Author: Helena

Some quick thoughts about democracy

Remember back in 2005, how George Bush and his acolytes provided us with a series of “purple finger moments”, using the record of the three successive nationwide polls that the US and UN had organized in Iraq as “proof” that the US invasion had led to democracy there?
I was reminded of that when Robert Mugabe produced his country’s own “purple finger moment” in recent days…
Elections on their own do not a democracy make.
In Iraq, the last of those three polls, in December 2005, cemented in place a very heavily sectarianized party system in the country. And because the US occupiers had previously demolished just about all of Iraq’s institutions of national administration and governance, the elected leaders had no levers through which they could even have hoped to govern their country. People should look at Roland Paris’s important work on post-conflict priorities, in which he concludes that the best approach is “institutionalization before liberalization.” What Bremer and Co did was quite a novel approach: “institution destruction before liberalization.” Almost enough to give the whole project of political (and economic) liberalization a bad name.
Like probably all other Quakers, I am strong adherent of democracy in all forms of decisionmaking. But here’s something worth thinking about: In our own internal governance, we never have votes at all! We decide everything by seeking “the unity of the meeting,” and in the event of differences we simply carry on discussing and deliberating together until we arrive at it. In the event of a lengthy stalemate, the holdouts may choose to “stand aside” and allow a decision they’re uncomfortable with to proceed. (Or they may not.) But our version of democracy is based on the idea that any individual, even if she is only one person in a large gathering, may be the one who has the right idea; and therefore everyone should be fully and respectfully listened to and engaged with.
Maybe in the broader world, that kind of lengthy deliberation is not often possible, and hence voting may– on some basis– be the best way to proceed. Though even then, you want to make very sure you don’t get a “dictatorship of the majority” that rides rough-shod over the concerns and needs of any minority.
In international diplomacy, consensus is nearly always a better way to proceed than through factionalism and voting.
So if voting– and all those purple finger moments– do not, actually, tell us anything particularly useful about whether a country is truly democratic or not, what does democracy actually consist of?
In my view, it rests on two core convictions:

    1. The conviction that differences of opinion should always be resolved through non-violent and non-coercive means– through deliberation, discussion, and negotiation, rather than through violence or coercion. Voting may (or may not) be a part of this; but the party that “wins” any particular vote has to remain committed to not using violence or coercion against the “minority”; and
    2. A deep conviction in the equal worth of every human person. As Jeremy Bentham put it: “Each one counts for one, and only one.” No-one should belong to any special class that is above the law. The views of even the humblest person in society should be sought out, included, and valued.

If we can promulgate adherence to these two principles in all the communities of which we are a part– including the community of all humankind– then surely our communities will flourish!
But the idea that “democracy” can be exported to other countries through violence and war is quite bizarre. War and invasion demonstrate that it is quite okay to resolve policy differences through violence and coercion.

Al-Qaeda redux?

The NYT’s Mark Mazetti and David Rohde had an extremely important article in the June 30 edition of the paper, on the bureaucratic chaos and operational failure that have marked the Bush administration’s campaign against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and (mostly) Pakistan.
They write:

    After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.
    … The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.
    Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Mazetti and Rohde base their story on “more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan.” It reveals how very unsuccessful that core portion of Bush’s so-called “Global War on Terror” has been. However, I don’t think they go nearly far enough in challenging the essential premise of the GWOT, namely, the idea that “terrorism” as such is something that can effectively be dealt with through a massive military campaign.
Instead, as I have argued consistently since 9/11, terrorism is a challenge that requires primarily a massive and determinedly multilnational police response. In the Afghanistan/Pakistan context– as most others– it also requires a huge, dedicated effort to address the horrendous social and economic crises in which these beleaguered populations are mired. This latter campaign is needed not only because it’s the right thing to do (which it is), but because stabilizing the lives and livelihoods of these communities will dry up the vast pool of terror condoners that they would otherwise continue to incubate.
I quite agree with the analysis of those who argue that Osama Bin Laden himself (like many of his immediate lieutenants) is not someone acting out of personal economic deprivation and the anger associated with that. However, even though Bin Laden himself would not make a credible leader for any “Movement of the Dispossessed”, he and his immediate cohort have found a way to strike a chord with many Muslims in extremely deprived and chaotic communities– primarily, those still reeling from the effects of lengthy armed conflict, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, or Lebanon. And it is in those communities that organizers and activists for the widely distributed Al-Qaeda networks are able to move around without any of their neighbors or friends turning them into the authorities.
That’s why I have long argued that dealing with the often very real social and economic grievances of the communities of potential condoners, and stabilizing the lives and prospects of the members of those communities, is the best way to supplement the police-based approach to dealing with Al Qaeda…
So Mazetti and Rohde do not, in their article, take on the whole conceptual framework of the GWOT in the way it needs to be taken on. But even working solely within the dominant paradigm of the GWOT, they show just how chaotic and unsuccessful the effort has been so far. They also demonstrate (yet again) the extent to which Bush’s misguided decision to invade Iraq in 2003 distracted attention and resources from addressing the real heart of the world terrorism challenge. JWN readers won’t need reminding that before March 2003, there was no such thing as “Al Qaeda in Iraq.” After March 2003, it became a huge presence, growing continuously for several years.
Anyway, there are many noteworthy pieces of information in this article, which is definitely worth a close reading. However, I’m on the road, and I left my annotated version of it at home. Bother!

