Attacking Iran: Will the Generals Mutiny?

At the end of the day, I doubt it will come to that, but the fact that it is being discussed suggests that the Pentagon, at least the military side, is not happy with the heightened rhetoric concerning Iran. With a military fighting two wars and manning bases across the globe, there appears to be no stomach for another front.

According to the Sunday Times, the venerable British paper:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

The question on my mind is why? Why is the military apparently showing reticence on going to war with Iran?

1. Is it because the military has no belief in the mission?

2. Is it because the military has lost faith in the civilian leadership after Iraq?

3. Is it because the military has doubts in its ability to win?

4. Is it because the military does not believe that war is the only choice?

This third question, of course, is the sum total of the first two questions as it depends on the definition of success and the leadership to get you there. In terms of material ability, the US military is the strongest and most able force in the history of mankind. Yes, that we know. But is that all it takes to "win"? Clausewitz took pains to point out that the advantage is with the side with the greatest strength. Yet, even he agreed that the edge can go to the lesser strength if it has the advantage of national will and ingenuity.

As we see in Iraq, military boots, steel and grit is not an automatic path to success.

We also see that if the definition of success is a moving target adjusted with facts on the ground, overall perception is one of failure.

What would be the definition of success in Iran? Would it be putting the nuclear program out of commission? Would it be regime change? Probably both. How can this be attained? John Mearsheimer and others have argued that air power just won't do it on its own. What would US boots on the ground in Iran mean? The occupation of Iraq, which the US is failing at, is a cake walk compared to Iran. At least in Iraq, self-immolation between Sunni and Shia means that less combined focus is on US troop. Iran is different. Iran does not suffer from identity crises. All the rage of the Iranian people will be focused singularly on US troops. Iran is also 3 times the size of Iraq with much more challenging terrain.

Perhaps, the US military recognizes all of this.

That means that the only way to get the wholehearted support of the military is for the situation to be one of no choice. In other words, the US has to have no choice but to go to war with Iran. If the national interest is at risk, it is only then that the generals will lead the charge if asked by the President.

So how can this situation be created?

One way is for the US to continually point to Iranian interference in Iraq as jeopardizing US troop lives. Despite the fact that Iranian involvement has been going on since the US invasion, it is only now that the US is making hay of it. Skeptics can reasonably ask, why now?

However, this tactic does not appear to be garnering a critical mass of support, neither domestically nor in military ranks perhaps because there is a recognition that it is a construed argument.

Thus, the second way is for some cataclysmic event to occur. For example, a terrorist attack which can be linked to Iran may give the US what it needs to strike.

Also possible is a scenario where Israel attacks a nuclear installation in Iran, a redux of 1981 against Iraq, on the basis that Iran poses a threat. Should Iran then rise to the provocation and strike back either directly or through non-state surrogates, the US may then feel it must intervene.

In short, if the war-mongers in the Administration, such as Cheney, are bent on attacking Iran, they will find the way to get the generals behind it, as Iraq has painfully proven. To quote Cheney speaking a few days ago in Australia:

"We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference," Cheney said.

"But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table," he said.

"We believe it would be a serious mistake if a nation such as Iran became a nuclear power," he said.

Putin's Munich Doctrine Reverberations and the Dialogue of the Deaf

Today's Washington Post contains two views reflecting on Russia after Putin's watershed speech delivered last weekend during the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy .

The first is by David Ignatius and offers a clear and intelligent assessment of the challenges and choices faced by Russia on its road towards democracy. Ignatius offers insight into the inner workings of the upper echelons of Russian leadership. If one listens to these men, a clear message comes through. Namely, Russia will do what Russia wants to do - not what Americans think they should do. It behooves his readers to hear the words of the men he quotes so as to understand before drawing conclusions as to what we would project onto Russia as the "correct way" forward.

Unfortunately, American proscriptions and prescriptions make the rest of the world cringe like the scratching of a fingernail across a blackboard. A sense of American exceptionalism and benevolent hegemony has permeated and constrained our foreign policy to the point that we no longer listen or even hear others. The US is increasingly rejecting dialogue as a sign of weakness. Diplomacy, as envisioned by George Kennan and practiced so successfully by many US presidents, is no longer the strategy of choice.

The second piece in the Post today by Charles Krauthammer is an exasperating example of this attitude; it is classic Krauthammer - replete with arrogant war-mongering and imperial hubris. He follows his typical point and shoot method of analysis which offers the reader nothing but a sense that everything must be all the other guys fault... everything must be the American way or the high-way.

Even if one starts from the premise that the US experience is worthy of emulation, which it is, shoving it down the other guy's throat is not likely to gain any avid and sustained following.

Rather than engage the substance of Putin's speech, Krathammer resorts to offensive defense. He rejects out of hand all that Putin puts on the table by simply saying that Russia can't be taken seriously because it has such a bad record. For example, he dismisses Putin's comments such:

There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, yet another Putin opponent who met an untimely and unprosecuted death; about the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and economic extortion.

Really! Is that to say that the US has not turned Iraq into a "smoldering gun", or that the US has turned over to Italy the CIA agents charged with a case of rendition of a man to Egypt from Italy? The list here could be much longer, but the point is made.

The point is that such mud slinging is only conducive to rallying support in the bleachers or on the battlefield. It is not a form of dialogue that the US, the world leader, should be engaging the rest of the international community with. Being the leader brings with it the ability to lead...

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the US has emerged as the greatest power among the community of peoples and states. What has the US done with this grand position over the past 17 years? Is it not plausible that other states should rise to ask such a question, and if not hearing an acceptable response, take a seat at the head of the table? Is it not our duty to ask it of ourselves? What have we done with the responsibility that falls upon our shoulders by virtue of being where and what we are?

Krauthammer would do both his readers and himself well to remember that he has two ears and one mouth for a reason...

Iraq Has Neighbors and the US is Not One of Them, So Let's Talk

Think as they may, think as they must, for Iraq there is no other way.... but to talk.

