'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

The use of web-based disinformation by the 'west'

Patrick Cockburn has an extremely important piece at the Independent today, in which he takes to task the major organs of the 'western' media-- including, crucially, today's Al-Jazeera-- for the extremely uncritical and often openly inflammatory use they make of unsubstantiated or highly exaggerated "news reports" coming out of, in particular, Syria and Iran.

He writes,

Governments that exclude foreign journalists at times of crisis such as Iran and (until the last week) Syria, create a vacuum of information easily filled by their enemies. These are far better equipped to provide their own version of events than they used to be before the development of mobile phones, satellite television and the internet. State monopolies of information can no longer be maintained. But simply because the opposition to the Syrian and Iranian governments have taken over the news agenda does not mean that what they say is true.

Early last year I met some Iranian stringers for Western publications in Tehran whose press credentials had been temporarily suspended by the authorities. I said this must be frustrating them, but they replied that even if they could file stories – saying nothing much was happening – they would not be believed by their editors. These had been convinced by exile groups, using blogs and carefully selected YouTube footage, that Tehran was visibly seething with discontent. If the local reporters said that this was a gross exaggeration, their employers would suspect that had been intimidated or bought off by Iranian security.

... [T]echnical advances have made it more difficult for governments to hide repression. But these developments have also made the work of the propagandist easier. Of course, people who run newspapers and radio and television stations are not fools. They know the dubious nature of much of the information they are conveying. The political elite in Washington and Europe was divided for and against the US invasion of Iraq, making it easier for individual journalists to dissent. But today there is an overwhelming consensus in the foreign media that the rebels are right and existing governments wrong. For institutions such as the BBC, highly unbalanced coverage becomes acceptable.

Sadly, al-Jazeera, which has done so much to shatter state control of information in the Middle East since it was set up in 1996, has become the uncritical propaganda arm of the Libyan and Syrian rebels.

Then he comes to the nub of why all this is important

The Syrian opposition needs to give the impression that its insurrection is closer to success than it really is. The Syrian government has failed to crush the protesters, but they, in turn, are a long way from overthrowing it. The exiled leadership wants Western military intervention in its favour as happened in Libya, although conditions are very different.

The purpose of manipulating the media coverage is to persuade the West and its Arab allies that conditions in Syria are approaching the point when they can repeat their success in Libya. Hence the fog of disinformation pumped out through the internet.

I completely agree with Patrick's analysis on this point. As I agree, too, with As'ad Abou Khalil's broad view of events in Syria that, though the government is highly repressive and often criminally stupid, in the ranks of the opposition there are also many very anti-democratic and violence-loving elements and others who are working hard to trigger a western intervention in the country. (Hence my judgment that if you want to follow what's happening in and toward Syria, Asad's Angry Arab blog is one of the very best, and best-informed, sources to do that.)

In my view, the Syrian opposition consists of a number of elements, some of them extremely contradictory with each other. There is a genuine, in-country network of activists who seek real democratic reform and who're working for it using mass nonviolent organizing. But there are also all kinds of opportunistic networks piggybacking on that movement, most of them based in or directed from outside the country... Among them are the openly violence-using people of the Free Syria Army. And though some people in the exile-based Syrian National Council claim that the role of the FSA is merely to "station armed people around mass demonstrations in order to protect the demonstrations", that has never been a tactic endorsed by any genuine nonviolent mass movement. Indeed it is tactic that's almost guaranteed to escalate the situation and cause far more casualties among the unarmed than if only nonviolent moral suasion/reproach is brought to bear on the regime's forces.

We should not kid ourselves by imagining that there is no opportunistic exploitation of the Syrian situation underway, being undertaken by a whole range of anti-Damascus forces-- some sectarian (as in the case of Qatar or Saudi Arabia; also, quite possibly, Turkey), and some pro-Zionist, or anyway easily exploited by Syria's longterm opponents in the Zionist movement in Israel and in the 'west'.

So how do those many western 'liberals' who seem to be so deeply invested in supporting the Syrian 'revolutionaries' fit into this scheme? To me, this is another key part of the puzzle, along with the enlistment by the 'revolutionaries' of so much of the western media, as documented by Patrick Cockburn.

Okay, I understand that the Syrian government has a really lousy human rights record. I have worked long enough (38 years) in and on the affairs of the mashreq to understand that better than probably 95% of the people in the human rights movement who currently present themselves as "experts" on Syria. But is getting out there to advocate a "Libya-style" overthrow of the regime (i.e. with the aid of outside forces) really a good way to bring rights abuses to an end?

No it is not! Wars and civil conflicts everywhere and always involve a mass-scale assault on the rights of civilian residents of the war-zones, with the most vulnerable residents being the ones whose rights (including the right to life) get abused the worst.

