal for domestic political reasons but that I did not understand them. Professor Cole mentioned it a few days ago but I don't want to paraphrase him from memory.
It will be a humiliation for you and for the American people if you attend his funeral, especially at the very time when unregistered agents of Israel are attempting to scuttle your multilateral efforts to reach a modus vivendi with Iran.
Isn't it "racist" or at best simple minded to adopt Israeli propaganda to the effect that Iranians and Arabs too are undeterrable, that implicitly the cause must be some sort of genomic defect? Or the result of having been marinated since the 6th or 7th Century in a particularly demonic religion? And that the only people in the region who can be trusted, especially with nuclear weapons, are the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe? We defeat *ourselves* by giving a moment's credence to this manipulative nonsense. We have to fight it.
It is obviously best for all concerned that there be no nuclear weapons at all in the Middle-East. The Israelis will not disarm. Therefore, wherein lies the nuclear arms race problem?
"It’s Netanyahu who’s behind the current push for this sanctions bill."
Of course it is. It's been the Lobby's practice for decades to take political instructions from Israel as it is uniquely her interests which are at stake.
It's not pretty but the Lobby's role in it reflects an ethnic conflict of interest which we should not be empowering by failing under pressure to enforce the law.
"The lobby may be local but it serves a foreign interest."
Precisely the right point!
Even though local, i.e., manned by *Americans* , it still violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The agents don't have to be foreign, their clients do. And yes, their client, Israel, is a foreign country.
It appears from the article that most all political parties except the Brotherhood prefer to trust the Army with their short term future rather than Islamists. Might they know their own interests pretty well? It could make sense based on the Turkish model--if I understand it well enough which is pretty doubtful.
Has the Egyptian army/government committed itself to secular democracy with a timetable for various phases? has that original constitution been amended?
I'll do my school marmish best to explain myself.
I'm not surprised by criticism of any sitting President. But some of it here is irresponsible, even slanderous. And it's almost never documented.
No one who cares about the long term health of the country and his own credibility should use such trivial observations of the political and criminal processes as the pretext for snakeish slanders designed to diminish our President.
He stated the constitutional principle correctly. He would also be the first to acknowledge that the criminal justice system, like every other aspect of government, is flawed and on occasion corrupted.
An example, flagrantly continuing from the earliest days of President Johnson's administration into the present, is the failure of all those administrations to enforce FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, in cases of the lobbying of Congress and administrations by Zionist organizations including but not limited to AIPAC on behalf of a foreign country, specifically Israel.
This is a serious failure for which the country has suffered dire consequences continuing to this day. If you wish to do the right thing, why don't you urge the President to instruct his Justice Department to do its duty and enforce the law in such matters equally across the board? They are serious questions, not in the least at the level of your quibbles. If you want to go after the man that is a real opportunity. And while you are at it you could campaign for rigorous and equal enforcement of the espionage laws against all violators including but not limited to Zionist-American and Israeli spies. That failure may be an even greater travesty.
In short you can't presume that the rule in practice is perfection and that Obama is personally responsible for any and all tiny deviations from it. Perfection is never attainable. But our dedicated reformers, presumably including yourself, should be working on real issues with perceptible impact on the commonweal.
"Fact of the matter is that Obama CAMPAIGNED on sending more troops to Afghanistan..."
That sounds like an attack on Obama, so I'll just ask if it isn't counter-intuitive coming from one who is critical of Obama's Afghan policy.
And then he said:
"...... and he deliberately misrepresented the occupation as a fight against Al Qaeda, which even the CIA said had very few numbers in Afghanistan."
It was a fight against al Queda. In fact it still is. If he said so it was a deliberate act, but what's the point? it was a fight against the Taliban too.
I suspect that you just got the context of your unquoted assertion a little screwed up. Hey, it happens.
It wasn't the stakes in the Cold War which motivated Truman. It was his duty to the office of the Presidency under our Constitution.
President Obama dealt with that same problem in the same way for the same reason. The civilian Commander in Chief is never going to give up that sort of precedent to a military man. It's inconceivable. And the principle itself is what's important to the issue, not the relative historical significance of the wars involved.
But Bill, President Obama chose a surge with a deadline, not endless war. They are quite clearly not the same thing.
Like Nixon he needed a decent interval to avoid a great national humiliation. It looks as though he has accomplished that.
And in the previous post I said:
"To date I don’t recall Commander in Chief Obama having blamed his generals for anything relating to their strategic advice. Do you? In any event he’s a gentleman with a first rate temperament. Won’t we likely have have to await his memoirs?"
I'm trying hard to understand the venom and knife-sharpening you and others here cultivate for President Obama. It's almost as if attacking him is the prime reason for your being here. You try to humiliate him by making up false names. You even use a false name for General Petraeus. You accuse the President of betrayal, knowing nothing of what went on inside the White house at the time.
Look, we only have one President. We all have a stake in his success. What do you *as an American* hope to gain by this vile treatment of him?
"Obama chose endless war and counter-insurgency. He did not have to acquiesce, but he did. It was his choice. The Commander in Chief cannot blame his generals."
To date I don't recall Commander in Chief Obama having blamed his generals for anything relating to their strategic advice. Do you? In any event he's a gentleman with a first rate temperament. Won't we likely have have to await his memoirs?
Quite like Truman with MacArthur, he fired General McChrystal for lese majeste, indiscretion and disloyalty. It was well deserved and required to maintain the dignity and power of the Office of President.
He elevated Petraeus to Director of the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY where that great military intellectual engineered his own downfall with an extra-marital affair not unlike an old fashioned Soviet-style honey pot sting. The Director of the CIA is required to behave himself in order to avoid becoming a threat to national security. He fell on his sword as befits a military man.
What faced Obama is exactly what faced Nixon and Kissenger, the intense need for "a decent interval" and cover for withdrawal without victory from a disastrous, failed war in a third world country. Neither Nixon nor Obama wanted to preside over a great national humiliation which no fig leaf could cover.
It may be counter-intuitive, but I'm not sure that the Afghan surge was a failure. President Obama did set the time for withdrawal. And we hear that the Afghan Army is fighting on its own now with significant success. If necessary we can leave without the SOFA and still support the Afghan government and military. If I'm right this adds up to a significant personal victory for the President.
Let it go, indeed. It's true that Nader's decisions to run third party campaigns were triumphs of principle or ideology over common sense, but his career seen as a whole is admirable.
The use of the term itself is unfortunate. It suggests that the author really did know his duty and fulfilled it rigorously, while others perhaps did not.
That's an interesting, indirect way of looking at it. In the long run though my guess is that he'll get credit for it. His Administration is going to interest historians.
I've written too much in this thread but I really want to thank you for this pithy view from the Arab side. The American people just don't understand the effect of what we've been doing in the region. Nor do they understand their own interests in changing the policies.
