Shoes hold a special place in the Arab lexicon of insults as a show of contempt – effectively saying, you’re lower than the dirt on my shoes. Even sitting with the sole of a shoe pointed at another person is seen as disrespectful. The hurling of shoes at Bush on his last visit to Iraq as president made an ironic bookend to one of the first images after the 2003 U.S. invasion, when Iraqi opponents of deposed leader Saddam Hussein toppled one of his statues in Baghdad and hit it with their shoes. Al-Zaidi attained instant hero status around the Arab world. At one Baghdad elementary school, a geography teacher asked her students if they had seen the footage of the shoe-throwing, then told them, All Iraqis should be proud of this Iraqi brave man, Muntadhar. History will remember him forever. In Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City, thousands of supporters of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burned American flags to protest against Bush and called for the release of al-Zaidi, a 28-year-old Shiite who works for the private Iraqi TV station Al-Baghdadia
[Snip]
“I’ve watched the video over a dozen times on You Tube and was excited very time I see him [al-Zaidi] standing up and calling Bush a dog,” said Tamer Ismail, 23-year-old art student in Cairo. “But I felt so bitter when he missed.”
Among other things, al Zaidi will be charged with “insulting the Iraqi state” even as he is celebrated as a hero in Iraq and throughout the region. But another irony here involves the fact that such laws continues to exits in what Bush insists on calling a democratic and free Iraq.
On a slightly related note, a friend of mine noted in an email recently that al Zaidi “has excellent aim. I can’t imagine that this was a spontaneous because he was throwing the shoe from 15 feet away with many heads obstructing his view, and got so close to Bush’s head both times. He must have practiced with various size shoes for years on end for this one moment with various distractions in the background. “
Ta-Nehisi Coates sums up John McCain’s posture on Iraq in very stark terms.
There is no sense here that one may have other reasons, short of cowardice, for wanting out of Iraq. But this is like being back on the block. Your man tells you that he got jumped by some cats from across the tracks, so you and him go to war. The beef lasts for months, and then you find out he never got jumped to begin with. But when you pull out, he calls you a chump.
This reminds me of a scene in The Wire when Slim Charles shares some of his wisdom on the Art of War with Avon Barksdale. Charles wanted to retaliate against a rival gangster Marlo Stansfield for the latter’s presumed involvement in murdering a close associate of the Barksdale set. Even when Barksdale the righleader informs him Marlo had nothing to do with the murder Charles still presses the point. “It don’t matter who did what to who at this point. And now there ain’t no going back. Once you in it you in it. If its a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight,” implores Charles.
I suppose I am more annoyed than surprised that media coverage of former Senator Phil Gram calling American’s a bunch of whiners was outdone by Rev. Jesse Jackson remarking on how he wanted to cut Senator Barack Obama “nuts off.”
Interestingly enough, stories about the candidates courting Hispanic voters was reported on just as much as Iran was, while Iraq did not make the list of top campaign stories at all. Of course, neither did Afghanistan either. This strikes me as rather odd considering Obama has held consistent 30 point lead over McCain among Hispanic voters for months, and no war is being waged in Iran at the moment, whereas the U.S. currently has two failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read the Pew analysis of top campaign media story lines of last week here.
In a speech today before the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem today, President Bush leveled a baseless not too thinly attack on Obama’s call for measured diplomatic engagement with Iran. The Great Decider told Israelis
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”
[snip]
Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapons would be an unforgivable betrayal for future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
The fact that Dubya still thinks its useful to frame mid-East political affairs with WWII thinking is as telling as it is astounding. First of all, it suggests that the conventional state based lumbering armies of the last century with the nimble and roaming non-state terrorist organizations of the 21st century are parallel in scope or similar in nature. Of course, we now know that terrorist organizations finance, recruit, propagate their message very differently than states do and are probably much more effectively, albeit not exclusively, deterred and contained by intelligence driven law enforcement strategies.
Second of all, applying this WWII thinking to mid-east affairs is problematic because it also suggests that countries in the region with frosty relations with Israel or those critical of its treatment of Arab Israelis and Palestinians are surely be equated with the Nazi campaign to exterminate all Jews. Whatever you think about anti-Israeli sentiment in the middle east or elsewhere, this is not exactly the way to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world.
Thirdly, if Dubya is implying that since Obama is willing to engage Iran diplomatically, he is somehow betraying American interests, its just absurd on its face, considering how American and Iranian diplomats sat down together to craft a key agreement after the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan. The Bonn agreement as it provided for a reconstruction plan and offer financial aid to Afghanistan, a known irritant to the Iranians since the Taliban took over the Central Asian country.