As David Ignatius put it in the Washington Post today, Expect The Worse in Iraq... He reminds both Democrats and Republicans that there is no nice way out of Iraq for either the US or Iraqis. Yet, he does offer a number of suggestions to minimize the inevitable fallout - namely:
1. Protect the oil
2. Protect the Iraqi population (as much as the US can)
3. Talk with Iraq's neighbors
4. Push for Arab-Israeli peace
To this I would add,
5. Reposition US troops out of civilian areas into camps in Iraq, Kuwait and the Gulf.

If that all sounds familiar to you, do not wonder because it should. It is basically a recycle of the Iraq Study Group Report recommendations.

Recall the opening words of the ISG report, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating." Those are words echoed in the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq released in January:
"Unless efforts to reverse these conditions [increase in violence] show measurable progress during the term of this Estimate, the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate...."

More shocking, not only does the NIE state that Iraq is suffering a civil war, but even worse, what is occurring in Iraq is even more complicated than that! So what is more complicated than civil war?

Answer: Multiple levels of violence and actors. The actors are many. Sunni insurgents, Shia death squads backing the government and in turn backed by Iran, Kurdish nationalists (supported, both financially and militarily, by Israel), and foreign fighters stirring the pot. Put it all together and you have a Sunni insurgency (perhaps supported by Syria and possibly in the future by Saudi Arabia) fighting against Shia domination over Iraq and Kurdish encroachment in the north, Shia death squads fueled by Iran wreaking revenge for decades of subjugation and ensuring that they maintain the upper hand, and Kurds supported by Israel in the north who want to protect their new-found independence while grabbing as much land south of them as possible. To make sure that none of this violence subsides, foreign fighters are there stoking the flames with incredulous acts of mass terror.

In short, you have a multi-party internal civil and external proxy war.

But it does not stop there. The US, who unleashed this latent hell, occupies the country, and it now finds itself buttressing an Iranian-leaning [if not out-right supported] government. One of the great ironies of the US grievous blunder in Iraq is that Iran seems to have come out the winner. Now the US finds itself supporting Iraq's government while flirting with an even greater confrontation with Iran, to whom the Iraqi government is allied.

Talk about complicated.

Yet, interestingly the NIE does not seem to agree with just about everyone else except Bush and Cheney. The NIE, while stating that what happens in Iraq impacts and is impacted by Iraq's neighbors, does not agree that there is much value to engaging those very neighbors to find a solution to the chaos in Iraq.

That is purely intellectual dishonesty.

While making the case that Turkey and Syria (while curiously making no mention of Iran in this context) have a vested interest in the outcomes in Iraq, in the same breath the NIE claims that the violence is so path dependent because of the "self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics" that no external influence can change its course. Well, if that is true, then there is nothing that the US can do either. Ergo, the NIE has just made the case for US withdrawal!

What is even more glaring is that the NIE in its initial pages makes a big case for how impartial, professional and nonpartisan was the process of generating the report. However, while facilely supporting the Bush Administration's case for not engaging Iraq's neighbors, it has in fact torpedoed the entire argument for US continued presence. Unfortunately, not even they can have it both ways.

Thus, if the US wants to make the case that it must remain in Iraq to protect the Iraqi people and see Iraq through to the shores of peaceful coexistence, it cannot at the same time make the claim that there is no value to involving Iraq's neighbors in doing the same.

Contemptuous Cheney, Delusional Works Too

Vice President Cheney not only seems to see a world only revealed to him, but he also places the will of the Bushites above the annoying "will of the people" (see earlier post). Delusional and leadership do not belong in the same sentence, let alone in the same White House. Add contemptuous to the mix and you have near half a million killed civilians, thousands of dead and wounded soldiers, and billions of tax payer dollars in big business coffers. For what?

According to Vice President Cheney, every drop of blood and penny was worth it to achieve the better world we now live in...... As he tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer,

CHENEY: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf. But what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do. The world is much safer today because of it. There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed. His sons are dead. His government is gone. And the world is better off for it. You can argue about that all you want. That's history.

History??? The world is a safer place???? Someone please tell that to all the decimated and lost lives in Iraq and the US. Saddam's sons are dead, but so are too many others.

But according to Cheney, "we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime..."

Is that what our objective was? What happened to weapons of mass destruction, axis of evil, and Saddam's support of Al Qaeda? Oh, yes, those "objectives" were proven ungrounded... perhaps even fabricated.

(Spin 101: when you make up stuff to get people to do what you want, always have a back up story so they don't feel they did it in vain when the s*** hits the fan... and hope they forget the original story.)

Memo to Cheney: We did not forget.

But that's not all... Not only did we achieve "our objective", but we were also successful... (yes, we had our cake and ate it too!) and all is well in Iraq.

CHENEY: ... They have got a democratically written constitution, the first ever in that part of the world. They've had three national elections. So there's been a lot of success.

But when pressed by Blitzer:

BLITZER: Some of your good Republican friends in the Senate and the House, are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders, of the failures.
CHENEY: Wolf -- Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash

He doesn't accept the premise? What premise is he rejecting here? The premise of Congressional oversight? The premise of accountability? Is that akin to declaring he doesn't feel obligated to answer to the American people or their representatives?

Sarcasm aside, although it may be the last refuge of the helpless, Cheney is putting forth a very dangerous precedent. Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that the US objective in Iraq was merely to take down the Saddam regime and at this the US was successful, that can only be half the equation. Measuring success cannot be only in terms of outcome or benefit... It must also take into account cost, both immediate and ongoing.

At what cost did the US achieve the downfall and death of the Saddam and his progeny?

Answering that must balance that outcome against the death of hundreds of thousands, destruction of an entire country's infrastructure, loss of US world stature and solidarity, a generation of US and Iraqi orphans, widows, and disabled, the opportunity cost of the billions of dollars gone towards the war effort, and last, but not least, the immediate and long term political impact on the region. That last calculation would need to consider what the impact of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has been on the balance of power in the region.

The only thing more dangerous than a fool is an unbridled powerful one.

Autocracy By Any Other...

