“The White House said the trial was fair and looked forward to more tribunals.” (BBC News) I’m sure.
Salim Hamdan, who has been in custody since 2001, was acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted of providing material aid to terrorism. (New York Times) He was convicted by six senior military officers, who deliberated for over eight hours.(New York Times) Shaun Mullen succinctly sets out the background at The Moderate Voice.
I do not know about anyone else, but I would like to take a little rest from reading, pondering, discussing, and writing about the numerous allegations and accusations that have been flying back and forth between the presidential candidates recently. For lack of a better term, let me call these “Unidentified Flying Accusations,” or “UFAs,” which (how conveniently!) takes me to the topic that I would like to briefly discuss, “Unidentified Flying Objects,“ or “UFOs”
What brings me to this topic is a recent New York Times article by Nick Pope who, according to the Times, is “the author of ‘Open Skies, Closed Minds, [and] was in charge of UFO investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994.”
I am neither a believer of UFOs nor one who considers those who believe in them to be total kooks. Nor am I an expert in this sort of phenomena. However, the national security implications that Pope raises in “Unidentified Flying Threats” piqued my interest–and skepticism.
Pope starts his interesting essay as follows:
On the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses?
Pope describes various UFO sightings in Britain, France and in the U.S., and is concerned that:
[T]he American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, while Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.
Referring back to the weaknesses or deficiencies he attributes to radar, Pope assumes that:
…in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States.
One of my areas of some expertise while in the U.S. Air Force and with industry was related to air defense and air traffic control radars, but such “expertise” is about 20 years “out-of-date.” However, I can not believe that, considering the development and use of stealth and other “invisible” technologies by our adversaries here on earth, we would not have come up with our own “counter-technologies“ to provide timely and effective detection, identification, and, if necessary, destruction of any possible threat to our security—terrestrial or otherwise.
True, the Air Force “officially” ended its Blue Book Project in 1969, but, again, I am confident that our government, through other agencies, methods, technology—and funding—is continuing to be vigilant in this area.
The famous October 20, 1969, (USAF Brig. Gen. C. H.) “Bolender Memo” that recommended termination of Project Blue Book significantly included several caveats such as:
Termination of Project Blue Book would leave no official federal office to receive reports of UFOs. However, as already stated, reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.
Moreover, reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book system
And, finally,
… the defense function could be performed within the framework established for intelligence and surveillance operations without the continuance of a special unit such as Project Blue Book.
Again, I am not an expert on, nor am I on either side of the UFO debate, but I have absolutely no problem repeating what we used to say during the days of the Soviet nuclear-tipped-ICBM threat: “Sleep well, your U.S. Air Force is watching over you.” This, I am positive, still goes not only with respect to the present earthbound threat, but also when it comes to the “little green men” threat.
The suicide of a suspect in the post-9/11 anthrax attacks in 2001 seems to have tied up that trauma into a neat package that can be filed away under national scare stories, case solved.
But the subject is too important for such a quick and tidy solution. As shocking as the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were, it was numbing weeks of public anxiety over deadly letters to the media and US Senators that spread fear across America to create an atmosphere that let Bush-Cheney Neo-Cons take us to war in Iraq and trample the Constitution.
Now, the anthrax story presumably ends with the death of researcher Bruce Ivins in the face of a therapist’s taped testimony that he had a “detailed homicidal plan” to kill his co-workers after learning he was going to be indicted on capital murder charges in the mailings.
But secrecy so far, according to Glenn Greenwald in Salon, “has generated far more questions about the anthrax attacks than it has answered” as he cites MSM complicity in efforts to tie the 2001 threat to “Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.”
“All people, especially in the Arab and Islamic world, long to see Democratic candidate Barack Hussein Obama win, occupy the chair of the American President and replace Republican Bush at the helm of the United States.”
