I’m back in the Great Wen (Washington DC) again this week… Taking
part in this mega-conference on “Terrorism,
Security, and America’s Purpose“. It is probably an admirable
venture: an attempt to stage a public forum on these issues that is
both high level and wide-ranging. I had originally thought it was
an attempt to start to define a strategy for the Democratic Party—
a task that certainly still needs to be done! But no. It
turns out the speakers come from both parties, and even from the far
right (e.g. Grover Norquist, the long-time campaigner against any and
all forms of taxation; and the fiction writer Tom Clancy, who is about
to enter this massive banquet hall where the main sessions are being
held.)
My personal high points so far have been listening to Nir Rosen of Asia Times
Online, and Gen. Wesley Clark…
(Aha, there’s Clancy on the podium now, looking pudgy and jowly.
He looks like a little old grandpa with his jaws sort of collapsing
into his mouth; and one tuft of his hair is sticking straight up…)
Okay, so Nir Rosen.
He was on, I guess, the second of the big panels this morning. I
missed the first one, because the “working group” I’ve been a part of
was having it’s meeting then. So I got to miss George Soros and
someone described as “The Hon. Roger Cressey” who– I kid you not–
used to be my research assistant back in the mid-1980s… The
Honorable?? Well, anyway, I missed him.
Then I missed most of Sen. Joe Biden’s presentation.
Nir– whom I’d never met before, in the flesh– was on a large panel
along with Robert Pape of the Univ. of Chicago, Yosri Fouda of al-Jazeera and a couple of other
folks. I have to tell you this is very much a Washington
‘establishment’ event. Nearly all white males, most of them
middle-aged or older; everyone in standard power suits and monochrome
(red or blue) ties… And then there’s Nir Rosen, 28 years
old, three days growth of beard, swarthy, and rumpled.
He spoke in almost a monotone. I couldn’t figure out why.
Maybe it was the weirdness of being where he was– TV lights blaring;
all this DC establishment stuff going on around him. What
he talked about was Fallujah, mainly. (He also talked about how,
during recent visits to Somalia and Pakistan, he has already seen
stores named after Fallujah, and people wearing tee-shirts talking
about Fallujah. “So it’s become a big rallying-point in different
parts of the Muslim world.”)
He talked quite rapidly, and in that fairly soft monotone. He
talked about the brutality of the US occupation of Iraq as he has seen
it, and said that wherever he goes Muslims tell him they hate the US
for what it does, not what it is…
He stressed that, “The majority of the resistance in Iraq is Iraqi.”
He talked about the terrible aspects of having to live under foreign
occupation: seeing these heavily armed foreigners controlling your
cities, your streets, your lives. “They seek to control
you. They terrorize you.”
He added, “And in Israel, a brutal, illegal occupastn has continued for
decades,
completely supported by the US.” He said many Muslims had noted
very critically, “the way the US media gave extensive and very
sympathetic coverage of the situation of the illegal Jewish settlers in
Gaza– much more than the decades of
suffering by the Palestinians… “
He described Zarqawi as much worse than Osama Bin Laden. “He is
quite nihilistic. His supporters seek to
eliminate the Shia along w/ the Jews and Christians. Many of them
are Jordanians, I think. They are mobilized by the US
occupation n of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
At the end– still in his monotone, he made another plea to Americans
to “just at least try to imagine what it’s
like to live under foreign occupation.”
Wesley Clark was (I
think– it’s all rapidly become a blur) the lunch-time speaker.
I’m just going to reproduce here the five-point conclusion to what he
said. Him too I’ve never met before. He seemed to be an
effective and convincing speaker.
Oh, first though, here was one gem he delivered: “This is no time toi
stay the course; it’s time to change the course– because we are still
at risk.”
So here is his five-point program for success:
We
won’t win just by killing people overseas ‘just because they’re
terrorists.’ This is not like WW2. When we kill people we
make
enemies… We have to move away from our over-reliance on the men
& women in uniform. This is not WW2; it’s not like Iwo
Jima. The people around the world don’t look at our armed forces
the way we look at John
Wayne. Calling it a war and sending in the armed forces is not
the way
to win.
We need to reach into people’s hearts & minds… We have to
understand why people are prepared to kill themselves to send a message
to
America…
(2) We have to win ideologically first. That’s the way we can be
offensive against terrorism.
We also need to remove the grievances. We need to put prirority
on
helping the Israeis and Pals END that conflict… We need to work
w/
our friends in Russia to stop the bleeding sore of the North. Caucasus
that’s feeding the problem of terrorism worldwide.
Finaly, regarding ending grievances, the armed forces that I know and
love would
never have used torture. We don’t know how the practise got
started
but someone at the top needs to be held accountable. Also the
renditions need be ended.
(3) We need deal realistically w/ Iraq… The administration
claims we’re doing
well but the American people don’t see it. This
administration risks doing the same
thing Nixon did in Vietnam. The administration needs a strategy
for success in
Iraq. No-one in the region wants to see the split deepen between
the
Sunni & the Shia; but we have deepened it. The administration needs
to bring in
Iraq’s neighbors as part of solution rather than continuing seeing
them as part of problem. We need to create a contact group.
.. We need
to bring a regional dialogue together; then work a real dialogue inside
Iraq, to keep the country together; also the military needs a clear
plan
including to secure the borders.
We either put in place a realistic strategy in Iraq, or the American
people will say ‘bring the forces home.’
