Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Finally. A western leader who will buck the code of silence invoked by Israel and the U.S. to perpetuate the ongoing mayhem in Lebanon. Haaretz reports that Tony Blair and Kofi Annan have jointly called for the deployment of an international force to guarantee the peace between Israel and Lebanon:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday called for the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon in order to end the conflict between Israel.

Speaking at the Group of Eight leaders summit in St. Petersburg Blair said such intervention by the international community could be the only way to end the crisis, Sky TV said.

“The blunt reality is that this violence is not going to stop unless we create the conditions for the cessation of violence,” Blair said after talks with Annan on the margins of the Group of Eight summit.

“The only way is if we have a deployment of international forces that can stop bombardment coming into Israel,” he said.

What neither man makes clear is how this new force would differ from the UN forces which currently serve in southern Lebanon. Their purpose I thought was to do precisely what the new force would do. So what would the new entity do differently than the previous one? Would it be well-armed and equipped and have a muscular mandate to maintain the peace?

Anyway, at least it’s a start. But please God residents of other European nations (especially France, which is supposed to have a “special relationship” with Lebanon) will begin to clamor for a resolution to the conflict and and demand that they lobby the Bush Administration to get down off its high horse and DO SOMETHING!

But Bush’s statements at the G8 summit give further cause for alarm. This is how the NY Times characterized them:

The Bush administration on Sunday appeared to give Israel tacit approval to cripple Hezbollah, casting the widening conflict in the Middle East in terms of a wider war on terrorism.

This is precisely the problem with Bush’s thinking on the Mideast and global terrorism. Instead of seeing regional conflicts like the Israeli-Arab dispute in their own terms, he only sees them as ‘writ small’ versions of the war on terror. The problem with this world view is that it allows for no understand or sensitivity to the unique particular aspects of these conflicts. If you do not understand the specific grievances of Israelis, Palestinians, etc. but rather see it all through the lens of “terror” you miss everything that might allow you to play a constructive role in bringing peace. So, the Bush position is essentially hopeless as far as that is concerned. The policy, such as it is, is dead in the water. And Bush’s face in the photo above is a perfect mirror of the dead-end nature of the current U.S. approach.

Ms. Rice and other officials repeatedly noted Iran’s support of Hezbollah — the Iranians appear to have supplied many of the rockets that have hit Haifa, other areas of Israel and perhaps an Israeli ship — and some administration officials said they saw this as the moment to damage the link between Iran and Syria and the Hezbollah fighters who appear to operate with impunity in southern Lebanon.

At the same time, American officials were careful in their accusations against Iran, stopping short of saying that nation inspired the current outbreak of violence. But several officials noted that the crisis had distracted the leaders from what, just days ago, appeared to be one of their main agenda items — pressing Iran to suspend its production of nuclear material in exchange for a broad economic incentives deal offered by Europe and the United States. Several officials suggested that the Iranian leadership might see the renewal of fighting as a chance to demonstrate how it could strike back at American interests in the region, both in Israel and in Iraq.

I find support here for my earlier post arguing that the U.S. sees Israel in the current Lebanon conflict as its proxy in a wider war (or war to come) against Iran. That is why it doesn’t want to the war to end. The more Hezbollah is bloodied, the greater damage is done to Iran. At least that’s the way the theory might work if you were George Bush, Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld and dumb enough to believe it.

Though I do not support Iran’s position regarding its nuclear program, I have to admit that in a tactical sense it is sittin’ pretty right about now. As the passage above notes, the G8 was supposed to deal with future strategy against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hezbollah, and by extension Iran, has effectively seized the initiative and the agenda from Bush.

Here’s some more doublespeak from Condi Rice which conveniently rewrites recent Mideast history:

“We have a new day in the Middle East, and it is a day in which the people of the Middle East, the people of Lebanon without Syrian forces there, the people of the Palestinian territories with a democratic leader in Mahmoud Abbas, are seeking to find a democratic future,” Ms. Rice said. “We’re standing with all responsible parties in the region and with moderate parties in the region who want a Middle East that is different than the 30-plus years of — really, 60-plus years — of Middle East history.”

