Author: Scott H

Is Israel “uniting” Lebanon? & PM Siniora’s appeal

Israel’s ongoing country-wide punishment of Lebanon, we have been told, is meant to convince Lebanon to take-back their country from “the terrorists,” to divide those who want peace with Israel from those who support Hizbullah. As Helena put it here yesterday, Israel’s approach to “dismantling” Hizbullah “seems to be… to put such horrendous military and destructive pressure on the country’s people that they would move to dismantle it themselves.”
Yet the opposite scenario may be materializing. Israel’s “divide and conquer” strategy, to get Lebanon’s population and government to turn against Hizbullah, is, ironically, producing new degrees of unity inside Lebanon – against Israel’s actions.

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Chinese Commentary on Iran Nuclear Case

If you’ve only been briefed by American MSM sources about the latest page in the saga over Iran’s nuclear program, you might be thinking that finally, the great powers, including China and the Soviet Union, are now on board with the United States. On July 11, US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack confidently declared that there were “no divisions” among the “P5+1” countries (the veto wielding UN Security Council members plus Germany) regarding their willingness to move towards “punitive measures” against Iran.
That characterization would be news to China, one of the P5. Today (19 July), the US government’s own “Open Source Center” released a translation of an interesting commentary appearing on Junly 13th in China’s official news agency, Xinhua Domestic Service. I append the document below.
After a rather balanced and positive rendition of key recent developments, the commentary includes striking interpretations of Iran’s ongoing “room for maneuver,” US Ambassador John Bolton’s “desperation” (sic), and a pointed reference to the Russian view that “sanctions at this moment will undermine the positive trend that is emerging.”
As this is, after all, an official Chinese news source, China’s own stance is left as ambiguous and non-committal: China remains opposed to nuclear weapons proliferation, maintains that “the best option is to peacefully settle the Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations,” and hopes that “all concerned” could soon resume talks “on the basis of the package proposal.”
No “slam dunk” here.

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George Will vs. The Weekly Standard

In a wildly confused front-page Washington Post story today (19 July), Michael Abramowitz asserts that President Bush is “facing a new and swiftly building backlash on the right over his handling of foreign affairs.”
Abramowitz claims “conservative intellectuals and commentators” are infuriated by perceived “timidity and confusion about long-standing problems” ranging from Iran to North Korea to Lebanon. Kenneth Adelman tops the cake by accusing President Bush of middle-of-the-road “Kerryism.” By “conservatives,” Abramowitz is mostly referring to “neoconservatives” – no doubt the many who went apoplectic when the Bush Administration recently appeared to shift gears on Iran and even to de-emphasize the “regime change” mantra.
Yet burried within Abramowitz essay is a vague reference to yesterday’s startling WaPo essay by traditional “conservative” columnist George Will. Will argues first that the Administration’s core hope that the democratic “infection” emanating from the democracy imposed on Iraq has, at best, produced democratic movements prone to extremism. He then rejects Secretary Rice’s rejoinder that democatic turmoil and “violence” is unavoidable.

“that argument creates a blind eye: It makes instability, no matter how pandemic or lethal, necessarily a sign of progress. Violence as vindication….”

Yet Will saves his most choice words for attacks on the Administration coming from what he deems to be a radically un-conservative and different direction, one

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“A bad movie rerun” and international opinion

I’m glad Helena has already focused our attention on Friday’s WaPo essay by David Ignatius. I think it worthy of further comment, particularly to draw out his points about Israel’s endgame and about the role of international opinion.
Yet like Helena, I question several of his assumptions, beginning with his acceptance of the “received wisdom” in Washington that Iran somehow is responsible for all Hezbollah actions. But more on that in a separate essay.
I do appreciate Ignatius’ laconic observation that “you can’t help but feel that this is the rerun of an old movie — one in which the guerrillas and kidnappers end up as the winners.” Just as in 1982 and beyond, Israeli military assaults into Lebanon and Gaza have little chance of earning Israel any meaningful friends within the targeted territories.
Then, Israel invaded Lebanon to “smash” Palestinian terror; in the process, as Yitzak Rabin later ruefully observered, Israel “let the Shia genie out of the bottle” and in the process catalyzed the creation of Hezbollah. What “unintended consequences” will arise this time?

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A “Global Hunger Strike?”