According to the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, autocracy is defined as:
"(aw-TOK-ruh-see) A system of government in which supreme political power is held by one person. (Compare constitutional monarchy, democracy, and oligarchy.)
+ Iraq under Saddam Hussein is an autocracy."

I have been at a loss for words (but even that is a lame excuse for my limited blogging lately) .... because what the US is doing in the Middle East has gone beyond the pale. Bush and his guiding voice (other than God), Cheney, have become totally immune not only to the voices of wisdom offering a virtual menu of policy options for addressing the debacle and travesty of Iraq, but more importantly to the will of the American people. And so thousands more troops march off, needlessly, into harm's way.... not to mention the scores of Iraqis who will also suffer.

Last Sunday, on no other than Fox News (surprise, surprise), Cheney made a startling revelation to Chris Wallace and the American people. He basically said that the Bush Administration would not be swayed by the will of the people. (Read David Ignatius piece in the Wash Post - great analysis). Forget polls, which arguably may be seen to be whimsical; he even dismissed general election results. (Please refer to the definition of autocracy above). So if the people are not to be heeded when they cast their ballots, what then is left for democracy?

(Read - only slightly tongue in cheek- I guess there is no wonder that the US can't impose democracy abroad; apparently, if the VP is to be believed and the Bushites observed, it can't even maintain it at home... The only reason this is a half-serious comment is because democracy can never be imposed even by paragons of it.)

But, you be the judge... here are the VPs words:

"WALLACE: I want to ask you one more question about this, and then we'll talk about other issues.
Iraq was a big issue in the November election. I want you to take a look at some numbers from the election. According to the National Exit Poll, 67 percent said the war was either very or extremely important to their vote, and only 17 percent supported sending in more troops.
By taking the policy you have, haven't you, Mr. Vice President, ignored the express will of the American people in the November election?
CHENEY: Well, Chris, this president, and I don't think any president worth his salt, can afford to make decisions of this magnitude according to the polls. The polls change day by day...
WALLACE: Well, this was an election, sir.
CHENEY: Polls change day by day, week by week. I think the vast majority of Americans want the right outcome in Iraq. The challenge for us is to be able to provide that. But you cannot simply stick your finger up in the wind and say, "Gee, public opinion's against; we'd better quit.""

I think it is time to recognize that we already have a third party in this country, and they hold the power. For lack of a better word, and because neo-con has become hackneyed, I will anoint the Bushites, the Imperialist Party. Last November we took the first step at running them out of town, but we still have a ways to go.

Will the real Republicans please stand up??

Perhaps they already have in the form of Senator Chuck Hagel. Here is a man who is true to his soul and essential republican principles (small "R") ... like growing the economy, maintaining international respect, leadership and citizenship, and heeding the people. His has been a lone Republican voice of reason which is only now resonating from amidst the howl of Bushite imperialist, autocratic dogma and self-delusion.

And the Bushites sense the danger... Once again read the VPs words:

"WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, it's not just Democrats, though, who oppose the plan. This week there were a number of leading Senate Republicans who also came out against it. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. NORM COLEMAN, R-MINN.: I'm not prepared, at this time, to support that.
SEN. DAVID VITTER, R-LA.: Too little, maybe too late.
SEN. CHUCK HAGEL, R-NEB.: The most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
WALLACE: Aren't you losing a lot of support in your own caucus?
CHENEY: Well, I don't think Chuck Hagel has been with us for a long time.... We have to prevail, and we have to have the stomach for the fight, long term. And for us to do what Chuck Hagel, for example, suggests or to buy into that kind of analysis — it's not really analysis; it's just criticism — strikes me as absolutely the wrong thing to do.
These are tough decisions, but the president's made it. It's a good decision. It's a good policy. We think, on reflection, it's the best way for us to move forward to achieve our objectives..."

Not only do the Bushites sense the heat from within, they are even throwing bones to the Democrats. After many an outcry but only moved to act under the threat of congressional hearings, the Bushites have, in small part, rescinded their self-declared right to unlimited power by placing the NSA eavesdropping transgression under judicial review. However, despite being once again subject to FISA oversight, the Bushites maintained the prerogative to act however they see fit, suggesting that the program could be instituted once again at any time (assuming that they are to be believed in having stopped it in the first place).

"de·moc·ra·cy /[di-mok-ruh-see] –noun, plural -cies.
1. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
2. a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies."

Let's Blame It On the Iraqis

Now that the year is almost over, the mood is weary ... weary of a Congress that has failed in its constitutional obligations, weary of an administration seemingly answerable to no one including reason, weary of the extremist fringes whether in the US or abroad, weary of increasing terrorist fears, and ... weary of Iraq - especially the cost in life, limb and treasure here and there. We look to 2007 to see changes on all of these and other fronts. Americans spoke up in November and now we expect change.

Yet, what does change mean? Does it mean that we shrug our shoulders and dust off our hands and pretend like the mess out there is in fact out there and not in here? Do we look ahead and pretend that the past will not eventually come back to bite us?

Or does change mean that we hold those who created this mess accountable and make sure they do everything they can to "fix it"?

Iraq is a good case in point, since it appears to be the fulcrum around which all our weariness revolves - Congress' abdication of its responsibilities, the Administration's sheer audacity and stubbornness, loss of life and treasure here and abroad, and a revitalization of the terrorist threat.

The new mantra coming out of Washington is that Iraqis have to step up to the plate and take charge of their country. Very few would actually disagree with that. However, what is especially jarring is when that sentiment is followed by claims that the US has done all it can to give the Iraqis the hope of a brighter future! Since we have done all that we can and the Iraqis, instead of being grateful and holding on to this golden opportunity (imagine that?), want instead to kill each other, well, what can the US do? Iraq is Iraq's problem and they have to fix it, right?

That logic is not only deficient; it is immoral.

Iraq was broken by the United States of America. That is not to say that it was in good shape before March 2003, but it is to say that Iraq is much worse off today then before the US, unprovoked and based on false pretenses, invaded the country - dismantled its institutions, allowed wanton plundering, dispersed its army, and allowed century old rivalries just enough oxygen to awaken smoldering embers.