ICC showboat Moreno-Ocampo, and Darfur

What is the ICC’s showboating Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo up to regarding Darfur?
I admit I haven’t been watching either the ICC or the Darfur situation quite closely enough in recent weeks. But this op-ed in Saturday’s WaPo certainly caught my eye. Not least because it’s written by Ju;ie Flint and Alex de Waal, two of the people who know the most about Darfur of any of the hundreds of westerners who have taken it up as their “celebrity-riven cause celebre” (or, as their way to try to change the topic of conversation in the US from Iraq, where the US does have direct responsibility, to Darfur, where it certainly doesn’t.)
Flint and de Waal start their piece thus:

    Is the International Criminal Court losing its way in Darfur? We fear it is. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s approach is fraught with risk — for the victims of the atrocities in Darfur, for the prospects for peace in Sudan and for the prosecution itself.
    We are worried by two aspects of Ocampo’s approach, as presented to the U.N. Security Council early this month. One concerns fact: Sudan’s government has committed heinous crimes, but Ocampo’s comparison of it with Nazi Germany is an exaggeration. The other concerns political consequences: Indicting a senior government figure would be an immense symbolic victory for Darfurians. But Darfur residents need peace, security and deliverable justice more than they need a moment of jubilation. And with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his men still in power, a high-level indictment would probably damage all these objectives.
    While addressing the Security Council on June 5, Ocampo described a Darfur we do not recognize. He spoke of a vast, single crime scene where “the entire Sudanese state apparatus” has been mobilized “to physically and mentally destroy entire communities.” He said he would seek to indict a senior government official — whom we infer may be Bashir — next month. He outlined a criminal conspiracy within government to destroy the social fabric of Darfur with, as he has said, the first stage being the massacres of 2003-04 and the second the destruction of the refugee camps and the ethnic groups housed there.
    We were among the first to document the massacres in Darfur — in 2002, even before the rebels announced their uprising — and to call for accountability. We see grave continuing violations of human rights there. But we do not see evidence for the two-stage plan Ocampo described. Yes, there are great obstructions of relief efforts and much violence in and around the camps (not all of it by the government). Government functionaries and soldiers abuse civilians with impunity. But defining today’s violations as a “systematic” campaign to destroy “entire” communities goes too far.

Many, many of the points Flint and de Waal make– especially those I underlined above– are very similar to points that I have made about Darfur over the past couple of years.
They conclude:

    Sudan’s government has only itself to blame for the difficulties it faces. But the ICC prosecutor also is erring. Many crimes have been committed in Sudan. The systematic eradication of communities today is not one of them. Bringing charges of this nature against the highest echelons of government, at this moment, would be gambling with the future of the entire Sudanese nation.

I hope that everyone in the western “Save Darfur” campaign reads this article and thinks deeply about it. I know these are not easy issues. But I certainly believe that Flint and de Waal know (and understand, which is a slightly different matter) a lot more about the situation in Darfur than Ocampo.
As they say, “Darfur residents need peace, security and deliverable justice more than they need a moment of jubilation.” What we also need to look much more at is what kind of justice the Darfuris really need. Return to their homes and the reconstitution of their lives, livelihoods, and communities– that is, the satisfaction of core issues of economic and social justice– is probably, for them as for other populations wracked by atrocity-laden inter-group conflict, their first and most pressing need.

