Are America's Right Wing Crackpots Harming US Foreign Policy?

In case you missed this story from last weekend, during the latest stop in her whirlwind tour of the world (that so far has taken her to 102 countries) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade was met in Egypt by a wild mob of protesters who threw shoes and tomatoes at her car while shouting that the US needed to stop its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the political party of Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi, along with chants of “Monica!, Monica!” 

As one of the most popular members of the Obama Administration, Secretary Clinton usually doesn't elicit such angry receptions during her state visits, and given that Egypt has long been an American ally, the reception was quite startling.  So what was the motivation behind it?  Apparently elements of America's own Right Wing lunatic fringe.

It seems that Egyptian conspiracy theorists have eagerly bought into some ridiculous claims currently making the rounds of the Far Right fringe that the US government has been infiltrated by radical Islamists.  Ground Zero for these claims is Sec. Clinton herself, who according to the theory, has somehow been brainwashed by her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who happens to be a Muslim, and therefore a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim infiltration of the US government has been so successful, according to the theory, that the US has gone on to rig Egypt's election in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who we are now funding to the tune of $1.5 billion.

This crackpot theory was apparently started by Frank Gaffney, who went from serving in the Reagan administration to peddling McCarthy-style conspiracy theories about evil Muslims lurking in under the beds of Mr. and Mrs. America on internet-radio programs.  Gaffney's delusional ramblings were eagerly picked up and echoed by such Far Right luminaries as Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and blogger Lucianne Goldberg, which explains the “Monica!” chants at least.  The details of this ring of lunacy have been mapped out by both the New York Times and TheRachel Maddow Show.

Of course in America we know better – at least those of us with an IQ higher than room temperature - than to take any of these idiotic ramblings seriously.  We know that these purveyors of nonsense are merely tossing out rhetorical red meat to folks like members of the Tea Party, who think that anyone not as white, Christian and conservative as they are is obviously some kind of foreign agent bent on destroying America.  We know that in this country anyone with a computer and a few dollars can stake out their own corner of cyberspace and fill it with whatever material they want, no matter how ridiculous, so the caveat that “I saw it on the Internet” is something of a joke about the reader's naiveté.

Unfortunately this model doesn't hold true in other countries, especially countries where an autocracy tightly controlled access to the media for decades.  So in a place like Egypt, being on the internet does confer some sense of legitimacy, as does the ability of someone like Frank Gaffney to be able to say they once worked for the President.  It gives his comments a certain weight, even if they sound like they ramblings of a lunatic and are easily debunked.  For example, “Muslim Brotherhood” agent Huma Abedin is also married to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, himself a Jew – hardly the action of a loyal MB member (I know Frank, it is all part of her amazingly clever cover story...).  The US rigging of the recent Egyptian Presidential election similarly makes no sense: if the US was going to rig the election then they most likely would have rigged it in favor of the SCAF-backed candidate Ahmed Shafiq, so that the US might more easily continue its decades-long friendly relationship with the Egyptian military (which is also the true recipient of the $1.5 billion in aid the Right Wingnuts say the US is providing Egypt).  Let's remember the United States' anemic early response to the Egyptian revolution – in part this was driven by a desire to keep our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak in power; it was also driven by the very real fear that if the Mubarak government fell, it's most likely successor would be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, since they were the only opposition party in Egypt with any level of organization.  Rather than wanting a Muslim Brotherhood take-over of Egypt, the United States feared it.

Dealing with idiotic comments is part of the price we pay for the freedom of expression guaranteed to us by the First Amendment.  Most Americans are savvy enough to either ignore comments like those being peddled by this collection of fringe characters or just roll their eyes at their inherent silliness.  Unfortunately folks in places like Egypt don't realize that these statements are the stuff of nonsense, they don't realize that to many Americans, Michele Bachmann is a joke. And, sadly, that means that their craziness is actually harming the United States abroad.

Is It Finally The End For Assad in Syria?

After dealing with a persistent rebellion in his country for over a year, the wheels seem to finally be coming off the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  Reports during the past day have indicate that several of Syria's ambassadors have defected and that a flotilla of foreign peacekeeping troops are en route to his country; another TV news report from a few days earlier alleged that troops loyal to Assad control only Syria's major cities (most of them, at least), the roads running through the countryside are basically no-go zones for Assad loyalists.

 So after more than a year of fighting and after Western-led efforts at stopping the violence proved to be largely fruitless, what's changed?  The nexus seems to be the defection of a member of Assad's inner circle, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass.  The bonds of power between the Tlass and Assad families go back decades in Syria.  Tlass' father, Mustafa, was a former defense minister who helped to usher Bashar Assad's father Hafez into power; Manaf Tlass has long been a loyal member of Bashar Assad's ruling cabal.