A “Global Hunger Strike”?
Commonly understood, “hunger strikes” are intended as a form of non-violent action, a voluntary fast with an intended political or human rights aim. Yet I confess to being puzzled by recent, more casual, deployments of the “hunger strike” as a political tool. I apologize in advance if this suggestion seems far too cynical, even Thatcher-esque.”
I don’t have a set thesis here, rather a working question, for which I will be interested to learn the thoughts of jwn readers. My question is prompted by the pending 3 day “global hunger strike” to take place on July 14-16. Orchestrated by prominet Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji, these “global hunger strikers” are demanding that the Iranian authorities release all political prisoners held inside Iran, including former MP Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeni, Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo and labor leader Mansour Osanloo.

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The new haves vs. the have-nots: Broadband

With all the horrendous conflicts escalating in the Middle East, it may seem a tad trite to observe the obvious – that monitoring the world via the internet without broadband is a drag. Try contributing to an events focused blog without it. (and mega-kudos to Helena for managing it even while traveling!)
More than a cute phrase, we have a serious “digital divide” afflicting tens of millions of Americans, separating those who can get affordable “broad band” access to the internet from those of us who cannot in any form. To those who must endure the barrage of TV commercials laying on the guilt trip about how deprived their children are without broadband, it seems quite the “injustice” – one that cries out for attention from our political and business leaders.
I think my own “quest for broadband” saga is not atypical of what those millions of American “have-nots” suffer. As of today, my own tale has a happy, if bizarre ending, which I’ll save… for the end. I now “have” it, but I will never forget what it was like to be a broadband “have-not.”

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Graham Allison on Taqiyya?

Harvard Professor Graham Allison is one of the better known political scientists in America. His classic text, “The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis” remains widely inflicted on graduate students and has sold over 350,000 copies. Allison later helped found Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and then served for several years in the Clinton Administration as an Assistant Secretary of Defense. A 1999 2nd edition of his Cuban Crisis text was written with Philip Zelikow – whose latest post is as Counselor to Secretary of State Rice.
Whatever his political loyalties, Allison is something other than “liberal” on his current presumed area of expertise – “nuclear terrorism.” Instead, he’s lately been making one of the more ultra-hawkish cases for “dealing with Iran.” Here’s his recent essay on the subject with Yale Global.
I emphasize the original link, because one significant alteration has sometimes been made in its subsequent re-prints around the world – namely whether one revealing sentence in the last paragraph about “taqiyya” gets included or not. More on that below.

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Bush on Gitmo, “the past,” and those “absurd” public opinion polls.

On June 21st, President Bush appeared before the press in Vienna, Austria, during his meeting with EU leaders. The President’s remarks resulted in at least four curious media headlines. The following quotes are from the White House transcript of the event.
1. On Gitmo:

I’d like to end Guantanamo. I’d like it to be over with. One of the things we will do is we’ll send people back to their home countries…. Of course, there’s international pressure not to send them back. But, hopefully, we’ll be able to resolve that when they go back to their own country.
There are some who need to be tried in U.S. courts. They’re cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they’re let out on the street. And yet, we believe there’s a — there ought to be a way forward in a court of law, and I’m waiting for the Supreme Court of the United States to determine the proper venue in which these people can be tried.
So I understand the concerns of… the European leaders and the European people about what Guantanamo says. I also shared with them my deep desire to end this program, but also I assured them that we will — I’m not going to let people out on the street that will do you harm. And so we’re working through the issue.

Interesting, the President apparently has been briefed by someone about “what Guantanamo says.” So if not for the right reasons, he wants to close Gitmo. But he can’t send them back to their homes, because of “international pressure” – e.g., the concerns that they might be treated even worse in the tender care of our “friends” in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt. I’m delighted that the President, for once, seems to give a hoot about international opinion. (but see below, #4)
As for those we must detain for trial, he’s not going to do so until the American Courts tell him how? Say again?He’s trying to share the blame for a policy and public relations disaster of his own making on the Courts? This is rich. Best of all, he won’t hurry the process to close Gitmo because he’s concerned the released may cause our allies harm. How considerate.
2. Elsewhere, the President stated that he “fully understood” that America and Europe had “our differences on Iraq, and I can understand the differences. People have strong opinions on the subject. But what’s past is past, and what’s ahead is a hopeful democracy in the Middle East.”
I remember a day when traditional conservatives routinely would trot out George Santayana’s famous quote about the past. “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
But for this George, the past is an undiscovered country, one too difficult to even bother fighting anymore – at least before foreign audiences.

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Something’s changed: Bush to Iran

Having closely followed the US-Iran saga for well over 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of false starts and missed opportunities to improve relations. Yet despite having had my hopes burned repeatedly in the past, I have a working hunch that something potentially quite interesting is happening, mostly behind the scenes, between Iran and the United States. On the surface, the rhetoric has changed significantly. From the American side, consider President Bush’s important, but almost ignored speech on Monday (June 19th) before the graduating class at the Merchant Marine Academy. Iran was a primary focus of the speech, comprising nine paragraphs which I reproduce, with running comment below:

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Rice and “Jefferson’s Constitution”?

