Just World News with Helena Cobban – Page 220 – Info, analysis, discussion

Haniyeh’s office hit

Israeli aircraft sent two missiles into the offices of recently elected Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh in the wee hours of this morning (Sunday).
That report, by the AP’s Ravi Nessman, includes this:

Now, at a time when the Palestinian communities, their governmental institutions, and their vital infrastructure are being directly targeted by the Israeli forces is quite patently a time for national unity. And both these men seem to understand this.
It’s important to note, too, that the latest escalation in lethal violence– for most of which the Israeli government is reponsible– came in the immediate wake of Haniyeh’s Hamas and Abbas’s Fateh reaching a significant political agreement.
It’s true that militants on the Palestinian side also played a small part (along with the government of Israel) in fueling the current escalation, when they went ahead with the plan to attack Israeli soldiers by using the Gaza tunnel, and when others of them kidnaped and murdered a young settler in Gaza.
But why did the Israelis and their friends in the Bush administration “respond” to those incidents so massively?
Seemingly– and I believe this is more true of the Bushites than for the Israeli government– because they wanted to use this opportunity to try to take down the Haniyeh government.
Haaretz’s usually very well informed defense correspondent Aluf Benn has a piece in the paper today saying:

The United States government has laid down three rules for the current Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip, according to senior sources in Jerusalem: No harming Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas; no harming civilians and avoid damaging infrastructure.

If this is indeed the case, then there is a notable omission from that list: It includes President Abbas (elected in January 2005) but does not include either PM Haniyeh (elected January 2006) or any other members of his team.
In other words– Washington is saying it’s okay to go after the Hamas people.
The rest of Benn’s piece is also interesting:

But at the end of the day, this isn’t “about” the WaPo or the NYT, is it? It’s about Israelis and Palestinians and how they can live together in some way in the land to which they both lay claim, in a way that is safe and supportive for all of them… For that to happen, you have to have an authoritative, politically legitimate leadership within each national community that is prepared to negotiate a fair final peace agreement with the leaders of the “other” side.
In the political agreement Hamas and Fateh reached last week, they came close to producing such a leadership on the Palestinian side.
But now, the Bushies want to torpedo that agreement by inciting Israel to go against Hamas?
Of course, it won’t work in the way that some of them seem to hope. Indeed, for the Bushites even to suggest, to anyone, that they favor the “protection” of Abbas’s life but not that of the elected Hamas leaders will act yet again within Palestinian public opinion to undercut whatever political legitimacy Abbas might still have left.
(Echoes of the story about the big financial help from the US government in the lead-up to the January election.)
But meanwhile, the Israeli government seems significantly more ready than the Bushites to use negotiations– as well as force– in their dealings with the Palestinians…
This is bizarrely reckless behavior by Washington. Especially at a time when 130,000 US troops are perched in very vulnerable positions, at the end of very vulnerable supply lines, within the frequently hostile environment of Iraq, for Washington even to consider that an escalation between Israelis and Palestinians might be in its interest is callous in the extreme. And not just to the Palestinians (whose infrastructure is indeed being hit on a continuing basis, despite the bleats of protest from Washington, and causing loss and serious degradation of the lives of civilians) but also to the US soldiers stationed in Iraq whose lives, unlike those of the family members of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc, are directly in harm’s way.

Got broadband, succumbed briefly to blog-addiction

Spouse made slight error in planning last night and we ended up in a place with in-room broadband.
It has proved a little distracting, as you can see. Now I’m going to go back into occultation.

Escalation against Gaza

The situation in Gaza (and much of the West Bank) seems to be horrendous.
This UN OCHA report for June 30 provides some figures for the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli violence across the Gaza border:

20 homemade rockets

50 air strikes

over 500 shells

The report detailed the results of just two of those 50 air strikes:

Laila el-Haddad blogged briefly about the situation earlier this week:

Much or perhaps all of the massive escalation that Israel has been mounting over recent days has to do with the fact that Palestinian militants of the Popular Resistance Committees– including, according to some reports, some members of Hamas– were able last Sunday to undertake a rather daring operation in which they tunneled under the Gaza-Israel border, went through the tunnel in the wee hours, surprised a slumbering Israeli tank crew, killed two of them, and were able to capture a third gunner, Corporal Gil’ad Shalit. (Two of the Palestinians were killed during the operation.)
In the West Bank, meanwhile, another group of Palestinian militants kidnaped and killed a young, male Israeli settler and murdered him.
Israel’s use of massive force against the Palestinian areas (and its threat of considerable further force, plus a possibly broad ground incursion into Gaza) are designed to forcefully “persuade” the PA’s government to turn Shalit back over to them. However, the groups claiming to hold Shalit have said they will release him only in return for the release of 1,000 of the Palestinian prisoners now in Israeli jails and the cessation of Israel’s military campaign against Gaza.
This latest round of escalation has caused immense difficulties for all the main political leaders on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides of the line. But most, perhaps, for Israeli PM Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Have Israel’s violent actions during the past week succeeded either in securing the safe release of Cpl. Shalit or, more broadly, in weakening Hamas’s PA government? No.
AP’s Diaa Hadid wrote this yesterday:

the tactic could backfire

He has some revealing quotes and vignettes to back up that conclusion (and one that shows that the rallying round Hamas is not unanimous.) Here are a couple of his vignettes:

As always, then, what is important in Gaza today is not the “mere” matter of military superiority, devastating though military technology can be to the lives and wellbeing of individuals. But as always, what is important in Gaza– as in US-occupied Iraq– is the way all this military superiority plays out at the political level.
(Clausewitz 101.)
So far, it doesn’t seem to be playing out very well for Israel– or, in Iraq, for the United States.

Why the Geneva Conventions are important

In case we needed a reminder of why the Geneva Conventions (which are part of the “laws of war”) are important, the most recent (of many now emerging) revelations about the misdeeds of US soldiers in Iraq can provide one.
On June 16, two US servicemen were captured during what looked like a fairly well-planned ambush of their patrol. Three days later, their mutilated bodies were found.
The Bushites pointed to the treatment of those two as revealing the inhumane nature of the insurgents in Iraq…
Now, AP’s Ryan Lenz has revealed that the two captured GIs belonged to the very same army platoon as five other soldiers who are now accused of having deliberately plotted and then committed the rape of an Iraqi woman and the subsequent murder of her along with three members of her family, back in March.
This is a grisly, tragic sequence of events all round. In no way do I argue that the gruesome earlier behavior of their platoon-mates in any way “justified” the way the two captured GIs were treated. All these abuses of the laws of war are quite unjustifiable.
I do, however, hold that it is quite likely that if members of this platoon had behaved all along towards the Iraqis whom they encountered in a way consistent with the Geneva Conventions, then those two murdered and mutilated GIs might now still be alive… That’s the thing about the Geneva Conventions: they provide a single unified code of conduct for how everyone should behave in a war zone.
Yes, of course if the soldiers in the US occupation forces all kept impeccably to the standards of the Gevena Conventions, it is quite possible that the insurgents would still commit some atrocities– though in far, far smaller numbers than the ones they’ve committed to date.
But the many messages the Bush administration’s high officials have put out about the idea that the Geneva Conventions are somehow “outdated” and don’t apply to Americans have certainly trickled down to the troops and affected the judgment of many of them regarding what they think is acceptable and what unacceptable in a war zone.
The piece by Lenz, by the way, is interesting in a number of ways. It seems he has been able to “break” the story about the March rape and murders in the US MSM in good part because, as the tagline at the end of the story informs us, he was previously embedded with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, the same regiment of which the accused delinquents were part. So I assume he must have had some fairly good sources at the regimental level there who helped give him some of the background to the story.
He writes:

But here is another interesting aspect of the case: Lenz writes that “Mahmoudiya police Capt. Ihsan Abdul-Rahman said Iraqi officials received a report on March 13 alleging that American soldiers had killed the family in the Khasir Abyad area, about 6 miles north of Mahmoudiya.” He doesn’t say whether Abdul-Rahman informed the US military of this allegation at the time. He does write that, “U.S. officials said they knew of the deaths but thought the victims were killed in sectarian violence.”
Oh, what a handy explanation, eh?
But the way the details of the crime started to emerge up at the officer level wasapparently through the participation of soldiers from the platoon in question in what are described as “counseling sessions” that were– according to an earlier filing from Lenz– organized among platoon members after the deaths of their two comrades, in an attempt to help them deal with their feelings, etc etc.
From what Lenz writes, the rape-and-murder action undertaken by the five had been known of prior to that by a number of their comrades. He writes, “A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the official said.”
But it wasn’t till the “counseling sessions” that any of these other, non-involved platoon members shared their suspicions or concerns with their superiors. Omerta ruled…
Anyway, all branches of the US military that have members on active duty inside Iraq are now becoming stained by the revelation of earlier acts of atrocity and mistreatment of Iraqi civilians. Military discipline seems to be coming under exactly the same kinds of pressure there that it came under in Vietnam.
Yes, to a large degree I do hold these individual sodliers responsible for their misdeeds. Burt I hold their commanders even more responsible for their training and discipline… and the higher up the chain of command you go, the more responsible these commanders should be held.
So let’s see, that goes up through the level of their regimental commanders up to the all-Iraq command to Centcom to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to– Donald Rumsfeld, to President Bush. We US citizens should demand that the nation’s higherst commanders of all be held directly responsible for upholding the rule of law– whether in the midst of combat (the circumstance that is addressed directly by the internationally agreed “laws of war”) or in any other circumstance. They also need also to take robust action to ensure compliance with the laws of war by soldiers and officers at all levels.
If they don’t do that, then as citizens of a nation built upon the rule of law we need to do the “holding responsible” for them– at the ballot box!
Meanwhile, until the US reverts to being a nation that abides by and upholds laws, the risks to individual US soldiers (and civilians) will continue to mount.
Note, too, that a call that the US military start complying with the laws of war in no way contradicts my equally strong call that the US military be withdrawn from Iraq at the earliest possible time, and the US military as a whole be radically downsized. Of course, if there were no US occupation of Iraq back in March, then that poor Iraqi woman and her family would never have met the grisly fate that was inflicted on them. (And nor would the two slain soldiers or the other 500 or so US soldiers killed this year in Iraq have been sent home in body bags, either.)
But whether the troops are in Iraq or not, they need to uphold the laws of war. It’s as simple as that.