A famous British historian whose name I have of course forgotten warned the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 that hot pursuit of bin Laden was one thing but that occupation and nation-building in Afghanistan was quite another and it should not be attempted.
Even Ariel Sharon, who rushed to Washington during the 9/11 crisis to sniff about for more commitments to Israel, warned Bush not to attempt nation building there. He preferred an American attack on Iran. The administration promised to deal with Iran after the cake walk into Iraq. Only a dozen years later has the current administration seemed to have escaped that "obligation" to Israel. And appearances may well be deceiving.
I'm not especially comfortable with the "expert" business either but where else does one find sufficiently informed comment? The administration of governments must be collaborative, the ranks filled by apparatchiks with specialties. The Soviet Union even had offices devoted exclusively to the ideological interpretation of events and policy. They were there because they are perceived to be needed.
Anyone who has led a life interesting enough can write a memoir. If thousands ARE interested and the books have commercial value, what's to be cynical about?
After all, to whom does the interesting life belong? Are men and women who choose lives in politics supposed to be ascetics practicing some pointless form of life long self-denial? Should they be disentitled from the attempt to shape how they are remembered?
An apt analogy. Lincoln's once in a lifetime *political* brilliance and near perfect temperament were key to national survival.
We're nowhere near being able yet to judge President Obama by the same standard even though the country has been in crisis since the GWB administration.
Ultimately the profession and the odd brilliant journalist will pass judgment, but I've never looked forward to Presidential memoirs as I do his. I hope things get straightened out in about four thick volumes on onion skin.
If I recall correctly, at the peak of their national and colonial power in the mid-19th Century, the British army, having captured Kabul, was driven out of Afghanistan with dispatch. The redcoats were nearly all killed from rocky positions high above by tribesmen armed with long-barrelled homemade rifles. They died one by one during their retreat to India. An army physician is said to have survived because he had a horse.
"He carried out the instructions of his superiors."
Gates was a very powerful advisor to senior politicians, an advisor to men whose background was usually in domestic, not foreign affairs. They certainly needed advice, but the responsibility for its quality rests on him.
Oaths and our proximity to fascism. Get up to date with Ray McGovern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvlWTMdKE58
The Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Snowden, and his suggestion that the NSA operation is actually a corporate espionage scam are two potentially huge breakthroughs. I found the interview in which Snowden alluded to the latter. It is tantalizing but there is little meat to it. Yet it is pretty clear that they aren't apprehending terrorists. Just what is it that they are bee-hiving about at NSA? Can no one tell us? Congress, of course, should be digging into it but it is a broken institution and also a part of the problem. Sy Hirsh and Bamford are capable of it.
And she could very well have not. And until we know which it is we ought to suspend judgment.
Oxfam shot itself in the foot.
By the way, Scarlett's spoof did reach the Super Bowl audience during the fourth quarter, but I felt it was swallowed up by the general noise and hype. It's almost as if all this sturm und drang took place for nothing and everyone involved in it has been a loser.
Thanks for this just corrective, Oui.
No one here has provided anything showing that Scarlett Johansson knew about the SodaStream West Bank factory before she signed the contract and worked on the Super Bowl advertising spoof. The company has 13 installations at least, only one in the West Bank. I believe it unjust to presume that she broke the boycott maliciously without some proof.
I don't have a problem supporting her except regarding Middle-Eastern policy. I don't remember her ever saying anything about it other than routine bromides and worry about her tenure as the Senator for Manhattan.
Come on, Bodden. There are times when I can't believe you guys. Of course she sells her fame via endorsements. So what? So do lady athletes. Poets and artists would do so if they could. Professors do an equivalent all the time. It's called consulting. So your complaint that she works for a living is frivolous.
You guys are the mock prosecutors of Miss Scarlett Johansson. You're going to have egg on your faces if you can't prove *intent*. You might even have to pay her costs and legal fees.
You'll only have some sort of a moral grip on this young woman if you can show she signed a contract with an Israeli owner knowing he manufactured the product to be touted on the Occupied West Bank. Only then will your witch hunt have been a symbolic success.
The analogy is to the law of crimes. Most of them have mens rea ( guilty knowledge) as a necessary element. If mens rea is not proved, the Defendant may not be convicted, and if, by a jury of ideological kangaroos the charming young lady IS convicted nevertheless, the appellate court must overturn it. It has no discretion in the matter.
You guys have the burden. What did she know and when did she know it? I'll be happy to accept the outcome. I just won't get out ahead of it.
By the way, I don't respect the timidity of the boycotters when they limit their prohibitions to Jewish West Bank producers. Why isn't everything Israeli boycotted? Who puts right wing Zionists in office after all?
When and how did she *knowingly* choose money over principle? And if she did not do that where do you stand? I understand that the company has assets in Israel proper too. I just don't think that critics of Israeli policy should jump to conclusions about Scarlett Johansson which may not warranted.
Are they warranted? Do you know?
I looked through it briefly. It seems that the formally organized boycott leaders are paying no attention to Miss Scarlett Johansson.
Aren't there any limits to these things? I support BDS........but Juan is right about Johansson at the individual level, she's a victim who has made a tactical error probably without malice and is paying a disproportionate price because of her celebrity?
What does one imagine her contract is worth? And then ask how many of her critics have made personal sacrifices anything equivalent to it.
Judges attempt to combine justice with mercy. She has contractual obligations. Leave her alone. She's done nothing justifying these political disruptions in her life. She should be permitted to go and sin no more.
But, if her compensation is a function of ratings? Hard cases make bad law.
I asked myself the same question and discovered that Gould's review in its entirety is available at the WSJ on line through a google search. It does not comport with typical professorial civility, so I can understand why Professor Drake appears a bit out of sorts and labels Gould a "neoconservative".
As Gould IS described as a neoconservative I, for the first time ever, looked for a definition and found this description which I would like to share, Dr. Cole willing:
"To neoconservatives, real-world conditions are not of great importance. By exerting their will, they change reality, in fact create their own reality. To the neoconservative movement, the reality-based community is a thing of the past. There is, in other words, a kind of neoconservative “triumph of the will.”
"The recent election may have relegated the neoconservatives to academia, but the impact they have had on America and the world since the disputed 2000 presidential election is dramatic."
(From Andrew E. Kersten's review of The First Cold Warrior.... by Spalding, E.E., Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, p. 764, date not available on the one page preview)
I couldn't bring myself to open this thread. Instinctively I just know that everything which weakens him diminishes our ability to push out of these alien swamps we wallow in. We can muddle through anything but these crises in foreign policy. They are profoundly dangerous. Who else is there for the next three years?
But Juan shames me into acknowledging that the truth must out and that I'm just going to have to accept it.
Not to make too fine a point of it but it was reported that we give the raw data to Israel.
Kenny said:
"Ironic that they’re demanding a certain level of racial/religious purity, no?"