You’ll find no mention there of Hamas, which also won a legitimate democratic election. Nor of Hezbollah, which ran and won a sizable number of seats in Lebanon’s parliament. So she’s really saying she doesn’t believe in full-on democracy. She believes in democratic processes that provide the U.S. the result it wants to see. If an election produces an “irresponsible, immoderate” (according to the U.S.’ definition of course) party then we will simply ignore the democratic nature of their victory and deny them legitimacy despite the fact that they engage in precisely the processes which we call for and endorse. What utter hypocrisy!

tags condi-rice, deploy-international-force-end-lebanon-fighting, G8-summit, george-bush, global-terror, haaretz, israeli-lebanon-invasion, kofi-annan, mideast-demoracy, tony-blair

George Bush made another one of those tremendously awkward statements he tends to make when under pressure and when someone under his command makes a really, really big mistake:

Bush said he had discussed Haditha with Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He’s a proud Marine. And nobody is more concerned about these allegations than the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is full of honorable people who understand the rules of war.”

“If in fact these allegations are true,” Bush said, “the Marine Corps will work hard to make sure that that culture — that proud culture — will be reinforced. And that those who violated the law, if they did, will be punished.”

Makes you wonder whether he wants to reinforce the proud culture of vengeance that enabled Marines to murder 25 Iraqis in cold blood. As for the “reassuring” statement that those who violate the law will be punished…Hmmm, where have we heard that one before? If anyone leaked Valerie Plame’s name they’ll be fired. Remember that one? Anyone who tortured at Abu Graibh would be punished. Remember that one? Would anyone like to put a little money down on the proposition that anyone will be punished for this incident? Of course, they’ll have to have a sacrificial lamb, a Lyndie England or Charles Graner. But what of the officers who approved the bogus story and allowed it to go up the chain of command?

I know that what I’ve written above is harsh…how can we be anything but harsh in light of these terrible events? But those Marines who tragically allowed their anger at losing a buddy swell into murderous vengeance are only a symptom of a greater evil. The entire enterprise of the war is evil. If we brought our troops home now such incidents would not happen.

Today’s news brings further horror with the murder of a pregnant Iraqi woman, Nabiya Nassayef and her cousin, Saleha Mohammed, traveling in a taxi to a maternity hospital where she was to give birth. The U.S. military’s initial statement claimed they were in an exclusion zone and refused to stop when commanded by U.S. troops to do so. According to the Daily Mail, a later statement withdrew the earlier one and said the women had been killed “by mistake.” “By mistake.” Don’t those two words encapsulate our entire enterprise in Iraq. Why are we killing pregnant Iraqi mothers about to give birth? What possible good are we doing for that country?

tags anti-war, george-bush, haditha-massacre, iraq-war, marine-corps, murder-of-pregnant-iraqi

Ehud Olmert came to Washington with high hopes for Bush Administration embrace of his convergence (now called “realignment”) plan to unilaterally set Israel’s international borders and thereby swallow up considerable territory beyond the internationally-recognized Green Line. What did he come away with? Well, he came away with some positive rhetoric from the president describing the Olmert plan as “bold.” The former also declared that once all other options were exhausted perhaps it might be appropriate to pursue a unilateral approach. The NY Times characterized Olmert’s reception in DC as 2 Cheers for Olmert. I’d call it 1 /2 cheers.

And Bush’s remarks are noteworthy for what they do not do. They do not endorse Israel’s draconian policy of isolating the Palestinians and drawing an economic-security cordon around Gaza. They do not endorse setting of unilateral borders–at least for the foreseeable future. They do not endorse Olmert’s refusal to negotiate seriously with Mahmoud Abbas–though hypocritical U.S. officials revealed privately that they do not hold much hope for Abbas as a serious partner:

…Senior American officials have few expectations that Mr. Abbas can deliver, so there is an element of hypocrisy on both sides.

Olmert lied when he told the U.S. Congress and President Bush that he too wanted to negotiate with Mr. Abbas (talk maybe, negotiate never). He wants nothing of the sort. He does want us to BELIEVE that he wants to negotiate with him. That’s why he said:

“We will make a genuine effort to negotiate with the Palestinian side,” and “we accept the sincerity of Mahmoud Abbas.”

That sounds like a good beginning until you read the next paragraph of the story:

“We hope he will have the power to be able to meet the requirements necessary for negotiations between us and the Palestinians.”

Requirements? Abbas has said time and again that he’s ready for negotiations right now with Israel. So Israel has to drive a wedge into its enemy’s readiness and it does so by introducing requirements, better known as conditions. I read yesterday (can’t remember the source) that Israel’s primary condition is that Abbas disarm all the Palestinian militant groups and end Palestinian terror. This of course is precisely the type of deabreaker that Israel needs in this circumstance. It’s not a dealbreaker in the sense that Abbas wouldn’t wish to do this. It’s a dealbreaker in the sense that he doesn’t have the physical means (neither troops, nor weapons, nor infrastructure) to do it.

