Pakistan without tears

Above: RT Gen. Hamid Gul: US attack on Pakistan will turn region into inferno

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Dec 4, 2011
Last month's attack by a NATO aircraft on Pakistani region that killed 24 soldiers has infuriated Islamabad. RT spoke to Hamid Gul, the country's former head of intelligence, about consequences the incident may have for US-Pakistani relations.

via Reality Zone.


Slate: "Defense Department overrules plan to offer a formal apology for last weekend's fatal NATO airstrikes"
(Evidently the title, per the url was originally "Pakistan: NATO soldiers attacked our troops")

Pakistan won’t be getting an official "I’m Sorry" from President Obama anytime soon, the New York Times reports.

According to the paper, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, had urged the White House to have the president issue a formal video statement apologizing for this past weekend’s NATO airstrikes that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. But senior officials within the Defense Department overruled the idea, saying that the remorse shown by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior officials was enough for now until a full investigation into the international incident is complete.

The Times explains the possible political calculus behind the decision: "Some administration aides also worried that if Mr. Obama were to overrule the military and apologize to Pakistan, such a step could become fodder for his Republican opponents in the presidential campaign, according to several officials who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly."

CNN: Obama expresses 'condolences' to Pakistan's president (And yes, those are CNN's quotation marks.)


When is an apology not an apology? On many, many occasions, and certainly when it needs to sound different to different sets of ears. I've noted before that US media coverage of foreign policy doings often seem designed to misdirect the casual viewer/reader/mindless consumer of news/whatever. As you likely know, Pakistan is the only majority Muslim country that does have nuclear weapons, and their people are generally pretty unhappy with that government for its apparent servitude to the US and NATO, even under normal circumstances, i.e., even before the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last month. But "the narrative", as people call these things nowadays, is mostly fixated on Iran and their more imaginary nukes, and that narrative is designed to agitate those casual news gobblers about how worrisome the Iranian threat is, even if it has never actually been demonstrated to exist.

But the news regarding Pakistan never seems calculated to worry Americans about the fragility of Pakistan's government, or US-Pakistani relations, nukes or no nukes. I am not clear why this is so, although I note it parallels the apparent lack of concern our state department has about antagonizing Pakistan. The NY Times article alluded to above suggests that Obama wanted to apologize to Pakistan, but was overruled by the defense department, so he didn't, or he just "kinda" apologized.

The effect is pretty bizarre, on many levels. We don't actually know that the Pentagon objected. That may also be an excuse, Obama's hand supposedly being forced, much as the advising offered by Summers and Geithner was used as an excuse to placate critics of BHO's dealings with the banks and the HAMP program and so forth. BHO had no problem standing up to McChrystal when the latter's Rolling Stone interview annoyed the narcissist-in-chief, so the idea that his hands are tied is risible. (Well, assuming he never ordered a deliberate attack on the Pakistani soldiers. If that were the case, I guess he'd have to worry about the Joint Chiefs turning him in to the Hague, although I find it hard to believe he'd really be that concerned. )

But on another level there's the brazenness of acknowledging that the upcoming election is more important than the Pakistani soldiers who were killed, which actually seems calculated to worsen relations with Pakistan. The acknowledgment is only via unnamed sources in an NYT article, so not many people here will pay attention to it, but it may carry more weight over there. I can't help but think about how top officials in our government have so much pomp and apparatus to protect them from seeming like careless blunderers or fiendish goons. The reporters covering the state department, and "administration officials" and all these people and things that mediate our perception, to prevent us from regarding them as cold-bloded jerks or idiots.

I can't help but think of Terry Jones, the Florida preacher with the wild looking mustache who burned the Koran, and how his behavior was actually pretty similar. He had the excuse of seeming a fool and not knowing any better, at least in some people's eyes. But the president and state department, et al are supposed to know better, right?

I'm also reminded of the incident in the summer of 1988, when the US Navy shot down a civilian Iranian airliner over Iranian territorial waters, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children. The Navy said that the radar profile of the Airbus looked like that of an F-14 Tomcat fighter, a considerably smaller airplane, which the Iranian Air Force also operated, having purchased some in the 1970s when the Shah was in power. Eventually our government paid a settlement of a bit over 61 million dollars to Iran for the families of the passengers, albeit without an apology or acknowledging responsibility.


Iran Air 655 was shot down when Reagan was president, and the US paid a settlement in the mid 1990s during the Clinton administration, so it's reasonable to see a good bit of continuity in policy here, just as the George W. Bush administration started threatening Iran in 2002 with the notorious Axis of Evil speech, and this sabre-rattling has continued under Obama.

When I recently read up about Iran Air's fateful Flight 655, I found out that in March of 1989 Sharon Rogers, the wife of the USS Vincennes's captain, had her minivan firebombed in San Diego[1](It was registered in Captain Rogers's name.), but later the FBI ruled out the possibility that it was a terrorist reprisal. I've occasionally wondered over the years if the Lockerbie bombing in December 1988 was reprisal for the downing of Flight 655, and not in fact the work of Libya-affiliated terrorists. But then it was pinned on Libya, which was functional: Americans might be less likely to regard US government indifference to the deaths of Middle Easterners at our hands as responsible for tangible blow back, and less likely to seriously question our government's policies.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who was convicted by the UK for the Lockerbie bombing, has always maintained his innocence[2] throughout the years, through his trial and prison sentence, which ended in 2009 when he was released early because of his deteriorating health. (Although the US is now trying to extradite him so he may go back to jail.[3] ) Incidentally the Jim Swires that al-Megrahi refers to in the video at the Telegraph article(below) was the father of one of the passengers who died at Lockerbie, and he also questions the official version.