It is also to say that if the objective was, as it is now claimed, that Saddam's repressive regime had to go so as to allow the march of liberty... well, there were and are better ways to achieve that then military invasion and ill-sighted occupation. Whether we like it or not, democracy does not come at the end of a soldiers gun. But that is not the reason the US invaded the country. At least, that is not what this Administration claimed at the time. Accordingly, there was no plan for what was not the objective to begin with!

That was then and this is now. Today, Iraq is broken. Hundreds of people are dying every day. Thousands of people are fleeing their homes and becoming refugees whether in Iraq or neighboring countries. Life for the average Iraqi, especially Arab Sunni or Shia, is pure hell between the lack of jobs and basic amenities to constant fear of death squads, insurgents and terrorists.

Ironically, Iran has achieved, despite itself and through no effort of its own, what it had failed to achieve for hundreds of years since before and during the days of the Ottoman Empire - control over the Shia-dominated lands of southern Iraq. What is also truly regrettable and as bumper-stickeresque as it sounds - the US went to war in Iraq and Iran won.

I am reminded of the wise words, despite his misplaced notion of loyalty, of Colin Powell - "If you break it, you own it." Yet, when you hear TV talking heads, senators, congressmen, and read the endless op-eds, the message is the same. The US has no option but to leave Iraq to the Iraqis.

But there are other options... and not the one the President is talking about. Iraq does not need more US troops in Baghdad, as his military commanders on the ground are telling him. Today, the new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is in Baghdad talking to the top brass, and already we are hearing that General John Abizaid is going to resign. For years now we have heard the President declare that the military commanders are the ones who call the shots on the ground. Well, either that was not true either, or it was the military commanders' fault all along. Secretary Gates is on a mission to change - change those who would dissent from Bush.

Is that the change we need? Blame it on the Iraqis, blame it on the military commanders, blame it on Iran, blame it on Syria, blame it on the terrorists, blame it on Saddam loyalists, blame it on them ...... How about blaming it on the leaders and policymakers who broke Iraq? How about blaming it on US?

Yet, blame is meaningless and a wasted energy if it does not yield redemption. Redemption will come only when we fix Iraq - and not by sending more troops to possible death. Redemption will come when we realize that we won't succeed if we continue to go it alone - or by continuing our sledgehammer foreign policy.

The Iraq Study Group report gave us important options. The bottom line is that we have to reach out - to all Iraqis, Iraq's neighbors, the region and the world. That means we have to work in partnership - not run away or fight away.

That is what I will be reflecting on as we enter 2007... because I too am weary.

See you in January, and may this be a happy and new year for all.

Kofi Annan Bids Adieu With Reflections on US Hegemony

In his farewell speech after 10 years as United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan imparted 5 lessons to the world, in general, and the US, in particular. He chose as the backdrop for this event the Harry S. Truman Library in Missouri because, in his words:

I think it's especially fitting that I do that here in the house that honors the legacy of Harry S Truman. If FDR was the architect of the United Nations, President Truman was the master-builder, and the faithful champion of the Organization in its first years, when it had to face quite different problems from the ones FDR had expected. Truman's name will for ever be associated with the memory of far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor. And you will see that every one of my five lessons brings me to the conclusion that such leadership is no less sorely needed now than it was sixty years ago.

In other words, while the US scuttles away all the goodwill it commanded in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, there is an imperative to recall the reasons why the US stood as the champion for world peace after WWII and heralded the United Nations as the future bastion of discourse and diplomacy to achieve that peace. And as the Bush Administration considers the Iraq Study Group Report and ponders how to get out of the mess it has created for itself and the Iraqi people, it may be wise to heed the 5 lessons Annan spelt out:

1. My first lesson is that, in today's world, the security of every one of us is linked to that of everyone else.

2. My second lesson is that we are not only all responsible for each other's security. We are also , in some measure, responsible for each other's welfare . Global solidarity is both necessary and possible.

3. My third lesson is that both security and development ultimately depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law.

4. My fourth lesson – closely related to the last one – is that governments must be accountable for their actions in the international arena, as well as in the domestic one.

5. My fifth and final lesson derives inescapably from those other four. We can only do all these things by working together through a multilateral system, and by making the best possible use of the unique instrument bequeathed to us by Harry Truman and his contemporaries, namely the United Nations.

These five lessons can be summed up as five principles, which I believe are essential for the future conduct of international relations : collective responsibility, global solidarity, the rule of law, mutual accountability, and multilateralism .

In his closing words, Annan implored the White House and all Americans to hold on to its legacy and its committment to leadership.

You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago?

Surely not. More than ever today Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world's peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition.

Typical of the tin ears of this Administration, the only comment came from the State Department's Spokesman, Sean McCormack, at his daily press briefing:

As I said, are we going to see eye to eye on every single issue with Secretary Generals of the United Nations? No, probably not. With respect to Mr. Annan's remarks, he, of course, is entitled to his opinion. ....And in terms of how the United States has sought to protect itself and act in its own national interest and, by the way, also try to help protect and defend freedom and liberty and those countries that subscribe to that political viewpoint, of course, we have made difficult decisions and we don't expect that everybody has agreed with those decisions and people are entitled to their opinions...."

Yes, those were actually McCormack's words, as unbelievable as they sound.

Yet, I see a glimmer of hope that Annan's words will not be in vain. He was introduced at the Truman Library today by none other than Republican Senator Chuck Hagel! (See my previous posts on Hagel)

The message coming from all directions is that the US go-it-alone sledgehammer foreign policy is counterproductive; it has left us and the world worse off. And that is the lesson we can all learn from the last 6 years....

Iraq Study Group Report

Here is the long awaited report. I haven't read it all yet, but here are some excerpts. Will have a follow-up post with comments! Initial reaction - nothing new, may even be old, but at least serious.

-- "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved."

-- "Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly. We believe that these two recommendations are equally important and reinforce one another. If they are effectively implemented, and if the Iraqi government moves forward with national reconciliation, Iraqis will have an opportunity for a better future, terrorism will be dealt a blow, stability will be enhanced in an important part of the world, and America's credibility, interests and values will be protected."

