America and 9/11

In my latest post over at The Mantle, I take a look at America's reaction to the 9/11 attacks ten years later. You often hear it said that the attacks “changed everything”, but did they really? And do Americans have an unhealthy obsession with wallowing in the tragedy of the attacks? Surf on over to The Mantle to read my views.

Pirates 3 a.m.

Back in the 2008 Democratic primaries, then candidate Hillary Clinton suggested that fellow candidate Barrack Obama wouldn't be ready as president to answer the emergency phone call that comes into the White House at three in the morning; now according to former George W. Bush press flack Ari Fleischer that call has come, in the form of Somali pirates.

“4 Americans killed by pirates. This is the 3:00am call that Hillary warned about. If O [Pres. Obama] doesn't want more killed, he must strike back,” Fleischer tweeted according to ABC News. Fleischer was of course referring to the four Americans aboard a hijacked yacht in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday at the hands of Somali pirates that had captured the ship over the weekend – though frankly a few things about that story don't make a lot of sense. Supposedly the pirates were negotiating with the FBI when gunshots were heard. Navy SEALS were dispatched from a nearby US warship only to find the hostages dead; two pirates were then killed in a shootout, two others wounded and 13 taken into custody. The problems I have with this story though are why would the pirates decide to shoot their hostages in the middle of negotiations? And 21 people seems like a lot for a 58-foot yacht... Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that this was a Navy-led hostage rescue attempt gone wrong.

But getting back to Fleischer, he went on to tweet: “If I was a Somali pirate & if O doesn't retaliate, I'd keep taking hostages. If crime/terror pays, there will be more crime/terror.” Fleischer is apparently unaware that the current wave of piracy off the coast of Somalia has been going on in earnest since 2008 and that literally dozens of ships have been captured so far and tens of millions paid in ransom. Equally as tone-deaf was Donald Trump at the recent CPAC convention when he said that all we needed to solve the piracy problem was a few ships and a couple of good admirals; again apparently unaware that at any given time there is a flotilla of roughly two dozen warships from navies around the globe, the US Navy included, engaged in anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia. The problem is that given the fact Somali pirates now range across several million square miles of ocean, to effectively combat the problem more than 100 warships would be needed. (Frankly it's also a little hard to believe that with protests roiling North Africa and the Persian Gulf, Fleischer keyed in on Somali pirates as Obama's “3 a.m. moment”.)

Fleischer's comments are likely a new conservative line of attack on Obama's foreign policy, slamming him over a fairly intractable problem that the global community has been happy to ignore for the past two decades; namely the lawless state that is Somalia. An increased naval presence in the Indian Ocean could help to battle the pirates, but the only real solution to ending piracy in Somalia lies onshore. A stopgap measure would be to put troops on land to capture and secure pirate port cities like Haradhere and Eyl; the only way to permanently solve the problem would be to restore security a functioning government to Somalia as a nation, which has essentially been lawless since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. But the international community is reluctant to even offer financial support to the African Union peacekeeping mission that is maintaining a tenuous foothold in the capital, Mogadishu for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, let alone doing anything bold like supplying equipment or troops to the mission. So until the international community gets serious about restoring Somalia to the ranks of functioning nation-states around the world, the piracy problem will continue, no matter how many tweets Ari Fleischer writes.

Finally, to wrap up on a more ominous note, this week Somali pirates operating out of the port of Haradhere agreed essentially to pay a “tax” to Somalia's main Islamic militant group, al-Shabaab. While there has long been a fear that Somali piracy was being used to fund the Islamic militancy in the country, the Islamists had only a slight involvement in piracy, while the Somali pirates were happy to spend their ransom money on women, alcohol and drugs – all things forbidden under the strict version of Islam pushed by groups like al-Shabaab. Late in December, militants moved into Haradhere, one of the main Somali pirate ports. Now under terms of the agreement, Somali pirates will kickback 20% of any future ransoms to al-Shabaab – a revenue stream of potentially millions of dollars, in addition to a one-time payment said to be in the millions as well.

The Egyptian Mirror

One of the more interesting aspects of the uprising in Egypt has been to watch the reactions of observers in the United States and Western Europe (a.k.a “The West”), and how readily what's happening on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities is so easily conformed into the existing notions of the viewer. A few brief examples:

Egypt is the Bush Freedom Agenda in action. This is a position being pushed by former members of the Bush Administration as well as some neoconservative commentators. Bush made spreading the “blessings of liberty” around the world a key part of his foreign policy, it became the rationale for America's invasion of Iraq - at least once it was clear that no one was buying the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction thing. The idea was that a democratic Iraq would send ripples across the region, ushering in a wave of democratic conversions across the Arab world.
In reality, if anything, the uprising in Egypt is happening in spite of the Bush Freedom Agenda. The Arab street viewed the situation in Iraq not as something to emulate, but rather to avoid, especially after the chaotic period that gripped the country from 2003-2008. Bush further undermined his own Freedom Agenda by cozying up to Arab autocrats, including one Hosni Mubarak. And protesters in Cairo have been quick to note that the tear gas canisters Mubarak's police are firing at them are stamped “Made in the U.S.A.”.

