'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Bush's invasion of Iraq, seven years on

My thanks to AP for having compiled and published these (most likely conservative) figures today:

U.S. TROOP LEVELS:

March 31, 2003: 90,000.

October 2007: 170,000 at peak of troop buildup.

March 1, 2010: Just over 96,000.

COALITION TROOP LEVELS:

Number of countries that participated in "Coalition for the Immediate Disarmament of Iraq" at the start of the war: 31, including the United States.

As of August 2009, all non-U.S. coalition members had withdrawn from Iraq.

PRIVATE CONTRACTORS:

Number of U.S. private contractors in Iraq as of August, 2008: 190,000.

CASUALTIES:

Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of March 19, 2010: at least 4,385.

States with the highest number of U.S. troop deaths as of March 19, 2010: California, 470; Texas, 411; Pennsylvania, 195; Florida, 193; New York, 188; Ohio, 183; Michigan, 159; Illinois, 156.

Deaths of civilian employees of U.S. government contractors in Iraq as of Dec. 31, 2009: 1,457.

Deaths of coalition troops (non-U.S.) as of March 19, 2010: at least 315.

Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion: more than 95,680, according to the Iraq Body Count database.

COST:

More than $712 billion, according to the National Priorities Project. To date, $747.3 billion has been allocated to the war in Iraq since 2003. In August 2008, the Congressional Budget Office projected that additional war costs for the next 10 years could range from $440 billion to $865 billion.

COST PER MONTH:

As of July 2008, the Department of Defense's monthly obligations for contracts and pay averaged about $9.9 billion for Iraq.

As of July 2009, the Department of Defense's monthly obligations for contracts and pay averaged about $7.3 billion for Iraq.

INDICTMENTS AND CONVICTIONS:

As of Jan. 30, 2010, the work of Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction investigators has resulted in 26 arrests, 33 indictments, 25 convictions, and more than $53 million in fines, forfeitures, recoveries and restitution.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN IRAQ:

January 2004: 30-45 percent.

January 2010: an estimated 15.5-30 percent.

COST OF A BARREL OF OIL:

March 28, 2003: $21.50.

March 12, 2010: $77.32.

OIL PRODUCTION

Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.

March 17, 2010: 2.43 million barrels per day.

ELECTRICITY:

Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 4-8.

March 3, 2010: Nationwide: 6,090 megawatts. Hours per day: 15.0.

Prewar Baghdad: 2,500 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 16-24.

March 3, 2010: Baghdad: Megawatts N/A. Hours per day: 15.5.

Note: Current Baghdad megawatt figures are no longer reported by the U.S. State Department's Iraq Weekly Status Report.

TELEPHONES:

Prewar land lines: 833,000.

Jan. 2010: 1,300,000.

Prewar cell phones: 80,000.

Jan. 2010: An estimated 19.5 million.

WATER:

Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.

Jan. 30, 2010: More than 21.2 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:

Prewar: 6.2 million people served.

Jan. 30, 2010: 11.5 million people served.

INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS:

September 2003: 4,900.

Jan. 2010: 1,600,000.

INTERNAL REFUGEES:

Prewar: 1,021,962.

March 2010: At least 1.5 million people are currently displaced inside Iraq.

EMIGRANTS:

Prewar: 500,000 Iraqis living abroad.

March 2010: Approximately 2 million Iraqis, mainly in Syria and Jordan.

Jan. 2010: At least 216,430 refugees and internally displaced persons have returned to Iraq.

All figures are the most recent available.

Sources: The Associated Press, State Department, Defense Department, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, The Brookings Institution, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, National Priorities Project, Department of Labor, Congressional Budget Office, Iraq Body Count, Energy Information Administration.

Let us also remember that the 'pre-war baseline' presented itself represented a standard of life (and death) for the Iraqi people that had been massively depressed as a result of 13 years of very tight sanctions, whose tightness was maintained from about 1993-- Clinton's arrival in power-- primarily by the insistence of the U.S. and its sidekick in the U.K. on maintaining them in a punitively tight way. Throughout that period, the U.N. estimated that around 500,000 Iraqis, mainly the very young and the very old, died deaths that would have been avoidable in the absence of sanctions.

