Visser on the British exit from Basra

Reidar Visser yesterday sent out an informative email note that
drew on his long and close study of the politics of, in particular,
Basra and the surrounding regions of southern Iraq to assess the
implications of Britain’s  final withdrawal of the remainder of
its forces from downtown  Basra and their  redployment
(concentration) back to the bigger base near Basra airport that is now
the Brits’ only military base inside Iraq.  (Can full British
withdrawal be far behind, I wonder?)

Anyway, I asked Reidar’s permission to publish this on JWN.  He
explained that the note “is part of
an experiment
that was launched in January 2007 featuring occasional e-mail updates
exclusively for historiae.org
subscribers.”  So if you want to read the whole thing, you have to
go there and subscribe.  The good news: I don’t think you actually
have to pay him anything, or give him any personal details apart from
your email address in order to do so.   So maybe y’all should
head on over and do that….

Meantime, here are the excerpts that he has kindly agreed I can use
here, along with a few of my own comments.  He has also said he
will welcome yours, so chip on in.

Local Reactions to the British
Withdrawal from
Basra: Sadrists Claim Victory

By Reidar Visser (www.historiae.org)

4 September 2007

Perhaps the most
important aspect of the recent British withdrawal from the urban centre
of Basra to a base near the city’s airport is the reaction from local
political forces. So far, the loudest response has come from the
Sadrists, who publicly claim that their armed campaign led to the
British withdrawal.

…  [T]he
recent pullout itself was a largely symbolic affair:
the British ceased exercising effective control of Basra a long time
ago.

Also Western
commentators – particularly in the United States – have suggested that
the Basra pullout represents “British defeat”. However, that judgment
rather exaggerates the differences between “gangland Basra” and what is
construed as the more “pacific” central parts of Iraq. The main
difference between the US and the British approach does not relate to
militia power as such, but rather to the extent to which there has been
an attempt to manipulate the political games in which the militias take
part.

In the south, the
British have largely maintained a neutral
position, with a variety of armed factions coexisting in some kind of
uneasy equilibrium, and with a diverse range of political forces
gaining power…
In the rest of Iraq, US forces have largely allied themselves with
Kurdish and ISCI parties and their militias (technically “integrated”
in the security forces and the Iraqi army), and have supported these
groups in their efforts to suppress internal dissent. Ideologically,
this has been presented as an effort to build a “moderate” base; in
practice it has involved giving consent to much highhandedness by local
authorities. Thus, repression and militia rule are not absent from the
US-controlled parts of Iraq, but they take on a more orderly form than
in
the far south.

(I would add in here that in the
US-controlled parts of the country the US forces have also found
themselves having to deal with the whole range of Sunni groups, a
factor that has made their task even more complicated than that faced
by the brits in the south.  And of course,it was the over-all
policy pursued by the US in Iraq since 2003 that gave birth to and then
increased those problems…  Actually, I question whether it’s
correct at all to describe any stark contrast between “gangland Basra”
and the more “pacific” environment further north, in general. 
Baghdad, the triangle south of it, Diyala Province, and many other
areas are currently far from pacific.  The only, demographically
relatively small “island” of peaceableness in the US-held,
majority-Arab part of Iraq is a portion of Anbar Province– the only
part of the whole country that was deemed safe enough for Bush’s recent
extremely “flying” visit. And who knows how long the current balance in
that portion of Anbar will even last?  ~HC)

… Over the coming
months, both the position of the Sadrists and the further development
of militia relations in Basra will be crucial. There is some indication
that relations between Fadila (which remains in control of the
governorate despite a vote of no confidence) and Sadrists have improved
slightly during the summer… On the
other hand, ISCI has in the past been skilful in forestalling alliances
between its two main competitors in Basra, and, moreover, could now
benefit from the handover to Iraqi government forces.

Westminster-centric
analyses of the British withdrawal have pondered whether the timing was
linked to the Labour Party’s upcoming annual conference. (I am shocked! shocked! by this
siuggestion. ~HC)  The more
important question is who will be Basra’s governor three months from
now. It would be a setback to the image of the Iraqi army as a “neutral
player” if the first thing to happen after the British withdrawal were
the ouster of Fadila and the fall of one of the last bastions of
resistance to ISCI rule in the Shiite parts of Iraq.