In fact, Ambassador James Dobbins, one of the U.S. representative carryout out the negotiations, said:
On two occasions Iranian representatives made particularly memorable contributions. The original version of the Bonn agreement, drafted by the United Nations and amended by the Afghans who were present, neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both.
Too bad the Bush turned his back on the Iranians by placing them in the so-called Axis of Evil. Another instance of a flawed WWII analogy at work.
When asked in an interview with Politico and Yahoo! News about what personal sacrifices he has made since the war in Iraq began, President Bush said he gave up playing golf. You just can’t make this stuff up.
For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
Way to take one for the team Mr. Great Decider.
Sidenote: I wonder if this counts as elitist and out of touch?
When asked whether or not the United States should treat an attack on Israel by Iran as an attack against Americans at the ABC News Democratic debate last Wednesday, Senator Clinton gave a fairly well thought out answer even if it was a bit too hawkish for my liking. She began by saying, “Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region.”
At these proforma debates you have to get the tough talk out there first to avoid being tagged as a dovish liberal eager to coddle dictators, especially if you are a Democrat.
Fine. I get that.
But to her credit she went on to note what can be achieved through isolating Iran with aggressive diplomacy. Clinton emphasized the need to create what she called an “umbrella” security agreement vis-visa Iran. She claim it would afford the U.S., under her administration, three tools. First, is it would provide leverage if we ever choose to negotiate Iran directly. Secondly, it would send the message that the U.S. is serious about containing the spread of nuclear arms in the region, since a nuclear Iran may ignite an arms race in the Middle East.
And thirdly, it would presumably send a message to states elsewhere that the U.S. is serious about restoring the non-proliferation regime that the Bush administration tore asunder with the one very notable exception of North Korea.
She concluded:
Therefore we have got to have this process that reaches out, beyond even who we would put under the security umbrella, to get the rest of the world on our side to try to impose the kind of sanctions and diplomatic efforts that might prevent this from occurring.
That’s a solid answer in the context of these sound bite driven debates, and quite frankly much better than the bungled response by Obama where he understandably tried to side step the premise of the question altogether. Our Middle East foreign policy is done a real disservice by presuming that U.S. and Israeli security interests should be tightly aligned. In other words, the U.S. should not operate as a guarantor of Israel’s security. It is after all, the sole nuclear power in the region, the most dominant force there, and has been the victor in virtually every war its fought since its inception.
As for the merits of Clinton’s answer, I doubt that what Clinton recommended in terms of a security umbrella is achievable. I suspect other countries in the region are interested in containing Iranian influence, but not necessarily to align themselves with Israeli security interests. And it would be difficult to make that distinction with a U.S. led region wide security initiative intended to knee cap a nuclear armed Iran. Driving a wedge between Iran and Syria, containing Iranian influence among Shiites in Iraq and Lebanon, i.e. Hezbollah, may be more of an immediate concern for other nations in the region.
But whatever. I never served on the National Security Council to any president or on some fancy Iraq Study group with luminaries from the national security establishment. So what do I know?
One thing I do know, however, is that the the National Intelligence Estimate, a document representing the definitive judgements of all the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies, in December stated that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and unlikely to resume them in the next decade. The Bush administration has done its best to dismiss the findings of the NIE and exaggerate the threat posed by Iran by citing its incidenary anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric and support to various insurgent Shiite factions in Iraq.
And during the debate I was eager for either Clinton or Obama to mention something about this. I was hoping that it would be Obama, since he has continuously said he will end the mindset that got us into the war in Iraq. But alas neither he nor Clinton even mentioned the letters NIE in one breath.
After gaining some measure of confidence in Clinton’s response that she put to bed the bizarre hawkishness that lead her to vote for the Kyle-Liberman amendment, a measure that Senator Webb called “Cheney’s Fondest Pipe Dream” Madame Inevitable heads to Good Morning America and turns into Ms. Obliterator.
Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on “Good Morning America” Tuesday. ABC News’ Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
Andrew Sullivan rightfully praised Senator Dick Lugar for summing up the unsustainable myopia driving the U.S. strategy in Iraq.