The Revolution is Social Media in action! There's at least a little truth to this one; scenes of the successful uprising in Tunisia were widely shared via YouTube and Facebook, one Egyptian cleric said over the weekend that the people were not following him, but Facebook, and of course Egypt tried to bring the situation under control by killing the Internet in the country. That said it is easy to overestimate the impact of Social Media in the protests. Less than a quarter of Egyptians have access to the Internet (some estimates put the number at only 8-10%), and once the Internet went down, the protests actually got larger. Organizers resorted to old-fashioned methods like passing out leaflets and knocking on doors to get the word out. In fact, the media outlet that seemed to have the biggest impact on getting the people to rise up was Al-Jazeera, which beamed first the story of the Tunisian situation and later the first Egyptian uprisings to homes around the country (Egypt finally pulled the plug on Al-Jazeera over the weekend). Yes, Social Media has played a role in the Egypt revolts, but revolutions were happening long before Facebook went online, and this one almost surely would have happened without Twitter and YouTube as well.

Egypt will go all Fundamental Islamic. This meme has been gaining traction over the weekend in the American press, and comes from fears that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which supports Hezbollah and Hamas, could “take over” in the power vacuum that would likely follow Mubarak's deposal. Not coincidentally, casting the MB as bogeyman is exactly the strategy that Mubarak has used for years to coerce Western nations to support his autocratic regime. But noted Egypt scholar Fawaz Gerges argued on MSNBC on Sunday that the Muslim Brotherhood's constituency within Egypt is in fact limited, perhaps only a third of the nation at best supports them, and that they have not been a leading force in the uprisings. He went on to argue that the MB has become more moderate and mainstream in recent years, leaving behind the violent radicalism that marked their rhetoric in the 80s and 90s. More important is the man on the street opinion. One Egyptian I saw on CNN asked the reporter: “who here is Muslim? Who is Christian? We are together and we want Mubarak gone.” The mood on the street certainly would seem more supportive of a broad coalition government than a fundamentalist Islamic state – after all, the Egyptians are trying to get rid of an oppressive regime not merely trade Mubarak in for a Taliban-style one. Would the Muslim Brotherhood be part of a coalition government? Yes, but that is not the same as “taking over”, and certainly is not an indication that Egypt is about to turn fundamentalist.

It's racism! Finally there's this nugget via my old University's email listserv where one student took great offense at the term “Day of Rage” as one of the early protests in Egypt was called, launching into a tirade about how “whites” viewed Africans as savages only capable of rage, etc., etc. Never mind that the term “Day of Rage” had been coined in Lebanon a week earlier to mark a protest over Hezbollah's attempts to appoint a new prime minister, or that reportage of the term seems to have originated with Qatar-based Al Jazeera. She wanted to see racism, and coverage of the events in Egypt allowed her to see it.

Just like a mirror.

You Think This Would Be News: Cheney Indicted

You really would think news that former Vice President Dick Cheney was likely to be indicted on charges of bribery by the government of Nigeria would at least rate a mention on the nightly news, but apparently not. So in case you likely missed this story, Nigeria's anti-corruption agency is set to levy charges against Cheney and a host of other top officials from the oil industry services company Halliburton over charges that a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, bribed a number of Nigerian government officials to win approval for the construction of a natural gas liquefaction plant. This plant would allow KBR to export liquefied natural gas (or LNG) by ship from Nigeria. While KBR and Halliburton have since split up, the charges date back to before 2007, when KBR was still a Halliburton subsidiary, and presumably to before 2001 when Cheney was still the head of Halliburton.

KBR has already agreed to pay more than $180 million in fines to the government of Nigeria.

Of course even if indicted it is impossible to believe that Cheney would actually go to Nigeria to stand trial. But the charges shouldn't just be dismissed as the act of a grandstanding government. Nigeria is Africa's most populous nations and one of the economic powers of the continent. It is also a major supplier of crude oil to the United States and is a growing exporter of LNG.

Get Your War On: Venezuela Edition

You would think that with the United States already bogged down in two unwinnable military engagements (Iraq and Afghanistan) the punditocracy wouldn't be advocating for a third, yet the sabre-rattling towards Iran, and occasionally North Korea, would indicate that two conflicts just aren't enough for some people. Now you can add Venezuela to that list, which as Rizwan Ladha alleges in the Huffington Post, is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program in partnership with that other nuclear bogeyman, Iran.

Ladha's post is heavy on the rhetoric, light on facts and is largely a rehash of an earlier column written by Roger Noriega, whose own motives in raising allegations against Venezuela must be carefully scrutinized given Noriega's association with the Neoconservative movement and his long history in battling Leftist governments in Latin America (Noriega was an Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under President George W. Bush and is currently a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute). Among the flaws in Ladha's article are his misidentifying Venezuela as a Southern Hemisphere nation (it's north of the equator) and his implication that the southern half of the globe has always been a nuclear-free zone – South Africa developed their own nuclear weapons, which they gave up at the end of the country's Apartheid regime. Ladha's biggest flaw though is failing to offer up any truly compelling evidence that Venezuela and Iran are collaborating on building nukes. Iran insists that their nuclear program is designed for the peaceful generation of electrical power only; while the world may have its doubts on the Iranian claims, there's no definitive proof to refute them. So right now it's a stretch to say that Iran is developing nukes, it's an even bigger stretch to say that Iran has reached such an advanced level of expertise that they are in a position to help another country establish a nuclear weapons program of their own.