— end of Visser text

Okay,
here’s my (HC) one major remaining
comment on this. I saw a slightly twittish British officer on the BBC
tonight assuring viewers that the redeployment to the airport area was
“not a defeat”.  Of course he had to say that.  They all do! 
Just like Ronald Reagan, as he pulled the US Marines out of Beirut in
February 1984 under the rubric of a “redeployment offshore”… Or Ehud
Barak pulling the Israeli troops out of Lebanon in 2000…

Well, at least on all those occasions the withdrawal redeployment
was carried out in good order and without casualties.  The British
withdrawal from Basra and, I think, the US Marines’ withdrawal from
Beirut were also both, unlike the Israelis as they slunk out of Lebanon
that time, accompanied by short ceremonies of “handover” of the
relevant area to the relevant governmental forces.  I certainly
saw a short newsclip of a slightly perfunctory-looking handover
ceremony in Basra on yesterday’s TV news: the whole decolonizing thing:
the Union Jack comes down, the national flag goes up, there is a bit of
saluting, and out the colonial forces roll…

Of course all of that– not just the handover ceremony but also the
withdrawal in good order, in general– requires some measure of
pre-negotiation to achieve in any minimally assured way.  That is
what the post-Rabin generation of Israeli leaders have all hated. 
Barak would slink out Lebanon, and Sharon out of Gaza… But they were
darned if they would negotiate, or be seen as negotiating, those troop
withdrawals with anyone.

So how, I wonder will the US approach the question of planning its
upcoming troop pullouts, even if only partial ones, from Iraq? 
Will there be negotiations and little handover ceremonies here and
there?  I do believe they’ve tried that in many places, and the
whole idea has probably lost a lot of its luster by now…

Anyway, Washington– and both political parties therein– will most
likely be eager to avoid any suggestion that this is a “defeat”. 
Will they be able to pull off that feat of legerdemain?  I highly
doubt it.

Also, how the heck will they actually get out of the country? 
Even harder to do so if the Brits are no longer in Basra.

Anyway, big thanks to Reidar for letting  me use so much of his
piece here.  (In the parts I left out, you can learn some really
interesting further details of the political situation in the Basra
region.)

This just in! ‘Century’ mysteriously loses 93 years!

Sometimes, it seems hard to remember that 1997 was only ten years ago. It feels as if such a lot has happened since then! Indeed, sometimes it feels that all of world history is going through a big time-warp these days, a great celestial laundry machine that’s tumbling us all over each other with increasing rapidity.
It was in 1997 that Bill Kristol and a bunch of his uber-militaristic and neocon allies in US politics established their ‘Project for a New American Century‘. Check out the names of those who signed its founding declaration, at the bottom of this web-page. There they all are: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, a smarter member of the Bush clan than George W., Elliott Abrams, Scooter Libby, Zal Khalilzad, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Rosen, etc etc…
Within less than four years of signing that, those men– okay, not including Jeb Bush, but instead, his more pliable brother– were catapulted onto the very apex of the US power machine. As of 2001 they had an unprecedented opportunity to bring into being their goal of a “New American Century.”
They over-reached, didn’t they.
That “exemplary” (shock! awe!) invasion of Iraq was their fatal over-reach.
Without that over-reach, but with smart stewarding of the US’s many assets in global politics, US domination of the world system could most likely have continued with little effective challenge for a further few decades– though almost certainly not for a full ten of them.
I’ve been reading the fascinating representation that Michael Pillsbury published in this 2000 book, of the views that Chinese strategic thinkers expressed in the late 1990s on relations among the world’s leading powers. Pillsbury wrote that one respected senior Chinese analyst, Yang Dazhou, wrote in 1997 that he foresaw the US as maintaining its superpower status “for at least three decades”– though this view was challenged by other senior analysts, who saw US decline as more inevitable and more rapid than portrayed by Yang.
(Can anyone refer me to good writing in English on the more recent assessments of global power balances produced by Chinese analysts?)
… Actually, I wish I could find out more about that term for a “superpower” in Chinese, as attributed to Yang there. For my part, I don’t foresee the US becoming “just one more ordinary power” in the world any time soon… But I do believe that the status of being the world’s unique “Uberpower“, that Josef Joffe rightly attributed to the US in the post-Cold War era, is the one that is right now– thanks in great part to the PNACers’ bloody and destructive over-reach in Iraq– coming to an end.
What will replace it? Well, we are evidently at a very important historic juncture. The invasion of Iraq has been a horrendous, cataclysmic tragedy for nearly all the people of that country (and for a relatively small number of American families.) But the course of events there also has the capacity to teach everyone in the world– and most particularly the US citizenry– a few important lessons:

    1. Military power, however technically hyper-advanced, can never be relied on as sufficient, on its own, to assure the achievement of strategic goals. Other elements of power including diplomatic/political smarts and international legitimacy, are equally or even more important.
    2. Thank goodness that, in the re-ordering of inter-national power balances that will certainly follow the US debacle in Iraq, we already do have two rules-based and generally well-trusted mechanisms of international coordination to help the people of the world navigate their way through these changes. These are (a) the UN, and its norms and institutions, and (b) the world economic system, ditto. If we didn’t have these two broad and already tested systems of international coordination in place, then imagine how damaging and violent the jostling among the world’s big powers could be during the transition into which the world’s peoples are now entering!
    3. The limitations on the utility of military force, as revealed most sharply in Iraq, are a helpfully instructive footnote to the more general situation that has existed since 1945 (or at least, since 1949), namely that in the era of nuclear weapons war among the great powers has become unthinkable. (This relates to #2 above, too.) True, Iraq was not at any point a “great” power. But what we have seen there is that war by a great power against even an already long-weakened medium power has proven counter-productive for the great (“Uber!”) power in question. Therefore, possession of great military power is revealed as not such an important component of “national” power as it has generally until now been thought to be…

