Bruce Bartlett had a recent article the thrust of which was to try and make the bitter pill of a prospective election of Hillary acceptable to conservatives. He did so by explaining Hillary was the most conservative of the liberal candidates. With rationalization like that it would appear the conservatives have decided to cave and concede.
Meanwhile, it would appear the Administration has decided to make billions of dollar arm deals with everyone in the Middle East on the flawed assumption it will bring peace or an ability to stare down Iran. From my vantage point it is simply the consequence of a failed policy being held together by military tape.
War talk continues to spread its wings. Is Assad planning an attack to pacify Iran? (See 1 below.)
Israeli can choose among flawed candidates of the past - Barak, Olmert and Netanyahu.
Not an exciting position to be in considering the problems the nation faces. (See 2 below.)
Netanyahu continues to position himself to return as PM. (See 3 below.)
It never hurts to read what foreigners are saying about us and "4 below" is from a Saudi newspaper . They apparently do not like Karl Rove either.
On another note, I suspect Rove resigned for a variety of reasons but two seem to stick out:
a) eliminate himself as a lightening rod as Rumsfeld did but do so earlier and b) get ahead of the historians and publish an "authoritative" book regarding the Bush Presidency and "set the record straight."
Apparently, Israel's government has decided to lower morale among those in the IDF who have served. (See 5 below.)
Off to play in state mixed doubles tennis tournament and back Sunday.
Dick
1)War tensions rise between Syria and Israel amid soothing words on both sides. Gen. Kaplinksy’s departure delayed
Sources report that the delay in Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky’s scheduled departure as Deputy Chief of Staff, announced by the IDF spokesman Wednesday night, Aug 15, is connected with the war tensions on Israel’s northern and Gaza borders and renewed threats from Iran. Defense minister Ehud Barak and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabby Ashkenazi prefer to keep in harness at this time a general with experience in managing warfronts.
Barak inspected the IDF preparations on the northern front Wednesday the day after he escorted prime minister Ehud Olmert on a visit to the northern command. Both stressed that Israel does not seek war, echoed by Syria’s vice president Farouk a- Shara.
Intelligence data and ground activity add up to the presumption that Syria is planning a campaign of hit-and-run cross-border attacks against Israeli border patrols and positions in Golan and attempts to take hostages. OC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gad Eisenkott and senior officers briefed the prime minister on their preparations in anticipation of such attacks.
They discussed ways of taking Syrian forces by surprise without provoking a full-scale conflict. In particular, Israeli decision-makers want to avoid exposing the populations of northern and central regions to Syrian missiles. They are also intent on limiting any flare-up to the Golan front and leaving out of the action the Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas and allied Palestinian terrorist groups of the Gaza Strip.
Military sources report, Washington updates point to the rising influence of the pro-war faction in Bashar Assad’s government. As we reported last week, this faction is led by the Syrian president’s brother-in-law commander of military intelligence, Gen. Assaf Shawqat. Since then, Syrian troop reinforcements have been moved forward to the front line, mostly by night. They include artillery contingents which have been kept well behind hitherto.
US and Israeli intelligence watchers believe Syrian leaders’ calculations are based on their expectation of a low-intensity Israel response, such as artillery crossfire, to their attacks. They are sure that both Israel and the US are determined to avoid a major conflagration. They expect the Israeli air force to be activated against strategic targets deep inside Syria only if their own persist.
Whether Israeli bombers go after civilian infrastructure, like bridges, highways and power stations, or stick to military targets, such radar stations, bases and military command posts, will depend on the duration of the Syrian offensive, its violence and how much pain is inflicted on Israeli lives and property. The Israel reprisal spiral is likely to match the intensity of Syrian attacks.
The scenarios examined by Israeli policy-makers during the prime minister’s visit therefore postulated a war of attrition starting later this year and going on for months. Charting how this war will unfold is chancy because some unforeseen circumstance could potentially blow it up suddenly into a full-scale war.
Some officers in the northern command therefore advocate a short and sharp Israeli response to nip any Syrian action in the bud before it develops, instead of a temperate reaction that would leave the tactical initiative with Damascus. Furthermore, if a war of attrition is allowed to drag on into the winter months, weather conditions would seriously hamper Israeli air force operations. Having heard these arguments, the prime minister, defense minister and the chief of staff must decide in the next few days how to proceed.
2)Poll: Netanyahu preferred as PM in four alternative candidate groupings
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
Telephone poll of a representative sample of 518 adult Israelis (including
Arab Israelis) carried out by Maagar Mohot Survey Institute (headed by
Professor Yitzchak Katz for Israel Radio's "Its all Talk" on 17 August 2007.
Statistical error +/- 4.5 percentage points.
Of the following candidates, who would you prefer to be prime minister? [AL:
Israel does not have direct elections]
Scenario #1
Total: Olmert 5% Barak 30% Netanyahu 32% Other replies 33%
Kadima voters: Olmert 14% Barak 33% Netanyahu 22% Other 31%
Likud voters: Olmert 0% Barak 4% Netanyahu 87% Other 9%
Labor voters: Olmert 3% Barak 74% Netanyahu 7% Other 16%
New immigrants: Olmert 3% Barak 6% Netanyahu 47% Other 44%
Religious: Olmert 0% Barak 4% Netanyahu 52% Other 444%
Scenario #2
Total: Livni 24% Barak 24% Netanyahu 29% Other 23%
Kadima voters: Livni 32% Barak 31% Netanyahu 23% Other 14%
Likud voters: Livni 6% Barak 4% Netanyahu 80% Other 10%
Labor voters: Livni 36% Barak 52% Netanyahu 7% Other 5%
New immigrants; Livni 14% Barak 10% Netanyahu 42% Other 34%
Religious: Livni 0% Barak 4% Netanyahu 52% Other 44%
Scenario #3
Total: Mofax 10% Barak 29% Netanyahu 32% Other 29%
Kadima voters: Mofaz 5% Barak 39% Netanyahu 30% Other 26%
Likud voters: Mofaz 11% Barak 4% Netanyahu 80% Other 5%
Labor voters: Mofaz 9% Barak 63% Netanyahu 13% Other 15%
New immigrants: Mofaz 6% Barak 7% Netanyahu 46% Other 41%
Religious: Mofaz 11% Barak 0% Netanyahu 52% Other 37%
Scenario #4
Total: Sheetrit 10% Barak 31% Netanyahu 32% Other 27%
Kadima voters: Sheetrit 10% Barak 39% Netanyahu 28% Other 23%
Likud voters: Sheetrit 11% Barak 0% Netanyahu 84% Other 5%
Labor voters: Sheetrit 21% Barak 70% Netanyahu 2% Other 7%
New immigrants: Sheetrit 2% Barak 13% Netanyahu 53% Other 32%
Religious: Sheetrit 6% Barak 4% Netanyahu 46% Other 44%
3) Netanyahu dares Barak to force election
By Gil Hoffman
Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu attempted to build on momentum from
his victory in Tuesday's Likud primary by daring Labor chairman Ehud Barak
on Wednesday to force a general election.
Netanyahu did not take time to savor his victory in the Likud race. He
immediately began working on his next election campaign, this time for prime
minister.
"I call upon Ehud Barak to keep his promise and advance the election now,"
Netanyahu said. "I invite him to coordinate with me a date for the general
election. The public wants it and the time has come."
Netanyahu's associates went further, saying Barak, as the head of Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert's largest coalition partner, could force an election at
any
moment and therefore he should "bring it on."
Barak declined to respond to Netanyahu's challenge. Labor MKs who support
quitting the coalition said Barak would not take steps to advance the
election until the Winograd Report comes out, which could happen anytime
from October to March.
Olmert responded to Netanyahu's call for advancing the election by saying,
in a meeting with Kadima council members in his Jerusalem residence: "I hear
the voices of those who want to replace me from the other parties. I want to
say to them, 'We have already seen what you are capable of.'"
According to final results, Netanyahu won the primary with 72.8 percent of
the vote, compared to 23.4% for Moshe Feiglin and 3.77% for Danny Danon.
The voter turnout was 40.2%.
[IMRA: The figures for Jerusalem are meaningless because many Feiglin
supporters took advantage of the option voters had to to vote at any polling
station in the country and drove to Jerusalem to cast their votes.]
Netanyahu beat Feiglin in Jerusalem 58% to 39%. Feiglin beat Netanyahu in
settlements like Efrat, Hashmonaim and Kiryat Arba.
Netanyahu said he would continue fighting Feiglin. He said he would try to
expel him through internal Likud courts and the High Court of Justice, and
would initiate a Likud membership drive ahead of the election for the
party's Knesset list to "drown out" Feiglin's support.
"Feiglin is an intruder into the party and the fate of his membership is in
the hands of the courts," Netanyahu said. "His group won't have any impact
on me, on the Likud list or on anything. Their number is not growing. When
more people vote, which will happen with the Knesset list, their support
will be more watered down."
Sources close to Feiglin said they would defend themselves by trying to
expel Likud MKs, such as their nemesis Limor Livnat, who violated the
Likud's platform by voting for disengagement from the Gaza Strip. They said
Feiglin's support would continue to grow, as it has since the 2003 Likud
race, when he won 3% of the vote, and the 2005 primary, when he won 13%.
"Likud members said with their votes that they want leaders with faith who
give hope that the country will survive and blossom," Feiglin said. "I am
not taking over the Likud. I am simply persuading people."
Labor and Kadima MKs said Feiglin's strong finish should convince Likud
voters to switch their allegiance to a more moderate party.
Sources in Kadima close to Olmert said the Likud had been tainted by
Feiglin's extremism and that Likud members with a conscience should move to
Kadima.
"The people are looking for responsible and moderate leadership," Labor
secretary-general Eitan Cabel said. "The Likud holds contests to determine
who could be a more right-wing extremist. The Likud under Bibi [Netanyahu]
and Feiglin gave a divorce document to centrist voters and proved that
everything must be done to prevent them from leading the country. Bibi
remains the same Bibi who is unable to make decisions under pressure or lead
the country."
4) Editorial: Master of Dirty Tricks
SO White House aide Karl Rove — the man they called “the president’s brain” — has quit. It is a significant departure which probably represents the beginning of the political end of this flawed and failed administration. Rove ran both George Bush’s successful election campaigns and also fulfilled a role as fixer and eminence grise at the White House. As deputy chief of staff, he played a major role in many decisions, including the one to invade Iraq. But last November he failed in the probably impossible task of saving the Republican hold on both houses of Congress. Bush, who has been consistently loyal to his staff, would probably have been happy for Rove to stay through the last 15 months of his presidency. But Rove decided that a decision that White House staff in post after this month should see out the presidential term was unacceptable.
He was probably glad of the chance to quit. This master of dirty tricks who is roundly disliked by Democrats — he once sent a crowd of Chicago down-and-outs to a swish Democrat reception, falsely promising they would be given free alcohol — was widely suspected of “outing” Valerie Plame, the CIA secret agent, in revenge for her ambassador husband Joe Wilson’s accurate debunking of administration claims that Saddam Hussein had been buying uranium yellow cake from Niger. Rove was called before a grand jury investigating the leak — which is an extremely serious federal offense — no fewer than four times.
In the end, Rove escaped prosecution as indeed did everyone else in the White House for this specific crime, despite evidence from journalists that the information came from there. In the end, the can, such as it was, was carried by another official, Lewis “Scooter” Libby who was found guilty of the lesser but no less reprehensible charges of perjury and obstructing the course of justice. There are many observers who believe that Rove should have been the man in the dock.
Rove’s key presence in the administration demonstrates the second fault line in this presidency. The bloody ruins and chaos of Iraq are testimony to the first — Bush’s ignorance and inability to take good advice from friends and allies, preferring the simplistic and bullheaded avenue of main force which in the end created more problems than it solved. It has, however, been little focused on the extent to which this presidential team has been prepared to resort to skullduggery and falsehood in order to achieve its ends.
Democrats, almost all of whom were complicit in the triumphalist crowing at the Iraq invasion and ouster of Saddam, seem unprepared to dwell on the lies and subterfuge that preceded it. They have not loudly claimed that they were misled. Why? Does the US political establishment accept that dishonesty is part of the political process? The electorate, it seem, does not. Only a quarter of Americans believe the Bush presidency will be considered a success. That number will be even smaller by Jan. 1, 2009.
5) Turning our backs on the soldiers
By David Regev
Nowadays as the draft dodging phenomenon is breaking records, the state is deserting those who served their country by withholding a significant benefit
According to a new regulation of the Finance Ministry, soldiers who completed their IDF service will no longer be eligible for unemployment allowance following discharge. Thousands of soldiers who use the funds in the intermediate period following the completion of their
duty and the time they find a job will have to find other means for sustaining themselves.
Of the 70,000 soldiers who are released from the army every year, 24,000 – primarily from lower socio-economic backgrounds – apply for unemployment allowance. Avi Tzarfati, an activist that aids the soldiers on issues relating to Social Security, explained that the newly-released soldiers would be eligible for the allowance only after if the employment bureau could not place them in a job.
The monthly allowance in the sum of NIS 2,100 ($500) was given to about 6,600 former soldiers with the goal of assisting them in integrating into the workforce. Initially the young men and women were eligible for allowance for a period of six months, which was later shortened to three months.
Yet, a year ago, the Finance Ministry decided to cut back on this expense and cancel it. The rational was the saving of over NIS 100 million (about $24 million) a year, and the desire to "educate" the former soldiers to become self-sustaining, productive citizens.
Nitzan Harel, who was released last week from three-year active duty in the artillery corps, said: "I applied for several positions but was rejected because I didn't have any experience since I enlisted immediately after I graduated high-school. I finally found an employer who was willing to give me a chance, but many of my fiends are still looking. I don't understand this decision. After risking my life for this country for a few hundred shekels a month, I deserve this allowance."
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
History Repeats in More Ways Than One!
Yisrael Ne'man lays out the main areas of contentious concerns involving final status negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, Abbas and Olmert. The problem the Israelis and Olmert face is that the Palestinians have gotten to where they are by breaking every agreement and understanding. Why change?
Secondly, the West will press Israel to make concessions not the Palestinians because the West wants/needs a near term resolution regardless of the long term implications that such might not hold. The entire Middle East was divided by Western powers without regard to long term implications and thus we have the problems we now face.
Furthermore, as Ne'eman points out Abbas cannot guarantee, from a military standpoint, anything because Fatah faded in the face of an Hamas onslaught so a future war could be in the making rather than peace.
Olmert is weak and needs a resolution in order to stay in power, something he dearly wants. Can he be trusted to protect Israel's security needs? Can a negotiating party whose every word has proven unreliable suddenly become trustworthy? What basis exists for believing so?
Fairly weighty matters and questions. (See 1 below.)
I have just concluded reading "The Lost Battalion" by Richard Slotkin. It tells the story of the pasted together ethically diverse WW 1, battalion which was led by white officers and how they were considered incapable of fighting because their patriotism was questioned. In every instance their training and equipment was inferior though their leadership, ultimately turned out to be quite commendable.
It also tells the story of how unprepared we were to enter the War because Wilson failed to take the necessary steps believing the War would not come and we would remain outside. In essence it proves once again how history repeats itself.
The book ends by telling the story of how the members of the Lost Battalion and its many heroes, who won Medals of Honor and Croix de Guerre (a black American soldier was the first,)were treated upon their return. In fact the German fascism they fought against was what they faced when they returned home. Our government dishonored their service by failing to assist them in finding work, postponed their bonus payments and on and on. Many who returned South were lynched and attacked by mobs fearing their military service and social acceptance by the French would make them seek "independence" and become "uppity."
It is another recording of our tragic history and a worthwhile read for those with a strong stomach.
Is something up from a military standpoint? Time is running out on GW should he wish to take military action against Iran. So far he has failed to prepare the nation for such and though he might be able to lay his case before the various Congressional and Senatorial Committees, as he did regarding Intelligence matters with Sen. Rockefeller, it all unraveled into partisan politics when informed Democrats subsequently sought political cover. (see 2 below.)
Be wary of a politician's denial and most particularly a weak one. (See 3 below.)
Herb Keinon expresses serious doubts and terms the Olmert-Abbas meeting a sideshow. (See 4 below.)
Diana West see hypocrisy in GW's latest weapons offer. (See 5 below.)
Daniel Pipes becomes a fashion editor? (See 6 below.)
Dick
1) A Guide to Mideast Peace 2007
By Yisrael Ne'eman
By this autumn Israel and the Palestinians are expected to begin permanent status negotiations within the framework of an international forum for peace in the Middle East. The two main players are to be Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman (President) Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. So how will this event be different than all the others, including the Oslo process? This time Israel and the Palestinians are to arrive at a final agreement first and only afterwards are the sides to discuss the step by step implementation. There are to be no more interim agreements, just the permanent or final status accords. The mechanism will then be built for implementation. The idea is that everyone will know the "price for peace" upfront and both governments will be able to prepare their populations for the "inevitable".
