The Republic of Dissent

Humanitarian intervention, Syria, and legitimacy

Oh no, not again:

Humanitarian intervention in Syria, under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine so often mentioned in the halls of the United Nations, would send a powerful message to Syrians and the Middle East. The people would feel validated, their plight recognized. Simply put: it would instill hope in a part of the world in dire need of it.

What we are learning from Libya and from the past is that humanitarian interventions remain wars that have to be fought and won. Good intentions, legitimating  righteous uprisings and even fighting bad regimes are never enough to make humanitarian interventions work in a world where images are everything and where wars are fought on the cheap to put it bluntly!

The devil you know...

Juan Cole on the Obama's position on Libya:

Washington appears to have decided it slightly preferred the devil it knew, and that may well be what it gets– though now a wounded devil talking crazily about global jihad against the West if things don’t go his way.

I'm surprised that people are surprised by what's happening in Libya and by the fact that Obama believes in real politik especially when idealism or doing the right thing is about something other than giving speeches and singing  "we have something in common."

Simple question of probabilities

Important point from Chris Dillow on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi:

(...) how many times in history has the son of dictator succeeded his father and successfully transformed his country to a liberal democracy? Basic Bayesianism tells us that, with such a poor base rate probability, we should have not have been hopeful about al-Gaddafi.

I don't think that people really believed in what the younger Gaddafi was selling, just in the fact that he had the means to buy a lot of their needful things as Stephen King would say.

The 'thing' speaks for itself

Gideon Rachman on Gaddafi and the 'contradictions'of the 'international community' (I have nothing but disdain for that term) :

There is no acknowledgement that is a disgrace that Libya is a member of the council [the United Nations Human Rights Council] in the first place. However, this is not some weird accident. It is the settled will of the international community. The Libyans were voted onto the council in May – getting 155 votes of the 192 UN members. Gaddafi is obviously a popular chap.

 

Gaddafi as the EU's bastard

Interesting point from Nathalie Rothschild,which I admit makes all warm and fuzzy:

In fact, the EU’s fear of unregulated migration has been a trump card for Gaddafi. Assuaging this EU fear has been a way for the Libyan leader to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the West after years of ostracisation. At the same time, threats to close and open borders have become a way for Gaddafi to hold the West to ransom, as he threatens to block trade deals or relax border controls unless Europe meets his demands. So it is not surprising that Gaddafi gave European nations the ultimatum of distancing themselves from the pro-democracy protesters or facing the supposed opening of the immigration floodgates from Africa. This is a real worry for the EU, which preaches about the virtues of democracy and human rights yet which has no interest in defending freedom of movement.
As we have seen with recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, when people get a taste for freedom there’s no telling what they’ll do to achieve it.

When I was young, I thought at least that Gaddafi (Gadhafi, Khadafi) had presence, now he is just a caricature of the man he once was, even though it was always a bastard,  but bastards with presence can be inspiring leaders to the blind.

Women as human shields

Sugary excerpt of the day or rather of the night from Juan Cole:

Note to Muslim-hater Bill Maher, who should know better: It is not true that women cannot vote in 20 Muslim countries, and please stop generalizing about 1.5 billion Muslims based on the 22 million people in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the only place where women cannot drive and where men can vote (in municipal elections) but women cannot. It would be like generalizing from the Amish in Pennsylvania to all people of Christian heritage and wondering what is with Christianity and its fascination with horses and buggies.

I have to admit that I have stopped watching Bill Maher years ago because I couldn't take him seriously. He is exactly like the people he criticized, arrogant and fanatically persuaded to be on the right side except that his views are  seen more fashionable and more 'cultured' (some forms of inculture in America and elsewhere are tolerable/fashionable than others when they lead to more palatable conclusions).

Bill Maher doesn't care about the status of women in the "Muslin world," to use an expression that I hate. He is using it to make a cheap point to win an argument that isn't about women, but about a group of people he considers as savages.  My own point here isn't that there is no there there, but to make the assertion that consistency matters when being self-righteous.

I will not foolishly assert that women in America are not privileged compared to others or that foreign countries especially those in certain parts of the world have a 'woman problem.' I will just argue that saying that isn't saying much for the question remains what is the ideal, what are absolute and universal values, and to stop using women as human shield, as props to win ideological wars.

Democracy and the use of force

The abomination of the day is from Neil Reynolds:

It’s the exceptional vulnerability of democracy that, in the end, justifies the use of force to defend or extend it – as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights implicitly recognizes.

I guess that means that the UN should send troops to Iran and other places to 'install' democracies everywhere. But of course, the key issues here are one of definition and power. What is democracy and who decides when, how, it has to defended with the use of force? Sermons are great in church, but futile and even dangerous in international politics even though they may be inspiring.

Yes We Can and confusion

Quote of the day from Tom Engelhardt (hat tip: Juan Cole):

Facing genuine shock and awe (the people’s version), the Obama administration has been shaken.  It has shown itself to be weak, visibly fearful, at a loss for what to do, and always several steps behind developing events.  Count on one thing: its officials are already undoubtedly worried about a domestic political future in which the question (never good for Democrats) could be: Who lost the Middle East?  In the meantime, their oh-so-solemn, carefully calibrated statements, still in command mode, couched in imperial-speak, and focused on what client states in the Middle East must do, might as well be spoken to the wind.  Like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, only the rhetoric of the last decades seems to be left.