And thus, while the US political class has been spending just about all its time, and vast amounts of our national budget, futzing around trying to figure out what to do about the actually unwinnable (and only barely salvageable) US situation in Iraq, the “soft power” that our country was once able to project around with great confidence around the world has eroded almost completely, and the Japanese, Chinese, Brits have become major props of our national debt…
As of June 30, 2007 Japan held $612.3 billion of our national debt, China $405.1 billion, and the UK $190.1 billion. The total amount of the US debt held by the public– that is, not by other US government trust funds, like the Social Security trust Fund– at that point was $4,943 billion. So China, for example, was holding 8.2% of that…
This past couple of weeks I’ve been doing some intriguing reading of Realist writers– Joffe, Brzezinski, Kishore Mahbubani– and some hard thinking on these issues, too. I have maintained for a few years now that there is no real contradiction between well-informed and principled Realist thinking on international affairs, and being a Quaker pacifist. I’d be happy to explain this more sometime, but don’t have time to now. My main point here, though, is to note that the whole wrenchingly ghastly experience of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq really does underline the fact that, in the globally interconnected and still informed-by-Hiroshima world of the 21st century, raw military power as such has far, far less utility than might have been thought earlier.
Yes, we still have to explain some of these things a lot more effectively to members of our political elite here, in both the big political parties– as well as to members of the MSM commentatoriat.
But at the very least, surely everyone can see that the destructive, arrogantly unilateralist uber-militarism that was the hallmark of the PNACers who captured our government in 2001 has failed?
Hallelujah.

An Iranian Surprise (or not)

I’m pre-occupied at the moment on two legacy projects, including an essay on former Iranian President Khatami. Nearly a year ago here at Monticello’s International Center for Jefferson studies, Khatami’s comments on the compatibility of Islam with Democracy included the assertion that even Iran’s supreme “Leader,” currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi, is subject to popular will.
While his extended comments deserve more careful discernment, Khatami and allied Iranian reformers have continued to advance what some observers will deem a “revolutionary” suggestion. Yet it’s also a view that Iran’s naysayers and those itching for a confrontation will be loathe to concede.
Khatami will contend that what he has in mind isn’t “revolutionary” at all, as it’s already in Iran’s constitution, in the form of Iran’s Assembly of Experts – (Majlis-e Kobragan), a body whose 86 members must be elected. The Experts Assembly in turn has responsibility for selecting and monitoring the performance of Iran’s Leader — even removing the Leader, as they might see fit.
Last fall, the doubters emphasized variations on a theme – that the Experts Assembly, Iran’s presumed “College of Cardinals,” was either irrelevant, ignored, captive to hardline clerics, or unrepresentative of popular sentiment due to vetting of candidates, etc., etc. In any case, “the system,” we were knowingly instructed, would never permit popular sentiment to play a real role over the Leader.
Last December 14th, on the eve of Iran’s fifth elections for this assembly, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute hosted a forum where the main “theme” offered by distinguished observers was that the Experts Assembly was a “disabled body” – one that would remain controlled by hardliners.
Funny thing, somebody forgot to tell Iran’s moderate conservatives and reformists that the elections were meaningless and a foregone conclusion. They coalesced around former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani – to hand key hardline figures a startling defeat on Dec. 15th. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the presumed mentor to Iran’s current firebrand President Ahmadinejad, tellingly placed a distant 7th in Tehran voting, far behind front runner Rafsanjani. Turn out was higher than past Assembly elections, in part because voters perceived real choices and stakes at hand.
Undaunted, the Iran doubters were out yet again before yesterday’s internal elections at the Experts Assembly to select a new chairman to replace a deceased former chair. Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar confidently predicted that

“In all likelihood, the right wing conservatives, headed by Ayatollah Yazdi, will beat moderate conservatives because they seem more united and organized. The infighting between moderate conservatives will most probably mean that Ayatollah Rafsanjani, their best known candidate, will be unable to pull off a ‘Shimon Peres,’ and suddenly emerge as a winner after a string of losses. Unfortunately for the West, this means that the chances for a compromise in the nuclear talks will be less likely, as this group is the one most likely to back such an option.”

Javendar, like the AEI forum, got it rather backwards.
Rafsanjani, already head of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, has been elected Chair of the Assembly of Experts. Echoing Khatami’s views, one Reuters report cited analysts who

“…said the election showed that more moderate conservatives like Rafsanjani were gaining ground in Iran, where there is increasing discontent with the ruling hard-liners over rising tensions with the West, a worsening economy and price hikes in basic commodities and housing….
Rafsanjani’s election is yet another no to the fossilized extremists
While extremists… propo[und] the theory that the legitimacy of Iran’s clerics to rule the country is derived from God, Rafsanjani is believed to side with pro-democracy reformers who believe the government’s authority is derived from popular elections.”

