Thank you, Senators!

Our senior Senator from Virginia, John Warner, today led three other Republicans in the Senate Armed Services Committee–and all the committee’s eleven Democratic members– in endorsing legislative language that preserves the vital “common Article 3” of the Geneva Conventions exactly as it is. The legislation in question is that to establish the special “military commissions” (courts), that the Prez asked for last week.
The vote by Warner and his allies delivers a hefty whump to the President’s plan to make this aspect of “fighting terrorism” into a partisan issue that, his political advisors had hoped, could help the Repubs in the upcoming mid-term elections. These four Republican Senators– Warner of Virginia, McCain of Arizona, Collins of Maine, and Lindsey Graham of S. Carolina– have shown two things:

    (1) They will not allow the president to play politics with an issue of such fundamental importance as the US’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, and
    (2) They have a clear understanding of the need for, and value of, international reciprocity regarding such international obligations.

That Warner and McCain led this ASC mutiny is notable. Sen. Warner has served two terms in the military: one in the US Navy at the very end of WW2, and one in the Marines during the Korean War. Later he served first as Under-Secretary of the Navy then as Secretary of the Navy (1972-74). He has been in the senate since 1978.
McCain also served in the navy, and is well-known for having been taken captive in Vietnam during the Vietnam war, during which time he gained a vivid and very personal understanding of the importance of the Geneva Conventions.
Bush’s defeat on this issue is all the more notable since today he had also taken the step– extremely unusual for him– of actually traveling the 1.5 miles to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress for his Article-3-busting language in person.
He succeeded in getting the House Armed Services Committee to endorse his language. But Warner, McCain, and their colleagues he was unable to persuade.
One other notable aspect of this vote was the intense lobbying around it by retired military leaders– and indeed, by some serving military officers (is this illegal?). On the pro-Article-3 side, General John Vessey, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a forceful letter to Sen. McCain on September 12, saying that reported plans to dilute Article 3,

    may weaken America in two respects. First it would undermine the moral basis which has generally guided [our] conduct in war throughout our history. Second, it could give opponents a legal argument for the mistreatment of Americans being held prisoner in time of war.

On September 13 Colin Powell, who both succeeded Vessey as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and– perhaps more notably– actually served as Pres. Bush’s first Secretary of State, sent a short letter to McCain endorsing what Vessey had written.
On Sept. 12, 29 former generals, admirals, and high-ranking civilian Pentagon officials had sent a fairly lengthy letter to Sens Warner and Carl Levin (the ranking Democratic member on the ASC) in support of leaving US adherence to Article 3 exactly as it was. These august individuals argued,

    The framers of the [Geneva] Conventions, including the American representatives, in particular wanted to ensure that Common Article 3 would apply in situations where a state party to the treaty, like the United States, fights an adversary that is not a party [to the Geneva Conventions], including irregular forces like al Qaeda. The United States military has abided by the basic requirements of Common Article 3 in every conflict since the Conventions were adopted. In each case, we applied the Geneva Conventions — including, at a minimum, Common Article 3 — even to enemies that systematically violated the Conventions themselves.
    We have abided by this standard in our own conduct for a simple reason: the same standard serves to protect American servicemen and women when they engage in conflicts covered by Common Article 3. Preserving the integrity of this standard has become increasingly important in recent years when our adversaries often are not nation-states…
    We have people deployed right now in theaters where Common Article 3 is the only source of legal protection should they be captured. If we allow that standard to be eroded, we put their safety at greater risk.
    Last week, the Department of Defense issued a Directive reaffirming that the military will uphold the requirements of Common Article 3 with respect to all prisoners in its custody. We welcome this new policy. Our servicemen and women have operated for too long with unclear and unlawful guidance on detainee treatment, and some have been left to take the blame when things went wrong. The guidance is now clear.
    But that clarity will be short-lived if the approach taken by Administration’s bill prevails. In contrast to the Pentagon’s new rules on detainee treatment, the bill would limit our definition of Common Article 3’s terms by introducing a flexible, sliding scale that might allow certain coercive interrogation techniques under some circumstances, while forbidding them under others. This would replace an absolute standard – Common Article 3 — with a relative one. To do so will only create further confusion.
    Moreover, were we to take this step, we would be viewed by the rest of the world as having formally renounced the clear strictures of the Geneva Conventions. Our enemies would be encouraged to interpret the Conventions in their own way as well, placing our troops in jeopardy in future conflicts. And American moral authority in the war would be further damaged.
    All of this is unnecessary. As the senior serving Judge Advocates General recently testified, our armed forces have trained to Common Article 3 and can live within its requirements while waging the war on terror effectively.
    As the United States has greater exposure militarily than any other nation, we have long emphasized the reciprocal nature of the Geneva Conventions. That is why we believe – and the United States has always asserted — that a broad interpretation of Common Article 3 is vital to the safety of U.S. personnel. But the Administration’s bill would put us on the opposite side of that argument…