As I have always said, Obama is a typical American president even though his brand may say something else. The fact that the elites and others, seeking for easy and aesthetic solutions,  believe that he is different not because of what he is, but because of non-defining factors such as race and biography are more an indication of intellectual laziness and their unwillingness to change without doing more than believe in an image without doing more. The point remains that Obama is what he does. As the Egyptian case shows, he is first and foremost the POTUS, a typical American president who fears that History will judge him harshly if he makes the United States different from what it is, a superpower and by does not hang on to what is perceived as its assets without asking himself the important question of what is good for the US in the long run. In short,  the fear to lose is too great within Obama and his administration to do anything else than maintaining the status quo ante or controlling the winds of change. Yes We Can was just a slogan as empty and as meaningless as the Just Do It of Nike.

Remains of orientalism

Quote of the day from Glenn Greenwald:

Any foreign story that interests the American media for more than a day requires clear villains and heroes.   What made the Egypt story so rare is that the designated foreign villains are usually first separated from the U.S. before being turned into demons; it's fine to vilify those whom we have steadfastly supported provided the support is a matter of the past and can thus be safely ignored.  Thus were Saddam Hussein, the former Mujahideen (now known as The Terrorists) and any number of Latin American and Asian tyrants seamlessly turned into Horrible, Evil Monsters despite our once-great alliances with them; the fact that it happened in the past (albeit the very recent past) permitted those facts to be excluded.  But so intertwined are the U.S. and Mubarak -- still -- that such narrative separation was impossible.

Complexity doesn't sell in American media because it requires time and depth, which are the enemies usually of entertainment. What has struck me watching the Egyptian revolt on American TV especially is that it is like a hollywood movie and requires constant movement, action, and climaxes to keep the audience and I suspect the journalists interested. I'm willing to bet that the longer the story lasts or rather the longer Mubarak is able to hang on, the less likely it is that the story will remain interesting to US media.

Good sense starts at home

The sugary excerpt is from Juan Cole's interesting post on Mubarak and his humiliation of Obama and America, I don't agree with a lot of Cole's assertion, but he is onto something and his main point ihat foreign policy has domestic repercussions and vice versa is valid:

As long as the president and the Congress are willing to lie down and serve as doormats for America’s supposed allies in the Middle East– out of a conviction of the usefulness of their clients and the inexpensiveness of putting them on retainer– there will be anti-Americanism and security threats that force us to subject ourselves to humiliating patdowns and scans at the airport and an erosion of our civil liberties every day. We are only one step away of being treated, with “protest zones” and “Patriot Acts” just as badly as the peaceful Egyptian protesters have been.

We are all Westerners

Richard Cohen doesn't get it and is stuck in a place where people are too different too immature, too barbaric to know what to do with the good things in life, which to him are 'western values':

Egypt's problems are immense. It has a population it cannot support, a standard of living that is stagnant and a self-image as leader of the (Sunni) Arab world that does not, really, correspond to reality. It also lacks the civic and political institutions that are necessary for democracy. The next Egyptian government - or the one after - might well be composed of Islamists. In that case, the peace with Israel will be abrogated and the mob currently in the streets will roar its approval.

My take on all this is relentlessly gloomy. I care about Israel. I care about Egypt, too, but its survival is hardly at stake. I care about democratic values, but they are worse than useless in societies that have no tradition of tolerance or respect for minority rights. What we want for Egypt is what we have ourselves. This, though, is an identity crisis. We are not them.

I'm not buying into that ideological distinction between 'us' and 'them' and into the racialist notion that traditions are everything and that identity is a non-evolving state in all societies meaning that people are their history and their traditions. The lesson of our post-globalized world is precisely that 'we' are all westerners now in the sense that 'we' all choose who want to be and thus decide the future, which doesn't have to be like the past.  It comes to Hannah Arendt and to her favorite quote of René Char, which I never get tired of using:  notre histoire n'est précédée d'aucun testament.

People are not chained to their past. Egyptians are not the slaves of history, of what they may have been.

Foresight and narrow-mindedness

Fraser Nelson over at the Spectator's Coffee House can't step out his way to see the forest through the trees:

In Egypt, the army look like they are settling in. If there is regime change, I doubt that whoever takes over will be pro-Western (the crowds will likely remember that the tear gas used on them was dispensed in canisters saying “Made in USA”). The grim fact remains that Iran is racing towards the bomb, and if they succeed then the Sunni world – in Saudi Arabia and Cairo – will likely follow suit. I’d love to see some wind of change blowing through Arab street, but I still fear that we’re heading for a multi-polar nuclear standoff in the only part of the world which is mad enough to use nuclear weapons. I do hope I’m wrong.

The trouble with Nelson isn't that he may be wrong or can be right, but rather that he sees Egypt not as a country like his own or any 'normal' one (I would use Western, but I don't believe in the existence of the West or in the division of the world between the West and the rest). Egypt to Nelson is a means to an end or worst a part of a jungle whose happenings must not be allowed to disturb the peace and stability of the 'modern world.'  The issue isn't about what the events of Egypt means for the rest of the world, but about what they mean for Egyptians. It is alarming to realize that too many including the prominent members of the Obama administration haven't learned from the greatest mistakes of the past. Doing so would have taught them that tolerating wrongs to avoid the worst never works in international politics for the simple reason that it legitimates the worst by delegitimating the moral arguments against it.