That someone as well-connected as Tlass would decide to jump ship is a stunning vote of no-confidence for the Assad regime, and one that many other seem to have taken note of.  Syria's ambassador to Iraq defected on Wednesday, seeking asylum in that country and calling on Syria's military to revolt againts Assad; this morning the BBC made an as-yet unconfirmed report that Syria's ambassador to Belarus has also defected.  Meanwhile, Russia has sent a flotilla of navy ships, including one destroyer and three amphibious landing craft from their Black Sea fleet to Tartus, Syria, where Russia maintains a naval facility.  The flotilla is said to be transporting a detachment of weapons and Russian marines.

Russia raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when they first discussed sending ships and weapons to Tartus.  Western diplomats feared that Russia might be trying to intervene on behalf of their old ally Assad, though the Russian government issued assurances that any military action would only to be to protect the Russian naval facility and Russian personnel in Tartus.  That Russia is now making such a show of force with their Tartus flotilla is a pretty clear indication that they expect there is a high chance for widespread unrest in Tartus in the near future.  And widespread unrest in Tartus would likely be the result of the chaos expected to follow in the wake of Assad's removal from power.

Since Russia has much closer ties to the current Syrian government than do any Western nations, it is not a unreasonable supposition to assume they have a clearer picture of what's happening on the ground in Syria than do officials in Washington or London.  Therefore the movement of Russian marines into the region, along with the defections of Tlass and several Syrian ambassadors are all indications of a regime on the edge of collapse.

How will that collapse occur?  It is highly unlikely that the rag-tag Syrian opposition will be able to launch a major assault on Damascus.  Keep in mind that in Libya, the Libyan rebels were only able to execute their drive on Tripoli after the US/NATO “humanitarian” mission began acting as the rebel's de facto air force; the walls of Gadhafi's Tripoli compound were breached by laser-guided bombs dropped from Coalition aircraft.  The Syrian rebels do not have this assistance.  Bashar's end then will likely come from an uprising within his own inner circle; either through loyalists who have grown tired of waging war against their own people, or through loyalists who see the tide turning against them and hope to curry some favor with the rebel leaders by delivering up to them the symbol of their oppression, or by removing Assad from power, permanently, themselves.  

Why Russia Loves Syria

Even though the international community has largely turned against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his government's brutal response to internal dissent, Russia has remained a staunch supporter of the Middle Eastern state.  In my latest post over at The Mantle, I take a look at the why of Russia's backing for Syria.  Rather than just outright anti-Western stubborness by Vladimir Putin, Russian support for Syria is driven by some unexpected factors like religion and a desire to cling to the remnants of their once glorious Soviet past. 

More TIME Person Of The Year Lameness

So Time Magazine is out today with their annual Person of the Year award, and once again Time has missed the mark.  While not as ridiculously bad as their 2006 selection of “You”, the computer user, this one is fairly bad in its own right.

Time has selected “The Protester” as the Person of the Year. Not a specific protester, or even a group like Occupy Wall Street, just protesters in general, so if you've formally bitched about anything this past year, congratulations, you are Time's Person of the Year.  But beyond the generic banality of giving the award to a vague group of people defined by partaking in a poorly-defined action, Time makes their selection seem even more ridiculous with their press release about the POTY award.

 “A year after a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself ablaze, dissent has spread across the Middle East, to Europe and the U.S., reshaping global politics and redefining people power,” the magazine explains.  The problem is that Tunisian fruit vendor had a name: Mohamed Bouazizi.  He passed away in early January after setting himself on fire after Tunisian authorities trashed his meager fruit stand because he couldn't afford a vendor's license.  Before setting himself alight, Bouazizi complained that even after getting a college education, there were no jobs for young men like himself in Tunisia, and now the government wouldn't even let him sell fruit at the local bazaar.  Bouazizi's act sparked protests that would eventually topple the government of Tunisia, an act that would go on to inspire Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis, Syrians and others to rise up against their oppressive governments.  If anyone met the criteria of being the individual who “most influenced the culture and the news during the past year, for good or for ill,” it was Bouazizi.

Yet somehow it wasn't enough for Time magazine to honor him as the POTY.  Perhaps Time feared that giving the award to a man little-known to the American population, but with a Muslim-sounding name would spark a possible boycott from a group of ignorant yahoos in Florida, or perhaps no one at the great journalistic institution of Time Magazine bothered to learn the name of the “Tunisian fruit vendor”.  Whatever the reason, by passing up honoring Mohamed Bouazizi in favor of the generic “Protester”, Time once again showed the irrelevance of the Person of the Year award, and of their magazine itself.

MENA Protest Songs

Every great political protest needs its own song, so why should the pro-democracy uprisings of Tunisia, Egypt, and the rest of the region be any different? Of course today thanks to YouTube, these songs can reach beyond a cluster of people gathered around a campfire and to a global audience. Radio Free Europe has collected a selection of five protest song videos from the region including a reworked Iranian student protest song and an Egyptian anti-government rap. You can check them out here.