That is everywhere and always the case. No exceptions. That is why I am always really dismayed and upset when I see rights activists who claim to understand what they are talking about taking actions that escalate the tensions toward outright civil conflict and war... Remember that in the case of most rights activists who live in comfortable, secure western countries: These people have never had direct experience of living in a war zone. They are bombarded (by the military-industrial complex) with arguments that modern warfare can be a "precision", "surgical" business... and most recently, in Libya, we saw the emergence of the keffiyah-ed warrior racing through the sand as a figure of popular heroism and adulation. (Lawrence of Arabia, anyone?).

I have lived in a war zone. I lived in Lebanon from 1974 through 1981. In six of those years the country was plagued by civil war. I lived within Lebanese society, being married to a Lebanese citizen. I was not a "visiting fireman", as many western journos were-- parachuting in to stay a few days or weeks in a relatively comfortable hotel from time to time. Everyone involved in fighting the Lebanese civil war, from all the multiple "sides" that were engaged in it, was convinced of the justice of his (or sometimes her) cause. Each one was fighting what he knew to be a "just" war... But the war and its associated atrocities ground on and on and on.

Another thing the western rights activists too often forget: Mass-scale atrocities-- as opposed to a rampage by a lone, psychotic gunman-- are nearly always, or always, committed only in the context of an ongoing civil conflict or war. Conflicts provide the heightened degree of threat and the dehumanization of the opponent that are essential ingredients in the organized commission of atrocities. They also, in the past, provided plenty of the "fog of war" in which those acts can be shrouded.

Thus, if you want to avoid the commission of atrocities: avoid war! Do everything you can to explore and enlarge the space for de-escalation and the negotiated resolution of grievances!

It is true that modern communications technology makes the shrouding of atrocities much harder (though not impossible) to achieve. That is, obviously, a very good thing! But this same technology also enables the fighting parties of all sides to do much more than they could previously, to frame and disseminate their own "stories" of what's happening... Rights activists in other countries need to be very aware that this is not only a possibility-- it is actually happening. And in the case of Syria, in particular, these reports are being used to whip up western (and worldwide) support for a 'western'-led military campaign aimed at bringing forced regime change to Syria.

Colonialists have, throughout history, always tried to cloak their campaigns of military intervention, domination, and control in the lingo of "rights", "progress", and liberalism. Even the Belgians and their supporters, when they entered Congo in the late 1800s to initiate an era of control that was marked throughout by mass killings, mass enslavement, and outright genocide that within 23 years took the lives of some ten million persons indigenous to the area... did so in the name of a campaign sold tothe European publics as being one aimed at "liberating" the people of Congo from other (in truth, much less maleficent) Arab slave-traders.

We liberals need to be very careful indeed that we do not have our admirable sentiments of human solidarity abused by today's architects of 'western' colonial invasion, control, and domination.

The situation that Syria's people are living through today is extremely difficult. There are no easy answers. Both the regime and the opposition have demonstrated their resilience, and neither looks as though it is about to "win" the current contest any time soon. Given the degree of tension that now exists in Syrian society (due to the actions of the regime, of some portions of the opposition, and of several outside actors), it is hard to see how to simply ramp those tensions down and open up the space for the inter-Syrian dialogue and reform process that the people of Syria so desperately need...

But what kind of future do those of us who are westerners or other kinds of non-Syrians want to see for our friends in Syria? A future like that of today's Libya-- or even, heaven forfend, another "result" of western military action: today's Iraq? Or would we want them to follow a negotiated-transition path like that taken by the people of South Africa, 1990-94... or the negotiated-transition path that the people of Myanmar/Burma now seem to be taking? Few of those western liberals and rights activists who are baying for "no-fly zones" or other forms of foreign military intervention seem to have ever thought about this question, so convinced are they of their own righteousness and the infallibility of their own judgments, however scantily informed these judgments may be in an era of instant You-Tube uploads of videos of, as Patrick Cockburn noted, often extremely sketchy provenance or representativity.

2012: A good year to boycott Sabra (& Shatila) Hummus

I've been thinking a lot, recently, about the upcoming 30th anniversary of the September 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. As some of you may know, my company, Just World Books, will soon be publishing a reissued version of former WaPo journo Jon Randal's classic 1983 study of the Israeli-backed Maronite-extremist militias that, with the full backing and encouragement of Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon, committed those massacres. More details on that, soon...

(Jon is also working on another book, which will be a study of the massacres themselves. In the meantime, he has written a fab new preface to the 1983 book, explaining to a new generation of peace-and-justice activists the significance of all those events... )

These days, "Sabra" is also the trade-name of one of the two brands of Israeli-related hummus that BDS activists are boycotting. In the case of Sabra hummus, the boycott is based primarily on the fact that the Strauss Group, an Israeli-owned company that owns half of the brand, has had a long history of giving material support to the Golani Brigade, an Israeli military formation associated with numerous grave rights abuses.

I'm thinking that maybe this year in particular, the BDS folks might start calling the hummus brand "Sabra and Shatila hummus", to make even clearer the connection between the hummus brand and the excesses/atrocities committed by, or under the close supervision of, the Israeli military....