Conetta continues discussion of ‘Necessary Steps’ report

Contribution from Carl Conetta of the Project for Defense
Alternatives to the discussion on the ‘Necessary Steps’ report on how to
withdraw from Iraq,

sent June 28, 2008 in response to the comments
made on the report by Helena Cobban, June 25

Published here by
permission of Carl Conetta and under JWN’s usual Creative Commons
license (main principles: always give attribution; don’t use for
profit-making endeavors without negotiating specific permission.)

On Saturday Carl Conetta, who
was a member of the “experts’ group” for the recent “Necessary Steps”
report, sent me this thoughtful response to my JWN comments of June 25.
 Most of what he wrote
he  keyed directly to the rows in the table in that
post.  So as soon as I have time, I shall make a  new
column for the table and insert his comments into it.  It’s a
good discussion. ~HC



Here’s what Carl wrote:

I found
your review of the report thoughtful and
helpful. Probably the most thorough and thoughtful review that the
report will
receive. So thank you. Important additions and amplifications as
well.

Carl
Conetta

Regarding
some of the points of difference you
mention, my comments:

1.
Handoff to UN. I tend toward your view, but
there were differences among participants about UN capacities, Iraqi
acceptance
of UN authority, and whether leaning heavily on the UN would really
answer
congressional concerns about post-withdrawal stability. Personally, I
think the
first two of these concerns are resolvable. But whatever the nature of
the UN
mandate after US withdrawal, it would have to be sell-able to an Iraqi
populace
that is pretty sick of occupation by foreigners.

2.
Arab-Israeli conflict. I agree that much of
the instability that troubles the Muslim world gains impetus from this
conflict.
But I don’t think resolution of it is essential in order to
reduce the risks of
post-withdrawal bloodshed and chaos in and around Iraq. And the latter
objective
was the aim of the report.  Baker-Hamilton linked the two
theaters with a
bigger vision and agenda in mind. If, indeed, reducing the risks I
mention are
contingent on progress in the A-I conflict, then we’ll be in
Iraq a long time.
Conversely, some of the international mechanisms that would be
established as
part of the Task Force agenda might contribute indirectly to progress
in the A-I
conflict (mostly by building cooperation with Syria and
Iran).  Of course,
progress in A-I disputes would be helpful to stability in
Iraq.  And the
issue, IMHO, is as important.

3.
Elections and constitution. I think the
balance of opinion on the TF was that this would follow on the new
“national
reconciliation” process and/or be a necessary part of it. There was
some
concern, I think, that specifying too many requirements here would
impede
withdrawal or undercut withdrawal sentiment. Also, some debate and
tension about
what constitutes ongoing meddling. So we had to balance different
concerns.
Anyway, I agree that Iraq’s long-term stability requires a
constitutional
rewrite. I think that the present election system is also flawed.
Moreover, this
needs to be overseen by the United Nations.

4.
You’re right that not enough was said about
repatriation and assistance to IDPs. But I don’t think anyone
intended to
exclude or impede these options. The point was that
repatriation will be a
long task and perhaps not preferred by the displaced Iraqis. The
principal
concern here was not to subtly compel repatriation when many may just
want to
get the hell out and stay out for a while. Still, most will want to
return, if
not right away then soon or eventually. I think we all support that
fully. 
And the report should have said more about how we could facilitate
that.

RE:
YOUR COMMENTS IN TABLE

Continue reading “Conetta continues discussion of ‘Necessary Steps’ report”