Hezbollah's Green Gambit

Environmental advocates have a new ally, but they may not want him.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah – a group considered by the United States and Israel to be one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the Middle East – dedicated much of a speech on Saturday to promoting environmental causes in Lebanon.  Nasrallah cited climate change as one of the greatest threats to mankind today and made the case that being pro-Green is also Islamic, citing events from Muslim history, as well as Islamic scripture to bolster his claims.  According to Reuters, Nasrallah argued that reforestation is in Lebanon's national security interests and announced that Hezbollah's development arm, Jihad al-Bina, recently planted their millionth sapling in the country.  It's worth noting that Lebanon was once a heavily-forested land, their flag even features a cedar tree, the national symbol, and that the pharaohs of ancient Egypt imported Lebanese timber for some of their signature construction projects.   But centuries of agricultural mismanagement, years of poorly-planned development and, as Nasrallah made a point of mentioning, Israeli deforestation efforts in the southern part of the country – meant to deny guerillas cover from which to launch attacks – have left large parts of Lebanon barren.

It was an odd message to hear from an organization best known in the United States as Israel as a hardcore terrorist group.  But Nasrallah's comments point to the complexity of the situation in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has taken pains to establish themselves as a legitimate political movement and has provided much of the redevelopment funding and expertise in the southern part of the country, which was devastated by the Hezbollah-Israel conflict in 2006.

Support for “President” Abbas

Good news for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – a recent poll shows that he has the support of a clear majority (54%) of those surveyed.  Maybe he can go ahead then and hold the presidential election that Palestine was suppose to stage a year and a half ago…

Ask an international diplomat who leads the government in Palestine and they’ll point to Mahmoud Abbas.  Technically though, Abbas’ term in office actually ended in early 2009; he’s been pretending to be president and the world has been pretending he’s legitimate ever since, largely because under the terms of the Palestinian constitution, the presidency should pass to ranking members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (their version of a national parliament), who also happen to be members of Hamas, and no one wants that.  Abbas cancelled the scheduled elections in 2009 by declaring a state of emergency following Israel launching Operation Cast Lead – their full-fledged military assault on the Gaza Strip.  In the year and a half since though neither Abbas nor the Palestinian Authority has found the time to reschedule them, again in large part because of the belief that Abbas would lose to a candidate put forward by Hamas.

This circles back to a problem the United States and other “Western” powers have in dealing with the Middle East: while they preach the need for democratic reforms in the region, they consistently accept autocratic rule in countries throughout the ME, so long as the autocrats are reliable allies – for prime examples, look at Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  Speaking of Egypt, it will be interesting to see if the US continues to support the decidedly un-democratic Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt with an increasingly iron fist for the past three decades, now that the former head of the UN’s atomic watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei is emerging as the head of an opposition movement set on opposing Mubarak in the next election. 

Are The Saudis Onboard For Israel Air Raid?

An update now to last Saturday’s post: “Israel, Iran and the Summer War”. The Times of London reported on Saturday that Saudi Arabia and Israel have struck a secret deal where the Saudis will basically “stand-down” their national air defense system over the northern part of the country to allow the Israeli Air Force a corridor to fly through on their way to attack nuclear sites in Iran. Rumors of Saudi assistance in an Israeli strike have been circulating for some months now, the Brookings Institution war game scenario of an Israeli raid on Iran even speculated that the Israeli Air Force might set up a secret refueling base in the Saudi desert (the target sites in Iran are at the far edge of the IAF’s operational range).

Since Saddam Hussein’s removal from power, Iran’s influence in the Persian Gulf has grown steadily, thanks in part to now no longer having to worry about getting involved in another war with their long-time adversary, Iraq (the two countries spent most of the 1980s engaged in a bloody, but ultimately fruitless, war). Iran’s growing power has not sat well with the Saudis, who like to see themselves as the big player in the Gulf, which is why they would likely be willing to let Israel use their airspace to launch an attack on Iran. The Times article should be seen as more evidence that an Israeli air strike against Iran this summer is becoming more and more likely.

Israel, Iran and the Summer War

If there is a message to be drawn from Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla it is this: there will be a major war in the Middle East this summer.

The flotilla raid was more than simply a military operation; it was an outward expression of Israel’s ongoing internal political and security debates. Since the modern state’s founding, Israel’s national mythos has been built on the idea that they are an island surrounded on all sides by hostile forces. While this was certainly true during their early history, Israel has enjoyed peaceful relations with two of their next-door neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, for several decades now; Turkey too was one of their closest allies, at least until the flotilla raid. In recent years, though hard-line Israeli governments have expanded this mythos: so now not only do they have enemies on all sides, they also exist in a world that (with the notable exception of the United States) is indifferent to their plight while secretly hoping for their downfall. The generally negative reaction to the flotilla raid around the globe (again save for the US) has only given strength to this idea.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s post-flotilla raid press conference gives valuable insight into the current thought process of Israel’s leadership. Netanyahu was quick to dismiss the flotilla’s stated mission of providing humanitarian aid and instead condemned it as an attempt by Hamas - the ruling force in Gaza that Israel regards as a terrorist organization - to rearm in preparation for a new conflict with Israel. Netanyahu then went a step further, to draw the line from the flotilla through Hamas in Gaza and back to Iran, at one point saying that Iran could not be allowed to “open a port on the Mediterranean [Sea].” It is a sign of how completely Iran is dominating current Israeli strategic thinking. Israel regards their main security challenge today as coming not from the Palestinian Territories, but rather from Iran and their ongoing nuclear program. Israel dismisses Iran’s claims that their nuclear research is meant to establish a domestic nuclear power program; instead saying it is a front for a secret atomic weapons program, which Israel regards as an existential threat to its very existence.

