Document Text Content
25 August, 2011
Article 1. Scientific American
Is Muammar Qadhafi Clinically Psychotic?
John Matson
Article 2. The Financial Times
Why Libya sceptics were proved badly wrong
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Article 3. Foreign Policy
Sinais Bedouin run amok in post-Mubarak Egypt
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy
Article 4. The National Interest
Foreign-Policy Failure
Dimitri K. Simes
Article 5. NYT
Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07
Charlie Savage
Article 6. Ma'an News Agency
Palestine and Statehood: An historical overview
Abdullah Abueid
Article 1.
Scientific American
Is Muammar Qadhafi Clinically Psychotic?
John Matson
August 23, 2011 -- OUT OF TOUCH: The bizarre statements Col. Muammar Qadhafi has made in the past several months may result from a self-imposed insulation from reality, rather than a delusional detachment from it. Six months after a civil uprising began in Libya, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, the nation's longtime leader, finally seems to have lost his grip on the country he ruled for more than 40 years. Did he also, at some point, lose his grip on reality? As the conflict spread across Libya, Qadhafi made a number of bizarre statements to members of the media, denying that demonstrators were angry with the government and even claiming that any conflict that might be unfolding was the result of drinks spiked with hallucinogenic drugs. More recently he has pledged to defend the capital, Tripoli, even as rebel forces swept through the city with surprising swiftness. Was Qadhafi deluded about the state of his nation or was he simply unwilling to accept that his time had come? To get some insight on the Libyan leader and other out-of-touch dictators, we spoke to Jerrold Post, a professor of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs, and director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington University. Post is a CIA veteran who has written psychological profiles of a number of world leaders.
What is it about leaders like Qadhafi that makes them unable to see or accept their own impending downfall?
Leaders like this? I'm not sure there are other leaders like Qadhafi.
In terms of many of the autocratic dictators who went down with bewildering speed in the Arab Spring, one of the reasons the public dismay—what then becomes revolutionary fervor—is so startling is they are really protected by this circle around them from understanding how their popularity is ebbing. They can have a very unrealistic understanding and believe, as Qadhafi stated again and again, "My people, they all love me." I found this language of his quite remarkable. And with Qadhafi as an exaggerated example, this is true of any of the other leaders, too—namely, they believe they have widespread support. If there are public demonstrations against them, that must reflect outside agitators. This was true with [ousted Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak as well. He spoke of outside conspiracies. But it is particularly true of Qadhafi. There is an interesting kind of almost syllogism for him: "My people all love me, and therefore if there is anyone protesting against me, they are not really my people, and that must be a consequence of outside provocation." And one of the points that he made early on was that this was crazed youth who were on hallucinogens with which their Nescafe had been laced, which I thought was rather creative, really.
I found Qadhafi's language in general very striking. And what is most interesting about it is it is entirely in the first person singular: "My people all love me. They will support me. My people, they love me." It was very "me" centered. A vivid contrast—and this will seem like a ludicrous comparison—was Churchill during World War II. Churchill always spoke in first person plural, and his way of strengthening the morale of his people was to talk about "us," "our trials and tribulations," to identify with the people. It was a remarkable case of charismatic leadership. Qadhafi, in contrast, speaks only about himself. He identifies himself as the creator of Libya, and one of his early quotes said, "I created Libya, and I can destroy it."
Are Qadhafi and other deposed leaders deluded in thinking all is well in their kingdom or their country?
Deluded isn't quite the word, because if you're surrounded by a group of sycophants who tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear, you can be in touch with reality by psychological tests but quite out of touch with reality politically. With Saddam Hussein, this was particularly true—where to provide criticism of him was either to lose your job or lose your life. Everyone was constantly praising him and his brilliance, and he was spared wise council.
In addition to these circles of sycophants, is narcissism a common trait among autocrats?
That is a wonderful question. I'm just putting the finishing touches on my capstone book, which will be called Dreams of Glory: Narcissism and Politics. I see narcissism as being a very powerful explanatory factor for many of these leaders, who display a number of traits of narcissism. One is they have a really exalted self-concept on the surface, and are very sensitive to slight or any information to the contrary. So they can get very angry if someone questions them.