Powerful stuff. Even more so when you read the (auto)biographical information the writers have included there at the end of the letter.
And on the other side of the argument, we have–
A sad, perfunctory little letter addressed to the Chairs of, respectively, the House ASC and the Senate ASC, by (I think) the serving Judges Advocate-General of the four armed services and a colonel described as “Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff”.
These five guys say,

    We do not object to section 6 of the Administration proposal, which would clarify [actually, obfuscate and dilute] the obligations of the United States under common Article 3… Indeed, we think these provisions would be helpful to our fighting men and women at war on behalf of our Country.

I note, of course, that as serving members of the military we cannot expoect these guys to come out and write or say anything in public that is critical of the President’s policy. I find it outrageous, though, that the Bushies have dragged these poor men into the fight on their side like this. (It would have been good if even one of them had resigned rather than be used in that way.)
Anyway, there have been some people in the serving military a bit braver than those five sad, weak-kneed individuals. For example, Human Rights First tells us that, in response to Bush’s Sept. 6 speech on the need for new legislation, “the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, Lt. Gen. John F. Kimmons, announced the Army’s rejection of coercive interrogation techniques in its revised Field Manual on Interrogations. Lt. Gen. Kimmons stated categorically that “[n]o good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices.”
Actually, that whole resource sheet from HRF is really well written and clearly argued.
So I’m not sure what will end up happening with this legislation. At some point, the full Senate needs to vote on it– not sure when– and at that point, the President might get the vote he needs. Or he might not…
But anyway, I think I’m going to call Sen Warner’s office tomorrow and give him a big bravo. Any JWN readers who live in– especially– Virginia, Arizona, Maine, or South Carolina should think of giving their relevant Senator a call along the same lines. Quite often we call our senators or representatives to ask them to do something. But they no doubt also appreciate it when we call to say a heartfelt “Thank you for going out on a limb and standing up for an important set of principles there.”

Kissinger and Friedman– unhinged?

Did the bloody nose that Hizbullah was able to deal to Israel’s once-“famed” military in South Lebanon this summer have the effect of driving some long-time American supporters of Israel almost batty?
I wanted to explore this issue in a post here this evening, with special reference to columns that Tom Friedman had in today’s New York Times and Henry Kissinger in the WaPo.
Hard to write as much as I wanted on the topic, though. I have the paper versions of both papers here in front of me, but you can’t access either of these texts on the web. (I think that as subscribers to the NYT, our family is probably entitled to get into the special “premium” part of their website where Tom Friedman lurks. But I’ve never figured how to do it.) As for Henry the K, his stuff is far too “high-value” for the WaPo to even dream of putting it on their website.
I have frequently disagreed with Tom in recent years. But I do think that, generally, he has tried to be a moral and humane individual. That’s why it was so disturbing to read these kinds of things in the column he had today:

    If Hizbullah could just attack Israel– unprovoked– claiming among its goals the liberation of Jerusalem [excuse me??], and using missiles provided by an Iranian regime that says Israel should be wiped off the map, then it was a war about everything. And Israel had to respond resolutely.
    So, gauging the right response was intrinsically hard. In the end, Mr. Olmert bombarded Hezbollah’s infrastructure, and tragically but inevitably, the homes of Hezbollah’s Shiite followers, among whom Hezbollah fighters were embedded.
    The Israeli response was brutal, but it did send a deterrent message…