At any rate, the "narrative" of unrepentance evidently has to continue in Pakistan. I linked to a snippet on CNN of Fareed Zakaria recently discussing the recent agressive rhetoric directed towards Iran. He also has an Op-Ed in Time discussing the attack on the Pakistani soldiers, "Friends without benefits" which bewails the inconvenience Pakistan's relationship with the US has caused--- to the US!

You wouldn't have thought anti-Americanism in Pakistan could get any worse, but last week NATO attacked a Pakistani army post, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. Even before this episode, for which NATO expressed deep regret, it would be difficult to find a country on the planet that was more anti-American than Pakistan. In a Pew survey this year, only 12% of Pakistanis expressed a favorable view of the United States. Populist rage and official duplicity have built up even though Washington has lavished Islamabad with aid totaling $20 billion over the last decade.

Why the 'populist rage'? Why aren't the people more grateful for all the bombs and assorted weapons we offer their government? He goes on to compare the relationship between the US and Pakistan to that of a shopkeeper to the mafia:

The second argument is the one given by businesses when they pay off the Mafia: ‘We need to keep these guys as allies, or else they will become enemies.’ The problem with this protection racket is that it isn’t working. Admiral Mike Mullen finally said publicly what insiders have said privately for years: Pakistan’s army, despite getting over a quarter of its budget from Washington, funds and arms the most deadly terrorist group in South Asia.

Does Zakaria actually believe this rubbish? Does it really need to be pointed out that the US is by far the stronger party, and hardly comparable to a reluctant merchant humoring crime bosses leaning on him? He know US forces have been killing Pakistani civilians for years, and our relationship with them makes their position more precarious, as ordinary Pakistanis intensely resent our periodically killing their people in raids on alleged al-Qaeda camps, our insisting that they should be grateful and "see it our way" notwithstanding. Zakaria even says:

The Pakistani military holds to its worldview out of an ideological conviction that combines 19th century realpolitik with politicized Islam. But it also has a strong bureaucratic interest in regional friction. After all, with a win-win scenario in which peace with India results in prosperity for the region, why would Pakistan need a vast military that sucks up almost a quarter of the federal budget? The country’s military would end up looking like India’s— noninfluential, nonpolitical and well­ contained within the larger society

.
The Pakistani military doesn't have to be saintly for the "strong bureaucratic interest in regional friction" argument to also apply to the Pentagon. In fact it's a pretty telling phrase, and sounds like a recurring theme of US foreign policy.

I don't believe that Americans are naturally more cruel, or naturally smarter, or naturally stupider, etc., when compared to people from Iceland, India, Pakistan and so forth. But our elites certainly have a culture of cruelty, and it seems you can't be part of that elite unless you support and continually reinforce that cruelty.

[1] New York Times, Blast Wrecks Van of Skipper Who Downed Iran Jet
Published: March 11, 1989


[2] Telegraph(UK) Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi: 'truth will soon emerge' [video and text] 03 Oct 2011


[3] Daily Mail(UK), U.S. bid to extradite Lockerbie bomber raises prospect of David and Goliath battle between Washington and Scottish local council, 25 November 2011


...

"...all this stuff twirling around in my head."

Arthur Silber:

The great majority of people remain resolutely focused on the trivia of the day, and the latest "controversy" of the moment. Developments over a period of years and even decades bore them, and they have no interest in understanding them. Our politicians specialize in such ignorance, and most bloggers indulge their stupidity, and imitate it to varying degrees.

(update below)

That's what Silber wrote in 2007, in "The Worsening Nightmare" and he quotes himself Monday, in "I Care for Myself Too Much to Write About Iran." If you are familiar with Silber's writings you already know he does this a lot, although the newer posts generally have a lot of new content too. He can be a "heavy" writer and seem humorless at times, but if you don't haven't read Silber before you probably should. It's good to see him posting again.

Arthur's comments have a sort of serendipity about them, he posting the above on the same day as the now famous Herman Cain Libya flub. Maybe in a society that places a premium on being too cool and too innocent to know terribly much about the big world outside our borders, Herman Cain is the kind of candidate we deserve.

In a way, his foreign policy misstep was a kind of treat for establishment reporters, they getting to self-indulgently point a finger at him for his ignorance, while gliding past the fact that the marquee reporters and commentators themselves conspire to keep the electorate ignorant much of the time.

And then there's the fact that this "zinger" came via reporters at a small-market newspaper just doing their job who were not even trying to stump him, but just asking him boring old-fashioned questions about his stands on sundry issues. You know, as opposed to demonstrating their rarefied cleverness in endless, postmodern speculation on how the candidate's behavior will be perceived and so forth. In fact the vacuousness of much national-level news coverage may have contributed to Cain feeling it probably wasn't that important that he have considered opinions about Obama's foreign policy.