In memoriam of all those who died and with solidarity and compassion for all who survived.

~HC

Deborah Amos's 'Eclipse of the Sunnis'

Yesterday I went to book talk that National Public Radio's Deborah Amos gave about her new book Eclipse of the Sunnis; Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East. She's an engaging person and a smart reporter who's been working in the Middle East for many years now.

The talk was ways too short for my taste! In the course of of it, she explained that when she started the book, she had intended for it to be about Iraqi exiles, in general; but then it transmuted itself into a book that's more about "the eclipse of the Sunnis." She also noted that the title arouses very different reactions from western and Arabic audiences, with the latter being quite shocked by it while most westerners see nothing shocking in it at all.

Well, I've read a couple of chapters now, and I don't really think the title is perfect. Not least because there is-- as she had told us at the talk-- one whole chapter there about the Christian Iraqis who make up roughly 15% of the exiles, though only 3 % of the national population.

The book seems to have been reported mainly from Syria and Jordan.

In her talk yesterday, Amos stressed that the exile from Iraq has been particularly harsh for many or most Iraqi exiles because back home they had mostly been people with good educations, and a fair or high degree of financial and professional standing. So the loss of that sense of security-- and the fact that, for many of these families, they now find the children are getting far worse educations than their parents, or no education at all, and that so little help has been given them-- has in any cases made the come-down particularly hard to bear.

These refugees do not, she said, fit most people's stereotypical idea of what a 'refugee' looks like. And she added that this was really the first time this had ever happened to such a huge swathe of the middle- and upper-middle class of a country.

Actually, I'm not so sure about that latter point... It was also, after all, what happened to just about the whole of the middle- and upper-middle-class of Palestine during the nakba of 1947-49.

There's another parallel in these two situations, too-- though she gives this fact no acknowledgment. In the Introduction she writes,

Iraqis are tied to their homeland through technology... There is no model for this middle-class exodus in the Arab world. In chat rooms and on cellphones, web cameras, and blogs, a larger Iraq exists. The community of exiles is in daily contact waiting for word from home that it is time to come back. The rest of the region is waiting, too.

Well, I'm not sure how many Palestinian homes Amos has been into recently. But the Palestinian diaspora is significantly more far-flung (and more populous) than the Iraqi diaspora... Moreover, at this point, every single Palestinian family, except for a few families that all have citizenship in Israel, has close family members distributed among five or six different countries or jurisdictions. And they all try to keep in good touch with each other, and with relatives back "home", using Skype and blogs and every other electronic means at their disposal. Indeed, the distribution of this new(-ish) technology among Palestinian refugees has done more than just keep the sense of national belonging intact; I think it has also been working to create an entirely new kind of sense of national belonging. Maybe, even of a "virtual Palestine", that is in no way removed from the concerns of the terrestrial one.

Just like the Iraqi refugees.

But I think that's a quibble. As far as I can see, Amos has written a book that sensitively portrays the deep sadness of the exiles and the very many challenges they face. She also seems honest about the degree of responsibility our country must bear for their fate.

On p. xv she writes:

This new exodus was not the narrative that the Bush administration wanted to project, or acknowledge, and remained invisible for much of the world. The U.S. security plan known as the surge was an American success story, but it was a sideshow for those forced out of hoes and neighborhoods in a power struggle that used displacement and exile as a weapon. More Iraqis left the country in 2007 than in 2006, the year that the surge got underway. The international Organization for Migration... was tracking widespread displacements in 2007; the movement inside the country had increased by a factor of 20. Thirty thousand additional U.S. troops, spread out across Baghdad, brought no return of the exiles... on the ground the Sunni-Shiite divide was still steeped in blood.