Tragic, certainly, as such views have driven them to the present pass. Like all the rest of us they display flaws. Some, however, are more interesting than most.
For example, they have many critics. A lot of them are generous and well informed, but they don't suffer them gladly. They tend to circle the wagons and attack without taking into account that many friends or potential friends *must* also be critics.
This is not a time when those friends and gentlemanly observers can remain discretely silent. Every one of us has a vested interest in the Palestinian peace process and in improvement of our relations with just about everyone in the Middle East. They are OUR interests, not just Israel's, not just those of our Jewish fellow citizens here in the U.S.
The criticisms raised in Israel about the young man's relationship with a Norwegian woman are based on imagined racial presumptions which have not held up under modern research.
The Jewish historical tradition which, for example, appears clearly in the "begats" of the Torah is based on race.
So are the later claims that the Hebrews were expelled en masse from Roman Palestine and have remained endogamous for 2,000 years. Those too are obviously racial and just as mistaken. That Exodus has been shown by the Israeli historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, never to have happened but to have been devised by early modern Zionists to support a right of return by analogy to inheritance of real estate. The term used by them today is redemption. It runs afoul of common sense as was described best by judges in the Rule Against Perpetuities.
And then finally we have the courageous work of the young Israeli geneticist Eran Elhaik, now of Sheffield University in the UK, who has broken through decades of squiddish ink emitted from within his own profession to discover that the origins of the Ashkenazi lie in Turkish tribes on the Steppe in Central Asia, not in the Hebrews of the Levant.
Were it not for the endemic crisis and recurrent tragedy in the Middle East I would be no more interested in these matters than is Dr. Cole, but they are just too dangerous to ignore. Correcting this false false narrative is critical to convincing Israel to consult her actual interests which lie in taking eight tenths of the loaf and settling with the Palestinians. Hubris, even chutzpah, can lead to disaster.
"How do you suggest we could have changed the behavior of the Soviet Union and Maoist China: both ideologically driven and implacably hostile to the United States at the time you mention?
I don't. Here's what I said:
"I harbor an acute sense of the West’s limitations and often of its submerged intentions. It has immense raw power when it comes to military and other coercive measures such as we’ve watched in the isolation and sanctioning of Iran.
"But there seems to be a profound lack of subtle, face-saving and civilized tools adapted to changing the internal behavior of regimes trapped in ideological rigidity and injustice."
I give you Israel as an example.
What I'm interested in is learning something new from social scientists, political scientists perhaps, about the generation and uses of soft power, influence if you, as alternatives to military interventions which I believe probably just make the overall situation worse.
I look back at the period since WWII and think that there must be a better way. Surely there was a better way in the Middle East after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I just want to presume that there is and find it. I don't want to be driven to the conclusion that we're incapable as a species of improving the ways we interface with other countries.
I'm not a pacifist. Not too many former Marines are. But I am a humanist.
Bill quoted Hunter:
” but neither Israel nor AIPAC bear any consequences for violating FARA or in Israel’s case for running a huge espionage effort against their ‘ally and closest friend.’”
And Bill replied:
And why don’t they suffer consequences for their actions? Because the highest levels of the Executive branch (which has the authority to impose consequences) acquiesces in and enables Israel and AIPAC in their nefarious activities that run counter to US interests.
You have just made my point for me.
Not exactly. You will recall that I explained in some detail how the oppressive system works. Today you agree with me while still maintaining your fatalism and making it seem even more impossible of remedy by lumping in the entire Executive and Legislative branches for fixing when all that's needed is a strong President, or a President capable of being strong in a crisis. What we need is a real world solution, a way to break the stalemate. And the key to that is simplicity.
We can't instill spine into a thousand petty legislators and timorous professional administrators. They all worry first and last about tenure and want to hide, especially from the ferocity of the Israel Lobby. It's something akin to a sociological law of nature set forth by Pareto. We shouldn't see that as a barrier, an excuse to throw our hands in the air and slink off as you seem to want to here:
"Until officials in our Executive and Legislative branches demonstrate the courage to stand up to Israel and its supporters, nothing will change."
What we need is no more than a single, strong and resolute President. And the jury is still out on whether Barack Obama can be that man in this ultimate test of wills. I believe he can, and one thing is quite clear. If he does intend to confront the Lobby and to redeem our democratic heritage he couldn't be positioning himself much better to accomplish it.
Walt Kelly and “Pogo” still have the last word: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
That's why I'm insisting that the problem be put into context and the actual power relationships be determined and tested resolutely by the President of the United States. He is not "us".
Thank you for this heartfelt post.
I harbor an acute sense of the West's limitations and often of its submerged intentions. It has immense raw power when it comes to military and other coercive measures such as we've watched in the isolation and sanctioning of Iran.
But there seems to be a profound lack of subtle, face-saving and civilized tools adapted to changing the internal behavior of regimes trapped in ideological rigidity and injustice.
It is not new. We complained bitterly about massive totalitarian oppression in the Soviet Union but in the end had to settle for accelerating its wholesale economic and political collapse, especially during the second term of Reagan. Collapse as the source of regime change proved to be another great tragedy for the long-suffering Russian people. Avoiding such compounded misery should have been central to our policy but in the end we could not accomplish it and probably didn't try.
In China, another priestly regime possessing that cultivated asset, ideology, we watched thirty million of Jasper Becker's 'Hungry Ghosts' die of starvation because we had no tools other than the military and sanctions with which to change the regime and ameliorate their condition. Again, we probably didn't try.
And so, regarding Iran, haven't the great powers already used their coercive option, sanctions? In the objective sense haven't they spent that asset on the protection of Israel's hydrogen bomb hegemony in the region? I believe we had better work on Israel and leave the Iranians alone for a while. After all, were we only to admit it, our position on Palestine is probably pretty close to what Iran and Hezbollah would accept, 20% of the country and a Palestinian State. Who is the problem here?
It is not at all 'isolationist' to recognize that there are decisive limits to American power. It's realistic. It keeps us out of trouble. But it's a shame we can't use that power in different ways.
It has heavy self-censorship. It's complicated.
How does one reply to a screed such as yours? As Joe says, we'll see how it works out.
But remember, we Americans have stupidly cultivated Iranian intransigence for a long time. Far too long. They are an ancient and justifiably proud people whether or not they wear clerical robes. We must follow our own national interests regarding normalization of the relationship. No one should be permitted to dictate to our government on that score, especially not a foreign country in the grip of a fanatical ideology such as Zionism.
Perhaps you heard the President this evening. He said he would veto AIPAC's latest legislative travesty which is designed to drive us to war on behalf of Israel if ISRAEL in her sole discretion and against our will attacks Iran. How's that for dog wagging my friend?
Bill said:
" Israel and AIPAC are not the elements with whom we must struggle within the confines of our own government. Israel and AIPAC are just acting in what they see as their interest, and they are succeeding."