The doubters though are already explaining it away, beginning with Michael Slackman who opines in today’s New York Times,

“Theoretically, Mr. Rafsanjani should be a powerful force…. But Ayatollah Khamenei has the final say on all matters of state. He has shown no interest in restoring Mr. Rafsanjani’s influence and has long viewed him as a challenge to his own authority, many political analysts said.”

Never mind that the Assembly ostensibly has the final say over Khamenehi. For Slackman to be more optimistic would undercut his own lead story, also in today’s NYTimes, on how “hard times and isolation” are actually helping hardliners maintain their power.
I’ve never quite accepted the all-too-easy view that Rafsanjani and Khamenehi are necessarily at loggerheads; sometimes they’re on what R.K. Ramazani once referred to as the same “tandem bicycle.”
Flatly at odds with Slackman, consider Barbara Slavin’s USA Today report: “Iranian Shakeup a Setback for Hardliners.” Note she has quotes supporting this interpretation from two of the speakers (Khalaji & Sammii) at last December’s AEI forum (the very one that didn’t see change coming to the Experts Assembly…)
Alas, Slavin closes her story with a quote from CRS Iran-watcher Kenneth Katzman who attributes potentially encouraging signs of change in Iran to US pressure. If only it was that simple.
The skeptics will have it both ways, as usual. The prospects for Iranian reforms are either a. rendered less likely while Iran is under siege and/or b. somehow attributable to external pressures when they do materialize.
—————–
Footnote: I am particularly struck that Mehdi Khalaji (of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) has apparently changed his tune to now lend support to Slavin’s report theme that Rafsanjani’s new position and the recent change at the top of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are both challenges to hardliners around President Ahmadinejad.
Contrast this view with the breathless reporting in Murdoch Media on Sunday, specifically the London Times, by disinformation specialist Uzi Mahnaimi. (the one whom Jonathan Edelstein noted here at jwn last Jan. 8th “seems to make a career of revealing that Israel is about to attack Iran.”) Now he spins one about the Guard leader change being a victory for hardliners, and his only mentioned source is the notoriously unreliable “National Council of Resistance of Iran” – (aka PMOI, MEK, etc. — a group which ironically has been on the US State Department’s terrorist list for the past decade.)

Secluded trail “Secret” in Ch’ville

I, for one, am impressed that Helena manages to keep running, and running well, even while writing an instant important book. Bravo!
Alas, I’ve not been one to run much on hard surfaces, not since breaking an ankle running X-country decades ago on a hard road course in West Chester, PA. Yet I have been “running” a lot lately, mostly on softer surfaces. I’m always on the look-out for “softer” trails for walking and running — and getting away from cars and crowds.
At the risk then of spoiling a well-kept exercise secret around Charlottesville, I recently have been enjoying the new extensions to the Saunders Trail system. I am not talking about the popular Saunders Trail that begins at a parking area near the intersections of Route 53 and 20 and extends nearly two miles to the Monticello entrance.
The core Saunders Trail is so well designed and maintained by the private Monticello Foundation that even wheel-chair athletes can enjoy its perfect grading. I recommend the upper boardwalk section of the main trail late in the fall, when the leaves are down and just before sunset — great vistas.
But I’ve never been one to stick to the “beaten path.” So last fall I began exploring rather un-marked side trails that cut up into the steep hills along the trails. Somebody maintains these side trails nicely. If you go back these side trails, don’t be in a hurry — as they can be confusing, until you come to the next intersection. (!) For locals who know the general topography, such mild uncertainty is “invigorating.”
The newest formal addition to the Saunders trail system comes in the form of 2+ miles of informal mowed trails that wind in and around the 150 acre “Secluded Farm.” If you like “soft trails” in pastoral settings, these are great for exercise and for reflection. Road-runners may find the “carpets” soothing when the joints get sore from pavement pounding.
Alas, unless you get high up onto the ridge, the sounds of highways and “civilization” are often too nearby. (For a real escape, that’s what the George Washington National Forest or Shenandoah are for — but those fragile glimpses of paradise are an hour away.)
For a regular nearby sanctuary, I’m grateful to Monticello for these trails and for not charging us to enjoy them. May these “green pastures” go on restoring many a soul and heart.
And let’s keep it a secret too. :-}