Ladha ends his piece by saying that even if Venezuela is trying to build a nuclear bomb, there's really nothing we can do about it. While this may be correct, talking about a leader like Hugo Chavez – widely regarded in the United States as someone who is both erratic and staunchly anti-American – getting a nuclear bomb is something political leaders in the US aren't going to stand for, recall how the most-effective bit of agitprop used by the Bush administration to build the dubious case for war with Iraq were the claims that Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing his own nuclear weapons program. You can't just raise the spectre of the nuclear genie in the hands of one of America's “enemies” and then tell people to live with it, something I suspect that deep down Ladha and Noriega know all too well.

Ebert And The Mosque

Perhaps it's a fitting summary of the bizarre, and quite ugly, debate that has sprung up over a proposed Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, that the best commentary I've read on the issue was written by Roger Ebert.  This is no knock against Mr. Ebert's intelligence or his skills as a writer, but the man is renown as a film critic, neither a journalist nor a political commentator.  But rather than flog my own post about the Cordoba House over at The Mantle, I thought I'd discuss some of the issues from Ebert's piece, which I suggest everyone reads.

Among my favorite bits were his questioning why an Islamic center located two blocks south of the Ground Zero site somehow “dishonors” the memory of those killed in the World Trade Center attacks, while digging through the dirt beneath the Towers, dirt that contains the pulverized remains of those killed in the attacks, to put in an underground shopping mall does not?  Ebert also quotes two strippers who work at clubs within the Ground Zero Sacred Land catchment area (again, strip clubs somehow manage not to sully the alleged sacredness of the area the way a cultural center would, strange...) who offer up some of the best views on the whole controversy that I've heard – namely that the United States is a land built on the principles of tolerance.

It's also worth noting that this whole controversy wouldn't exist if not for some truly sloppy/lazy reporting on the part of the media in this country.  The “Ground Zero Mosque” is neither – as I noted in my Mantle piece – it is in reality a cultural center with a prayer room that is located two blocks south of the former WTC site.  Yet it seems that actual reporting in this country has taken a backseat to dutifully broadcasting the inane ramblings of Sarah Palin's Facebook page.  Once the “Ground Zero Mosque” meme got out into the popular discourse, the debate was already framed.  The media has also failed to press political critics – notably Rep. Peter King, former Gov. George Pataki, and aspiring Gov. Rick Lazio – why if Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Cordoba project, is such a “radical Islamist” was he repeatedly employed by Pres. George W. Bush to act as an emissary for the United States to the Islamic world to foster an idea of reconciliation and to promote a tolerant, inclusive view of Islam in the modern world?

I guess decent reporting is too much to ask from the mainstream press these days.  Besides, then they wouldn't be able to cover their own manufactured controversies like the Ground Zero Mosque...  

Israel/Palestine - Why Now?

The big foreign policy news from Friday is that apparently the US has brought the Israelis and Palestinians kicking and screaming back to the negotiating table to try to hammer out some sort of lasting peace agreement. The big question is why?

Finding an end to the intractable Israel-Palestine problem has been something of a mania for the past several presidents; sadly it has also proved to be a fool’s errand. There's no reason to think this time will be any different: there has been no substantive change on the ground, if anything the two sides are less suited for talks than they were when the last round of negotiations fell apart under George W. Bush – the Israeli government is even more right-wing and hawkish than it was previously, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is even weaker than he once was (not to mention that his term of office actually ended a year and a half ago...). And if the two sides were just waiting for George W. to leave the scene before starting negotiations again, then talks would have started long ago, not more than a year and a half into the presidency of Barack Obama.

Given all that, I can't see why anyone in Washington can believe these talks will be anything more than yet another Mid-East fail. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is steadfast in their refusal to put a full and binding halt to Israeli settlement construction; the key irritant to the Palestinian side (they raise a good point – how can they be expected to have a country when Israeli settlements are swallowing it up bit by bit?) Meanwhile Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas, who hold half the cards in Palestine as the ruling party in Gaza.

Both Israel and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and both maintain that they won't negotiate with terrorists, which is true, except when it's not... The United States does negotiate with terrorists, and does so quite frequently in fact. The success of the much-ballyhooed “surge” in Iraq was based in large part on negotiating with “terrorists”, particularly Sunni tribes, who following the 2003 invasion became allied with al-Qaeda militants in the country. The US negotiated with, and eventually won over, many Sunni militias, rechristening them the “Sons of Iraq” who were not dedicated to rebuilding their country. Now, as we try to replicate the surge strategy in Afghanistan, a key facet is identifying and negotiating with “more moderate” elements of the Taliban – another group the US considers to be terrorists. And it's worth noting that the successful peace process in Northern Ireland came about after the British began negotiating with a group they considered terrorists, the Irish Republican Army.