Thus, tying to the fall of Mubarak to the nuclearisation of Iran and of the whole middle east is like tying the fall of Louis XVI to the rise of anarchy in Europe and of the reign of terror. History isn't gastronomy and Egyptians are thus neither ingredients nor slaves of a predictable or controllable future.

The Egyptian State and legitimacy

Sugary excerpt of the day is from Juan Cole on the Egyptian revolt (I don't think the word revolution applies here, at least not yet):

The Nasserist state, for all its flaws, gained legitimacy because it was seen as a state for the mass of Egyptians, whether abroad or domestically. The present regime is widely seen in Egypt as a state for the others– for the US, Israel, France and the UK– and as a state for the few– the Neoliberal nouveau riche. Islam plays no role in this analysis because it is not an independent variable. Muslim movements have served to protest the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities, and to provide services. But they are a symptom, not the cause. All this is why Mubarak’s appointment of military men as vice president and prime minister cannot in and of itself tamp down the crisis. They, as men of the System, do not have more legitimacy than does the president– and perhaps less.

I'm wondering whether this means that this revolt will  end with the reestablishment of the Nasserist state rather than something more democratic, in other words is it just a fight to return to what 'worked' in the past ?

Blinders

Provocative proposal from David Bernstein:

(...)if Turkey is so concerned with the welfare of Gazans, why not let Turkey run the place.

It is  possible to be on the right side and to be stubbornly and often dangerously blind.

Own goal

The statement of the day from Gideon Rachman:

It would be a classic Israeli own goal, if their assault on the Gaza ships sank the choices of a new resolution on Iran.

Retreat and ideology

Fouad Ajami has a good op-ed in the Wall Street Journal making the argument that Karzai's anti-American and anti-foreign outburst is a just a sign that the Middle East doesn't take Obama seriously. Sugary excerpt:

Still, this recent dust-up with Mr. Karzai—his outburst against the West, his melodramatic statement that he, too, could yet join the Taliban in a campaign of "national resistance," his indecent warning that those American and NATO forces soldiering to give his country a chance are on the verge of becoming foreign occupiers—is a statement about the authority of the Obama administration and its standing in Afghanistan and the region.
Forgive Mr. Karzai as he tilts with the wind and courts the Iranian theocrats next door. We can't chastise him for seeking an accommodation with Iranian power when Washington itself gives every indication that it would like nothing more than a grand bargain with Iran's rulers.
(...)All this plays out under the gaze of an Islamic world that is coming to a consensus that a discernible American retreat in the region is in the works. America's enemies are increasingly brazen, its friends unnerved. Witness the hapless Lebanese, once wards of U.S. power, now making pilgrimages, one leader at a time, to Damascus. They, too, can read the wind: If Washington is out to "engage" that terrible lot in Syria, they better scurry there to secure reasonable terms of surrender.

Fouad Ajami, because of his biases, doesn't have enough distance from his subject matter to see the full picture. He is so blinded by his own ideology to make a correct assessment of Obama's Afghan and Middle East policy. I remember too well Ajami's comments before and during the Iraq not to realize that he is too much an interventionist and an idealist America to approve of the policies of the  President that succeeded the one he championed and indirectly advised. That said, that doesn't mean that  he isn't right about the fact that America's standing in the Middle East has greatly diminished, but that it isn't Obama's fault, that is Bush's fault and the fact that Obama is choosing to view American's national interest in a conventional way.

The Hurt Locker's American-centrism

Astute observation from Chris Bertram about The Hurt Locker:

Purely as a piece of cinema, The Hurt Locker is probably the better film [better than the Green Zone], but politically it is nowhere, and indeed it suffers from the same syndrome as many Hollywood Vietnam pictures – they are all about Americans and how they feel, and the poor natives appear as mere ciphers.

The power and seductiveness of Apocalypse politics

Juan Cole on the new delusion of Ahmadinejad:

Not only is Ahmadinejad the Iranian equivalent of a truther, he is also the mirror image of the Christian Zionists. That brand of evangelicals in the US believes that the establishment of Israel throughout geographical Palestine, i.e. the complete annexation of the West Bank and perhaps the expulsion of its Palestinian residents, will hasten the return of Christ.
Ahmadinejad holds the opposite. It is in his view the collapse of what he calls the Zionist regime and the emergence of a state for all Palestinians, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, that will provoke the Promised One to come. In Shiite Islam, the promised one is the return of the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the lineal descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. In Muslim folk belief it is sometimes alleged that when the Mahdi comes, Jesus will also return, and they will join forces to prepare the world for the Judgment Day.