Secondly, when there is something that shatters that image—and this will be interesting to see what happens with Qadhafi—there can be what's called a narcissistic rage. So, for example, with Saddam Hussein as he was exiting Kuwait, lighting the oil wells on fire—that was probably an example of that. Their interpersonal relationships are very disturbed, and they surround themselves with people who make them feel good. So that it is really a great hazard to in any way criticize the leader. Qadhafi did a great deal to hollow out the institutions of government, and while he said that he couldn't give up his position because he had no position—which was literally true—he was appointed the eternal guide of the Libyan people, with no authority over them. But in fact, 20 percent of the people's committees had counterintelligence responsibilities for sniffing out people plotting against him, who were always dealt with very harshly. Even when people fled Libya he would track them down, and he even made an assassination attempt of a Libyan exile living in the United States early on.
In a profile that you wrote for Foreign Policy in March, you mention that Qadhafi has some hallmarks of a borderline personality. How does that manifest itself?
This will sound slightly sarcastic, but the borderline refers to individuals—it kind of comes from the borderline between neurosis and psychosis—who can often function perfectly rationally but may under certain stresses go below the border and have their perceptions distorted and their actions impaired. The two circumstances where Qadhafi seems to go below the border are A, when he's succeeding; and B, when he's failing. An example of when he's succeeding would be when he was marching toward Benghazi with very little resistance. He can really get almost high and feel invulnerable. When he promised he would search down his enemies from room to room, which partially contributed to the NATO reaction to him, that's an example of that kind of exaggerated belligerent high he can go on.
On the other hand, when he is suffering, when he is under pressure, and particularly when he is not being seen as the powerful and exalted leader—and that's really the case to an extreme now—it hits another place in his psychology, and that's the kind of noble Arab warrior who will stand tall against superior force. There was an example in the 1970s when he had declared that Libyan sovereignty extended to 200 miles off its coast, when international waters start at 12 miles. He declared that anyone who crossed this "line of death" would be subject to attack. The U.S. was planning maneuvers in the Gulf of Sidra and went inside this 200-mile zone. Qadhafi sent out three sorties of jets against them, which were promptly shot down. But after, it was interesting. He said, "I want to thank the United States for making me a hero to the Third World." Standing tall against a superior adversary has great value in the Arab world.
In your view, is there anything that Qadhafi could have done to remain in power or is he just fundamentally out of touch with Libya today?
One should remember back to Saddam Hussein again, and how long it was before we finally found him. I believe that until the end he believed that he could get past this and would reach heroic stature for standing up against the enemy, and that his people would support him. A couple of questions get asked about leaders here. A, would he go off to a lush exile as, say, [former Haitian president] "Baby Doc" Duvalier did? Or B, would he commit suicide? I don't think either of those is in the cards for Qadhafi. In fact, he gave this defiant speech on August 21, which insisted that he was in Tripoli and wouldn't surrender: "We cannot go back until the last drop of our blood. I am here with you. Go on. Go forward." And in a brief television statement the same day, "Go out and take your weapons, all of you. There should be no fear." It's a rather different thing than Churchill, who was advised to move out of London and instead stayed there to absorb the Blitz along with the British people. He was sort of a role model for heroism and spoke—again in the first person plural—about, "We will stand tall, we will resist this tyranny." It was really remarkably inspiring. But with Qadhafi, again, it's always the "me," and that goes back to your narcissism. He has a very difficult time, as most narcissists do, empathizing with the pain and suffering of others. Everything is about him.
So how do you see this playing out for Libya?
Well, it's quite clear that the rebels are in control, but things will not really be fully clarified until Qadhafi is either killed, forced to surrender when there's no one left around him or goes down in a blaze of bullets. I gather there has been some talk about him going into exile in Tunisia. That's not totally out of the question, but if he does so, that's not with the idea of giving up so much as temporarily taking refuge there in order to continue on as the leader of Libya.
So I think that there's every reason to believe that what we are seeing is the last act, but it could be prolonged until they actually succeed in capturing him. Of course part of what makes it so difficult for him to leave is the indictment by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. His son Saif al-Islam is also indicted for crimes against humanity. So there really is no way out for him. I think it's important to note that his most important audience is the mirror. And when he says these things he really does believe them. It's sounds crazy, but it's kind of like, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most important Muslim Arab Third World leader of them all?" And the answer is, "You, Muammar." He is really going have a very difficult time seeing people celebrating his going down, in terms of trying to sustain that heroic inner image.
Article 2.
The Financial Times
Why Libya sceptics were proved badly wrong
Anne-Marie Slaughter
August 24, 2011 -- Let us do a thought experiment. Imagine the UN did not vote to authorise the use of force in Libya in March. Nato did nothing; Colonel Muammer Gaddafi over-ran Benghazi; the US stood by; the Libyan opposition was reduced to sporadic uprisings, quickly crushed. The regimes in Yemen and Syria took note, and put down their own uprisings with greater vigour. The west let brutality and oppression triumph again in the Middle East.