Where can you start to unpack such over-hyped and partisan war-mongering?
The Lebanese of all sects whose homes, roads, bridges, power stations, and other vital inastructure were deliberately targeted by Israel would be amazed by Tom’s description of what happened. Back on July 12 itself, the Israeli government publicly announced that it had decided to go to war against the whole country of Lebanon. (And what amazing accuracy Tom claimed– that those Israeli 2,000-lb bombs could actually discriminate between the home of a Shiite Hizbullah follower, and someone who was not!)
Here’s what Gen. Udi Adam, the head of the IDF’s northern command, said on July 12:

    “This affair is between Israel and the state of Lebanon… Where to attack? Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate — not just southern Lebanon, not just the line of Hezbollah posts.”

Adam, by the way, handed in his resignation today. He was the guy whose performance during the war was so much criticized by chief of staff Dan Halutz that Halutz put another general in to work over him…
Unlike Tom Friedman, the Israeli political and military leaders understood clearly that the conflict was not about Hizbullah fighting “to liberate Jerusalem”, but about the terms on which each side might win the release of people taken captive by the other side. (Yes, it was also about each side reasserting its deterrent power– and both sides succeeded in doing that, Tom, not just one… )
Here’s what Halutz himself said on July 12:

    “If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years.”

Well, Tom goes on and on in that alarmist vein. I can’t re-type it all into here. But he does say this:

    The UN/European force evolving in Lebanon may offer a new model. It’s not “land for peace” or “land for war”, but what I’d call “land for NATO.” Israel withdraws and the border is secured by a force that is UN on the outside but NATO on the inside.

He even gives an approving nod to a quote from the Israeli analyst Yaron Ezrahi who says this might be a model for the West Bank and Gaza, too.
I doubt it. NATO???
And moving rapidly along, here, to Kissinger’s lengthy bloviation (“After Lebanon”) in today’s WaPo… Well, here’s an AFP digest of what HK wrote. But again we have the same frenzied tone as from Tom Friedman, and the same hyped-up worries that, with the rise of Hizbullah and Hamas, the very existence of Israel seems to hang in the balance. Get a grip, guys! Israel still has huge military capabilities and a robust population. What’s more, it is quite capable (if it chooses to, which I hope it doesn’t) to continue oppressing the Palestinians for many years into the future.
Let’s review the facts here a little. Which side is occupying land belong to the other side– the Arabs or the Israelis? Which side has thousands of members of the other side’s population in its prisons– the Arabs or the Israelis? Which side is still many times more capable than the other of affecting the lives and wellbeing of members of the other side– the Arabs or the Israelis?
Israel is doing okay. It is nowhere near the point of being about to be “conquered.” Take a d-e-e-p breath.
Kissinger:

    Hezbollah, which took over southern Lebanon [!], and Hamas and various jihadist groups, which marginalized the Palestinian Authority in Gaza[!], disdain the schemes of moderate Arab and Israeli leaders. They reject the very existence of Israel, not any particular set of borders.
    One of the consequences is that the traditional peace process is in shambles…

Gimme a break!
Where does this whole narrative to the effect that there was a humming-along peace process prior to the “assaults” by Hamas and Hizbullah, and then they stopped it in its tracks– what planet does that stuff come from?? Not the planet Earth, that’s for sure. Guys! The “peace process” died many, many years ago. haven’t you been on the same planet here smelling its corpse along with the rest of us?
And who was it who marginalized the PA in Gaza, and then the pro-US March 14 movement in Lebanon? It was Israel and the US that accomplished those amazing feats, much more than Hamas and Hizbullah.
Anyway, Kissinger goes on to hype up the Iranian “threat”, stating as a fact that,

    It works on a nuclear weapons program, which would drive nuclear proliferation out of control and provide a safety net for the systematic destruction of at least the regional order. The challenge is now about world order more than about adjustments within an accepted framework.