I've also been thinking about the meanings, connotations, and expropriations of the term "Sabra" in general. In Arabic, the most common understanding of the triliteral root S-b-r relates to being patient and long-suffering. The root is also used in the common name that many Arabs, including Palestinians, give to the prickly pear/ "Indian fig", and its fruit. It has also been thus used in modern Hebrew. (I don't know about ancient Hebrew.)

And then, in modern-day Israel, the term "Sabra" was introduced to refer to those Jewish Israelis who had actually been born in the country-- as opposed to that proportion of them, originally very large, who arrived from elsewhere as colonial settlers inside the land. Indeed, the use of the term "Sabra" in that context merely underlined the fact that for so many Jewish Israelis, being born in the country was not the norm.

For Palestinians, meanwhile, the hardy prickly-pear (Subar) hedges that once ringed or demarcated properties in many traditional villages in historic Palestine over time became, in many cases, the only trace left of where once had stood those villages that in 1947-48 were ethnically cleansed by the advancing Jewish/Israeli armies that pushed the boundaries of the state of Israel far beyond what even the very generous U.N. Partition Plan had allotted to it. You can still drive around many parts of Israel today and see, on a small rise here or in the fold of valley there, a neglected and ragged line of prickly pear hedges; and you'll know that that was where one of the ethnically cleansed villages stood.

Patient, indeed.

But the word "Sabra" in one form or another has also been used as a family name in many Arab families, as has the family name "Shatila". In Beirut, the Chatilas/Shatilas have long been one of the big Sunni trading families... So I imagine the names of the two refugee camps established in southwest Beirut in 1948-50 came from the names of the owners of the lands on which the U.N. and the Lebanese government agreed to locate those camps.

The refugees housed in those camps, as in the three dozen other large refugee camps that ringed the area of the State of Israel, then and now, were some of those same Palestinians who'd been ethnically cleansed from those now destroyed but still "Subar"-hedged villages inside the area of Mandate Palestine.

The massacres at Sabra and Shatila were committed, as noted above, by extremist-Maronite militia formations who were acting under the close supervision of, and with much logistical support from, the Israeli military. (This coordination was well represented in the haunting 2008 film from Israeli director Ari Folman, "Waltz with Bashir.") The key architect of the whole episode, as of the extremely lethal, all-out military assault on Lebanon that preceded it, from June through early August of 1982, was Ariel Sharon. Israel's own investigation into the massacres, conducted by former Supreme Court Justice Yitzhak Kahan, found that Sharon bore personal responsibility for the massacres, and recommended that he not be permitted to hold high office again.

Well, we know how that went, don't we...

So now, here we are, 30 years after the Israeli assault on Lebanon, 30 years after the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and elsewhere are still no closer to having their rights restored. Their communities were expelled from their ancestral homes and lands through the use of violence and force, and were subsequently prevented from returning to those lands by the same force. They have been subject to repeated assaults by the arrogant Israeli military (with the Golani Brigade as one of the most violent and aggressive units in it.) And they've have been forced to continue living as stateless refugees for 64 years now, though numerous United Nations resolutions assure them of the right to "return or compensation" (in UNGA resolution 194, and reaffirmed in numerous U.N. resolutions since then), or, more simply, as per the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the "right to ... return to his [or her] country."

So maybe if we start calling "Sabra" hummus "Sabra and Shatila" hummus, it might remind American shoppers of some of this history?

(What I would not want to do, however, is stigmatize the use of the term "Shatila" in a brand name. The Dearborn, Michigan-based Shatila Food Products bakery produces the very best baklava there is in the whole of North America... )

J. Alterman on America and Egypt

Jon Alterman has an op-ed in the NYT that has some good sense in it but also some very troubling ideas and policy prescriptions.

Alterman is quite right to note that by far the most important thing that's happening in Egypt right now is not the confrontations or lack of them in Cairo's very visible Tahrir Square but the electoral process that is unfolding, with almost painful slowness, all around the country-- and the negotiation that will subsequently unfold between the election's victors and the country's now-ruling military council, the SCAF.

(The piece doesn't mention the SCAF's recent actions against US-funded NGOs in the country. That was probably because it was written a few days ago. But anyway, his basic thesis that it is the election and the subsequent negotiation that are the most important story, still stands.)

He is also right to note that the Islamist parties that between them are now showing a clear lead in the elections are doing so for good reason-- because they have built up serious, nationwide political organizations. He writes:

Islamists have grasped that the game has moved beyond protests to the mechanics of elections, and their supporters are motivated, organized and energetic. By contrast, the secular liberal parties are virtually absent from the countryside. Judging from posters, billboards, bumper stickers and banners, the two major Islamist parties have the field almost to themselves.

However, he was unnecessarily patronizing and wrong when he prefaced those remarks by writing " For Americans, it is hard to imagine that religious parties could win almost 70 percent of the Egyptian vote... " What? I have been "imagining", indeed predicting, this for a very long while now. I'm an American; and so are many others-- from a broad range of viewpoints, who have "imagined" it.

Why does Alterman need to make it seem as though only he understands what is really going on? (And isn't he an American, too? Or has he, like Michael Oren, suddenly transformed himself into an Israeli?)