“The way Obama absorbed the inside of America during the primaries is reflected in his compelling campaign slogan (change). In the same way, his intellectual assets and his Muslim origins have allowed him to absorb the thinking of many Arabs and Muslims, notwithstanding his subsequent assurances that he isn’t Muslim, which is a position taken for political purposes only … The entire world awaits Obama, considering him a good man to replace an “evil” one. It is Bush who has prepared the ground for Arab and Muslim religious and social support for Obama, a man who may find it possible to look at their problems differently than other presidents, especially Bush.”
“It is commonplace to have U.S. presidential candidates become the focus of world public opinion and controversy. It’s to be expected that they become the center of attention for newspapers, analysts and other politicians. But in Hussein Obama’s case, almost everyone has gathered around him and considers him a possible world savior.”
Barack Obama avoided going there and John McCain has trouble remembering where it is, but Pakistan is the hottest spot in the Mideast with today’s news that Islamabad’s intelligence agency, the ISI, helped plan last month’s bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
A senior US official tells the Washington Post about “significant” evidence that ISI members provided logistical support to the bombers as well as in an attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In this CIA leakfest, the New York Timesgets “new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”
“John McCain is one who proudly boasts (like many other politicians) of his ignorance about the Internet and e-mail. Its likely that McCain has never seen the videos produced by his staff on a computer monitor - but rather on a video tape sent to his home which he popped into his vintage Magnavox-VHS recorder to watch on his trusty Zenith TV … McCain shows by far the greatest weakness in terms of his connection to the real world. At a time when cyber-terrorism, espionage and crime are an even greater threat; when countries like China recruit whole armies of hackers to work against the West and plot the collapse of its IT-infrastructure - which could cost billions of dollars and millions of lives - it wouldn’t be bad if the President of the United States had at least a rudimentary knowledge of what’s at stake.”
Our wonderful neighbors at the Second Presbyterian Church in Knoxville opened their sanctuary to the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church to hold a candlelight vigil.
It was a moment of solidarity.
It was a moment of hope.
By now, many stories have come out about the motives and background of the shooter, Jim Adkisson. But last night, during a powerful electrical storm that lit up the East Tennessee sky, we focused on more important things.
Healing.
Community.
Peace.
Social justice.
Human dignity.
Hope.
We proudly affirmed who we are and why we are Unitarians.
After a few beautiful songs played by our pianist, Vicki Masters, our Reverend Chris Buice gave some words of hope. The pastor at the Westside UU Church even suggested that it was audacious for us, in this dark hour, to hope for healing.
The President of the Unitarian Universalist Association of America in Boston informed us that a large candlelight in vigil in Boston was being held to show support for us. He asked the community to raise their hands if they were members of TVUUC. About half raised their hands. He asked those who belonged to Westside UUC to raise their hands. A solid group in the middle of the sanctuary raised their hands. He asked those at Second Presbyterian to raise their hands and several scattered throughout the crowd did so. He asked those at the Hebrew Congregation Beth El (on the other side of TVUUC on Kingston Pike) to raise their hands and a proud section sitting right near us raised their hands. Then he asked those not affiliated with one of our neighboring congregations to raise their hands if they had come here just to support us. And nearly half the sanctuary raised their hands. It was so moving. We all started to applaud them. This community will not be intimidated. We will not be terrorized.
In an iconic UU moment, the President told us that a reporter had asked him if he thought the shooter was going to Hell. Everybody started chuckling in the crowd and the President said, “I don’t know what will happen after he dies, but I do know that he has been living in his own Hell for years.” And that was the true compassion of the Unitarian Universalist Church - to show sympathy even for those who would harm us. To love our enemies. It was a powerful example for those of us who may not accept the divinity of Jesus that, at the very least, he was a powerful teacher. This moment was not just Unitarianism at its best. It was Christianity at its best.
After lighting candles and singing a few more hymns, we were in for the biggest surprise of the night. Vicki Masters broke into a familiar tune - but one not on the program for the night’s service. It was “Tomorrow,” the theme song from “Annie.” As you all probably know, the disrupted service was a performance of Annie, Jr. The kids never had the chance to put on their show.