Athleticism and older women

I took a day off from bookwriting today to run in the Charlottesville Women’s Four-miler. Nowadays, they have these snazzy little chips you tie into your shoelaces that record something near to your actual time– I think they trigger as you cross the Start line and as you cross the Finish line. This annual race has grown so large I didn’t even cross the Start line till the clock showed 0:55.
So here are the results. I came in #802 out of 2,240 women who finished the race. My chip-time was 41:24. In the 50-54 age group I came in 68th out of 217 women (i.e., just at the one-third point.)
Since I am 54 this year, that means I’m in the oldest age-cohort in the group. It also means next year I’ll be in the 55-59’s.
So here are two slightly depressing aspects of this:
(1) I am definitely slowing down. In 2005 I clocked 40:13— and they didn’t have the chip-timing system in place then! (So I still fondly hang onto the idea that “actually”, I came in under 40 minutes??)
(2) My feet hurt horribly after today’s race. They’ve been hurting quite a lot recently, especially at the start of my usual three-mile run. But today, for much of the day since the early morning race I’ve been hobbling around like an old lady.
Okay, no more whining. I am still incredibly lucky to have great health and mobility. I’ve sometimes thought how unprecedented it is to have such huge cohorts of older– and generally wiser?– women still surviving in the rich countries these days, as opposed to the proportion (or, of course, number) of women who would have survived in good health to these ages in earlier centuries.
I delivered and raised three incredible children. I didn’t die in childbirth. And though raising them while working was extremely tiring and stressful at times, I survived that with health and sanity more or less intact. (A huge bouquet to fellow-parent Bill-the-spouse for that.)
… And then, going out this morning to the stunning beauty of sunrise over the Virginia Piedmont and seeing 2,200 other healthy women all out there too– huge numbers of them my age or older, and many of them with supportive spouses and kids in tow– that was a great experience.
I had my own little dream there. Wouldn’t it have been great if we could have taken all that sheer womanpower running on up to DC to encircle the Pentagon and tell the Bush people to just bring the soldiers home?
Well, my experience in life has taught me that not all women are as antiwar as we might like. (Condi Rice!!! Maggie Thatcher!!! Jeane Kirkpatrick!!! etc.) But still, I really do think there is a gender tilt in bellophilia/bellophobia. I think that having large numbers of healthy, well-educated older women is going to be good for US democracy and for the restoration of US values of fairness and caring, over the years ahead.
Okay, back to the book. (And an Advil or two?)

Sri Lanka: Asia’s Darfur?

    The revived and very violent civil war in Sri Lanka is another world event that seems to have slipped off the scope of most of the US mainstream media. For that reason, I am glad I am able to publish the following, very disturbing account of the situation there. ~HC

SAVING ASIA’S DARFUR
by Rageen Joseph and Prashanth Parameswaran
“Either help us, or give us poison so we can kill ourselves,” cry aging Tamil mothers in war-torn Northern Sri Lanka. “The only difference between us and dead people is that we are breathing,” claims an internally displaced man in the East.
These and other similar stories have been reported both through direct conversations and stories broadcast by the BBC Tamil language service. Civilians have grown weary of the violence between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, but that cannot prevent it.
Since 1983, over 70,000 people have been killed; virtually the total population in the North and East has been displaced over the last two decades with thousands missing. Meanwhile, the international community has offered only minor mediation. Outside pressure and increased international monitoring is required to restore basic rights for Tamil civilians. With more than 5000 killed since December 2005, and disappearances, extra-judicial executions, and unlawful killings occurring every day, the violence has been getting more extreme.
In Vauniya, a government-controlled area in the North, armed and masked Sri Lankan soldiers spread fear and intimidation, demanding identity cards from Tamils at gunpoint. At night in government controlled areas, the Karuna group and other paramilitaries enter houses, holding randomly selected families at knifepoint while they rob, brutalize, and sometimes kill family members. In the past, civilians have been able to live through periods of violence without being brutalized, but recently both sides have assaulted the civilian population as part of their psychological warfare.
In the rebel-controlled Vanni region, people expect shelling and aerial bombardment without warning, while economic embargo leaves many without food and medicine. Without allowing civil dissent, the Tigers forcibly recruit one member from each Tamil family to join the armed struggle, a retired government employee reports. Temporary safety is found only in refugee camps. They provide food and some protection from attack, but no one can stay there for more than a few days. Some are soon sent back into conflict zones.
In East Batticaloa, school children go unconscious when the government forces use nearby playground to launch rockets and other artillery. At a hospital close to this launch site, patients collapse from the fear caused by the violent shaking of the buildings. Sometimes, rockets fall into civilian areas killing many people. In refugee camps in the North and East, shelter is a plastic sheet on the burning hot sand. Thousands of aid workers have withdrawn due to the violence and insufficient supplies.
More than 27 aid workers were killed in Sri Lanka since April 2006. On June 1, 2007, two Red Cross workers were abducted from Sri Lanka’s main railway station in Colombo and executed miles away. This happened despite government checkpoints in every block. Following recent Tamil Tigers bombing in Colombo, Sri Lankan government expelled hundreds of Tamils from the capital city until they were stopped by the Supreme Court. According to Sir. John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordination, Sri Lanka has become the most dangerous place on earth for humanitarian workers. He has called on the government to probe civil war abuses and consider an international rights monitoring mission.
Monitoring and mediation are stymied by Sri Lankan government officials trumpeting national sovereignty, but a state’s sovereignty flows from the ability to protect citizens. Legitimacy is lost when human rights violations are committed with tacit state approval. No matter which party committed the atrocities against Tamil civilians, the government is responsible to prosecute the perpetrators, a former Sri Lankan foreign minister has stated.
A mission to provide international monitoring has been proposed by EU nations, local and international human rights groups, and senior UN officials. The effort would be coordinated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This mission would supersede the government’s Commission of Inquiry – which has not prosecuted anyone.
The appointment of a US or UN special envoy to Sri Lanka would demonstrate genuine concern. Many nations have advocated this, and 38 lawmakers in the Sri Lanka Caucus of the U.S. Congress, urged this action in a letter to President Bush in February. The Sri Lankan government has opposed the measure, so diplomatic pressure is needed. The May 2007 visit to Sri Lanka by Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher was not enough. Continuing events show his visit changed nothing. Recently, Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group warned that the situation in Sri Lanka is deteriorating to that extent where large-scale atrocities – Cambodia-style, Rwanda-style, Srebrenica–style, Kosovo-style– have occurred. Mr. Evans said “…Sri Lanka is anything but a Responsibility to Protect (R2P). So it is an R2P situation which demands preventive action by the wider international community to ensure that further deterioration does not occur.”
Under the Leahy Law, the U.S. is prohibited from providing aid to any foreign military personnel engaged in human rights abuse. Yet, the US government continues to train Sri Lankan troops, disregarding human rights violations. To add to the problem, the Bush administration signed a military cooperation agreement with the Sri Lankan government in March 2007.
Lost in the international humanitarian inaction is the voice of Tamil civilians. Whether in refugee camps, government areas or rebel territory, civilians can find no relief from this war. Despite the conflict, people deserve basic rights. If the world does not hear their cries, Sri Lanka becomes not only the Asian Darfur but it forces Sri Lanka Tamils into virtual servitude as a permanently dominated, oppressed, and exploited minority without political rights of self-determination.
—————————————–
Rageen Joseph is a recent graduate from University of Virginia and a humanitarian worker in Sri Lanka involved in several relief programs.
Prashanth Parameswaran is a senior at the University of Virginia. He is a columnist for the school newspaper and an editor of several research journals.