The simple truth is that peace negotiations mean sitting down with people you hate. Or as the great Israeli statesman Yitzhak Rabin is often quoted as saying: “you don't make peace with your friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” Excluding Hamas from the talks alone is a clear indication that no one is serious about this process actually yielding results. After a couple of weeks the talks will likely end after Palestinian militants launch one of their home-made rockets into Israel, or a hawkish member of the Israeli government (looking at you Avigdor Lieberman) makes another ill-timed announcement about the further expansion of Israeli settlements; or both. As other nations around the world make a bid to be big-time players on the world stage, playing moderator for the Israel-Palestine peace process is a role the United States should gladly relinquish.

Beating The War Drums

A few quick thoughts on Iran. Just a casual look around the blogoshpere turns up an awful lot of pieces dealing with the idea of Iran - either warning of the growing Iranian “nuclear threat”, advocating military action to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon, or in fewer instances, warning against the consequences of attacking Iran. Perhaps it’s laziness on the part of the punditocracy, since a rehash of the case for/against war with Iran kind of writes itself at this point; but it does seem like there’s a growing expectation that there will be some military action against Iran soon (something I humbly note that I predicted back in June).

Unfortunately for the pro-action crowd, their arguments are pretty weak. Take this recent piece in the Weekly Standard, which makes the case that the US has to take military action against Iran to protect the world’s oil supply, since if there was an outbreak of hostilities, it would negatively impact the world’s supply of oil (feel free to scratch your head over that bit of logic). The pro-action crowd also maintains that Iran’s nuclear capabilities can quickly be eliminated through a series of air strikes that will have no negative reprocussions. And if you believe that, I have some lovely beachfront property along the Straits of Hormuz to sell you.

Sadly, we’ve seen this movie before. Military action in Afghanistan was suppose to quickly decapitate al-Qaeda and eliminate the country as a terrorist safe-haven. Our soldiers in Iraq would, supposedly, be greeted as liberators, met with candies and flowers and Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for the whole invasion to boot. We all know how well those two scenarios played out. But sadly as Arnaud de Borchgrave reports in today’s Washington Times, those lessons of history seem to have been lost on the crop of neoconservatives still rattling around Washington DC; he quotes Reuel Marc Gerecht who says that Iran’s response to military action will be “minimal” and that an attack will “rock the system” in the region - basically shoveling the same stupid line the neocons pushed seven years ago about Iraq.

If we indeed are set on military action against Iran then, let’s hope our leaders do a much better job planning for the day after the attack as they do for when the bombs fall.

Opposition Rallies in Haiti

Police firing tear gas canisters met a crowd of more than 1,000 people demanding the resignation of Haiti’s President Rene Preval on Tuesday, according to the BBC. Opposition politicians, who are claiming that Preval is using the earthquake last January that killed more than 200,000 people as an excuse to remain in power once his term in office ends next February, led the protest. Haiti’s parliament just extended Preval’s term in office by three more months because, they say, it would be impossible to hold elections as scheduled because many government electoral records were lost and many civil servants were killed in the quake; opposition politicians though counter by saying that Haiti’s constitution makes no provisions for suspending elections due to a national crisis.

In the aftermath of the quake, many Haitians were upset by Preval’s seeming lack of leadership; some also felt that the Haitian government was allowing foreign militaries - particularly the United States’ – too free a hand in operating within their country while providing relief efforts. During Tuesday’s protest, some protestors called for the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was driven from power and into exile in Africa six years ago. For his part, Aristide claims that he was actually deposed by the United States in a coup d’etat for his refusal to sell off state-owned enterprises; at the time, officials from the Bush Administration countered by saying that the US military actually helped Aristide and his family escape the country ahead of an armed uprising by Haitians opposed to his rule, the US hoped, as a way to avoid a full-blown revolution in Haiti. Aristide was flown into exile first in the Central African Republic and later in South Africa. Preval was later elected to the presidency in 2006.

New Missile Plans, New Problems For US/Russian Relations

So much for “resetting” relations with Russia I guess…

Just five months ago the Obama Administration gave a boost to their attempts at repairing relations with Russia with their decision to pull the plug on a scheme to base an anti-ballistic missile shield (or ABM) in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now Washington is putting new strains on that same relationship by floating plans to base elements of the US missile shield in Bulgaria and Romania instead.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with developments in anti-missile defense, a brief recap: The Bush Administration pushed to base elements of the ABM shield – a radar station in the Czech Republic and ten anti-missile missiles in Poland – in Eastern Europe to protect the Continent against rocket attacks from “rogue states”. In practice “rogue states” was translated as “Iran”. But Iran doesn’t even have ballistic missiles with the range to reach Europe, nor was it ever explained why Iran would even want to launch missiles against Europe, and there were questions about whether or not the ABM system would even work in the first place, so all in all the ABM project didn’t make a lot of sense.

The plan did however infuriate the Russians. Publicly, Russia complained that the ABM system was intended not to guard against rogue states but to oppose their own nuclear missiles, something the Americans said wasn’t true since the ten interceptors in Poland could easily be overwhelmed by the thousands of missiles in the Russian arsenal. In reality, a lot of Russia’s opposition to the ABM program stemmed from the fact that they still consider Eastern Europe to be within their “sphere of influence” (a belief held over from Soviet times). Russia likely also doubted American claims that ABM was solely a defensive system since they had received similar assurances about NATO back in the 1990s, right before NATO went on the offensive against Russia’s long-time ally, Serbia in 1999.