So what about UN Res. 242 (Nov. 1967), the Camp David Accords and Framework for Peace in the Middle East (1979) negotiated by Israeli PM Menachem Begin and Egyptian Pres.Anwar Sadat calling for Palestinian autonomy, the Saudi peace plan (2002), the Arab peace initiative (current), the Clinton Outline (Dec. 2000), the Bush Road Map (2003), the Geneva Initiative (2003), the Bush-Sharon exchange of letters and US commitments(April 2004), the Israeli security plan based on territorial compromise (known as the Allon Plan, 1967 and revised afterwards), the return of Palestinian refugees� UN Res. 194 clause 11 (Dec. 1948), Israeli settlements across the 1967 lines (continuing until the present) and the possible Hamas spoiler who reject compromise, recognition, peace or any dealings with Israel?
Without delving into all aspects of the above mentioned there are certain understood common denominators:
* There is to be no Palestinian refugee return? UN Res. 194 states, "that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return," and holding the governments and authorities responsible for the situation to be responsible for "repatriation, resettlement, compensation and rehabilitation" of the refugees. The Bush-Sharon exchange of letters and Congressional commitment of 2004 endorsed Israeli policy against Palestinian refugee return while the Saudi peace plan as expressed in UN Res. 1397 speaks of a two-state solution "within secure and recognized borders" and re-emphasizes Res. 242 (1967) calling for "a just solution of the refugee problem" (which here can be interpreted as both Arab and Jewish). The Clinton Outline and even the Geneva Initiative which saw possible symbolic return of a minimal amount of Palestinian refugees to Israel spoke of the necessity of two nationalisms firmly established in their two states living side by side. This is no longer the case today as refugees would only be admitted to the Palestinian state-to-be or rehabilitated with international funding elsewhere, most likely in the Arab world and especially where they already reside.
* Territorially all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) will be handed over to Palestinian Authority (later State) control. Gaza has no Jewish population as of late summer 2005 and all discussions and attempts at agreements indicate Palestinian control over the vast majority of the West Bank (90% or more). Since 1967 even the US government has constantly insisted on only minor territorial adjustments to be made on Israel's border with the West Bank, beginning with Pres. Nixon's Sec. of State William Roger's Plan (1969). Pres. Bush speaks of a "contiguous" Palestinian state in the West Bank with a road link to Gaza which was agreed upon by Israel in the discussions earlier brokered by Pres. Clinton at Camp David 2000 between Israeli PM Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasir Arafat. Even the Israeli developed security concept known as the Allon Plan envisioned a return of approximately 60% of the West Bank to Arab control (at the time Jordan).
Years later PM Ariel Sharon was known to accept the Allon Plan in principle (a security zone held by Israel to be on an average 16 kilometers or about ten miles wide along the Jordan River) but insisted on adding large Jewish settlement blocs close to Israel's 1967 lines into Israel proper. This was done beginning in 2002 by building the security fence east of those West Bank settlements. Somewhere between 6 and 8 % of the West Bank would remain in Israel. This area would contain 70% of all Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The fence is not complete hence we do not know the final demarcation. Holding the full territory as envisioned in the Allon Plan and the settlement blocs would still envision a withdrawal from some 55% of the West Bank.
In the international arena Israel is expected to relinquish over 90% of the West Bank but security necessities, Jewish demographics and a fair amount of consensus in Israel will not allow for such a large concession. The Palestinians of course will accept nothing less. Furthermore there are 250,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. Even if "only" 30% needed to be evacuated that means 75,000 people would need to relocated their lives. Two years after the Gaza evacuation involving 8,000 residents no one is yet in permanent housing due to massive government planning and implementation failure. Who today trusts the government over issues of compensation?
* Jerusalem will be divided into two capital cities, one Israeli and one Palestinian. Today there are close to half a million Jews in Jerusalem alongside a continually growing Arab population of 250,000 which constantly gnaws away at the Jewish majority. National status is to be determined by whether the neighborhoods are Jewish or Arab. Jerusalem's municipal boundaries will be a checkerboard on its eastern side and questions of policing, border crossings and integrated city services need to be confronted. Much of these arrangements are technical. Israel always guaranteed access to holy sites for all but based on the behavior of the Moslem Wakf who control the mosques on the Temple Mount no one can expect this to be the case on the Palestinian side. Most importantly, is there any possibility of compromise on the Temple Mount? As complicated as the Jerusalem issue may be, control of the Old City and Temple Mount is further charged with religious, historical and raw emotional issues. This has been discussed time and again and is emphasized in the Clinton Outline. Although considered taboo by many in Israel all those discussing Jerusalem know it will be two cities (and in many cases already is), just like there will be two states.
* Security is dependent on whether the Palestinian forces under Abbas and Fatah are trustworthy. In Gaza they proved a paper tiger when challenged by Hamas, collapsing within a week. Massive endemic corruption makes them an easy target for payoffs and bribes for terror activities. The forces themselves are made up of different and often competing family factions whose loyalties are not necessarily to a Fatah dominated Palestinian State. And lest one forgets, the Hamas controls Gaza (where they are now being challenged by Al Qaeda). Hamas will challenge Fatah for control of the West Bank where they were also voted into power in the January 2006 parliamentary elections. Fatah must win for any agreement to succeed with Israel.
To sum up there is a fair amount of understanding concerning refugees and even the division of Jerusalem (excluding the holy sites and the Old City). As for permanent borders the question of the security zone along the Jordan Rift Valley (Allon Plan) is a major issue not only with the Palestinians but in the regional context since the area would be Israel's front line should Jordan succumb to a radical Islamic uprising whereby the next step could be a sweep through the West Bank, putting those Islamic forces 15 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast. It should be pointed out that now Defense Minister Ehud Barak as PM conceded the Jordan Rift at Camp David 2000 when negotiating with Arafat. Renewed Palestinian terrorism, uncontrolled by the PA security forces (or even abetted by them) could unleash ground and rocket attacks across the new agreed upon borders threatening Israel�s main population centers. Supposedly Israeli security forces would have the right to take up positions along the Jordan River in an emergency (discussed at Camp David 2000) and continue to exercise actions of "hot pursuit" after terrorists (Bush-Sharon letters 2004). But how are both of these stipulations interpreted when crossing the borders of an independent Palestinian State? A liberal interpretation in Israel's favor should not be expected.
Opposition by the Israel Right and religious can certainly be expected, but far worse will be the rise in Palestinian terrorism as a result of the negotiations. The Americans seem convinced that should the final outcome be known from the outset and then implemented in stages most opposition will fade especially if massive funding accompanies each step. The possibility of success is miniscule despite certain pre-understandings. One should not forget for a second that even should all go well between Israel and Palestinian West Bank Abbas/Fayad government, Hamas and their Islamist allies are sworn to undermine the process every step of the way.
2) Big US Armed Forces integrated Valiant Shield exercises simulate possible operation against Iran
The maneuvers beginning Monday, Aug. 6, in waters off Guam include the simultaneous deployment of three carriers and their air and naval strike groups: USS Stennis, USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, altogether 30 warships, 280 warplanes and 22,000 soldiers and sailors. The exercise is commanded by Adm. Robert Willard, Pacific Fleet chief.
Military sources report: This will be America’s last major combined sea-air war game before during Bush presidency which ends in Jan. 2009 and last opportunity for drilling large-scale combined units should the president decide on a military operation against Iran.
To indicate that outside eyes were not desired, foreign observers who attended the Pacific exercises last year were not invited this year. US military sources in the region said that invitations to officers of regional nations to watch the drills would have had to include Malaysia, which has close ties with Iran.
According to these military sources, the exercises will be held in conditions resembling as closely as possible those in Iran and practice assaults of the kind that may be executed against the Islamic Republic.
Admiral Willard may well be describing the realities expected to prevail in a real-life offensive against the Islamic Republic..
Valiant Shield, he said, will “include the complexities of operating three aircraft carriers in the same area while at the same time adding in the operations of another component – the fighters, bombers and tankers of the US Air Force.”
He said the exercise will not detract from the Navy’s “real world” missions in the Persian Gulf but help drill the Navy and its crews [for that real world.]
Valiant Shield’s commander’s words may have been meant to answer the sharp criticism coming from Persian Gulf governments.
“Washington may be sending the USS Enterprise Strike Group to the Persian Gulf. It has not yet arrived. The other two American carriers, Nimitz and Stennis, have gone to take part in an exercise far away in the Pacific.”
“So where does that leave us?” asked a Gulf military official. “Vice President Dick Cheney and Robert Gates promised three American air carriers to protect us plus naval, marine and air forces. Now all the carriers are gone.”
3)[Denial by Prime Minister's Office] Olmert considers land swap as part of future peace deal: Response To The Main Headline In Ha'aretz [copy below]]
In response to the main headline in this morning's Ha'aretz, we do not know
of any plan as described in the article. We would like to clarify that such
a plan has not been considered, nor is it being raised for discussion in any
forum. We express our amazement at this erroneous article, which was
published without any attempt being made to ascertain from us its accuracy.
-----------------
Olmert considers land swap as part of future peace deal
By Akiva Eldar, Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is examining a new framework for peace in which
Israel will propose transferring to the Palestinian state areas equivalent
to 100 percent of the territories conquered in 1967.
Israel will suggest to the Palestinians to conduct negotiations for adequate
territorial compensation from Israel's sovereign territory, in exchange for
settlement blocs amounting to about 5 percent of the West Bank's area.
Israel is also examining various options of exchanging settlement blocs with
Arab community blocs within Israel, in agreement with the residents. An
agreement on this issue would enable Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Avigdor
Lieberman, to remain in the coalition.
The new framework was presented to Olmert by President Shimon Peres, a few
days after he entered the President's Residence. It includes a timetable for
negotiations for the final status agreement and implementing it, similar to
the framework of the Peres-Abu Ala agreement reached at the end of 2001.
Olmert has not yet decided on his position regarding all the plan's clauses,
but apparently has not dismissed its main ideas.
Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas agreed Monday that cooperation between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority would be expanded, in an effort to expedite
progress in their talks for the establishment of the Palestinian state.
"Exchanges between the two sides will become increasingly more substantive,
and will deal less with routine matters," a senior political source in
Jerusalem said Monday.
The three-hour meeting between Olmert and Abbas took place in two parts: a
private meeting just between the leaders, and a lunch with their teams of
advisers.
Sources in the Prime Minister's Bureau said that the atmosphere at the
meeting was constructive.
Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO negotiating team, described Monday's meeting
between Olmert and Abbas as serious and detailed.
"Abbas did not come to the meeting with a magic wand, and neither did Mr.
Olmert," Erekat said at a news conference. "There is an agreement on a
series of meetings to discuss the issues, including the establishment of a
Palestinian state."
Abbas thanked Olmert for the release of 255 Palestinians held in Israeli
prisons, and expressed hope that the next step would result in the freeing
of more prisoners. The two decided to institute a special ministerial
committee, and that the Palestinian Authority will be represented by
Interior Minister Abd al-Razek al-Yihiye.
Israel also promised the Palestinians to reconsider the request of the
militants who were expelled after the siege on the Church of the Nativity in
2002.
"The negotiations on renewing the diplomatic talks between the two sides
have reached fruition," Erekat said Monday. "What we now need is decisions
by the two leaders. We do not need to do anything new for a regional summit,
but to clarify the existing initiatives and the signed agreements. We
support the Arab [League] initiative and the road map as the basis for this
summit."
Erekat also said that the two leaders would hold at least three more
meetings before the November summit in Washington.
Commenting on the Abbas-Olmert meeting, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said
that he did not expect it to produce any results.
After the tete-a-tete, Olmert said he and Abbas discussed issues fundamental
to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
"We have decided to expand the negotiations between us in order to advance
mutual understanding, and formulate the framework that will allow us to move
forward toward establishing a Palestinian state," Olmert said. "Our mutual
goal is to realize the shared vision between us and [U.S. President George]
Bush regarding the establishment of two states for two peoples, who live
side by side in security and peace. We want to achieve this as soon as
possible."
He said he had no intention of stalling.
During the expanded meeting, the Palestinians spoke of the resumed security
cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. They handed a
document to Olmert and his aides detailing the PA's steps to enhance
security in recent weeks, including the arrest of several members of terror
organizations, and captured munitions and explosives that was handed over to
Israel.
4) Analysis: Nothing but a sideshow
By HERB KEINON
On the surface, it all looks so very important.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert drives down to Jericho, two helicopters hovering overhead, for the first meeting in the West Bank of an Israeli prime minister and a Palestinian leader since Ehud Barak met with Yasser Arafat before the violence of September 2000.
Dramatic? Historic? The main event? Forget it. Instead, pay close attention to a line former Quartet envoy James Wolfensohn said in an interview last month with Haaretz.
"There has to be a moment when Israelis and Palestinians understand that they are a sideshow," he said in a very telling comment.
And, if that wasn't clear enough, Wolfensohn piled it on for effect: "Israelis and Palestinians really should get over thinking that they're a show on Broadway. They are a show in the Village, off-off-off-off Broadway."
When Olmert and Abbas sat down in Jericho's Intercontinental Hotel over a traditional Arab dish of chicken and rice, they were talking about issues that effect us deeply - what are increasingly being referred to very vaguely as the "fundamental issues." But these issues, as fundamental as they might be, must be seen within the greater context of the overall tumult in the Middle East and the US effort to do something - anything - to contain it.
Olmert made two seemingly contradictory statements in Jericho.
First, when he arrived, he said: "I came here in order to discuss with you the fundamental issues outstanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, hoping that this will lead us soon into negotiations about the creation of a Palestinian state." And then, after he met Abbas for a 90 minute tête-à-tête, he said: "The aim is to achieve US President George Bush's vision which both we and the Palestinians share of two states for two peoples, living in security and peace side by side, and we want to do this as soon as possible." He added that this process must be based on the road map.
But there is an inherent contradiction between plans now to sketch out with the Palestinians an agreement of principles or a framework for an agreement, and the road map.
The road map was based on a step by step process. First the Palestinians stop terrorism, and then there are negotiations for peace.
While pledging allegiance to the road map, Olmert is now turning that step-by-step process around. Rather than first security, and then peace, Olmert and Abbas are talking roughly about how peace will look, believing that then security will be achieved.
Ariel Sharon spent a lot of time in 2001 and 2002 convincing both the Americans and the Israeli public of the need to achieve security first, and then to talk about an overarching peace agreement. But now there is suddenly no time, and the feeling in Jerusalem is that waiting for the PA to uproot the terrorist infrastructure, as spelled out in the road map, would mean waiting for ever, and in the meantime Hamas would not only have consolidated its hold on Gaza, but also made giant inroads into the West Bank.
Suddenly there is a new sense of urgency because of the fear that there is no time to wait, and that Hamas - and by extension Iran - will move on the West Bank if some kind of accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians is not reached.
And this is where Wolfensohn's theory about our being off-off-off-off Broadway comes into play.
The US needs progress here to try and consolidate a moderate Arab coalition as a counterbalance to the threatening Shi'ite crescent. And there is no better way to breathe life into this moderate coalition then to show diplomatic progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
he US needs a regional meeting in November no less, and probably far more, than either the Israelis or the Palestinians. The US needs this meeting to show the Iranians that there is a coalition of the moderate Arab willing who will some day stand up to them.
The US, at some point, will leave Iraq, but it is unlikely to do so unless it has assurances that there is a coalition of states that will not just let Iran march into the breach. It is in the US's interests to cobble this coalition together as soon as possible. At the regional conference, Bush wants to be able to say: "I created the moderate Arab coalition."
We're important, but we're just one brick in the anti-Iranian coalition the Americans want to form. It is not insignificant that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates accompanied Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her visit last week to Egypt and Saudi Arabia - but did not follow her to Israel. Right now, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries are the cornerstones of this coalition. Israel and the Palestinians, or rather a possible Israeli-Palestinian agreement, are the glue the US has in mind to stick that coalition together. •
5) Want to stop terrorism? Give in to its supporters
By Diana West
Boy, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, that Condi Rice and Bob Gates sure drive a tough bargain.
Visiting "the kingdom" (the grating, fairytale nickname for that oil-rich human-rights pit), the U.S. secretaries of state and defense delivered a blunt message: If you keep fomenting and financing global jihad; if you keep teaching and preaching the eradication or repression of non-Muslims; if you keep trampling human rights, women's rights, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech; and if you keep supporting Sunni insurgents in Iraq who are battling American troops, then the United States will be forced to act. Yessir, you can bet your bottom petro-dollar. You Saudis keep doing all that bad stuff and Uncle Sam is going to ... deliver $20 billion of cutting edge weaponry to you, ASAP.
That'll fix them.
Or will it fix us? It's easy to get things mixed up unless you remember the latest version of the Bush Doctrine: You're either with us, or we sell you smart bombs.
In the Bush administration, such appeasement counts as Grand Strategy. As the leading Sunni state, Saudi Arabia is supposed to serve as a counterbalance to Shiite Iranian terror-statism. Forget about Saudi Arabian terror-statism. And please don't wonder what happens if/when jihad revolutionaries, already thought to have infiltrated Saudi security forces, get their hands on our smart bombs. Inspired by the teachings of James Baker — practically an honorary Saudi princeling — Condi, Bob and George see the Saudis as Our Moderate Allies. Who cares if they promote jihad doctrine? Who cares if they sponsor Hamas? Who cares how many Saudis support (or belong to) Al Qaeda?