But when Vicki broke out into “Tomorrow,” all the kids ran up to the stage and led the entire congregation in song. With a thunderstorm literally howling outside the church walls, we sing in unison: “The sun will come out, tomorrow!” The courage of those kids, who just a day earlier witnessed something no human being should ever have to see, inspired us all. There really was hope. The sun really will come out tomorrow.
Yes, the sun will come out for TVUUC. After the service we mingled and hugged and shared stories about what happened yesterday. The tales of bravery were real. Greg McKendry really did save lives. Had he not stood up and confronted the gunman, a family of four directly in the line of fire would have been killed. We sat next to a woman whose father was shot in the eye and who has lost his vision. He was in good spirits, she relayed to us: “I won’t look too scary to the grandkids.”
My wife and I walked into the TVUUC sanctuary and stood exactly where the shooter was, saw where Greg McKendry stood, and sat where we normally sat in church - right behind Greg McKendry. We thought about all the wonderful moments we’ve had at TVUUC - the prayers, the songs, the sermons, the fellowship, the moments when my son embarrassed us by blurting out during the religious education director’s story, the plays, the spirit of the place. We saw the Welcome sign with the rainbow on it. On the back of the sign was a note remarking that a similar sign in 1950 that said “Welcome” had encouraged controversy back then. In 1950 Knoxville was segregated and Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church (later TVUUC) admitted African Americans and whites to worship together. For this, the church was punished by the city. The only thing that has changed on the sign is the rainbow and the word “Universalist” in the name. There is clearly a direct line between the civil rights movement in Knoxville in the 1950s and the gay rights movement today. TVUUC has proudly stood on the front lines both times, no matter the cost.
Some people say that Unitarians don’t believe in anything. Or that we are dry and intellectual. Last night, it was very clear that we do believe something very real and very powerful: The sun will come out, tomorrow.
In his New York Times column last Monday, “No Substitute for Victory,” Bill Kristol was full of hope that Obama, while in front of Berlin’s Siegessäule, would “make the case for victory” in the struggle against terrorism; that Obama would “warn of the temptation of assuming we can somehow avoid confronting the terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them;” and that Obama would “express pride…in the efforts of American servicemen and women, and those from our coalition partners, who have fought and sacrificed, along with countless Afghans and Iraqis, against those who would kill and subjugate their fellow human beings.”
Well, perhaps to Kristol’s chagrin, Obama met and surpassed every one of Kristol “hopes.”
I say chagrin, because one would have expected that Kristol–in his Monday NYT column– might, however reluctantly, acknowledge the fact that Obama did address his “hopes.”
In a post last night, anticipating Kristol’s column, I wrote:
I believe that Senator Obama more than met the “challenge” posed by Kristol, not only at the Siegessäule, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Israel, Jordan, Paris and London.
Whether Obama’s words will meet Kristol’s “exigent” (i.e. partisan) criteria, remains to be seen. Personally, I doubt it, but I could and would like to be pleasantly surprised.
Well, I wasn’t “pleasantly surprised.”
About the only reference to Obama’s soaring reception in Germany was a sarcastic reference to an article in Der Spiegel, where according to Kristol:
The article’s premise was that an Obama victory is a foregone conclusion: “Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin’s Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States.”
To which Kristol predictably asks, “Don’t the American people get a chance to weigh in on this in November?”
Not only did Kristol ignore Obama’s batting every one of his “hope” balls out of the Siegessäule park, but he also decided that, since nothing else is working, it might be time to play the good old Republican fear card—starting with the title of his piece, “Be Afraid. Please.”
In a roller coaster of emotions, Kristol expresses fear,
That the way things are going, the hopes of McCain supporters who “have hope — for an America that wins its wars, protects its unborn children and allows its citizens to keep more of their hard-earned income,” will be dashed.
That “one man’s ‘deadlock-proof’ Democratic majority is another’s unchecked Democratic majority.” “Yikes,” Kristol groans.
That, “if the voters elect Obama as president, they’ll be putting Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in untrammeled control of our future.”
That, “…if you don’t like the Congress in which Senator Obama serves in the majority right now, you really should be alarmed about a President Obama rubber-stamping the deeds of a Democratic Congress next year.”