None of our witnesses last week claimed that the task in Iraq was simple or that the outcome would likely fulfill the ideal of a pluralist democratic nation closely aligned with the United States. All suggested that spoiling activities and the fissures in Iraqi society could undermine even the most well-designed efforts by the United States. Unless the United States is able to convert progress made thus far into a sustainable political accommodation that supports our long-term national security objectives in Iraq, this progress will have limited meaning. We cannot assume that sustaining some level of progress is enough to achieve success, especially when we know that current American troop levels in Iraq have to be reduced and spoiling forces will be at work in Iraq. We need a strategy that anticipates a political end game and employs every plausible means to achieve it.
Senator Obama also made an interesting yet understated point about managing expectations at the hearing yesterday.
Sen. Obama: I’m not suggesting that we yank all our troops out all the way. I’m trying to get to an endpoint. That’s what all of us have been trying to get to.
And, see, the problem I have is if the definition of success is so high, no traces of Al Qaida and no possibility of reconstitution, a highly-effective Iraqi government, a Democratic multiethnic, multi- sectarian functioning democracy, no Iranian influence, at least not of the kind that we don’t like, then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.
If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there’s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence, there’s still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an Al Qaida base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable timeframe, and that, I think, is what everybody here on this committee has been trying to drive at, and we haven’t been able to get as clear of an answer as we would like.
I wonder if those comments, as truthful as they are, will haunt Obama this fall in attack ads this fall.
Eager to look presidential amidst the Democratic squabbling, Republican presidential nominee John McCain in a speech in Los Angles on Wednesday, provided the country a glimpse of how sell his Commander and Chief persona to the American people during the next few months.
Clearly, McCain sought to reassure those who were perhaps disturbed by the “Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” talk and the causally suggesting that U.S. could be in Iraq for 50 to 100 years, by informing us that he “detested war.” On nuclear nonproliferation, McCain said, “We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own.”
He also rhetorically distanced himself from the reckless unilateralism of the Bush administration in saying, “Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.”
McCain reaffirmed his somewhat comprised stance on banning torture too. “We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control,” he urged the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
On global warming, he tried to impress Americans as a reasonable sober thinking conservative. He admitted that modern advances can “produce a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.”
At first glance, all of this makes John McCain sound like a centrist Democrat. But a closer examination of his previous statements and of the speech itself reveals an unwillingness to shed some of the vestiges of the Bush doctrine.
For instance, in September of 2006, President Bush invoked the then 5-year anniversary of the 9/11 calamity to justify a misbegotten war in Iraq and another poorly executed one in Afghanistan.
We’re determined to deny terrorists the support of outlaw regimes. After September the 11th, I laid out a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they’re equally guilty of murder….Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from terrorist states into allies in the war on terror.
Witnessing its effects, few people were persuaded by the logic of the Bush doctrine then and even more are skeptical about it now. But John McCain has been an unwavering adherent. After emphasizing how radical Islamic terrorism is the transcendent challenge of our time in his speech, McCain warns:
We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.
Though McCain does note that such an effort will require more than just military instruments, most of his pro-war advocacy has focused on achieving ill defined notion of “victory” in Iraq.
And while it is true that security threats exist in a variety of places, it is not clear that the U.S. was passive in confronting them either before or after September 11th. President Bill Clinton did bomb Afghanistan and Sudan to root out Osama bin Laden in 1998. President Bush did initiate two poorly prosecuted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11.
So we are left wondering to what extent are we to expect these efforts to root out terrorists will lead to open ended war in various parts of the globe. That unanswered question leads to the same dead end that making “no distinction between those who harbor” them does which either, is or comes close dangerously to, perpetual war.
And when a war is predicated on a number of confusing premises, as is the case with Iraq, claiming victory is difficult to define in concrete terms. McCain asserted:
Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
Somehow that does not clear things up for me. And I suspect many other people will have the same problem. Of course, not President Bush who said in the 2007 State of the Union address, “Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.”
Could that take 50 to 100 years?
But an equally baffling point made by both Bush and McCain is the framing for why the U.S. should not withdraw in the near future. McCain said in his speech this week that “Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly.”
And on March 19, Bush said, “Iran would be emboldened as well — with a renewed determination to develop nuclear weapons and impose its brand of hegemony across the Middle East. Our enemies would see an America — an American failure in Iraq as evidence of weakness and a lack of resolve.” Thus, not only are Bush and McCain of the same mind on Iran, but the unmeasured hawkishness toward the Shiite dominated country has contributed to conflating the Sunni dominated global terrorist network of radical Islamists.
Its the “but if we leave now then Iran will talk about us and call us punks” argument.