Why do I have the feeling that Iran is going to be a Nuclear state no matter was the US and its allies does? May be it is because there is nothing or rather few things that states can do, no matter how powerful they are collectively when another one who cannot be bribed has decided that it was the right afforded to them by God or whatever else to get a nuclear bomb and even welcomes confrontation for nationalistic or religious reasons,

The dangers of toothlessness in American Foreign policy

Quote of the early morning from Michael Young of the Daily Star:

The reality is that the Obama administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies and even less fear in its adversaries. The US remains the dominant actor in the Middle East, but to what end? If Obama’s ultimate goal is to be different than George W. Bush, he hasn’t even managed that. As setback follows setback, he is increasingly finding himself constrained by the same dynamics that Bush faced. But at least Bush knew what he was supposed to be about. Obama just seems lost.  

The Al Jazeera effect

Noah Bonsey and Jeff Koogler on the increasing influence of Al Jazeera on Mideast politics ore especially the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:

For Americans seeking to understand Al Jazeera’s role in shaping public opinion, it is perhaps useful to compare the channel to Fox News or MSNBC. Al Jazeera largely reports the facts, but in choosing which stories to highlight and which guests to invite on regularly, it betrays a certain political perspective. Of course, whereas Fox News and MSNBC operate in a highly competitive media environment, Al Jazeera is the main source of news for a majority of Palestinians and is the most popular television channel in the Arab world. This maximizes its influence. Indeed, Al Jazeera’s dominance of the Arab media makes it a political force unto itself. In no place is this more true than in the Palestinian arena, where it focuses much of its news coverage and where its market share is particularly strong.

No wonder, the Obama administration has chosen to have closer ties with Al Jazeera through   détente rather than conflict and confrontation.

Israel as a European country

I would have taken the following statement seriously if it had come from a political leader other than Berlusconi:

My greatest desire, as long as I am a protagonist in politics, is to bring Israel into membership of the European Union.

Assuming that it were possible, why would Israel join the EU? To be protected by it? Right, let's be serious!

Speechless

I don't know what to say/feel or even how to react when I read this although I know that something isn't quite right, however I'm still thinking about Mary-Kay Wilmers's words and I have to find more about her (hat tip: Norm Geras) :

I just think we get worked up about the wrong things, and there is more wrong on one side. What Cherie Blair said about being a suicide bomber if she’d been brought up in Gaza, I can absolutely see that point.

Anticipated catastrophes

David Grossman on life in Israel, catastrophes and the impossibility of long-term planning (hat tip: Norm Geras)

The main theme is the acuteness of life here in Israel. And even if a catastrophe like the death of a son does not befall you, one feels this immediate effect of political events on one's own personality. Many deny this reality, they simply ignore it. But at some point you are caught up by reality -- at the latest when your boys reach puberty, and the shadow of the army starts to fall on them. An international TV program once interviewed a young Israeli couple and asked how many children they wanted to have. The beautiful bride said immediately: "Three." And the interviewer asked: "Why three?" And she said with a smile: "So that if one of them is killed in a war or in terror we shall still have two left."(...) The option of personal catastrophe is connected to the special fate of this country. As I fear for my children, all my life I lived with this fear of what happens if a catastrophe occurs in Israel. The question of whether we shall exist here in the future, whether we will still live here within a few decades time, prevails subconsciously in the mind of most Israelis.

Attention grabber

Ah, ah, ah, and ah:

Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, he certainly knows how to capture your attention.  At a meeting in the Elysée Palace last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears that the French president recommended in no uncertain terms that Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, should be dropped from the Israeli cabinet and replaced with Tzipi Livni, the less abrasive opposition leader.

Just another almost revolution

Douglas Muir explains why Ahmadinejad will win. I have to say that I can't believe that serious people are thinking that he will lose and Iran will have changed regime in the next couple of weeks. As I have said previously, we have seen this movie before.

Wake me up at the end of the movie

I can't bring myself to be riveted by the whole Iran thing because the story  is hyped by the media which, I sense is waiting with unhealthy anticipation for an explosion, for the image, the interview, the thing, the moment that will bring more attention not so much to Iran, but to the courage of journalists covering the story. I feel as if I'm in a crowded theater watching a poorly made movie with an average cast who lacks the patience required to let the story evolve and speak for itself. I've seen all of this before and what are missing in this case, yet again, are distance, good reporting and something other than expected and cliché analysis about the struggle of a people for freedom. It's sad to say but I think this story will only become compelling at its end when the emphasis will shift from speed to accuracy and from syrupy clichés to singularity and fractured realities.

Faith and political reforms

Oliver Kamm on Obama's Cairo speech, Islam, and political reforms:

I'm uneasy about an American President (or sometime British Prime Minister, for the same applies to Tony Blair) declaring as a matter of policy deep respect for Islam. I can see the political imperative for doing so and (in the case of the statesmen concerned) the sincerity of the sentiment. But the proper attitude of a constitutional democracy towards religious faith is not respect but disinterest (i.e. neutrality). Our societies defend religious liberty and conscience. That's the least, but also the limit, of how the state should treat religion.
There's a pragmatic reason for such a stand. The Islamic faith is a fact of life and a huge influence on the world order. It's essential for peace and justice that Islam be dominated by elements that make their accommodation with democratic values, modern mores and secular education. To speak in an undifferentiated way of Islam and its achievements does not give the right message to those elements: to political reformers, religious moderates and heroic secular forces in autocratic states. Their voices need to be heard and encouraged, in the same way that dissidents in the Soviet bloc were given heart by an explicit commitment (in the Helsinki Final Agreement of 1975) to human rights.
That was the missing element in Obama's address. And when you see the pictures of demonstrators demanding freedom in Tehran, you have to conclude that the omission was not even good politics.