In fact, one could credibly argue that if in the current strife besetting Gaza (a senior Fatah-affiliated security commander was assassinated by a car bomb yesterday and several others have been critically wounded in recent similar attacks) Hamas assumes uniform control of security there–that this might be a good thing. For Hamas can do what Abbas seemingly cannot. It can control both its own militants and have significant tempering influence over Islamic Jihad. If it can take security matters away from the irreparably splintered and criminal Fatah, then perhaps Israel would finally find a Palestinian partner who can deliver.

Of course, Israel still has an ‘out’ to avoid negotiation with Hamas since it hasn’t yet bended its knee and sung Hatikvah (that’s Tom Friedman’s locution for describing Israel’s demands that Hamas recognize Israel and renounce terror before it will sit down at the negotiating table).

David Makofsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Peace (a pro-Israel think tank loosely affiliated with Aipac) also unintentionally reveals the hypocrisy of Olmert’s stance toward Abbas:

The Palestinians, through Mr. Abbas, must at least be “given a voice and even a vote” in the Israeli withdrawal plan, Mr. Makovsky said, “but not a veto.”

A vote but not a veto. Interesting. If Israel has one vote and Abbas has one vote then one would think that this would mean stalemate. But not according to Makofsky, because Abbas’s vote doesn’t really count–Israel can essentially ignore his opposition. So of what value is his vote to begin with?

I just love one of Israel’s reasons for not negotiating with the Palestinians. If they do so and get into the nitty gritty of a Camp David style process and it fails (as the Clinton efforts did), then we may have another intifada. Here’s how the Times described the thinking:

…Both the Americans and the Israelis are concerned about getting deep into negotiations, on final-status issues like Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees, that are unlikely to succeed, possibly prompting another round of violence like the intifada, or uprising, that followed the failure of President Clinton’s peace efforts in 2000.

So Israel says “we won’t negotiate at all because if we did we might fail and stir up more violence.” This is idiotic and utterly self-serving because the difference between current levels of violence and death and a full-blown intifada is but a matter of degrees. It’s the difference between a warm war and a raging one. Israel doesn’t want to negotiate because it knows it will never readily give the Palestinians anything that will satisfy them. So if it did sit down and made such a bad-faith offer, both the Palestinians and the rest of the world would see Israel’s two-facedness and exert pressure on it to compromise further. This is what Israel wants to avoid at all costs. Essentially, it wants to stack the deck before the card game even begins.

All I can say is that thank God Olmert’s roadshow is over and he’s back on a plane headed home. We have enough hypocrisy and pandering right here in our own Congress and Administration without taking on the added burden of Olmert’s.

tags convergence, ehud-olmert, george-bush, israeli-realignment, israeli-unilateral-borders, mahmoud-abbas, u.s.-mideast-policy, west-bank-withdrawal

There are oh so many descriptive phrases that come to mind regarding George Bush: hopelessly out of touch, disengaged, defeated. But now add a new one: dinosaur. The NY Times quotes this passage from his commencement address at that hotbed of free-thinking intellectual fervor, Oklahoma State University:

“When I was in college, we listened to music on 45 r.p.m. records as opposed to the iPod,” Mr. Bush said. “We used manual typewriters instead of the personal computer. When we made a mistake while writing a paper, we didn’t have the luxury of spell-check. As a matter of fact, we used something that maybe some of you have heard of. It was big and bulky; it’s called a dictionary.”

I’m certain that he spent a lot of time spinning those 45s, but as for typing term papers and cracking that dictionary–those sound like fantasies to me. It’s amazing to me that a person Bush’s age would try to present himself to a college audience as so hopelessly quaint and out of touch with modern technology. Especially if you consider that the modern American president has just about every technological innovation available right at his fingertips. Chalk it up to yet another tone-deaf Bush performance.

I’ve heard in progressive blogs that in her NYT coverage of the Bush administration Elizabeth Bumiller is a shill for the Bushies (I personally don’t buy it). But you can’t say that about this passage in her article describing Bush’s address:

Mr. Bush made no mention of the war in Iraq, high gas prices or other problems confronting the nation. Instead he painted an optimistic picture of America and said that “the job market for college graduates is the best it’s been in years,” even in the face of weak job growth reported by the government on Friday.

He also regaled them with the earth-shatteringly bold pronouncement:

President Bush told 2,700 graduates of Oklahoma State University on Saturday that advances in technology presented them with choices and dilemmas as they faced a future “at one of the most hopeful moments in human history.”

