Just World News with Helena Cobban

PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI ROAD MAP ‘NEWS’: Read all about it! Read all about it! In the Rose Garden yesterday (March 14), the Prez promised that as soon as Abu Mazen is confirmed as Palestinian Prime Minister, “the road map for peace will be given to the Palestinians and Israelis.” And then, “Once this road map is delivered, we will expect and welcome contributions from Israel and the Palestinians that will advance true peace.”
This is news??? The road map was actually given to the Palestinians and Israelis already– as long ago as last October. Giving it to them is not the issue. The issue– as between the US and all three of its allies in the diplomatic “Quartet” responsible for this process– is whether the Quartet will allow any further revisions to it by Israel’s Ariel Sharon.
The Palestinian leadership, including Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister-designate Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), has already agreed to the road maps’s terms. (Whether wisely or not, given the RM’s long-drawn-out and inconclusive nature, is another matter.)
Sharon has not agreed to it. He has sought since October to delay and prevaricate with regard to the RM, while he’s sought to have further revisions made to what everyone else– except the Bush administration– considers to be an already finalized text.

The Quartet, you’ll remember, consists of the US, the UN, the EU, and Russia. The other three ain’t chopped liver. The Quartet was formed almost exactly one year ago, shortly after Bush called– last April 4– for the Israeli government (then also led by Sharton) to “withdraw immediately” from those parts of the occupied territories that had been handed over to Palestinian security control under the Oslo Accords.
Well, the Israelis did not “withdraw immediately”. Far from it. Bush lost a lot of credibility in the Arab world and Europe for his failure to insist that the huge wads of US taxpayer $$ that are handed over to Israel on a daily basis could not even be used to get Israel to do that one small thing. So to shore up his diplomacy (and dilute the criticism) Bush agreed to join this thing called the Quartet.
But he still wants to be the one who calls all the shots, evidently, by unilaterally redefining the progress and pace of the Quartet’s work. As he did in yesterday’s announcement.
Bush made the announcement in the last hours of his preparations to leave for the Azores, where he’s holding a last-minute war-preparation “summit” with the leaders of existing Security Council allies Britain and Spain. (What about Bulgaria, I hear you say?? Well, “new Europe” may be all very fine as a stick to beat those Frenchies with. But this Azores summit is, hem-hem, serious business.)
For starters, meeting with people who already agree with you does not count as “going the extra mile for diplomacy”… But that aside, the announcement about the Palestinian-Israeli RM was clearly made to try to placate Britain’s Tony Blair who’s been pressing Dubya for progress on the RM issue for many months now.
It remains to be seen– in the few hours we have left before the pro-war Trio Con Brio reach whatever decision they come to in the Azores– whether Blair and his domestic critics will actually conclude that Bush’s statement committed him to anything meaningful in Arab-Israeli peacemaking. London’s Independent reported that skeptical Blair cabinet member Clare Short said she was “delighted” about Bush’s announcement, and she was having second thoughts about her previous threat to resign.
The Independent’s own editorial today acknowledged the “cynical” quality of the timing of Bush’s announcement, but said it was nonetheless a welcome sign of US re-rengagement. “If the road map … proves the basis for restarting negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, then it matters,” the editorial said. I agree totally with that. But I just think the conditional clause there does not yet show any realistic signs of coming about.
What Bush did not mention: “Israeli forces shot dead 5 Palestinian militants in the city of Jenin today, bringing to 10 the number of Palestinians killed in the northern West Bank in less than 24 hours.” — New York Times, p. A6.
Did I mention that Bush opened his remarks by saying, “We have reached a hopeful moment for progress toward the vision of Middle Eastern peace… ” What planet was that that he’s coming from?

MY COLUMN IN TODAY’S CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: So the column ran today. It’s titled “Unraveling a centuries-old global system… ” I guess that over the 13 or so years I’ve been contributing this column to the CSM, a number of my pieces have precipitated quite a lot of criticism. Like whenever I– shock! horror!– criticize some policy of the Government of Israel, or whatever.
My editors at the paper have generally been great in shielding me from the really vitriolic hate-mail that has come in. Usually, they send on the bouquets but keep the brickbats. Today, though, they sent on to me– perhaps for my amusement?– one from someone called Thurl Harris, who accused me of anti-Americanism and criticized my “myopic view of history.” “It is pathetic and sad that this hysterical point of of view rates publication,” he huffed.
Don’t feel sorry for me, though. I’ve also received quite a few responses from total strangers who expressed great support for the piece.
You, the readers of JWN, get the rare chance of telling me directly what you thought of the piece…