Well, perhaps the use of the “fear card,” when referring to Kristol’s “angst” is a little strong, especially when compared to the entire stacked deck of fear (and marked) cards that the Bush administration has so deftly dealt and played during the past seven years.
Kristol does conclude his roller coaster piece with a bit of hope:
And so I drifted off into a pleasant daydream. It’s election night, and a victorious John McCain is waving around the Spiegel article, “No. 44 Has Spoken” — just as Harry Truman, 60 years ago, triumphantly held aloft the early edition of the Nov. 3, 1948, Chicago Tribune, with its banner headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
My hope is that Gerhard Spörl, the chief editor of Der Spiegel’s foreign desk is right,and that Barack Obama will indeed become the 44th U.S. president.
And, please, don’t accuse me of “letting Germans decide who our next president will be .”
I have no idea what Bill Kristol will pontificate about tomorrow in his much-awaited Monday, New York Times column…I can’t wait
But, if it is about Obama’s astoundingly successful overseas tour, I have no doubt that he will join the chorus of nay-saying, right-wing pundits and that he will have at best some sarcastic, sour-grapes observations and, at worse, various disparaging, condescending “analyses.”
But, I could be wrong. I hope so.
You may or may not remember that last week, in anticipation of Obama’s appearance at Berlin’s Siegessäule, Kristol demurely had to admit that Obama would be “well-received.” He said in “No Substitute for Victory”: “I’ll go out on a limb and say that Barack Obama will be well received when he speaks in Berlin on July 24.” and he reluctantly added, “O.K., it’s not exactly a limb. A recent poll shows that the German public prefers Obama to John McCain by 67 percent to 6 percent.”
Kristol’s “limb” turned out to be a massive, indestructible, “old-Europe”, oak tree.
“Well-received?” Talk about an understatement: 200,000 cheering Europeans—two or three more that McCain had when he shared a bratwurst at a German restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and where he was heard grumbling something about his “Truppenverstärkung.”
Last Monday, Kristol had some advice for Obama:
Perhaps Obama — with the Victory Column at his back — will also challenge those who think it impossible to imagine victory today. Perhaps Obama will also warn of the temptation of assuming we can somehow avoid confronting the terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them.
And,
Surely he will express pride — whatever his judgment as to the prudence of the effort, and whatever his judgment as to whether it has been worth the cost — in the efforts of American servicemen and women, and those from our coalition partners, who have fought and sacrificed, along with countless Afghans and Iraqis, against those who would kill and subjugate their fellow human beings. And surely he will pledge our continued commitment to the cause of victory in this struggle.
Mr. Kristol ought not to worry. Senator Obama will eloquently and convincingly address victory in the real war on terrorism, just as President Obama will convincingly achieve victory over the “terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them“ by effectively dealing with them where they are and have always been and without taking his eye off the ball
As a matter of fact, in a lead article, on July 25, none other than the Financial Times Deutschland (as translated in Watchingamerica.com) said:
Obama’s speech in Berlin was an advertisement for the cooperative struggle against terrorism. For the German government, that’s a clear sign he expects more German participation. In the long term, the United States won’t accept the fact that it alone is doing the fighting against the Taliban while the Germans play the role of those nice guys helping the reconstruction effort.
And,
A President Obama would not only find military assistance helpful, but a sharing of the financial burden would also go a long way toward helping America, now suffering a financial crisis, to remain capable of action. The German Parliament will decide this fall to increase the number of German troops in Afghanistan by 1,000 to a total of 4,500. Obama will ask for more, including the deployment of German troops to the dangerous southern part of the country.
This doesn’t sound like ignoring terrorism or advocating defeat in the real war on terrorism, or of being afraid to ask our European allies to pitch-in in this struggle.
I believe that Senator Obama more than met the “challenge” posed by Kristol, not only at the Siegessäule, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Israel, Jordan, Paris and London.
Whether Obama’s words will meet Kristol’s “exigent” (i.e. partisan) criteria, remains to be seen. Personally, I doubt it, but I could and would like to be pleasantly surprised.