This is the scenario many wise heads were effectively arguing for with their strong stands against intervention to stop Col Gaddafi. Over the months those analysts have reminded us of their views, calling Libya a quagmire. This week one of the leading proponents of that position, my friend and colleague Richard Haass, shifted gears – but only to remind us just how hard the road ahead in Libya is likely to be. I do not know anyone, regardless of the side they took in the initial debate, who thinks this task will be easy; indeed, the battle against Col Gaddafi is not yet won. But not so fast. Before we focus on what must happen next, let us pause for a minute and reflect on that initial debate and the lessons to be learnt.
The first is that, against the sceptics, it clearly can be in the US and the west’s strategic interest to help social revolutions fighting for the values we espouse and proclaim. The strategic interest in helping the Libyan opposition came from supporting democracy and human rights, but also being seen to live up to those values by the 60 per cent majority of Middle Eastern populations who are under 30 and increasingly determined to hold their governments to account. This value-based argument was inextricable from the interest-based argument. So enough with the accusations of bleeding heart liberals seeking to intervene for strictly moral reasons.
We also now know how different intervention looks when we help forces who want to be helped. East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Libya – all cases where force evened out odds between a brutal government and a widespread and legitimate social or national movement. It is difficult to know when a state has failed in its responsibility to protect its people, particularly when secession is involved. This is why international authorisation is both required and difficult to obtain. But the contrast with Iraq and Afghanistan, where external invasion saw the US often labelled as an enemy, is enormous.
Another clear lesson: the depiction of America as “leading from behind” makes no sense. In a multi-power world with problems that are too great for any state to take on alone, effective leadership must come from the centre. Central players mobilise others and create the conditions and coalitions for action – just as President Barack Obama described America’s role in this conflict. In truth, US diplomacy has been adroit in enabling action from other powers in the region, and then knowing when to step out of the way.
That said, we must not focus just on states, because Libya also shows that social forces are increasingly powerful drivers of foreign policy. Those forces have now pushed both the west and Arab governments into taking a much harder line than simply geostrategic logic would dictate against Bashar al-Assad’s brutality in Syria, and even (albeit timidly) against torture and killings by the Bahraini government. Social movements are also beginning to reshape politics in Israel and India.
Looking forward, it is really not up to the west, much less the US, to plan Libyas transition. It is a relief to see so many articles and statements reflecting lessons learnt from Iraq. But the Libyans are far ahead of where the US was when the initial fighting ended in Iraq. The National Transitional Council has a draft constitutional charter that is impressive in scope, aspirations and detail – including 37 articles on rights, freedoms and governance arrangements.
The sceptics’ response to all this, of course, is that it is too early to tell. In a year, or a decade, Libya could disintegrate into tribal conflict or Islamist insurgency, or split apart or lurch from one strongman to another. But the question for those who opposed the intervention is whether any of those things is worse than Col Gaddafi staying on by increasingly brutal means for many more years. Instability and worse would follow when he died, even had he orchestrated a transition.
The sceptics must now admit that the real choice in Libya was between temporary stability and the illusion of control, or fluidity and the ability to influence events driven by much larger forces. Welcome to the tough choices of foreign policy in the 21st century. Libya proves the west can make those choices wisely after all.
The writer is a former director of policy planning for the US state department
Article 3.
Foreign Policy
Sinais Bedouin run amok in post-Mubarak Egypt
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy
AUGUST 24, 2011 -- The landscape of Egypt's lawless North Sinai governorate is punctuated by the bullet-riddled, torched police station of Sheikh Zuweid, a densely populated town roughly nine miles from the Gaza border. It is just one of the security buildings that has fallen victim to the long-running clashes between the military and the Bedouin tribes of the region, clashes that have only escalated since Egypt's revolution. Hosni Mubarak's regime branded the Bedouin, a largely nomadic and clan-based people, as outlaws who threatened Egyptian sovereignty. As his rule collapsed in February, and afterward, the Bedouins sought retribution against the security services that long oppressed them, attempting to carve out a degree of autonomy in the region. The unrest has turned into an economic headache for Egypt's new military rulers: The pipeline that supplies 40 percent of Israel's natural gas has been bombed five times since the revolution, halting the country's natural gas exports. But more importantly, Sinai has become a breeding ground for Islamist extremism and violence that -- barring a dramatic improvement in relations between the Bedouins and the central government in Cairo -- threatens Egypt and the region at large. Sinai's lawlessness recently sparked an international incident: On Aug. 18, gunmen carried out a string of attacks in southern Israel that left eight Israelis dead. The Israeli government, which claimed that the attackers were militants from the Gaza Strip who had crossed into Israel through the porous Sinai border, retaliated by launching attacks in both Gaza and Egypt.