Here, it’s useful to take a look at Amos Oz’s op-ed in the June 1 New York Times. Believing that hostile forces surround them, Israel has responded by building and maintaining a formidable military. The downside to this belief, as Oz explains, is that Israel now acts as though every foreign policy problem has a military solution; Israel’s military campaigns against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008 though, both of which failed to destroy these groups, would seem to argue against this belief. Yet the Israeli leadership remains undeterred, arguing that only military action (namely air strikes) and not a new round of sanctions will prevent Iran’s nuclear program from going forward. Here Israel is buoyed by their success in 1981, when a raid against the research reactor at Osirak destroyed Iraq’s fledgling nuclear program.

To this point, diplomatic pressure and fear of a widespread backlash seem to have kept Israel from ditching the UN-based sanctions scheme and preemptively launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites. I would argue the flotilla raid then should be viewed as a sign that these forces will no longer restrain Israel. Simply stated the flotilla raid is Israel in effect saying: “we’re surrounded, we’re going to act in our defense and we don’t care what you think about it.”

What effect would an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities have? Here it’s useful to look at a war game scenario conducted by the Brookings Institution that examined both the Israeli raid and the probable Iranian response. Rather than retaliate directly against Israel militarily, Brookings predicts that Iran will use their Lebanon-based proxies in Hezbollah (which receives a large portion of its funding from Iran) to strike back against Israel. And here is where the air strikes will spark the region-wide war. In April, Israel accused Syria of smuggling Scud missiles across the border to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria have all denied the claims, though that has not stopped Israel from pressing them. Because Hezbollah has seats in the Lebanese parliament, Netanyahu has said that Israel will regard any attack against Israel from Hezbollah as being officially sanctioned by the Lebanese government and will respond accordingly, the same goes for Syria for their role as the transshipment route for the weapons. So, if Iran’s Hezbollah proxies strike out at Israel, Israel will respond militarily against the governments of Lebanon and Syria (it’s also hard to imagine that Hamas, which also receives funding from Iran, won’t launch retaliatory strikes against Israel as well). What started as a series of air raids against a select group of targets in Iran will then quickly devolve into a war pitting Israel against Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

The United States will find itself involved in the Summer War, by both choice and circumstance. During Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the United States provided emergency shipments of precision guided bombs when Israel’s stockpile of these weapons ran low as what they thought would be a series of air strikes and hit-and-run ground incursions turned into a month-long guerilla campaign. It’s logical to believe that the United States will again be called on to provide Israel with war material; US troops based in Iraq (still numbering in the tens of thousands) are likely to become targets of retaliation attacks from Iranian-backed militias within Iraq, or by groups in Iraq sympathetic to the Iranian cause. Since the removal from power of their long-time adversary Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iranian influence in Iraq has steadily grown – Shiites, the dominant Islamic sect in Iran also make up the largest single ethnic group in Iraq as well. If Iran chooses to play the “oil card” by attacking oil tankers and other shipping in the Persian Gulf (a possibility outlined in the Brookings scenario), the United States, with the largest naval presence in the Gulf, will be pressed into the role of securing these vital shipping lanes as well.

Wars have unusual ways of unfolding once the shooting starts. It is impossible really to script exactly how the Summer War would play out – what role Turkey will play, how the populations in Jordan and Egypt will react to the fighting and how the government in Iraq will formally respond all are difficult to predict, as is how long the Summer War will actually last. But even before it starts, we can know the war will be a strategic loss for Israel. Countries go to war with specific goals that define victory – for Israel air strikes against Iran are meant to bring an end to their nuclear program. Israel believes this is an achievable outcome because of their experience with the Iraqi reactor at Osirak. But Iran has studied Osirak as well, and they have learned from the Iraqi experience not to concentrate their nuclear program at one lightly guarded site. Iran has scattered their nuclear sites across the country and some are allegedly buried 75 feet or more underground, protected by anti-aircraft weapons systems. It is extremely unlikely that the Israelis could destroy them with air strikes alone. And the experiences in 2006 and 2008 show that it is also unlikely Israel will be able to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas through military might as well. So long as the Iranian nuclear program, Hezbollah and/or Hamas survive the conflict in some meaningful form, they win/Israel loses.

An Israeli loss will likely (again) spell the end of Netanyahu’s government. Israeli political coalitions are notoriously fragile; fighting another unwinnable war will likely turn Israeli public opinion against Netanyahu and bring down his government. The Summer War will probably spell the end of any meaningful foreign policy efforts on the part of Barack Obama as well. Support for Israel in an unprovoked attack against Iran will undo all of the outreach Obama has conducted with the Islamic world, which started in earnest with his landmark speech in Cairo last summer. It will also drive a wedge between his administration and rising powers, like Brazil and Turkey, who attempted to negotiate a deal that would defuse the Iranian nuclear situation in May – an attempt that was rebuked by the United States; and it will be another irritant in relations with Russia and China, both of whom the United States has worked hard to bring onboard for a new round of sanctions against Iran. Attempting to justify America’s support for Israel’s preemptive strike against Iran and their launching of a wider regional war will dominate Obama’s foreign policy efforts for the rest of his term in office, crowding out other initiatives.