I suppose his impromptu concern that we not leave a post Qadaffi Libya in ruins should be touching, once he got his bearings straight and realized he needed to have a comprehensible opinion or two about the whole thing. In fact if he meant it, it would be both a sensible and decent thing for him to say. But you'd think if he meant it he'd have less difficulty remembering that he felt that way.

In a way the "gotcha" narrative the national level reporters apply to this story reflects badly not only on themselves and Cain, but people who buy into it, as it is more than a reflection of how insular the national media is, but how actively pernicious their influence is. It suggests that a presidential candidate has to demonstrate knowledge of US foreign policy just as a formality, and we will judge him mostly on his polish and poise in response, and actually taking tedious questions about how the US behaves towards other countries seriously is just being fussy. Come to think of it, this view is probably why we have a president like Obama.


The full Milkwaukee Journal-Sentinel interview is below. And yes, Herman's just another ambitious empty suit. But the conduct of non-marquee, non-beltway political reporters(the unfortunate sound quality notwithstanding) is actually more interesting, serving as a reminder of how journalism was done 30 plus years ago. (Follow up questions? What are those?)




update: I changed the 1st clip to a slightly longer version which may give you a better sense of the context.

13 November 2011: Iran, etc

Is it just me, hearing Fareed Zakaria's pain at restraining himself, wanting to say he recognizes part of his job is placating war loving oligarchs nutballs? We could feel bad for him, but one imagines he's well compensated to talk out both sides of his mouth, to hint that war with Iran would be crazy, that they are complying with regular inspections, but "who can say" what their intentions are?

Who, who?

Maybe this is as close as a talking head on TV can get to saying that US foreign policy is deliberately counterproductive and stupid, which is to say not very close. And another thing you can't say on television is that Saddam and Qadaffi were both allied with the US at one time, then US policy changed, so see what it got them. Or to put it another way: the Iranians must by now conclude that it would be insane to not get nuclear warheads.


Two from the Christian Science Monitor:
1.Iran nuclear report: Why it may not be a game-changer after all The Iran nuclear report released yesterday by the UN nuclear watchdog agency sought to corroborate details provided by US intelligence in 2005. But some nuclear experts are unconvinced.

In a 14-page annex to its quarterly report on Iran released yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said new intelligence and other data gave it "serious concern" about the allegedly peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. But the casus belli for military strikes that anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel expected to gain from the IAEA report is far from clear-cut.

Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979

The report is based on more than 1,000 pages of information shared with the agency by US intelligence in 2005, one year after they were apparently spirited out of Iran on a laptop computer. But deep skepticism about the credibility of the documents remains – Iran has long insisted they are forgeries by hostile intelligence agencies – despite a concerted attempt by the IAEA to verify the data and dispel such doubt.

"It's very thin, I thought there would be a lot more there," says Robert Kelley, an American nuclear engineer and former IAEA inspector who was among the first to review the original data in 2005. "It's certainly old news; it's really quite stunning how little new information is in there."

and 2.Mystery surrounds deadly blast at Iran ammunition depot

Lew Rockwell,"12 Facts About Money and Congress That Are So Outrageous That It Is Hard To Believe That They Are Actually True" [via Mimi]

Brayden Goyette, Truthdig, "Flat Taxes Are Big in the Former USSR. Have They Worked?"

Arthur Silber re OWS

Scott Olsen, the vet who was injured at the Oakland OWS protests last month, discusses his progress since surgery at his Google Plus page in a public posting, here.[via Gary Farber]

The oligarchs vs Iran, etc ; 3 Nov 2011

above:Bachmann: Iran Threatened U.S. with Nukes Uploaded by TheYoungTurks on Oct 31, 2011

"GOP Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann makes a transparently false charge that Iran has threatened the U.S. and Israel with nuclear weapons it denies possessing."

It's axiomatic in many quarters to say Michele Bachmann is just crazy. She may be, but she may also want a war with Iran on behalf of Israel, whether per her religious views regarding the end times or for some other reason. We seem to live in an age where both the democrats and republicans want war, where wanting war is "the new normal" even when it's also seen as bad manners to say that about somebody. But it's ok to say somebody's crazy, or to say "we have have a responsibility to protect." (I don't think I've heard anybody accuses Samantha Power or anybody else associated with Obama administration foreign policy of being crazy.)

It's not crazy so much as it's monstrous to hunger for wars and bloodshed, and bang the drum for them. Dismissing somebody as crazy sounds a bit like absolving them of the moral dimension of what they advocate, as if you're suggesting they probably don't know any better. Also, if you say Bachmann is calculating rather than crazy, this reflects on how monstrously calculating other, more sober-sounding persons may be.


below: Uploaded by Testarossa1982 on Jun 18, 2011




Lastly, this interview with Alan Simpson is from June 30th, when the debt ceiling faux debate was still going on. Unfortunately Reuters has not permitted embedding at this point, at least not of the YouTube version. I think this is interesting because, by turns, he plays scandalous truth-teller and shifts back to shilling for collapse. (It takes a lot of brass to shill for 1890s style government, as he does in the debt commission report, and simultaneously attack the GOP for being unduly influenced by Grover Norquist.)

some preliminary notes for a post on Libya

above, Ron Paul talks to David Gregory on "meet the press" via Mediaite and Salon.com.


below: Fox News interview with Michele Bachmann regarding Gadhafi and Libya, via Crooks and Liars, October 23, 2011 09:00 AM
Bachmann: Gaddafi 'May Be' Still in Power If I Were President



via Xymphora, who writes:

"Bachmann: Gaddafi 'May Be' Still in Power If I Were President" I believe that Bachmann is certifiably insane, but her voting record, and her stated positions on many of the most important issues, are in many ways far more progressive than most Democrats, and most so-called American progressives. It is simply sad that this 'progressive' website is using her better instincts to make fun of her. The United States is fucked for a very good reason.