In her talk yesterday, which was hosted by the Women's Foreign Policy Group here in DC, Amos said that her understanding is that most Iraqi exiles are watching the results of the recent elections carefully, and that if Allawi does well they will have more reason to consider returning home than if anyone else wins. His Iraqiyya bloc is the only one with any significant Sunni members in it.

She noted that candidates who'd earlier risen to prominence with the (U.S.-funded) Sunni "Awakening" groups were doing really badly.

(Also doing badly, according to Visser, has been Ali Faisal al-Lami, the executive director of the Debaathification commission. That should make many of the exiles happy!)

Anyway, though I disagree a little with some of the judgments Amos makes in her book, all-in-all I think it's a really excellent and important volume. Everyone here in the U.S. who might want (and perhaps understandably so) to forget as much as they can about the Bush years and all the really terrible decisions Pres. Bush made-- including the decision to invade Iraq-- needs to remember that those decisions had far greater, and graver, consequences on the people of Iraq than they have had on our people. Deborah Amos does a great job of taking us into the lives, concerns, and essential humanity of some of the millions of Iraqis displaced from their homes as a result of our country's invasion.

Iraq count delayed-- and indeterminate?

It is now more than eleven days since the polls closed in Iraq's March 7 election, and we still have no final answer. The latest information on the election commission's website tells us that 89% of the total vote has now been counted. How long will that last 11% take?

The long-drawn-out process by which the votes have been tallied, checked, and provisional vote-counts released has led to swings in expectations-- as of now, it seems that Ayad Allawi's Iraqiyya bloc is ahead by a hair-- and a growing drumbeat of concern about the integrity of the counting process. Today, some supporters of PM Nouri al-Maliki were reported by Reuters as complaining about vote fraud. Over at the BBC, meanwhile, Allawi was judiciously saying only that "there are irregularities that must be clarified", though Stephen Sackur was-- in a highly irresponsible way-- trying to push him into making outright allegations of vote fraud.

What does seem to be the case as of now is that followers of Moqtada Sadr, acting within the broader INA bloc, have been doing much better than anyone expected. Reidar Visser has calculated that, at the two-thirds-counted mark, in the twelve provinces in which the INA has been a big factor, the Sadrists had pulled in 34 of the 65 seats won by the INA.

Many commentators are now predicting that the Sadrists will be able to play a key kingmaking role once all the count has been completed, since Maliki's State of Law bloc and Allawi's Iraqiyya will most likely come out very closely tied. Because of the close finish, the coalition-forming process this time around may well prove to be as long-drawn-out and politically complex as it was after the December 2005 election. Though let us all very fervently hope, pray, and (where possible) work so that this period of political uncertainty does not see the same kind of horrendous descent into sectarian violence that Iraq saw back in early 2006.

I do think that this time around, the clear understanding by all parties that the U.S. occupation troops are now, absolutely, on their way out-- in implementation of the November 2008 Withdrawal Agreement-- should help motivate all authentically Iraqi political figures to find a way to cooperate with each other in this period rather than engaging in an orgy of political violence while still hoping that at some stage the U.S. will save their skins (which was one of the things that, I think, happened in 2006.)

Visser had these additional comments on the Sadrists:

it seems the Sadrists were a lot more successful with their “primaries” last autumn than ISCI... One of the remarkable aspects of the Sadrist success is their ability to use the open-list vote strategically, i.e. by spreading the vote on a number of winning candidates across the list (the more usual pattern is that a limited number of highly popular candidates stand out)... Additionally, the Sadrists, led by a 7-man committee of scholars based in Najaf who have liaised with Muqtada al-Sadr, have put a great effort into promoting individual candidates and providing voters with information on their educational and career backgrounds. But Sadrist voters are not doing this blindly: Some Sadrist candidates have been effectively demoted, such as Qusay Abd al-Wahhab, number six on the original list in Baghdad, and a deputy in the outgoing parliament.