I'm agnostic on this issue as I am on most Obama's speeches because I don't think that speeches are good substitutes for policy. Kamm has a point, but I wonder if all of this fluff matters.

Ze speech

I'm having an awful week. My anemia is back in full force and it is kicking my you know what. Nevertheless, I wanted to write on Obama's speech in Cairo today. My personal opinion is that it will matter not in the immediate future, but in the next decade if it is followed by change (there is that awful word again), by something more substantives than syrupy words and good intentions. Speeches matter in international relations when they are followed by actions and that they announced the beginning of a new era in a country's foreign policies. It is for that reasons that although George W. Bush speeches were criticized for their dullness, arrogance, and their simple-mindedness, they were meaningful. In simpler terms, Ze speech will matter if it is the beginning of something new, the first step in the creation of a new era in American foreign policy (I have my doubts, but hey, I could be). Reza Aslan has a more critical take on the speech, but I think that it is because he bought in the whole messianic mystique that came with Obama's election:

Obama should have chosen Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, a moderate, pluralistic, wildly successful democratic country whose citizens just last month overwhelming voted for secular and moderate Muslim parties over the country’s more radical Islamist groups. Instead, by choosing Cairo as the backdrop to his speech, Obama has in effect rewarded Egypt’s president for life, Hosni Mubarak, for his bloody, blatantly anti-democratic, and dictatorial rule.(...) While it is becoming increasing clear that the new administration has abandoned the half-hearted and ultimately hypocritical democracy-promotion program of the previous administration, it is equally clear that the Muslim world has done no such thing. On the contrary, as I have written in these pages before, the overwhelming majority of people in the Middle East (78 percent, according to Gallup International) consider democracy “the best form of government” and continue to clamor for greater political freedoms, especially in countries like Egypt.
What the Muslim people want to hear is what kind of pressure America is willing to place on its dictatorial allies in order to force them to address their people’s aspirations for genuine political, economic, and social development. The truth is that, after four months of Obama in the White House, the Muslim world has had its fill of his platitudes about “mutual respect.” They want to know what actions the Obama administration is willing to take to fundamentally change America’s relationship with the Muslim world. Chiefly, they want to hear about Obama’s specific policy recommendations for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Powerful narrative, useful resentment, and change

ahhhhh...the beauty of perceived powerlessness:

Most Middle Eastern states have very little incentive to work towards a two-state solution.  Within many Arab countries, domestic resentment can be channeled into anger at the Israelis and symbolic support for the Palestinians.  Why would governments in the region want to turn off that very useful spigot?

Making the EU a diplomatic force

Martti Ahtisaari and Joschka Fischer make a strong plea for a European Common Foreign policy in the Financial Times:

But, despite these successes, the EU continues to underperform on the world stage. Since the Iraq war and the French and Dutch No votes on the constitutional treaty, the EU has shown the faltering confidence of adolescence. European leaders, who struggle to adapt to a new global environment characterised by a weakened US, a resurgent Russia and a rising China, have too often turned inwards.

The most dramatic signal has been the foot-dragging over Europe’s most stunning foreign policy success: enlargement. Political leaders and journalists tally up the potential costs of enlargement and the havoc that new member states could wreak in EU institutions. But there is little thought about the costs of non-enlargement: the damage that our wavering commitment is doing to the momentum for reform in Turkey and the Balkans.

[…]We believe a common foreign policy will allow individual countries to increase their global influence. A strong European voice in favour of human rights, democracy and inter­national law will not just benefit Europeans; it will be good for the world.

Well, we are all allowed to have big and impossible! When I look at Europe, I am reminded of de Gaulle’s quote about the difficulty of governing a country with 246 cheeses in this case, the difficulty would be in having leaders such as Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, the Kaczynski’s twins, Prodi, Zapatero agree on the Middle East, globalization, the United States, aid, aids, China, …etc. It is much more simply for the EU leaders to agree to disagree.

Western divergences on Iran and Shame

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Yossi Halevi accuses Germany not only of enabling Iran, but also of betraying the lessons of their own history. Halevi’s accusations are based on Germany’s refusal to back tough economic sanctions on Iran that would forbid European companies to do business with Teheran:

In Berlin, it seemed to me that afternoon, the decision had already been made to learn to live with the Iranian bomb.

Inevitably, Germans and Israelis approach the use of force with very different sensibilities. World War II taught us opposite lessons: for Germans, to suspect power as immoral; for Jews, to regard powerlessness as untenable. Still, I expected greater understanding among Germans of their responsibility in helping to resist the Iranian threat, especially toward Israel. Germany, after all, is Israel's most reliable friend in Western Europe. Since the early 1990s, for example, Germany has on several occasions upgraded Israel's submarine fleet, offering it second-strike nuclear capability to counterbalance threats from Iraq and Iran. When the Iranian government sponsored its notorious conference on Holocaust denial last December, the German government sponsored a simultaneous conference on Holocaust remembrance.