As I said, I don’t know if Kristol will be addressing Obama’s tour; but if he does, and he decides to showcase his German I hope he comes up with a little more original and a little less personally offensive cliché than his right-wing buddies’ “Ich bin ein hypocriet.”
And I hope that he will not use the flawed, tired intimation that an American politician’s popularity in Europe inevitably results in suspicion and resentment in America’s “heartland.” America and Americans deserve better credit and respect than that.
In keeping with the myriad outrages that it has perpetrated in fighting the so-called Global War on Terror, the Bush administration has not lacked for cojones.
Congress was a mere handmaiden or not consulted at all when the White House decided to establish a parallel court system to try terror suspects, when it tossed the Geneva Conventions into the Potomac and embraced the use of torture, when it established a plan to secretly rendition suspects to the Rumsfeld Gulag, and when it twice refused to heed the Supreme Court’s warnings that these suspects could not be stripped of all constitutional rights.
But when the top court ruled in June that a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that denied Guantánamo Bay detainees the right to file habeas petitions with civilian courts for determinations as to whether they were being held illegally, the Justice Department found itself painted into a tight corner entirely of its own making.
How to handle the tricky matter of making available civilian courts to Gitmo detainees, some of whom are seriously nasty people?
What should be done with Gitmo detainees now that the whole reason for the prison for so-called enemy combatants has been undermined by the Supremes?
And pray tell what would happen if detainees whose home countries will not accept their return are released inside the U.S.?
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who has shown that his own cojones are even bigger than predecessors John Ashcroft and Albert Gonzalez in telling Congress to buzz off while the Justice Department did the White House’s bidding, suddenly has had a change of heart. Or so it would seem.
For some strange reason, I remember the scene with clarity. I was in the kitchen, early on a Friday afternoon about a month ago, cooking Shabbat dinner. Micha, our youngest, now 15, was hanging out in the living room. The radio was on in the background, and on the hour, the news came on. It was over in minutes, and then the music returned.
I hadn’t really paid attention to the news, but Micha apparently had. “Do you think we’re ever going to get Gilad Shalit back?” he asked. Without even looking at him, I said, without even thinking, “Of course we are. Definitely.”
“You don’t know that,” a different voice piped in. Now, I looked up. Avi, his older brother, was unexpectedly home. “We may get him back, and we may not. How can you possibly say that we definitely will?” But the conversation was over. Micha, overjoyed to see Avi, had quickly followed his brother upstairs, and I was left alone in the kitchen. So I never got to answer Avi.
But had he pressed, and had Micha not been around, I would have said to him, “Why did I say that? Because when he hears the news each and every day, the only thing that your brother thinks about is the fact that you’re about to get drafted. And he’s beyond worried he’s panicked. Because he worships the ground you walk on. And he needs to believe, to know. He needs to believe that you’re going to be OK. And he wants to know that though he lives in a country that asks its kids to do everything, to commit everything, that country also knows that it owes them everything in return. And getting them home – no matter what has happened to them – is part of that.”
Kevin Sullivan in a must-read post looks at terrorism, terrorism policy, the way it’s perceived on the right and left and Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s position on the issue.. One observation:
If Neoconservatives broaden the conflict to the point of absurdity, Leftists in turn do their very best to whittle it into irrelevance. Neither approach makes much sense.
Terrorism remains the wild card in both the months leading up to the election, and a wild card in terms of the election. In the past few years, the candidate whom voters felt imparted a greater sense of personal and national security would likely win. Republican John McCain has taken a strong stance on terrorism. And McCain is determined to make debate over the issue a key issue in the election.
He then looks at Obama’s stance on the terrorism issue in detail. One quote:
There’s a lot to appreciate in Senator Obama’s approach to the War on Terrorism. He clearly understands that there are multiple threats–often operating in a very gray area of complicit networks–that need to be handled respectively. Understanding the ideological, ethnic and religious distinctions between these organizations and states is indeed important, and it will help us to better leverage one against the other. Understanding their petty differences and gripes could aid our efforts to target them in certain regions and isolate their access to weapons and resources. It’s good policy.