Ultimately, the Obama Administration’s decision to end the ABM program in Poland and the Czech Republic last year seemed to be based more on a cost-analysis of an expensive, yet strategically dubious weapons program than as a way to placate the Russians, but it had that effect also, which is what makes the Administration’s decision this week even more puzzling. Russia considers Bulgaria to be in their backyard just as much as they do Poland (maybe even more so since Russian-Bulgarian relations have historically been much better than Russian-Polish ones), so their anger over the latest ABM decision is no surprise. At the same time, Poland will likely view this as a slap against them – if the US was going to base an ABM system in Eastern Europe anyway, why not just keep it on Polish soil?

One explanation could be Bulgaria’s importance in two competing natural gas pipeline projects meant to ship gas from Central Asia to Europe – the Russian-backed South Stream and the American-supported Nabucco (the United States hopes Nabucco will help to lessen Europe’s dependence on Russia for their natural gas supplies). Bulgaria is a key transit point in both plans, so perhaps ABM is a way for the United States to build up relations with Bulgaria to win them over to Nabucco.

But whatever the motivation, the latest chapter in the ABM saga is already causing problems in US-Russian relations. Russia is now threatening to suspend talks on a renewal of the START nuclear arms reduction pact, while the tiny pro-Russian quasi-nation of Transdnestr (a breakaway region of Moldova) is offering to host Russian ballistic missiles in response to an American ABM base in Bulgaria.

Iraqi Shoe Thrower Claims He Was Tortured

Remember Muntazer al-Zaidi? He was the Iraqi journalist who turned into a regional folk hero after he chucked both his shoes at then-President George W. Bush during a press conference last December. That act earned him a three year sentence in prison for insulting a foreign head of state (to strike someone with a shoe is considered a grave insult in many Arab cultures).

Al-Zaidi got a gift today, an early release from jail, after serving just nine months of his sentence. And being a journalist, it's no surprise that al-Zaidi is talking.

He claims that he was tortured while in prison and fears that now he's out US intelligence forces will hunt him down, a fear that he's taking so seriously that al-Zaidi won't move into a house his employer, al-Baghdadia television in Baghdad, bought for him until he arranges for his own security detail.

Actually, the claims of torture are nothing new, soon after his arrest the New York Times, among other news sites, reported that al-Zaidi had apparently been beaten while in custody, and had even had a tooth knocked out. Al-Zaidi claimed that a confession/apology he made a few days after the event was due to this torture. In his impromptu press conference outside the prison gates, al-Zaidi said that he was regularly tortured by Iraqi officials, suffering beatings, electric shocks and exposure to extreme cold. Al-Zaidi has promised to name "senior Iraqi officials" he said were involved in his mistreatment.

After the shoe throw, al-Zaidi became a folk hero in many parts of the Mid East. He said that he threw his shoes to protest the American occupation of his country.

Liz Cheney's Trouble With History

Maybe it's because the Cheney family has finally realized that to much of America the former Vice President comes off like Darth Vader without the charm and personality, but recently his daughter, Liz, has taken over the role as the family spokesperson. But if Liz Cheney's going to be front and center in policy debates, she needs to take a remedial course in history, fast.

Liz's first whopper came a few days ago when she said on MSNBC that her dad and President Bush had kept America safe for the past eight years. It's a fine statement that overlooks one small incident - 9/11 (hardly worth mentioning, I know), unless Liz somehow thinks having 3,000 people killed in the worst terrorist attack on American soil somehow qualifies as 'keeping us safe'...

But even if you're willing to give her a pass on that titanic faux pas, Liz Cheney shows in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that she has some big problems with world history as well. She attacks President Obama for his recent speech in Moscow, accusing him of getting the facts of the Cold War wrong. "The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom...", she states.

Actually the Cold War ending because the Soviets decided it should isn't too far from the truth, and it's much closer to reality than the version pushed by the Conservatives of Reagan the Victorious. The Cold War ended because Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet system, found it couldn't be done and decided in the end to let the Soviet Union dissolve rather than trying to keep it together through force of arms. Sure Reagan began his term as President by railing against the "evil empire" (as he once referred to the Soviet Union), but his tone changed when Gorbachev came to power. Reagan saw Gorby as a man he could work with on his ultimate goal - eliminating the potential for nuclear war between the superpowers. By the time Gorbachev took power, Reagan didn't want to destroy the Soviets, but rather work with them to achieve his goal.

Liz Cheney goes on to slam Obama for bringing up "American support for the 1953 coup in Iran" during his speech in Cairo aimed at the worldwide Muslim community. Strike two for Cheney - America didn't "support" the coup, the CIA engineered the whole thing, even roping in the very reluctant Shah to take control of Iran once their democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq was disposed.

But wait, she's not done yet! Cheney tries to end her screed with one last shot at Obama, saying he's weakening America "by cutting our weapons systems and our defensive capabilities." Um, you mean like Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney (dear ol' dad) did during the George H. W. Bush administration, when he cut the the size of the military (in personnel terms) by almost 20%?

Like the old saying goes: you're entitled to your own opinions Liz, but not your own facts.