Well, that is a relatively small quibble. The more serious problems occur at the end of his piece, where he writes:

Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt, fear that the elections will produce an Islamist-led government that will tear up the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, turn hostile to the United States, openly support Hamas and transform Egypt into a theocracy that oppresses women, Christians and secular Muslims. They see little prospect for more liberal voices to prevail, and view military dictatorship as a preferable outcome.

American interests, however, call for a different outcome, one that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other. And with lopsided early election results, it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.

Our instinct is to search for the clarity we saw in last winter’s televised celebrations. However, what Egyptians, and Americans, need is something murkier — not a victory, but an accommodation.

Let's look at that first paragraph there. It is factually accurate that "Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt" harbor the fears he describes. Though why he should put the fears of a subset of Israel's actually tiny-- and often paranoid-- population before those of Americans and some Egyptians in a piece that purports to speak about American and Egyptian interests, I don't know... But more importantly here, he lets the substantive scenarios described in those fears stand as quite possible outcomes without making any mention of the assurances that the MB's Freedom and Justice Party and even the salafist Nur Party have given re not tearing up the peace treaty with Israel; and the assurances the FJP has given re the other "feared" scenarios that he lists.

As someone who claims to be a knowledgeable, evidence-based "realist" rather than an alarmist, wouldn't that be information Alterman should include in that paragraph, rather than letting those "scare" scenarios simply stand?

Moving on to the last two paras of his piece... I feel pretty sure that Alterman would define "American interests" in a way that is in some portions the same and in some portions different from the way that I would define "the true interests of the American people". However, let's assume we're talking here about roughly the same thing. In my definition the true interests of the American people would require that our government and all its appendages, including its sneakily misnamed, government-funded quangos like NED, etc, stay completely out of Egyptian politics, and take only those actions toward Egypt that are clearly requested by the new government that will emerge from the ongoing electoral process.

Realistically, that government will only emerge and stabilize itself once presidential elections in April, as well as the current lengthy round of parliamentary elections, have been completed. But the parliament that emerges from the current elections will have a leadership that will be in a position to negotiate with and make demands of not only the SCAF, but also the SCAF's main financial backers, that is, the U.S. government.

So Alterman is arguing for an outcome "that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other." Say that again, Jon? Um, in democratic theory there's this thing called civilian control of the military. Surely, anyone who claims to want to see greater democracy in Egypt should aim to have that principle firmly implemented there! It's not a question of "vanquishing" or "silencing". It's a question of who's in charge.

In the next sentence, he seems to giving another reason why "we" Americans should seek to see the power of Egypt's elected leaders curtailed: "it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs." His clear implication here is that an Islamist government (a) would not be able to mobilize any-- or sufficient numbers of-- "educated" people with "connections and know-how", and (b) would "drive away" the country's liberal elite, whose fabulous attributes "will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs."

This argument is nonsense on stilts! It is based on incredibly condescending views of observant Muslims and the Islamist parties that grow up in their communities, to the effect that they really do not have sufficient education, know-how, or connections to run a successful modern economy.

Turkey, anyone? (Or come to that, Iran-- and the impressive abilities its technicians showed recently when they hijacked the US military's allegedly "stealth" RQ-170 drone... )

But the argument Alterman is making is also a sly one. By placing his "concern" about Egypt's "educated liberal elite" right there alongside his argument for the military to still retain a say in national governance, he sis clearly implying that the military can be a guardian for the interests of the liberal elite.

Actually, that too is a pretty stupid argument. True, there are some in the "liberal elite" who strongly indicated in the past that they would be happy to see some form of military guarantee, or counter-balance, to protect them from the programs and policies of the Islamists; but for quite a while now relations between the SCAF and the liberals have been far, far worse than the relations either side has with, say, the MB. But I guess Alterman is adducing this argument here as a way of making the support he is expressing for a continued strong military role in Egypt more appealing to Western liberals...

Anyway, in his's last paragraph, he states his position clearly: "what Egyptians, and Americans, need is ... not a victory, but an accommodation." That is, he doesn't want to see a true victory for a democratically elected civilian leadership in Egypt, or for the important democratic principle of civilian control of the military; but he wants to see a continuing strong role for the military in Egypt's governance.

Describing his own policy preference as a "need" for both Egyptians and Americans" is, of course, colonial, patronizing, and quite unwarranted. Let Egypt's voters (who include, of course, all the members of the military) define their country's needs on their own behalf. They don't need Jon Alterman to do it for them.

Democracy and human rights in Libya??

I just caught up with this piece by the Guardian's Chris Stephen in Tripoli. (H/T B of MofA.)

Tell me again why anyone ever thought that NATO missiles were capable of somehow 'delivering' democracy and a system of respecting basic human rights in Libya?

Stephen writes of the country's current rulers, the National Transitional Council:

The NTC refuses to say who its members are, or even how many there are. Although it appointed a cabinet last month, policy decisions are taken inside what amounts to a black box. Meetings are held in secret, voting records are not published, and decisions are announced by irregular television broadcasts.