The Saudis and their fellow Sunni states, including Egypt and Jordan, are supposed to agree with the Bush administration that they have a stake in stabilizing Shiite-majority Iraq — which, in Bushland, is supposed to serve as a curb on Shiite Iran, and not simply turn into the natural ally thereof. It's in the Sunni states' interests, the Grand Strategy goes, to help stabilize Iraq and to support the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians — or, rather, between Israel and "good" Fatah Palestinians, not "bad" Hamas Palestinians. Never mind that both groups' charters call for the destruction of Israel. And never mind Saudi support for Hamas.
The Sunnis aren't buying the administration's worldview, which, in politically correct fashion, ignores the $64,000 Islamic question: Why on Allah's green earth would these states want to staunch the bleeding of ideological enemy No. 1 in Iraq? Of course, these same states are happy to buy American guns and ammo. Which may make Condi, Bob and George masters of let's-make-a-deal politick. However, that's not saying much. But the Saudis have promised to open an embassy in Baghdad and come to peace talks with Israel, administration boosters will say. Well, not exactly. The Saudis said they will consider opening the embassy and consider coming to a peace conference.
Frankly, opening that Baghdad embassy makes Saudi sense (so much easier to supply insurgents in Iraq using the diplomatic pouch). But since when is the presence of a world-class human rights violator at a peace conference something worth groveling for? Answer: Since this week, when the United States, represented by Rice, signed a joint statement endorsing the Saudi's pet peace plan, the one that sends Israel back to indefensible, pre-1967 borders. What comes in return? Arab recognition of Israel. (Oh, joy! The retrograde human rights violators might possibly recognize the freedom-loving democracy!) This is one big booby prize. It also marks a momentous shift in American policy that proves one calamitous truth: Jihad terrorism works.
It's a dispiriting truth for a dispiriting time. American resolve has given way to American submission, and almost no one has noticed. Very little outrage over the Saudi sale has bubbled over, even in what could still be called the war camp. Israelis themselves have expressed little or no dissent. So far, with the exception of New Jersey Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson, the anti-Saudi support group seems centered in a small segment of the Democratic Left: New York Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner, Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, leftist writer Robert Scheer, and presidential candidate John Edwards.
Which leaves us where, exactly? Somehow, it seems appropriate to reply: wandering in the wilderness.
Dick
6) Ban the Burqa - and the Niqab Too
by Daniel Pipes
Once-exotic forms of Muslim women's head and body garments have now become both familiar in the West and the source of fractious political and legal disputes.
The hijab (a hair-covering) is ever-more popular in Detroit but has been banned from French public schools, discouraged by the International Football Association Board, and excluded from a court in the U.S. state of Georgia.
The jilbab (a garment that leaves only the face and hands exposed) was, in a case partly argued by Tony Blair's wife, first allowed, then forbidden in an English school.
Sultaana Freeman wanted her Florida drivers license to show her in a niqab, but an Orlando court said no.
The niqab (a total covering except for the eyes) became a hot topic when Jack Straw, a British Labour politician, wrote that he "felt uncomfortable" talking to women wearing it. If Quebec election authorities disallow the niqab from voting booths and a judge disallowed it from a Florida driver's license, it is permitted in British courts and a Dutch candidate for municipal office wore one. A British hospital even invented a niqab patients' gown.
The burqa (a total head and body covering) has been barred from classrooms in the UK, is illegal in public places in five Belgian towns, and the Dutch legislature has attempted to ban it altogether. Italy's "Charter of Values, Citizenship and Immigration" calls face coverings not acceptable. A courtroom in the United States has expelled a burqa'ed woman.
In brief, no general rules govern Islamic headwear in the West.
Some observers would ban hijabs from public places, but what legal grounds exist for doing so? Following my rule of thumb that Muslims enjoy the same rights and obligations as other citizens, but not special rights or obligations, a woman's freedom of expression grants her the option to wear a hijab.
In contrast, burqas and niqabs should be banned in all public spaces because they present a security risk. Anyone might lurk under those shrouds – female or male, Muslim or non-Muslim, decent citizen, fugitive, or criminal – with who knows what evil purposes.
Some examples (full details can be found at my weblog entry, "The Niqab and Burqa as Security Threats"): A spectacular act of would-be escape took place in early July, when Maulana Mohammad Abdul Aziz Ghazi, 46, tried to flee the Red Mosque complex in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he had helped lead an insurrection aiming to topple the government. He donned a black burqa and high heels but, unfortunately for him, his height, demeanor, and pot belly gave him away, leading to his arrest.
One of the July 2005 London bombers, Yassin Omar, 26, took on the burqa twice – once when fleeing the scene of the crime, then a day later, when fleeing London for the Midlands.
Other male burqa'ed fugitives include a Somali murder suspect in the United Kingdom, Palestinian killers fleeing Israeli justice, a member of the Taliban fleeing NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the murderer of a Sunni Islamist in Pakistan.
Burqas and niqabs also facilitate non-political criminal behavior. Unsurprisingly, favorite targets of robberies include jewelry stores (examples come from Canada, Great Britain, and India) and banks (Great Britain, Bosnia, and two 2007 attacks in Philadelphia). Curiously, in Kenya, street prostitutes have donned buibuis (which reveals slightly more of the face than a niqab), the better to blend into the night population and avoid the police.
Expressing the universal fear aroused by these garments, a recent Pakistani horror film, Zibahkhana (meaning "slaughterhouse" in Urdu) includes a sadistic cannibalistic killer figure dubbed "Burqa Man."
The practice of covering the face derives from tribal customs that build on Islamic law, not the law itself. For example, some tribeswomen in Saudi Arabia's Al-Kharj region put on the burqa at puberty, then never take it off – not for other women, not for their husbands, and not for their children. These family members typically see the woman's face only when viewing her corpse.
British research offers another reason to drop the burqa and niqab, finding that covered women and their breast-fed children lack sufficient amounts of vitamin D (which the skin absorbs from sunlight) and are at serious risk of rickets.
Nothing in Islam requires turning females into shapeless, faceless zombies; good sense calls for modesty itself to be modest. The time has come everywhere to ban from public places these hideous, unhealthy, socially divisive, terrorist-enabling, and criminal-friendly garments.
Secondly, the West will press Israel to make concessions not the Palestinians because the West wants/needs a near term resolution regardless of the long term implications that such might not hold. The entire Middle East was divided by Western powers without regard to long term implications and thus we have the problems we now face.
Furthermore, as Ne'eman points out Abbas cannot guarantee, from a military standpoint, anything because Fatah faded in the face of an Hamas onslaught so a future war could be in the making rather than peace.
Olmert is weak and needs a resolution in order to stay in power, something he dearly wants. Can he be trusted to protect Israel's security needs? Can a negotiating party whose every word has proven unreliable suddenly become trustworthy? What basis exists for believing so?
Fairly weighty matters and questions. (See 1 below.)
I have just concluded reading "The Lost Battalion" by Richard Slotkin. It tells the story of the pasted together ethically diverse WW 1, battalion which was led by white officers and how they were considered incapable of fighting because their patriotism was questioned. In every instance their training and equipment was inferior though their leadership, ultimately turned out to be quite commendable.
It also tells the story of how unprepared we were to enter the War because Wilson failed to take the necessary steps believing the War would not come and we would remain outside. In essence it proves once again how history repeats itself.
The book ends by telling the story of how the members of the Lost Battalion and its many heroes, who won Medals of Honor and Croix de Guerre (a black American soldier was the first,)were treated upon their return. In fact the German fascism they fought against was what they faced when they returned home. Our government dishonored their service by failing to assist them in finding work, postponed their bonus payments and on and on. Many who returned South were lynched and attacked by mobs fearing their military service and social acceptance by the French would make them seek "independence" and become "uppity."
It is another recording of our tragic history and a worthwhile read for those with a strong stomach.
Is something up from a military standpoint? Time is running out on GW should he wish to take military action against Iran. So far he has failed to prepare the nation for such and though he might be able to lay his case before the various Congressional and Senatorial Committees, as he did regarding Intelligence matters with Sen. Rockefeller, it all unraveled into partisan politics when informed Democrats subsequently sought political cover. (see 2 below.)
Be wary of a politician's denial and most particularly a weak one. (See 3 below.)
Herb Keinon expresses serious doubts and terms the Olmert-Abbas meeting a sideshow. (See 4 below.)
Diana West see hypocrisy in GW's latest weapons offer. (See 5 below.)
Daniel Pipes becomes a fashion editor? (See 6 below.)
Dick
1) A Guide to Mideast Peace 2007
By Yisrael Ne'eman
By this autumn Israel and the Palestinians are expected to begin permanent status negotiations within the framework of an international forum for peace in the Middle East. The two main players are to be Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman (President) Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. So how will this event be different than all the others, including the Oslo process? This time Israel and the Palestinians are to arrive at a final agreement first and only afterwards are the sides to discuss the step by step implementation. There are to be no more interim agreements, just the permanent or final status accords. The mechanism will then be built for implementation. The idea is that everyone will know the "price for peace" upfront and both governments will be able to prepare their populations for the "inevitable".
So what about UN Res. 242 (Nov. 1967), the Camp David Accords and Framework for Peace in the Middle East (1979) negotiated by Israeli PM Menachem Begin and Egyptian Pres.Anwar Sadat calling for Palestinian autonomy, the Saudi peace plan (2002), the Arab peace initiative (current), the Clinton Outline (Dec. 2000), the Bush Road Map (2003), the Geneva Initiative (2003), the Bush-Sharon exchange of letters and US commitments(April 2004), the Israeli security plan based on territorial compromise (known as the Allon Plan, 1967 and revised afterwards), the return of Palestinian refugees� UN Res. 194 clause 11 (Dec. 1948), Israeli settlements across the 1967 lines (continuing until the present) and the possible Hamas spoiler who reject compromise, recognition, peace or any dealings with Israel?
Without delving into all aspects of the above mentioned there are certain understood common denominators:
* There is to be no Palestinian refugee return? UN Res. 194 states, "that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return," and holding the governments and authorities responsible for the situation to be responsible for "repatriation, resettlement, compensation and rehabilitation" of the refugees. The Bush-Sharon exchange of letters and Congressional commitment of 2004 endorsed Israeli policy against Palestinian refugee return while the Saudi peace plan as expressed in UN Res. 1397 speaks of a two-state solution "within secure and recognized borders" and re-emphasizes Res. 242 (1967) calling for "a just solution of the refugee problem" (which here can be interpreted as both Arab and Jewish). The Clinton Outline and even the Geneva Initiative which saw possible symbolic return of a minimal amount of Palestinian refugees to Israel spoke of the necessity of two nationalisms firmly established in their two states living side by side. This is no longer the case today as refugees would only be admitted to the Palestinian state-to-be or rehabilitated with international funding elsewhere, most likely in the Arab world and especially where they already reside.
* Territorially all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) will be handed over to Palestinian Authority (later State) control. Gaza has no Jewish population as of late summer 2005 and all discussions and attempts at agreements indicate Palestinian control over the vast majority of the West Bank (90% or more). Since 1967 even the US government has constantly insisted on only minor territorial adjustments to be made on Israel's border with the West Bank, beginning with Pres. Nixon's Sec. of State William Roger's Plan (1969). Pres. Bush speaks of a "contiguous" Palestinian state in the West Bank with a road link to Gaza which was agreed upon by Israel in the discussions earlier brokered by Pres. Clinton at Camp David 2000 between Israeli PM Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasir Arafat. Even the Israeli developed security concept known as the Allon Plan envisioned a return of approximately 60% of the West Bank to Arab control (at the time Jordan).
Years later PM Ariel Sharon was known to accept the Allon Plan in principle (a security zone held by Israel to be on an average 16 kilometers or about ten miles wide along the Jordan River) but insisted on adding large Jewish settlement blocs close to Israel's 1967 lines into Israel proper. This was done beginning in 2002 by building the security fence east of those West Bank settlements. Somewhere between 6 and 8 % of the West Bank would remain in Israel. This area would contain 70% of all Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The fence is not complete hence we do not know the final demarcation. Holding the full territory as envisioned in the Allon Plan and the settlement blocs would still envision a withdrawal from some 55% of the West Bank.
In the international arena Israel is expected to relinquish over 90% of the West Bank but security necessities, Jewish demographics and a fair amount of consensus in Israel will not allow for such a large concession. The Palestinians of course will accept nothing less. Furthermore there are 250,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. Even if "only" 30% needed to be evacuated that means 75,000 people would need to relocated their lives. Two years after the Gaza evacuation involving 8,000 residents no one is yet in permanent housing due to massive government planning and implementation failure. Who today trusts the government over issues of compensation?
* Jerusalem will be divided into two capital cities, one Israeli and one Palestinian. Today there are close to half a million Jews in Jerusalem alongside a continually growing Arab population of 250,000 which constantly gnaws away at the Jewish majority. National status is to be determined by whether the neighborhoods are Jewish or Arab. Jerusalem's municipal boundaries will be a checkerboard on its eastern side and questions of policing, border crossings and integrated city services need to be confronted. Much of these arrangements are technical. Israel always guaranteed access to holy sites for all but based on the behavior of the Moslem Wakf who control the mosques on the Temple Mount no one can expect this to be the case on the Palestinian side. Most importantly, is there any possibility of compromise on the Temple Mount? As complicated as the Jerusalem issue may be, control of the Old City and Temple Mount is further charged with religious, historical and raw emotional issues. This has been discussed time and again and is emphasized in the Clinton Outline. Although considered taboo by many in Israel all those discussing Jerusalem know it will be two cities (and in many cases already is), just like there will be two states.
* Security is dependent on whether the Palestinian forces under Abbas and Fatah are trustworthy. In Gaza they proved a paper tiger when challenged by Hamas, collapsing within a week. Massive endemic corruption makes them an easy target for payoffs and bribes for terror activities. The forces themselves are made up of different and often competing family factions whose loyalties are not necessarily to a Fatah dominated Palestinian State. And lest one forgets, the Hamas controls Gaza (where they are now being challenged by Al Qaeda). Hamas will challenge Fatah for control of the West Bank where they were also voted into power in the January 2006 parliamentary elections. Fatah must win for any agreement to succeed with Israel.
To sum up there is a fair amount of understanding concerning refugees and even the division of Jerusalem (excluding the holy sites and the Old City). As for permanent borders the question of the security zone along the Jordan Rift Valley (Allon Plan) is a major issue not only with the Palestinians but in the regional context since the area would be Israel's front line should Jordan succumb to a radical Islamic uprising whereby the next step could be a sweep through the West Bank, putting those Islamic forces 15 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast. It should be pointed out that now Defense Minister Ehud Barak as PM conceded the Jordan Rift at Camp David 2000 when negotiating with Arafat. Renewed Palestinian terrorism, uncontrolled by the PA security forces (or even abetted by them) could unleash ground and rocket attacks across the new agreed upon borders threatening Israel�s main population centers. Supposedly Israeli security forces would have the right to take up positions along the Jordan River in an emergency (discussed at Camp David 2000) and continue to exercise actions of "hot pursuit" after terrorists (Bush-Sharon letters 2004). But how are both of these stipulations interpreted when crossing the borders of an independent Palestinian State? A liberal interpretation in Israel's favor should not be expected.
Opposition by the Israel Right and religious can certainly be expected, but far worse will be the rise in Palestinian terrorism as a result of the negotiations. The Americans seem convinced that should the final outcome be known from the outset and then implemented in stages most opposition will fade especially if massive funding accompanies each step. The possibility of success is miniscule despite certain pre-understandings. One should not forget for a second that even should all go well between Israel and Palestinian West Bank Abbas/Fayad government, Hamas and their Islamist allies are sworn to undermine the process every step of the way.
2) Big US Armed Forces integrated Valiant Shield exercises simulate possible operation against Iran
The maneuvers beginning Monday, Aug. 6, in waters off Guam include the simultaneous deployment of three carriers and their air and naval strike groups: USS Stennis, USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, altogether 30 warships, 280 warplanes and 22,000 soldiers and sailors. The exercise is commanded by Adm. Robert Willard, Pacific Fleet chief.
Military sources report: This will be America’s last major combined sea-air war game before during Bush presidency which ends in Jan. 2009 and last opportunity for drilling large-scale combined units should the president decide on a military operation against Iran.
To indicate that outside eyes were not desired, foreign observers who attended the Pacific exercises last year were not invited this year. US military sources in the region said that invitations to officers of regional nations to watch the drills would have had to include Malaysia, which has close ties with Iran.
According to these military sources, the exercises will be held in conditions resembling as closely as possible those in Iran and practice assaults of the kind that may be executed against the Islamic Republic.
Admiral Willard may well be describing the realities expected to prevail in a real-life offensive against the Islamic Republic..
Valiant Shield, he said, will “include the complexities of operating three aircraft carriers in the same area while at the same time adding in the operations of another component – the fighters, bombers and tankers of the US Air Force.”
He said the exercise will not detract from the Navy’s “real world” missions in the Persian Gulf but help drill the Navy and its crews [for that real world.]
Valiant Shield’s commander’s words may have been meant to answer the sharp criticism coming from Persian Gulf governments.
“Washington may be sending the USS Enterprise Strike Group to the Persian Gulf. It has not yet arrived. The other two American carriers, Nimitz and Stennis, have gone to take part in an exercise far away in the Pacific.”
“So where does that leave us?” asked a Gulf military official. “Vice President Dick Cheney and Robert Gates promised three American air carriers to protect us plus naval, marine and air forces. Now all the carriers are gone.”