Read his take on Obama’s policy in its entirety.
Question: is any policy that can even be defined as having a tad of “nuance” doomed to become a political albatross in the heat of a 21st century political campaign? Your thoughts in comments…
It’s creating almost as much controversy as the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad did last year: Does The New Yorker cover - with Barack and Michele Obama dressed like terrorists - go too far?
Pascal Riche of France’s Rue 89 suggests that the episode is a cautionary tale for French newspapers - and whatever the left-wing American weekly was trying to do - it has failed.
“Irony is a tool that should be used with care. French newspapers Libération and Rue89 had best remember that. … Irony is rarely a good mix with news. Though a majority of readers of any newspaper understand the subtext, many others are terribly narrow-minded. I remember a headline that we wrote for Libération when [former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre] Raffarin was named prime minister: Finally, Raffarin!! Such a reaction over such an uncharismatic character made journalists laugh during the news meeting [when editors decide what to publish]. But readers didn’t completely understand.”
This time, the terror watch list has picked up Clinton-era assistant attorney general, Jim Robinson. He is on this list despite having a recently renewed set of security clearances. It’s ok for him to have access to nuclear secrets, but not to get on an airplane without some serious extra hassle. He’s been quoted several places:
I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it. But I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced.
While Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the Terrorist Screening Center, says there are only about 400,000 people on that list — and most of them are foreigners — other sources disagree. Back in April, there were estimated to be 700,000 names on that list, last October it was estimated at over 860,000, and today the ACLU thinks the list probably tops 1,000,000. That’s one million. One out of every 304 Americans — minimum, since the list only includes names rather than unique identifiers. Even if the list does serve its intended purpose, there are too many names on it to be truly efficient.
So why is it that we only hear about prominent critics of the way the Global War on Terror is waged, and prominent Democrats mistakenly ending up on this list? Why is it we never hear about Republicans like, say, Larry Craig ending up on the list? He at least is accused of doing something questionable in an airport.
July 14th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Everything, it is said, is fair in love and war. Let’s admit it, we all are in love with “oil”. In the present long-drawn “war” we have allowed anything and everything to happen. In fact our “love” has turned into a naked “lust” for oil. And when “lust” takes hold of leaders and the public, they lose their sense of proportion and become virtually myopic (or blind) to the consequences of their actions.
So what can a Mc Cain or an Obama do under the circumstances? (Have a look here…) These thoughts occured to me when I recently went through a must-read book “Half Gone” by Jeremy Leggett. A powerful book that provides fascinating insight into the geology and politics of oil…and hope(?).
He writes: “Despite the defectors from the Empire of Oil, the growing dissent within it, little (has) changed. The Great Addiction remained…Barons of the Empire of Oil rode the planet in executive jets, more powerful than any president except perhaps the president of the Number One Nation State. But then he was one of them anyway.
“The most basic foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing are rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precendent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.
“Most US presidents since the Second World War have ordered military action of some sort in the Middle East. American leaders may dress their military entanglements east of Suez in the rhetroic of democracy building, but the long-running strategic theme is obvious. It was stated most clearly, paradoxically, by the most liberal of them.
“In 1980 Jimmy Carter declared access to the Persian Gulf a vital national interest to be proteced by ‘any means necessary, including military force.’ This the US has been doing ever since, clocking up a bill measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and counting. With such a strategy comes an increasingly disquieting descent into moral ambiguity, at least in the minds of something approaching half the country.
“The deeper the dependency on oil and oil money becomes, the worse the effects of the unforseen energy crisis will be when it hits, so the more America’s security is undermined, even as its government advances enhanced security as the rationale for the latest actions of the Pentagon’s global oil potection service.
Squeeze them out of Iraq, and they squirt into Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal areas. What’s clear is that the Bush-McCain mantra of “fight them there [Iraq] so we don’t have to fight them here” has turned out to be an oversimplification of the war on terror the US will be fighting through the next Administration and beyond.
This week, A US Marines commander reported his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April, and visiting Congressmen were told the Bush administration is “recalibrating operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq.”