Typical was last week's announcement, which came out of the blue, that the oil and economy ministries would be moved to Benghazi, and the finance ministry to Misrata. Diplomats scoffed at the impracticality of such a scheme, which would leave Libya's administration scattered over hundreds of miles. This opacity reminds some Libyans of how things were run in former times...

And there's this:

According to diplomats, the country can move forward only when the national army controls the militias. However, the national army is neither national nor an army.

It was formed in the February revolution in the eastern city of Benghazi by several hundred army officers who defected to the rebels. But most of the army itself remained loyal to Muammar Gaddafi. All of which has left this "national army" with plenty of chiefs but precious few Indians.

The militias, meanwhile, are getting organised. Those of Zintan and Misrata are in effect citizen armies, controlled by their leaders and military councils. Discipline remains a problem, with older members complaining of too many unemployed young men with guns, but order in both cities is more complete than in Tripoli, where gunfire crackles on most nights.

The news peg on which Stephen hangs his article is a grim reminder of how deep the political fragmentation in Libya currently is. basically, it's the tale of how the militias were all lining up to control tripoli's international airport, in the expectation that the UN was about to fly in several planeloads of Libyan dinar bills that had just been printed in Germany... with the hope that whoever could control the airport and the road from there to the central Bank could take a hefty rakeoff from the booty in the name of "providing security services."

Here is the scene that Stephen described:

Last weekend the army tried to storm the airport and was stopped in a battle at the main airport checkpoint, which left two militiamen wounded and flights suspended as tracer fire arced over the runways. The army tried again midweek, summoning reinforcements from eastern Libya, only for the column to be stopped 200 miles west by units from Misrata, which are allied with Zintan.

More fighting is expected after unidentified gunmen shot and wounded a son of army commander General Khalifa Hifter in a battle outside Tripoli's biggest bank, then kidnapped another on Friday.

Meantime, even people in the ranks of the rebels are conceding that somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 Libyans were killed during the seven months of fighting that followed NATO's entry into the fighting March 19. Prior to that, the death toll was only one-tenth as high.

My old friend Hugh Roberts knows 100 times as much about North Africa as I do. In November, he was writing these very sane words in the LRB:

The claim that the ‘international community’ had no choice but to intervene militarily and that the alternative was to do nothing is false. An active, practical, non-violent alternative was proposed, and deliberately rejected. The argument for a no-fly zone and then for a military intervention employing ‘all necessary measures’ was that only this could stop the regime’s repression and protect civilians. Yet many argued that the way to protect civilians was not to intensify the conflict by intervening on one side or the other, but to end it by securing a ceasefire followed by political negotiations...

This was, of course, the very same argument that I was making back in March. So was Hugh: He was then working for the International Crisis Group, which as he noted in the LRB piece put forward its own very sensible proposal for a negotiated de-escalation at the time. But no: The foul humors and animal spirits of the west's warmongers won the day on that occasion-- as they seem to, only too, too often.

But why, I wonder, had so many western liberals and rights activists learned nothing from what had happened in Iraq over the preceding eight years? Truly tragic.

Mrs. Peled and the Palestinian homes of West Jerusalem

I am delighted that my company, Just World books, is publishing Miko Peled's intimate and thought-provoking memoir The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. (We're already taking advance orders though the book won't be available before the end of February.)

Miko has been giving out some great teasers for the book in the writing and lecturing he's been doing in recent months. Today, on his blog, he has this intriguing story:

Newt Gingrich, being the history buff that he is, might be interested in a story I mention in my book The General’s Son, about my mother. She was born and raised in Jerusalem and she remembers the homes of Palestinians families in neighborhoods in West Jerusalem. She told me that when she was a child, on Saturday afternoons she would go for walks through these neighborhoods, admiring the beauty of the homes, watching families sit together in their beautiful gardens. In 1948 when the Palestinian families were forced out of West Jerusalem, my mother was offered one of those beautiful, spacious homes but she refused. At age 22, the wife of a young army officer with little means and with two small children, she refused a beautiful spacious home, offered to her completely free because she could not bear the thought of living in the home of a family that was forced out and now lives in a refugee camp. “The coffee was still warm on the tables as the soldiers came in and began the looting” she told me. “Can you imagine how much those families, those mothers must miss their homes?”

She continued, “I remember seeing the truckloads of loot, taken by the Israeli soldiers from these homes. How were they not ashamed of themselves?”

There are thousands upon thousands of homes in cities all over the country that were taken.

Ah, the importance that a mother has in raising a thoughtful and compassionate person, eh?

Solipsism of U.S. power: Iraq, Libya

This is just a short post to, once again, express my anger and sadness at what the U.S. government has done during nearly nine years of occupation of Iraq. (And also, at what looks very likely to happen over the coming years in U.S.-attacked Libya.)

Right now, the particular form of 'constitutional democracy' that the American occupiers imposed on Iraq looks set to implode and as Reidar Visser notes, there is a real possibility of complete political disintegration there. The present situation and future prospects for most of Iraq's 30 million people look very grim indeed.