At week’s end

The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy. Last week I did four events connected with my Re-engage! book. The one at USIP Tuesday really involved me doing some new cogitation, and I’ve been thinking a lot more about that “Have foreign wars become unwinnable yet?” question ever since. (I’m trending toward Yes, but need to do more work on the matter.)
The other three events were all great. Two of them were in private homes. One of those was organized by the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, and the other by an interesting new project, the “Chez Nous Salon”, based in the DC exurb of Reston, Virginia, that aims mainly at bringing residents from that area together with each other for friendship and discussion… Standing room only at both those events, where I met some really interesting people– most of them extremely supportive of the book project!
Friday, I got to talk about the book with a group of high-school teachers, in DC for a Summer Institute organized by the World Affairs Council of DC. Another great group. I truly think teachers are grossly under-valued in our society.
Learning about the recent “How to withdraw from Iraq” project, the degree to which they had ripped off some of my own longstanding work on precisely this topic, and the fact that, though they had consulted widely with alleged experts they never even deigned to contact me, all took a bit of time to deal with. But I hope we can all learn some good lessons from that about the need for better coordination and more serious, focused antiwar movement-building going forward. That’s what I want to do, anyway.
But right now, I’m starting to change gears for the next ten days or so. My son’s wedding is in Vermont next weekend. Bill and I will be driving up, and taking a few days to do so.
By the way, if you’re anywhere near Johnstown, PA, on Tuesday afternoon, come hear me talk about my book at 1:30 p.m. at the Gathering of Friends General Conference, being held in the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown. The book talk will be in the Gathering’s bookstore.
Lots is, as always, still happening in the world. North Korea is off the US government’s “terrorism list.” Robert Mugabe has been acting like a real thug (though I’m trying to figure out why the US government feels it has any particular reason to say anything about that… really, who cares what Washington thinks about it?) The Israel-Hamas ceasefire is still in place, albeit shakily, given the determination of Fateh and others to torpedo it… The Quarantine Wall the Bushists have been trying to maintain against Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, and Hamas has seen yet more breaches with the news that the Hizbullah-Israel prisoner swap is even closer to being a done deal, and the news of further steps in the Israel-Syria peace talks dance. There have been new developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan…
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading Sy Hersch’s latest piece in The New Yorker, which depicts in some detail the way the hawks in the Bush administration have been maintaining and escalating their provocative military and paramilitary activities against Iran… Their use of the term “preparing the battle space” for what they’ve been doing seems particularly ominous to me, as does the permission given to “defensive lethal” operations.
Well heck, aren’t all the US’s many wars around the world always sold to the citizenry here as being “defensive” at some remove??
Anyway, I have scores of things I wanted to post about here, but I don’t have time. Over the next ten days I’ll check in and post whenever I can. But no promises.

Crunch time coming in Afghanistan?

Maybe crunch time is approaching much faster than I had expected in Afghanistan, for US military planners desperately trying to assemble forces to deal with the deteriorating situation there?
Today, the Pentagon released a pair of Congressionally mandated reports that apparently depict a “fragile” security situation. What’s more, even that Armed Forces Press Service (AFPS) report linked to there admits that the formal “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan”, which claimed some bright spots in the situation as of three months ago, may have been painting too rosy a picture compared with today…
The AFPS writer says:

    Underscoring the fragility of situation in Afghanistan and its tendency for rapid change is the fact that some of the report’s assertions about security success — based on information available several months ago and earlier — [are] no longer are as solid as once believed.
    For instance, the report highlights Khowst province in eastern Afghanistan as an example of a once-troubled region transformed by counterinsurgency operations.
    “Khowst was once considered ungovernable and one of the most dangerous provinces in Afghanistan,” the report states. “Today, tangible improvements in security, governance, reconstruction, and development are being made.”
    But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday expressed concern that attacks in NATO’s Regional Command East section of Afghanistan, which includes Khowst province, rose 40 percent from January to May.

To me, one of the most relevant aspects of today’s news– which in classic Washington fashion, the Pentagon tried to “bury” by issuing it late on a Friday– is that it probably makes much more urgent the arrival of the country’s top military planners at a “Dannatt moment”, named in honor of the former chief of the British armed forces who back in late 2006 recognized that the western alliance just does not have enough forces to sustain operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and therefore has to choose between them.
Back when Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt reached that conclusion, he opted unequivocally for focusing on Afghanistan. I assume (hope?) that the Pentagon’s top brass and suits will make the same choice once they reach Dannatt’s level of understanding about the impossibility of sustaining both theaters. Afghanistan and the lawless Afghan-Pakistan border are after all the zones in which Al-Qaeda was incubated, and in which the Qaeda-friendly Taliban have been making a big come-back in the past year. Iraq does have some violent Islamist networks that call themselves “Al Qaeda in Iraq” (who never existed there before the US invaded the country in 2003, we might note.)
But the far greater challenge of terrorist regroupment is still that in Afghanistan-Pakistan.
So when Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs chair Adm. Mike Mullen reach their “Dannatt moment,” I hope they’ll make the same strategic choice that Dannatt made. What could make it easier is that, as I and others have argued for some time now, there really is a way we can plan for a US withdrawal from Iraq that is orderly, speedy, timely (and generous to Iraqis.) It’s far harder, at this point, to think of such a plan for Afghanistan, though realistically the need for that may come along some time pretty soon, too.
I see that Mullen sounded pretty desperate in remarks he made today in Garmisch, Germany, about the understaffing situation in Afghanistan.
The AFPS report linked to there says this:

    Mullen told about 200 students at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies he’s “desperate to get more capability” out of NATO. He said it’s critical that NATO lives up to its commitments to the alliance’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan…
    “The simple math is that I can’t put any more [US] forces in Afghanistan until I come down in Iraq,” he told the group. He noted that initiatives to “grow” the Army and Marine Corps will take two to three years to develop deployment-ready troops. Meanwhile, U.S. troops are “pressed very hard” from multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, with too little time” at home stations between deployments. Mullen said keeping up the current operational tempo for the long term will be impossible.

In recent weeks, both Mullen and Gates have been pleading abjectly with the other NATO countries to contribute more forces to the Afghanistan mission. That AFPS report from Garmisch says,

    Mullen told students at the Marshall Center that he finds it difficult to understand why some NATO countries don’t share the deep concern the United States and other alliance members have about the situation in Afghanistan.
    “It is very clear to me that those who live in Europe see [the terrorist threat] differently from those of us in the United States,” he said. Why Europe “isn’t more excited about what’s going on there than those of us in the United States,” Mullen said, is a question to which he doesn’t know the answer.
    Afghanistan, where NATO leads the ISAF effort, is “at the heart of NATO right now,” he said. “And I believe that whether NATO is going to be relevant in the future is tied directly to a positive outcome in Afghanistan… ”

We could and probably should have a good discussion about why so many Europeans aren’t “excited” about what’s going on in Afghanistan. Maybe it’s because when the US’s gung-ho terrorist-hunting units there bomb populated areas and a lot of noncombatants die, many Europeans don’t see that as a winning strategy? Maybe because they, like me, scratch their heads trying to figure out how Afghanistan, a country in Central Asia, could in any way be thought of as lying “at the heart of” an organization associated the North Atlantic? Maybe because they are reluctant to serve in Afghanistan under the leadership of a country (the US) that is badly tainted because of its reckless decision decision to invade Iraq and its blatant disregard of many of the human rights and humanitarian-law norms that Europeans consider to be important? Well, who knows why?
So yes, the US government needs a far smarter, more multilateral (and by that I mean something much broader than NATO) and more successful strategy for Afghanistan. But in order to arrive at that, it needs to get out of Iraq.
Maybe while he’s in Europe, Adm. Mullen should go talk to Gen. Dannatt.

The ‘Necessary Steps’ recommendations, annotated

I’ve now taken the chance to examine the Executive Summary of the “Necessary Steps” report issued yesterday by the Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq. From a quick scan through the report’s other 28 or so pages, I think the Executive Summary looks easier to deal with. The rest looks a little amorphous and unclear.

My main reactions to reading it are these:

    1. They did indeed use many of the ideas I have been working on and advocating for throughout the whole of the past three years. Points of what I would call our “distinctive” convergence include our shared emphasis on the need for the UN to have a key role in helping organize some of the key political aspects of the departure; and our shared emphasis on the need for the US to be “generous” to the Iraqis as we depart their country, in partial compensation for the sheer harm and misery inflicted on them.

    2. There are many other points of convergence that i would not necessarily judge to be so “distinctive”, since they are points that are also articulated by many others in the peace and justice community. These include, crucially, the need for the withdrawal to be total, which was indeed right there.

    3. Altogether, therefore, there are very many points of convergence between their plan and what I have been articulating, refining, and advocating throughout these past three years. So bravo to them.

    4. In four key respects, however, their plan differs significantly from what I have been advocating. These are:

    (a) They do not envisage nearly so definitive a handoff of decisionmaking and “convening” power regarding Iraq, from Washington to the UN Secretary General, as I do.