The biggest losers, of course, will be the many, many innocent civilians who will be killed, maimed or displaced by the fighting in an unwinnable war.

Hezbollah’s Mystery Scuds

It’s the Mid East mystery that won’t die; for the past month accusations have been flying that Hezbollah, the Islamic group that the United States and Israel regard as a terrorist organization, yet which also is a member of Lebanon’s national parliament, has received Scud ballistic missiles from Syria. Israel first made the claim in early April as part of a stark (though off-the-record) warning to Syrian officials that if Hezbollah were to launch Scuds against Israel, then Israel would retaliate against Syria as well as the government of Lebanon, based on the assumption that since Hezbollah is represented in the Lebanese parliament the attack was sanctioned by the Lebanese government. Subsequent reports suggest that the Scuds may have originated in Iran, with Syria acting as a middleman between them and Hezbollah. The United States has even weighed in on the issue warning Syrian diplomats in Washington DC not to rearm Hezbollah (UN Security Council resolution 1701 forbids any weapons shipments to Lebanon not approved by the United Nations), and especially not to provide them with Scuds. The US called Syrian policy towards Hezbollah “ill-conceived.”

Israel has a long history of conflict with Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group based in Lebanon and funded in part by Iran. Most recently, Israel engaged in a 34-day conflict with Hezbollah in 2006 over persistent rocket attacks fired into northern Israel from Hezbollah bases in Lebanon. That conflict resulted in more than 1,200 casualties in Lebanon - many of them civilians, 160 dead in Israel, caused widespread damage across southern Lebanon, but ultimately did not bring about the end of Hezbollah as a force in Lebanese politics and culture, so in that respect the conflict was a tactical defeat for Israel. The rockets used by Hezbollah during the 2006 conflict were mostly Katyushas – a kind of artillery rocket that can trace its history back to the Soviet Union and World War II. Katyushas are about the size of a lamppost, can be carried by a few men, and fired from a simple metal tripod, though a series of tubes mounted on the back of a truck is a more common firing arrangement for Katyushas (during WWII the Germans called these trucks Stalin’s Pipe Organs). The Katyusha has a fairly short range, and fairly small warhead (only about 50 lbs). The Scud can also trace its lineage back to WWII, this time to the German V-2 rocket. A Scud, by comparison, is about 40 feet long, weighs several tons, has a range of several hundred miles and needs its own launch vehicle (about the size of a school bus) to operate.

And that’s what makes the Scud claims sound dubious – considering that US and Israeli satellites monitor the Iranian and Syrian borders, it’s hard to imagine either country being able to slip something the size of a bus past them unnoticed. Egypt’s foreign minister has already expressed his doubts over the Scud claims and on Saturday Syria fired back, (diplomatically, that is) cautioning Washington not to accept Israel’s allegations, before making their own claim that what really destabilizes the security situation in the region is instead the United States’ military support for Israel. So far neither the United States nor Israeli governments have offered concrete proof to back up the Scud allegations.

So why make the claim, especially one that has the region in such an uproar? One possible answer could be found in this article from the March 26th New York Times. It is a report on a war game simulation conducted by the Brookings Institution over what could follow an Israeli air strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran. The simulation found that rather than strike back at Israel directly, Iran would likely use proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas to launch hit-and-run rocket attacks into Israel in an attempt to destabilize the country. Israel’s Scud accusation – linking Hezbollah, the Lebanese government, Syria and Iran together in the process – could be a warning then that such a retaliation could spark a region-wide war.

Israel Slammed By Rights Groups (And Arrests A Former Member Of Congress)

Israel, on Wednesday, was slammed by not one but two of the world's leading human rights groups over its conduct in last January's military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

First, Human Rights Watch blasted Israel for its use of unmanned drone aircraft armed with air-to-ground rockets, which HRW said was responsible for the deaths of 29 civilians, eight of them children. Drone aircraft were said to be responsible for incidents where Palestinian children were killed while playing on a rooftop and another where a group of students were killed while waiting for a bus. Because of the high-resolution cameras that drone aircraft use to view the ground below them, HRW investigators said that Israeli operators should have realized they were targeting civilians and not militants in those situations.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International accused Israel of "wanton destruction" in their Gaza campaign, saying that much of the damage done could not be justified under the rules of war. Thousands of buildings in Gaza were destroyed or heavily damaged in the fighting, while estimates are that between 1,100 and 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Amnesty also found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Hamas militants were using civilians as "human shields", but did basically accuse Israel of doing just that by forcing Palestinians civilians to stay in buildings that were taken over by Israeli troops.