According to Wikipedia,

In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fourth highest GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa, behind Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production.

from the CIA Factbook about Libya:


The Libyan economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contribute about 95% of export earnings, 25% of GDP, and 80% of government revenue. The weakness in world hydrocarbon prices in 2009 reduced Libyan government tax income and constrained economic growth. Substantial revenues from the energy sector coupled with a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows down to the lower orders of society. Libyan officials in the past five years have made progress on economic reforms as part of a broader campaign to reintegrate the country into the international fold. This effort picked up steam after UN sanctions were lifted in September 2003 and as Libya announced in December 2003 that it would abandon programs to build weapons of mass destruction.

The process of lifting US unilateral sanctions began in the spring of 2004; all sanctions were removed by June 2006, helping Libya attract greater foreign direct investment, especially in the energy sector. Libyan oil and gas licensing rounds continue to draw high international interest; the National Oil Corporation (NOC) set a goal of nearly doubling oil production to 3 million bbl/day by 2012. In November 2009, the NOC announced that that target may slip to as late as 2017.

Libya faces a long road ahead in liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps - including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and announcing plans for privatization - are laying the groundwork for a transition to a more market-based economy. The non-oil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for more than 20% of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include the production of petrochemicals, iron, steel, and aluminum. Climatic conditions and poor soils severely limit agricultural output, and Libya imports about 75% of its food. Libya's primary agricultural water source remains the Great Manmade River Project, but significant resources are being invested in desalinization research to meet growing water demands.

Children under the age of 5 years underweight:
5.6% (2007)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 77.65 years
country comparison to the world: 58
male: 75.34 years
female: 80.08 years (2011 est.)

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 82.6%
male: 92.4%
female: 72% (2003 est.)

Sanitation facility access:
improved:
urban: 97% of population
rural: 96% of population
total: 97% of population
unimproved:
urban: 3% of population
rural: 4% of population
total: 3% of population (2008)

Physicians density:
1.9 physicians/1,000 population (2009)
......................................
CIA(the same stats for Iraq):
Children under the age of 5 years underweight:
7.1% (2006)
country comparison to the world: 72
Life expectancy at birth:
Field info displayed for all countries in alpha order.
total population: 70.55 years
country comparison to the world: 145
male: 69.15 years
female: 72.02 years (2011 est.)

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 74.1%
male: 84.1%
female: 64.2% (2000 est.)

Sanitation facility access:
improved:
urban: 76% of population
rural: 66% of population
total: 73% of population(2008)

Physicians density:
0.69 physicians/1,000 population (2009)

Operation Forever War

photo: realclearworld.com


Friday was the 10th anniversary of the launch of the war in Afghanistan, launched less than 30 days after the terrible events of September 11th, 2001. The war on the Taliban was originally called "Operation Infinite Justice" but was renamed Operation Enduring Freedom when somebody decided that "Infinite Justice" had a creepy fundamentalist tinge or something. Infinite Justice also suggests an operation never meant to end, and maybe the name change was meant to avoid that suggestion, although evidently it would have been more honest.

Why are we still in Afghanistan? Because we are needed? Because they want us there? This is pretty unlikely. When an American reporter goes to some rural village, surrounded by US soldiers and asks if they want us to be there, what are they going to say? "No, get lost, and take those gun-toting soldiers with you, they're really ticking us off!" I wonder what Americans think when they're told we're needed or wanted in Afghanistan.

Slate, Gen. McChrystal: "After 10 Years, Our Work in Afghanistan Is Only Halfway Done"


McChrystal: "Frighteningly simplistic" view of the country has crippled the war effort.
By Will Oremus | Posted Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, at 12:01 PM ET

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, McChrystal said the United States had a “frighteningly simplistic” view of the country when it invaded, CBS News reports. Even today, McChrystal argued, the country lacks the understanding needed to complete the mission successfully.

“We didn't know enough and we still don't know enough,” he said. “Most of us — me included — had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”Knowledge isn’t the only problem, he added. President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was a costly diversion that has tarnished Muslims’ perception of the United States.
The most difficult task still ahead, he continued, is building a credible Afghan government that could rule the country peacefully once outside forces withdraw.

The celebrated personal difficulties between BHO and McChrystal notwithstanding, the language above, in which McC describes GWB's decision as a "costly diversion", suggests that he's 'on message' with the Obama administration in terms of delivering the right talking points. But whether it's McChrystal or Petraus, or Condoleezza Rice or Gates or Hilary Clinton delivering the speech, and whether it's 2005 or 2009 or 2011, the message is depressingly similar. A superficial understanding isn't the problem. They don't want us there, and will never want us there, at least not as occupiers imposing our will.

People like McChrystal must know this, even if they feel they also have to support doomed policies, apparently because it's expected of them. I don't know if this is sad or monstrous. I suppose it's both.