    (b) They make no mention at all of the need for focused attention also to be paid to reaching a final resolution of the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict, as I have consistently done since before the publication of the Baker-Hamilton report– of which that was also, we can recall, a key feature. Baker Hamilton rightly recognized the close linkage between the two theaters. At a political level, I don’t see how the US can expect to involve the UN in any meaningful way in handling complex diplomatic tasks regarding Iraq if at the same time Washington is keeping the UN and the international legitimacy it represents at arm’s length in the Arab-Israeli theater.

    (c) They make no mention of the need for new national elections in Iraq or, crucially, the need to craft a new, post-occupation Constitution, or at the very least, submit the existing one to very thorough review.

    (d) They call for a plan to fund “refugee resettlement in third countries” but make no mention of supporting the return and repatriation of the two million refugees and the two million IDPs to their home communities; whereas I see that, rather than resettlement in other countries, as the prime need.

In general, therefore, I think it would have been excellent if I could have discussed these differences with the people who wrote the Necessary Steps report, before they published it. I think those discussions would have been excellent. We would probably all have learned a lot from them. And the result would have been a significantly richer and more helpful report all round. But, ahem, as I noted yesterday, they didn’t bother to consult me before they went about ripping off my work without attribution and publishing this report.

In addition to the four broad points of difference I’ve identified above, I have some other, more detailed comments on some of the points they make in their Executive Summary. And I’ve made a table in which I’ve put those comments alongside the relevant portions of their text. So read on, dear readers…

Continue reading “The ‘Necessary Steps’ recommendations, annotated”

Comment on the new report on withdrawal from Iraq

The Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Institute has just issued an excellent report (PDF here) calling for a “responsible” withdrawal of US troops from Iraq that is “quick, careful, and generous.” Also, I believe, total– though I’m not seeing this spelled out in my quick reading of the Executive Summary.
It looks like an excellent initiative, and they already have two members of the US Congress signed up in support of it.
I’ll look in more detail at the report’s contents later. But I just want to make a personal comment here.
I have been working steadily and publicly for the past three years to sketch out and promote the idea of a US troop withdrawal from Iraq that is speedy, total, orderly, and generous. (Wording sound familiar here?) And I know that many of the people associated with this project read my work fairly regularly. Some of them I know personally. So I am really disappointed that none of them ever contacted me to ask me to work with them on this in any capacity, and they never even cited any of my numerous writings on the subject as far as I can see.
They have an advisory group of 14 people, listed on p.30 of the PDF document there. All of them (except one, see below) are male. Surprise, surprise. One of the four members of the “Organizing Committee” listed there is female. I don’t know her.
Why is this yet another, so egregious instance of the ambitious professional male elevator at work? I have worked professionally on Middle East and strategic issues for 34 years. What does it take for a woman to get some acknowledgment and respect in this field? A sex-change operation?
Honestly, I don’t think most of the “left” (which is what most of these people are) is any better on gender-inclusion issues than the right. It sometimes feels fairly depressing.
But I soldier on.

    Update Thurs. morning:
    I’m informed that Nadje al-Ali of London’s SOAS, who’s listed as a advisory group member, is female. I’m sorry not to have known or noted that. So we have one out of 14.
    One member of the advisory group told me he had simply answered a call from Chris Toensing to participate, and agreed to do so. But why did no-one on any of these groups (organizing or advisory) ever think of drawing on the considerable amount of thinking and writing I have done on precisely this “How to get out of Iraq” issue over the past years? I note that the Commonwealth Institute is headquartered in the Boston area, where certainly my writings on this topic in the CSM and Boston Review would have had wide circulation.
    I still believe the “ambitious male professional elevator” I mentioned above is a real factor– and the picture of who was in the two groups bears out this assessment.
    Like many of my female friends, I have seen this elevator at work in many, many different contexts, and I might describe them here in some future posts. But so many men still aren’t even aware it exists; aren’t aware there’s a gender-exclusion problem; and are mystified (or worse, defensive and upset) when people tell them there is.