... It seems inevitable that the remarkable Sadrist comeback at some point will be reflected in different coalition-forming dynamics. So far, this tentative process has remained dominated by the old elites, but what is really the point in negotiating with a 16-man bloc such as ISCI/Badr? With 34 plus candidates, the Sadrist will form a sizeable contingent of deputies comparable to the Kurdistan Alliance and as such will constitute an independent centre of power in the next Iraqi parliament.

Berkeley divestment, contd.

Here (Doc) is the press release that U.C. Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine put out about the historic, late-night vote in which the student senate last night voted to

ensure that its assets, and will advocate that the UC assets, do not include holdings in General Electric and United Technologies because of their military support of the occupation of the Palestinian territories...

And here (Doc) is the whole, very carefully drafted text of the bill adopted by the senate.

The press release notes that,

In 2009, Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, became the first US educational institution to divest from companies directly involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hampshire College action was advocated by the group Students for Justice in Palestine, and ultimately adopted by the Board of Trustees. Today, through its Student Senate bill, UC Berkeley becomes the first large, public US institution to endorse a similar measure.

Bill supporter Liz Jackson reported that,

The Senate meeting started at 9 pm, and it was packed with hundreds of students and community members. I think it went on all night but I left at midnight. Confrontations between Students for Justice in Palestine and the pro-Israeli students are always wired with intense vitriol. Last night was the same. The emotions of war, and history, of personal stakes, displacement and persecution are all right there in the room. The pro-Israeli students shock me with their hatefulness and violent energy. The Palestinian students impress me with equanimity and ability to turn the other cheek. Their life experience is their training. I know that characterization is probably unfair but it felt true last night. The room cheered and jeered at every speaker.

I spoke as an American Jew and as the co-chair of the Berkeley National Lawyer's Guild chapter. I based our chapter's endorsement of the bill on the NLG fact-finding mission in Gaza, the first legal group on the ground to document human rights violations just two weeks after the attack on Gaza ended last January. I closed with something like, "When the next Israeli bomb lands on a house full of screaming children may it not be funded by one cent of UC dollars."

Jackson described her elation at being at an important gathering where each person delivers the very best argument he or she can, in the two minutes each speaker is allowed. "Some of the older people there from Jewish Voices for Peace were really amazing," she said.

She said that one of the most inspiring speeches came from Tom Pessah, one of the two co-authors of the bill (and an Israeli citizen.) She noted that Pessah recalled the important legacy established at Berkeley in the 1960s by the Free Speech Movement, and quoted from the historic "bodies upon the gears" speech made by FSM leader Mario Savio on the steps of Sproul Hall in December 1964:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part.

"And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop..."

Jackson also said that many of the speeches made by the anti-divestment speakers seemed like hostile, demeaning invective aimed at the 20 voting members of the senate, along the lines of "You stupid idiots! You don't know anything about this matter! It's so much more complicated than you think and you don't have anything like the knowledge that's needed to even talk about it!"

I guess those arguments proved less than persuasive...

It was a long night. It started at 9 p.m., and I think the vote was finally recorded at 4 a.m. or so.

Jackson noted that Students for Justice in Palestine has worked and organized on the campus for many years to reach the present point-- and that a lot more, much broader statewide organizing still needs to be done to persuade the U.C. Regents to divest the whole of the university's large assets from companies involved in providing military support to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

By the way, also note this in the third 'Whereas' in the text of the bill there:

WHEREAS, within the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Israeli government continues a policy of settlement expansion...

These Berkeley students really have a very clear-eyed idea of what's going on in the occupied territories!

By the way, Jackson was one of many members of Berkeley SJP who took part in the campus's recent "Israeli Apartheid Week". Here is a photo of her taking part in a quiet standing action with her friend Sarah Abdullah:

Sloggers slogged?

Back in December, when a strange new quasi-news outfit called "IraqSlogger" emerged, I blogged my concerns about the organization here and here.