Dr. Strangelove lives!
… But anyway, I’ve been wondering what it has been about the events of the past few weeks that have driven these two guys toward the brink of insanity. I think it is this. I think that both of them– Freidman and Kissinger– have operated for so long on the basis of the never-spoken assumption of Israel’s ability to dominate the strategic environment of the entire Near East that what Hizbullah was able to do to the IDF in Jebel Amel (south Lebanon) in the past two months has shaken their worldview(s) to their very foundations.
I mean, if you’re a Tom Friedman, and you write a lot about the Middle East and care about it a lot, and are a liberal kind of a pro-Israeli, you can be “liberal” so long as Israel’s domination of the whole Middle East (and the pro-Israeli narrative’s domination of the US public discourse) both remain unchallenged. But when a ragtag bunch of Shiite militiamen in south Lebanon are capable of bloodying the nose of the great, heroic Israeli military– why, then the rubber of the Friedmanesque “liberalism” smashes hard against the road of his pro-Israelism… and its the liberalism that gets stripped off, isn’t it? (As well as a lot of Tom’s attentiveness to veracity.)
And if you’re Henry Kissinger, and you make gazillions of bucks from “consulting” with a whole range of governments in the Middle East– Israel, Arab government, Turkey, various Central Asian petrocracies– well, you can carry on servicing all those clients with equanimity so long as the assumption of the domination of the enture region by the US-Israeli alliance is never brought into question at all. But when it is? … Well, that just has to be deeply shocking for the old guy; and so now you see Kissinger retreating into a tight little “Euro-heritage power” lager. (a.k.a. NATO, come to think of it.)
But you know what? Today’s world is a world in which all nations and all peoples are vulnerable… Some more so, some less so, but all of us vulnerable, none of us totally self-sufficient. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s part of the human condition, from the very earliest days of humanity.
But I guess for these guys, this is a shocking prospect. Personally, I find it really interesting to see the degree to which, as it now seems, both of these weighty members of the US commentatoriat– and likely many others as well– have been affected by that one little turn of events this summer in distant Lebanon.

My ‘Atrocities’ book– about to ship!

I can’t figure out why I’m so excited about my new book, Amnesty After Atrocity?: Healing Nations After Genocide and War Crimes… Maybe because it was a new, intellectually challenging, but ultimately very inspiring subject to work on?
Anyway, last week, the folks at Paradigm sent me the book’s cover (big PDF file there; be warned.) It’s absolutely beautiful. It features a pen-and-ink drawing by the great Mozambican artist Malangatana that to me looks very Guernica-esque. It’s titled “O Aberto”– “the Opening”. You can see the “opening” there just above the middle of the picture, if you look.
(I just found another version of that image on the website of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which owns the picture. And on this web-page of theirs you can learn that this picture– described as a screenprint, so perhaps there are other copies?– was donated to the Court by Justice Albie Sachs, who is one of my heroes.)
Anyway, the blurbs on the back cover of the book are fabulous. I had no idea the folks there at Paradigm were gathering such great blurbs for me while I was traveling over the summer…
Here’s a downloadable order form (also a large PDF file) for the book. Alternatively, if you go to the Paradigm website you can order the book there and get a non-trivial discount that brings the shipped price of the hardcover edition in at under $70.
Okay, I know that’s an astronomical figure for many people. Self included. The paperback– priced at under $25– will be out in January.
Here, by the way, is the Table of Contents:

    1. Atrocities, Conflicts, and Peacemaking
    2. Rwanda: Court Processes after Mass Violence
    3. South Africa: Amnesties, Truth-Seeking—and Reconciliation?
    4. Mozambique: Heal and Rebuild
    5. Comparing Postconflict Justice in Rwanda, South Africa, and Mozambique
    6. Restoring Peacemaking, Revaluing History

The amazing thing about books is that they really do take on a life of their own. They are surely the artefact for which the term “shelf-life” has the most applicability. This remains true today, even with all the great electronic gadgetry we have… I mean, it really is not as much fun to curl up in bed or stretch out on a couch and read stuff off a laptop, is it?
I’m not sure, though, that the subject of my book is one that you necessarily want to read about just before going to bed. Sorry about that…

CSM column on US-Iran relations

My column urging easing of US-Iran tensions is in Thursday’s Christian Science Monitor.
It uses some of the material I gleaned from Pres. Khatami’s visit here.
The column is titled Back from the brink, Iran and the US must now build comity. Here’s how the text starts:

    The Bush administration and Iran seem to be stepping back from the brink of their confrontation over accusations that Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. On Sunday, Iranian officials in Vienna said they would consider suspending their controversial uranium-enrichment program for two months if that would improve the climate for the talks. Washington’s chief negotiator there said he welcomed the move.
    This is great news. The last thing the Middle East or central Asia needs is an outbreak of fighting between the US and Iran. In Afghanistan and Iraq, US and allied troops face a worrying escalation of hostilities. In both countries, these troops are deployed in vulnerable positions, at the end of equally vulnerable supply lines. Iran lies between those two countries – and abuts the US naval presence in the Persian Gulf.
    So it is not nearly enough to take just one small step back from the brink. Washington and Tehran need urgently to start addressing the broader issues of power and security in the region. They also need to make sure that the military forces they both have deployed and primed for action there do not get mistakenly jerked into action. Does each side have a hot-line arrangement to dispel misunderstandings, I wonder? If not, they should.
    How can the weightier challenge of stabilizing the long-stormy US-Iran relationship be tackled? This is a real conundrum…

By the way, Scott Harrop and I had an interesting little side-meeting with Col. Pat Lang after his appearance here in town Monday. (I was, sadly, unable to get to the main event. So I’m lucky Scott was able to go, and to post such a full description of it on JWN for us!) We talked about the virtues of a military-to-military hot-line system some. And I learned from Lang that in mil-speak this would be referred to as a “deconfliction mechanism.” Right. Let me remember that…
Anyway, here’s how the column ends:

    It was not clear to me whether Khatami was proposing himself for any key diplomatic role. What did seem clear was his commitment, in a general but philosophically deep way, to the ideals of peaceful coexistence that motivated his US trip. If this visit – and Mr. Bush’s wisdom in letting it proceed – helps the world avoid a US-Iranian explosion and brings the two countries closer to improved relations, then that is already cause for huge relief.

So, comments courteous and to the point, as usual, please…

U.N.U. workshop on non-violence, October

Here’s an announcement for another project I’m contributing to. Again, please feel free to copy, distribute, and re-post this one.

    United Nations University
    International Leadership Institute
    A 4-day, workshop-style course on:
    “Non-violent approaches to conflict resolution, peace building, and reconciliation
    To be held at UNU-ILI headquarters, Amman, Jordan, October 28–31, 2006
    Non-violent approaches as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King have been powerful forces in resolving conflicts and effecting peaceful change and reconciliation. Yet this way seems to have lost momentum in the latter half of the 20th century and at the beginning of this century. Instead we see a world of intolerance with little respect for diversity, complexity and nuance but a readiness to resort to violent means, often mindless and brutal, to resolve conflicts. No sustainable development can occur amidst the continuing inter and intra-state conflicts that ravage many parts of the world in particular the Middle East and Africa. Under these conditions, democratic governance cannot be introduced or established nor can human rights be upheld.
    This course will explore reasons as to why the non-violent approaches have not been deployed to a much greater extent and what can be done to resurrect and reinsert them into the body politic of contemporary society as a means of peace building and reconciliation. Concurrently, leadership strategies for conflict prevention and its recurrence, mediation and arbitration will be discussed.
    It is anticipated that distinguished scholars from across the world will constitute the faculty. About 50 participants will be recruited with emphasis on developing countries, post-conflict and conflict societies. This course will be undertaken in partnership with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Germany
    —————
    For more information or to apply to the course, contact the Institute by fax at + 962 6 533 7068 or by e-mail: poapp@la.unu.edu; the closing date for applications is 30 September 2006.

Yup, I’m one of the “faculty” members there. The other faculty people look really exciting. I am looking forward to this a lot. Send in your applications! (Sorry I couldn’t find out yet how much the course will cost… But I know that UNU-ILI is trying to get funding for scholarship support for participants from low-income countries.)

