Towards a global perspective . . .

I received an email to day, asking for an update on Can Iraq Form a New Government, my previous post about the Iraq election.  I had done a significant investigation at the time, and that post had a lot of detail and analysis of the ongoing process.   At the time I wrote the piece, I got interested responses from regional (i.e. Kurdish and Turkish) news outlets and even Iyad Allawi’s Office.  Since then, I haven’t revisited the subject because the dynamic hasn’t really changed.  The sources of my information have had less detailed discussion on the issue than they did when I wrote previously.   It is as if the situation is frozen.  Nothing has changed so there is nothing to say.

I do think the recent US interventions have unfortunately, and most likely inadvertently, tightened the deadlock.   Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, we haven’t been paying a lot of attention to Iraq.   When we do hear something, we hear about a prolonged and possibly rather disorderly process reflecting an incompetent or maybe recalcitrant embodiment of Democracy.   There are, in fact, some interesting and reasonably democratic forces at play, along with some that are less so.  In any case, the type of democracy they have is somewhat complicated, especially at the current stage they.   The situation is sometimes represented as a competition between two guys, Iyad Allawi and his people, and Nouri Al Maliki and his people.  We see Mr. Allawi insisting that he won, while Mr. Al Maliki is being a very bad sport, using all of the resources he can muster as the incumbent to change the outcome, so far without success.  And, at some level, this is all too true.

But there are some significant, and quite reasonable players driving events behind the scenes.   Read the rest of this entry »

Our priceless friend and ally, Israel, has just assaulted a flotilla of supplies with 800 civilian activists aboard and several tons of building materials, food, toys and various necessities.   There was live coverage online from the lead ship, broadcast through a Turkish news station.    Live TV coverage of a war crime, this is today’s media.  This is our world.   Even so, as time will show, Israel managed to come up with a conflicting story and a video of their own to prove it, only a few hours later.  They are ingenious and persistent.

There were around 600 people on the lead ship where the most serious confrontation took place, all unarmed civilians.   Al Jazeera and the Turkish station have video of a stairway crowded with people with people in life jackets.  You can hear a loudspeaker in the background directing people to go to their rooms and wait.   The reporter from Al Jazeera says that at least two are dead and there are an unknown number of injured.  Speedboats race alongside and around the ship.  Helicopters hover overhead.  He says that he is going to join them, and the scene ends, but the Turkish coverage continues. Floodlights are flashing over the deck as uniformed soldiers board the ship from the air and the sea.     Read the rest of this entry »

Some very interesting thinking on Iran has surfaced through this past week.   Robert Gate’s leaked memo has created a new opening for discussion of Iran policy in some significant circles.   I was starting to write a little piece based on an article by Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, posted on Politico Blog earlier this week, called The Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran, where they say that they agree with Gates general analysis, but they disagree with his conclusion because they think that ‘containment’ is a ‘slippery slope’ that could easily lead to a military encounter.   They also quote Dennis Ross, Senior Adviser to the Obama Administration on Iran, as telling them before Obama took office, that he was assuming with regard to Iran,  that a little negotiation would prepare the way for a likely military military strike, which they believe would be a devastating mistake.   I wondered as I read this why Dennis Ross is in the White House and Flynt Leverett is at the New America Foundation.

Meanwhile, NIAC (National Iranian American Council) has come out in support of Keith Ellison’s Stand with the Iranian People Act, which suggests that restrictions on interactions between Iranian and American people should be eased (I whole heartedly agree), and that sanctions should target human rights violators rather than the people as a whole.   Read the rest of this entry »

I found this interesting article on a website called PRNewswire that looked like it was on the up and up – though the website was a little fishy.  The title was: US Government asked to Regulate AIPAC as a Foreign Agent of the Israeli Government.   It begins as follows:

“The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section . . .”

Too good to be true, I thought, and after all, who or what is IRmep?   A quick search on Google turned up a site that said IRmep is one guy who needs a maid.  Hey, don’t they all?   As the previous complaint said, the IRmep website is a blog, put up by a young man named Grant Smith.  Read the rest of this entry »

I just want to mention this interview with Robert Blake, by Narayan Lakshman that I found on the Op/Ed page of the online version of The Hindu, the 2nd largest English language newspaper in India.  Blake is Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia       I’m thinking this piece might be the answer the question “What are some issues that educated Indian Citizens would like to ask about American policy in Central and South Asia?“  I suppose it will also shed some light on how the State Department would respond to those questions.

I was a little surprised by the very first question, though the answer is a blow off.  The interviewer asks about Indian workers in the US having to pay Social Security taxes.  Read the rest of this entry »

We are currently just about to sell big packages of high tech arms to Egypt, Jordan, UAE and Saudi Arabia .  Ha’aretz, says that the Israeli government is not happy about it.   We’re only supposed to sell these countries second class weapons, but now we’re giving them F15s and Hellfire missiles.  We’ve been protecting Israel through the years, by giving them an edge in the local weapons race.  And make no mistake, they are still getting the most assistance and the best of the best, subs capable of carrying nuclear warheads, missile defense shields and more.  Not only is Israel a seemingly familiar ally in a very foreign, often hostile world, but they are really good customers.  You sell them the weapons, and you know they will use them, probably on a target you approve of.  Even so, capitalism is prone to prostitution.  It’s the way of the world

Israel might well be concerned about the sale of these weapons to Egypt, recipient of the second largest amount of US aid,  because Mubarek is old and his son is not popular.   Who will control those weapons when he’s gone?  Read the rest of this entry »

When I say that we, the U.S., should be talking to Iran and criticizing the recent human rights violations by the somewhat embattled government, I don’t mean that the US, or the West in general, should support the opposition directly.  When we support the opposition, we hurt them.  On the one hand, our support undermines their credibility; on the other, they don’t need us.   This is their fight.  As I said in my previous post, most of us aren’t even clear on what their goal is.   When we call the government on their brutal tactics and violations of human rights since the election, we are undermining the credibility of the government.  Iran has consistently pleaded their alignment with international law.  Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times ran a front page article a week ago with the headline “Iran Shielding Its Nuclear Efforts in Underground Tunnels“, and accompanied by a bizarre PR photo of Iranian President Ahmadinejad accompanied by other men in suits, in a [highway] tunnel wearing hard-hats.     The picture looks like an ad for a Broadway play and the article reads like the storyboard for a political thriller.    The article not only presents currently disputed ‘facts’ and without a shred of evidence, it turns the one underground facility about which we were notified [by the Iranian Government], which so far has not been furnished with contents,  into a vast underground labyrinth full with a busily humming nuclear weapons program.   But, as if that isn’t good enough, the article goes into the past and raises all sorts of long ago debunked [by the IAEA and an NIE reported in late 2007] allegations about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program 2003 and 2004.

Unfortunately, they are not alone.  Gareth Porter’s latest piece on IPS,  New Revelations Tear Holes in Nuclear Trigger Story, is the result of a detailed examination of evidence presented in a London Times article from mid December that claimed to have a leaked copy of an original document proving that Iran is working on a nuclear trigger mechanism.  Read the rest of this entry »

Transcript of Obama’s speech on Afghanistan
Last Updated: Tuesday, December 1, 2009 | 11:01 PM ET
CBC News

Annotated by yours truly in red.

Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women [ mostly men] of our armed services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan — the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It is an honor for me to do so here — at West Point — where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country. [ Military Rules! ]

To address these issues, it is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington and killed many more.   [Shades of GWB.  You'd never know that 8 years had passed]  Read the rest of this entry »