It should also be noted that the most definitive U.S. intelligence document, the NIE, concluded that Iran halted it’s program in 2003 and decided to do so because “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs,” as opposed to being a rouge nation acting irrationally. That means diplomacy works when give a chance and explored exhaustively. Interestingly enough, McCain 6 page speech mentions the word “diplomacy” only twice.
All of which puts McCain’s so-called gaffe regarding which country is training what terrorists where and for what reason in context.
With the 5th anniversary of the disastrous invasion of Iraq still hanging in the air, Christopher Hitchens in a piece entitled “Blind Faith” claims Barack Obama delivered opportunistic and politically calculating speech race to deflect attention away from Rev. Wright controversy.
In his piece, Hitchens, who usually is a probing writer, neither engaged in a substantive examination of the speech nor did he prove that Obama’s views were in any way identical to those of Rev. Wright’s. Instead the British contrarian registered his disgust with Obama’s reference to his own grandmother to illustrate the subtle interplay between public expressions of vitriol and private utterances of intolerance.
You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)
Hitchens has never been known to minced words. But he has been one known to misread events as they unfold, such as the war in Iraq, but more on that later. In this instance he is so caught up in his own self-righteousness that he fails to acknowledge the immense risk Obama took and is still bearing in his campaign by not denouncing both Rev. Wright and his controversial remarks. To say that Obama threw his grandmother under the bus for sheer opportunistic gain is to diminish the larger point regarding the very visceral nature of racial prejudice in the America experience. It also fails to acknowledge that Obama indeed took the more difficult route in in giving a nuanced speech that will almost certainly be used against him by soundbite by soundbite.
But Hitchens main beef is not with Obama per se. It’s with religious leaders and religion itself. The author of such awe inspiring works as God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and scornful attacks on Mother Teresa asked his readers yesterday, “Is it conceivable that such repellent dolts would be allowed into public life if they were not in tax-free clerical garb? How true it is that religion poisons everything.”
A cheap and unsophisticated squawk like that does not merit a response.
But, interestingly enough, while he railed against Obama for giving a speech in bad faith, Hitchens has yet to come clean for his support for a real dangerous enterprise, namely the war in Iraq, perpetuated by a far more powerful “dolt,” namely President George W. Bush. Five years later, despite the flawed war planning, the strategic blunders made along the way, and the thousands of dead Americans and Iraqis, Hitchens is still intent on pushing the notion that invading was a good idea, its just that White House screwed it all up.
As recently as last Monday, Hitchens wrote in Slate:
The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say “attempt” rather than “do,” which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on “a war of choice.” But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons.
Spoken like a true believer. Only someone of Hitchens’ outsized sense of piety could blur the differences between a war of choice and the responsibility to protect the actual victims of a genocidal campaign. And at the same time, he conveniently ignores the fact that the sanctions were working, since they weaken Sadaam’s military and forced him to accept weapons inspectors. History did create the war in Iraq, people in the White House did.
Hitchens also astonishingly suggests with the full confidence of a confused Hegalian that the American invasion of Iraq was an inevitable outcome of its involvement with that country’s affairs. Again, that formulation nearly absolves the Bush administration of all responsibility.
More importantly, it is appalling to hear Hitchens castigate clergy men, many of whom opposed the war, while he asserts his own blind faith in asserting that the war was waged “on the right side and for the right reasons” despite so much evidence to the contrary.
At times moments like these, I think only satire can convey the sheer absurdity of some of the pro-war arguments. And in spirit, I present to you Dave Chappelle’s skit spoofing the variety of preposterous justifications used by the Bush White House in the run up to the war in Iraq.
Danielle Pletka, a foreign and defense policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, an institution responsible for incubating many of the neo-conservatism ideas that we come to know and love, wrote in Sunday’s New York Times:
We point to all the United Nations Security Council resolutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency statements, the C.I.A. analyses, the Silberman-Robb report, the Senate Intelligence Committee findings — if we were wrong, we were in good and honest company.
But what about the mistaken assumptions that remain unexamined? Looking back, I felt secure in the knowledge that all who yearn for freedom, once free, would use it well. I was wrong. There is no freedom gene, no inner guide that understands the virtues of civil society, of secret ballots, of political parties. And it turns out that living under Saddam Hussein’s tyranny for decades conditioned Iraqis to accept unearned leadership, to embrace sect and tribe over ideas, and to tolerate unbridled corruption.