PERLE AND HERSH: So far, much of the commentary about Sy Hersh’s great article in this week’s New Yorker about Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle has dealt with Perle’s out-of-control accusation on CNN that Hersh is “the nearest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.” But I think what people really need to focus on is the content of what Hersh writes about Perle’s involvement in businesses that are almost certain to benefit from the super-access he has to classified information. He is, lest we forget, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board.
So read the piece, here, and learn how Perle set up this firm, Trireme, dealing with homeland security issues, shortly after 9/11; and how later he apparently tried to shake down the Saudis for some lucrative contracts; etc etc.
You have to believe the New Yorker would have pored over the text word by word with their lawyers before they published it. The account is truly devastating to Perle. Indeed, what Hersh tells us about Perle would have been shocking if our moral sensibilities had not already been dulled by the full-scale political rehabiltiations we’ve seen already of Elliott Abrams, Michael Ledeeen, Oliver North, John Poindexter, and so many other Reagan-era felons and slimeballs.

GOING TO AFRICA: So, a massive war threatens in and around Iraq…. CNN, according to one report has or soon will have 250 people in the field there… As for JWN? Well, this trusty correspondent is hard at work planning a trip to– Africa.
The way I figured it, when I went final-final on this decision a couple of weeks ago, is that the Middle East’s bundle of issues ain’t going to go away. It’ll still be around, oh, three months from now, three years from now– even, three decades from now. (This latter being around my planned retirement point.)
Meantime, I have a (very) modest amount of research money from the U.S. Institute of Peace to continue work on my research project on “Violence and Its Legacies”– the VAIL project, more info here— which looks at the policies three African countries chose, back in the early-to-mid-1990s, to deal with their heavy burdens of atrocious violence…
This is important stuff! How countries and peoples escape from cycles of violence is actually a much more instructive thing to study– and hope to learn from??– than going to watch a bunch of guys shooting each other other up.
Of course, in the mainstream media, “If it bleeds, it leads”. But the blogosphere is not your grandfather’s mainstream media. So I’m not looking for blood and shooting. (Been there; done that; six years in Lebanon back in the 70s.)
When I leave home April 6, I’ll take my trusty laptop with me, and I’ll try to post to JWN every couple of days or so. Over the five weeks that follow you will hear from:
** Arusha, Tanzania, which is the seat of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I have written quite a bit about ICTR’s background and workings already, notably here. I’ve been to its sister court, the one for former-Yugoslavia, headquartered in The Hague. (Arrived there in 2001 the same day Slobo did, indeed.) And I did some really interesting research inside Rwanda last year. But this will be my first visit to Arusha. I have a request in already to interview the South African judge, Navanethem Pillay, who’s the President of the court– and she’s also one of the judges recently elected to the bench of the ICC. Then, on to–
** Mozambique, a country that suffered a truly atrocious, 17-year civil war that started right after the country’s independence in 1975. But then, one fine day in October 1992, the country’s President and the leader of the insurrectionist rebels shook hands– and bingo!– the fighting and the resentments were all over… Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. But still, the ability of the Mozambicans to get beyond the nasty, lingering legacies of their years of travail has been notable, and impressive. How did they do it? Well, for one thing, they reached their peace agreement just before the vogue in international circles suddenly switched to post-atrocity war-crimes trials. And for another, they still had many robust indigenous traditions of post-conflict healing on which they able to draw. I think it’s really important to try to learn about (and from) what worked in Mozambique. That’s why I’m spending just over two weeks there. And finally, to–
**South Africa. I did a few days of interviews in Johannesburg, about the record of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, back in 2001. And of my three “cases”, this is the one that’s been the most pored over by other western scholars. But I still think it’s worth going back. So I’ll be spending about five days each in Jo’burg and Cape Town.
You know what, though? I’m actually kind of glad I’ll be there in those different places trying to tease apart the tough questions of how countries escape from cycles of violence — which, I admit, these three countries have done to wildly varying degrees, and in different ways. But this task sure sounds better for a person’s mental health than sitting back and watching the Air-Blast and other types of mega-bombs rain down on Baghdad.
And along the way, I hope I can write some on this blog about how the people I’m talking and meeting with there in Africa feel about our Prez and his misbegotten drive for war. D’you think anyone in Washington even cares?
But hah! I’m not going to be writing this for people in Washington. My main message for Dubya is coming out tomorrow– Thursday– in the Christian Science Monitor. Don’t miss it.