--- "If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al-Qaida could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized."

-- "During the past nine months we have considered a full range of approaches for moving forward. All have flaws. Our recommended course has shortcomings, but we firmly believe that it includes the best strategies and tactics to positively influence the outcome in Iraq and the region."

--- "The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. This diplomatic effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq's neighbors. Iraq's neighbors and key states in and outside the region should form a support group to reinforce security and national reconciliation within Iraq, neither of which Iraq can achieve on its own."

--- "Given the ability of Iran and Syria to influence events within Iraq and their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, the United States should try to engage them constructively. In seeking to influence the behavior of both countries, the United States has disincentives and incentives available. Iran should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shia groups to encourage national reconciliation. The issue of Iran's nuclear programs should continue to be dealt with by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. Syria should control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents and terrorists in and out of Iraq.

"The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria and President Bush's June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians - those who accept Israel's right to exist - and Syria.

"As the United States develops its approach toward Iraq and the Middle East, the United States should provide additional political, economic and military support for Afghanistan, including resources that might become available as combat forces are moved out of Iraq."

--- "The primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations. By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid-reaction and special operations teams and in training, equipping, advising, force protection and search and rescue. Intelligence and support efforts would continue. A vital mission of those rapid reaction and special operations forces would be to undertake strikes against al-Qaida in Iraq."

Bush Meets Leader of Badr Death Brigade But Not Elected Hamas Leader

With Rumsfield gone and Bolton soon to follow, there are still a few rotten apples yet to go. Nevertheless, Bush seems to have heard America's roar and may even be rediscovering the art of diplomacy. So, we can give him points for that.

Today he meets with leading Iraqi Shiite cleric, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Although he holds no official position in the government, his party represents the largest bloc in parliament and a member of his party is one of Iraq's two vice-presidents. Hakim talks a a good talk, painting himself as an elder statesman with a democratic vision for Iraq. Bush, in an attempt to be even-handed, is even meeting next month with a Sunni leader, the other vice-president, Tariq Al-Hashimi.

However, Hakim's history tells a different story.

Did I mention that his group also includes one of the most violent death squads in Iraq, the Badr Brigade (which later grew and morphed into the Badr Corps)? And did I also mention that this brigade was trained in (and some say equipped by) Iran and he is closely allied with Iran where he lived in exile while Saddam was in power? You might also be interested to know that his Badr Corps is responsible for some of the most heinous sectarian violence, the running of torture chambers, and murders of innocents, especially Sunnis. To make matters worse, members of Badr have now moved into key positions of the police causing Iraqis not only to fear the lawless but also the representatives of the law as well!

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Hakim had this to say:
In more than an hour of conversation at his Baghdad home and office, Hakim denied accusations that the Shiite-led government's security forces -- with alleged involvement by his party's armed wing -- have operated torture centers and death squads targeting Sunni Arabs. He also renewed his call to merge half of Iraq's 18 provinces into a federal region in the oil-rich, heavily Shiite south, and he played down Iran's interests in Iraq, saying that the Shiite theocracy to the east wants only what the United States claims to want: a stable Iraq.

Despite all of this, this meeting would, in fact, be something to commend Bush for. After all, this is realpolitik in action. However, it is also the height of hypocrisy, not to mention inconsistent and counterproductive foreign policy. The US policy is to not meet with groups who propagate non-state violence, even if they are elected by their people in a fair and democratic process, or so was the excuse when the US decided to refuse to deal with elected Hamas leaders in Palestine.

In the case of Iraq, it is OK to meet with those who have blood on their hands because it is prudent if it holds any prospect of reducing the violence. Yet, somehow that logic doesn't translate to the Palestinians. Why?

On the other hand, we reward the Iraqis for going to the polls and electing leaders, even if some of them are associated with violent groups who wantonly kill others. Yet, in Palestine that message doesn't apply. In fact, we penalize an entire people and halt all aid to a starving population for expressing themselves in a democratic process at the polls. Why? Because we don't like how they voted? Does that mean that we like the way they voted in Iraq but not Palestine? Or, does it mean that we don't care how they voted in Iraq just as long as they voted?

So, what does the average Palestinian learn from that? Does he then surmise that democracy is what the US wants for everyone else, but not for him?

We can go on and on, but I think you can see where this can go.....

Deja Vu in Iran: Iraq All Over Again But Worse

Will someone, please, get the bullies off the playground, or, at least, call in some adults?

From the man who opened our eyes to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the single event which many have pointed to as the turning point in the failed US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Seymour Hersh has a new warning siren out in this week's New Yorker concerning Part Two of the Bush Administration's vision and strategy for a New Middle East...... Operation Iran.

It is almost funny, if it were not so offensively sad that this administration seems to be accountable to no one, not even the American voter. One would think that after the "thumping" they took on Nov. 7 , they would sound a more conciliatory tone.... I won't even suggest that they may have learned their lesson, because true to their modus operandi, fear is a more effective impetus than either conscious or shame.

And now with the full measure of the debacle in Iraq still not accounted for, the drum beat is on for preventive war with Iran. As Hersh points out, leading neoconservatives are already doing their own "thumping".... of their chests,

In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. “Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”

The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President’s staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser “believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq,” the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney’s office “want to end the regime,” the consultant said. “They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran.”

Perhaps, there is some hope that wiser ones will step in and save the administration from itself....

President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”

However, according to Joshua Muravchik, what the US needs to get back on track is to be saved by some more good 'ol neoconservatism:

Fix the Public Diplomacy Mess. The Bush administration deserves criticism for its failure to repair America’s public diplomacy apparatus. No group other than neocons is likely to figure out how to do that. We are, after all, a movement whose raison d’être was combating anti-Americanism in the United States. Who better, then, to combat it abroad?

In other words, while the neocons are busy pointing out how wrong the Bush Adminsitration got it, they are ignoring the fact that they are the ones who gave it to them in the first place! .... And now they want us to turn to them for help!!!All I can think is SCREAM!