Saddam Hussein: I Lied About WMDs

According to just-released transcripts of Saddam Hussein's interrogations at the hands of FBI officers, he made up all that stuff about Iraq actually having a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program to keep Iran from attacking his country.

Iraq and Iran spent most of the 1980's locked in a bloody war that killed hundreds of thousands of people on each side. Hussein feared that Iran would attack again if they thought Iraq was weak, so he encouraged the belief that Iraq was actively pursuing WMD technology to keep the Iranians at bay. He told his FBI interrogators that he was much more worried about Iran than he was the United States, thinking that Iraq could absorb a second US-led invasion, if it came to that.

Ironically Hussein and George W. Bush seemed to have a similar world view in a couple of key ways: they both thought that Iran was led by a bunch of religious "fanatics" and Saddam condemned Osama bin Laden as a "zealot" - adding that he never supported the Saudi-born terrorist.

Netanyahu Makes History (or maybe not)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a major speech yesterday on Israel's relations with the Palestinians where he for the first time endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state.

All in all it was a pretty mild endorsement, he only used the term "Palestinian state" three times and just one of those was in reference to an actual homeland for the Palestinians. And there were a few strings attached: the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a nation itself, give up claims to Jerusalem, give up claims of the "right of return" for Palestinians displaced by Israel's founding in 1948, not form a military, not control their own airspace, not form military agreements with other countries, and had to accept the continued growth of Israeli settlements in their territory. But they can have their own flag and anthem. (The full text of the Netanyahu speech is here).

So really it's not a very historic speech after all since the Palestinians will never accept the conditions Netanyahu is putting on them (in fact they've already rejected his offer). In many ways, the speech really was another round in an ongoing battle between Netanyahu and Barack Obama over the issue of Israeli settlements inside what the Palestinians hope one-day will be Palestine.

There are two problems with Israel and its settlements: first they're illegal under international law - an occupying country (Israel) can't just move its citizens into occupied lands. Second, Israel agreed to halt "all settlement activity" as part of the 2003 'Roadmap to Peace' with the Palestinians. Now the Bush Administration let Israel slide with a wink and a nod, not protesting as they continued to build and expand settlements in violation both of international law and their 2003 pledge. Netanyahu mentioned his handshake deal with Bush to Obama after he was sworn in as President, Obama in turn told him it’s a new day and a new administration and that the settlement activity had to stop.

Netanyahu has agreed, sort of - Israel won't build any new settlements, but they insist on 'natural growth' of the existing ones, meaning the settlements should be allowed to expand as their populations grow. There are about 500,000 Israelis living in settlements, which makes for a lot of growth...So far it's not an argument the Obama Administration is buying.

The problem for the two leaders is that neither one of them can afford to back down on the settlement issue. Obama recently gave his own major speech in Cairo, the Muslim world (a lousy term for such a diverse collection of countries and cultures, but an easy bit of shorthand to reference a big chunk of the globe) is looking for a different policy from America, and they're interested in concrete action, not just moving speeches. If Obama gives in on the settlements, it will likely be taken as a sign by the Muslim world that nothing's really changed as far as American policy. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is catching flak from members of his own ruling coalition for even suggesting there might be a Palestinian state and for putting any limits on the settlements.

But something has to give. The status quo has gone on too long. The Saudis earlier in the year said that their own peace proposal - peace between Israel and all the Arab states if Israel leaves the Occupied Territories - wouldn’t stay on the table much longer. Meanwhile Obama either has to take a hard-line with Netanyahu over the settlements or risk seeing his plans for a new relationship with the Muslim world fall apart. And Sunday's speech aside, Netanyahu is hoping not for history, but more of the same.

Iraqi shoe thrower prison sentence cut

Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who became a folk hero after flinging his shoes at President George Bush, should be out of jail by the end of the year.

Al-Zaidi was originally found guilty of assault after a trial in March and was sentenced to three years (out of a possible 15) in jail. But an Iraqi judge has agreed with al-Zaidi's appeal, changing his crime from assault to 'insulting a foreign leader' (a crime under Iraqi law) and reducing his sentence from three years to one. With time already served, it means al-Zaidi should get out of jail in September.

Al-Zaidi became a hero to many in the Middle East after he tossed both of his shoes at Bush during the President's press conference to mark his last visit to Baghdad last December. Throwing or hitting someone with a shoe is considered a grave insult in Arabic cultures. At his trial al-Zaidi said he threw his shoes at Bush because "I had the feeling that the blood of innocent people was dropping on my feet during the time that he was smiling and coming to say bye-bye to Iraq with a dinner."

A recent poll conducted by the BBC found that 62% of Iraqis consider Muntadar al-Zaidi to be a 'hero' for his actions.

Israel's new Foreign Minister slams peace deal

Well that was fast.

There was a lot of concern when Avigdor Lieberman was tapped to be Israel’s new Foreign Minister that it would mean bad things for the Israel-Palestine Peace Process. Just one day into the job Lieberman, who has been described as an “ultra-nationalist” by some and an outright racist by others, rejected the Annapolis agreement forged by President George W. Bush back in 2007.