But in Washington DC-- and Fort Bragg, NC-- Pres. Obama and his people seem oblivious to the fate of Iraqis, intent as they are on trying to "sell" to the American people the idea that simply getting the American troops out of Iraq without them suffering any additional casualties constitutes some kind of a valuable achievement... regardless of what happens to the long-suffering Iraqis.

Obama's people are even trying to fundraise around this idea. Two days ago, I got this email from Obama's re-election campaign:

Helena --

Early this morning, the last of our troops left Iraq.

As we honor and reflect on the sacrifices that millions of men and women made for this war, I wanted to make sure you heard the news.

Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved in the political process for the first time. Today's outcome is a reminder that we all have a stake in our country's future, and a say in the direction we choose.

Thank you.

Barack

No reference at all to the idea that perhaps, having wrought such havoc inside Iraq, we might also have a responsibility to-- and a stake in-- Iraq's future, as well.

This is wilfull, almost psychopathic, disregard for the facts of human inter-dependence and the responsibility that war-waging nations have under international law for the wellbeing of the civilian residents of the places where they choose to fight their wars.

We have seen this same solipsism in the conduct of the U.S. and its NATO allies in Libya-- and in particular, in the way that the NATO command tried wilfully to disregard the compelling evidence that NATO bombs had killed many of the very same civilians whom they were allegedly acting in Libya to protect.

C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt had a generally excellent piece of reporting in the NYT on December 17, in which they detailed both their own painstaking investigations of incidents in which NATO airstrikes in Libya had killed civilians-- and the extreme reluctance of NATO officials to acknowledge these facts.

Libya looks in many ways to be the 'western' nations latest paradigm in how to fight a war. Taking lessons from the problems the United States encountered in running the Iraqi occupation, western actions towards Libya have been much more hands-off. NATO never explicitly put troops on the ground in Libya (except for a few 'deniable' special ops forces), and therefore acts as if it does not have to bear any direct responsibility for running the country now. Meanwhile, the British government still reportedly controls much of Libya's sovereign wealth, and NATO ships continue to police Libya's shoreline. Both those instruments of power can be used to exercise indirect control over key aspects of the post-Qadhafi government's policy.

It all sounds a lot like Gaza to me. There, the Israelis pioneered the whole concept of running a 'hands-off' kind of a military occupation wherein they (quite illegally) deny that they have any responsibility for the welfare of Gaza's residents, while they still nonetheless continue to control all significant interactions between Gaza and the outside world...

At least in Gaza there is one, generally competent, indigenous governing body which has done a generally good job of maintaining public security for the vast majority of the Strip's 1.6 million people-- something that has been especially welcome to Gazans after the lawlessness of the earlier years of IDF/Fateh condominium there. In Libya, by contrast, the power vacuum that followed NATO's destruction of Qadhafi's army and the reluctance of the NATO powers to take any responsibility for post-Qadhafi public security has left the whole country open to the competing militias and warlords who were NATO's local allies.

But why would voters in America or in other NATO powers care about any of that? The bet that Obama and the other NATO leaders are making is that the voters at home won't care at all.

Visser on Iraq in the NYT today

Reidar's op-ed, 'An Unstable, Divided Land' is a must-read. It places due responsibility on the U.S. government-- under both G.W. Bush and Barack Obama-- for the tragedy that most Iraqis continue to live through, today.

The news analysis piece that the NYT's own Tim Arango also has in the paper today is in stark contrast to Reidar's fine work. It's ill-informed, exculpatory (of Washington), and deeply dishonest. Especially when he writes that the social and sectarian breakdown that Iraq experienced after the U.S. invasion-- and that was certainly exacrebated by the U.S. occupation administration's calculated policies of divide and rule-- was "unforeseen" by Americans before the invasion. They were not unforeseen. Juan Cole, I, and numerous other people who knew a lot more about the country than the dangerous people running the Bush administration foresaw many or most of these problems and published widely about our concerns. If we were not listened to, that was not for lack of us trying to be heard.

When I read Arango's piece I was almost overcome by a wave of sadness and anger. Sadness, for what our country wrought in Iraq, and anger at not having been given any kind of fair hearing in the pre-2003 period (or since.)

Arango does have some good quotes and snippets from Iraqis expressing their anger at the U.S. government after nearly nine years of miserable occupation.

But Reidar's piece really beautifully sums up the analysis of how U.S. policy has continued to be harmful to Iraqis, including under Pres. Barack Obama.

Syria, Myanmar, South Africa, Libya...

Just a quick note from an airport here... How come that western publics who applauded the negotiated transition to democracy in South Africa and who applaud the current openings in the same direction in Myanmar/Burma, generally seem so unwilling to pursue a similarly negotiated transition in Syria?

Why do so many western rights activists continue instead to give strong support to the forces of the increasingly militarized opposition in Syria? Do they really want a violence-driven outcome there similar to what we have seen in Iraq and now Libya? Or, do they not understand the basic facts of violence: that violence begets more violence and in the modern, heavily armed world the use of violence is highly inconducive to the building of an accountable, rights-respecting social/political order.