During the 1980s, the Saudi government encouraged Islamic militants to fight against the Soviets in the Afghan War. They even subsidized their flights. Their efforts, in part, came back to haunt them when several former mujahideen built a small but powerful movement that would soon threaten the existence of the monarchy. (I’m talking about al-Qaeda, of course.) The Saudis have since become somewhat more cautious. With a population that’s largely under the age of 30, and with a war raging in neighboring Iraq, the monarchy is hoping to restrict the growth of a violence-prone group of Iraq-trained militants who might, someday, turn their attention to the un-Islamic transgressions of the government itself.
Enter the de-radicalization “resorts.” Like a number of other governments in the region (including Egypt and Yemen), the Saudis are trying to reprogram militants to reject violence. It’s an odd program, and has been received with both mild interest and downright scorn. Shiraz Maher, over at The Sunday Times, has one of the most detailed accounts of the de-radicalization efforts that I’ve seen to date, and he highlights some of the campaign’s eccentricities:
It has been called the Betty Ford clinic for jihadists and within minutes of arriving at the Care Rehabilitation Centre on the outskirts of Riyadh, you can see why. The small complex, where the Saudi Arabian government is exploring a new way of reforming its wayward radicals, feels more like an exclusive boarding school than a Saudi jail.
Inmates have access to swimming pools, table tennis and PlayStations. In the evenings, guards and prisoners play football. An air-conditioned tent sits adjacent to the sports field, serving as a dining hall and common room where, when I visited, the prisoners were tucking into rice and lamb with fresh fruit for pudding.
In return for this privileged treatment, the prisoners – Islamic extremists, some of whom are convicted murderers – are obliged to attend lessons based around Islamic law and the jurisprudence of jihad. A team of psychologists teaches detainees how they should manage their emotions, particularly when reacting to world events.
Art therapy classes help inmates to “reveal their softer side”. And it is not just the artwork that is surreal. It is quite a sight to see men in flowing robes, with unkempt beards and their trousers hoisted above their ankles, sit down with a pack of crayons to express themselves. “The unconscious mind holds a lot of things,” said the therapist.
It’s easy to laugh off these efforts as naive or overly-ambitious — and there is certainly room for that — but it’s also true that the verdict remains out on their success. As Saudi blogger John Burgess has written, “So far, the Saudis report no recidivism, but the first people to go through the program are just now being released into the general population.” What’s particularly interesting is that the Saudis appear to honestly believe, as do several other governments in the region, that militancy can be “cured” through religious discussion and debate. And, of course, it’s not entirely out of the question. Since militants base their views on a certain reading of the Islamic texts, why should they not reconsider that interpretation when confronted with the divergent opinions of more moderate Islamic scholars?
The Egyptians, for example, claim success in their efforts. In 1998, the Islamic Group — a violent jihadi movement that was responsible for hundreds of Egyptians deaths during the 1990s, including those of the Luxor Massacre — publicly renounced violence after months of government-directed prison debates. Interestingly, most accounts I’ve read suggest that the overwhelming majority of the militants appear to have genuinely undergone an ideological shift. The author Lawrence Wright interviewed several Islamic Group members and he has written that they appear firmly opposed to - and ashamed of - their former militancy.
All in all, playing ping pong, drawing with crayons, and talking religion is an unusual approach to criminal justice and rehabilitation. Which makes it worth paying attention to.
The media is abuzz with reports that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants a timetable for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country–some even say that Iraq wants U.S. troops out, period.
Well, I would not pay much attention to what Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says, or what the Iraqi people want.
After all, we are the liberators, the “installers” of democracy there, and we know exactly what is best for that country.
Why should we listen to what the Iraqi government or the Iraqi people want, when it comes to bringing our troops home–we didn’t even listen to our own people.
After all we have done for that country, we have every right to stay there for one hundred years, if we want to. To build and keep permanent bases there, if we wish to. To continue to fight the terrorists “over there” (the few to none in Iraq), as we said we would when we invaded that country.
After all, didn’t we break it? What is that saying, “you break it, you own it?”