I wrote about the Af-Pak war at some length in the summer of 2009, here and here. While the US may have killed bin Laden since then, I fail to see what has otherwise changed, or even how killing him has changed the war. More people have needlessly died, on all sides, who were alive in 2009. What else?

Even the reliably hawkish Fred Kaplan acknowledges that the Af-Pak war is going badly:

As for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who appeared alongside Mullen at Thursday's hearing, it is hard to tell whether his spin on recent events was evasive, delusional, naïve, or a combination of the three. The assault on the embassy, Panetta insisted, marks "a sign of weakness in the insurgency." Having been dealt a string of setbacks on the battlefield, the insurgents are now shifting tactics to go after "high-profile" targets, such as Afghan officials, peace negotiators, and the American embassy. This shift, Panetta said, will have no effect on the Taliban's "odds of military success."

Also here:

Hearts, Minds, and Murders: The killing of Hamid Karzai's brother means the war in Afghanistan is going worse than we thought

Two from Greg Scoblete, How Important is Af-Pak?

The Alluring, Enduring Myth of Energy Independence

and, A decade of war [via BDR]

...

Pictures of goats in trees

update below
According to Yahoo:

In Morocco, the native Tamri goats are so enticed by the berries of Argan trees that they have become adept at climbing the branches to reach their food. Even stranger still, the goats' droppings contain seed kernels which local farmers then grind into an oil that is used in cooking and cosmetics.

I'm skeptical. Maybe the Morocco Export Council is thinking, "Oh, those stupid Americans. Surely if we post some pictures of native Tamri goats in trees, we will be able to sell more berries. They will never for a moment suspect we know how to use the photoshop because they think we don't understand these things. Ha ha ha ha!" Or maybe somebody else is thinking this.

Note also the reference to Abbas' speech at the UN. The speech urging the UN to recognize Palestine as a state is harmful or not harmful to the peace process. Leaving aside the questions of what exactly the peace process is, i.e. whether it can only occur under US-sanctioned auspices or at least with US approval of the process, the blurb on Yahoo's front page functions as a barrier, positing "helpful or harmful" to the peace process, as opposed to many other possible questions:

Why the P.A. taking is the initiative, why they would want to, or feel they have to, or of the US losing its primacy in the Middle East, and if so, why do others see the US's influence as less useful or relevant than before, or simply whether or not its the best course of action for the Palestinians to take, to further their interests. No, its important for Americans to regard other people as children, and therefore, ironically, important for the press to treat Americans as children to help perpetuate this.

Do people actually buy this, and look at things, and avoid looking at other things, the way this approach dictates? Undoubtedly some do. I suppose the stereotype of Palestinians dancing in the streets probably helps, reinforcing the image of those hot-headed, passionate desert peoples, etc.

Reuters,"Abbas stakes Palestinian claim to state at U.N."(the Yahoo news link above)

"Obama sold Israel bunker-buster bombs"(also here)

"Israel on alert for possible Hamas attack"

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, says there is "concrete intelligence" that Hamas and maybe other militant groups are trying to infiltrate the border.

She says an attack might be timed to torpedo the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., an effort being led by Hamas' chief rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has more to benefit from an attack by Hamas at this point than Hamas does, in terms of the propaganda value of being able to point to it as yet another proof of the brutishness of the Palestinians, and Hamas has a lot to lose if they attack Israel, especially now, in terms of credibility and goodwill. That doesn't automatically make the assertion of "concrete intelligence" so much hogwash, but it still reminds me of the goats in the trees.

Cross-posted here at Hugo Zoom.

update: Rob Payne kindly references this goaty discussion, here. Also, he mentions this by Philip Giraldi:"Biggest Losers in Palestine Veto? The American People" as well as a recent Counterpunch piece by Uri Avnery. All three are worthwhile.

I wonder if US and Israeli politicians are feeling boxed in now, as if they have no choice but to be even more recalcitrant. Maybe they feel this in part because of how the political zeitgeist has shifted so far to the right in both countries, which of course is something they had a hand in creating. Or maybe they blame it on the Palestinians, for not co-operating in the the continual confirming and reconfirming of their own agreeable powerlessness, and committing the crime of embarrassing the two countries.

But they're not boxed in. All they have to do is acknowledge Palestine's claim as legitimate, as opposed to continuing the fictional peace process that fools fewer people each day. If they actually did this it could even lead to a nonfictional peace process. Could you imagine that?

Afghan lite, or believe what you will

Arthur Silber,("Every Word He Utters Is a Lie") listened to Obama's speech, and writes:

"...In fact, and this is the point of significance, no man or woman is going to ascend to the office of president unless he or she will utter precisely the same empty phrases and offer the identical meaningless assurances."

and concluded that we will be in Afghanistan for a very long time.

I tend to agree. Not the part about how every word he utters is a lie, insofar as I believe the president really was born in Hawaii, really attended law school and so forth, but you have to allow Arthur his poetic license. (Incidentally he's been on quite a roll of late, if you haven't noticed.) Yahoo and CNN and the New York Times and undoubtedly others provide handy links to texts of the speech, so you can read it for yourself.

To me Obama is a sort of gestalt president, insofar as his words can be interpreted as representing pretty much whatever you think they should represent, presumably consistent with your hopes, or your fears, or whether or not the frozen lasagna you had last night agreed with you. And no, I don't see this as a compliment, nor as proof of his 'special genius' playing political chess so many moves ahead of his opponents and mugs like you and me who are too benighted to understand his long game and all that.