Bush’s Gitmo woes

I know I’m late in commenting on the US Supreme Court’s decision,
announced June 19, that ruled
illegal the Bushites’ project of establishing special “military
commissions” to ptorcess the cases of the 500-some men still held at
the Guantanamo Naval Base.

The decision is important at a number of levels. Firstly,
regarding the fate of the Gitmo detainees, the Supremes told the
administration it has to either try them according to the existing
rules and procedures used by courts martial (which operate under the
Uniform Code of Military Justice)– or, it should go to Congress and
ask Congress to legislate new rules for dealing with these detainees.

(I’m assuming this also applies to detainees held by the US military or
“other government agencies” at Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan, or
elsewhere, as well? I’m not sure, though.)

Secondly, the June 29 decision informs the President quite clearly that
even though 9/11 might have changed many things for Americans– a
proposition worthy of considerable further discussion– still, it did
nothing to alter the concept of the US as a political system that
operates under duly legislated laws rather than through
imperial fiat or the undisclosed and unregulated workings of secret
government agencies. This will have huge effects, I hope, on the
Bushites’ ability to continue with other illegal projects like the
widespread use of warrantless wiretapping of everyone’s communications
and illegal scrutinization of people’s financial dealings…

Good for the Supremes! (Or at least, for the five of them who
voted for this ruling, as opposed to the three who opposed it.)

Regarding the fate of the Gitmo detainees– many of whom have now
languished under the sometimes brutal and always demeaning control of
their captors for more than four years now– the administration (and
Congress) will find themselves dealing with some rather tough dilemmas:

Continue reading “Bush’s Gitmo woes”

Birthplace of the European Ascendancy

I’ve just spent a week in northern Italy on a long-planned
vacation trip with Bill the spouse. Because I’d been so busy, he
ended up doing most of the planning for it– which is just fine by me
as we enjoy doing just about the same things when we’re on
vacation. Right now, I’m writing this while hurtling on a train
from Mantova to Milano. I love trains, and think that living in a
place with a robust train network is a really civilized way to live.

When we’re in Milano, Bill has reservations for us to see Leonardo’s
‘Last Supper’ (recently restored, and needs advance booking.) We have
seen so much incredible late Medieval and Renaissance art in the past
week that my head is almost spinning. We’ve been in Venice,
Padua, Verona, Vicenza, and Mantua, and in each place we’ve hiked
“religiously” from church to church to church to museum to palazzo to
duomo to church, to see and experience as many great works of art and
as many wonders of Romanesque and Renaissance architecture as we
could. A big part of the charm of all this for me is also seeing
how human and livable the traditional European concept of urban living
still is…. To the extent that in all these cities, having a car
becomes almost a burden. Certainly, the cities have all created
extensive pedestrian-only zones, which makes walking around them a
whole lot easier and more attractive a proposition than it wold
otherwise be. Venice, of course, is almost entirely pedestrian-
(and boat-) only, which is the nec
plus ultra of car-free living…

While we’ve been on the trip I’ve been deliberately trying to take a
vacation from political and conflict-related news. I
have, however, been trying to gain an appreciation of the roots of the
European Ascendancy in world affairs. Northern Italy and the
Netherlands– which we’re going to later– are two good places to do
this. There was a whole long period, after all, in which Venice
was the dominant power in the whole East Mediterranean and controlled
most of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. It did that
after amassing huge naval power, which it was able to pay for from a
combination of the surplus of northern Italiy’s hefty agricultural and
early manufacturing production and creative financing– since the
northen Italians virtually created the modern kind of banking system.

Continue reading “Birthplace of the European Ascendancy”

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.

Continue reading “Graham Allison on Taqiyya?”

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.

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

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:

Continue reading “Something’s changed: Bush to Iran”

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?