The situation in Syria remains complex. There are many elements inside the country's opposition movement who are sincere democrats. There are others who are vicious sectarians and men of violence. The goal for political leaders inside and outside the country is surely to find a way to engage the former while marginalizing the influence of the latter. Sadly, Pres. Asad seems unable or unwilling to find a way to do this-- and most of the numerous outside forces now supporting the Syria opposition seem very unwilling to do it, as well.

By the way, here is the record of the panel I was recently on, on Syria, at the (Turkish-American) SETA Foundation in DC.

Further thoughts on Syria, Turkey, and democracy

This Monday, Nov. 28, I'll be speaking at a 2pm symposium in Washington DC on the topic "The Future of Syria: Political Turmoil and Prospects of Democracy". It is organized by SETA-DC, the Washington DC branch of the Ankara-based SETA (Foundation for Economic, Political and Social Research.) Also speaking will be Erol Cebeci, Executive Director of SETA-DC and until recently a parliamentarian for the AKP.

Longtime readers of this blog will be aware that I have followed Turkish-Syrian relations for some time here; and back at the beginning of the current political turmoil in Syria I was arguing that Turkey's AKP government was uniquely positioned and perhaps uniquely motivated to be the principal power mediating the regime-opposition negotiation in Syria that I saw, and still see, as overwhelmingly the best way out of Syria's impasse.

Since I started expressing that position publicly, back in May, several important further developments have occurred. Principally, of course-- and just as I predicted back in the March-May period-- the confrontation between the regime and the opposition in Syria has continued; both sides have demonstrated resiliency; and the casualty toll has continued tragically to grow. There have also been these other developments:

* Turkey's AK government has shifted into a position of much stronger support for the Syrian opposition, with PM Erdogan now openly calling for the resignation of Syria's President Asad, while leaders and members of the militarized, oppositionist 'Free Syrian Army' have been given considerable freedom to organize in the encampments of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

* Attempts by western governments to win a UNSC resolution that would, as with Resolution 1970 in re Libya, have provided a basis for future military action against Syria were rebuffed when both Russia and china vetoed it.

* The Arab League has launched its own strong-seeming diplomatic and political intervention that requires the Syrian government to end the use of repression and violence, engage in negotiations with the opposition, and allow the entry of Arab league monitors-- actually, the deadline for that latter step is today.

* The Arab League-cum-NATO military action against Libya (which was also supported by NATO member Turkey) had been cited as a desired precedent by many in the Syrian opposition. That action was eventually successful in taking over the whole of Libya and killing President Qadhafi. But it took them seven months and a lot of bloody fighting to achieve that; and the outcome inside Libya has been very far from what most pro-democracy, pro-rights activists in the west had hoped for.

So obviously, there will be a lot to discuss with my SETA colleagues next Monday.

One thing that has been much on my mind in recent days is the range of possible effects that the situation in Syria might have on the prospects for democracy not only in Syria but also in Turkey. Of all the Middle Eastern forces currently giving support to a Syrian opposition that claims to pursue the goal of democracy, the only one that any has any credible claim itself to uphold and practice the values of democracy is Turkey. The idea that Saudi Arabia, other GCC countries, Jordan, or the currently military-ruled regime in Egypt has any credibility in saying it seeks the goal of democracy is completely laughable. So it strikes me that sincere supporters of democracy around the world who want to see a democratic and accountable outcome in Syria should pay particular attention to the role that Ankara might yet play there.

It is also the case that for me, one of the bedrocks of any commitment to democracy is a commitment not to use violent means to resolve differences of opinion or politics among fellow-citizens, however deepseated and sensitive these differences may be. Democracy is not really-- or perhaps, not only-- about elections, which are at best only a technical means to reaching a democratic end. (Elections, remember, can be and are used by all kinds of profoundly rights-abusing regimes.) Democracy is about having a fundamental respect for the equality of all human persons and establishing a set of political mechanisms that allow citizens of one state (and eventually, of the whole world-- though we are still a long way from that) to live together peaceably and over the long term while allowing the different communities within that state to live out their own vision of the good life so long as this does not impinge on the rights of others.

Turkey is a country in which many different kinds of social groups live together. These include members of the Sunni-Turkish majority. They also include members of ethnic, religious, and sectarian minorities. They include people who are highly secular and people who are highly pious and for whom "the good life" is necessarily one defined by religious norms. They include highly sophisticated, "Europeanized" urbanites, and people much more rooted to the traditional ways of villages and small towns. Yet somehow, as a result of decisions taken throughout the course of Turkey's modern history-- including both the Kemalist era and the post-Kemalist era-- nearly all these different groups have been able to find a way to come together and agree on the (still-evolving) rules of a democratic order for their country.

I have long thought of this as an amazing achievement. Of course, it is still incomplete. But still, Turkey's people have come so far away from both Ottoman-era theocracy and the intolerant, ethnocratic militarism of Kemalist rule that I think this is an achievement to be acknowledged and celebrated by democrats everywhere.