If Obama is a gestalt president, this is in substantial part because of how dizzyingly tribal our culture has gotten, which of course he has been happy to exploit. If he pushes through a scheme that further entrenches for-profit health insurance companies and liberals gush, or he pushes through a 'stimulus' package that consists mainly of tax cuts for employed people and conservatives call him a socialist, then his opacity isn't so much a function of his cleverness but the heightened screwiness of our culture. (Don't forget that the Nobel people helped, awarding him a nifty peace prize after he amped up airstrikes on Afghanistan. Hey, but at least he gave a swell speech about nuclear disarmament!)

I assume we will have a modest reduction in troop levels, but this proves he's a liberal and a really a good guy at heart, and really hates the fact that he ordered a surge in '09(he had to!), and that any reduction will likely only take us back to GWB levels but he can't help that because look at the tough spot he's in, and he really hates how we've been in Afghanistan for a decade, and if some of those troops are subsequently deployed across the border in Pakistan he can't help that either because the world is a dangerous place, etc, etc, etc,

[hold on, I need a breath...]

only if you supply the belief. You gotta BELIEVE.





On the other hand, there are actually people who believe that Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin have all the answers. Well, they're plumb loco.



Henry Giroux, "Reveling in the Pain of Others: Moral Degeneracy and Violence in the "Kill Team" Photos"

CNN, "Should the US negotiate with the Taliban?"


Stan Goff, Feral Scholar, "Why I won’t vote (and you shouldn’t either)"
(via)

(Silber also supplies this helpful Caruso link.)

Osama obit

Update below.

You probably know by now that Obama just got on the TV and announced that a US team killed Osama bin Laden earlier today in Pakistan. This was done by a special forces unit and not airstrikes, which were never necessary, apart from being needed to brutalize the Afghan population, as opposed to being necessary for making Americans safer.

For the record, even though I am against the US military campaign in the Af-Pak region, I think they were right to go after bin Laden, assuming he was in fact responsible for the 9/11 plot, as most people believe. But that doesn't change the fact that the rest of the war that has been prosecuted against the populace was terribly wrong. They may have even been more likely to help US forces apprehend him if we'd just asked for their help and didn't engage in a wide-scale campaign to pacify the country. How many thousands of lives, Afghan, and Pakistani, and American, would have been spared! But clearly that wasn't on the agenda, for either the Bush 2 or Obama administrations. (It's easy to forget that in 2001 the Taliban actually offered to turn over bin Laden to a mutually acceptable third party, upon being provided with proof that he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Maybe they didn't mean this, but their offer was rejected and we'll never know.)

If the US had tried a modified form of that strategy after Obama became president, maybe the Taliban would have turned him over if they were allowed into Karzai's government and if they had assurances that bin Laden would not be executed. Taking him alive under such circumstances would have the virtue of giving doubting millions in both the East and the West some assurance that it was really him, and would have been less likely to infuriate the Muslim world. Presumably the soldiers in the operation today did not have the option to safely capture him alive.*

Over at CNN.com the banner reads, 'U.S. State Department warns of "enhanced potential for anti-American violence" following bin Laden's death.' I wonder if this is true; and if, possibly, many Muslims around the world are anticipating that now the US will leave Afghanistan and Pakistan, and hope to avoid provoking the US, at least for now.

But if such a bated breath effect does exist, it will evaporate quickly upon the inevitable resumption of airstrikes by American forces. A fantasy Obama would declare a short unilateral cease-fire, maybe a week to 10 days, and offer to send Mullen or some other VIP to facilitate negotiations between the Afghan puppet government and the Taliban for a peaceful reconciliation of some sort. But [1] that presumes that Obama is actually concerned about peace in Afghanistan, and [2] that kind of Obama doesn't exist in this world, even if millions of Obama drones believe that, in his heart, Barry is just that kind of guy. (Except maybe they're also secretly glad he isn't.)

*update: from my response to Quin:[yes,] arresting him would have been preferable. If we really believe we're the good guys and a nation of laws, etc., we would have tried to do that.

Did they actually try to capture him without killing anybody? Who knows. I'll admit I'm skeptical - certainly describing the woman as a shield sounds like spin. But I also know that it's easy for us to speculate from our safe remove about how much danger they should have exposed themselves to in order to capture him alive, with no other 'collateral' deaths.

21 April 2011

Guardian/Getty

Paul Bignell, Independent, "Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq"

AP: NYC officials defend decision to cuff 1st grader(also here)

Jessica Anderson tells the Daily News that 7-year-old Joseph became upset because his egg-painting didn't look the way he wanted. She says he was taken to the hospital wearing metal handcuffs even though she told the school she was on her way to get him.

Annie Lowrey, Slate, Heading for a McRecovery? McDonald's plan to hire 50,000 people in one day and what it says about America's economic prospects.

www.thenewspaper.com, Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic StopsACLU seeks information on Michigan program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists.

Alex Parene, Salon.com, "DEA head: A thousand dead children means we're winning war on drugs"

U.S. and Mexican officials say the grotesque violence is a symptom the cartels have been wounded by police and soldiers. “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” said Michele Leonhart, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartels “are like caged animals, attacking one another,” she added.