Now compare that statement with President Bush’s former presidential envoy to Iraq L. Paul Bremer recently said in the New York Times that same day:
Our soldiers were magnificent in liberating Iraq. But after arriving in the country, I saw that the American government was not adequately prepared to deal with the growing security threats. Looting raged unchecked in major cities. By late 2003, as the insurgency and terrorism grew, it became clear that the coalition also lacked an effective counterinsurgency strategy.
Our troops on the ground were valiant and selfless, but prewar planning provided for fewer than half the number of troops that independent studies suggested would be needed in Iraq. And we did not have a plan to provide the most basic function of any government — security for the population. Terrorists, insurgents, criminals and the Iraqi people got the impression that the coalition would not, or could not, protect civilians.
On Friday, McCain went to Round Rock, Texas to raise some money and criticize both of the leading Democratic contenders for wanting to renegotiate the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement before a pro-business crowd. McCain exaggerated both Obama’s and Clinton’s positions in accusing them of wanting to unilaterally abrogate the trade agreement altogether.
But Obama and Clinton did not willy-nilly declare pulling out of NAFTA. Clinton during the debate on Tuesday night said:
It is not enough just to criticize NAFTA, which I have, and for some years now. I have put forth a very specific plan about what I would do. And it does include telling Canada and Mexico that we will opt out unless we renegotiate the core labor and environmental standards.
While much of the press has focused on how it’s so hard to put the free trade genie back in the bottle and how the Democrats are oh so protectionist now, few are actually reporting on why the environmental standards is such an important issue. Pollution in Mexico has intensified under NAFTA to the point where some consider a pollution haven for transnational companies.
In 2005, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin rebuked the United States for unilaterally pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty and ignoring the root causes of global warming. Surely, renegotiating NAFTA to improve environmental standards would not offend Canadians sensibilities. Somehow I doubt this criticism will ever be fully addressed in the context of the NAFTA debate.
But McCain made an even more specious argument on Friday too in emphasizing a somewhat tenuous link between the war in Afghanistan and NAFTA. He told those gathered in the town hall meeting at the Dell Computers headquarters that:
The Canadians are now supplying brave young Canadians to the fight in Afghanistan. One of our priorities is to try to get more cooperation from our allies throughout the world. All these things are interconnected.
I could not agree more that the all these issues are interconnected. But it’s for different reasons.Waning support for Afghanistan among our allies and Canada has less to do with trade per se and more to do with Iraq. Citizens of NATO countries, whether rightly or wrongly, increasingly see Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the same U.S.-led fumbled adventurism called the war on terror.
I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused. Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq, and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.
Our NATO allies know that since the Bush administration has diverted its resources and attention to waging a failed war in Iraq, the U.S. has neglected Afghanistan. This in turn has contributed to an even greater deterioration of the security and development of Afghanistan. Six years after the invasion, opium production is up, the Taliban controls much of Southern Afghanistan, suicide bombers are on the rise, and police officers are undermanned and corrupted.
Consequently, there has been a growing backlash directed against the United States by both Canadians and the Europeans alike for fighting a losing war that they believe they have no real stake in. As the New York Times notes Canadians in particular have signaled their inclination to pull out soon.
Some of that pressure has come from Canada, whose 2,500 troops in Afghanistan have suffered heavy losses, including 78 deaths. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he will withdraw his force on schedule next year unless NATO adds 1,000 troops.
His government said Wednesday that if NATO agreed to add the troops, it would introduce a motion in the Canadian Parliament to prolong the Canadian mission for one more year beyond February 2009.
If Europeans and Canadians see supporting the war effort in Afghanistan as proxy support for the American led adventure in Iraq, then it’s the policies advocated by John lets-stay-in-Iraq-for-another-hundred-years McCain who may do more to harm U.S.-Canadian or NATO relations. That said, perhaps McCain should wonder who is sending the wrong message to whom.
Every year around this time people often like to pay homage to Dr. King’s 1963 “I have a Dream” speech and praise his commitment to non-violence. But somehow his fierce opposition to the Vietnam war does not seem to attract the same attention as say the march on Washington or in Selma. I suspect this stems from people in America wanting to cheery pick Dr. King’s legacy to highlight what we do like, namely integration, but then ignore his unflinchingly criticism of the American condition broadly understood.
No matter our race or creed, Dr. King’s message is still too radical for our ears.
In that spirit, however, I thought it would be appropriate to post a video that illustrated Dr. King’s fervent anti-war advocacy and thoughtful criticism of America given our current state of affairs.