Excellent Middle East library seeks new home

Loyal JWN readers will recall that in June, I wrote about the death from cancer of my dear friend Deborah J. “Misty” Gerner.
Now, pursuant to her request, I’d like to post this announcement:

    The Deborah J. Gerner Collection
    Before her passing in June the much-loved scholar of Middle Eastern affairs, Dr. Deborah J. Gerner expressed her hope that the professional library she had assembled over many years might find a home where it could be of use to new generations of enquiring minds. The collection comprises over 1,900 books, some 90 materials in other media, and near-complete series of periodicals like IJMES, JPS, MEJ, etc., from around 1983 through 2005 or 2006. Nearly all the materials are in English, are in good condition, and were published between 1983 and 2006 (though a few are older.)
    The collection would make an excellent “starter library” for any college or research institution seeking strongly to enhance its offerings in M.E. studies. If we could find help in covering shipping costs, then shipping it to a suitable institution in the developing world would be attractive. Dr. Gerner did, however, leave a bequest to support the incorporation of this collection into the library of the recipient institution, whether in North America or overseas. Please contact Helena Cobban (hcobban’at’gmail.com) for further information about the collection or with any suggestions you have regarding a suitable recipient institution (your own or another), or possible sources of help for transoceanic shipping.

I would really appreciate any help JWN readers could give in helping to find a good home for Misty’s professional library. So do please feel free to copy this announcement to any person or location you think might be interested.
Thanks!

Patrick Lang: “The Best Defense…”

On 9/11, the Miller Center at the University of Virginia featured a talk by Colonel Patrick Lang – who returned here by reputation as a voice of reason, experience, “independence,” and wit regarding the Middle East. He did not disappoint.
Miller Center lectures are a rather unique phenomena here. First, they are popular. For this one, I arrived five minutes “early” (e.g. very late) – to be escorted to the fourth and last overflow room. Not bad for forums that ordinarily are simulcast on the net. Yet Miller audiences are hardly filled with bright-eyed students; the Miller Center is off the main “grounds” (campus) and students rarely comprise more than a handful amid the throngs. Instead, these sessions draw from the extraordinary community of retired policy professionals who seem to be flocking here to Hoo’ville.
Colonel Lang himself is “retired” from full-time government service, having served with distinction in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) and then at the highest levels of U.S. Military Intelligence. His training includes a Masters Degree in Middle East studies from Utah, and he served in the mid-1970’s as the first Professor of Arabic at West Point. Today, he combines ongoing consulting and training projects with frequent media appearances, ranging from PBS to CBS to BBC. For more, see his bio and publications highlights, via this link on his blog.
Colonel Lang “sticks out” in Washington for his informed willingness to take on what passes for “received wisdom” regarding the Middle East. His publications include the memorable “Drinking the Koolaid” in Middle East Policy. It’s still an important, sobering read. Quite far afield from Graham Allison’s realist “rational choice” decision-making model, Lang attributes the disastrous decision to invade Iraq to a loss of nerve among policy makers and analysts. Instead of honorably sticking to their convictions, even if it meant “falling on their swords,” career-preserving senior policy makers were more inclined to drink from a Jonestown-like vat of poisonous illusions. “Succumbing to the prevailing group-think” drawn up by the small core of neoconservative “vulcans,” Lang’s former intelligence colleagues “drank the koolaid” and said nothing, leaving them henceforth among the “walking dead” in Washington.
Speaking here on 9/11, Lang’s comments were wide-ranging and stimulating; he didn’t stick narrowly to his talk title on Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah, but he had much to suggest related to all three. I offer a few highlights here:
On Military Options against Iran:
Here Lang summarized his now widely cited National Interest article from earlier this spring. (Issue #83 – no link available). Even though Lang and co-author Larry Johnson seem to accept standard worst-case assessments of Iran’s nuclear aspirations, their article makes a compelling case that there are no “realistic” military options to attack Iran, by land or air, conventional, or exotic. Air assaults, whether by Israel or the US, are a “mirage” – unlikely to succeed for long, while incurring the risks of severe retaliations by Iranian assets.
To Lang, these dangers are obvious. Yet spelling them out serves the purpose of going on record so that neoconservatives in the future cannot claim – as they did with Iraq – that the disaster could not have been foreseen. This time, we’ve been warned.
On the greatest source of conflict within Islam:
If I understood him correctly, Lang was not as concerned about a battle between extremists and political pietists, deeming the “pietists” overwhelmingly still in the ascendant. Instead, Lang’s “bigest concern” for the Muslim world was over the “revolution” in the Shia-Sunni equation. The old order of “Sunnis rule and Shias survive” is now in question. Lang depicted Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear option as the latest extension of a long-forming Shia effort to resist domination from the Sunni realm.
Yet Lang did emphasize that Muslims of all stripes come together in resentment towards Israel — as a direct affront to the well being of the faith. To accept the existence of Israel means having to admit that the Islamic world has been truncated, that part of the “realm of God” had been given back. Hizbullah thus has become widely popular among all Muslims, not just among Shia, for its demonstrated capacity to resist both Zionists and the modern day crusaders.
Iran’s support for Hizbullah:
Lang deems Iran’s support for Lebanon’s Hizbullah as “first and foremost” useful for Iran’s pursuit of respect and leadership within the Islamic world. Yet Iranian financial assistance for Lebanon has shrewdly earned friends among Arab Christians and Sunnis too. In this light, Iran’s low-key strategy has been quite successful; hardly a rat-hole, such “success” draws more support.
On Why Hizbullah beat Israel:

Continue reading “Patrick Lang: “The Best Defense…””

1.2 million cluster bomblets; phosphorus bombs

From HaAretz’s Meron Rapoport today:

    “What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,” the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.
    Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.
    In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

This is, of course, a follow-up to the piece Rapoport published Friday (Sept. 8), as discussed on JWN here.
Today’s piece continues:

    The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate.
    MLRS is a track or tire carried mobile rocket launching platform, capable of firing a very high volume of mostly unguided munitions. The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds.
    The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit.
    The cluster rounds which don’t detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended.
    Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war.
    According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would “flood” the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon.
    When his reserve duty came to a close, the commander in question sent a letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz outlining the use of cluster munitions, a letter which has remained unanswered.
    It has come to light that IDF soldiers fired phosphorous rounds in order to cause fires in Lebanon. An artillery commander has admitted to seeing trucks loaded with phosphorous rounds on their way to artillery crews in the north of Israel.
    A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death.
    International law forbids the use of weapons that cause “excessive injury and unnecessary suffering”, and many experts are of the opinion that phosphorous rounds fall directly in that category.
    The International Red Cross has determined that international law forbids the use of phosphorous and other types of flammable rounds against personnel, both civilian and military.
    In response, the IDF Spokesman’s Office stated that “International law does not include a sweeping prohibition of the use of cluster bombs. The convention on conventional weaponry does not declare a prohibition on [phosphorous weapons], rather, on principles regulating the use of such weapons.
    “For understandable operational reasons, the IDF does not respond to [accounts of] details of weaponry in its possession.
    “The IDF makes use only of methods and weaponry which are permissible under international law. Artillery fire in general, including MLRS fire, were used in response solely to firing on the state of Israel.”
    The Defense Minister’s office said it had not received messages regarding cluster bomb fire.

I don’t feel the need to add anything except my sadness at the inhumanity that seemed, “demonically”, to have taken possession of the IDF commanders who planned and ordered these kinds of actions, and my appreciation to both Rapoport and to his informants who saw the need to bring these facts to light.
Of course, a good part of the evidence is still all out there, spread over the lands of south Lebanon, so many of which have now become killing fields because of this wildly indiscriminate and disproportional spraying around of cluster bomblets.
But it is also great to start investigating the perpetration of these criminal actions. Who undertook them? Who planned and ordered them? Too bad that no-one in the Kirya (Israel’s Defense Ministry complex) is prepared to speak more openly about it. But it is certainly very laudable that that rocket unit head recognized, and was prepared to say to Rapoport, that what his unit had done with the cluster bombs and phosphorus shells was “insane and monstrous.” Indeed.