They are certainly succeeding. I'm very pleased that you don't dispute that.
But what you don't seem aware of is that they are acting illegally with impunity, which impunity has in their case destroyed the protections against corruption of our political system through foreign intervention within it. Everyone should read the history of it at IRmep, especially materials written by Grant Smith. I believe him to be the deepest expert on this matter in the U.S. He is certainly the most courageous.
I had provided specific context regarding a particular issue:
"Domestic liberalization in Iran is an obviously important American interest.
"With whom must we struggle most violently within the confines of our own government to create conditions for that liberalization? Israel, of course, and her unregistered American lobby including AIPAC."
Surely you don't disagree that domestic liberalization in Iran is an American national interest?
And I would add that normal diplomatic relations should be a goal too. So I'll pass those matters for the moment so that you may respond.
Of course you are perfectly correct about the failure of our political class to look after the country's interests in the face of a powerful domestic lobby for a foreign country. But you don't take the circumstances into account.
That failure of statesmanship is lamentable, but the flesh is weak and most congressmen and women like their work and would like to send their kids to Harvard and to stay in their positions until retirement time.
By speaking out in opposition to Israeli policy or resisting AIPAC-backed legislation or resolutions they endanger their very careers. There is no question about how it works, including campaign donations filtered in from the outside, primary challenges, recruitment of opponents,
whispering campaigns and accusations of the ultimate social kiss of death, anti-Semitism. The classic study is Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy."
And so it IS a two-sided coin. First the political class as individuals swear an oath which, loosely interpreted, requires them to do the right thing for the American people despite political pressure by, for example, agents of a foreign power and, second, the Israel and AIPAC gentlemen who organize against Congress to accomplish something very different on behalf of a Foreign country are obliged to obey the Foreign Agents Registration Act which requires them to Register and to keep out of electoral politics including the flow of "campaign contributions," but they DON'T because as to THEM it is not enforced and hasn't been since the 1960s.
Compare the two. The politicians who stand up in the American interest are at personal risk of loss of their professions and, I suppose, violate their oaths, but neither Israel nor AIPAC bear any consequences for violating FARA or in Israel's case for running a huge espionage effort against their "ally and closest friend." Neither the oaths nor the law being violated by Israel's agents working in our Congress are enforced as they should be. Again, Grant Smith, IRmep.
Think about it, the politicians are at serious risk, but the Lobby and the spies are almost immune due to the immense power deployed by the Lobby against our government.
As to the latter, recall again that FARA has not been enforced against the unregistered Israel Lobby since the time of Jack Kennedy. And that matter was simply dropped by the LBJ Administration after Kennedy's death.
Domestic liberalization in Iran is an obviously important American interest.
With whom must we struggle most violently within the confines of our own government to create conditions for that liberalization? Israel, of course, and her unregistered American lobby including AIPAC.
Similar conflicting American and Israeli interests are replicated all over the region. The imprisonment and occupation of the Palestinians against our will, our policy and against common decency are primary examples. The Israeli annexation of the Golan is another.
Are we ever to regain control of our own policy there? Or will this brutal bullying of our political class continue indefinitely?
The Justice Department has the tools with which to bring AIPAC and the rest of the Lobby to heel under the Foreign Agents' Registration Act. It can not bring itself to do it though presented with everything it needs in the evidentiary sense and historically by IRmep and other sources.
It simply can not be said that Justice is unaware that it fails to enforce the law and why. A few months ago a very smart and courageous guy, Grant Smith, the founder of IRmep, took all the necessary material to a meeting with administrators in the Department. They have not acted. I don't know whether he has written-up the history of that effort or not but he concludes that they will do nothing.
In the early 20th Century we broke up the then most powerful trusts and combinations which threatened the future of the country. Today we collectively face far greater dangers but for the most part can't even speak openly about defending ourselves.
"At Davos, Netanyahu declared “I will not uproot a single Israeli.” Not a single settler will be moved."
Then some will choose to live in a Palestinian State? It won't be too many once the U.S. taxpayers' incentives for being reasonable are rolled out.
Mr. Stein,
Let's make this easier by approaching it directly.
It is a fact that Iranian-supported Hezbollah confronts Israel, the aggressor, illegal occupier and would be permanent colonial master of West Bank Palestine, which in turn is part of the homeland of the Palestinians, not the Zionist European Jews of Israel.
The vast bulk of Israelis are Ashkenazi with no biological or historical connection to Palestine or for that matter to what is today known as Israel. Their connections to Israel/Palestine are based on religion and conquest. In other words they are not based on law or fact.
Despite a colonial paper trail going back to 1917, Israel exists today primarily because of the Holocaust of the 1940s, one of many immense tragedies associated with World War II.
The difficulty with that is the transparent injustice of paying-off the debt of Europeans with the coin of an Asian people's homeland when the latter were not involved in those crimes at all. It is this profound injustice compounded by the great Zionist crimes against humanity represented by the Nakba of 1948 and its sequel of 1967 which fuel the present day hostility to Israel throughout the region if not globally.
The most bizarre aspect of it is, perhaps, that the Zionists' claim to what today is called israel shares all of the defects inherent in the occupation of the West Bank and the other scraps of Palestinian land appropriated by Israel in 1967. It was accomplished through multiple crimes against humanity.
It appears that the rest of the world including the entire Arab region is prepared to pardon those crimes and to confirm Israel's post-Nakba and pre-1967 title to 80% of the country if only it it will disgorge the last 20% so a resolution is possible.
And what does the Israeli leadership do, firm as it is in its grip on the United States? It demands more and more and more while the region boils in a nuclear arms race and insurrectionist violence and its only ally turns in the wind with no way to protect its own interests.
I urge you, sir, to listen to reason.
"This theory that the United States pursues a policy of destabilization in the MENA region runs contrary to the historical record."
That's my impression too, though it's not been the goal of the Israelis while we've been rampaging through the region on their behalf. They were on the ground massaging the Kurds of Iraq and there is talk of partitioning Syria too. They will be supporting whomever wants that. In both cases their rationale is to weaken a traditional enemy. They also are very fond of their great friend and ally's tendency to bomb them back into the stone age for the same reason. It's the suppressed central tenet of neoconservatism. One is known by his friends.
I presume you mean the rules of candor and civilized, democratic politics when Israel is concerned?
This is radical! We've been told all these years by our dear friend and ally in the region not to speak to terrorists. And she has also been so kind as to point them out for our convenience.
Farhang, thanks for the clarification. I had misunderstood.
After a tiny introduction I will ask you a question.
My personal interest is with the American role in the region since roughly 1967. That role and its spin-offs have been catastrophic for almost everyone concerned including Israel which has been far too clever to understand her own interests or to allow us to determine them for her.
As everything we touch there seems foredestined to fail, it's doubtful that the Syrian Civil War with all its factions and obscure motivations can be 'jawboned' by Americans into an enduring settlement any more readily than Iraq and Afghanistan have been.