On Conflation and its Dis-content

The bottom line is that words, and the concepts they embody, have meaning. To use a word loosely is to impoverish and even obfuscate its original content. Conflating fascism and religious zealotry into "Islamofascism" cheapens the significance and impact of both. It also robs those who suffer under either from a recognition of the true nature of their suffering.

I have written much on this and hope that we can start to generate a new discussion around the dangers of conflation. First, we conflated actors (Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda). We imagined a scenario of the one giving weapons of mass destruction to the other, reified it, and acted upon our constructed reality! The result is that we are entrenched in a war based on false pretexts and lies. This has consequences - people are dying and hatred has new fuel.

Now we are witnessing the conflation of two different, yet separately serious, deviations. If we do not realize the conflation, we will fail to address the problem, yet again!

This topic requires more ...... and it shall come.

Neither Pope Nor Bush the Emperor Are Wearing Any Clothes

Reflecting for days on the Pope's recent coming out as a Bush ally in the war against "Islamofascism" has left me struggling to find an excuse for his clear and utter ignorance both of history and theology - at least anything not Catholic. It seems that both the Pope and Bush have more in common then Islamophobia. What I do find stunning is his blatant historical revisionism as though the Inquisition and the Crusades were a mere aberration worthy of naught. Or has he conveniently forgotten the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain with death to any who chose not to convert to Christianity? It is about time that the "sword" image that has dominated Euro-Western vilification of Islam since the fall of Constantinople be shown for the fiction that it is.

I came across the words of a wise man from Israel, Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom, who writes of this travesty so eloquently. Here is an excerpt:

Muhammad's Sword (excerpt)
by Uri Avnery
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.

THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables.

More on Bush's Megalomania and Racism

The recent Bush Administration's new refrain entitled "Islamo-Fascism" can only be a new expression of their complete and utter megalomaniac ignorance, at best, and at worse, a ratcheting up of their fear-politics. The result is a policy which appears bent on creating more hate and division in the world. What is even more insidious is their persistent rally cry which aims at painting any dissenter as unpatriotic bordering on a traitor.

This new strategy once again brings to mind the sick methods which gave rise to the moral depravity of the instigators of World War II. Note the words of Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials:

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

Recently, a dear friend of mine and a very able political commentator wrote the following article which appears as an open letter to Bush. He refreshingly voices what many of us have resigned to a falling on deaf ears.

A letter to President Bush
Before a real clash of civilisations becomes reality, Mohamed Hakki* pleads for reason -- and some comprehensive rethinking -- in Washington

Dear President Bush,

It is with my deepest regret that I write this letter to you. People throughout the Middle East have always held every president of the United States in the highest regard, but I have been driven to write this letter after hearing your thoughtless, almost racist, description of our hallowed religion as "Islamo-fascism".

When you first used this expression sometime ago, we thought it was just a slip of the tongue, a stumble. Your more mature advisors would surely soon correct you. When General Boykin used this expression, we thought he would surely be fired. And when other advisors, like Daniel Pipes, used it we ignored it as the unfortunate bigotry of misguided Likudniks, though they seemed to fill the corridors of your administration. It was heartening that you always talked about Islam with respect, considering it part of our mutual heritage of heavenly faiths sent by our one God -- the God in which we all believe, be we Christians, Muslims or Jews. Even after your actions -- all of your actions -- betrayed admiration for, alliance with, and complete support of Israel, even after the whole world watched the total destruction of Lebanon, we thought that these actions were simply the result of a broken moral compass. But when you equate Islam with fascism, you crossed all acceptable lines of behaviour.

Mr President, throughout the last 60 years no American president has ever used his pulpit to so publicly denigrate any human faith, and you, Mr President were held in high esteem because of your previous, positive statements about Islam. You even described it as a religion of peace, which it is.

Fascism, Mr President, as defined by Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is "a system of government characterised by rigid one party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralised governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism and militarism, etc." Benito Mussolini was one founder of modern fascism, but no one ever accused him of being a "Christo-fascist".

The majority of your people do not agree with your policies or opinions or actions, whether in Iraq or elsewhere. But this, Mr President, is not our fight. This is your problem. This is your legacy, whatever you want to leave behind. But insulting 1.2 billion Muslims is not becoming of the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, the one that your predecessor described as the shining city on the hill. Most of us believed that description.

We thought that if you heard one of your unenlightened advisors using such language you would be a role model, rising above to stop them in their tracks. America is bigger than that. You can embrace the Israelis as much as you want. You can even support their destruction of entire towns and massacres of thousands of civilians. All of this could go under policy failures, or a broken moral compass, but attacking one of God's holiest religions is not a policy failure -- it is much worse than that. And here, Mr President, we part ways. I hope you realise the gravity of the wedge you are creating between the US and those billion Muslims in the world.

As for your call for democracy in the Middle East, the German magazine Der Speigel in an interview with your predecessor, Jimmy Carter, said, "It comes as no surprise that that had been discredited. The former president said, 'My concerns have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon. Israel has no moral justification for its massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon'."Mr President, the majority of Arab-Americans, including myself, were hoping that you would pursue your father's even-handed policies in the Middle East. But when former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil quoted you in your first National Security Council meeting as saying, "We are going to tilt US policy to Israel and we are going to be consistent," we could not believe him. Unfortunately you have tilted it completely and systematically towards Israel.

Mr President, Israel's fight with the Arabs is not your fight. Mature advisors would tell you that Israel is not America. Israel is your delinquent ally. You will spend the rest of your administration trying to clean up Israel's bloody mess. This does not have to be your fate or your destiny or your cross to bear, like a delinquent son. You don't have to pay for their ugly wars. The Arabs collectively declared that they want to live in peace with Israel. The peace proposal adopted by the Arab League in Beirut in 2002 is unequivocal. Please read it, Mr President.

When I was in Rochester, Minnesota, 6 August, I read in The Star Tribune that in 2002 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said to you, "I think we never had such a relationship with any president of the United States." Most Arabs can say the same thing, Mr President, but with exactly the opposite meaning. The irony is that it does not have to be this way. There is no other part of the world where countries have been as consistently friendly and helpful to America as those in the Arab world, despite the long history of injustice, insults and total neglect of their hopes and aspirations. Believe me, Mr President, every Arab I know believes that it is an act of magnanimity that they accept Israel to live among them, but only if Israel accepts to live among them peacefully, forgoing expansionism, creeping annexation and continued settlement enlargement.