3)[Denial by Prime Minister's Office] Olmert considers land swap as part of future peace deal: Response To The Main Headline In Ha'aretz [copy below]]
In response to the main headline in this morning's Ha'aretz, we do not know
of any plan as described in the article. We would like to clarify that such
a plan has not been considered, nor is it being raised for discussion in any
forum. We express our amazement at this erroneous article, which was
published without any attempt being made to ascertain from us its accuracy.
-----------------
Olmert considers land swap as part of future peace deal
By Akiva Eldar, Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is examining a new framework for peace in which
Israel will propose transferring to the Palestinian state areas equivalent
to 100 percent of the territories conquered in 1967.
Israel will suggest to the Palestinians to conduct negotiations for adequate
territorial compensation from Israel's sovereign territory, in exchange for
settlement blocs amounting to about 5 percent of the West Bank's area.
Israel is also examining various options of exchanging settlement blocs with
Arab community blocs within Israel, in agreement with the residents. An
agreement on this issue would enable Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Avigdor
Lieberman, to remain in the coalition.
The new framework was presented to Olmert by President Shimon Peres, a few
days after he entered the President's Residence. It includes a timetable for
negotiations for the final status agreement and implementing it, similar to
the framework of the Peres-Abu Ala agreement reached at the end of 2001.
Olmert has not yet decided on his position regarding all the plan's clauses,
but apparently has not dismissed its main ideas.
Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas agreed Monday that cooperation between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority would be expanded, in an effort to expedite
progress in their talks for the establishment of the Palestinian state.
"Exchanges between the two sides will become increasingly more substantive,
and will deal less with routine matters," a senior political source in
Jerusalem said Monday.
The three-hour meeting between Olmert and Abbas took place in two parts: a
private meeting just between the leaders, and a lunch with their teams of
advisers.
Sources in the Prime Minister's Bureau said that the atmosphere at the
meeting was constructive.
Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO negotiating team, described Monday's meeting
between Olmert and Abbas as serious and detailed.
"Abbas did not come to the meeting with a magic wand, and neither did Mr.
Olmert," Erekat said at a news conference. "There is an agreement on a
series of meetings to discuss the issues, including the establishment of a
Palestinian state."
Abbas thanked Olmert for the release of 255 Palestinians held in Israeli
prisons, and expressed hope that the next step would result in the freeing
of more prisoners. The two decided to institute a special ministerial
committee, and that the Palestinian Authority will be represented by
Interior Minister Abd al-Razek al-Yihiye.
Israel also promised the Palestinians to reconsider the request of the
militants who were expelled after the siege on the Church of the Nativity in
2002.
"The negotiations on renewing the diplomatic talks between the two sides
have reached fruition," Erekat said Monday. "What we now need is decisions
by the two leaders. We do not need to do anything new for a regional summit,
but to clarify the existing initiatives and the signed agreements. We
support the Arab [League] initiative and the road map as the basis for this
summit."
Erekat also said that the two leaders would hold at least three more
meetings before the November summit in Washington.
Commenting on the Abbas-Olmert meeting, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said
that he did not expect it to produce any results.
After the tete-a-tete, Olmert said he and Abbas discussed issues fundamental
to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
"We have decided to expand the negotiations between us in order to advance
mutual understanding, and formulate the framework that will allow us to move
forward toward establishing a Palestinian state," Olmert said. "Our mutual
goal is to realize the shared vision between us and [U.S. President George]
Bush regarding the establishment of two states for two peoples, who live
side by side in security and peace. We want to achieve this as soon as
possible."
He said he had no intention of stalling.
During the expanded meeting, the Palestinians spoke of the resumed security
cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. They handed a
document to Olmert and his aides detailing the PA's steps to enhance
security in recent weeks, including the arrest of several members of terror
organizations, and captured munitions and explosives that was handed over to
Israel.
4) Analysis: Nothing but a sideshow
By HERB KEINON
On the surface, it all looks so very important.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert drives down to Jericho, two helicopters hovering overhead, for the first meeting in the West Bank of an Israeli prime minister and a Palestinian leader since Ehud Barak met with Yasser Arafat before the violence of September 2000.
Dramatic? Historic? The main event? Forget it. Instead, pay close attention to a line former Quartet envoy James Wolfensohn said in an interview last month with Haaretz.
"There has to be a moment when Israelis and Palestinians understand that they are a sideshow," he said in a very telling comment.
And, if that wasn't clear enough, Wolfensohn piled it on for effect: "Israelis and Palestinians really should get over thinking that they're a show on Broadway. They are a show in the Village, off-off-off-off Broadway."
When Olmert and Abbas sat down in Jericho's Intercontinental Hotel over a traditional Arab dish of chicken and rice, they were talking about issues that effect us deeply - what are increasingly being referred to very vaguely as the "fundamental issues." But these issues, as fundamental as they might be, must be seen within the greater context of the overall tumult in the Middle East and the US effort to do something - anything - to contain it.
Olmert made two seemingly contradictory statements in Jericho.
First, when he arrived, he said: "I came here in order to discuss with you the fundamental issues outstanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, hoping that this will lead us soon into negotiations about the creation of a Palestinian state." And then, after he met Abbas for a 90 minute tête-à-tête, he said: "The aim is to achieve US President George Bush's vision which both we and the Palestinians share of two states for two peoples, living in security and peace side by side, and we want to do this as soon as possible." He added that this process must be based on the road map.
But there is an inherent contradiction between plans now to sketch out with the Palestinians an agreement of principles or a framework for an agreement, and the road map.
The road map was based on a step by step process. First the Palestinians stop terrorism, and then there are negotiations for peace.
While pledging allegiance to the road map, Olmert is now turning that step-by-step process around. Rather than first security, and then peace, Olmert and Abbas are talking roughly about how peace will look, believing that then security will be achieved.
Ariel Sharon spent a lot of time in 2001 and 2002 convincing both the Americans and the Israeli public of the need to achieve security first, and then to talk about an overarching peace agreement. But now there is suddenly no time, and the feeling in Jerusalem is that waiting for the PA to uproot the terrorist infrastructure, as spelled out in the road map, would mean waiting for ever, and in the meantime Hamas would not only have consolidated its hold on Gaza, but also made giant inroads into the West Bank.
Suddenly there is a new sense of urgency because of the fear that there is no time to wait, and that Hamas - and by extension Iran - will move on the West Bank if some kind of accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians is not reached.
And this is where Wolfensohn's theory about our being off-off-off-off Broadway comes into play.
The US needs progress here to try and consolidate a moderate Arab coalition as a counterbalance to the threatening Shi'ite crescent. And there is no better way to breathe life into this moderate coalition then to show diplomatic progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
he US needs a regional meeting in November no less, and probably far more, than either the Israelis or the Palestinians. The US needs this meeting to show the Iranians that there is a coalition of the moderate Arab willing who will some day stand up to them.
The US, at some point, will leave Iraq, but it is unlikely to do so unless it has assurances that there is a coalition of states that will not just let Iran march into the breach. It is in the US's interests to cobble this coalition together as soon as possible. At the regional conference, Bush wants to be able to say: "I created the moderate Arab coalition."
We're important, but we're just one brick in the anti-Iranian coalition the Americans want to form. It is not insignificant that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates accompanied Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her visit last week to Egypt and Saudi Arabia - but did not follow her to Israel. Right now, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries are the cornerstones of this coalition. Israel and the Palestinians, or rather a possible Israeli-Palestinian agreement, are the glue the US has in mind to stick that coalition together. •
5) Want to stop terrorism? Give in to its supporters
By Diana West
Boy, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, that Condi Rice and Bob Gates sure drive a tough bargain.
Visiting "the kingdom" (the grating, fairytale nickname for that oil-rich human-rights pit), the U.S. secretaries of state and defense delivered a blunt message: If you keep fomenting and financing global jihad; if you keep teaching and preaching the eradication or repression of non-Muslims; if you keep trampling human rights, women's rights, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech; and if you keep supporting Sunni insurgents in Iraq who are battling American troops, then the United States will be forced to act. Yessir, you can bet your bottom petro-dollar. You Saudis keep doing all that bad stuff and Uncle Sam is going to ... deliver $20 billion of cutting edge weaponry to you, ASAP.
That'll fix them.
Or will it fix us? It's easy to get things mixed up unless you remember the latest version of the Bush Doctrine: You're either with us, or we sell you smart bombs.
In the Bush administration, such appeasement counts as Grand Strategy. As the leading Sunni state, Saudi Arabia is supposed to serve as a counterbalance to Shiite Iranian terror-statism. Forget about Saudi Arabian terror-statism. And please don't wonder what happens if/when jihad revolutionaries, already thought to have infiltrated Saudi security forces, get their hands on our smart bombs. Inspired by the teachings of James Baker — practically an honorary Saudi princeling — Condi, Bob and George see the Saudis as Our Moderate Allies. Who cares if they promote jihad doctrine? Who cares if they sponsor Hamas? Who cares how many Saudis support (or belong to) Al Qaeda?
The Saudis and their fellow Sunni states, including Egypt and Jordan, are supposed to agree with the Bush administration that they have a stake in stabilizing Shiite-majority Iraq — which, in Bushland, is supposed to serve as a curb on Shiite Iran, and not simply turn into the natural ally thereof. It's in the Sunni states' interests, the Grand Strategy goes, to help stabilize Iraq and to support the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians — or, rather, between Israel and "good" Fatah Palestinians, not "bad" Hamas Palestinians. Never mind that both groups' charters call for the destruction of Israel. And never mind Saudi support for Hamas.
The Sunnis aren't buying the administration's worldview, which, in politically correct fashion, ignores the $64,000 Islamic question: Why on Allah's green earth would these states want to staunch the bleeding of ideological enemy No. 1 in Iraq? Of course, these same states are happy to buy American guns and ammo. Which may make Condi, Bob and George masters of let's-make-a-deal politick. However, that's not saying much. But the Saudis have promised to open an embassy in Baghdad and come to peace talks with Israel, administration boosters will say. Well, not exactly. The Saudis said they will consider opening the embassy and consider coming to a peace conference.
Frankly, opening that Baghdad embassy makes Saudi sense (so much easier to supply insurgents in Iraq using the diplomatic pouch). But since when is the presence of a world-class human rights violator at a peace conference something worth groveling for? Answer: Since this week, when the United States, represented by Rice, signed a joint statement endorsing the Saudi's pet peace plan, the one that sends Israel back to indefensible, pre-1967 borders. What comes in return? Arab recognition of Israel. (Oh, joy! The retrograde human rights violators might possibly recognize the freedom-loving democracy!) This is one big booby prize. It also marks a momentous shift in American policy that proves one calamitous truth: Jihad terrorism works.
It's a dispiriting truth for a dispiriting time. American resolve has given way to American submission, and almost no one has noticed. Very little outrage over the Saudi sale has bubbled over, even in what could still be called the war camp. Israelis themselves have expressed little or no dissent. So far, with the exception of New Jersey Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson, the anti-Saudi support group seems centered in a small segment of the Democratic Left: New York Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner, Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, leftist writer Robert Scheer, and presidential candidate John Edwards.
Which leaves us where, exactly? Somehow, it seems appropriate to reply: wandering in the wilderness.
Dick
6) Ban the Burqa - and the Niqab Too
by Daniel Pipes
Once-exotic forms of Muslim women's head and body garments have now become both familiar in the West and the source of fractious political and legal disputes.
The hijab (a hair-covering) is ever-more popular in Detroit but has been banned from French public schools, discouraged by the International Football Association Board, and excluded from a court in the U.S. state of Georgia.
The jilbab (a garment that leaves only the face and hands exposed) was, in a case partly argued by Tony Blair's wife, first allowed, then forbidden in an English school.
Sultaana Freeman wanted her Florida drivers license to show her in a niqab, but an Orlando court said no.
The niqab (a total covering except for the eyes) became a hot topic when Jack Straw, a British Labour politician, wrote that he "felt uncomfortable" talking to women wearing it. If Quebec election authorities disallow the niqab from voting booths and a judge disallowed it from a Florida driver's license, it is permitted in British courts and a Dutch candidate for municipal office wore one. A British hospital even invented a niqab patients' gown.
The burqa (a total head and body covering) has been barred from classrooms in the UK, is illegal in public places in five Belgian towns, and the Dutch legislature has attempted to ban it altogether. Italy's "Charter of Values, Citizenship and Immigration" calls face coverings not acceptable. A courtroom in the United States has expelled a burqa'ed woman.
In brief, no general rules govern Islamic headwear in the West.
Some observers would ban hijabs from public places, but what legal grounds exist for doing so? Following my rule of thumb that Muslims enjoy the same rights and obligations as other citizens, but not special rights or obligations, a woman's freedom of expression grants her the option to wear a hijab.
In contrast, burqas and niqabs should be banned in all public spaces because they present a security risk. Anyone might lurk under those shrouds – female or male, Muslim or non-Muslim, decent citizen, fugitive, or criminal – with who knows what evil purposes.
Some examples (full details can be found at my weblog entry, "The Niqab and Burqa as Security Threats"): A spectacular act of would-be escape took place in early July, when Maulana Mohammad Abdul Aziz Ghazi, 46, tried to flee the Red Mosque complex in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he had helped lead an insurrection aiming to topple the government. He donned a black burqa and high heels but, unfortunately for him, his height, demeanor, and pot belly gave him away, leading to his arrest.
One of the July 2005 London bombers, Yassin Omar, 26, took on the burqa twice – once when fleeing the scene of the crime, then a day later, when fleeing London for the Midlands.
Other male burqa'ed fugitives include a Somali murder suspect in the United Kingdom, Palestinian killers fleeing Israeli justice, a member of the Taliban fleeing NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the murderer of a Sunni Islamist in Pakistan.
Burqas and niqabs also facilitate non-political criminal behavior. Unsurprisingly, favorite targets of robberies include jewelry stores (examples come from Canada, Great Britain, and India) and banks (Great Britain, Bosnia, and two 2007 attacks in Philadelphia). Curiously, in Kenya, street prostitutes have donned buibuis (which reveals slightly more of the face than a niqab), the better to blend into the night population and avoid the police.
Expressing the universal fear aroused by these garments, a recent Pakistani horror film, Zibahkhana (meaning "slaughterhouse" in Urdu) includes a sadistic cannibalistic killer figure dubbed "Burqa Man."
The practice of covering the face derives from tribal customs that build on Islamic law, not the law itself. For example, some tribeswomen in Saudi Arabia's Al-Kharj region put on the burqa at puberty, then never take it off – not for other women, not for their husbands, and not for their children. These family members typically see the woman's face only when viewing her corpse.
British research offers another reason to drop the burqa and niqab, finding that covered women and their breast-fed children lack sufficient amounts of vitamin D (which the skin absorbs from sunlight) and are at serious risk of rickets.
Nothing in Islam requires turning females into shapeless, faceless zombies; good sense calls for modesty itself to be modest. The time has come everywhere to ban from public places these hideous, unhealthy, socially divisive, terrorist-enabling, and criminal-friendly garments.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Democrats want to make The Filthy Rich Dirt Poor
Gingrich's Speech in New Hampshire has apparently caused a firestorm with many calling him a racist. You decide, (See 1 below.)
Democrats may be hell bent on raising taxes because the "filthy" rich need to become dirt poor!
Who is the turkey? (See 2 below.)
And what of Syria. Barry Rubin is interviewed. (See 3 below.)
Another Rubin, Michael, blasts GW for failures and broken promises. (See 4 below.)
Something is beginning to work in Iraq. (See 5 below.)
I have repeatedly said I do not understand why we continually pull Muslim/Arab chestnuts out of the fire. (See 6 below.)
Dennis Praeger hails forth on Islamophobia and considers it a good term. (See 7 below)
More from Sen. Lieberman. (See 8 below.)
Dick
1) "While the West Sleeps"
Speech by Newt Gingrich
We better start talking about the shape of the table now because this country doesn't have the stomach to face what is coming!
Gingrich's Speech in New Hampshire has apparently caused a firestorm, with many calling Gingrich a racist. You decide……..
“...I want to talk about ...briefly ... the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision and leadership that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of threat.
Let me give you two examples.
When the British this summer arrested people who were planning to blow up ten airliners in one day, they arrested a Muslim couple who were going to use their six month old baby in order to hide the bomb as baby milk.
Now, if I come to you tonight and say that there are people on the planet who hate you, and they are 15-25 year old males who are willing to die as long as they get to kill you, I've simply described the warrior culture which has been true historically for 6 or 7 thousand years.
But, if I come to you and say that there is a couple that hates you so
much that they will kill their six month old baby in order to kill you, I
am describing a level of ferocity, and a level of savagery beyond anything
we have tried to deal with.
And, what is truly frightening about the British experience is they
are arresting British citizens, born in Britain , speaking English, who went
to British schools, live in British housing, and have good jobs. Those
arrested represent a religious extremist culture that hates the Anglo Saxon
and western cultures.
This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to
want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will
lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it
will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing
of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons.
And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if
we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of
engagement that uses every technology we can find to break up their
capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free
speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from
recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to
destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to pro actively... develop the appropriate rules of engagement.
And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for
fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight
outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction,
and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally
different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating
barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.
This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national
dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait
until actually we...lose a city which could literally happen within
the next decade if we are unfortunate.
