Helena – Page 212 – Just World News with Helena Cobban

Violence and tragedy in Egypt

The inter-communal violence in Egypt is just ghastly. Friday, one
or more knife-wielding attackers attacked worshippers in three Coptic
churches in Alexandria, Egypt, killing one worshipper and injuring 16
others.

Members of the very ancient Coptic Church make up about 10 precent of
the Egyptian population. (Did you know that our word “Egypt” actially
derives from the word “Copt”?)

Saturday, the violence escalated some… and it got even worse today,
Sunday. According to this
AP piece from Alexandria, about 2,000 members of the riot police
had surrounded the Saints Church in the downtown area–
presumably, “for the protection of the church community”. It
seems that Muslim rioters had surrounded the police cordon, though
that’s not clear… But anyway, in inter-communal clashes that
accompanied Saturday’s funeral of the man killed on Friday, one Muslim
was reportedly killed.

The AP reporter, Omar Sinan, described the scene around the church thus:

Police fought back against Coptic
Christians, who were encircled by
a security cordon around the Saints Church … after
hurling stones and bottles from inside the police line. Fellow
demonstrators tossed Molotov cocktails from the balconies of nearby
buildings.

Police could be seen repeatedly beating a
boy of about 12, who was
among the crowd of Coptic young people who fled into the church,
slamming the doors behind them, or dashed down narrow streets
surrounding the church. Most of the protesters were between the ages of
12 and 25.

Later, a huge mob of what appeared to be
Muslim protesters charged the police cordon from the other side.

Mustafa Mohammed Mustafa, a Muslim
Brotherhood parliamentarian, said
a 24-year-old Muslim died early Sunday of wounds from a beating by
Christians during rioting Saturday…

Sirens blared as ambulances raced toward
the scene. Armored police
vehicles surrounded the church as tear gas fumes sent protesters
fleeing down narrow streets in the neighborhood.

It all sounds so ugly and so terrifying. Sectarian clashes
are., sadly, not at all a new thing in Egypt… But nearly every
time it happens the actions of the police seem to inflame tensions even
more. I think the police needs to have much better training in
crowd control.

But ithe political situation in the country also needs some much
broader attention, too. How can you have a police force that
treats people humanely and with dignity if the political system as a
whole is one that treats the average Egyptian like the downtrodden
subject of a Pharaoh?

Anyway, I was reassured to read at the end of that AP piece that,

Police said Alexandria Gov. Mohammad
Abdel Salam Mahgoub and local
politicians were trying to calm the situation with the help of the
powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

The MB is still actually outlawed in Egypt. But if the
government folks think the MB can help to calm the situation, then
certainly it should be brought into the process. It occurs to me,
too, that leaders from within the Coptic community need to brought in
to help calm things down, too.

Clark and Simon against attacking Iran

Richard Clarke and Steven Simon have a very significant op-ed
in today’s NYT that argues forcefully against the idea of the US
bombing Iran in attempt to halt the Iranian nuclear program.

The piece is significant mainly because of these two men’s
credentials. Clark is the fairly famous guy who was national
coordinator for security and counterterrorism in both the Clinton and
the early GWB administrations, and Simon was senior director for
counterterrorism in the Clinton-era National Security Council.

They build on the experiences they both went through dealing with the
Iran issue in the mid-1990s, noting that on that occasion: “In essence,
both sides looked down the road of conflict and chose to avoid further
hostilities.”

And they conclude this about the present situation:

Now, as in the mid-90’s, any United
States bombing campaign would
simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could respond three
ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers —
as it did in the mid-1980’s — which could cause oil prices to spike
above $80 dollars a barrel. [Or,
much more ~HC]

Second and more likely, Iran could use
its terrorist network to
strike American targets around the world, including inside the United
States. Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to
anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The Lebanese terrorist
organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past
as an instrument of Iran. We might hope that Hezbollah, now a political
party, would decide that it has too much to lose by joining a war
against the United States. But this would be a dangerous bet.