Now it turns out that Eason Jordan and Robert Young Pelton the two ethically challenged adventurers behind that short-lived project moved on from there to the world of intelligence gathering on contract to the U.S military in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Back in December '06, I wrote,

basically, this company is mixing up the job of making available a free news-reporting service with that of hiring themselves out as private intel consultants/providers, offering themselves to the highest bidders. Very disquieting. In my experience, there is quite enough suspicion out there in the world about the role of journalists and the media without a company coming along that explicitly seeks to mix the role of journalists with that of intelligence collectors and analysts.

Boy, did I call that one. (It wasn't hard. Those guys were pathetic amateurs.)

BDS comes to U.C. Berkeley

Yes, Alan Dershowitz, eat your heart out, the student senate at U.C. Berkeley voted 16-4 last night to "urge the University of California to divest from companies who have supplied the state of Israel with materials used in alleged war crimes."

Scroll down in the comments section here (Carl Randall) to get the news on the final vote.

That report, from the Daily Cal, says,

proponents said the bill is the first step in an expected long-term process to convince the UC Board of Regents to pull total investments of about $135 million from five companies currently supplying Israel with electronics and weapons, opponents contended it unfairly targets Israel.

Also read Russell Bates's comments there.

Mourning Jay (and Gene)

This afternoon my beloved friend Jay Worrall died. Jay was a shining, Light-filled elder of our Quaker meeting here in Charlottesville who in an earlier era played a pioneering role in the racial desegregation movement here in town and founded the important, statewide prisoner-aid organization Offender Aid and Restoration.

I am still crying. I happened to be the only non-family member who was present in the hospital room as he passed away. Shortly before he passed, the 15 or so family people in the room, the respiratory therapist, and I all stood in silent worship together with Jay, as he lay on his bed. I had a profound sense of the Divine Spirit/Light bursting out in great pulses from Jay.

When I joined the Charlottesville Friends Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), back in 1997, the meeting (congregation) had several really amazing, inspiring older members. Among them, Chic Moran, who had been a conscientious objector during World War II and had done some really important reconstruction work in Europe right after the war... Elaine Bell, who had worked with her husband Colin for many years for various Quaker service organizations in different places around the world... and Jay Worrall and his luminous wife Carolyn. They all meant so much to me. Chic died three or four years ago. Elaine died about 18 months ago. Now Jay, too, has passed. (Carolyn was at his bedside today, but she is in not in good shape.)

Jay Worrall was, I think, 96 years old. He had served in the U.S. military for many years in the 1940s and 1950s, including doing something in Ethiopia/Eritrea that always meant a lot to him afterwards. Then, fresh out of the military, he and Carolyn brought their five children to Charlottesville, where he got a job heading a pioneering organization called the Monticello Area Community Action Agency (MACAA) that worked to extend social-support services to all in the area, regardless of race... That, at a time of continued racial segregation in Virginia and much of the rest of the American south.

In 1956, Harry F. Byrd, Sr., a member of the U.S. Senate from Virginia, announced a policy of "massive resistance" to the federal court's 1954 order that all the country's school systems should end racial segregation. His followers in the Virginia General Assembly then enacted a series of laws forbidding any race-integrated schools from receiving state funds, establishing a board to determine which school each pupil should attend (based on her or his race, when this was in question), and offering tuition grants to pupils attending white-only schools.

The federal government ordered a number of school systems in the state, including the one here in Charlottesville, to desegregate their classrooms. Rather than do that, the state Governor ordered the closing of several key schools, including the high school and the premier elementary school here in Charlottesville.

There are still many older African-Americans here in town whose educations were grossly disrupted by the tensions of those years.

This was the racial cauldron in which Jay Worrall and his longtime African-American friend and collaborator Drewary Brown chose to work, building MACAA up into a powerful force for good in the community.

Jay carried on working on racial equality and racial healing issues throughout his life. He also did a lot of work on criminal justice reform and was a stalwart participant in all antiwar efforts. In the early 2000s, when I was participating in the weekly antiwar vigils here in town, he would quite frequently come by-- though his legs were a little shaky and he found it hard to walk. And he'd stand with us for most of the hour, to give his public witness.