STILL LOOKING FOR AN INFORMATIVE, EDGY ISRAELI BLOG: Thanks to the alert reader who, in response to my earlier enquiry on this score, suggested I go to “Israeli guy.” However, he didn’t come anywhere close to being as informative, as irreverent, or as just-plain-interesting as Iraqi blogmeister Salam of Where’s Raed?
Today, though, scrolling down one of Salam’s comment screens, I found a great reference to a good Iranian blogista. Check her out!
And if any of you has a good bead on an Israeli blogger of comparable interest, please let me know.

I WROTE A COLUMN FOR THE CSM TODAY: Sometimes, meeting deadlines is like pulling teeth. Sometimes, it flows. Today was a “flow” day. The piece will run Thursday– check it out at their website.
Actually, I’d spent many of the wee hours of the morning polishing various phrases in my half-sleep. So when I sat down at around 8:30 a.m.– still in my cuddly fleece robe; it’s cold again!– I got the whole thing keyboarded in by about 10:20.
I look at it as my very last opportunity to try to turn Dubya back from the madness of this war. It would be nice if I could picture him there in the White House– perhaps cuddled up in his fleece robe against the weather– reading the column with close attention and saying to himself, “Dang it, she’s right!”
Yes… it is kind of hard to imagine. But I must say the only time I’ve been inside the White House– when Brent Scowcroft gave some kind of valiant service award to our friend Ed Hewett, who died soon thereafter of a ghastly cancer– I saw one newspaper, and one newspaper only, sitting on a side-table.
You guessed! It was the CSM!

BOMBS-AWAY DON DOES DIPLOMACY (also, does ‘Bombs-away’): I’ve written before about Bombs-Away Don suffering some illusions that in addition to being SecDef he’s also the Secretary of State… His latest diplomatic debacle has even set the tea-cups tinkling in 10 Downing St., it seems.
So there he was at a Pentagon press briefing today saying, essentially, that he doesn’t give a hoot whether the 44,000 valiant troops whom Her Majesty currently has in Kuwait join in the war or not. If it wd be too difficult for Tony (‘the lapdog’) Blair to commit troops to the campaign, BAD was saying, then fine, “we can manage with a workaround.” (A “workaround”, you’ll remember, is what the Pentagon also had to scrabble to do to deal with the recalcitrance from that darned democratic Parliament in Turkey.)
So while the teacups were still tinkling at BAD’s suggestion of British irrelevance, Tony got on the blower– to whom, I wonder? I need to check… to Powell? Or to BAD himself? And the message, loud and clear according to BBC-TV’s Andrew Marr this evening, was “you’re not helping”.
Marr said some people had tried to suggest that BAD thought that he was sensitively “helping” Tony get off the hook caused by his own parliamentarians’ recalcitrance, by, um, well, trying to take the pressure off him or something. But as Marr commented in an all-time understatement of the year, “Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t DO sensitive very well.”
So BAD tried to issue some kind of retraction… Maybe he should just leave diplomacy to Colin Powell?
Of course for Tony, this suggestion that Britain is nearly irrelevant to today’s global balance of power is deeply wounding. The Beeb’s Diplo Correspondent later huffed that “Of course, the US would have both political and military problems if there is no British participation in the war.”
Political problems– yes. A “coalition of the willing” containing only Albania somehow doesn’t inspire much confidence. But military problems? I doubt it. I should imagine that from the operational point of view, coordinating with the British forces may well be a real pain for the Americans.
… And meanwhile, this just in from the US military: They have now done a demo detonation of their latest, biggest, baddest piece of heavy ordnance, called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB (though the AP reports coyly that it has also come to be known unofficially as the Mother Of All Bombs.)
Actually, on behalf of mothers everywhere, I want to call for an end to the use of all these “Mothers of All …” references in a warlike context.
But anyway, it seems clear that the detonation of this 21,000-pound behemoth over a test-range in Florida, and its wide publicization, is part of the old ‘Shock & Awe’ routine. For more info on Shock & Awe, if I’ve got my permalinks working right here now, you can go here or here.
Moab, in case you’re interested, was Lot’s grandson: the fruit of his incest with his elder daughter. His descendants later settled the area east of the River Jordan. and various other things happened to them… Well, that’s the Old Testament for you.