Third, Iran is in a position to make our
situation in Iraq far more
difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite
militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British
and American troops. There is
every reason to believe that Iran has
such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready.

No matter how Iran responded, the
question that would face American
planners would be, “What’s our next move?” How do we achieve so-called
escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears
responding because they know that the next round of American attacks
would be too lethal for the regime to survive?

Bloodied by Iranian retaliation,
President Bush would most likely
authorize wider and more intensive bombing. Non-military Iranian
government targets would probably be struck in a vain hope that the
Iranian people would seize the opportunity to overthrow the government.
More likely, the American war
against Iran would guarantee the regime
decades more of control.

Good judgment there, guys. You don’t have to “love” the mullahs
who rule in Teheran to reach this conclusion… You just need to
have some basic grasp of the realities of regional and global power
dynamics.

Of course, what they didn’t do in their article, which I wish they had
done, was point out that even if using a bombing campaign or other
major military escalation against Iran is a really, really bad option–
still, there are other options which might help people deal with
concerns they (we) still have about the Iranian nuclear program…. As
I have noted here on a number of occasions, there are a number of
urgent diplmatic paths that need to be followed. One is working
intensively through and with the IAEA. Another is opening
diplomatic talks with Teheran with an open-ended agenda to include the
nuclear question along with others…

Do I think these are the kinds of “diplomatic” options that the Bushies
are now pursuing? No, sadly, I don’t.

Rumsfeld and the cautious generals

President Bush came out swinging yesterday to offer what WaPo reporters called, “an unequivocal vote of confidence in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.”
And to show just how seriously he considered this matter, he even took time out from his long weekend to issue a special statement denying claims that Rumsfeld completely ignored the professional advice he’d gotten from the generals in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and at several stages since…
This brass-vs.-suits contest inside the Pentagon over the conduct of the Iraq war is not a new issue Check for example this JWN post from November 2003.
What is new is the willingness of small numbers of retired US flag officers to come out publicly not just to criticise Rumsfeld but also to issue a four-year-overdue call for his resignation. The IHT yesterday identified a fifth retired general who had done this.
But here’s the thing. There are literally hundreds of serving flag officers in the four branches of the US military. (If someone has time to verifiably research the exact number that would be grand: just post the number and a link in the Comments here.) David Ignatious wrote in yesterday’s WaPo that,

When I recently asked an Army officer with extensive Iraq combat experience how many of his colleagues wanted Rumsfeld out, he guessed 75 percent. Based on my own conversations with senior officers over the past three years, I suspect that figure may be low.