On the other hand can't we see that the contradiction of American military involvement to bring peace to the country will lead to nothing but more intense and prolonged violence?
Given the American National catastrophe in your region, don't we need a fundamental reassessment of our interests there and of the militarization of our foreign policy in the developing world generally?
If we have legitimate interests there which can not be served by a 21st century version of "showing the flag" in the region once in a while, I am unaware of them.
I would appreciate it if you would suggest a few principles for a new American foreign policy in the region which would meet the tests of legitimacy and benefit all concerned.
What conclusion do you draw? Perhaps it's my background, but what I did see was an evaluation of the evidentiary quality of the smuggled photographs against the background of war crimes prosecutions.
We shouldn't expect much but short term self-interest from that quarter. When we search for principled behavior they respond by pointing out their typhoon aid to the Philippines.
Rob,
Do I mean the U.S? Hell no! I want us out of there. I want the realists' off-shore policy.
I mean those members of the international community capable of acting effectively in a situation like this. Who might you prefer? I don't give a damn so long as the carnage stops.
Farhang uses the term 'international community'. Does it suit you? If not, define it any way you like. We'll let you designate the intervenors.
It's fine if you're against any and all interventions for humanitarian purposes. That's a defensible position on some sort of ideological grounds I'm sure. Perhaps you can explain it.
But it doesn't do anything at all for the Syrians. Are you really okay with that?
You will have to judge it by its logic and the credentials of its authors. We don't get anywhere casting aspersions on the Quataris. As far as I can see they just funded it. It was a London law firm which organized it.
We really ought to get on the right subject. And that's what the great powers ought to do about it and why.
Presume, arguendo, that the report from London is highly professional, unbiased and accurate. What positions do we take on Mr. Jahanpour's forthright challenge found in the first two sentences of his post? It could not be more direct and certainly deserves thoughtful responses.
Most of us appear to be Americans. As a nation we have an immense responsibility to get this right. Our overall track record in that region is miserable. And quite a few if not most of the participants here know a lot about the history of the Middle East.
How would you like to be Barack Obama just now?
"The proxy war in Syria is descending into total barbarism and violence by both sides. Instead of playing geopolitical games over the lives of millions of people it is time for the “international community” to come together and put an end to this carnage."
I think I agree with your conclusion, or the liberal and humane part of me does anyway. But we've become cautious regarding specifically American military interventions in that region. We weary of the burdens inherent in the blow-back from neoconservative doctrine and the unhealthy nature of our relationship with Israel. For most of us probably the idea of more boots on the ground in Syria after all that has happened seems obscene; it's as if we can not benefit from experience and are somehow doomed never to emerge from it.
You know both worlds. Have you anything to offer us which might benefit all concerned?
The forensic report described by Professor Cole may cover only a part of the country and represent but the tip of the iceberg.
Here's Norman Finkelstein on the state of the negotiations:
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/the_end_of_palestine_an_interview_with_norman_g._finkelstein
Bibi's chutzpah will turn out to be smoke and mirrors:
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/business-confront-netanyahu.html
Support the boycott.
I come from way outside the Egyptian loop but I'm not so sure that matters too much as her situation is by no means unprecedented.
Militaries have often created conditions which resulted in democratization in the past. Washington was asked to ascend a throne. After years of bitter warfare, he did not. Military transitions to democracy have happened successfully in the aftermath of wars. In Japan it was the American military. Didn't MacArthur impose a constitution? He did indeed. And hasn't it been a success? Wasn't the same true with S. Korea and West Germany? Does Kosovo have a democratic system today? South Africa changed after an armed revolution.
Profound political change is often messy and armies are often involved, but that doesn't mean that the results will be inevitably negative in the long term. For what it is worth I believe that's especially true today in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood botched its time in the sun. The Army saw it as an invitation to chaos and put an end to it. Most of the Egyptian parties support the Army's intervention. That looks something akin to "democratic" to me. It was heavy handed, but does that mean that it will not permit orderly democratic liberalization in Egypt? I don't think so. What I see doesn't indicate that the military wants to go back to the Mubarak system, quite the opposite.
There are times when the western democracies, preeminently the United States, tend to think that our sort of system ought to spring into being at the stroke of a pen. It's part of our Messiah complex. There is too much criticism of the Egyptian difficulties along the path and too little patience.
Didn't the Egyptian Army display a willingness for the country to be democratized by initially tolerating the Muslim brotherhood's victory? And didn't it act only when that crowd made a mess of it. And can't an argument be made that it is likely to be even more committed to it in the present? After all it has presided over the drafting of another constitution which under the circumstances seems pretty liberal to me.
"Far easier said than done..."
You've used the cliche so I'll just say that we probably differ on that. That it is not easily said is my point.
Speech, more particularly the failure of protections for political speech, is at the heart of it. But it has effects in our system which one might not normally connect with it. More of that below.
It is the chilling and even worse the distortion of political speech with resultant institutional and legal paralysis which American Zionists have been able to create on behalf of a foreign country in disregard of their fundamental conflicts of interest. (Yes, we must use that term. Nothing about it is "anti-Semitic".)
They have succeeded in exempting themselves from following law and custom and instead follow Israeli interests without such burdens. And their tactics are brutal. They are clothed with impunity before our political system and the law through fear and thus intimidation.
Examples of the damage done are the disastrous failure of FARA, the even-handed bribery/financial intimidation of our political class regardless of party and the inability to enforce our espionage laws when Israel is involved. There is a lot more which is less visible, all of it done on behalf foreigners at the expense of Americans. (And no, saying that is not anti-Semitic either.")
Simply put the Israel Lobby uses a form of slash and burn politics implemented by a tiny minority OF a tiny minority which we haven't seen the likes of in our entire history. The damage has been immense, including but not limited to our having sent armies to the Middle East partially in an effort to bolster Israel's strategic position there as a de facto alternative to settling with the Palestinians.
We need to free political speech in this country so that both the electorate and our political class are out from under the boot of this little minority. We need to enforce the law in the very face of it. And unfortunately it is not easily said.
Very interesting. I agree that we Americans will in fact continue to support Israel once there are fundamental adjustments made , but I'm clear that we have no national obligation to do so, none. Neither moral nor based on contract. The Israelis need to get it straight that our support is terminable at will unilaterally, and until that time it will be based on respectful behavior and her willingness to take direction.
She needs to understand that her interests are both different and subsidiary to ours and that if she does not honor them we will bid her adieu. It is a compelling American national interest that we get the relationship under control, that is, under OUR control, not hers.
Israel will neither be supported on her terms as is the case now, nor without firmly enforced concessions so far as our national interests are concerned. The present situation is a pathetic humiliation of a great nation and we must put an end to her overreaching.
That was a criminal declaration which has apparently come true.