So this is a very sober description of the Islamic terrorist threat
facing us. We are NOW at war with a culture that wants not to take over
our land, but to KILL us... all-non Muslims, especially Americans and
Britons, and eventually ELIMINATE WESTERN CIVILIZATION
We must not put our heads in the sand and hope this is not true.
It is true and we cannot allow it to happen.
Maybe this is why Pres. Bush is so bull headed about the War?
Could it be so many people see Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan as the
trees but miss seeing the Islamic Movement as the Forest ?
I hope Bush is wrong, but I am afraid he is right.”
2) Nancy Pelosi condemned the new record highs of the stock market as
"just another example of Bush policies helping the rich get richer".
"First Bush cut taxes for the rich and the economy has rebounded with
new record low unemployment rates, which only means wealthy employers
are getting even wealthier at the expense of the underpaid working class".
She went on to say "Despite the billions of dollars being spent in
Iraq our economy is still strong and government tax revenues are at
all time highs. What this really means is that business is exploiting
the war effort and working Americans, just to put money in their own pockets".
When questioned about recent stock market highs she responded "Only
the rich benefit from these record highs. Working Americans, welfare
recipients, the unemployed and minorities are not sharing in these
obscene record highs". "There is no question these windfall profits
and income created by the Bush administration need to be taxed at 100%
rate and those dollars redistributed to the poor and working class".
"Profits from the stock market do not reward the hard work of our
working class who, by their hard work, are responsible for generating
these corporate profits that create stock market profits for the rich.
We in congress will need to address this issue to either tax these
profits or to control the stock market to prevent this unearned income
to flow to the rich."
When asked about the fact that over 80% of all Americans have
investments in mutual funds, retirement funds, 401K's, and the stock
market she replied "That may be true, but probably only 5% account for
90% of all these investment dollars. That's just more "trickle down"
economics claiming that if a corporation is successful that everyone
from the CEO to the floor sweeper benefit from higher wages and job
security which is ridiculous". "How much of this 'trickle down' ever
get to the unemployed and minorities in our county? None, and that's
the tragedy of these stock market highs."
"We democrats are going to address this issue after the election when
we take control of the congress. We will return to the 60% to 80% tax
rates on the rich and we will be able to take at least 30% of all
current lower Federal Income Tax tax payers off the roles and increase
government income substantially. We need to work toward the goal of
equalizing income in our country and at the same time limiting the amount the rich can invest."
When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied: "We
need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and
minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal
immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of
unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a
long ways to guarantee these people the standard of living they would
like to have as "Americans".
2)The Geopolitics of Turkey
By George Friedman
Rumors are floating in Washington and elsewhere that Turkey is preparing to move against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an anti-Turkish group seeking an independent Kurdistan in Turkey. One report, by Robert Novak in the Washington Post, says the United States is planning to collaborate with Turkey in suppressing the PKK in northern Iraq, an area the PKK has used as a safe-haven and launch pad to carry out attacks in Turkey.
The broader issue is not the PKK, but Kurdish independence. The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and, to a small extent, Syria. The one thing all of these countries have agreed on historically is they have no desire to see an independent Kurdistan. Even though each has, on occasion, used Kurdish dissidents in other countries as levers against those countries, there always has been a regional consensus against a Kurdish state.
Therefore, the news that Turkey is considering targeting the PKK is part of the broader issue. The evolution of events in Iraq has created an area that is now under the effective governance of the Iraqi Kurds. Under most scenarios, the Iraqi Kurds will retain a high degree of autonomy. Under some scenarios, the Kurds in Iraq could become formally independent, creating a Kurdish state. Besides facing serious opposition from Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions, that state would be a direct threat to Turkey and Iran, since it would become, by definition, the nucleus of a Kurdish state that would lay claim to other lands the Kurds regard as theirs.
This is one of the reasons Turkey was unwilling to participate in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Americans grew close to the Kurds in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, helping augment the power of an independent militia, the peshmerga, that allowed the Iraqi Kurds to carve out a surprising degree of independence within Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Turks were never comfortable with this policy and sent troops into Iraq in the 1990s to strike against the PKK and pre-empt any moves toward more extensive autonomy. Before the war started in 2003, however, the Turks turned down a U.S. offer to send troops into northern Iraq in exchange for allowing the United States to use Turkish territory to launch into Iraq. This refusal caused Turkey to lose a great deal of its mobility in the region.
The Turks, therefore, are tremendously concerned by the evolution of events in Iraq. Whether northern Iraq simply evolves into an autonomous region in a federal Iraq or becomes an independent state as Iraq disintegrates is almost immaterial. It will become a Kurdish homeland and it will exist on the Turkish border. And that, from the Turkish point of view, represents a strategic threat to Turkey.
Turkey, then, is flexing its muscles along the Iraqi border. Given that Turkey did not participate in the 2003 invasion, the American attitude toward Ankara has been complex, to say the least. On one hand, there was a sense of being let down by an old ally. On the other hand, given events in Iraq and U.S. relations with Iran and Syria, the United States was not in a position to completely alienate a Muslim neighbor of Iraq.
As time passed and the situation in Iraq worsened, the Americans became even less able to isolate Turkey. That is partly because its neutrality was important and partly because the United States was extremely concerned about Turkish reactions to growing Kurdish autonomy. For the Turks, this was a fundamental national security issue. If they felt the situation were getting out of hand in the Kurdish regions, they might well intervene militarily. At a time when the Kurds comprised the only group in Iraq that was generally pro-American, the United States could hardly let the Turks mangle them.
On the other hand, the United States was hardly in a position to stop the Turks. The last thing the United States wanted was a confrontation with the Turks in the North, for military as well as political reasons. Yet, the other last thing it wanted was for other Iraqis to see that the United States would not protect them.
Stated differently, the United States had no solution to the Turkish-Kurdish equation. So what the United States did was a tap dance -- by negotiating a series of very temporary solutions that kept the Turks from crossing the line and kept the Kurds intact. The current crisis is over the status of the PKK in northern Iraq and, to a great degree, over Turkish concerns that Iraqi Kurds will gain too much autonomy, not to mention over concerns about the future status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The United States may well be ready to support the Turks in rooting out PKK separatists, but it is not prepared to force the Iraqi Kurds to give them up. So it will try to persuade them to give them up voluntarily. This negotiating process will buy time, though at this point the American strategy in Iraq generally has been reduced to buying time.
All of this goes beyond the question of Iraq or an independent Kurdistan. The real question concerns the position of Turkey as a regional power in the wake of the Iraq war. This is a vital question because of Iran. The assumption we have consistently made is that, absent the United States, Iran would become the dominant regional power and would be in a position, in the long term, to dominate the Arabian Peninsula, shifting not only the regional balance of power but also potentially the global balance as well.
That analysis assumes that Turkey will play the role it has played since World War I -- an insular, defensive power that is cautious about making alliances and then cautious within alliances. In that role, Turkey is capable of limited assertiveness, as against the Greeks in Cyprus, but is not inclined to become too deeply entangled in the chaos of the Middle Eastern equation -- and when it does become involved, it is in the context of its alliance with the United States.
That is not Turkey's traditional role. Until the fall of the Ottomans at the end of World War I, and for centuries before then, Turkey was both the dominant Muslim power and a major power in North Africa, Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Turkey was the hub of a multinational empire that as far back as the 15th century dominated the Mediterranean and Black seas. It was the economic pivot of three continents, facilitating and controlling the trading system of much of the Eastern Hemisphere.
Turkey's contraction over the past 90 years or so is not the normal pattern in the region, and had to do with the internal crisis in Turkey since the fall of the Ottomans, the emergence of French and British power in the Middle East, followed by American power and the Cold War, which locked Turkey into place. During the Cold War, Turkey was trapped between the Americans and Soviets, and expansion of its power was unthinkable. Since then, Turkey has been slowly emerging as a key power.
One of the main drivers in this has been the significant growth of the Turkish economy. In 2006, Turkey had the 18th highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, and it has been growing at between 5 percent and 8 percent a year for more than five years. It ranks just behind Belgium and ahead of Sweden in GDP. It has the largest economy of any Muslim country -- including Saudi Arabia. And it has done this in spite of, or perhaps because of, not having been admitted to the European Union. While per capita GDP lags, it is total GDP that measures weight in the international system. China, for example, is 109th in per capita GDP. Its international power rests on it being fourth in total GDP.
Turkey is not China, but in becoming the largest Muslim economy, as well as the largest economy in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus and east to the Hindu Kush, Turkey is moving to regain its traditional position of primacy in the region. Its growth is still fragile and can be disrupted, but there is no question that it has become the leading regional economy, as well as one of the most dynamic. Additionally, Turkey's geographic position greatly enables it to become Europe's primary transit hub for energy supplies, especially at a time when Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on Russia.
This obviously has increased its regional influence. In the Balkans, for example, where Turkey historically has been a dominant power, the Turks have again emerged as a major influence over the region's two Muslim states -- and have managed to carve out for themselves a prominent position as regards other countries in the region as well. The country's economic dynamism has helped reorient some of the region away from Europe, toward Turkey. Similarly, Turkish economic influence can be felt elsewhere in the region, particularly as a supplement to its strategic relationship with Israel.
Turkey's problem is that in every direction it faces, its economic expansion is blocked by politico-military friction. So, for example, its influence in the Balkans is blocked by its long-standing friction with Greece. In the Caucasus, its friction with Armenia limits its ability to influence events. Tensions with Syria and Iraq block Syrian influence to the south. To the east, a wary Iran that is ideologically opposed to Turkey blocks Ankara's influence.
As Turkey grows, an interesting imbalance has to develop. The ability of Greece, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Iran to remain hostile to Turkey decreases as the Turkish economy grows. Ideology and history are very real things, but so is the economic power of a dynamic economy. As important, Turkey's willingness to accept its highly constrained role indefinitely, while its economic -- and therefore political -- influence grows, is limited. Turkey's economic power, coupled with its substantial regional military power, will over time change the balance of power in each of the regions Turkey faces.
Not only does Turkey interface with an extraordinary number of regions, but its economy also is the major one in each of those regions, while Turkish military power usually is pre-eminent as well. When Turkey develops economically, it develops militarily. It then becomes the leading power -- in many regions. That is what it means to be a pivotal power.
In 2003, the United States was cautious with Turkey, though in the final analysis it was indifferent. It no longer can be indifferent. The United States is now in the process of planning the post-Iraq war era, and even if it does retain permanent bases in Iraq -- dubious for a number of reasons -- it will have to have a regional power to counterbalance Iran. Iran has always been aware of and cautious with Turkey, but never as much as now -- while Turkey is growing economically and doing the heavy lifting on the Kurds. Iran does not want to antagonize the Turks.
The United States and Iran have been talking -- just recently engaging in seven hours of formal discussions. But Iran, betting that the United States will withdraw from Iraq, is not taking the talks as seriously as it might. The United States has few levers to use against Iran. It is therefore not surprising that it has reached out to the biggest lever.
In the short run, Turkey, if it works with the United States, represents a counterweight to Iran, not only in general, but also specifically in Iraq. From the American point of view, a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq would introduce a major force native to the region that certainly would give Iran pause in its behavior in Iraq. This would mean the destruction of Kurdish hopes for independence, though the United States has on several past occasions raised and then dashed Kurdish hopes. In this sense, Novak's article makes a great deal of sense. The PKK would provide a reasonable excuse for a Turkish intervention in Iraq, both in the region and in Turkey. Anything that blocks the Kurds will be acceptable to the Turkish public, and even to Iran.
It is the longer run that is becoming interesting, however. If the United States is not going to continue counterbalancing Iran in the region, then it is in Turkey's interest to do so. It also is increasingly within Turkey's reach. But it must be understood that, given geography, the growth of Turkish power will not be confined to one direction. A powerful and self-confident Turkey has a geographical position that inevitably reflects all the regions that pivot around it.
For the past 90 years, Turkey has not played its historic role. Now, however, economic and politico-military indicators point to Turkey's slow reclamation of that role. The rumors about Turkish action against the PKK have much broader significance. They point to a changing role for Turkey -- and that will mean massive regional changes over time.
3) Barry Rubin is the Director of Global Research for International Affairs Center of The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. His latest book is entitled "The Truth About Syria"
Rubin was recently interviewed and here is a brief overview.
Question: How has Assad managed to survive?
Answer: It has failed to provide a better life for its citizens, to defeat Israel and to unify the Arab world but yes, it has survived. It has done so through ruthless ideology, authoritarianism, building of hatred and scapegoating. It need Israel to survive - conflict is its main asset.
Question: Golan is not a priority?
Answer: If Syria were given the Golan back the next day its situation would not change and then the people would begin to ask questions about their plight about their lack of democracy, lack of free speech and why so much money is spent on the military.
Peace in the region makes Israel a normal player and enhances the influence of America. This is not in Syria's best interest as Assad sees it.
Question Why does Syria matter so much?
Answer: Because it can and is causing trouble in Lebanon. Its threats and violence is paying off as the Western World offers concessions etc.
Question: Is there a benefit to engaging Syria?
Answer: No, because they know how to play the game and though they talk they want to engage they are simply trying to avoid the Hariri Trial because it will expose some of their most senior leaders to examination and possible conviction for criminal acts etc.
Question" Can Syria be drawn away from Iran?
Answer: Probably not because Syria needs what they receive from Iran and they also continually bleed Lebanon. Syria produces nothing and sells even less. It also gets Iranian protection from the U.S. and Israel. Finally, it receives Islamist cover from its own population. All the West can offer is commercial investment but that means opening up the Syrian economy and that would probably bring down Assad and for sure loosen his control over the nation.
Question: How should America approach Syria?
Answer: Through touch diplomacy and be told the U.S. will not engage until it changes its policy and Israel will not engage either until Assad does something to stop terrorism.
4) Michael Rubin on Bush's soft policy towards PKK, Palestinians: Kicking diplomatic problems down the road is not a strategy: President Bush's Broken Promises
by Michael Rubin
During his last 18 months in office, President Bush confronts a broader set
of international crises than in his first 18 months. While pundits blame
unilateralism and the Iraq war, the deterioration of Washington's relations
with once-staunch allies has less to do with a lack of diplomacy and more to
do with its kind.
Too often, the administration has sacrificed long-term credibility for
short-term calm. Take Turkey. At the June 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul,
President Bush promised Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the
U.S. military would shut down Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorists in
Iraq. He did not. Three years later, the Turks no longer trust U.S. promises
and may send their army into Iraqi Kurdistan.
Already the damage to U.S. prestige is severe. Once among America's closest
allies, Turkey, according to a Pew Global Attitudes Project poll last month,
is the most anti-American country in the world. Only 9% of Turks have a
favorable impression of the U.S.; 83% hold the opposite view. Most blame
U.S. inaction against the PKK.
On June 24, 2002, Mr. Bush declared, "The United States will not support the
establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained
fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure." Less than
a year later the State Department reversed course, eliminating the cessation
of terror as a precondition for engagement. Palestinian terrorism grew.
While the White House condemns Hamas terrorism, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, to which Mr. Bush promised a half billion
dollars in July, is equally culpable. A year ago Fatah's military wing
threatened to "strike at the economic and civilian interests of these
countries [the U.S. and Israel], here and abroad," and it claimed
responsibility for a rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot in June.
Empty promises of accountability encourage terror by diminishing the costs
of its embrace.
While terrorists benefit, Arab liberals pay the price for the president's
rhetorical reversals. His promise in the second inaugural speech to "support
the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and
culture" rings hollow as Egyptian police beat, arrest and sodomize
protestors rallying to demand the rule of law.
Mr. Bush has yet to act on his promise to resolve the case of Palestinian
banker Issam Abu Issa, whose visa the State Department revoked in February
2004 as he prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee
on Palestinian Authority corruption. Nor has the president fulfilled a
promise to demand the release of Libyan dissident Fathi Eljahmi, imprisoned
by Moammar Ghadafi since March 2004. State Department officials say
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the Libyan dictator this
autumn, regardless of Mr. Jahmi's fate.
On June 5, 2007, Mr. Bush endorsed the Prague Declaration, which calls upon
governments to instruct diplomats "to actively and openly seek out meetings
with political prisoners and dissidents committed to building free societies
through non-violence," and announced that he'd tasked Secretary Rice to
implement it. U.S. embassies in the Middle East have yet to reach out to any
dissident or political prisoner.
Increasingly, friends view Washington as an unreliable ally; foes conclude
the U.S. is a paper tiger. This latter conclusion may transform broken
promises into a national security nightmare.
Way back in April 2001, the president established a moral redline when he
declared that the U.S. would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend
herself" in the face of Chinese aggression. But amid Beijing's steady
military build-up, Mr. Bush stood in the Oval Office beside Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao and condemned Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian for holding a
referendum on missile defense. Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Bush has yet to
send a single cabinet-level official to demonstrate commitment to the island
nation. Such contradictions may raise doubt in Beijing and encourage Chinese
officials to test U.S. resolve.
After promising Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in May 2003 that
Washington would "not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable
and irreversible dismantlement of nuclear weapons program," Mr. Bush
directed his administration to do just that. Despite the administration's
self-congratulations over its ephemeral deal with North Korea in February of
this year, the fact remains that, against its allies' wishes, Washington
acquiesced to Pyongyang's continued custody of its reactor and nuclear
weapons. This broken promise is guaranteed to haunt the next U.S.
administration.