So my question– and okay, I know it’s not totally original– is why have so few retired officers and zero serving officers gone on the record publicly with deep-rooted criticisms of Rumsfled’s conduct of the war?
I think an answer needs to be built from a number of components… One of these is of course that we have a valuable and long-engrained system in the US of civilian control of the military.
That’s grand, and it’s a basic component of democracy. I am totally not calling for a military coup here!
But still, even within that system, there has to be a way for basic professional expertise to be made available to the (civilian) policymakers at all levels in a purely professional and unpoliticized way. Shinseki tried to do that, and was canned. He was then replaced as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the nation’s top military officer) by two Rumsfeld yes-men in turn, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers and then Marines Gen. Peter Pace.
Rumsfeld, of course, is the person who makes the recommendation to the White House regarding who to nominate for that job. So he has made it crystal clear that he only wants a yes-man in the job.
There are other powerful ways in which the country’s top officers are trained (or “incented”) to be loyal yes-men, too. One of course is the whole tenor of basic military training, which is such as to inculcate and value the blind following of orders and the setting aside of personal considerations and analyses… (But then, regarding operational matters, the military wants to encourage innovative, out-of-the box thinking in mid-level officers… So there’s quite a bit of a tension there.)
And then, there’s the pay structure. And not just the structure of the pay and benefits for serving officers, which already and understandably incent people toward behavior that will ensure promotion, but also– and this is crucial for top-rank people coming near the end of their careers– the structure of the military pension scheme in which an officer, once retired, will then find himself for the rest of his (or her) life.
Expectations about pension levels have been mentioned by many reporters when discussing the very cautious behavior of the highest-ranking officers… So I thought I’d go over to the DOD’s Final Pay Retirement Calculator to see what difference it would make for me, if I were a senior-level officer coming toward the end of my career in, say, 2010, having served for 30 years at that point… (I kept the default “expectations” regarding inflation rate etc that are given in the bottom half of that web-page.)
So I found out there that if I retired in 2010 as a Colonel (O-6), my monthly pension would be $7,609. Not shabby at all– especially given the many other perks and benefits that military retirees get in this country, to say nothing of opportunities for lucrative consultancies, etc…
Ah, but if I’d been a loyal officer and got to retire at O-7 level (Brig.-Gen.) level in 2010, instead, then I’d make $8,664 per month. ($12,660 more per year.) But if I’d been even more “loyal”– to my superiors, to the Secretary of Defense, etc– I might be an O-8 (Maj.-Gen.) and pull in $9,767/month instead (a further increase of $13,236/yr.)… Or an O-9 (Lieut.-Gen.), and retire at $10,780/mth…. or an O-10 (full Gen.) and get $10,901/mth.
I have to tell you a few things here. Firstly, the incentive is certainly there for a serving high-rank officer “just to keep quiet for a couple of further years” as s/he heads toward retirement… and certainly to avoid doing anything dramatic that might force him/her to resign from the force at the existing rank, if need be, in order to protest the policy. And also, to do nothing that might jeopardize that vital next promotion, that could– over the course of 35 more years of life after retirement– add up to huge amounts of actual $$$.
Second, I find all these retirement levels (and all the pay levels for still-serving officers at the top end of the scale) quite obscenely high. The serving generals in this country live very nicely indeed, with all kinds of country clubs, subsidized housing and transportation, tax breaks, etc… They form a special class of pampered and very powerful individuals who nowadays roam the world trying to run programs and projects in scores of different countries… And when they retire, many of them find well-paid additional jobs inside our country’s bloated military-industrial sector.
I, with my pathetic little income as a writer, have to subsidize all that? (FCNL tells us that 42 cents of every dollar I in taxes goes to the military now.) And the grunts out there in the field risking their lives in obedience to Bush’s scary and destabilizing war plans are supporting the generals’ lifestyle, too.
So the very least we should all expect from these guys, given how nicely we are all treating them, is that they should candidly give the country and its citizenry their best professional estimate of whether a proposed war-plan will work, or not.
Shinseki tried to do that, and got canned for it. But why have we not seen any other generals trying to “storm the ramparts of the SecDef’s office” since then?

Israeli asks: What if US fails in Iraq?

This is, of course, the kind of question that few in the US public discourse yet dare to ask… (As for me, I’d put it a little differently. I think that a failure of the Bush administration’s project in Iraq could constitute a net victory for the US citizenry, in terms of starting to re-balance our relations with the rest of the world away from imperial hegemony and back towards basic human equality.)
But anyway, how interesting that Roni Bart, an analyst at Tel Aviv University’s prestigious Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies should be the one now publishing a short analytical paper titled What if the United States fails in Iraq?
Bart judges that:

None of this analysis is ‘rocket science’, folks… Bart writes,

Internationally, American stature will suffer. Osama bin Laden will declare victory… Europeans will claim, yet again but with renewed vigor, that their Venus outshines the American Mars; that the American failure in Iraq proves that use of force exacerbates problems rather than solves them; that even as a last resort force must be agreed upon multilaterally by the Security Council; and that such an international consensus, possible only through American patience, might have made the difference in a successful reconstruction of a stable Iraq. A failure in Iraq will also strengthen the balancing-containing-obstructionist attitude of Russia and China vis-à-vis the United States. American prestige will hit a new low; American ability to deter might be undermined, at the very least in cases with potential for long-term military engagement. The United States will be perceived not just as a “Texan cowboy,” but an ineffective one at that. And the weakening in American resolve will project to the world – states and dictators and terrorists – that the United States not only can do less but also wants to do less.