All it would take is for Congress to insert a provision in the annual aid bill which empowers the President to stop the flow at any time by filing a formal finding that the Israelis have violated American law as to use of our weapons or regarding continuing espionage against us or that they work with an illegally unregistered lobby for Israel. There are many other things he could do alone, administratively.
He is hanging in there. We can only hope that his boss won't let him be defeated. But then the two of them must, don't you think, have an understanding as to taking it as far as it takes?
It's a nonstarter for those who understand it that clearly.
Mahmood,
We need the answers ourselves too. Whatever these policies consist of they are not understood by the American people generally.
Bill,
I've just explained my interest in the Terse article to Brian.
Bill:
"In most cases, they are on training missions, working with local forces to train them up on techniques, as well as to establish a degree of interoperability should it be necessary in the future."
JT: "Dare one ask what the national interest is in insinuating the US military presence into pretty much every corner of the planet? Are the threats so immanent and/or imminent, or is this just a bad habit grown very large and expensive?"
Bill seems to presume that the U.S. is going to be in the business of micro-managing outcomes militarily in poor countries for the indeterminate future as if our natural default setting must be a form of out-back neoconservativism.
JT questions whether the program is justified by our national interests, especially in light of the law of unanticipated consequences.
For what it's worth, like JT I think we should get out of the business. We've been getting it wrong since about 1945 at roughly a king's ransom per incident. We're nowhere near the country we would be if we had avoided that nonsense. Does anyone still remember the advisers Jack Kennedy sent to Vietnam? How did we handle the Patrice Lumumba matter? Why did we choose nation-building in Afghanistan? What could go wrong pretty much has gone wrong. And so far as I can see we've just amped-up the level of violence. And then there is the endless America-hatred that we now see all over the Middle East. If it is power we must have, the route to that is economic, not the sprinkling of tough guys and weapons and explosives all over the globe. It's hard to imagine that we have CHOSEN to do it ever since 1945.
I'm going to hang onto this view until someone explains why we've been doing it for nearly 70 years and quantifies its benefits. What we are right now is exhausted as a result.
Does this mean that the Israeli delegation will be seated alongside Muslim fighters whose goal is an Islamic Republic of Syria?
Thank you for this reply and the interesting citation to the Katz article.
Saudi and Israeli claims that Iran can not be trusted are slender reeds on which to base an indefinite American containment policy. They mimic Israel's propaganda about the inherently devious nature of the Palestinian People.
Containment is an inherently hostile policy and can have all sorts of negative consequences which become more dangerous as time passes. There must be credible reasons to believe that such measures will be necessary more or less permanently to not even attempt to work on the relationship.
And then there is the odd fact that Israel and Saudi Arabia want to defeat a specifically American foreign policy initiative based on American interests and supported by the bulk of the governments and populations in the West. Uncivil, even racist claims about an entire nation will not carry the day against that.
So I am hoping that we may learn what it is in terms of strategic rivalries, economic interests and historic enmities, etc., which may drive this particular part of the conflict.
Yaalon has given the President an opportunity which is worth a great deal.
Ban the man from the U.S. and from direct contact with our Department of Defense until further notice. Netanyahu will get the message.
Mr. Jahanpour, have you any suggestions for us regarding the pursuit of good relations with Iran?
A United Jerusalem is not on the table.
It makes no sense to seek a two state solution with a united capital. We don't know what the status of the boundary negotiations is. And until that is resolved, the rest of this, especially land swaps, have to be on hold. Frankly, I don't think that Israel has accepted the 1967 Green Line as a basis for for negotiation.. If they were to do that with swaps, the rest of it could be over expeditiously. Most of the Israeli objections are phony.
Of course they prefer no deal! That's what they have preferred since shortly after 1967. What they should have been confronted with since the beginning is a steely American determination to show them that it will lose them "their deal" with the United States if they continue this petulant nonsense.
It is impossible for Washington not to respond to disgusting insults by a tiny client state which presumes it is entitled to wag the dog.
Our aid to Egypt is a pretty tidy sum, something like a thousand million paid out each year without fail as if it were a permanent entitlement, sort of like an annuity.
You might feel more comfortable if you thought of it as protection money for the benefit of our greatest ally, Israel, which we pay on her behalf to neutralize her vicious, terrorist enemies, the Egyptians.
So long as that's what we're paying for how may we cavil about who gets it once it's in Egypt? Is it even our business?
By the way, can you remember ever seeing a financial transaction wherein the money or other value flowed from Israel to the United States?
It's time for individual Egyptians to SEE if they can in fact live their lives free of oppression and turmoil. It is obvious there is a legitimate opportunity for them here. We should be helping them grasp it.
Okay Gary. Fair enough. I suppose I'm just tired of the turmoil I've been watching in that region for decades, almost as if it is a new normal, and would like the people of the Middle-East to live their own lives instead of someone else's. Constitutions are inert pieces of paper until they are reflected by institutions and expectations. That's gradual and the Egyptians aren't there yet. In the mean time they have a chance for peace.
The Egyptian Constitution doesn't have to be perfect at the get-go so long as the barriers against amendment don't make it too difficult or impossible. Adjusting a constitutional structure is healthy over time for depressurizing a society.
On the Turkish model I'm also not so sure that a Constitutional caretaker role for a secular Army is such a bad thing either. It would be called-upon in a crisis in any event. Aren't the people of Egypt going to have to build democratic institutions, a democratic temperament and the appropriate expectations over time?
Are the Rights of Egyptians to be the same as the rights of Englishmen when the latter don't even have a Constitution and get along just fine?
There is nothing centrist about CNNs failure to report the Middle East objectively. Wolf Blitzer and crew finesse their reporting to protect Israel and until recently anyway MSNBC essentially has hardly covered it at all which is somewhat more straight forward.
Sure you do. It's something akin to to the winged critters which nest on European chimneys.
Yes, and Finkelstein and Weiss inter alia.
Neither is likely? I don't think so, Bill. The key to it lies in Washington because most individuals need cover if they are to speak out. But the inclination to do so is long since pent-up. These really are fascinating times, don't you agree?
We shouldn't forget that the arrogant attitudes of Sharon are largely shared by Netanyahu and by extension even the Israeli electorate. As we hear more about the memoir of Secretary Gates it becomes apparent that this pattern is not just individual, but is the leit motif of the regime as a whole.
http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Former-US-defense-secretary-Gates-tried-to-ban-Netanyahu-from-the-White-House-338099
The first step must be to deal with the Lobby itself. And that means its strategic defeat, its dismantlement, nothing less:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/01/12/defeat-the-israel-lobby/
The rot has gone much too far. It has to be rooted out at the center. And the President is going to have to take the primary role which can't consist of a few verbal sallies. At that point everyone will be able to stand up, not just a few incredibly brave public intellectuals.