You probably heard that photographer Chris Hondros(left, above) and filmmaker Tim Hetherington were killed in Libya earlier this week.This famous photo was taken by Hondros in Iraq in 2005. (via "Photojournalism, Ethics and a Trail of Blood" )

20 March 2011

BBC

Reuters, "Some states consider cutting 2012 primaries to save money"

Bob Somerby:

You live inside a plutocrat war—a war being waged by the top one percent. (Well—by the top one-tenth of the top one percent.) This war has been underway for thirty-five years; the plutocrats clearly are winning. In the process, all average people are getting looted—those who voted for Bachmann, those who voted for her opponent. But guess what? The plutocrats will continue to win as long as we slow-witted liberals keep taking the bait from cynics like [Lawrence] O’Donnell—as long as we keep getting conned into heightening our tribal wars.

Two from Slate,

Christopher Beam, "Why so little looting in Japan? The explanation is legal as much as cultural"

Bethany McLean, "Infrastructure privatization: Can banks be trusted?"

commenter Peter D writes:

Privatization of state roads just highlights the inefficiencies and waste of state government. Here in Pennsylvania they debated privatizing the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which they gave up on). If the new owner was going to be able to operate and maintain the roadway AND turn a profit for less than the state is currently paying just to operate and maintain the road (since they don't necessarily have to turn a profit), that just shows how much waste there is in the state system.

Instead of selling off public assets for a one time injection of money, run the state-owned property more efficiently and let the public reap the rewards in lower fees/tolls and/or lower taxes. What is inevitably going to happen when that one time shot of money runs out is that you will end up with no more public assets AND high fees and taxes from the lack of income producing assets. Then what are you going to do?

Naked Capitalism, "Everything you need to know about torture"

"Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages"
(Apparently CNBC counts social security payments as a 'handout', ignoring the years of payments you have to put into the system to be eligible.)

Thomas Daulton, American Crackpot,"Risking other people's money":

The supposedly 'for-profit' nuclear industry is completely a creature of government subsidies.

Rob Payne, "The Libyan question"


And yes, it seems we are at war with Libya, Kosovo-intervention style. I want to preface my remarks by noting that I don't for a moment doubt that Khaddafy is indeed brutalizing his people, and that large numbers of them want him gone. All the same I can't help but be reminded of that old photo from the Vietnam conflict of a soldier's helmet that read "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity."

Inevitably, the idea of a 'humanitarian intervention' is attractive to people, the good guys coming to the aid of the virtuous freedom fighters trying to overthrow a brutal oppressor. I imagine the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan also regard themselves as virtuous freedom fighters trying to get rid of an oppressor. I also imagine the protesters in Yemen and Bahrain feel they are being brutally oppressed, what with the massacres and such. So how are all these things different, and why do we not come to the aid of the people of Yemen and Bahrain?

Of course if we did come to the aid of Yemen and Bahrain, we would do it knowing that we weren't going to destabilize the region, and any deaths were modest, acceptable losses. We can know what are 'acceptable' losses in Libya, I guess, because Khaddafy has a long history of dressing up in fanciful garb, so any announcement regarding casualties in Libya is probably a lie that can be dismissed. Khaddafy also nationalized Libya's oil in the 70s, so a mean-spirited person might wonder if a strong man will emerge among the rebels who means to cut a deal to privatize them after the revolution.

Bomb Libya or Lose the World!

It makes me a bit uneasy when I hear denizens of the United States making fun of a foreign leader for saying something stupid. Sure, they might deserve it, but it often seems hypocritical and at least bordering on bullying.

I think back to 2003 and Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf a.k.a. Baghdad Bob. High on the thrill of a war for freedom and democracy, pundits filled pages and screen ridiculing him for making obviously false statements such as U.S. troops were committing suicide en masse even as the U.S. was successfully taking over Iraq.

At the same time, these same people had no problem with George W. Bush making hilarious statements about how the U.S. was not an empire because some troops were returning to the U.S.

So with that caveat aside, I was amused Muammar Gaddafi’s recent comments blaming al-Qaeda, along with drugs, for the evil revolt in Libya.

Isn’t he supposed to blaming America, the Great Satan and blood sucking vulture of the world? When did Osama bin Laden become the face of evil in that part of the world?

Could it be that Americans wasting so much time on social media is finally starting to pay off for the world? Maybe we aren’t very good at running other countries anymore.

Well, no. As much as I would like to be optimistic, I suspect that the Gaddafi was trying to do was rekindle western support, however great the odds against this are. Or maybe he is delusional. (Calling the leaders of other countries “crazy” or “delusional” for acting in a way that the U.S. does not approve of, but which is rational, is another pet peeve of mine. But perhaps he is irrational.)

All that said, if we Americans are to make sure we that we remain on top of the world, we had better hurry up and pull off a successful intervention in Libya that we get credit for. Sending weapons via Saudi Arabia has a certain Iran-Contra quality to it, but it might not be enough. Reagan never could take credit for that and, even today, the ungrateful likes of Oliver North do not give Iran proper credit for helping us to win the Cold War. I favor relentless bombings and then, just as we did in Iraq, teaching the new Libyan government how to repress its people without creating a controversy.

The stakes are high. We are in the fourth quarter of sudden death overtime, and all of the money is on the table. If we act, we can show everyone that the earth stills revolves around the red, white and blue. If we fail, people in other countries might see themselves as legitimate human beings.