If you stay around Charlottesville long enough, you are vulnerable to catching the Thomas Jefferson “bug.” Happened to me too. As a result, I will be a Jefferson Fellow at Monticello’s International Center for Jefferson Studies this fall, aiming to discern just what “Mr. Jefferson” meant by “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind” in the opening sentence of the American Declaration of Independence. More on that in an essay for July 4th.
As such, I may be a tad sensitive to how our political leaders invoke Jeffersonian quotes, images, and presumed legacies for their own purposes. Secretary of State Rice has me especially puzzled. Consider the Jefferson references in her speech on 14 June before the Southern Baptist Convention. Speaking almost of a global American “Manifest Destiny,” the Secretary proclaimed,

If America does not serve great purposes, if we do not rally other nations to fight intolerance and to support peace and to defend freedom, and to help give all hope who suffer oppression, then our world will drift toward tragedy. The strong will do what they please. The weak will suffer most of all and inevitably, sooner or later the threats of our world will strike once again at the very heart of our nation. So together, let us continue on our present course. Let us reaffirm our belief that in the words of Thomas Jefferson “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time…”

Reportedly, the speech received multiple standing ovations from the enraptured Baptist audience. I too found parts of the speech quite interesting, especially the insights on Secretary Rice’s personal narrative, moving from being raised in a church – literally – to her present leadership role. I can also appreciate her emphasis on the ideal of religious freedom, as we have come to enjoy it – and still fight over it – here in America.
But I suspect the speech will grate on many ears around the world – including Jefferson buffs. While Secretary Rice may well invoke Jefferson to support the view that human freedom and dignity are divinely ordained and intertwined, it is far more of a stretch to imagine what Jefferson would have thought of the self-serving notion that God had somehow uniquely anointed America to spread “freedom” by force and occupation to other nations. No matter how piously couched, the strategy to impose “American exceptionalism” stands sharply in tension with the ideals of human dignity and freedom.
More inconvenient for the Secretary, the very 1774 Jefferson quote she cites about, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time;…” was but the first half of a sentence that closed with, “the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Put differently, the American revolution was not just about “freedom;” it was as much, if not more, about “independence” for the new nation to find its own way.
That may be too fine a point for Secretary Rice. After all, at least three times this year, Rice has erroneously referred to Jefferson as author of the American Constitution, including in her January speech introducing her strategy of “transformational diplomacy.” In last week’s Baptist Convention speech, it came up in the following context:

“America will lead the cause of freedom in our world, not because we think ourselves perfect. To the contrary, we cherish democracy and champion its ideals because we know ourselves to be imperfect. With a long history of failures and false starts that testify to our own fallibility, after all, when our Founding Fathers said “We the people”, they didn’t mean me. My ancestors in Mr. Jefferson’s Constitution were three-fifths of a man. And it’s only in my lifetime that America has guaranteed the right to vote for all our citizens. But we have made progress and we are striving toward a more perfect union.”

One wonders if Rice and her 26 year-old speechwriter skipped American History 101. Jefferson of course had little to do with writing the Constitution; he was US Ambassador to France at that time.
Ironically, Jefferson did have a few things to say about the draft American Constitution about which Secretary Rice might not wish to know. Writing on 31 July 1788 to his friend James Madison – the leading hand among many in drafting the Constitution – Ambassador Jefferson was concerned that a Bill of Rights should be adopted quickly. He also specifically objected to what became Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which forbids Congress from suspending “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus…, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Jefferson asked,

“Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? The parties who may be arrested, may be charged instantly with a well-defined crime; of course, the judge will remand them. If the public safety requires that the government should have a man imprisoned on less probable testimony, in those than in other emergencies, let him be taken and tried, retaken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving him redress against the government, for damages. Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law, have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treason, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual, and the -minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension

In her January speech, Secretary Rice waxed rhetorically about what Jefferson would have thought of the Bush Administration’s foreign policies. Indeed.
One wonders what Jefferson would have thought of Guantanamo Bay. Would he have been willing to suspend habeas corpus indefinitely for the mystery detainees? What would he have thought of our politicians, media, and citizenry who so quickly kow-tow to “George III” for fear of being branded terrorist sympathizers should they contend there’s something fundamentally “un-American” (un-Jeffersonian) about holding faceless prisoners captive and without charge on a foreign soil?
Would Jefferson have waited for the Supreme Court to give him a ruling permitting him to shut Guantanamo down? Or might a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind” suggest that a different course of action was urgently needed?