LOSING (WINNING?) TOM FRIEDMAN: Seems like Dubya’s news conference last Thursday truly was a bust. It has caused numerous liberals who were formerly on the war wagon finally to jump off. Here I’m talking not just about bloggisti like Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, or the Agonist. I’m talking– with all due respect to the aforementioned– big-time. I’m talking my old friend Tom Friedman.
Tom’s started to agonize a little in print these past two weeks about some of the many possible downsides to war. But today– and in direct response to his actual physical-space presence in the Prez’s ill-fated new conference– he has finally come down against the war.
At least, I think that’s what Tom is saying, though he is not absolutely crystal-clear about it.
In today’s column, Tom focuses in on a key proposition that Bush uttered in the n.c.: “When it comes to our security, we really don’t need anybody’s permission,” and he takes issue with both the introductory premise there and the stated conclusion.
“The first thing that bothered me,” he wrote, “was the phrase, ‘When it comes to our security . . .’ Fact: The invasion of Iraq today is not vital to American security. Saddam Hussein has neither the intention nor the capability to threaten America, and is easily deterrable if he did.
“This is not a war of necessity. That was Afghanistan. Iraq is a war of choice… ”
He then takes issue with Dubya’s conclusion that “we” (the US) don’t need anyone’s permission.” He rightly points out that while no-one doubts that the US can destroy Saddam’s regime at will, rebuilding Iraq will most certainly require the input of a robust international coalition.
This is his conclusion: “So here’s where we are. Regime change in Iraq is the right choice for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the world. Mr. Bush is right about that. But for now, this choice may be just too hard to sell. If the president can’t make his war of choice the world’s war of choice right now, we need to reconsider our options and our tactics. Because if Mr. Bush acts unilaterally, I fear America will not only lose the chance of building a decent Iraq, but something more important ? America’s efficacy as the strategic and moral leader of the free world.”
Well, still not quite the ringing opposition to the launching of a pre-emptive unilateral war that one might hope for from someone as smart as Tom Friedman. Tom’s position still seems predicated on the argument that, “this choice may be just too hard to sell.” So if it were an easier selling job internationally, Tom, maybe you could still be in favor of this war? (Talking of which, when will we ever hear the true reasons for Charlotte Beers’ departure? Maybe, far from being fired, it was a resignation on grounds of conscience– such as has started to happen in the lower ranks of Tony Blair’s government already?)
But back to Tom. Even if his opposition to the war is still a ittle mealy-mouthed or wistful, it’s still significant.
Welcome aboard the anti-war movement, old friend.

DDV DOES DIPLOMACY: Master Hunk of the Rational Universe Dominique de Villepin is, according to Reuters, off to make a diplomatic tour of Africa. By an amazing coincidence (!) his itinerary will take him to Angola, Cameroon, and Guinea, the three African countries with seats on the Security Council.
I’ve noted earlier on JWN that Colin Powell’s failure to actually visit key countries, but to rely on phone calls instead, has been noted with annoyance around the world.
But what, I want to know, will the leaders of these three countries do if DDV’s people are proposing he visit their leaders at home on the very same day that George W. Bush issues his imperial summons that they visit him at his new Versailles in Crawford, Texas?
If Presidents Dos Santos, Biya, and Conte end up facing this painful scheduling dilemma, how might we expect each of them to react?
(By the way, jolly good luck to these leaders of extremely needy nations as they negotiate the very best deal they can get from the superpowers under the present circumstances. Here are some figures on “Life expectancy at birth” from the U.N. Development Program: Angola– 45.2 yrs, Cameroon– 50.0, Guinea– 47.5, USA– 77.0, France– 78.6.)
It would not be a walkover for the US! I don’t have the exact figures on comparative aid flows from France and the US to each of these three countries. (Nor do I want to suggest for a moment that aid flows are the only important factor here, though of course they are going to be one factor.) But France is no slouch as an aid donor. In 2000, it disbursed $4.1 billion in overseas development assistance (a figure of $80 per French capita), with 24 percent of that aid going to the “least developed countries”– a category into which both Guinea and Angola fall. That year, USA overseas development aid came to $10.0 billion– or $35 per American capita– with 20 percent going to least developed countries.
Beyond that, we know that Cameroon and Guinea are former French colonies that since independence have been tied into the web of “francophonie” that Paris has maintained especially strongly throughout Africa. So both governments probably have fairly long, close, and quite possibly appreciative relations with Paris. Angola is just emerging (we hope!!!!) from a really nasty civil war and desperately needs the kind of reconstruction aid that the UN and the Europeans are pretty good at– even if they’re still far from perfect– but is the kind of thing that really doesn’t grab Washington’s attention at all.
So I’m guessing that those factors, along with a little stroking from DDV, can keep Dos Santos, Biya, and Conte out of Washington’s grasp on the war vote. Certainly, none of these governments will be an easy (or cheap) pushover for the US warhawks.
But wait! Good news for the hawks! This just in! Albania’s going to contribute troops to the war effort! And so the coalition grows… As for the diplomatic effort in the Security Council, the war party still only has four members…. Thank you, Spain and Bulgaria!