Disarray in Israel’s ruling group

This is how Haaretz’s Uzi Benziman describes what’s been going on:

    June 2008 may be remembered as the month when the Israeli public’s patience with its leaders and their style of politics runs out, as citizens are currently witnessing the inner workings of the parties exposed for all to see. In the past, backroom dealings were kept secret, but now the politicians themselves are shedding light on their dark practices, and they are doing so with gusto, in a sort of unabashed striptease revealing all their deformities. Thus, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert informed the public that Defense Minister Ehud Barak allegedly imposed upon him to reach an agreement with Hamas [huh?? Interesting if true, though Benziman’s qualification of “allegedly” implies he doubts it… ~HC] over a calm in the Gaza Strip not because it was in the national interest, but because of the Labor leader’s political considerations.
    Members of the defense minister’s inner circle say in return that the prime minister allegedly reneged on an agreement regarding a prisoner swap for abducted Israel Defense Forces solders held by Hezbollah because of interests concerning the Kadima leader’s political survival.
    Furthermore, the prime minister said the defense minister is imposing his will on security establishment officials, which prompted the defense minister to claim that the prime minister’s policy is as stable as a seesaw. Neither take into consideration that they are using the fate of the three abducted soldiers as ammunition to fire charges against each other.
    Olmert’s pride prevents him from doing the honest thing of stepping down, even for a period of three months, and turned authority over to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni until the police investigation against him clears up. His purely selfish interests, which are completely alien to the common good, have driven him to pull a maneuver that may lead to early elections.
    Had Olmert allowed Livni to take over, or given the green light for his party to hold an early primary election, then he may have boosted the chances of the current government coalition to continue, and averted a political crisis. But Olmert has his urges, and he would rather throw everything down the drain then have Livni, or anyone else from his party, take over from him.
    Say he manages to pull off a last-minute deal with Shas that keeps it in the coalition, or he succeeds in delaying the preliminary reading over the proposal to dissolve the Knesset – will he then have the right to make fateful decisions? Does he believe that a dubious deal with Shas promising the ultra-Orthodox party funds will endow him with the moral authority to conduct the nation’s affairs with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority and Iran?
    Olmert’s public behavior these days are a repeat of his performance during the Second Lebanon War, which the public was not aware of in real time. Now like then, he lacks a cohesive opinion and is not displaying leadership. Also, his relationship with the defense establishment is problematic and, much like in July 2006, he does not trust his defense minister. Concerns about appearances are considerable factors in the prime minister’s decisions over returning abducted IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
    Even if Olmert is trying to implement the recommendations of the Winograd Committee war probe, he is failing to implement its main requirement of his job: Confidence and assertiveness, two further reasons why he should step down.

I guess I hadn’t been paying attention to the continuing breakdown in the integrity an coherence of Israel’s ruling group. It must be incredibly hard for anyone who’s trying to negotiate with this chaotic government to figure out who they can rely on, or even who they should be dealing with.
One big concern. If this ruling system (I shall not say the two words “spider’s… web… “) is really this close to chaos, doesn’t that mean that these leaders’ motivation to spark a war or some other form of national emergency to distract attention from their own deep shortcomings as leaders, and even if it looks quite reckless or otherwise counter-productive, correspondingly grows?
Best precedent: Peres’s big, reckless, and quite counter-productive attacks against Lebanon in 1996. Also a precedent: Olmert’s ditto of 2006.
Recklessness in the present circumstances might take the form of launching an act of war against Iran that would have a very high probability of sparking retaliation against the United States’ very long and very vulnerable supply lines in Ira and the rest of the Gulf…
Or a big military assault against Gaza that would likely spark an explosion of anti-US actions throughout the Middle East…
Are people in the Bush administration worried about the political incoherence and instability in Israel’s current leadership? They should be.

Searching for a brother’s body in Iraq

Read this, from McClatchy’s Baghdad correspondent Laith, and think about how the violence and social collapse set in motion in Iraq by President Bush’s decision to invade the country has affected just about every Iraq family.
If you are Iraqi, as a US citizen I say to you I am sorry beyond words for what my government has done to your country. Many of us here in the US tried to prevent the invasion before it happened, but we failed to rein in our government. We should take responsibility for that failure.
If you are an American or any other non-Iraqi reading this, think about how you would feel if these catastrophes happened in your country.
In poll after poll after poll, Iraq’s citizens tell us they want a fixed timetable for a total US troop withdrawal from their country. They are willing to take responsibility for what happens after that. For American politicians to claim they have to keep US troops in Iraq “for the sake of Iraq’s people” is (a) quite simply mendacious, and (b) incredibly imperialistic and patronizing.
Stop the harm inflicted by the continuing US occupation. Pull the US troops out, and let Iraq’s people find their own way to heal.