Why, then, the German obstructionism on efforts to contain a nuclear Iran? Business interests, of course, offer one explanation. […] Still, however substantial, business interests alone can't explain Germany's refusal to seriously confront the Iranian threat. The men and women I met in Berlin are obviously concerned about the stability of the Middle East and the safety of the Jewish state, and recognize that a nuclear-armed and expansionist Shiite regime is a danger, ultimately, to Europe as well.

Perhaps another reason for German blindness on Iran is a misplaced sense of contrition. In insisting on engagement rather than confrontation with Tehran, Germans seem to believe they are keeping faith with the lessons of their history. All problems should be peacefully resolved; no aggressor is irredeemable. […] The message Germany is inadvertently sending the Ahmadinejad regime is: Continue to hold out because the West is divided and ultimately will abandon not only the military option but the economic one, too.

Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is arguing that the United States and France are just grandstanding for American and French companies are doing business with Iran:

Several French companies in the automobile, energy and financial sectors -- including Peugeot, Renault, Total, BNP Paribas and Societé Générale -- have hardly reduced the level of business they do with Iran, according to the Foreign Ministry data. German exports to Iran, in contrast, have dramatically declined.

Even more explosive is the data that reveals US hypocrisy over sanctions. The German Foreign Ministry accuses American firms of bypassing the boycott against Iran, which has been in place since 1979, by creating front companies in Dubai to carry out their business. German politicians have long internally accused the United States of knowingly tolerating the practice.

The differences in how strictly sanctions are applied by different countries has led to "German firms being pushed out of the Iranian market," a high-ranking source in the Foreign Ministry told SPIEGEL.

I find this heated rhetoric on Iran not only unnecessarily divisive, but also more importantly worrisome and counterproductive because it divides the West unnecessarily when it needs to be united on an issue as important as the one of Iran and its nuclear ambition. I think that Halevi goes too far by using Germany’s past to shame it for taking a position that it believes sincerely, but perhaps erroneously, is in its interests. The challenge for the United States, France and Germany is to agree to disagree on the means without these disagreements become a distraction to the goal of not letting Iran become a nuclear power and to present a common front by not putting these disagreements to the forefront unless they are deal breaker. I don’t believe that in this instance divergences are so great that they have to fracture the united front for the issue is not whether to have sanctions on Iran, but rather on how to sanction Iran and the choice is not between applying sanctions and doing nothing.

Women refugees in Israel

Haaretz has an article on African women who seek asylum in Israel for fear of being persecuted in their home country. The article is fascinating because it shows that how difficult life still is for women in many parts of the world and another side of Israel that is rarely shown. Sugary excerpt:

T. spent a year and five months in Cairo. The day came when she could no longer hold her story in and gave an interview to a Web site that is read all over Africa (allAfrica.com) about the cruelty entailed in FGM [female genital mutilation], which in her view is intended to terrorize women. Two days after the interview was posted on the site she received an e-mail from her husband stating that he knew where she was and would get to her. T. understood that she was in danger and fled to Israel. After her first request for asylum was rejected, she submitted a new one, but even before it could be considered she was rearrested. After being released recently, she is now waiting for a decision to be made in her case.

Fukuyama and the end of history

Francis Fukuyama writes in Haaretz about the history of his famous book, “The End of History and the Last Man.” He tries to untied the bond that many have made between his argument for there is no alternative for a modern society than free markets and a democratic political system and the Bush foreign policy, which has emphasize the need to spread democratic to the world especially to the Middle East. He writes that he never argued that there was a universal desire to live in a liberal society and that he never argued that every country would end up having an American model of social or political organization. He also asserts that America should use his military to spread democracy. Sugary excerpt:

To be sure, the desire to live in a modern society and be free of tyranny is universal, or nearly so. This is demonstrated by the efforts of millions of people each year to move from the developing to the developed world, where they hope to find the political stability, job opportunities, health care and education they lack at home.
But this is different from saying that there is a universal desire to live in a liberal society - that is, a political order characterized by a sphere of individual rights and the rule of law. The desire to live in a liberal democracy is indeed something acquired over time, often as a byproduct of successful modernization.
Moreover, the desire to live in a modern liberal democracy does not necessarily translate into an ability to actually do so. The Bush administration seems to have assumed in its approach to post-Saddam Iraq that both democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which societies would revert once oppressive tyranny was removed, rather than a series of complex, interdependent institutions that had to be painstakingly built over time.

The problem that I have with Fukuyama is that I have the impression, which could be wrong, that he waited until the Bush Foreign policy became a disaster to take his distance with the neocons and with their ideology. I have the feeling that had Iraq been a success, Fukuyama would be taking credit for the ideas that led to it by arguing that his book was the catalyst behind them.

Saudia Arabia's fight against extremism

Fahad Nazer writes about the rise of extremism in Saudi Arabia in YaleGlobal. It is a fascinating article because it shows that Saudi Arabia has had to walk a fine line between confronting extremism and not destabilizing its kingdom, but that nevertheless they have made some efforts. The real question however is still whether they will ever be able to do enough to quash extremism and to stop it from leading to other terrorist attacks not only against America, but against the West. Sugary excerpt:

The quest to find the roots of Islamist militancy led the Saudis to undergo a healthy process of critical self-evaluation. The end result was a comprehensive and multi-dimensional campaign that is both a security operation and a public-awareness program. Much more than winning a conventional war, the Saudis realized that they can prevail only by presenting a more hopeful vision for the future of Saudi youth, one in stark contrast to the apocalyptic and foreboding scenario offered by militants. Using religious principles and nationalist ethos, the government has embarked on what it describes as an unprecedented campaign with the inescapable message that Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and mercy.