CODE PINK RALLY REPORT: I confess I did not feel entirely in sync with the “celebratory, creative” approach that the feminist organizers from Code Pink For Peace had planned for their pro-peace events in DC yesterday. But Barbara Ehrenreich, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, and a raft of other great creative and dedicated women were scheduled to speak. And the timing was great– coming so close to Dubya’s final-final decision on going to war. (Has this been made yet? Good question. I like to argue that until we see the very first US cruise missiles launched, there will still be time for him to “stay the dogs of war.”)
But the organizers were asking us all to wear pink. Ugh.
I felt more in a somber, black-wearing mood. A mourning, Women-in-Black mood. So I dressed in black, but as a concession to the CodePinksters I rounded up some scraps of fuchsia fabric and tore them into makeshift scarves for myself, Barbara, and the other folks we were traveling to DC with. (Is there a fuchsia in this, I wonder? Oh, never mind.)
Well, the rally was great. The speakers were all tremendous. Nearly everyone, including the many brave guys who were there, was wearing something pink. Some of the “creativity” seemed a little out of place amidst the talk of war– except that the idea, as I understood it, was to celebrate life, to celebrate International Women’s Day, and to celebrate solid human values of caring and creativity in place of– and as antidote to– the gathering clouds of war.
The most welcome surprise among the speakers was “Granny D”, the 93-year-old peace activist Doris Haddock who just a few years ago walked across the US of A as her witness against war.
Call me an ageist if you will, but I’d never encountered Granny D in the flesh before; I’d only read a few news stories about her Peace Walk. So I guess I was expecting a dear, if still feisty and committed, “little old lady” with good pro-peace values whose main importance seemed to be merely her advanced age.
Well, that’ll teach me to under-estimate people in their 90s: she was an absolute pistol! She spoke out loud and clear with the most well-considered, succinct, and smart political advice I’ve heard anyone give in a long time. Her main emphasis? Focus like a laser on the November 2004 elections in order to turn things around.
So listen to your Granny, folks. You can find her here.
I estimate that the number of participants was between 15K and 20K. The 1.5-mile march from Malcolm X Park down 16th St. to the White House was uneventful. The original plan had been to “surround the White House”. That task used to involve making a cirumference around a couple of city blocks only. Now, given how far they’ve pushed out the WH security perimeter it involves making a human chain around a huge, multi-block chunk of that part of DC.
I’d say we more or less achieved it, but the organizational clarity of the event sort of got dissipated by that point. Some of the organizers were focusing on trying to negotiate entry into Lafayette Park for small numbers of participants– and there were a few arrests along the way there.
I’m hoping that those were some of the DC Police Dept’s “celeb arrests”, such as happened on a regular basis outside the South African Embassy there throughout the 1980s– you’d see Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, and whoever being photographed stepping into one side of a paddy wagon; and then within minutes they’d step out again as free men. Last fall, though, the DCPD turned very ugly against– was it the October antiwar demonstration? They herded people into parks, kept them there for hours, and then booked them without even– it now seems– giving them the required orders to disperse.
News coverage of yesterday’s events seemed surprisingly prominent on at least the evening’s ABC and CNN broadcasts. It looked to me, though, that the mainstream newsies just loved focusing in on the arrests and the small but ultra-vociferous presence of counter-demonstrators, rather than on the thousands of people who’d come from many parts of the country to take part in a peaceful act of anti-war witness.
What else is new?