Kicking diplomatic problems down the road is not a strategy. Addressing
crises with insincere promises is as counterproductive as treating a
hemorrhagic fever with a band-aid. Empty promises exacerbate crises. They do
not solve them. While farsighted in his vision, it is the president's
failure to abide by his word that will most shape his foreign policy legacy.
It would be ironic if he justifies the "Bush lied, people died" rhetoric of
protestors across the White House lawn in Lafayette Park, though not for the
reasons they believe.
5) Methods That Work in Iraq
By Frederick J. Chiaventone
The United States is now employing our former enemies to fight Al-Qaeda. This new approach, especially noticeable in the provinces of Anbar and Diyala, is paying off. We shouldn't be surprised. History has ample precedent.
A number of former enemies - Sunni and Shi'a groups - of the American presence in Iraq have already signed on and are guided by three simple rules: they must promise to stop fighting American forces; agree to attack Al-Qaeda forces; and finally, begin a gradual rapprochement and cooperation with Iraqi military and police forces.
Bringing former insurgents into the fold is a mark not only of progress but of sound, practical thinking, a good grasp of historical precedent, and a much better understanding of local politics. Pols everywhere agree: all politics is local.
U.S. commanders have in fact realized that the best weapon against a guerrilla is frequently a former guerrilla. Except to the political naifs who get their history lessons from Showtime this is not a new concept, but one which has been used by the U.S. Army -- indeed by a number of armies -- in the past, and frequently with remarkable success.
When the fascist government in Italy finally collapsed, some of the fiercest fighters on the Allied side were Italian soldiers who but weeks before had fought alongside their German counterparts. The Italians, however, had come to fear and loathe their Nazi allies. It hadn't taken too long for them to realize who their real enemies were. Eager to come to blows with their former oppressors they sought to fight alongside Allied forces. Allied leadership was practical enough to recognize the potential contributions of Italian fighters. Rather than disarm these former enemies or shift them to the sidelines, we took strategic and tactical advantage of our new allies' hard won experience, their intimate knowledge of Wehrmacht operations, and their enthusiasm to pay back their Nazi overlords.
Payback is by no means a new concept. When Hernando Cortez conquered what is now Mexico he never had more than 500 Spanish soldiers under his command. Certainly the horses, steel swords and primitive muskets gave the Spaniards a limited advantage, but even these would have been fairly useless in confronting an enemy numbering literally in the tens of thousands. Instead, Cortez quickly realized that while the Aztecs were the big dog on the block, they had not made any friends in the region. Arrogant to a fault, rapacious and brutal to neighboring tribes, the Aztec Empire looted and murdered its neighbors without compunction. They herded thousands of captured subjects back to Tenotchtitlan for the sole purpose of butchering them to appease bloodthirsty gods. (Does the behavioral pattern sound familiar?) When the Spaniards arrived they were delighted to welcome the thousands upon thousands of local tribesmen who flocked to their banners in the hope of getting back at their Aztec overlords. This approach worked to a fault. In record time the vaunted and vicious Aztec Empire ceased to exist.
American soldiers in the field were quick to recognize the potential of the disenchanted and yet fierce members of Native American warrior sects. The majority of scouts for the US Army during the extensive Sioux Wars of the 1870's through 1890's for example were not, as Hollywood might have us believe, United States soldiers. Instead they were largely Arikara, Shoshone, Pawnee, Winnebago, and Crow scouts. All of these indigenous people knew and hated the Sioux. The Sioux were fellow Indians to be sure, but not well loved by those who by necessity or tradition lived near them. It was a group of Shoshone and Crow scouts who in June of 1876 first discovered and then blunted a massive assault by Crazy Horse's warriors on Brigadier General George Crook's encampment along the Rosebud. A week later, George Custer would use Crow and Arikara scouts to discover a large encampment of Sioux led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Unfortunately for him and many of his men Custer would dismiss the Crow's declaration that the camp contained "...more warriors than you have bullets." A cavalier disregard of his scouts' advice proved disastrous in this event.
The following year the Sioux themselves would actually volunteer to track and fight the Nez Perces. And in later years General George Crook would be faced with the task of bringing to bay Geronimo's fierce marauding Apaches. No pushovers, Crook described the Apaches as "the tigers of the human species." Knowing the difficulties facing him Crook quickly enlisted the aid of other Apache warriors as scouts. It was the Apache scouts who finally located and brought Geronimo to bay. They knew the enemy and the terrain intimately. Apaches would continue to serve as scouts for the Army as a separate unit until as late as 1942. In almost every significant case, throughout the Indian wars it was the Indian Scouts who led American forces to the enemy in question.
We should keep this in mind when congressmen and news commentators begin to question a military use of former guerrillas against Al-Qaeda or the Mahdi Army. Perhaps it has taken us some time to relearn the lessons of history but this may just be the approach that our commitment to Iraq requires. Our newly acquired allies have learned their lessons the hard way. They have come to realize that the true enemies of Iraq and the Iraqi people are not American GIs -- instead they are fanatical Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians, Chechens, Palestinians and Iranians who have come to feed their blood thirsty gods with the bodies of Iraqis. Or they are criminals and murderers who thrive on the chaos of war at the expense of those who would work and live in peace rather than raise their children in a climate of fear and death.
What we must now strive to do is to not repeat our past grievous errors. Most Native American Indian scouts were woefully treated after they had served honorably and well. Disarmed, abused, returned to reservations, their treatment amounts to nothing less than a national disgrace. In our own history General Crook, in a rare display of integrity, resigned his commission when his promises to his Apache scouts were broken by a duplicitous government in Washington.
But I don't worry about the generals, it's the politicians who bear careful watching.
6) 'Our men would surrender if the war lasted 10 more days'
"The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War]," a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday.
In the interview, the unnamed officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another 10 days.
His statement sharply contrasted with those made by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah on several occasions since the monthlong war.
At the end of the war, Nasrallah said his organization had gained a "divine victory."
The officer shown on Channel 10 said the organization's gunmen had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies.
The officer also said that many Hizbullah commanders were ordered to hide before the war started, and that the gunmen who remained were forced to fire Katyusha rockets from inside urban populations because of the IDF's efficiency in destroying launchers minutes after a launch had been detected.
He said that when the gunmen relocated to cities and villages, they knew innocent civilians would be hurt as a consequence.
The quick arrival of IAF jets at rocket-launch sites, sometimes only four to five minutes after a Katyusha was fired, "surprised" Hizbullah, the officer said.
7) Why ‘Islamophobia’ is a brilliant term
By Dennis Prager
What do anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia have in common?
In fact, nothing.
But according to Islamist groups, Western media and the United Nations, they have everything in common. Anti-Semites hate all Jews, racists hate all members of another race, and Islamophobes hates all Muslims.
Whoever coined the term "Islamophobia" was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not "Muslim-phobia" or "anti-Muslimist," it is Islam-ophobia — fear of Islam — yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.
The equation of Islamophobia with racism is particularly dishonest. Muslims come in every racial group, and Islam has nothing to do with race. Nevertheless, mainstream Western media, Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism.
To cite three of innumerable examples: The Guardian published an opinion piece titled, "Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism"; the European Union has established the European Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia; and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia notes that "Muslims have also been the target of racism in Australia, often referred to as Islamophobia."
Even granting that there are people who fear Islam, how does that in any way correlate with racism? If fear of an ideology rendered one racist, all those who fear conservatism or liberalism should be considered racist.
Of course, some may argue that whereas conservatism and liberalism are ideas, Islam is a religion, and while one can attack ideas, one must not attack religions. It is, however, quite insulting to religions to deny that they are ideas. Religions are certainly more than ideas — they are theological belief systems — but they are also ideas about how society should be run just as much as liberalism and conservatism are. Therefore, Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism should be just as subject to criticism as conservatism or liberalism.
However, the only religion the West permits criticism of is Christianity. People write books, give lectures and conduct seminars on the falsity of Christian claims, or on the immoral record of Christianity, and no one attacks them for racism or bigotry, let alone attacks them physically. The head of the Anti-Defamation League announces that conservative Christians are the greatest threat to America today, and no one charges him with racism or Christianophobia.
The statement may be an expression of hysteria and of ignorance, but not of racism. But if one says that Islam does not appear compatible with democracy or that the Islamic treatment of women is inferior to the West's, he or she is labeled a racist Islamophobe.
One might counter that maligning people for criticism is not only true of those who criticize Islam, it is also true of critics of Israel and of America — the former, it is said, are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic" and the latter are immediately labeled "unpatriotic." Neither is true at all. Both are, and I use this word rarely, lies.
No one is labeled anti-Semitic for merely criticizing Israel. People are labeled anti-Semitic for denying Israel's right to exist, for siding with those who wish to exterminate it or for singling out the Jewish state alone among all the nations of the world for attacks that most other countries deserve far more.
And no one in any responsible capacity has called anyone "unpatriotic" just for criticizing America. Sen. Hillary Clinton claimed during the last Democratic presidential debate that the Defense Department called her "unpatriotic" for asking whether the Defense Department has a plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq. Yet the term "unpatriotic" was not only not used in the response to the senator, it was not even hinted at.
The fact remains that the term "Islamophobia" has one purpose — to suppress any criticism, legitimate or not, of Islam. And given the cowardice of the Western media, and the collusion of the left in banning any such criticism (while piling it on Christianity and Christians), it is working.
Latest proof: This past week a man in New York was charged with two felonies for what is being labeled the hate crime of putting a Koran in a toilet at Pace College. Not misdemeanors, mind you, felonies. Meanwhile, the man who put a crucifix in a jar of urine continues to have his artwork — "Piss Christ" — displayed at galleries and museums. A Koran in a toilet is a hate crime; a crucifix in pee is a work of art. Thanks in part to that brilliant term, "Islamophobia."
9) Lieberman escalates attack on Iraq critics
By Manu Raju
Ever since Connecticut Democrats refused to back him for a fourth term in Congress, Joe Lieberman has been burnishing his independent credentials in the narrowly divided Senate while becoming increasingly critical of the Democratic Party on the war in Iraq.
Lieberman, the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee, insists he is not actively considering joining the Republican Party. But he is keeping that possibility wide open as his disenchantment grows with Democratic leaders. The main sticking points are their attempts to end the war in Iraq and their hesitation to take a harder line against Iran.
“I think either [Democrats] are, in my opinion, respectfully, naïve in thinking we can somehow defeat this enemy with talk, or they’re simply hesitant to use American power, including military power,” Lieberman said in a wide-ranging interview with The Hill.
“There is a very strong group within the party that I think doesn’t take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously enough.”
Lieberman says he is annoyed by the mudslinging on Capitol Hill and Democrats’ unwillingness to work with President Bush. But his critics say he has contributed to that polarization by his rhetoric and refusal to compel Bush to find a new way forward in Iraq.
As Lieberman sees it, however, the Democratic Party has slipped away from its “most important and successful times” of the middle of last century, where it was tough on Communism and progressive on domestic policy.
“I fear that some people take this position also because anything President Bush is for, they’ll be against, and that’s wrong,” said Lieberman, a staunch advocate of the war. “There’s a great tradition in our history of partisanship generally receding when it comes to foreign policy. But for the moment we’ve lost that.”
Even though he did not reclaim his Senate seat as a Democrat, Lieberman has been instrumental in two bills this Congress central to the 2006 Democratic campaign platform: an ethics and lobbying overhaul bill and a measure to implement recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 bill cleared Congress last week, and the ethics bill could win final approval this week before lawmakers adjourn for August recess.
But if Lieberman seems blunt about the direction of the Democratic Party, it may stem from his loss last August in the primaries to businessman Ned Lamont, who wooed Democratic voters with his anti-war platform. Lieberman calls his ensuing victory in the general election as an independent “inspiring.” And remaining an independent has freed him to repeatedly buck the Democratic leadership on foreign policy and other legislative issues.
“Now that he knows he can win as an independent, he doesn’t need the Democrats at all,” said Kenneth Dautrich, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut. “I think it’s absolutely emboldened him.”
Lieberman was the only non-Republican in June to vote against Democratic efforts to pass a resolution expressing no confidence on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He has no plans to endorse a Democrat for president, including the senior senator from his home state, Christopher Dodd, and is open to backing a Republican candidate for president. Lieberman also startled Democrats when he lent his support to the re-election bid of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a top target of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
During this month’s Iraq debate, Lieberman was working behind the scenes strategizing with Republicans and was front-and-center in several GOP press conferences denouncing Democratic tactics to push for an end to the war.
Lieberman was the lone non-Republican to vote against Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) efforts to shut down debate on an amendment to bring troops home by next April. (Reid voted against the cloture motion to file a similar motion at a later time.) Lieberman was also alone when he joined 40 Republicans in voting to kill an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to extend the time between troop deployments in Iraq.
“I’m disappointed that I am in so small a minority among Senate Democrats in taking the position that I have,” Lieberman said.
But even as he has played a key role on some of their top domestic initiatives, Democrats have at times kept their distance from Lieberman. Last week, for instance, Reid held a press conference with several Democrats to tout their efforts to pass the 9/11 Commission bill and a homeland-security spending plan. Lieberman, the lead Senate negotiator on the measure and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was conspicuously absent.
Reid said it was not intentional to leave Lieberman out of the press conference, but Lieberman said not being invited was “surprising.”
The distance that Democratic leaders appear to be keeping from Lieberman could result from the animosity that the Democrats’ anti-war base has directed toward him. That criticism intensified even more last month, when he suggested military intervention against the Iranian government.
“He used to have a heart and soul, and he used to care about people,” said Leslie Angeline, an activist with the anti-war group Code Pink, who held a 24-day hunger strike until she could meet with Lieberman about his position on Iran.
Angeline is facing an unlawful entry charge after she refused to leave Lieberman’s office during her strike.
Even though Lieberman has become a lightning rod on the left, his prominent chairmanship and influence within the Democratic caucus is safe, for now, given the Democrats’ razor-thin majority. Analysts say if Democrats increase their Senate majority from the 2008 elections, Lieberman’s influence and role could be marginalized within the caucus.
Still, Lieberman is unfazed and says he has no intention of formally rejoining the Democratic Party.
“For now, I find being an independent more fun,” Lieberman said. “The partisanship in this place is out of control. As an independent I’ve got the opportunity to speak out against that.”
Excerpts from The Hill’s interview with Sen. Lieberman
The Hill: How long do you see U.S. troops staying in Iraq?
Lieberman: I think some troops will be there for quite a while to secure the country, particularly from external threats. Look, I hope that this surge, which has always intended to be temporary, gets to a point sometime next year where it has succeeded enough in quelling the sectarian violence, particularly so that some of the troops that were part of the surge begin to come home. But my direct answer is that there is no explicit answer. The answer is that the troops will come home when the mission is completed.
The Hill: Obviously, a lot of Democrats don’t feel that way.
Lieberman: I’ve noticed that.
The Hill: How dissatisfied are you with you right now with the way this debate has been handled in the Senate, especially during the defense authorization bill debate?
Lieberman: I’m disappointed that I am in so small a minority among Senate Democrats in taking the position that I have. While I obviously understand and respect that Iraq is a difficult issue, and people take different points of views, I’m surprised and disappointed that the split has followed partisan lines so much. It shouldn’t be.
The Hill: Some of this criticism might seem surprising from someone who was the vice presidential nominee seven years ago. How far away from the Democratic Party do you see yourself right now?
Lieberman: Right now, certainly on Iraq, to some extent on some other foreign policy issues, like how do we confront Iran, how do we contain Iran, how do we deal with what that threat represents in the Middle East. To some extent on some defense issues, I have disagreements with most Democrats. But I agree with most Democrats on a lot of other issues, and a lot of domestic issues particularly.
The Hill: Are you open to switching parties and becoming a Republican?
Lieberman: I have no interest or desire in doing that. I wouldn’t foreclose it as a possibility, but I hope that I don’t reach that point.
The Hill: What would drive you over to that point?
Lieberman: Well, I guess I’d know it. It’s like Justice [Potter] Stewart and his definition of obscenity: he couldn’t define it but he’d know when he saw it. I think I’ll know it when I feel it, but I hope I never get to that point.
Democrats may be hell bent on raising taxes because the "filthy" rich need to become dirt poor!
Who is the turkey? (See 2 below.)
And what of Syria. Barry Rubin is interviewed. (See 3 below.)
Another Rubin, Michael, blasts GW for failures and broken promises. (See 4 below.)
Something is beginning to work in Iraq. (See 5 below.)
I have repeatedly said I do not understand why we continually pull Muslim/Arab chestnuts out of the fire. (See 6 below.)
Dennis Praeger hails forth on Islamophobia and considers it a good term. (See 7 below)
More from Sen. Lieberman. (See 8 below.)
Dick
1) "While the West Sleeps"
Speech by Newt Gingrich
We better start talking about the shape of the table now because this country doesn't have the stomach to face what is coming!
Gingrich's Speech in New Hampshire has apparently caused a firestorm, with many calling Gingrich a racist. You decide……..
“...I want to talk about ...briefly ... the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision and leadership that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of threat.
Let me give you two examples.
When the British this summer arrested people who were planning to blow up ten airliners in one day, they arrested a Muslim couple who were going to use their six month old baby in order to hide the bomb as baby milk.