Mr Bush, the ball is in your court, but you have to fear God, the one God that we all believe in -- Christians, Muslims and Jews.

* The writer is a political analyst resident in Washington.

Fascism: A Word Not To Be Thrown Lightly

The following is a piece written by Sergio Romano, an Italian historian, who knows what fascism means, and what it does not. Mr. Bush should know better than to use the word so lightly... or maybe he just doesn't...

Corriere Della Sera, Italy
Lesson for Bush: Saddam is a Fascist, the Islamists are not
By Sergio Romano*
Translation Provided By Nur-al-Cubicle [Nur-al-Cubicle Blog]
August 12, 2006

Today, the word, fascist, has lost its original meaning and simply signifies a certain violence, intolerance and perhaps even a scoundrel. Many of those who use the term have only a vague notion of its meaning, but have understood that it's an insult and therefore good for verbal attacks by political figures. But when the President of the United States says that his country is at war with "Islamo Fascists," even though his declarations are often imprecise, we should suppose that he knows from whence he speaks.

George W. Bush is not the first to use the expression. An American leftist intellectual recently used the term, "Muslim Totalitarianism" and just before the thwarted London bombings, British Minister of the Interior John Reid warned his audience of threats from those who could be termed, fascist. Does Islamo-Fascism therefore exist? And if it does, who are its ideologues, its prominent leaders, and what are its political formations?

Suspicions began to be raised when European diplomats and intelligence agents reported to their governments in the 1930s, that intellectuals and military men of certain Muslim countries expressed a definite interest in and admiration for the fascist regimes [Germany and Italy]. One of the first to realize that such sympathies could be turned into a useful political trump card was [former Italian dictator] Benito Mussolini. From that moment, Fascist Italy began sending out feelers to anti-British and anti-French nationalists in North Africa and in the Levant [countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean], with particular attention to Palestine. An Arab language radio station, Radio Bari, was created. Contacts were made with Habib Bourguiba , founder of the Tunisian nationalist movement, Neo Destur, derived from a prior group called Destur [the word means liberty or constitution], which was more moderate and conciliatory.

When Mussolini went to Libya in 1937, the Colonial Governor, Italo Balbo , arranged an extraordinary welcoming pageant in Bugara, outside Tripoli, where 2000 horsemen saluted him with war hymns and drumrolls. One horseman, Iussuf Kerbisc, rode out of formation and presented Mussolini with A sword of solid gold. At this moment, reverberating next to our own hearts, he told Mussolini, are the hearts of all Muslims of the Mediterranean who, full of admiration and hope, see in you a great Man of State guiding our destiny with a steady hand.
Contacts with Arab nationalists increased during the war, when Italy and Germany hoped to foment an Arab revolt in British Empire's backyard, similar to that led by T. E. Lawrence and Faisal , son of the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, against the Ottoman Empire in 1916. The principal pawns of this policy were an Iraqi man of state, Rashid Alì al-Gaylani , and the Grand Muftì di Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini .

As Manfredo Martelli recounts in his book, Arab Nationalism and the Policies of Mussolini [I nazionalisti arabi e la politica di Mussolini, Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, 2003], that Rashid Alì al-Gaylani came to power in Baghdad with a coup d'état at the beginning of 1941 and declared war on Great Britain with modest assistance from Axis aviation. It lasted until the end of May, when British troops entered Baghdad and forced him into exile in Iran. He fled to Iran together with the Mufti of Jerusalem, who avoided arrest by the Iranian police and crossed into Turkey (says Martelli), in possession an Italian passport, with dyed hair and a shaved beard. When he finally arrived in Rome on October 10, 1941, he was received by Mussolini in the presence of [Foreign Minister] Galeazzo Ciano . The conversation took place in French, and Mussolini told him that he would spare no effort to assist the Arabs "politically and spiritually." They also spoke of Jewish aspirations for Palestine.

The fascist leader (who, during the 1930s had supported the Zionist Movement against Britain) reassured him. If the Jews want their own state they'll have to build Tel Aviv in America. They are our enemies and there will be no room in Europe for them. From Rome, the Mufti went to Berlin, where he remained until the end of the year. He also made a trip to Bosnia to urge Muslims in the region to collaborate with the Axis; thus, the Handzar Division, comprised of SS who wore distinctive headgear - a red fez - was conceived of.

Al-Gaylani and al-Husseini were not the only friends of the Axis in the Middle East. At the end of 1941, as the Africa Korps advanced toward Alexandria, a group of Egyptian officers gathered intelligence for Rommel's General Staff on the movement of British troops. One of their leaders was Anwar al-Sadat , who became President of Egypt following the death of Nasser . Several crossed over the lines to join Axis troops only to reappear next to Nasser during the 1952 [Egyptian] revolution. Jean Lacouture , in his 1971 biography of Nasser, recounted that during those days, while the Germans and the British were fighting the Battle of al-Alamein , there were demonstrations in Cairo and in Alexandria. The crowd chanted the praises of Rommel and mangled Mussolini's name calling him Mussa Nili, the Moses of the Nile.

But none of these personalities could be considered truly fascist. They were nationalists seeking assistance from the enemies of Great Britain because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." It is certainly true that the nationalist and socialist regimes created in several European countries in the 1920s and 1930s appeared to many Arab and Muslim leaders as appropriate for their needs. The unquestioned authority of the leader, a single party, the role of the armed forces and the bureaucracy, the unbridled use of the police and secret services and the control of society and of the press appeared to be the right ingredients for a nascent state in which the masses were illiterate and the tree of democracy struggled to enroot itself. But not all authoritarian regimes can be considered fascist or communist.