The Annapolis agreement committed the Israelis and Palestinians to “vigorous, ongoing and continuous” negotiations on a two-state solution that would create an independent Palestinian homeland in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Bush had hoped by the end of his term in 2008. Lieberman, though, said that the Annapolis agreement “has no validity,” a declaration that seemed to even catch members of the Foreign Ministry that he now heads, off guard. Lieberman said the only obligation Israel has is to the 2003 “Road Map” agreement for a two-state solution - an agreement Lieberman himself voted against while a member of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset. Of course Israel has continuously failed to live up to one of the key elements of the Road Map, a freeze on building “settlements” for Israeli citizens within the occupied Palestinian lands.

Lieberman has a long history of making very controversial statements about Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Even while campaigning ahead of Israel’s elections just this past February, Lieberman suggested that Israeli citizens of Arab descent (who make up about a quarter of Israel’s population) should have to swear ‘loyalty oaths’ to Israel or lose their citizenship.

For his part, new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel will “strive for peace” and said that they (the Israelis) did not want to rule over another people (the Palestinians). Yet Netanyahu has also backed away from supporting an independent Palestinian state, which would seem to contradict his ‘not wanting to rule’ statement. Netanyahu is also stressing the need to 'deal with' the threat he sees from Iran.

Neoconservative view: Obama's a Commie (and he'll destroy America)

I’m happy to read commentary from all sides on a given topic; I think that’s how you get a full picture of what’s really going on in the world. Even if I don’t agree with your point of view, I’m willing to be swayed if you make a good, fact-based argument.

Unfortunately the arguments from the Right coming out against Barack Obama have been light on facts on heavy on rhetoric, and some very confused rhetoric at that. The Right has been describing the Obama administration by turns as Communist, Socialist, Fascist and McCarthyist – apparently forgetting (or not knowing) that Communists and Fascists are ideologies inherently opposed to each other and that Sen. Joe McCarthy made his name as an anti-Communist crusader (not to mention his being viewed as a hero of sorts by right-wing commentators like Ann Coulter).

So into this confusing mess, enters Frank Gaffney, one of the more vocal Neoconservative backers of the George W. Bush worldview. In an opinion piece for the Washington Times, Gaffney informs us that Barack Obama is really a Communist bent on destroying the military and political power of the United States and who will surrender to Islamic extremists (seriously).

Mr. Gaffney offers few facts, or reasoned arguments, to back up his allegations, which in a sense is good since the few facts he offers he gets terribly wrong…Gaffney claims that Russia is “squeezing our supplies lines into Afghanistan”, when in reality Russia just opened a new supply route after NATO was unable to protect the main one up from Pakistan against Taliban insurgents. He accuses Obama of planning to abandon our allies in the Czech Republic by backing out of our pledge to base a system to protect them against “Iranian nuclear-armed missiles” – this ignores the fact that Iran posses neither nuclear warheads, nor missiles that can reach the Czech Republic (nor does he explain why the Iranians would want to nuke the Czechs…), and that the majority of the Czech people don’t want our ABM system in the first place. Finally Frank says that Obama will give the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights region to Syria; bypassing the fact that Israel and Syria have been negotiating the return of Golan to Syria for months now.

While I think the Obama administration is off to a good start in international affairs, I’m concerned about some of his decisions – like putting Richard Holbrooke in charge of Afghan-Pakistan relations, and I’m reserving judgment on how effective the Obama foreign policy is until we move from the talking phase to the action one. So I’m willing to listen to critiques, I just expect them to be of a far better quality than the screed Mr. Gaffney offers.

Bush legacy tour hits Canada

George W. Bush took his first foreign trip this week, giving a speech about his presidency in the friendly confines of Calgary, Canada. Alberta is basically Canada’s answer to Texas - a conservative place where cowboys are a common sight and wealth flows from the oil industry, so it was pretty much a home game for Dubya. But still several hundred protesters turned up, including one dressed in Guantanamo-prisoner orange and another who brought along his shoe-flinging “cannon”, all of which prompted Bush to scurry into the convention center via an underground tunnel.

So what did Bush say to the folks who spent $4,000 per table to hear him speak? We’re not entirely sure - no cameras were allowed and no official transcript was released, though through reports published by Canadian news outlets the Toronto Globe and Mail and Maclean’s magazine, we can piece together the highpoints.

We learned that Bush (unlike Rush Limbaugh) wants Pres. Obama to succede; even if Obama wasn’t his first choice as successor, Bush now sees the historic importance of his presidency to the country. We also learned that Bush thinks Canada’s banking system is better than the United States’, given the recent meltdown on Wall Street (which Bush said “got drunk”), and that he thinks global warming “could” pose a major threat to the planet.

When it comes to foreign policy though, Bush stuck to his guns. Saddam Hussein was a grave threat to the world (even though at the time of the 2003 US invasion he only controlled about half his own country), Iraq is better off without him and Iraq’s democracy could be an inspiration for Iran. As for Afghanistan, Bush brushed off suggestions that the Iraq war negatively affected US efforts to capture Osama bin Laden. Of course the story of Tora Bora basically contradicts Bush on this one. In December 2001 US troops cornered bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership in a cave complex called Tora Bora. But there weren’t enough US forces to completely surround him, so Afghani warlords were called on to fill in the gaps. Al-Qaeda bribed the Afghans (the ones who weren’t star-struck just being so close to bin Laden in the first place) and slipped across the border into Pakistan - with the help of the Pakistanis. It’s a pretty clear example of what happens when you don’t send enough troops into a war zone, though the administration never fully staffed the Afghan war, largely because they were already gearing up for the invasion of Iraq.