Regarding the implications of an American failure in Iraq for Israel, he writes:

Actually there is almost literally nothing new, let alone earth-shaking, here. Bart’s little piece has all the signs of something rushed off at the last minute, under deadline. But still, I find it interesting and noteworthy that the Jaffee Center folks have decided to start thinking and writing about this.
As I wrote elsewhere recently– never mind about the American pols, but I hope to heck the US military has started producing some sensible plans for a speedy and peaceable total evacuation of Iraq, under a number of different but increasingly possible scenarios…

Is the NPT useful?

Almost immediately after my column in today’s CSM on nuclear-weapons issues went up onto their website, I received an interesting email from Rajat Talwar of Rolla, Missouri. The column dealt with the current US-Iran standoff in light of other moves the Bush administration has been making with regard to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the treaty that since 1968 has been the main pillar of the US’s approach to preventing the global spread of nuclear weapons. The NPT came into force in 1970.
The kind of n/w proliferation the NPT deals with is also sometimes known as “horizontal” proliferation, i.e., proliferation to additional countries… as opposed to “vertical” proliferation, which is the proliferation of weapons/warheads within any single country’s arsenal, a field in which the US has always– clearly– been “the leader”.
Rajat Talwar made some important and serious arguments in his email, so with his permission I’m putting the whole text of our exchange to date up here so all the rest of you can join in a general discussion on the value of the NPT. (It looks as if the comments on yesterday’s quick post about the column are mainly about the Iran dimension. That’s good. These are two distinct and important discussions. Let’s discuss the general value of the NPT here.)

From Rajat Talwar

Dear Ms.Cobban,
In your piece today on the CSM, you argue against the India-US nuclear deal while arguing for the preservation of the NPT system which arbitrarily allows certain nations to possess and increase their nuclear arsenal. India has not signed the NPT because the treaty essentially allows 5 nations to keep and develop nuclear weapons in perpetuity – a sort of a nuclear Jim Crow system. One is curious as to what NPT supporters like you need to see to understand that the NPT authorized nuclear powers have zero intentions on giving up their nuclear weapons when even after 35 years since the treaty, a country like China continues to make nuclear weapons (and point them at India).
Many in India wonder if the only problem opponents have with the India deal is that some in the US are unwilling to see Indians sitting in the front of the nuclear bus, metaphorically speaking. If opponents can live with the US selling nuclear reactors to China without safeguards and even as China makes more bombs, then they should be able to accept India getting reactors under safeguards – unless they have a thing against brown skinned people having nuclear bombs.
I personally believe that the only language the NPT nuclear powers understand is the stick of nuclear terror – the same stick that they have used on “lesser” powers. A nuke in everyone’s pocket brings respectful diplomacy.
Sincerely,
Rajat Talwar
Rolla, Mo

From me:

Hi, Rajat. Thanks for your email. Can I post it on my Just World News blog?
I am for global disarmament including nuclear disarmament. I understand and largely sympathize with your point about the discriminatory nature of the NPT. However– because I have lived for a lengthy period of time in a war-ravaged nation and because I have also spent time in Hiroshima– I cannot feel as cavalier as you seem to be about the prospect of continued acquisition of arms including nuclear arms being a way to global justice.
For a number of reasons I think supporting the NPT including especially its Article 6 (cited in the column) is the best way to go.
But we should continue this conversation! That’s why I’d like to post your email on my blog…
Be well, friend–
Helena Cobban

From RT:

Sure. Feel free to post my email on your blog.
I realize the dangers of nuclear weapons but I also realize that disarmament does not happen in a political vacuum. The NPT’s Article 6 is a joke because it has no time limit and no mechanism for enforcement. Even the non nuclear states don’t take that Article seriously. Australia and Canada, for instance, have nuclear dealings with weapon states without requiring the latter to begin disarmament. Under these conditions, to persevere to enforce the NPT will only result in the perpetation of the unjust requirements of the treaty – an enforceable one on non weapon states while the weapon states enjoy impunity.
I hate to say this but you need to look at your own writings, for example. Just last week, China signed a deal to buy massive quantities of Australian Uranium without IAEA safeguards or without declaring an end to its nuclear weapon production. Yet no nonproliferation advocate cared enough to point out that China is in violation of its Article 6 commitments by refusing to end weapon production, Yet, the India deal has caused a furor. Did you even know about the China deal? If so, where is the proof that your dedication to the NPT is just as strong when it comes to China?
Regards
RT