He was always keenly interested in the Middle East. As recently as last Sunday he was an active member of a group in the Quaker meeting who were discussing what campaigns can be mounted to address the current crisis in Jerusalem.

Oh, and did I mention that along the way there, Jay Worrall researched and wrote a compendious, beautifully written 630-page history of the Quakers in Virginia, an area where there has been a Quaker presence since almost the dawn of Quakerism in the mid-17th century.

So, Friend Jay Worrall has passed from our midst. Last night he had a fall, and he never recovered. I shall miss him so. My warmest sympathies go to Carolyn, their five children, and their many grandchildren.

... Last night, I was planning to write something to mark the recent passing of another man, someone whom I never knew in person, but who was another amazing force for good in our country. Gene Stoltzfuz was a member of another of the historic "peace churches", the Mennonite church. He was the founding director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams from 1988 until 2004.

After Gene retired he started writing a blog called Peace Probe. His last post there is this quiet but profound reflection on torture and violence.

On the current tipping point

1. We really are at a tipping point.

AIPAC and its allies have really gotten their undies in a twist over last week's confrontation between Netanyahu and Biden (and Sec. Clinton, too.)

Next week, AIPAC has its big, power-demonstrating policy conference in Washington. The list of confirmed speakers is topped by Clinton and Netanyahu. How will that go? Will it be a love-fest or some discreet form of a continued confrontation? Will one or the other find a reason not to attend? Whatever happens, it's going to be important.

Meantime, Petraeus-- along with, presumably, others in both the brass and the suits sides at the Pentagon-- have started to discreetly weigh in on the real dangers Netanyahu's current policies pose to the lives of U.S. soldiers... And in the commentatoriat even Tom Friedman has come out strongly critical of the Netanyahu government's arrogance over Jerusalem.

AIPAC and its attack-dog allies have been fast, focused, and relentless. I've been receiving a stream of emailed news releases from the attack-dog group "The Israel Project", whose head, Jennifer Mizrachi has also been robo-calling me on my cellphone to urge me to contact legislators and the Prez to urge them to reaffirm their support for Israel and back off from confronting Netanyahu over Jerusalem. The press release AIPAC itself issued Sunday publicly called on Obama TO WORK TO IMMEDIATELY DEFUSE THE TENSION WITH ISRAEL (their screech, not mine.)

And where have the alleged "counter-AIPAC" organizations like J Street, Americans for Peace Now, or even that sad little group the Council for the National Interest been all this time? Notably AWOL, compared with AIPAC, TIP, etc. J Street hasn't put anything on their website on the Jerusalem-settlements issue, or on their email list, since March 11; APN hasn't done anything on it March 10. And you can search CNI's website and find nothing about it at all. Nor has the End the Occupation website.

This matters, because steering or dominating the narrative is really important in moments of crisis.

But anyway, the intense frenzy of activity from AIPAC, TIP, etc shows us that they think we are at what could well be a crisis for them. (And they are far from stupid.) After all, is the President simply going to wave away the concerns that have now, verifiedly, been voiced by the leader of Centcom about the dangers that Israel's policies pose to the lives and wellbeing of American troops? I do not see that he can.

2. In electoral politics, it still is 'the economy, stupid.'

The present confrontation between an administration in Washington and a settlement-addicted Likud government in Israel harks straight back to the period in 1991-92 when Pres. George H.W. Bush and Sec. of State James Baker got into a similar confrontation with Likud leader (and lest we forget, former terrorist gunman) Yitzhak Shamir. We need to remember the political lessons from that incident-- and remember them correctly.

The short version of what happened in that clash was that Bush and Baker drew their line in the sand against use of U.S. loan guarantees (however fungibly) to support the construction of settlements in the West Bank. During the Israeli elections of 1992, that principled U.S. stance persuaded Israeli voters, ever mindful of the need for good relations with Washington, to vote Shamir out and replace his government with a Labor-led coalition that enjoyed far better relations with Washington.