The roots of Middle East violence

Husain Haqqani argues that the West isn't the sole cause for Middle East violence. He writes that because of the lack of a democratic space of Muslim world, it is much easier for its population to focus on outward causes than to look inward. Sugary excerpt:

National pride in the Muslim world is derived not from measurable achievements - economic productivity, technological innovation or intellectual output. Instead, rhetoric about Islam being in danger and Islam's enemies plotting against Muslims prevails. Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilizations as much as specific Western policies. More significantly, it serves as an opiate that keeps Muslims riled against external enemies, with little attention paid to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline. Ignorance and anger feed tribal and sectarian conflict, and the spiral of violence and decline endures.

Intellectuals and Iraq

Gustav Seibt argues that the many intellectuals who supported the Iraq war were not only arrogant, but also didn't care about Iraq. He writes that those "intellectuals hawks" were focused on the wrong issues such as pacifism, anti-Americanism, and appeasement instead of addressing the overriding issue of what the war meant and what it was going to be its consequences. Sugary excerpt:

Most of those behind the war – the exception being Herfried Münkler – didn't even concern themselves with Iraq, international law, the chances and risks of a war in the Middle Eastern context. The vast majority of arguments for the war were drawn from European experience of the last two or three generations. Thus, one wrote about the overriding issues such as pacifism and anti-Americanism, appeasement and anti-Semitism, rather than addressing the thing itself.
First and foremost was an attempt to draw broad historical analogies. The fall of Saddam, a desirable enough goal, was compared directly with the fight against Hitler, the democratisation of Iraq with the democratisation of West Germany and Japan after the Second World War and the chance for democratic change throughout the entire Middle East was compared with the end of the East bloc and the quick establishment of civilian democracies afterwards. But virtually nobody had anything to say about the actual domestic situation in Iraq today.

One of my favorite French philosophers André Glucksmann was for the war in Iraq because it believed that the world could no longer accept the taking of hostage of a whole population by a dictator such as Saddam Hussein. Glucksmann based its support on the idea that le droit d’ingérence that is the right that the world has to intervene even with force to stop an injustice. Glucksmann still supports that idea because he believes that the status quo in too many parts of the world, particularly in Chechnya, is unacceptable and the Iraq war was right because it got rid of Saddam and gave Iraqis a chance to seize control of their future. For many intellectuals such as Glucksmann, stability, and peaces based on injustice cannot work in a world, which has know 9/11. It is because Glucksmann believes in action that he has declared his support to Nicolas Sarkozy because he believes that the left doesn’t understand the world has evolved and changed and that sometimes it is necessary to strike without overanalyzing or accepting to compromise with dictators such as Putin while people die because they were sold out in the name of peace and stability.

Peter Galbraith and the surge

Peter Galbraith critiques the surge in Iraq and argues that it is a way for President Bush to avoid admitting defeat in Iraq by just punting away the ball to the next president:

President Bush's plan has no chance of actually working. At this late stage, 21,500 additional troops cannot make a difference. US troops are ill prepared to do the policing that is needed to secure Baghdad. They lack police training, knowledge of the city, and requisite Arabic skills. The Iraqi troops meant to assist the effort are primarily Kurdish peshmerga from two brigades nominally part of the Iraqi army. These troops will have the same problems as the Americans, including an inability to communicate in Arabic.

[...] At best, Bush's new strategy will be a costly postponement of the day of reckoning with failure. But it is also a reckless escalation of the military mission in Iraq that could leave US forces fighting a powerful new enemy with only marginally more troops than are now engaged in fighting the Sunni insurgency. The strategy also risks extending Iraq's civil war to the hitherto peaceful Kurdish regions, with no corresponding gain for security in the Arab parts of the country.

The US and the Middle East

Leon Hadar argues in an article that the US's lack of involvement in the Israel- Palestinian peace process is a sign of the erosion of its power in the region and of its increasing inability to contribute to stabilization of the region.

Goode is bad

I think that there is just one thing to say after watching this video and that is : unbelievable!

Getting to Know Muqtada al-Sadr

Patrick Cockburn has a fascinating portrait of Muqtadar al-Sadr in the Independent. It's an essential reading to understand his rise to power and why he has become a threat to the United States. Long sugary excerpt:

Yet the source of his power has remained a mystery to the US and many Iraqi politicians. Few men have been so consistently underestimated. He is not a great orator, nor does he have huge charisma. His movement has limited resources. Until recently, his militiamen were unpaid and provided their own weapons. He does not have a powerful foreign backer. In spite of US efforts to link him to Iran and claim that he has fled there, he and his movement have traditionally been suspicious of the Iranians, and they of him.