The movement most resembling fascism among those groups which appeared in the Middle East during the 1900s was a movement founded in Syria in 1940. Its founder, Michel Aflaq , was a Syrian Christian. He had studied at the Sorbonne in the 1930s, had participated in the battles between Left and Right in the streets of Paris and had absorbed an intoxicating mix of political literature, from Mazzini to Lenin . He was anti-colonial, pan-Arab, proud of the Arab past but resolutely secular and socialist. When he returned home, he founded the Ba'ath Party [Resurgence or renaissance, in Arabic] and one of his first actions was to join the al-Gaylani revolt against Great Britain in 1941. Aflaq died in 1989, probably in Baghdad, as the guest of a man who had much admired him and who drew on his teachings to organize the Iraqi state. That man was Saddam Hussein.

It was he who created the Party, Saddam Hussein told an interviewer in 1980. How could I possibly forget what Michel Aflaq did for me? If it were not for him, I would never have come to this position. Iraq was therefore the Middle East's most fascist regime in the last few decades. Saddam used the Ba'ath Party to militarize the society, to set up a cult of personality modeled from that of Il Duce and Der Führer, to put the bureaucracy in uniform and to emphasize public works. At the same time, he was a nationalist and, in his own way, a socialist. This was the height of fascism in the Arab world.

But it would be very difficult for me to identify fascism in religiously inspired movements from the Muslim Brotherhood to those that following the Iranian Revolution, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the First Gulf War in 1991. Between the Ba'ath and religious fanaticism, even against a common enemy, there is an unbridgeable divide. Unlike his predecessors, George Bush seems to have forgotten that the greatest enemy of Khomeini's Iran was Saddam Hussein, and that during the long war between the two countries, from 1980 to 1988, the United States supported the fascists against the Islamists.

*Sergio Romano was born in 1929 in Vicenza and earned a law degree from the State University of Milan. Joining the Italian diplomatic service in 1954, Romano served as representative to NATO and ambassador to Moscow during the crucial "perestroika" years. He retired in 1989. He has taught history at the Universities of Florence, Paria, Sassari, Berkeley and Harvard. He holds honorary doctoral degrees from Etudes Politiques of Paris, the University of Macerata and the Institute of Universal History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His most famous published works are Giolitti, the style of power; Gentile, the philosophy of power, Russia in the Balance (il Mulino 1989), and The Decline of the USSR as a World Power and Its Consequences

Forget Mission Drift, Iraq is Pure Excuse Drift

In 2002 as the Bush administration was developing its War Stool (see earlier posts), one of the key architects, Dick Cheney declared that war was necessary to protect the American people and its allies because, as he put it:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
Vice President Cheney in an address to the Veterans of Korean War, San Antonio, Texas, Aug. 29, 2002

Four years and the above assertion exposed as a lie later, the tune has drastically changed to one focused on a supposed nexus between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaeda, on the one hand, and the freedom of the Iraqi people to live in peace and harmony under democracy, on the other. It doesn't really matter that the former is a lie and ill-conceived efforts toward the latter has resulted in civil war proving that peace, freedom and democracy do not come through foreign occupation and the barrel of a gun.

The following captures the new tune the Bush Administration is marching to:

"Our strategy that we adopted after 9/11 of progressively going after the terrorists, going after states that sponsor terror, taking the fight to the enemy, has been crucial in terms of our being able to defend the United States. I think one of the reasons we have not been struck again in five years -- and nobody can promise we won't -- but it's because we've taken the fight to them. And if Jack Murtha is successful in persuading the country that somehow we should withdraw now from Iraq, then you have to ask, what happens to all of those people who have signed up with the United States, who are on our side in this fight against the radical extremist Islamic types of bin Laden and al Qaeda?What happens to the 12 million Iraqis who went to the polls last December and voted, in spite of the assassins and the car bombers? "

Vice President Cheney in an interview with CNN's John King, June 22, 2006

I am sorry, but what just happened here? I know that politicians tend to think that no one is actually listening to them, but when it comes to war, I think some of us do. When did the reason for going to war in Iraq at the cost of life, limb and treasure suddenly change??? Didn't we go to war because Iraq had WMD, might use them on us or give them to terrorists, and the Iraqi people were ruled by a vile tyrant and they needed our help (a third reason thrown in as an afterthought)? Then, when we discovered that there were no WMD, we started hearing how great it was that the Iraqi people could now live in peace and democracy, and that was supposedly a good enough reason for having gone to war. And, now that we are discovering that neither peace nor democracy are happening any time soon, we are expected to believe that there is a NEW reason that we went to war three years ago? Suddenly, Iraq's Al Qaeda connection went from a few possible meetings between low level operatives, to Iraq being a bastion of Al Qaeda terrorists under Saddam? If that was the case, why didn't we hear it then?

Reasons for going to war cannot be concocted after-the-fact unless we are willing to accept that we go to war and lie about why later.

In an interesting discussion I had today concerning Cheney's new refrain with a man currently serving in the US military, he rationalized that while terrorists in general and Al Qaeda in specific may not have been in cohorts with Saddam Hussein pre-2003, there was some benefit to the war in Iraq because the war served to act as a "light to draw the mosquitoes", and it also offered the US military training grounds to learn how to combat the terrorists!!!!

Needless to say, I had a surreal moment. Is it possible that this is how we are now rationalizing going to war in a foreign country that posed no threat to the US resulting in the death of over 40,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, over 2,500 US military personnel and thousands upon thousands of injured and maimed, not to mention the cost of billions of dollars??? My response to him was that the Iraq war did indeed attract terrorists from all over the world offering them yet another pathetic rallying cry, but those it drew are the minority of those fighting the US occupation in Iraq and killing innocent Iraqis. What the Iraq War did accomplish is create a swamp of blood, tears, injustice and misery which served to BIRTH new terrorists; the Iraq War is a swamp for mosquito breeding!!!

Vice President Cheney, the world had no Iraq terrorist problem before 2003. The United States and its hapless 'coalition of the willing' created the Iraqi terrorist problem for Iraq and the world.

As for the gentleman's comment on how the Iraq 'theater' offers the US military on-the-job training, I really don't know what to say..... except how sad. Actually, I do know what to say... That is just criminal.