In the U.S. elections of later that year, however, Bush lost. The big question for us in the U.S. today, is why exactly did he lose?

The lobby people would have us believe the story that they and their allies have been spreading ever since Bush's defeat in November 1992: that he lost precisely because he had had the temerity to confront a government in Israel. That understanding of November 1992 came to dominate many narratives and "elite" political understandings-- in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

But it ain't so!

I was here in the U.S. during that election. It was the first or second general election I voted in. Go back and read the news accounts of the time. Bush lost-- and Clinton won-- because of the immense power of Clinton's slogan that "It's the economy, stupid!" It was the terrible state of the economy then that dominated voters' thinking-- much more importantly than anything about the Middle East, including Bush's previous set-to with Shamir. (And after all, most Jewish Americans were very happy to see Shamir replaced by Rabin.)

In the mid-term elections of November 2010, and in the presidential election of 2012, it will similarly be the state of the economy and of domestic governance in general that dominates voters' thinking. Inasmuch as the Middle East intrudes on voters' thinking at all-- which would anyway be very trivial--only a small proportion of voters are going to end up having their behavior swayed by the screechy arguments that AIPAC and Co. make about distant Jerusalem. Many more could be persuaded by organizations or opinion leaders who take trouble to spell out the kinds of arguments about the true interests of the American people in the region, as spelled out made by Gen. Petraeus (and also, as it happens, back in November by myself.)

So we do need to underline to the President and his political advisers that they absolutely should not be be blown off course by any arguments AIPAC and and its shills might make about "Hey, don't mess with us: Look what we did to Bush I back in 1992." It still really is "the economy, stupid!"

3. What Obama could do.

The administration has decided to delay, for an unstated length of time, the visit to Israel and Palestine that peace envoy George Mitchell was due to start yesterday. That's good for starters.

The administration's position, as described here by the WaPo's Glenn Kessler, is that it is pressing Netanyahu to do three things:

a. reverse last week's approval of 1,600 housing units in a "disputed" [i.e. occupied] area of Jerusalem,
b. make a substantial gesture toward the Palestinians, and
c. publicly declare that all of the "core issues" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, are on the agenda in the upcoming talks.

Kessler doesn't say this, but I understand that the administration's position is that unless Netanyahu does these things, then Mitchell won't be launching the promised "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinians any time soon.

Notice there, by the way, the degree to which these proximity talks are being treated by Washington as a boon or reward for Israel, which can be delayed or withheld by Washington as part of its diplomatic bargaining with the Netanyahu government. But actually, Netanyahu might in the abstract be very happy not to have the proximity talks. Why does it need them? Does Washington need them, actually, more than Israel? Maybe.

There are a lot of other things the Obama administration could do as well if it really wanted to demonstrate its commitment to achieving a fair and sustainable peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis. In no particular order of doability or anything else it could do any or all of the following, and should consider doing at least some of them.

It could,

A. Announce the launching of an administration-wide review of all U.S. policies that have any relationship to the Israeli settlements including policies affecting economic links and trade preferences being extended to settlements as well as to Israel proper; the activities and tax status of U.S. entities, including non-profit entities, that have dealings with or in the settlements. The terms of reference of this review should explicitly spell out that its purview includes the settlements in Jerusalem as well as elsewhere (including Golan.)

B. Announcement of a similar review of policies and entities related in any way to Israel's illegal Wall.

C. Commit to a series of steps aimed at speedily ending the illegal and anti-humane siege that Israel maintains against Gaza and restoring all the rights of Gaza's 1.5 million people.

D. Sen. Mitchell should be empowered to talk to representatives of all those Palestinian parties that won seats in the 2006 PLC election which was, let us remember, certified by all international monitors as free and fair. Obama and Co. should also inform the Egyptians and all other parties that they want and expect them to be helpful rather than obstructive in the Palestinian parties' efforts to reach internal reconciliation.