Amnesty International did also accuse Hamas of their own war crimes for deliberately targeting civilians by launching rockets and mortars into towns in Southern Israel along the border with Gaza.

And you would think if a former member of Congress were arrested in a foreign country, it might make the evening news. But Israel's detention of former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has gone all but unnoticed (after all it has only been a week since Michael Jackson died), even though Israeli forces detained her on Tuesday. McKinney was one of 20 human rights activists onboard a boat loaded with humanitarian supplies that tried to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The ship was stopped and its passengers, McKinney included, detained by the Israelis.

The Green Party, which organized the boat trip, is demanding the immediate release of all the activists, a demand the US Congress so far has failed to echo.

Is Mousavi Really The Hero We Want Him To Be?

Presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi has become the de facto head of the protests in Iran - after all, the whole reason people are taking to the streets in the first place is because they think their votes weren’t counted and that he was cheated out of the presidency. But is Mousavi really the reformist leader we’ve (at least we in the West) have made him out to be? Perhaps not…

Members of Mousavi’s own Azeri community have their doubts according to EurasiaNet. The Azeri make up about a quarter of the population in Persian-dominated Iran, yet they often complain about being the victims of ethnic discrimination, claiming to routinely suffer from restrictions on their cultural and linguistic rights. The Azeri voted heavily in favor of Mousavi – at least it’s thought they did before the vote-rigging began. But they haven’t taken to the streets in huge numbers to support Mousavi, nor to they seem to plan to do so in the future.

The reason is that the Azeri don’t see Mousavi as a strong champion of ethnic rights; his record on fighting for minority rights is said to be “lackluster”. While the community views him as a change from Ahmadinejad, they don’t view him as a particularly large change, nor do they expect that their lives would greatly improve, or that discrimination against the Azeri, would end under President Mousavi.

It’s useful to remember that despite the reformist mantle, Mousavi is a political insider, intimately involved in the revolution that brought the Ayatollahs to power in 1979, and that he served as the Islamic Republic’s Prime Minister from 1981 to 1989.

Mousavi was PM when members of the group ‘Islamic Jihad’ launched devastating suicide attacks against US interests in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, including a truck bomb attack on military barracks that killed 299 people, 220 of them US Marines (the death toll from the Beirut bombing was the worst one-day loss the Marines had suffered since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II). Islamic Jihad was an affiliate of Hezbollah, which in turn was (and is) supported by Iran. According to former CIA officials, not only did then Prime Minister Mousavi almost certainly know in advance about the attacks because of Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah, there’s some belief that he may have picked the bombers himself.

Of course people can change a lot in the course of 25 years, they can try to atone for a lot of sins, but it is at least a cautionary point to keep in mind, that the situation in Iran is far more complex than many out there – our politicians, the media and legions of Tweeters – would like to believe.

Obama apology tour (really?)

Right now I'm watching MSNBC's rebroadcast of President Obama's speech early this morning in Egypt (click here for the full text). So far, it's an excellent, wide-ranging, but ultimately balanced speech hitting on all the hot topics in the Mid-East and wider Muslim world - Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, extremism, etc.

One thing I haven't heard though is Obama apologizing for America, or America's role in the world. This has become the default charge of Obama's foreign policy critics that he is running around the world "apologizing" for America.

Frankly, that's utter nonsense (I'd prefer to use another word, but I try to keep my posts PG). Obama has been stressing the need for America to do crazy things like actually listen to and respect other nations - a break from the Bushite/Neoconservative unilateral foreign policy of "shut up and do what your told."

But to the neocons, this equals both apology and surrender, making Obama the Neville Chamberlain of our time. Case in point: this anti-Obama screed published by Nile Gardiner on Tuesday. Nile is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.

I don't care if Gardiner, the Heritage Foundation and London's Telegraph newspaper want to slam Pres. Obama, they just shouldn't offer up such intellectually lazy arguments as the one Nile puts forward (really, if you have a title like Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom you should be able to put together a decent argument). Just three paragraphs into his screed, Nile says this: "the Obama doctrine is now lying in tatters after North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Il and Iranian demagogue Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Obama’s recent overtures with missile tests and even a nuclear blast from Pyongyang." The implication being that this wouldn't have happened on George Dubya's watch.

But, in fact, it did. North Korea's first nuclear test happened in 2006, six years into the reign of Bush II; Iran's ballistic missile program also progressed by leaps and bounds during the Bush regime, so has (if we believe the most dire estimates) Iran's nuclear program.

These regimes weren't slowed by the Bush's unilateral foreign policy - it could be argued (successfully I think) that the belligerent tone and lack of diplomatic engagement actually encouraged their weapons programs, making the world not more safe, but less. Just as Bush's policy of "my way or the highway" damaged our relations with wide swaths of the globe: Latin America, Russia and Western Europe especially. Gardiner and the rest of the 'apology' critics ignore these facts, shouting that the tough Bush/Neocon foreign policy enhanced America's position in the world, when in reality it did the opposite.

There's certainly room to criticize Obama's foreign policy, but that criticism needs to be more than some lame charges that he's an apologist.