Egypt 2011:Now what?

I agree with Mimi (and Ian Welsh) that the events of the past 3 weeks in Egypt represent a victory for ordinary people, no matter what the eventual outcome.


Meanwhile the US mainstream press is full of fancy-pants learned assessments of how Obama and the State Department "handled" the events in Egypt, as if we really still have so much influence in the region, which I doubt. I assume Obama hopes the displacement of Mubarak as just so much rebranding, and that may prove be the case(Change he can believe in...). At any rate I suspect Egyptians are less likely to be fooled by mere window dressing and symbolism the way, say, many democratic voters were fooled by Obama.

Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian:"The tyrant has gone. Now the real struggle begins for Egypt"

"The edifice of despotic government totters to its fall. Strive so far as you can to destroy the foundations of this despotism, not to pluck up and cast out its individual agents." This was the deathbed exhortation-cum-warning of the itinerant Muslim Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) who pursued a long career in political activism and trenchant journalism.

John Dickerson, Slate, Was Obama Too Indecisive on Egypt?
Or did his refusal to meddle actually speed Mubarak's fall?

Ethan 6 or 7, "A perfect symbol of how hard the fight is"

Ian Johnson: Washington’s Secret History with the Muslim Brotherhood [via BDR]

Cairo Spring

Robert Springborg, Foreign Policy "Game over: The chance for democracy in Egypt is lost" Feb 2nd

Gareth Porter, "The Illusive Quest for Dominance: Why Washington Clings to a Failed Middle East Strategy"

Juan Cole, "Saad’s Revolution"

‘ Saad Eddin Ibrahim has spoken out forcefully on human rights and democracy for decades, and he is finally being vindicated. But his message that the United States needs to support democracy in the Arab world and put aside its paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements may be unpalatable to Washington’s elites. ‘

Firedoglake,“No One Could Have Predicted the Housing Bubble Middle East Status Quo Would Crash” [via Corrente]

Ahdaf Soueif: The regime unleashes its thugs

Washingtonblog, "Why Did Mubarak's Thugs Ride In On Camels?"

Gary Farber, "De Nile Truly Is A River"

Steve Lendman, "Revolutionary Change in Egypt: Internal or Made in USA?" 1/31

Parvez Sharma, 'We are very much in the early stages of our revolution’ Feb 3rd

Helena Cobban, "Obama's know-nothings discuss Egypt" 1/28

Chris Floyd had several interesting posts up about recent events in Egypt but apparently hackers have removed them.


I've seen very little in the way of polling regarding the turmoil in Egypt. From the somewhat right-wing Rasmussen people there's this.


Juan Cole mentions another poll, here: "Why Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979"

A recent Pew poll found that 59% of Egyptians favor democracy in almost all situations. And fully 60 percent are very or somewhat worried about the specter of religious extremism in their society. About 61% do not even think there is a struggle between modernizers and religion in Egypt.

Among the 31% who did see such a struggle, 59% favored religious forces and 21% favored the modernizers. Barry Rubin and Michael Totten misread this latter statistic to be true of all Egyptians. They are wrong. The statistic is not about Egyptians in general, but about the third of them who see a conflict between modernizers and religion. 59% of 31% is 18% of the whole Egyptian population who favor fundamentalists over modernizers. The rest either favor the modernizers or think it is a phony conflict. Not thinking that modernism and religiosity conflict is generally a liberal point of view.

Vermont's Bernie Sanders has an interactive poll on his Senate web site, here. Last I checked about 2,700 people had participated. I know it's not remotely scientific, but I found it interesting.

Regarding Gary Farber and Marc Lynch (whom Farber quotes extensively), I'm inclined to think they both make too many excuses for Obama-- although I doubt that if Obama actually took a more forthright stand in favor of a meaningful change to democratic government it would make much difference in terms of actual events. My sense of Obama is that he just cares about avoiding having people and events making him look bad, and at this point the US government's main rhetorical struggle is the attempt to seem relevant to events in the Middle East. I wonder if many Americans can see how our influence in the region has declined, and it's not about dems versus the GOP, any more than Iraq was about WMDs. At any rate I hope Robert Springborg is wrong and the street revolutionaries really have a chance to get rid of the government and replace it with something better. History suggests the odds against them are steep, not because Arabs "don't understand" democracy, but because outside forces tend to interfere if they can.

6 November 2010

Alternate Focus:"How Israel Influences the United States"

Retired CIA analysts Bill and Kathleen Christison talk about Israel's influence on the United States.This conversation was filmed at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, Washington, during a February 2010 conference. (I believe he's referring to the Citizens United decision at around 25:00 minutes in.)

James K. Galbraith, "Obama’s Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks"

Two from that Rob Payne feller:

"Raining in Iraq" and

"If only Al Gore"

BBC: "China, Germany attack US stimulus"

Germany's finance minister calls the US stimulus programme "clueless", while China warns of its "negative impact".

And, from Phronesisaical: "Does. Not. Compute." (I'm not clear on Cheryl Rofer's view of the alleged bomb plot, although you don't have to definitively believe or disbelieve the government's version to have questions regarding the details.)


Johann Hari: Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill

from Consumertrap.com: "Does the USA Really Have Public Broadcasting?"