Money quote:
Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as His divine messanic force to be policeman of the whole world.
As of this writing, 3,915 American soldiers died in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
From the start of the war in March of 2003 till June of 2006, 151,000 Iraqis died. Apparently, these statistics have not made an impression on everyone.
Watch as Senator McCain informs a group of voters at a New Hampshire town hall meeting that its possible that American soldiers could be in Iraq for 50 to 100 years.
I must confess that while I am not pacifist myself, I am generally highly skeptical of the utility or necessity of war as a means of achieving peace. That said, when we are told a war that should not have been waged in the first place should or could go on indefinitely, we should reflect upon our history and listen to critics of past military misadventures for guidance, even if it comes from unlikely sources preaching inconvenient truths.
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Update: For those of you interested in listening to Dr. King’s prophetic speech entitled, “Why I Oppose the Vietnam war” click here.
I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see read in Paul Krugman call Barack Obama “the anti-change candidate” in one of his recent columns, and then under emphasize the importance of the war in our current political climate by arguing at TPM:
I guess I’ve been going on the view that no Democrat is not going to end this war, and no Democrat is going to start another war. I have not felt that foreign policy is the defining issue in the race to the nomination.
I found this position rather odd considering what Krugman said about Obama in a column called “They Told You So” published a year ago this month. It was in that very same column that Krugman singled out Obama, along with a few others, including Al Gore, Russ Feingold, and Nancy Pelosi, as those who not only provided “antiwar arguments that now seem prescient,” but whose stance on the war he apparently found admirable. In fact, he said:
We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.
What a difference a year makes. :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
On his blog for the New Yorker, “Interesting Times,” George Packer described the harrowing experience of one Iraqi he calls Ibrahim who to fled Baghdad after receiving death threats from a co-worker aligned with the Mahdi militia. Realizing his life was in danger, Ibrahim tried to navigate the byzantine world of human trafficking to get himself smuggled out of country. Packer’s source, Ibrahim, says the journey led him from Dubai to Bombay, among other countries, before landing him in Egypt where he was repeatedly tortured by his captors after they discovered Ibrahim’s forged traveling papers.
Packer relays Ibrahim telling of the underground torture haven in excruciating detail here.
In March, Ibrahim says, an Egyptian intelligence officer involved in the smuggling ring that brought him to Cairo sent a Palestinian middleman to persuade Ibrahim to go to the airport with his fake passport. At the airport, he could have his entry into Egypt legalized. Desperate to keep the police at bay, Ibrahim overcame his fear of deportation and did as he was told. But instead of receiving a permit, he was arrested and taken to a prison beneath the airport. There, other lost souls who had run afoul of the Egyptian authorities languished underground for weeks on end. Moldavian girls, charged with prostitution, were regularly raped in prison; men from Ghana, Liberia, Algeria, and even Europe, arrested on one charge or another, suffered brutal beatings and electric shocks administered with a lamp. Ibrahim was among those beaten. One day he heard the cries of a Somali boy of about twelve who was being tortured in a bathroom. The place was swarming with cockroaches, and Ibrahim’s Portuguese cellmate instructed him to stuff his nostrils and ears with paper before going to sleep so that they didn’t crawl in and lay eggs. “Under the floor where tourists from all around the world go,” Ibrahim told me, “this is what exists.”
But miraculously, Ibrahim managed to get himself released from captivity and even fast tracked by the U.S. State Department for asylum in the U.S. with the help of an American attorney named Kirk Johnson of the law firm of Holland & Knight who tirelessly worked pro bono on Ibrahim’s behalf.
Once Packer and Ibrahim met face to face, the latter had questions that center as much on human nature as it did on policy matters.
When I saw Ibrahim last week, the questions kept pouring out of him: Who are the real Americans? The officials who treated him badly in Baghdad, or the volunteers who showered him with gifts in Tucson? The ones who threw up barriers to his rescue, or the ones who made it their personal business? Why did Egyptians care less about a fellow-Arab than some Americans did? Are people basically bad or good?
Since those questions are difficult to answer in a single book much less a blog post, I thought I would leave readers of IntheKut with a few stats and figures that might convey how unlikely it is that Ibrahim would actually find refuge in the United States.
The Bush administration promised to settle 7,000 refuges in February, before revising that number to 2,000 in September. So far approximately 1,600 have been resettled in the U.S.
When asked whether or not the United States should treat an attack on Israel by Iran as an attack against Americans at the
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