Fundamental, indeed. They go to the very heart of the falsified history designed by modern Zionists to justify the Jewish right of return to Palestine. Here it is in a nutshell.
http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/75.full
Brilliant, indeed, and even more courageous.
I read all of your posts carefully, Mr. Jahanpour. Thank you for them. We could use more.
We have the power to put an end to that in a hurry. It's nothing but hubris built up as the result of our long term weakness, our inability to speak the truth in public for fear of personal retribution at the social, professional and business levels..
When we start standing up and protect our political and intellectual classes it will disappear like a puff of smoke in the breeze.
Israel has a long history of gratuitous attempts to humiliate well-intentioned American leaders in public in order to reinforce the aura of the power of its American lobby over them. It's clear that they mistook James Earl Carter for a weakling and have paid the price for it.
Mr. Hoffman says:
"Professor Cole is engaging in political correctness asserting that a white dude automatically gets a free Get Out Of Jail card when he plays Monopoly."
Political correctness is not a term of art. And Dr. Cole made no "automaticity" argument either.
Irrespective of the accuracy of what you say he asserted, you seem not to have lingered over his conclusion: "If we are to emerge from the jungle, we must have a rule of law in international affairs as well as domestically. Impunity for war criminals only encourages war crimes."
How can you differ with that conclusion when it seems to agree with yours, i.e., that white war criminals do indeed seem escape prosecution, MacNamara, Nixon and LBJ being your examples?
All you've done is to add American whites to the list which supports the Cole thesis.
Your argument boils down to this: "You can't criticize Sharon's crimes because he is a white guy and other white guys have gotten away with it without such criticism.
That's incorrect because the Americans you name were in fact accused almost daily of being war criminals for many years. That they escaped prosecution is a different matter. So far, so have all the Israelis and you can bet that they will be looking for clemency in any settlement deal.
By the way, there has always got to be a time when we decide to behave ourselves and enforce International Criminal Law. How about NOW? The Middle-East is the crisis du jour. And a determination to do it might well cool-off to ardor of some of the players.
Joe, is this monstrosity merely one in the endless stream of non-binding AIPAC resolutions, or is it actually legislation? It does seem to contain crack pot language undermining the Executive's role in foreign policy which I wouldn't expect to find in legislation. Only if you know, I should be doing my own research.
A partial theocracy in Iran does not threaten American liberties. What the founders were about was preventing a theocracy from arising here in the United States.
We have far more at stake in engaging Iran than in whether or not rule there is by Mullahs.
Frankly, sir, the domestic oppression by American Zionists of the Israel Lobby certainly does threaten our liberties. Its purpose is precisely to do that very thing. It is a terrible precedent. In fact the Lobby's primary purpose is to dominate the national discourse on the *nature* our relationship with Israel and to oppress and intimidate her critics. It is extremely dangerous to let any powerful faction to get away with such a thing. FARA has criminal sanctions to prevent what I speak of. So does the espionage legislations. In neither case can we enforce our law in the face of Israel Lobby and Israeli transgressions.
Dr. Cole excuses nothing. He is a realist.
And you, sir, need to ask yourself some tough questions, e.g., why it is that you can not bring yourself to even mention Israel's role in the giant mess that today is the Middle-East.
This is a very fine article which first of all depicts the ancient Iranian people humanely and generously. We Americans very rarely read material written from this perspective. The distortions in our mainstream media are pervasive. The atmosphere in the United States regarding Iran has been systematically poisoned. And when she makes an obviously genuine effort to end the impasse it is met with obscurantist malevolence on the right in Washington.
I hope that the Leadership in Teheran will will see the shameful Israel-mandated and AIPAC-led efforts in our Senate for what they are and will draw no negative conclusions unless fully warranted when the fight is actually over.
Again, thank you for this fresh perspective.
Mark said: "The only material redeeming conduct toward peace that he can be credited with is the Gaza disengagement in 2005 which won him international praise...."
At the time I thought he withdrew from Gaza because he could apply even greater pressure on the Gazans from a distance through forcing them to take responsibility for governing the enclave and through a siege which would be "cleaner" and less expensive than an overt occupation. I also thought he would spin the withdrawal for domestic political reasons but that I did not understand them. Professor Cole mentioned it a few days ago but I don't want to paraphrase him from memory.
Dear President Obama,
The butcher of Sabra and Shatila is dead.
It will be a humiliation for you and for the American people if you attend his funeral, especially at the very time when unregistered agents of Israel are attempting to scuttle your multilateral efforts to reach a modus vivendi with Iran.
If you will, Mr. President, just say "no".
With great respect,
Hunter Watson
"If congress wishes to undermine the President’s agenda, then that is a radical congress."
Exactly. And that conclusion is driven home by the fact that the President is obviously a moderate.
Isn't it "racist" or at best simple minded to adopt Israeli propaganda to the effect that Iranians and Arabs too are undeterrable, that implicitly the cause must be some sort of genomic defect? Or the result of having been marinated since the 6th or 7th Century in a particularly demonic religion? And that the only people in the region who can be trusted, especially with nuclear weapons, are the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe? We defeat *ourselves* by giving a moment's credence to this manipulative nonsense. We have to fight it.
It is obviously best for all concerned that there be no nuclear weapons at all in the Middle-East. The Israelis will not disarm. Therefore, wherein lies the nuclear arms race problem?
"It’s Netanyahu who’s behind the current push for this sanctions bill."
Of course it is. It's been the Lobby's practice for decades to take political instructions from Israel as it is uniquely her interests which are at stake.
It's not pretty but the Lobby's role in it reflects an ethnic conflict of interest which we should not be empowering by failing under pressure to enforce the law.
"The lobby may be local but it serves a foreign interest."
Precisely the right point!
Even though local, i.e., manned by *Americans* , it still violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The agents don't have to be foreign, their clients do. And yes, their client, Israel, is a foreign country.
http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/mohammad-fadel
It appears from the article that most all political parties except the Brotherhood prefer to trust the Army with their short term future rather than Islamists. Might they know their own interests pretty well? It could make sense based on the Turkish model--if I understand it well enough which is pretty doubtful.
Has the Egyptian army/government committed itself to secular democracy with a timetable for various phases? has that original constitution been amended?
JT says:
"So, does ANYONE actually act as the Decider? Or does the “complicated nature” let everyone off the hook?"
It's infinitely more complicated. and the situation is far more dire overall than just from the perspective of our domestic scene.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/10/echoes_of_1914_world_war_one
We've got a couple of Vietnam vets. Things are looking up.
I'll do my school marmish best to explain myself.
I'm not surprised by criticism of any sitting President. But some of it here is irresponsible, even slanderous. And it's almost never documented.
No one who cares about the long term health of the country and his own credibility should use such trivial observations of the political and criminal processes as the pretext for snakeish slanders designed to diminish our President.