E. Move speedily toward giving the other four permanent members of the Security Council more real role in Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking. They all have a lot to offer and can help the U.S. get out of the very tight spot it currently finds itself in, in the Greater Middle East region.

4. Finally, beware of 'dirty tricks'.

We should all be very aware that Netanyahu and the even more militantly settlerist parties who are in his ruling coalition (and now well entrenched in the leadership of many of his security apparatuses) will not necessarily "play fair" in any continuing confrontation with Washington. No doubt many of these forces are already thinking up a variety of "dirty tricks" they might employ to try to reduce Obama's power domestically and internationally, to make him look weak, and to "punish" him for daring to stand up to their plan to Judaize the whole of Jerusalem while America looks impotently on.

Let's remember the history of, for example, the Lavon Affair in 1954, in which, according to the well-sourced Wikipedia entry,

Israeli military intelligence planted bombs in Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954 in the hopes that "the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'" would be blamed.

A country whose leaders could in relatively recent history act as cynically as that, including against British and U.S. targets, might well today have leaders who might think along similar lines.

Including, perhaps, even an action as explosive as launching some kind of military provocation against Iran, whose counter-attack would almost certainly engulf far more of the Americans who are on the country's borders, than of Israelis?

The U.S. military, obviously, need to redouble their efforts to prevent any such provocation. But other Israeli "dirty tricks" against the U.S., in a wide variety of arenas, are also very possible in the period ahead.

More on Petraeus

Paul Woodward of 'War in Context' has a good post, "Israel is putting American lives at risk", that expands on the info that Mark Perry blogged Saturday, about the briefers whom Gen. Petraeus despatched recently to go tell JCS chair Mike Mullen that the administration's Israel-Palestine policy is putting American lives at risk.

Woodward got Perry to discuss the circumstances behind his post a little more, and to give his assessment of what Petraeus is up to.

Perry told Woodward:

My sense is that General Petraeus neither likes nor dislikes Israel: but he loves his country and he wants to protect our soldiers. The current crisis in American relations with Israel is not a litmus test of General Petraeus’s loyalty to Israel, but of his, and our, concern for those Americans in uniform in the Middle East.

It is, perhaps, a sign of the depth of “the Biden crisis” that every controversy of this type seems to get translated into whether or not America and its leaders are committed to Israel’s security. This isn’t about Israel’s security, it’s about our security.

Very well said.

This is, of course, another sign of how the discussion over the nature and value of our country's currently joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel is fermenting in different sections of the U.S. political elite.

As a serving military officer, Petraeus is of course not allowed to take a "political" stand on anything. But he is also the man who as head of Centcom is charged with ensuring that the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops serving in combat zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other portions of the Greater Middle East are not exposed to any unnecessary dangers. And where he sees that Washington's policies do indeed place U.S. troops in unnecessary danger, he has a duty to speak out through the appropriate channels.

Though in the past I have accused Petraeus of being a grandstander, I think in the present circumstances there is no evidence at all that he did anything to leak the news of his briefings to Mullen (or about his reported request that Israel, currently handled out of EUCOM, nt Centecom, be transferred to his command. That one, Perry wrote, got shot down immediately.)

... Anyway, readers here at JWN might like to note that when I read interesting and significant things I am now trying once again to tag them and get them onto the "Delicious" zone on the right sidebar of the Main Page here for your edification, with a few comments from myself. I realize the Delicious zone is quite far down on the sidebar, but do try to check it from time to time.... In my current redesign, I'll try to bring it up a lot higher and more accessible.

For now, note that I put the Woodward piece on there yesterday. And today, there is this good roundup of pieces on the current "tipping point", by Ali Gharib.

More ferment in the liberal establishment: Friedman!!

I'm late getting round to reading the NYT today. But credit where credit is due. Tom Friedman:

I am a big Joe Biden fan... So it pains me to say that on his recent trip to Israel, when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government rubbed his nose in some new housing plans for contested East Jerusalem, the vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”