By me, to him, now:

You make excellent points there about the persistently proliferatory (vertical and horizontal) behavior of China and other NPT members. I’m sorry I hadn’t been aware enough of the China developments, which I am sure look very threatening to India and are a challenge to all our efforts for global disarmament.
However, I am still quite shocked by your claim that “A nuke in everyone’s pocket brings respectful diplomacy.” Certainly I can see the prima facie egalitarian appeal of that argument… but it seems fraught with terrible, terrible potential for mundicidal mishap.
Can we agree that securing actual implementation of the goals mentioned in Article 6 is desirable and very necessary? If so, wouldn’t you agree that starting and then finishing the mentioned negotiations for a complete and general disarmament would be more easily accomplished if the effort is based on an existing regime of some trust and global cooperation? Don’t you think that the existing NPT regime could be seen as providing that basis?
Actually, maybe rather than getting into arguments about “a nuke in everyone’s pocket” we should be brainstorming on how to get to the convening and the successful conclusion and implementation of the general disarmament goal. (The UN already has a lumbering old body called the Conference on Disarmament, as well as a Disarmament Commission… But neither seems to me to have any clear orientation toward implementing the goal of the NPT’s Article 6. Equally importantly, world public opinion is not very attuned to this whole issue… Maybe that’s what we need to try to change first!)
Of course, India and the other non-NPT states need to be folded into the general-disarmement effort from the very beginning. But why should we put up with wrecking the significant global cooperation we already have in the NPT regime, as we proceed? I think that’s an unacceptable and very reckless prospect.
One of the problems with the NPT, and with the entire global system as currently constituted (with the five NPT-recognized nuclear ‘have’ states gaining thereby veto power in the security Council) is that it incents every else to try to get nuclear weapons. In my view, we should be doing everything we can in our dealings around the world to reduce the value of weapons– all weapons– and of militarism in general, and to re-stress the value of cooperation as the best (and in the end, the only) way to support human flourishing and indeed to assure human survival….
Anyway, let the discussion continue…

CSM column on Iranian nuclear program and the NPT

The column I wrote yesterday about the Iranian nuclear program, western concerns about that, and the urgent need to preserve the NPT is now up on the Christian Science Monitor website. It’s actually going to be in Thursday’s paper.
It’s titled Work through the NPT to address concerns about Iranian nukes.
In there, I also point out that the Bush administration is currently attempting to drive a ten-ton truck through the NPT by urging Congress to change the US’s own anti-proliferation legislation in order to allow ratification of his recent proposed nuclear deal with India.
I already had one very interesting letter in response, from someone who argued that all nations should indeed be allowed to have nuclear-weapons programs…
But I’m really glad the looming presence of the Indian-nuke deal will force folks in the US to seriously engage with whether we want to keep (and strengthen) the NPT or not.
I say, “Yes!”
Anyway, go read the column, and you can post your (as always, courteous) comments on it here.

Iraqi politics– 17 weeks on

I see from the handy “Democracy denied in Iraqi” counter here that 118 days have now passed since the much-vaunted Iraqi parliamentary election of December 15.
It has become clearer and clearer to me over recent weeks that the major cause of the political impasse that has brought so much uncertainty and violence to the country since then has been the anti-democratic meddling of the machinators of the US occupation force and some of their close political allies within the Iraqi political system. (See e.g., here, here, and here… )
Today, there is news that the acting Speaker of the Parliament, the very venerable Adnan Pachachi, has said he, “will convene the legislature next week to push the formation of a new government that is stalled over who will be prime minister.” Pachachi added, according to that AP report, that “Shiite politicians told him they hope to have the deadlock over the nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari resolved before the session”.
I certainly wish Pachachi well in his efforts. But we need to understand that the big, multi-party Shiite electoral list, the UIA, has thus far stuck firm with its original decision to nominate the current interim PM, Ibrahim Jaafari, to form the new government. That despite huge efforts by President Bush and others to try to scuttle his nomination
Regular JWN readers will know that I’ve been following intra-UIA political developments here for some time– and in a way markedly different from that pursued by most people in the MSM.
Recently, Reidar Visser wrote to me to add some of his own, impressively detailed analysis to what I’d written earlier. He wrote:

Global Policy Forum piece

it is the Muqtada faction plus the two Daawa factions that have kept the most unified position.

I really appreciate this clarification. Thanks, friend!

Meanwhile, in the West Bank

A great Amira Hass piece on April 12 reminds us of some of the realities of the stifling and anti-humane interaction between Israelis and Palestinians inside the West Bank.
Remembering of course that things are now noticeably different from the way they are in Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israeli military and “Border Police” people are still intimately entwined with the lives and movements of the Palestinians– even in the areas in the north from which four (or was it six?) “Illegal outposts” were removed. Whereas in Gaza, there is no ground presence of either Israeli troops or Israeli settlers. But that has given the IOF much greater latitude to treat the whole Strip as a free-fire zone, if they choose.
So the nature of the interactions in the two territories have now become different…
Hass’s piece is titled The uber-wardens, and it details many of the forest of restrictions placed on the West Bank’s 2.4 million Palestinians as they try to pursue the errands and chores of everyday life.
We actually did a lot in Chapters 2-4 of our 2004 Quaker book on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, to describe these restrictions, and the role that their always unpredictable and often capricious nature plays in making the pursuit of an “ordinary life”, including the simple ability to plan one’s activities for the days or hours ahead, impossible for Palestinians.
Hass concludes by writing about the Israeli military-government bureaucrats who design the many prohibitions places on the Palestinian residents of the West Bank that,

They continue to invent prohibitions because there is no one raising a voice against it. And they are responsible for not only seriously disrupting the lives of Palestinians, but also implanting the jailor mentality in thousands of Israeli young people, soldiers, clerks and policemen – an intoxicating mentality of those who treat those weaker than they with impunity.

But read her whole article there…

Eyeless in Gaza

I can’t finish this string of posts without urging you to go read Laila el-Haddad’s extremely moving description of how life feels in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. And then, from today, she had this description of the famioly of the 9-year-old girl killed yesterday, Hadil Ghabin, dealing with their shock (and with the grievous wounding of several other kids from the family, including 10-year-old Ahmed Ghabin who was blinded in the attack.)
Just so we can see some figures on what’s been happening, AP reporter Amy Teibel wrote today from Jerusalem:

Since the beginning of the month, Israel has retaliated against an estimated 32 rockets that landed in its territory with 16 airstrikes and about 2,200 artillery rounds, the military said. Since Friday, 17 Palestinians, including 13 militants, have died in the offensive. There have been no Israeli casualties from the rocket fire.

Which side’s action came “as a retaliation for” the other’s is of course, as always, a heavily politicized judgment. But the importabnt thing is for both sides to end the violence, rather than for either of them to engage in any escalation of it.
So which side do we think has been acting in a more esclataory way? The one that in this period launched sixteen airstrikes and 2,200 artillery rounds and killed 17 people– or the one that launched an estimated 32 [very primitive] rockets and inflicted zero casualties?
Teibel actually tells us that,

intensified its offensive

The Palestinian observer delegation at the UN has meanwhile asked the UN Security Council “to take urgent action to stop what it called an escalating military campaign by Israeli forces.” He delivered a letter to this effect to the Council’s current president, Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya.

A blessed Passover

Wishing a blessed Pesach to all of JWN’s Jewish readers. And special greetings to the wonderful group of young Jewish men and women in Boston who held this seder outside the AIPAC office there today, under the banner, “Passover Means Liberation For All”.
One participant reported,