He stated the constitutional principle correctly. He would also be the first to acknowledge that the criminal justice system, like every other aspect of government, is flawed and on occasion corrupted.
An example, flagrantly continuing from the earliest days of President Johnson's administration into the present, is the failure of all those administrations to enforce FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, in cases of the lobbying of Congress and administrations by Zionist organizations including but not limited to AIPAC on behalf of a foreign country, specifically Israel.
This is a serious failure for which the country has suffered dire consequences continuing to this day. If you wish to do the right thing, why don't you urge the President to instruct his Justice Department to do its duty and enforce the law in such matters equally across the board? They are serious questions, not in the least at the level of your quibbles. If you want to go after the man that is a real opportunity. And while you are at it you could campaign for rigorous and equal enforcement of the espionage laws against all violators including but not limited to Zionist-American and Israeli spies. That failure may be an even greater travesty.
In short you can't presume that the rule in practice is perfection and that Obama is personally responsible for any and all tiny deviations from it. Perfection is never attainable. But our dedicated reformers, presumably including yourself, should be working on real issues with perceptible impact on the commonweal.
Daniel said:
"Fact of the matter is that Obama CAMPAIGNED on sending more troops to Afghanistan..."
That sounds like an attack on Obama, so I'll just ask if it isn't counter-intuitive coming from one who is critical of Obama's Afghan policy.
And then he said:
"...... and he deliberately misrepresented the occupation as a fight against Al Qaeda, which even the CIA said had very few numbers in Afghanistan."
It was a fight against al Queda. In fact it still is. If he said so it was a deliberate act, but what's the point? it was a fight against the Taliban too.
I suspect that you just got the context of your unquoted assertion a little screwed up. Hey, it happens.
It wasn't the stakes in the Cold War which motivated Truman. It was his duty to the office of the Presidency under our Constitution.
President Obama dealt with that same problem in the same way for the same reason. The civilian Commander in Chief is never going to give up that sort of precedent to a military man. It's inconceivable. And the principle itself is what's important to the issue, not the relative historical significance of the wars involved.
But Bill, President Obama chose a surge with a deadline, not endless war. They are quite clearly not the same thing.
Like Nixon he needed a decent interval to avoid a great national humiliation. It looks as though he has accomplished that.
And in the previous post I said:
"To date I don’t recall Commander in Chief Obama having blamed his generals for anything relating to their strategic advice. Do you? In any event he’s a gentleman with a first rate temperament. Won’t we likely have have to await his memoirs?"
geoff,
I'm trying hard to understand the venom and knife-sharpening you and others here cultivate for President Obama. It's almost as if attacking him is the prime reason for your being here. You try to humiliate him by making up false names. You even use a false name for General Petraeus. You accuse the President of betrayal, knowing nothing of what went on inside the White house at the time.
Look, we only have one President. We all have a stake in his success. What do you *as an American* hope to gain by this vile treatment of him?
"Obama chose endless war and counter-insurgency. He did not have to acquiesce, but he did. It was his choice. The Commander in Chief cannot blame his generals."
To date I don't recall Commander in Chief Obama having blamed his generals for anything relating to their strategic advice. Do you? In any event he's a gentleman with a first rate temperament. Won't we likely have have to await his memoirs?
Quite like Truman with MacArthur, he fired General McChrystal for lese majeste, indiscretion and disloyalty. It was well deserved and required to maintain the dignity and power of the Office of President.
He elevated Petraeus to Director of the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY where that great military intellectual engineered his own downfall with an extra-marital affair not unlike an old fashioned Soviet-style honey pot sting. The Director of the CIA is required to behave himself in order to avoid becoming a threat to national security. He fell on his sword as befits a military man.
What faced Obama is exactly what faced Nixon and Kissenger, the intense need for "a decent interval" and cover for withdrawal without victory from a disastrous, failed war in a third world country. Neither Nixon nor Obama wanted to preside over a great national humiliation which no fig leaf could cover.
It may be counter-intuitive, but I'm not sure that the Afghan surge was a failure. President Obama did set the time for withdrawal. And we hear that the Afghan Army is fighting on its own now with significant success. If necessary we can leave without the SOFA and still support the Afghan government and military. If I'm right this adds up to a significant personal victory for the President.
Let it go, indeed. It's true that Nader's decisions to run third party campaigns were triumphs of principle or ideology over common sense, but his career seen as a whole is admirable.
The use of the term itself is unfortunate. It suggests that the author really did know his duty and fulfilled it rigorously, while others perhaps did not.
That's an interesting, indirect way of looking at it. In the long run though my guess is that he'll get credit for it. His Administration is going to interest historians.
I've written too much in this thread but I really want to thank you for this pithy view from the Arab side. The American people just don't understand the effect of what we've been doing in the region. Nor do they understand their own interests in changing the policies.
A famous British historian whose name I have of course forgotten warned the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 that hot pursuit of bin Laden was one thing but that occupation and nation-building in Afghanistan was quite another and it should not be attempted.
Even Ariel Sharon, who rushed to Washington during the 9/11 crisis to sniff about for more commitments to Israel, warned Bush not to attempt nation building there. He preferred an American attack on Iran. The administration promised to deal with Iran after the cake walk into Iraq. Only a dozen years later has the current administration seemed to have escaped that "obligation" to Israel. And appearances may well be deceiving.
I'm not especially comfortable with the "expert" business either but where else does one find sufficiently informed comment? The administration of governments must be collaborative, the ranks filled by apparatchiks with specialties. The Soviet Union even had offices devoted exclusively to the ideological interpretation of events and policy. They were there because they are perceived to be needed.
Anyone who has led a life interesting enough can write a memoir. If thousands ARE interested and the books have commercial value, what's to be cynical about?
After all, to whom does the interesting life belong? Are men and women who choose lives in politics supposed to be ascetics practicing some pointless form of life long self-denial? Should they be disentitled from the attempt to shape how they are remembered?
An apt analogy. Lincoln's once in a lifetime *political* brilliance and near perfect temperament were key to national survival.
We're nowhere near being able yet to judge President Obama by the same standard even though the country has been in crisis since the GWB administration.
Ultimately the profession and the odd brilliant journalist will pass judgment, but I've never looked forward to Presidential memoirs as I do his. I hope things get straightened out in about four thick volumes on onion skin.
If I recall correctly, at the peak of their national and colonial power in the mid-19th Century, the British army, having captured Kabul, was driven out of Afghanistan with dispatch. The redcoats were nearly all killed from rocky positions high above by tribesmen armed with long-barrelled homemade rifles. They died one by one during their retreat to India. An army physician is said to have survived because he had a horse.
"He carried out the instructions of his superiors."
Gates was a very powerful advisor to senior politicians, an advisor to men whose background was usually in domestic, not foreign affairs. They certainly needed advice, but the responsibility for its quality rests on him.
Deeply flawed minds? Such as those displayed by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln and FDR?