But the revisionist history campaign is well underway by the Bush inner circle and his supporters - last week on MSNBC's Hardball Ari Fleischer stated that it was Saddam Hussein, not bin Laden, who attacked the US on 9/11; while Fox's Bill O'Reilly said that Bush has “basically won” the War on Terror - which must have come as news to the 150,000+ US troops currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as part of that war.

Dubya might be looking to forget about the whole War on Terror thing though if his official Presidential Library biography is any indication - it has no mention of Iraq, Afghanistan or the WOT, though it does mention Bush’s dogs Barney and Miss Beazley.

The US, International Criminal Court, and Cheney war crimes?

The United States should reengage with the International Criminal Court, that’s the opinion of former Clinton and Bush administration official David Kaye.

Just to recap, the International Criminal Court is the international body empowered to charge and try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other such atrocities committed anywhere in the world. In the past international tribunals have been convened to deal with war crimes associated with conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, but these tribunals sat for limited periods of time and only had jurisdiction over one specific region. The ICC is a permanent body that can try individuals charged with war crimes, etc., committed anywhere in the world. They made news last week by indicting Sudan’s President Bashir over atrocities committed in Darfur.

Pres. Clinton was a strong supporter of the ICC idea and helped to get the ball rolling on its creation. But Clinton also knew it would be a nearly impossible sell to Congress, who would eventually have to ratify any agreement he signed on behalf of the United States. Before leaving office, Clinton did sign a measure to keep the US ‘engaged’ with the actions of the court.

Once in office Pres. Bush ‘unsigned’ the statement, leaving the US with no official connection to the ICC. His argument, and the argument of some in Congress, was that the Court infringed on US sovereignty. It’s the argument usually trotted out by our government anytime it is faced with some international agreement it doesn’t like (of course you could argue the free trade agreements Bush signed also infringe on US sovereignty, but he didn't seem to have a problem with those).

Kaye argues that now the United States has no way of influencing the further development of the court, and that it only makes sense to at least go back to the Clinton-era level of engagement. It would also be a way for the Obama administration to again signal their desire to be a global leader in human rights and international relations.

Of course if the allegations put forward by journalist Seymour Hersh are true, the first American to face charges at the ICC could be former VP Dick Cheney. At an event at the Univ. of Minnesota on Tuesday night, Hersh talked about a covert military operation, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which reported directly to VP Cheney. Their mission, according to Hersh, was to carry out secret assassinations around the world. Hersh explained the JSOC would fly into a country, without the knowledge of US officials like the ambassador to the country, or the CIA, carry out execution(s) and leave, reporting, apparently only to Dick Cheney. The JSOC was apparently causing so much ‘collateral damage’ (a.k.a. killing innocent civilians) in that the officer in charge, Admiral William McRaven, ordered a halt to JSOC operations.

Hersh later said that he was working on a book about the Bush administration on topics including the JSOC and didn't want go into further detail right now. Hersh though has a good reputation for accuracy, especially in the military and intelligence circles.

Secret hit squads carrying out covert assassinations around the world? Sounds like the kind of thing we use to accuse Saddam Hussein of doing. It also sounds like the type of crime the ICC would be very interested in.

Another chip in the Bush legacy - India

In polishing his legacy, one of the things supporters of President George W. Bush have pointed to as a foreign policy success is America’s strengthened relationship with India – the world’s largest democracy and second-most populous country. Their argument goes that during the Cold War India often had a close relationship with the Soviet Union, but today the US and India are cooperating on a number of fronts (like the development of nuclear power) so it’s proof of the US pulling India away from Russia and into our “orbit of influence.”

The Bush backers might want to hold off on the victory celebrations though… News this week out of India is that the Indian military has concluded an agreement with their counter-parts in Russia to jointly design a fifth-generation jet fighter. Fifth-gen aircraft are the most modern, most advanced jets in the sky, and are the planes that will form the core of any modern nation’s air force for decades to come (currently the only fifth-gen fighter in service anywhere in the world is the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor). The agreement with Russia is to jointly build their new fifth-gen aircraft that will enter service in both countries simultaneously, not for India to receive a lower-tech export model of a Russian plane (which has been the way advanced technology has been shared in the past). The Russian-Indian consortium hopes to fly a test aircraft by the end of the year.

It is the latest in a series of military agreements between Russia and India, which include the sale of other fourth-generation aircraft, a Soviet-era aircraft carrier (currently being refurbished in Russia) and possibly the lease of a new Russian nuclear attack submarine. They’re all ties that poke holes in the idea that George W. has pulled India out of the Russian orbit and into ours – its probably a lot more accurate to say that India will act in India’s best self-interests, working with Russia on a host of issues and the US with others when they see an advantage for India in doing so.

Meanwhile, this morning in a survey of US presidential historians sponsored by C-SPAN, George W. came in at 36 overall and 41st when you focus just on International Relations (William Henry Harrison finished last in case you’re wondering).