Bush is a veritable Pangloss as he tells anyone who’ll listen that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible world.”

tags george-bush, new-york-times, oklahoma-state-university

George Bush is having more than a political crisis. It appears he’s having an identity crisis as well. How else to explain this picture of Bush and his “double” at the annual White House Correspondents dinner? I guess if I had so many people hating me and my policies I might find a doppelganger a consolation. Tired of taking the heat? Let the other guy fry a bit for you.

I guess people can no longer say of Bush that he feels “comfortable in his own skin.” Seems he feels more comfortable with someone else wearing his skin these days and who can blame him? The impersonator in his makeup looks waxy–like a model from Madame Tussaud. It’s almost like Bush is posing with a wax figure of himself. Eeeww creepy! The picture conjured in my mind the odd title of that Ronald Reagan autobiography Where’s the Rest of Me (based on a line his characater spoke in King’s Row).

The NY Times story is inadvertently (or advertently) hilarious. In this section, the Bush impersonator’s manager speaks of the first time Bush met his double:

Mr. Nolen said that Mr. Bush greeted Mr. Bridges by opening his arms and asking, “Is this me?” and that the president and the impersonator spent 20 minutes together. Mr. Bridges did his imitation of Mr. Bush and talked about the two and a half hours it takes to apply the makeup he needs to morph into the president.

“Everything but his eyes and teeth are fake,” Mr. Nolen said.

That’s not just true of the impersonator…Is there a genuine personal or political bone in the real George Bush’s body??

This particular joke raised my eyebrow quite a bit and must’ve made people laugh awkwardly:

One line, delivered by Mr. Bush, was particularly topical: “I’m feeling pretty chipper tonight — I survived the White House shake-up.”

One has to wonder how long Bush himself can last if he has to make a joke like this.

tags george-bush, steve-bridges, white-house-correspondents-dinner

Gershon Gorenberg notes in The Forward that Ehud Olmert has decided to speed up his timetable for the "major" West Bank settlement withdrawal he touted during the recent election campaign. He plans to complete it within 18 months. According to Gorenberg, Olmert had two considerations in mind. One is that he believes he may have a volatile coalition which might implode if he waits too long to act (i.e. strike while the political iron is hot). The second is U.S. politics. Olmert knows he has a friend in George Bush and he'd rather stick with the Pharaoh he knows than the future one he doesn't, fearing that a new president will arise who "knows ...

I'm following with interest the brewing storm about Rumsfeld's mismanagement of the U.S. military and the Iraq war in the form of six generals who denounced him and called for his resignation. No one that I've read so far has pointed out that all the officers whom I've heard of served in a single branch of the service, the Army. It should be no surprise to anyone who's followed the "day of the long knives" infighting within the Pentagon over the past few years to find that the Army's brass would hate Rumsfeld. He's the one who forced Gen. Shinseki, Army chief of staff, out of a job and the service. He's the one who's incessantly ...

Pulling a Murtha. I think I've just coined a political neologism. Actually, it wouldn't be a neologism since I didn't coin a word, but you get my drift. Congressional Democrats have long been known for their courageous willingness to take on Republican presidents bent on mischief. So I waited with baited breath to see how the fearless Dems would react to Russ Feingold's proposed censure resolution against George Bush for NSA spying. Imagine my surprise to read Dana Millbank in the Washington Post saying: Democratic senators, filing in for their weekly caucus lunch yesterday, looked as if they'd seen a ghost. "I haven't read it," demurred Barack Obama (Ill.). "I just don't have enough information," protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). ...

Aipac might like America to believe that Jews march in lockstep with their hard-right views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I'm pleased to say that Brit Tzedek V'Shalom, the national Jewish group advocating for Israeli-Palestinian peace, is marching to a different beat. It organized a national effort among rabbis to tell President Bush that America's rabbis do not want him to criminalize Hamas, thus making life for the Palestinians even harsher than it already is. 400 rabbis have signed on. Here is a major excerpt: ...We urge you to maintain a cautious approach to the new Palestinian government, so as to preserve the future possibility of bringing Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating ...

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) published a revealing article heralding AIPAC's upcoming national conference. This is THE event every year when 6,000 of AIPAC's top Jewish leaders come to DC to hobnob with the political elite, which seemingly delights in paying obeisance at AIPAC's feet. By the way, I note that this year Dick Cheney will be the "Special Guest" at the Closing Session. JTA did everyone a favor by laying out AIPAC's political agenda for both the meeting and the remainder of the congressional session. Become a Goliath for Israel--attend the AIPAC policy conference and smite Hamas Not content with the current Bush Administration policy ...