The real source of his vast influence among the Shia of Iraq - the Sunni see him as orchestrating the death squads that have killed so many of them - is that he promulgates a blend of religion and nationalism that they find deeply attractive. He comes from the deeply revered Sadr clerical family that provided so many martyrs under Saddam Hussein. Some American commanders may wonder if it is wise for the US to pick a fight with a religious leader regarded with cult-like devotion by millions of Shias. They may also reflect that he is not just popular with the poor masses of Shia Iraq - his picture also hangs on the wall in many Iraqi police stations and army barracks. Some of these will be the very people on whom US and Iraqi commanders will rely in order to regain control of Baghdad.

It is impossible to explain Iraq today without understanding the reasons behind the astonishing rise of Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement in less than four years. Muqtada appears to have come from nowhere. In reality, he is heir to a social and political movement with a history that stretches back almost half a century. In addition, he could not have become so powerful so fast had he not come from a family that provided some of the most revered leaders of the Shiah clergy in their long and bitter struggle with Saddam Hussein.

Shi'a, Sunnis, geopolitics, and history

Fred Halliday argues that the current sectarian strife between Shi'a and Sunnis is more geopolitical than religious and historical. Sugary excerpt:

[…] there are many analysts or propagandists who resort to the notion that this sectarianism is a "deep structure", reflecting a latent atavism that has long underlain the politics of the region. The implication is that the overt violence of 2006-07 involves the emergence to the surface of deep and ever-present, hatreds. (Similar arguments about "ancient ethnic hatreds" were heard repeatedly in the context of the wars in Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland).

However, another analysis is more persuasive. This sees the Sunni-Shi'a conflict as essentially a recent development, a product of the middle-east political crisis in recent decades and, in the case of Iraq, of the spiral of violence released by the United States invasion of 2003. In this perspective, the origins of the conflict - and more generally of the Arab-Persian conflict - lie not in ancient hostility and grievance, but in the modern history of the region; in particular, the ways in which the twin revolutions of Iraq (1958) and Iran (1979) set in motion rivalry and insecurity between states and peoples that exploded first in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, and again, inside Iraq, from 2003.

Getting inside Iran

The Globe and Mail has a terrific insider account of what life is like in Iran. It shows the picture of a proud country filled with contradictions. It's a great read.

Hope spring eternal

“The big disappointment to me, well, it’s not the only one, but of the Iraq expedition was I hoped, I still do, that getting rid of a totalitarian slum next door, mainly with a Shia population, would have a positive effect by producing democratic ferment on Iran. And by the way, I think in the long run, that’s not a totally futile law or a romantic belief.” Christopher Hitchens.

Bush and Iran

Timothy Garton Ash argues that the world must stop Bush from bombing Iran and Iran from getting the bomb. I'm wondering if two goals aren't mutually exclusive.

Lack of Understanding of Iraq

USA today has an editorial on what it argues is the US lack of understanding of Iraq before and after the war. It focuses on the testimony of Paul Bremer, the former head of  Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in which he admitted some mistakes without admitting the most important one, which that he had no idea what he was doing.

The Neocons haven't changed

Francis Fukuyama makes the point in an article in the Guardian that the Neocons have learned nothing from the last few years. How could they since there was nothing wrong with their policies, but only with the way they were implemented and with the people who implemented them?

Blankley and defeat in Iraq

Tony Blankley has succeeded in his editorial  in taking fearmongering to the next level by making the following point:

If we are going to throw in the towel, then we should bring the troops home promptly, lick our wounds and prepare for the inevitable Third Gulf War, which we will have to fight under far worse conditions than currently. Either option is at least honest (although the latter is dangerously foolish).
But the current mentality in Washington -- to pretend that there is a third way between victory and defeat -- is morally despicable. Washington politicians of both parties are trying to salve their consciences for the ignominy of accepting defeat by fooling either themselves or the public into believing they are doing otherwise.

The only question that I have is if the US is fighting in Iraq just not to lose or to avoid a Third Gulf War, hasn't it already lost?

Iran would use nukes

“What is the likelihood that the ruling Mullahs will actually use the bomb? If they remain in power long enough to have it, they are very likely to use it, in one form or another. At the very least, they use the bomb for blackmail and intimidation in the region. Not even the all-out nuclear exchange can be ruled out. Islam is a religion centered on death with the faithful eyes fixed on the afterlife and its promised eternal pleasures. If the faithful kills, he goes to Allah’s paradise; if he gets killed, he goes to Allah’s paradise.” Amil Imani, “Would Iran’s Mullahs Use the Bomb?”

Attacking Iran

Yossi Melman explores, in Haarezt, the possibility and the feasibility of military strike on Iraq either by the United States or by Israel. Richard Perle is quoted in the article as saying, “I have no doubt that if it becomes apparent to President Bush that during his term Iran will achieve nuclear weapons, he will not hesitate to order a strike.” Scary, very scary.

Cutting and Running

“It is over. What we need to face now are the consequence of the folly of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice in launching this unnecessary and unprovoked war, the folly of the neocon snake oil salesmen who bamboozled the media into believing in this insane crusade to bring democracy to Baghdad in the belly of Bradley fighting vehicles and the folly of the Democratic establishment in handing Bush a blank check for war out of political fear of being called unpatriotic.” Pat Buchanan, “See the Superpower Run.”