Israel tries to pass the buck on Palestine

Politicians in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, have come up with an idea on how to solve their Palestinian problem - ship ‘em all to Jordan.

That's the gist of a proposal put forward earlier this week that would name an official Palestinian homeland. The only problem is that the homeland would be Jordan (and no one asked the Jordanians what they thought of this idea before proposing it).

The proposal’s supporters argue that it just makes sense since more than half of the folks in Jordan can trace their roots back to Palestine. But critics say that the proposal is just a thinly-veiled attempt to expel all of the Palestinians from the West Bank, and the proposal has already caused an uproar in Jordan, putting more stress on an already strained relationship between the Israeli and Jordanian governments.

The proposal was put forward by the National Union party, which holds only four seats in the Knesset. Some are saying that the National Union only put the idea forward to cause problems for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he didn't include their party in his governing coalition. Netanyahu slammed the Jordan proposal. But members of Jordan's parliament respond by pointing out that the proposal then received 53 votes in the 120-member Knesset, an indication, they say, of broader support for the idea.

Expect a lot more on this topic in the next few days as Barack Obama conducts his whirlwind tour of the Middle East.

Israel threatens Gaza with disproportionate force (again)

Just two weeks after Israel’s military campaign wrapped up in Gaza and already the rockets are starting to fall again on Israeli towns in the south. So far only a handful (four at last count) have been launched and none have caused any real damage or injury (except maybe to the notion that Israel won the war). But that hasn’t stopped Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from warning of dire consequences. “We've said that if there is rocket fire against the south of the country, there will be a disproportionate Israeli response to the fire on the citizens of Israel and its security forces,” Olmert said.

Will be disproportionate force? I thought that already happened…

Olmert’s bluster overshadowed an announcement from Egypt that Hamas has agreed, in principle, to a long-term truce agreement with Israel. News agencies from the region reported a major breakthrough in the talks with Hamas, though the details were sketchy. Really it’s amazing there could have been any progress at all in the negotiations considering that Israel is refusing to talk with Hamas, yet wants them to agree to a truce (this might be a good time to again quote former Israeli PM Yitzak Rabin: “you don’t make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies…”).

And the United States’ relationship with Israel could get even tenser if, as expected, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party wins in the elections next week. Netanyahu has again raised the idea of air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The problem for the US with this plan is that the most logical route has the Israeli Air Force crossing over Iraq to get to Iran, and refueling in mid-air while they do it. Iraq would never agree to let Israel use their airspace, but Iraq has no air force to speak of, controlling the skies is our job. So, in theory, the USAF could be put in the position of either confronting the Israelis or ignoring their responsibility of patrolling Iraq’s skies and letting them fly through should Israel decide to strike.

Frankly I could see Netanyahu launching an attack on Iran as a way of pressuring the Obama administration to choose sides – either Israel or the Arab world. Hopefully the folks in the White House are having the same thought and are deciding what they’ll do in case that happens.

Snow falls in the Persian Gulf

For the first time in recorded history a measurable amount of snow fell in the mountains of the United Arab Emirates.

Nearly 20 centimeters (about seven inches) of snow blanketed Jess Mountain, a 6,200-foot peak in the Ras al Khaimah emirate. Locals say that snow fell on Jess Mountain twice before - in 2004 and 1994 - but this was the first time it ever fell in measurable amounts.


Some of Jess Mountain's desert flora in the snow

Ironically Dubai, one of the other emirates, is home to one of the world's first indoor ski slopes, previously the only place you could see snow in the UAE.

Saudi Arabia: Patience is running out with Israel

A few days ago I wrote this post, where I talked about Saudi Arabia making a veiled threat towards Israel when they said that a 2002 proposal the Saudis put forward for peace between the Arab world and Israel wouldn't stay on the table forever. In an article in today's Financial Times, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal made that threat a little less veiled.

Saudi Arabia's 2002 proposal promised that all Arab nations would formally recognize Israel as a nation and sign peace agreements with Israel if they withdrew from the Palestinian Territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (which Israel captured during the Six Day War in 1967), and allowed the formation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. As recently as this past November, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel should again ‘consider’ the Saudi offer.

But since Israel's military campaign in Gaza earlier this month, attitudes in the Arab world towards Israel have hardened. Two of the four Arab states that have formal relations with Israel - Qatar and Mauritania - suspended them. Turkey suggested that Israel's UN membership be suspended because of the UN sites in Gaza destroyed or badly damaged by the Israeli military. According to Al-Faisal, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently sent a letter to Saudi's King Abdullah recognizing him as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds - then asked him to lead a pan-Arab jihad against Israel over the Gaza conflict.

Al-Faisal's message is that while Saudi Arabia has no plans for jihad, it is getting tougher and tougher to keep a lid on the ill-will of the Arab world towards Israel, so the window for the Saudi peace deal is rapidly closing. Al-Faisal said that Pres. Obama is inheriting a “basket full of snakes” with the Israel-Palestine conflict, and urged him to take a more even tone in the peace talks than Pres. Bush, who was seen as being whole-heartedly behind Israel, ever did.