Bush fiddles, world warms, China ‘rises’

The work on my current book project has been going generally well. When I’m working on a big project like this, the writing I do when I’m writing sometimes feels fairly difficult. But the writing I do when I’m not (visibly) writing is sometimes eye-poppingly impossible. I’m not just talking about writer’s block; I figured how to write my way out of that a long time ago. I’m not even talking about the occasional moments of existential dread or complete self-doubt. (When in doubt, eat chocolate, I say.) … No, I’m talking about the time it takes to just let the impact, shape, and meta-narrative of the work settle itself down inside me and then reveal itself to me.
Sometimes this process feels frustratingly slow. But there’s no real alternative I’ve found yet to just– at the point that this needs to happen– letting it do so. I’ve now written five of the book’s six chapters. By having done so, I think I’ve finally figured out what the book is about. Now I’m sitting with these chapters. I’ve re-read them and can see several biggish ways in which some of them need to be revised. Sometime tomorrow or Friday I need to start (re-)writing the whole book, all six chapters of it, in some order or another.
I think I’m on track. Ommm.

Rights situation of Iraqis continues to deteriorate

I almost cannot believe the level of brazen disregard or outright, racist disdain that Bush administration spokespeople and their supporters show towards the situation in which the people of Iraq are forced to live (or die.) Every day we hear crowing from the Bushites about how “the surge is working”, or “Petraeus is succeeding in ‘flipping’ the Sunnis”, or whatever. But what you don’t hear at all from them are the grim facts about the situation of Iraq’s people.
Reporters in the MSM should be actively asking the administration’s spinmeisters how on earth they can claim signs of “progress” in Iraq, in light of developments like those being continually reported by those international agencies that do care what happens to real people in Iraq.
Like this, report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, yesterday:

    an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis are have been uprooted from their homes, with the monthly rate of displacement climbing to over 60,000 people compared to 50,000 previously, according to UNHCR and the Iraqi Red Crescent…
    More than 2 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, with over 1 million displaced since the February 2006 Samarra bombings. While most of the security incidents happen in the centre and south of the country, the displaced are not confined to these regions. In the north, there are more than 780,000 displaced Iraqis, over 650,000 in the centre of the country, and 790,000 in the south. Many are barely surviving in makeshift camps, inaccessible to aid workers for security reasons.
    Syria, which has generously kept its borders open to fleeing Iraqis, estimates that more than 1.4 million Iraqis are now in the country. Jordan estimates that some 500,000-750,000 Iraqis are in the country. The number of Iraqi asylum seekers in Europe in the first half of 2007 rose to nearly 20,000 – the same number received during all of 2006…

Or this, from the ICRC today:

    With the daily violence currently inflicted on the lives of Iraqis, tens of bodies are found every day, while countless persons go missing. While some of the bodies found can be identified, others cannot. According to official sources in Iraq, from 2006 until June 2007 some 20,000 bodies were brought to the Medical-Legal Institute in Baghdad (MLI). Almost 50 per cent of these bodies were unidentified and brought to morgues throughout the country. When unclaimed, they were buried in cemeteries. Since 2003, according to some sources, 4,000 unidentified bodies have been buried in special cemeteries in Najaf and Kerbala.
    For an Iraqi family, the process of looking for a missing person may prove to be extremely complicated or even very dangerous, and sometimes impossible. One of the main factors is the current security situation. Today, it is well known that moving in certain areas in Iraq can be life-threatening. Therefore, families cannot move freely asking for the whereabouts of their missing relatives. They try to go through private channels such as individuals or charity organizations. The second step would be looking in hospitals, before inquiring at the MLI, knowing that Baghdad suffers today from the worst security conditions…

And then, there are the swelling numbers of Iraqis who have been detained by the US forces themselves, under the surge. This recent news report says the number has gone up from 16,000 in February to 24,500 today.
The writer there, the NYT’s Thom Shanker, adds these details:

    Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs… with the other detainees being Shiite Muslims, the officers say.
    Of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to a group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, military officers said. Another 6,000 identify themselves as takfiris [= “excommunicators”], meaning Muslims who believe that some other Muslims are not true believers. Such extremists view Shiite Muslims as heretics.
    Those statistics would seem to indicate that the main inspiration of the hard-core Sunni insurgency is no longer a desire to restore the old order – a movement that drew from former Baath party members and security officials who served under Saddam – and has become religious and ideological.

Actually, I disagree. The figures he gives “indicate” nothing of the kind. They indicate only that some 37.4% of the Sunni detainees are either Qaeda supporters or takfiris. They tell us nothing about the remaining 62.6% of them.
Shanker tells us that of the US-held detainees, “about 800” are juveniles. That is cause for huge concern.
We need to remember that the term “detainee” refers to people who have not been convicted of any crime, but are merely behing held “on suspicion”, or because a jealous neighbor has turned them in, or whatever. Shanker says the average length of time they are held is one year, though the very low figure he gives on releases so far this year seems to contradict that. (Perhaps math is not his strong point?)
He also has this additional detail:

    According to statistics supplied by the headquarters of Task Force 134, the American military unit in command of detention operations in Iraq, there are about 280 detainees from countries other than Iraq. Of those, 55 are identified as Egyptian, 53 as Syrian, 37 as Saudi Arabian, 28 as Jordanian and 24 as Sudanese.

280 foreigners is just over one percent of the total. An interestingly low figure.
Anyway, my main point here is to note that none of the reports I have seen in the humanitarian-affairs media recently gives any indication that the surge has brought any improvement to the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Just the opposite.
Isn’t that the key “metric” that the US electorate and media ought to be focusing on?
Otherwise, what is the surge for? Just the personal vanity of one stubborn and rather ignorant US president?

Introducing the “Right to Dry Movement”

In the category of the “completely different,” let’s hang-out for a moment with the burgeoning “right to dry” movement. That’s right, the right to dry — one’s clothes on an outdoor clothes line.
What’s become of our land? Some of my most sublime early childhood memories in the 60’s are of running through backyards of Texas-Eastern company row-homes in Eagle, PA, dodging and twisting through the billowing sheets. Sometimes the lines would get stretched down and became a nasty way to lose a baby tooth. My generation recognizes where the sports phrase, “getting clotheslined” originates.
But do today’s football players have a clue what a clothesline is? Tried recently to buy “clothesline” at your local Lowe’s or Wal-Mart?
What’s become of our supremely efficient air-drying technology?
A key culprit, it seems, originates in the national proliferation of homeowners’ associations. In their collective “wisdom,” they tend overwhelmingly to ban the airing of our clean laundry as too uncivilized, too unsightly. Especially – and ironically – in California. Fer sure dude.
Now, with energy prices reaching new peaks, independent spirits in Vermont (where else?) are leading a counter-culture movement to restore our right to get clotheslined!
Consider the Vermont Clothesline Company, with its stylish lines for hanging your duds. (if you aren’t creative enough to “rig” your own solution.)
And if you’re stuck with an authoritarian homeowners’ group block, help is here in the form of “Project Laundry List.” Curiously, on their home page, PLL lists these six “rational” reasons why the right to dry naturally should be not be abridged.

1. Clothes last longer.
2. Clothes and sheets smell better.
3. Conserve energy. (as electric dryers use 5-10% of residential electricity)
4. Save money.
5. Physical activity which you can do outside.
6. Clothes dryer fires account for about 15,600 structure fires, 15 deaths, and 400 injuries annually.