(4) We need a new formula for how we conceive our own security.
We
can’t any longer go it alone… We are a superpower; but we need
to
rebuild an international political and legal framework that will ensure
our forces
are used only as a last resort… We need to talk to Iran & North
Korea
directly.
(5) We need to rebuild our security structure altoegether.
For people
around the world, seeing us flounder in our Gulf Coast, has been very
scary…. We don’t even have a civil defense organization in this
country. We should
ask US ppl to sacrifice for our security…. We need to de-conflict the
tasks of war-fighting and civil defense/first response…
Well, wouldn’ it have been great if this guy had been our president
now, instead of GWB??
One of the questions put to him (and not by me) was about whether it
wouldn’t be better to just pull straight out of Iraq, right now.
Her’s how he answered that:
fighting withdrawal; it would be messy and maybe very violent.
Then, al-Qaeda wd claim it as their victory. The political system
we’ve started to establish there with our allies would fall apart, most
likely in a very violent way with thousands slaughtered. There
would be a rapid collapse into regional conflict
& chaos. Our international reputation would be severely
diminished.
H’mmm. Interesting response. Sort of like what Juan Cole
and Shibley Telhami argued in the recent Nation forum on Iraq in which
Nir Rosen and I were arguing for a speedy US withdrawal.
Talking of which, Juan is one of the speakers here tomorrow.
Right now, I have to leave the little eyrie in the Tabard Inn where I’m
putting this post together, and drag my weary bones back to the Capital
Hilton for the dinner– with featured speaker Chuck Hagel.
Thanks Helena. Your post makes me feel like I was in the room. But what was the reaction to Nir Rosen? Your description of his monotone leads me to imagine the audience chattering to each other during his talk and ignoring him. Is that what happened, or did they pay attention? Were any intelligent questions asked?
As for W. Clark, I’m sorry but that guy was not ready for prime time. Maybe he learned enough in 2004 to be a credible candidate in 2008, but I’m not yet convinced. As a military man, if he is opposed to withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, then he needs to explain not only what bad things might happen if we withdraw, but how the hell he would keep this enterprise going for 5 or 10 more years if he were in charge. He cannot and does not do that.
Clark has nice ideas about what the U.S. could have and should have stood for, but I’m afraid it’s just too f***ing late. We didn’t, and we don’t. Now, we’ve shown the world that we can’t even clean our own kitchen.
Sorry, I meant to be more upbeat. Thanks for your reporting.
Posting in haste: love this Blog, except that the Comments section for me routinely goes blank after a few posts. Wish someone could tell me why – not enough RAM? A life of sin?
Catchy-sounding phrases which maybe don’t stand up to pondering: “…they hate the US for what it does, not what it is…”
Doesn’t what we do, in the final analysis, detirmine who we are? Like, Hitler was a real nice guy, to his friends?
If we did that it wd be a fighting withdrawal; it would be messy and maybe very violent. Then, al-Qaeda wd claim it as their victory. The political system we’ve started to establish there with our allies would fall apart, most likely in a very violent way with thousands slaughtered. There would be a rapid collapse into regional conflict & chaos. Our international reputation would be severely diminished.
The terrorists and insurgents are now waging a brutal campaign of terror in Iraq. They kill innocent men and women and children in the hopes of intimidating Iraqis. They’re trying to scare them away from democracy. They’re trying to break the will of the American people. Their goal is to turn Iraq into a failed state like Afghanistan was under the Taliban. If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit more terrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States and our coalition.
President Commemorates 60th Anniversary of V-J Day
Naval Air Station North Island
San Diego, California
John C.: No, people did listen to Nir. He was on a 5-person panel and none of the questions at the end was directed to him. The “interactive” part of these big plenaries is very haphazard & stilted.
John (no c): Probably your life of sin… Try a different browser maybe?
Salah– thanks for that link!
Wakeup David
They are among more than 90 countries, rich and poor, proposing assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina, with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates contributing “very large cash” donations, the State Department said Tuesday.
Nations Offer Help to Katrina Victims
“wherever he goes Muslims tell him they hate the US for what it does, not what it is…”
I wonder if Nir managed to respond that we do not hate Islam for what it is, but for what Muslims do in the name of Islam…
My entire post today at “South by Southwest” focused on the America’s Purpose conference. I watched it via streaming video and C-Span. I linked to this blog about it. I thought it was great. I invited my readers to take some follow up actions that might give momentum to the conference’s stated purpose of achieving a more comprehensive strategy following the tragedy of 9/11.
My entire post today at “South by Southwest” focused on the America’s Purpose conference. I watched it via streaming video and C-Span. I linked to this blog about it. I thought it was great. I invited my readers to take some follow up actions that might give momentum to the conference’s stated purpose of achieving a more comprehensive strategy following the tragedy of 9/11.
Sorry for the mulitple posts. I was trying to do the right thing, but I’m a new reader. Cheers
Hi, Carol. Don’t worry about the multiple post– it happens to many people here. The spam-blocking we have to do to stanch the tide of Viagra ads (and worse) is so extensive that it takes up to a few minutes for a comment to actually post… So people think it hasn’t happened when it has.
Do put the whole URL of your blog or site into a comment here, since the “Homepage” thing doesn’t automatically show up.
Thanks for your help, Helena. Here’s my URL:
http://carol-sandy1.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Thank you for the info!