Al-Faisal makes it pretty clear what could happen if Obama fails to finally secure a comprehensive peace deal in the region.

Gaza cease-fire, but will it last?

I don't know if I should even bother commenting on Israel's declared cease-fire in Gaza, since I have the feeling I'll wake up tomorrow and the fighting will be underway again...

In case you missed it, this afternoon Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that Israel was unilaterally halting its operation in the Gaza Strip; and that it would stay stopped so long as Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel and did not attack the Israeli troops who would remain behind in Gaza. Since Hamas said that if even one Israeli soldier remained in Gaza the ‘resistance’ would continue and that moments before Olmert spoke Hamas fired another rocket into southern Israel, you can see why I don't have a lot of hope for this cease-fire.

Olmert said that he was halting the operation because Israel had achieved its goals. If Israel's goal was to basically destroy their image and credibility around the world (save for Washington DC), then to quote our soon to be former President, “Mission Accomplished.” As far as weakening Hamas and making Israel secure though, Olmert is sadly mistaken.

The Hamas rocket attacks never stopped during the Gaza campaign; they fell every day, often by the dozens. And while a many Hamas fighters were killed (along with many more civilians, even by Israel's calculations), just having members left alive at the end of a conflict with a vastly superior force is victory in itself - a lesson Israel should have learned after its disastrous campaign in Lebanon in 2006 against Hezbollah, who came out as the ‘victor’ in that conflict merely by surviving.

Meanwhile the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) is calling for an international panel to investigate Israel for war crimes after yet another UN site was hit by the Israeli military overnight. Turkey has called for Israel's membership in the UN to be suspended and Venezuela and Bolivia have both kicked the Israeli ambassadors out of their countries. All definite signs that Israel lost the PR portion of the war, badly.

Prospects for a lasting cease-fire look dim, at least with the current set of negotiations. Egypt has been hosting talks with Israel and the Palestinian Authority (which controls the West Bank part of Palestine), but hasn't included Hamas (Egypt has talked with them separately). And an agreement to open border crossings between Gaza and Egypt would put them under Israeli-Palestinian Authority control, another condition the Hamas government of Gaza won't agree to.

Hopefully the people in Gaza will enjoy the calm for now, I fear it won't last.

Russian Navy wants bases around the world

Reuters is reporting that on Sunday Russia's military command approved a plan put forward by the Russian Navy to permanently station Russian warships in bases around the world.

In the past two years Russia has started sending its Navy on maneuvers far from the Russian coast for the first time since the end of the Soviet Union, the highest-profile trip came late last year when a task force of Russian ships visited Venezuela and Cuba. The Russian frigate Neustrashimy (“Fearless” in Russian) has also been busy escorting commercial vessels in the pirate-filled waters off of Somalia for the past few months - foiling several pirate attacks in the process.

The Reuters report didn't mention any specific bases besides one Russia is hoping to establish in the Georgian-region of Abkhazia (which Russia considers now to be an independent country), but Russia is also upgrading facilities at the Syrian port of Tartus for its navy to use and the Neustrashimy has docked at the port of Aden in Yemen (at the south end of the Arabian peninsula) to resupply while working off Somalia. Aden was another place where the Soviet Union once had a naval base. There has been informal talk at different times about Russia trying to base ships in Libya and Vietnam, and Russia has discussed with Somalia about building ties between their two nations, which could in theory include stationing ships there as well.

Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian military's deputy chief of staff, said that decisions on where to base ships would have to be "considered very carefully." One factor that might temper Russia's grand naval plans is money - not only would Russia likely need to build or renovate port facilities at sites around the world, they also need to acquire more ships - the Russian Navy is still trying to rebuild from the collapse of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago now. With oil prices off $100 from their highs last year, the Navy's plans are likely to get scaled back. At the same time, joining the piracy task force, along with the cruise to the Caribbean, show that the Russian Navy plans on making its presence felt in the world’s seas.

Ten fighters fighting

Just in time for Christmas, Russia announced a present for the government of Lebanon: ten MiG-29 fighter jets.

Russia is providing the ten aircraft to Lebanon free of charge - the first time since the days of the Soviet Union that Russia has given military equipment to another country - along with some training for the crews to operate them (the MiG-29 is roughly the equivalent of the American F-15 and is in service with more than two dozen air forces around the world). There is some hope on the part of the Russians though that the gift will prompt Lebanon to "buy Russian" in future arms purchases.

Officials from the Russian military say that they are taking the move to provide stability to Lebanon, which they feel is an important country in the region. Right now the Lebanese Air Force is in such sorry shape that it had to take several 1950's-vintage jets out of storage just to put something besides helicopters in the air. Russian military analysts also touted the gift as an example of Russia's superpower status since "only a superpower can afford this".

The Lebanon gift is another example of Russia's increasing presence in the Mid East. The Russian Navy is currently renovating a port in Syria for their fleet to use and has talked with Yemen about using a port in their country as well. Russia is also negotiating with Iran to sell that country an advanced anti-aircraft missile system.