Turkey's longest land border is its border with Syria-- more than 500 miles long, as I recall. If there is ethnosectarian breakdown in Syria, can Turkey be insulated from that, I wonder? And if so, at what cost?

... Well, the events in Syria are moving fast, and will doubtless continue to do so over the coming three days. So I shan't complete gathering my thoughts for Monday afternoon's presentation until that morning.

As a side-note here, I also want to send my (only slightly qualified) congratulations to my friends at the Crisis Group for having once again produced a very sane and timely analysis of the situation in Syria. In the Conclusion to this study, they write:

That the current crisis and future transition present enormous risks is not a reason to defend a regime that offers no solution and whose sole strategy appears to be to create greater hazards still. Optimally, this would be the time for third-party mediation leading to a negotiated transition.

... However unlikely they are to succeed, mediation efforts ought to be encouraged in principle, and none should be automatically dismissed. The focus should remain for now on the Arab League initiative, the most promising proposal currently on the table. For international actors or the opposition to rule out dialogue or negotiations with the regime would be to validate its argument that nothing short of its immediate fall will be deemed satisfactory. At the same time, Damascus should not be given an opportunity to gain time, nor should it be offered concessions in the absence of tangible signs that it is acting in good faith. Should the regime present a genuine, detailed proposal backed by immediate, concrete steps on the ground – again, an implausible scenario – mediated talks with the opposition should swiftly begin.

The report goes to some lengths to spell out the massive risks involved in any non-negotiated resolution in Syria, which is good. And they highlight the extreme political incompetence of the Asad regime, which I also think is something well worth doing. But I think they let the opposition off too lightly; and I really do not see that that the Arab League as such is in any position to negotiate the kind of transition-- that is, a negotiation to a truly democratic, rights-respecting and accountable political system-- that I see as being the one best able to prevent the outbreak (or continuation) of further internal violence in Syria, going forward.

Throughout my years in Lebanon during the early years of the civil war there, I saw at first hand how an "Arab League peacekeeping mission" there was used all along by all the different Arab powers to pursue their own, often highly divisive agendas and thus became yet another factor that prolonged the fighting and the suffering there. And I have no reason to believe that the Arab League is in any better position today to plan and run a constructive peacekeeping mission in Syria. In addition, as noted above, it is amazing for anyone truly concerned about pursuing a more democratic and accountable Syria going forward to think that the governments now running the Arab League are well positioned or well suited to help realize that goal. Hence I would like to keep alive the possibility of a role for democratic Turkey in spearheading a serious push for negotiations-- something that the Crisis Group's report doesn't mention.

(On the Arab League, and Qatar's rapidly shifting political role in regional politics, As'ad AbouKhalil has had four excellent short pieces in Al-Akhbar English in the past couple of weeks. You can access them all via this web-page.)

Palestine 1948 at the University of Virginia

On Saturday, I was delighted to attend the first two sessions of a half-day conference held at the University of Virginia on the topic '1948 in Palestine.' The main speakers at those sessions were Susan Akram of Boston University Law School and Rochelle Davis of Georgetown University.

Both those sessions were really thought-provoking. Susan Akram presented a smart and thoughtful set of comments based on the recent essay in Jadaliyya in which she compared the international-law strategy pursued by the PLO over the years highly unfavorably with that pursued by SWAPO and its allies in an earlier era. Bill the spouse was the commentator for that. Rochelle Davis then gave a lovely presentation based on her recent book about "Palestinian Village Histories", and someone from UVA Jewish Studies called Gabriel Finder was the commentator for that one.

What was equally notable to the high quality of both of these discussions was, for me, simply the fact of the open-ness of this corner of American academe to discussing this whole issue of 1948 in such an open-minded way.

These days, dealing with the still-unresolved issues of 1948 is moving back to being an inescapably central part of the whole quest to find a workable and equality-based formula for the longterm coexistence of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, whether in two states or one. For several years in an earlier era-- perhaps up to 1999 or 2000; or possibly, even later than that?-- it seemed to many people around the world that dealing only with the issues of 1967 (primarily, ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that Israel initiated in that year) would be sufficient and/or workable, while the issues from 1948 (primarily, the question of that large portion of Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from the area-that-became-Israel that year) could somehow be sidestepped, swept under the rug, or finessed in one way or another.

For many Israelis, however, even trying to discuss the question of the Palestinian refugees as being bearers of rights is still seen as anathema, or as an attempt to "delegitimize Israel", or whatever... and the same is true of the many pro-Israeli watchdogs and discourse-suppression organizations in the U.S. media and the U.S. academy.

That's why I found it particularly refreshing to hear of this symposium, which was organized by Alon Confino, a distinguished Israeli-American professor in the UVA history department. I wish I had the time to write more about the discussions. (Maybe they'll be published some day by Confino and his department?) In the meantime, though, I urge JWN readers to go read Susan Akram's piece on Jadaliyya and Rochelle Davis's book...