I think the Project can be more bold! Let’s take a page from the Bush machine and invoke national security!
Those of us able and willing to dry our laundry outside, even sometimes, are saving energy – lots of it. Even better than wildly inefficient ethanol or the distant hope of switchgrass, “hanging out” with your laundry is something many of us can do.
We now have a “new” simple answer to the question of how can we reduce our dependence on foreign oil

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Next time your Association Lords want to tear down your clothesline, wag the red, white & blue in their faces. It’s all about national security.

Bush vs. JAG (w/ help from TJ)

Today’s Boston Globe reported startling dissent at the top ranks of America’s military lawyers toward the Bush Administration’s recent rule-making on CIA interrogations of prisoners. Read the whole report here. The crux of their concern, as delivered to three top US Republican Senators:

“The Judge Advocates General of all branches of the military told the senators that a July 20 executive order establishing rules for the treatment of CIA prisoners appeared to be carefully worded to allow humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques when the interrogators’ objective is to protect national security rather than to satisfy sadistic impulses.“

Here’s how the new get-out-jail-free card works for the CIA interrogators
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions outlaws “cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment….” As the US Supreme Court ruled last year, “in all circumstances,” detained prisoners are “to be treated humanely.”
Never mind vague, lame Bush spokesperson claims to the contrary, the “tortured language” in the President’s executive order fudges the Geneva prohibition’s clarity by adding a critical caveat. According to the military JAG’s,

CIA interrogators may not use “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual.” As an example, it lists “sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation.”

In short, in the view of the US military’s own top lawyers, the “for the purpose” escape clause means an interrogator can be as sadistic, cruel and humiliating as they wish, provided they didn’t do it “for the purpose” of being sadistic, cruel, or humiliating. Put crassly, if you mistreat a prisoner, your best defense is to say you did it for America’s “national security.”
Amazingly, the Army’s top JAG officer, Major General Scott C. Black, felt compelled to send a memo to lower ranking officers and soldiers,

“reminding them that Bush’s executive order applies only to the CIA, not to military interrogations. Black told soldiers they must follow Army regulations, which “make clear that [the Geneva Conventions are] the minimum humane treatment standard” for prisoners.

No doubt General Black is worried about much confusion in the ranks, even among officers. After all, what’s a soldier to think? (especially the ones who for the past several years have gotten their moral compasses from “24” and had Faux News piped in round-the-clock to their mess halls) How is it, they might wonder, that the CIA can “do it” but we can’t? Wink, wink… Besides, as a certain relative of mine would reason, he’s my “duly elected commander-in-chief.”
I hope I can get a copy of General Black’s memo. (If anybody has it, please post.)
Before readers start waving the “liberal” bogey about the Boston Globe, consider that several quotes in today’s report come from an oped published last month in the Washington Post by former Marine Commandant P.X. Kelley and distinguished University of Virginia Law Professor, Robert F. Turner.
These two-tour Vietnam veterans are, shall we say, not easily branded as “liberal.” Bob Turner, a former Reagan Administration player, happens to be a friend from the past (don’t hold that against him); we even shared an office for a year. Turner lately has been carrying a lot of water for President Bush and the imperial Presidency – as it takes so much of Bob’s previous energetic scholarship to its most extreme breaking point. (including defending executive privilege and Presidential signing statements.)
It’s all the more noteworthy then that Kelley & Turner came out squarely opposed to the President’s end-run around the Geneva Accords for the CIA. They write,

“It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in “good faith” in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America’s clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.”

(As a recent Jefferson fellow,) I’m especially interested that they twice invoke Thomas Jefferson:
In April of 1793, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to President George Washington that nations were to interpret treaty obligations for themselves but that “the tribunal of our consciences remains, and that also of the opinion of the world.” He added that “as we respect these, we must see that in judging ourselves we have honestly done the part of impartial and rigorous judges.”
(This is part of Jefferson’s intense policy debate with Alexander Hamilton before the President Washington, regarding whether or not the treaty with France was still in force, amid France’s own revolutionary tumult. Of special note, both Jefferson & Hamilton quoted extensively from international legal texts – Vattel especially – in making their cases. Wonder when the last time anything similar happened in Washington?)
In a letter to President James Madison in March 1809, Jefferson observed: “It has a great effect on the opinion of our people and the world to have the moral right on our side.” Our leaders must never lose sight of that wisdom.
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I’m overdue to publish an essay on Jefferson and the Treatment of Prisoners of War. (Jefferson had considerable experience with some of the same thorny issues faced today — and at times, he was tempted to err on the side of “harsh retribution”….)
Yet for the moment, here’s one favorite Jefferson quote regarding the treatment of 4,000+ British & Hessian Prisoner’s of War detained here in Charlottesville. (out “Barrack’s Road”) Writing in 1779 to then Governor Patrick Henry, Jefferson is defending expenditures for the care of the detained:

“Treating captive enemies with politeness and generosity” was “for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war.”

Jefferson reasoned the experience would be a good example to be seen by what he referred to in the Declaration of Independence as “a Candid World.”
Contrary to the American founders, the Bushists, yet again, have demonstrated they have anything but a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”