Something completely different

I confess that Bill and I share a teeny weeny addiction. It’s to a word-game called Perquackey that we’ve been playing a couple of rounds of, oh, just about every evening for the past four years on which we’ve both been together.
Yes, of course we played most evenings when we were traveling together in Europe in the summer. And when I was traveling in Palestine in March, Bill rigged a webcam over the playing table so we could play transcontinentally via Skype… I’m afraid our fondness for the game is that bad.
Most people play Perquackey with a 3-minute timer for each round. But we long ago decided that was too slow. So we play with a one-minute timer from another game-box, which makes the game go much faster and builds the adrenalin better.
Not that we’re competitive about this, you understand.
So why am I sharing this dark family secret with you right now? Because this evening I got my best score ever, that’s why! 4,200 points in one 60-second round. If you’ve ever played one-minute Perquackey you might understand how elated I felt about that. (The ace in the hole there was the word “floorings”, which with 9 letters gave me 1,000 points.)
In case you want to know more fascinating details about how we play, here they are: We use the 1974 Lakeside edition of the game which is better than the later, tin-box “Cardinal Industries” edition in a number of ways. And we use the Scrabble dictionary as our absolute go-to “Bible” on the admissibility of words. Since Bill grew up American and I grew up British, we had to have a neutral arbiter for this; and this, with all its faults, is what we chose.
4,500 here I come…

GAO charts depressing picture in Iraq

The U.S. “Government Accountability Office” today released an intriguing new study titled Stabilizing Iraq: An Assessment of the Security Situation.
This report is described as a “Statement for the Record by David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States”. And it is indeed good to have this document on the record, even if none of the fairly pertinent questions that Walker asks in it gever gets satisfactorily answered. But heck, some of them might at least get asked, now that he has given the members of the US Congress some hints as to what some good questions might be.
On p.1 of the report (p.3 of the PDF file), he writes,

    The Department of Defense (DOD) has reported obligations of about $227 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq for fiscal years 2003 through June 2006. U.S. assistance appropriated for Iraqi security forces and law enforcement has grown from $3.24 billion in January 2004 to about $13.7 billion in June 2006.

So that’s around $5 billion we taxpayers are laying out each month to fund Cheney and Rumsfeld’s sick fantasies there… Almost beyond belief.
On p.3 of the report Walker lays out three of the key questions he thinks prudent members of Congress should be asking about the use of these generously obligated funds:

    • What political, economic and security conditions must be achieved before the United States can draw down and withdraw military forces from Iraq?
    • Why have security conditions continued to worsen even as Iraq has met political milestones, increased the number of trained and equipped forces, and increasingly assumed the lead for security?
    • If existing U.S. political, economic, and security measures are not reducing violence in Iraq, what additional measures, if any, will the administration propose for stemming the violence?

It strikes me that, while those might be good questions to start with, there are also a whole class of much bigger questions that could and should be asked… Including,

    “Actually, taken altogether, what have we achieved in Iraq with the outlay of all these funds?”
    “How could those funds have been more effectively used to further the real interests of the US citizenry at home and abroad (i.e. What have been the opportunity costs of the decision to do these things in Iraq)?” and most of all,
    “Who are the near-criminally incompetent nincompoops who got us all into this mess and why the heck are they still in office?”

Oh well, I suppose that’s not the kind of language a “Comptroller General” gets to use.
P.6 has a sobering graphic, showing how the number of aattacks against the US and its allies and civilians jumped in April 2004 from about 1,000/month to about 2,000/month– and how it has stayed at or much higher than that latter figure ever since then. (In July 2006, it was around 4,000.)
The report notes with an air of near-wonderment:

    The security situation has deteriorated even as Iraq has made progress in meeting key political milestones and in developing its security forces… [A]ccording to the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the December 2005 elections appeared to heighten sectarian tensions and polarize sectarian divides. According to a U.S. Institute of Peace report, the focus on ethnic and sectarian identity has sharpened as a result of Iraq’s political process, while nationalism and a sense of Iraqi identity have weakened.

So much for elections as any kind of panacea.
If you want to see the US government’s multi-color map of the sectarian/ethnic breakdown (break-up?) of Iraq, you’ll find it on p.13.
On p.15 the report notes some of the problems with the data provided to the GAO regarding the preparation of new Iraqi security forces. (So who was the nincompoop who disbanded the old Iraqi security forces, anyway?)
On pp.19-21, the report lays out its recommendations for the questions that diligent Congressional overseers ought to be asking the DOD about Iraq. In addition to the ones already listed, these include a few other good ones, as well.
But as I noted above, the questions asked are still not pitched at anything like a broad enough strategic and political level.