Now, if I come to you tonight and say that there are people on the planet who hate you, and they are 15-25 year old males who are willing to die as long as they get to kill you, I've simply described the warrior culture which has been true historically for 6 or 7 thousand years.
But, if I come to you and say that there is a couple that hates you so
much that they will kill their six month old baby in order to kill you, I
am describing a level of ferocity, and a level of savagery beyond anything
we have tried to deal with.
And, what is truly frightening about the British experience is they
are arresting British citizens, born in Britain , speaking English, who went
to British schools, live in British housing, and have good jobs. Those
arrested represent a religious extremist culture that hates the Anglo Saxon
and western cultures.
This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to
want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will
lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it
will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing
of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons.
And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if
we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of
engagement that uses every technology we can find to break up their
capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free
speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from
recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to
destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to pro actively... develop the appropriate rules of engagement.
And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for
fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight
outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction,
and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally
different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating
barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.
This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national
dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait
until actually we...lose a city which could literally happen within
the next decade if we are unfortunate.
So this is a very sober description of the Islamic terrorist threat
facing us. We are NOW at war with a culture that wants not to take over
our land, but to KILL us... all-non Muslims, especially Americans and
Britons, and eventually ELIMINATE WESTERN CIVILIZATION
We must not put our heads in the sand and hope this is not true.
It is true and we cannot allow it to happen.
Maybe this is why Pres. Bush is so bull headed about the War?
Could it be so many people see Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan as the
trees but miss seeing the Islamic Movement as the Forest ?
I hope Bush is wrong, but I am afraid he is right.”
2) Nancy Pelosi condemned the new record highs of the stock market as
"just another example of Bush policies helping the rich get richer".
"First Bush cut taxes for the rich and the economy has rebounded with
new record low unemployment rates, which only means wealthy employers
are getting even wealthier at the expense of the underpaid working class".
She went on to say "Despite the billions of dollars being spent in
Iraq our economy is still strong and government tax revenues are at
all time highs. What this really means is that business is exploiting
the war effort and working Americans, just to put money in their own pockets".
When questioned about recent stock market highs she responded "Only
the rich benefit from these record highs. Working Americans, welfare
recipients, the unemployed and minorities are not sharing in these
obscene record highs". "There is no question these windfall profits
and income created by the Bush administration need to be taxed at 100%
rate and those dollars redistributed to the poor and working class".
"Profits from the stock market do not reward the hard work of our
working class who, by their hard work, are responsible for generating
these corporate profits that create stock market profits for the rich.
We in congress will need to address this issue to either tax these
profits or to control the stock market to prevent this unearned income
to flow to the rich."
When asked about the fact that over 80% of all Americans have
investments in mutual funds, retirement funds, 401K's, and the stock
market she replied "That may be true, but probably only 5% account for
90% of all these investment dollars. That's just more "trickle down"
economics claiming that if a corporation is successful that everyone
from the CEO to the floor sweeper benefit from higher wages and job
security which is ridiculous". "How much of this 'trickle down' ever
get to the unemployed and minorities in our county? None, and that's
the tragedy of these stock market highs."
"We democrats are going to address this issue after the election when
we take control of the congress. We will return to the 60% to 80% tax
rates on the rich and we will be able to take at least 30% of all
current lower Federal Income Tax tax payers off the roles and increase
government income substantially. We need to work toward the goal of
equalizing income in our country and at the same time limiting the amount the rich can invest."
When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied: "We
need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and
minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal
immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of
unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a
long ways to guarantee these people the standard of living they would
like to have as "Americans".
2)The Geopolitics of Turkey
By George Friedman
Rumors are floating in Washington and elsewhere that Turkey is preparing to move against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an anti-Turkish group seeking an independent Kurdistan in Turkey. One report, by Robert Novak in the Washington Post, says the United States is planning to collaborate with Turkey in suppressing the PKK in northern Iraq, an area the PKK has used as a safe-haven and launch pad to carry out attacks in Turkey.
The broader issue is not the PKK, but Kurdish independence. The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and, to a small extent, Syria. The one thing all of these countries have agreed on historically is they have no desire to see an independent Kurdistan. Even though each has, on occasion, used Kurdish dissidents in other countries as levers against those countries, there always has been a regional consensus against a Kurdish state.
Therefore, the news that Turkey is considering targeting the PKK is part of the broader issue. The evolution of events in Iraq has created an area that is now under the effective governance of the Iraqi Kurds. Under most scenarios, the Iraqi Kurds will retain a high degree of autonomy. Under some scenarios, the Kurds in Iraq could become formally independent, creating a Kurdish state. Besides facing serious opposition from Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions, that state would be a direct threat to Turkey and Iran, since it would become, by definition, the nucleus of a Kurdish state that would lay claim to other lands the Kurds regard as theirs.
This is one of the reasons Turkey was unwilling to participate in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Americans grew close to the Kurds in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, helping augment the power of an independent militia, the peshmerga, that allowed the Iraqi Kurds to carve out a surprising degree of independence within Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Turks were never comfortable with this policy and sent troops into Iraq in the 1990s to strike against the PKK and pre-empt any moves toward more extensive autonomy. Before the war started in 2003, however, the Turks turned down a U.S. offer to send troops into northern Iraq in exchange for allowing the United States to use Turkish territory to launch into Iraq. This refusal caused Turkey to lose a great deal of its mobility in the region.
The Turks, therefore, are tremendously concerned by the evolution of events in Iraq. Whether northern Iraq simply evolves into an autonomous region in a federal Iraq or becomes an independent state as Iraq disintegrates is almost immaterial. It will become a Kurdish homeland and it will exist on the Turkish border. And that, from the Turkish point of view, represents a strategic threat to Turkey.
Turkey, then, is flexing its muscles along the Iraqi border. Given that Turkey did not participate in the 2003 invasion, the American attitude toward Ankara has been complex, to say the least. On one hand, there was a sense of being let down by an old ally. On the other hand, given events in Iraq and U.S. relations with Iran and Syria, the United States was not in a position to completely alienate a Muslim neighbor of Iraq.
As time passed and the situation in Iraq worsened, the Americans became even less able to isolate Turkey. That is partly because its neutrality was important and partly because the United States was extremely concerned about Turkish reactions to growing Kurdish autonomy. For the Turks, this was a fundamental national security issue. If they felt the situation were getting out of hand in the Kurdish regions, they might well intervene militarily. At a time when the Kurds comprised the only group in Iraq that was generally pro-American, the United States could hardly let the Turks mangle them.
On the other hand, the United States was hardly in a position to stop the Turks. The last thing the United States wanted was a confrontation with the Turks in the North, for military as well as political reasons. Yet, the other last thing it wanted was for other Iraqis to see that the United States would not protect them.
Stated differently, the United States had no solution to the Turkish-Kurdish equation. So what the United States did was a tap dance -- by negotiating a series of very temporary solutions that kept the Turks from crossing the line and kept the Kurds intact. The current crisis is over the status of the PKK in northern Iraq and, to a great degree, over Turkish concerns that Iraqi Kurds will gain too much autonomy, not to mention over concerns about the future status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The United States may well be ready to support the Turks in rooting out PKK separatists, but it is not prepared to force the Iraqi Kurds to give them up. So it will try to persuade them to give them up voluntarily. This negotiating process will buy time, though at this point the American strategy in Iraq generally has been reduced to buying time.
All of this goes beyond the question of Iraq or an independent Kurdistan. The real question concerns the position of Turkey as a regional power in the wake of the Iraq war. This is a vital question because of Iran. The assumption we have consistently made is that, absent the United States, Iran would become the dominant regional power and would be in a position, in the long term, to dominate the Arabian Peninsula, shifting not only the regional balance of power but also potentially the global balance as well.
That analysis assumes that Turkey will play the role it has played since World War I -- an insular, defensive power that is cautious about making alliances and then cautious within alliances. In that role, Turkey is capable of limited assertiveness, as against the Greeks in Cyprus, but is not inclined to become too deeply entangled in the chaos of the Middle Eastern equation -- and when it does become involved, it is in the context of its alliance with the United States.
That is not Turkey's traditional role. Until the fall of the Ottomans at the end of World War I, and for centuries before then, Turkey was both the dominant Muslim power and a major power in North Africa, Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Turkey was the hub of a multinational empire that as far back as the 15th century dominated the Mediterranean and Black seas. It was the economic pivot of three continents, facilitating and controlling the trading system of much of the Eastern Hemisphere.
Turkey's contraction over the past 90 years or so is not the normal pattern in the region, and had to do with the internal crisis in Turkey since the fall of the Ottomans, the emergence of French and British power in the Middle East, followed by American power and the Cold War, which locked Turkey into place. During the Cold War, Turkey was trapped between the Americans and Soviets, and expansion of its power was unthinkable. Since then, Turkey has been slowly emerging as a key power.
One of the main drivers in this has been the significant growth of the Turkish economy. In 2006, Turkey had the 18th highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, and it has been growing at between 5 percent and 8 percent a year for more than five years. It ranks just behind Belgium and ahead of Sweden in GDP. It has the largest economy of any Muslim country -- including Saudi Arabia. And it has done this in spite of, or perhaps because of, not having been admitted to the European Union. While per capita GDP lags, it is total GDP that measures weight in the international system. China, for example, is 109th in per capita GDP. Its international power rests on it being fourth in total GDP.
Turkey is not China, but in becoming the largest Muslim economy, as well as the largest economy in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus and east to the Hindu Kush, Turkey is moving to regain its traditional position of primacy in the region. Its growth is still fragile and can be disrupted, but there is no question that it has become the leading regional economy, as well as one of the most dynamic. Additionally, Turkey's geographic position greatly enables it to become Europe's primary transit hub for energy supplies, especially at a time when Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on Russia.
This obviously has increased its regional influence. In the Balkans, for example, where Turkey historically has been a dominant power, the Turks have again emerged as a major influence over the region's two Muslim states -- and have managed to carve out for themselves a prominent position as regards other countries in the region as well. The country's economic dynamism has helped reorient some of the region away from Europe, toward Turkey. Similarly, Turkish economic influence can be felt elsewhere in the region, particularly as a supplement to its strategic relationship with Israel.
Turkey's problem is that in every direction it faces, its economic expansion is blocked by politico-military friction. So, for example, its influence in the Balkans is blocked by its long-standing friction with Greece. In the Caucasus, its friction with Armenia limits its ability to influence events. Tensions with Syria and Iraq block Syrian influence to the south. To the east, a wary Iran that is ideologically opposed to Turkey blocks Ankara's influence.
As Turkey grows, an interesting imbalance has to develop. The ability of Greece, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Iran to remain hostile to Turkey decreases as the Turkish economy grows. Ideology and history are very real things, but so is the economic power of a dynamic economy. As important, Turkey's willingness to accept its highly constrained role indefinitely, while its economic -- and therefore political -- influence grows, is limited. Turkey's economic power, coupled with its substantial regional military power, will over time change the balance of power in each of the regions Turkey faces.
Not only does Turkey interface with an extraordinary number of regions, but its economy also is the major one in each of those regions, while Turkish military power usually is pre-eminent as well. When Turkey develops economically, it develops militarily. It then becomes the leading power -- in many regions. That is what it means to be a pivotal power.
In 2003, the United States was cautious with Turkey, though in the final analysis it was indifferent. It no longer can be indifferent. The United States is now in the process of planning the post-Iraq war era, and even if it does retain permanent bases in Iraq -- dubious for a number of reasons -- it will have to have a regional power to counterbalance Iran. Iran has always been aware of and cautious with Turkey, but never as much as now -- while Turkey is growing economically and doing the heavy lifting on the Kurds. Iran does not want to antagonize the Turks.
The United States and Iran have been talking -- just recently engaging in seven hours of formal discussions. But Iran, betting that the United States will withdraw from Iraq, is not taking the talks as seriously as it might. The United States has few levers to use against Iran. It is therefore not surprising that it has reached out to the biggest lever.
In the short run, Turkey, if it works with the United States, represents a counterweight to Iran, not only in general, but also specifically in Iraq. From the American point of view, a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq would introduce a major force native to the region that certainly would give Iran pause in its behavior in Iraq. This would mean the destruction of Kurdish hopes for independence, though the United States has on several past occasions raised and then dashed Kurdish hopes. In this sense, Novak's article makes a great deal of sense. The PKK would provide a reasonable excuse for a Turkish intervention in Iraq, both in the region and in Turkey. Anything that blocks the Kurds will be acceptable to the Turkish public, and even to Iran.
It is the longer run that is becoming interesting, however. If the United States is not going to continue counterbalancing Iran in the region, then it is in Turkey's interest to do so. It also is increasingly within Turkey's reach. But it must be understood that, given geography, the growth of Turkish power will not be confined to one direction. A powerful and self-confident Turkey has a geographical position that inevitably reflects all the regions that pivot around it.
For the past 90 years, Turkey has not played its historic role. Now, however, economic and politico-military indicators point to Turkey's slow reclamation of that role. The rumors about Turkish action against the PKK have much broader significance. They point to a changing role for Turkey -- and that will mean massive regional changes over time.
3) Barry Rubin is the Director of Global Research for International Affairs Center of The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. His latest book is entitled "The Truth About Syria"
Rubin was recently interviewed and here is a brief overview.
Question: How has Assad managed to survive?
Answer: It has failed to provide a better life for its citizens, to defeat Israel and to unify the Arab world but yes, it has survived. It has done so through ruthless ideology, authoritarianism, building of hatred and scapegoating. It need Israel to survive - conflict is its main asset.
Question: Golan is not a priority?
Answer: If Syria were given the Golan back the next day its situation would not change and then the people would begin to ask questions about their plight about their lack of democracy, lack of free speech and why so much money is spent on the military.
Peace in the region makes Israel a normal player and enhances the influence of America. This is not in Syria's best interest as Assad sees it.
Question Why does Syria matter so much?
Answer: Because it can and is causing trouble in Lebanon. Its threats and violence is paying off as the Western World offers concessions etc.
Question: Is there a benefit to engaging Syria?
Answer: No, because they know how to play the game and though they talk they want to engage they are simply trying to avoid the Hariri Trial because it will expose some of their most senior leaders to examination and possible conviction for criminal acts etc.
Question" Can Syria be drawn away from Iran?
Answer: Probably not because Syria needs what they receive from Iran and they also continually bleed Lebanon. Syria produces nothing and sells even less. It also gets Iranian protection from the U.S. and Israel. Finally, it receives Islamist cover from its own population. All the West can offer is commercial investment but that means opening up the Syrian economy and that would probably bring down Assad and for sure loosen his control over the nation.
Question: How should America approach Syria?
Answer: Through touch diplomacy and be told the U.S. will not engage until it changes its policy and Israel will not engage either until Assad does something to stop terrorism.
4) Michael Rubin on Bush's soft policy towards PKK, Palestinians: Kicking diplomatic problems down the road is not a strategy: President Bush's Broken Promises
by Michael Rubin
During his last 18 months in office, President Bush confronts a broader set
of international crises than in his first 18 months. While pundits blame
unilateralism and the Iraq war, the deterioration of Washington's relations
with once-staunch allies has less to do with a lack of diplomacy and more to
do with its kind.
Too often, the administration has sacrificed long-term credibility for
short-term calm. Take Turkey. At the June 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul,
President Bush promised Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the
U.S. military would shut down Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorists in
Iraq. He did not. Three years later, the Turks no longer trust U.S. promises
and may send their army into Iraqi Kurdistan.
Already the damage to U.S. prestige is severe. Once among America's closest
allies, Turkey, according to a Pew Global Attitudes Project poll last month,
is the most anti-American country in the world. Only 9% of Turks have a
favorable impression of the U.S.; 83% hold the opposite view. Most blame
U.S. inaction against the PKK.
On June 24, 2002, Mr. Bush declared, "The United States will not support the
establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained
fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure." Less than
a year later the State Department reversed course, eliminating the cessation
of terror as a precondition for engagement. Palestinian terrorism grew.
While the White House condemns Hamas terrorism, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, to which Mr. Bush promised a half billion
dollars in July, is equally culpable. A year ago Fatah's military wing
threatened to "strike at the economic and civilian interests of these
countries [the U.S. and Israel], here and abroad," and it claimed
responsibility for a rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot in June.
Empty promises of accountability encourage terror by diminishing the costs
of its embrace.
While terrorists benefit, Arab liberals pay the price for the president's
rhetorical reversals. His promise in the second inaugural speech to "support
the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and
culture" rings hollow as Egyptian police beat, arrest and sodomize
protestors rallying to demand the rule of law.
Mr. Bush has yet to act on his promise to resolve the case of Palestinian
banker Issam Abu Issa, whose visa the State Department revoked in February
2004 as he prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee
on Palestinian Authority corruption. Nor has the president fulfilled a
promise to demand the release of Libyan dissident Fathi Eljahmi, imprisoned
by Moammar Ghadafi since March 2004. State Department officials say
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the Libyan dictator this
autumn, regardless of Mr. Jahmi's fate.
On June 5, 2007, Mr. Bush endorsed the Prague Declaration, which calls upon
governments to instruct diplomats "to actively and openly seek out meetings
with political prisoners and dissidents committed to building free societies
through non-violence," and announced that he'd tasked Secretary Rice to
implement it. U.S. embassies in the Middle East have yet to reach out to any
dissident or political prisoner.
Increasingly, friends view Washington as an unreliable ally; foes conclude
the U.S. is a paper tiger. This latter conclusion may transform broken
promises into a national security nightmare.
Way back in April 2001, the president established a moral redline when he
declared that the U.S. would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend
herself" in the face of Chinese aggression. But amid Beijing's steady
military build-up, Mr. Bush stood in the Oval Office beside Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao and condemned Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian for holding a
referendum on missile defense. Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Bush has yet to
send a single cabinet-level official to demonstrate commitment to the island
nation. Such contradictions may raise doubt in Beijing and encourage Chinese
officials to test U.S. resolve.
After promising Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in May 2003 that
Washington would "not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable
and irreversible dismantlement of nuclear weapons program," Mr. Bush
directed his administration to do just that. Despite the administration's
self-congratulations over its ephemeral deal with North Korea in February of
this year, the fact remains that, against its allies' wishes, Washington
acquiesced to Pyongyang's continued custody of its reactor and nuclear
weapons. This broken promise is guaranteed to haunt the next U.S.
administration.
Kicking diplomatic problems down the road is not a strategy. Addressing
crises with insincere promises is as counterproductive as treating a
hemorrhagic fever with a band-aid. Empty promises exacerbate crises. They do
not solve them. While farsighted in his vision, it is the president's
failure to abide by his word that will most shape his foreign policy legacy.
It would be ironic if he justifies the "Bush lied, people died" rhetoric of
protestors across the White House lawn in Lafayette Park, though not for the
reasons they believe.
5) Methods That Work in Iraq
By Frederick J. Chiaventone
The United States is now employing our former enemies to fight Al-Qaeda. This new approach, especially noticeable in the provinces of Anbar and Diyala, is paying off. We shouldn't be surprised. History has ample precedent.
A number of former enemies - Sunni and Shi'a groups - of the American presence in Iraq have already signed on and are guided by three simple rules: they must promise to stop fighting American forces; agree to attack Al-Qaeda forces; and finally, begin a gradual rapprochement and cooperation with Iraqi military and police forces.
Bringing former insurgents into the fold is a mark not only of progress but of sound, practical thinking, a good grasp of historical precedent, and a much better understanding of local politics. Pols everywhere agree: all politics is local.
U.S. commanders have in fact realized that the best weapon against a guerrilla is frequently a former guerrilla. Except to the political naifs who get their history lessons from Showtime this is not a new concept, but one which has been used by the U.S. Army -- indeed by a number of armies -- in the past, and frequently with remarkable success.
When the fascist government in Italy finally collapsed, some of the fiercest fighters on the Allied side were Italian soldiers who but weeks before had fought alongside their German counterparts. The Italians, however, had come to fear and loathe their Nazi allies. It hadn't taken too long for them to realize who their real enemies were. Eager to come to blows with their former oppressors they sought to fight alongside Allied forces. Allied leadership was practical enough to recognize the potential contributions of Italian fighters. Rather than disarm these former enemies or shift them to the sidelines, we took strategic and tactical advantage of our new allies' hard won experience, their intimate knowledge of Wehrmacht operations, and their enthusiasm to pay back their Nazi overlords.
Payback is by no means a new concept. When Hernando Cortez conquered what is now Mexico he never had more than 500 Spanish soldiers under his command. Certainly the horses, steel swords and primitive muskets gave the Spaniards a limited advantage, but even these would have been fairly useless in confronting an enemy numbering literally in the tens of thousands. Instead, Cortez quickly realized that while the Aztecs were the big dog on the block, they had not made any friends in the region. Arrogant to a fault, rapacious and brutal to neighboring tribes, the Aztec Empire looted and murdered its neighbors without compunction. They herded thousands of captured subjects back to Tenotchtitlan for the sole purpose of butchering them to appease bloodthirsty gods. (Does the behavioral pattern sound familiar?) When the Spaniards arrived they were delighted to welcome the thousands upon thousands of local tribesmen who flocked to their banners in the hope of getting back at their Aztec overlords. This approach worked to a fault. In record time the vaunted and vicious Aztec Empire ceased to exist.
American soldiers in the field were quick to recognize the potential of the disenchanted and yet fierce members of Native American warrior sects. The majority of scouts for the US Army during the extensive Sioux Wars of the 1870's through 1890's for example were not, as Hollywood might have us believe, United States soldiers. Instead they were largely Arikara, Shoshone, Pawnee, Winnebago, and Crow scouts. All of these indigenous people knew and hated the Sioux. The Sioux were fellow Indians to be sure, but not well loved by those who by necessity or tradition lived near them. It was a group of Shoshone and Crow scouts who in June of 1876 first discovered and then blunted a massive assault by Crazy Horse's warriors on Brigadier General George Crook's encampment along the Rosebud. A week later, George Custer would use Crow and Arikara scouts to discover a large encampment of Sioux led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Unfortunately for him and many of his men Custer would dismiss the Crow's declaration that the camp contained "...more warriors than you have bullets." A cavalier disregard of his scouts' advice proved disastrous in this event.
The following year the Sioux themselves would actually volunteer to track and fight the Nez Perces. And in later years General George Crook would be faced with the task of bringing to bay Geronimo's fierce marauding Apaches. No pushovers, Crook described the Apaches as "the tigers of the human species." Knowing the difficulties facing him Crook quickly enlisted the aid of other Apache warriors as scouts. It was the Apache scouts who finally located and brought Geronimo to bay. They knew the enemy and the terrain intimately. Apaches would continue to serve as scouts for the Army as a separate unit until as late as 1942. In almost every significant case, throughout the Indian wars it was the Indian Scouts who led American forces to the enemy in question.
We should keep this in mind when congressmen and news commentators begin to question a military use of former guerrillas against Al-Qaeda or the Mahdi Army. Perhaps it has taken us some time to relearn the lessons of history but this may just be the approach that our commitment to Iraq requires. Our newly acquired allies have learned their lessons the hard way. They have come to realize that the true enemies of Iraq and the Iraqi people are not American GIs -- instead they are fanatical Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians, Chechens, Palestinians and Iranians who have come to feed their blood thirsty gods with the bodies of Iraqis. Or they are criminals and murderers who thrive on the chaos of war at the expense of those who would work and live in peace rather than raise their children in a climate of fear and death.
What we must now strive to do is to not repeat our past grievous errors. Most Native American Indian scouts were woefully treated after they had served honorably and well. Disarmed, abused, returned to reservations, their treatment amounts to nothing less than a national disgrace. In our own history General Crook, in a rare display of integrity, resigned his commission when his promises to his Apache scouts were broken by a duplicitous government in Washington.
But I don't worry about the generals, it's the politicians who bear careful watching.
6) 'Our men would surrender if the war lasted 10 more days'
"The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War]," a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday.
In the interview, the unnamed officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another 10 days.
His statement sharply contrasted with those made by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah on several occasions since the monthlong war.
At the end of the war, Nasrallah said his organization had gained a "divine victory."
The officer shown on Channel 10 said the organization's gunmen had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies.
The officer also said that many Hizbullah commanders were ordered to hide before the war started, and that the gunmen who remained were forced to fire Katyusha rockets from inside urban populations because of the IDF's efficiency in destroying launchers minutes after a launch had been detected.
He said that when the gunmen relocated to cities and villages, they knew innocent civilians would be hurt as a consequence.
The quick arrival of IAF jets at rocket-launch sites, sometimes only four to five minutes after a Katyusha was fired, "surprised" Hizbullah, the officer said.
7) Why ‘Islamophobia’ is a brilliant term
By Dennis Prager
What do anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia have in common?
In fact, nothing.
But according to Islamist groups, Western media and the United Nations, they have everything in common. Anti-Semites hate all Jews, racists hate all members of another race, and Islamophobes hates all Muslims.
Whoever coined the term "Islamophobia" was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not "Muslim-phobia" or "anti-Muslimist," it is Islam-ophobia — fear of Islam — yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.
The equation of Islamophobia with racism is particularly dishonest. Muslims come in every racial group, and Islam has nothing to do with race. Nevertheless, mainstream Western media, Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism.
To cite three of innumerable examples: The Guardian published an opinion piece titled, "Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism"; the European Union has established the European Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia; and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia notes that "Muslims have also been the target of racism in Australia, often referred to as Islamophobia."
Even granting that there are people who fear Islam, how does that in any way correlate with racism? If fear of an ideology rendered one racist, all those who fear conservatism or liberalism should be considered racist.
Of course, some may argue that whereas conservatism and liberalism are ideas, Islam is a religion, and while one can attack ideas, one must not attack religions. It is, however, quite insulting to religions to deny that they are ideas. Religions are certainly more than ideas — they are theological belief systems — but they are also ideas about how society should be run just as much as liberalism and conservatism are. Therefore, Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism should be just as subject to criticism as conservatism or liberalism.
However, the only religion the West permits criticism of is Christianity. People write books, give lectures and conduct seminars on the falsity of Christian claims, or on the immoral record of Christianity, and no one attacks them for racism or bigotry, let alone attacks them physically. The head of the Anti-Defamation League announces that conservative Christians are the greatest threat to America today, and no one charges him with racism or Christianophobia.
The statement may be an expression of hysteria and of ignorance, but not of racism. But if one says that Islam does not appear compatible with democracy or that the Islamic treatment of women is inferior to the West's, he or she is labeled a racist Islamophobe.
One might counter that maligning people for criticism is not only true of those who criticize Islam, it is also true of critics of Israel and of America — the former, it is said, are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic" and the latter are immediately labeled "unpatriotic." Neither is true at all. Both are, and I use this word rarely, lies.
No one is labeled anti-Semitic for merely criticizing Israel. People are labeled anti-Semitic for denying Israel's right to exist, for siding with those who wish to exterminate it or for singling out the Jewish state alone among all the nations of the world for attacks that most other countries deserve far more.
And no one in any responsible capacity has called anyone "unpatriotic" just for criticizing America. Sen. Hillary Clinton claimed during the last Democratic presidential debate that the Defense Department called her "unpatriotic" for asking whether the Defense Department has a plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq. Yet the term "unpatriotic" was not only not used in the response to the senator, it was not even hinted at.
The fact remains that the term "Islamophobia" has one purpose — to suppress any criticism, legitimate or not, of Islam. And given the cowardice of the Western media, and the collusion of the left in banning any such criticism (while piling it on Christianity and Christians), it is working.
Latest proof: This past week a man in New York was charged with two felonies for what is being labeled the hate crime of putting a Koran in a toilet at Pace College. Not misdemeanors, mind you, felonies. Meanwhile, the man who put a crucifix in a jar of urine continues to have his artwork — "Piss Christ" — displayed at galleries and museums. A Koran in a toilet is a hate crime; a crucifix in pee is a work of art. Thanks in part to that brilliant term, "Islamophobia."
9) Lieberman escalates attack on Iraq critics
By Manu Raju
Ever since Connecticut Democrats refused to back him for a fourth term in Congress, Joe Lieberman has been burnishing his independent credentials in the narrowly divided Senate while becoming increasingly critical of the Democratic Party on the war in Iraq.
Lieberman, the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee, insists he is not actively considering joining the Republican Party. But he is keeping that possibility wide open as his disenchantment grows with Democratic leaders. The main sticking points are their attempts to end the war in Iraq and their hesitation to take a harder line against Iran.
“I think either [Democrats] are, in my opinion, respectfully, naïve in thinking we can somehow defeat this enemy with talk, or they’re simply hesitant to use American power, including military power,” Lieberman said in a wide-ranging interview with The Hill.
“There is a very strong group within the party that I think doesn’t take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously enough.”
Lieberman says he is annoyed by the mudslinging on Capitol Hill and Democrats’ unwillingness to work with President Bush. But his critics say he has contributed to that polarization by his rhetoric and refusal to compel Bush to find a new way forward in Iraq.
As Lieberman sees it, however, the Democratic Party has slipped away from its “most important and successful times” of the middle of last century, where it was tough on Communism and progressive on domestic policy.
“I fear that some people take this position also because anything President Bush is for, they’ll be against, and that’s wrong,” said Lieberman, a staunch advocate of the war. “There’s a great tradition in our history of partisanship generally receding when it comes to foreign policy. But for the moment we’ve lost that.”
Even though he did not reclaim his Senate seat as a Democrat, Lieberman has been instrumental in two bills this Congress central to the 2006 Democratic campaign platform: an ethics and lobbying overhaul bill and a measure to implement recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 bill cleared Congress last week, and the ethics bill could win final approval this week before lawmakers adjourn for August recess.
But if Lieberman seems blunt about the direction of the Democratic Party, it may stem from his loss last August in the primaries to businessman Ned Lamont, who wooed Democratic voters with his anti-war platform. Lieberman calls his ensuing victory in the general election as an independent “inspiring.” And remaining an independent has freed him to repeatedly buck the Democratic leadership on foreign policy and other legislative issues.
“Now that he knows he can win as an independent, he doesn’t need the Democrats at all,” said Kenneth Dautrich, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut. “I think it’s absolutely emboldened him.”
Lieberman was the only non-Republican in June to vote against Democratic efforts to pass a resolution expressing no confidence on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He has no plans to endorse a Democrat for president, including the senior senator from his home state, Christopher Dodd, and is open to backing a Republican candidate for president. Lieberman also startled Democrats when he lent his support to the re-election bid of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a top target of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
During this month’s Iraq debate, Lieberman was working behind the scenes strategizing with Republicans and was front-and-center in several GOP press conferences denouncing Democratic tactics to push for an end to the war.
Lieberman was the lone non-Republican to vote against Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) efforts to shut down debate on an amendment to bring troops home by next April. (Reid voted against the cloture motion to file a similar motion at a later time.) Lieberman was also alone when he joined 40 Republicans in voting to kill an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to extend the time between troop deployments in Iraq.
“I’m disappointed that I am in so small a minority among Senate Democrats in taking the position that I have,” Lieberman said.
But even as he has played a key role on some of their top domestic initiatives, Democrats have at times kept their distance from Lieberman. Last week, for instance, Reid held a press conference with several Democrats to tout their efforts to pass the 9/11 Commission bill and a homeland-security spending plan. Lieberman, the lead Senate negotiator on the measure and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was conspicuously absent.
Reid said it was not intentional to leave Lieberman out of the press conference, but Lieberman said not being invited was “surprising.”
The distance that Democratic leaders appear to be keeping from Lieberman could result from the animosity that the Democrats’ anti-war base has directed toward him. That criticism intensified even more last month, when he suggested military intervention against the Iranian government.
“He used to have a heart and soul, and he used to care about people,” said Leslie Angeline, an activist with the anti-war group Code Pink, who held a 24-day hunger strike until she could meet with Lieberman about his position on Iran.
Angeline is facing an unlawful entry charge after she refused to leave Lieberman’s office during her strike.
Even though Lieberman has become a lightning rod on the left, his prominent chairmanship and influence within the Democratic caucus is safe, for now, given the Democrats’ razor-thin majority. Analysts say if Democrats increase their Senate majority from the 2008 elections, Lieberman’s influence and role could be marginalized within the caucus.
Still, Lieberman is unfazed and says he has no intention of formally rejoining the Democratic Party.
“For now, I find being an independent more fun,” Lieberman said. “The partisanship in this place is out of control. As an independent I’ve got the opportunity to speak out against that.”
Excerpts from The Hill’s interview with Sen. Lieberman
The Hill: How long do you see U.S. troops staying in Iraq?
Lieberman: I think some troops will be there for quite a while to secure the country, particularly from external threats. Look, I hope that this surge, which has always intended to be temporary, gets to a point sometime next year where it has succeeded enough in quelling the sectarian violence, particularly so that some of the troops that were part of the surge begin to come home. But my direct answer is that there is no explicit answer. The answer is that the troops will come home when the mission is completed.
The Hill: Obviously, a lot of Democrats don’t feel that way.
Lieberman: I’ve noticed that.
The Hill: How dissatisfied are you with you right now with the way this debate has been handled in the Senate, especially during the defense authorization bill debate?
Lieberman: I’m disappointed that I am in so small a minority among Senate Democrats in taking the position that I have. While I obviously understand and respect that Iraq is a difficult issue, and people take different points of views, I’m surprised and disappointed that the split has followed partisan lines so much. It shouldn’t be.
The Hill: Some of this criticism might seem surprising from someone who was the vice presidential nominee seven years ago. How far away from the Democratic Party do you see yourself right now?
Lieberman: Right now, certainly on Iraq, to some extent on some other foreign policy issues, like how do we confront Iran, how do we contain Iran, how do we deal with what that threat represents in the Middle East. To some extent on some defense issues, I have disagreements with most Democrats. But I agree with most Democrats on a lot of other issues, and a lot of domestic issues particularly.
The Hill: Are you open to switching parties and becoming a Republican?
Lieberman: I have no interest or desire in doing that. I wouldn’t foreclose it as a possibility, but I hope that I don’t reach that point.
The Hill: What would drive you over to that point?
Lieberman: Well, I guess I’d know it. It’s like Justice [Potter] Stewart and his definition of obscenity: he couldn’t define it but he’d know when he saw it. I think I’ll know it when I feel it, but I hope I never get to that point.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)