That same night, five Egyptian soldiers were killed and several injured during an attack on the Egyptian side of the border. Lt. Col. Amr Imam, a media spokesman for the Egyptian military, said that the officers were killed by an Israeli Apache helicopter that fired two rockets. "It may have been a mistake," he said. Also on Aug. 18, a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up at an Egyptian checkpoint 11 miles from the Sinai town of Taba, killing an officer and injuring two others. "The body of the dead officer and the unidentified head of the bomber were brought over to the hospital," said Abel Wahab, a doctor in the emergency department of the hospital in el-Arish, North Sinai's capital. The Israeli operation outraged the Egyptian public and prompted thousands to protest outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Amid rumors that Egypt might recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv, the Egyptian government also brushed off a rare Israeli statement of regret as "not in keeping with the magnitude of the incident and the state of Egyptian anger."
In Sinai, that anger is more palpable -- but it's more often directed at the Egyptian state. Ibrahim al-Menaei, a leader of the Swarkeh tribe, considered the most powerful tribe in the north, told me that Mubarak's formally dissolved state security apparatus was to blame for the lack of law and order in the region. He accused the security forces of framing his people for crimes that they did not commit and labeling them as drug and weapons dealers. "I will not let a single police officer into this region until they give in to our demands," Menaei explained as he sat in the sanctuary of his safe house a few kilometers south of the Israeli border, surrounded by his five sons and armed disciples. He called on the new Egyptian government to repeal laws that prevent the Bedouins from owning land, abolish all absentia sentences against Bedouins that were issued during Mubarak's rule, and prosecute police officers responsible for killing Bedouins. There are in fact two Sinais: the impoverished north and the more-developed south, home of beach resorts catering to international tourists. The security vacuum may have turned Sinai into a regional hot spot, but it is also an economic boon to Bedouin leaders, who have thrived off what is literally an underground economy. Menaei said that he spent $100,000 to construct a subterranean tunnel large enough to smuggle cars into nearby Gaza. "As many as 200 cars a week were smuggled through," he said. "Hamas gets $1,000 per car as tax," he explained. "The buyer pays me the car's price and rent money for using the tunnel -- $5,000 for a car and around $8,000 for a truck." Such a lucrative source of revenue requires significant weaponry to protect it. "This is our operation room," Menaei boasted, showing off two 14.5 mm anti-aircraft machine guns stored in the corner of the room, covered with bedsheets. The smugglers showed me one of their blockade-busting tunnels positioned to relieve the Gazans' suffering from the Israeli blockade and sanctions. It was equipped with ventilation and lighting systems, as well as network boosters meant to amplify the mobile-phone signal. Its entrance was well hidden between man-made huts and fences located amid an olive tree field in the desert. "I get $50 for every Palestinian I smuggle into Sinai," Menaei said, explaining that Hamas supervises the smuggling operation from the Gaza side of the border. Standing nearby, one of his sons demonstrated how the smugglers plunge safely into the tunnel using a rope tethered above ground. Salem Aenizan, a fugitive leader from the Tarabin tribe, insisted that the Bedouins' links to Gaza are based on financial interest rather than an ideological affinity with Hamas. He told me that the tunnels are used to smuggle food, cars, medicine, and construction materials -- but that the weapons trade ceased after Hamas's 2007 takeover of Gaza and that the smugglers refuse to transport suicide bombers or people intent on kidnapping tourists. But the Bedouins' entrepreneurial spirit has nevertheless led to some interesting opportunities. "We built the Gaza Zoo," Aenizan boasted. "I received $20,000 once for smuggling a tiger. We had to drug it." For the Bedouins, the profits that they reap from smuggling are only compensation for generations of neglect and outright hostility from Egypt's central government. "Only 10 percent of my people benefit from the tourism industry," Aenizan said. "The rest is pocketed by Egyptian tycoons." It is not unusual for Bedouins to refer to non-Bedouins as "Egyptians" -- a sign of their detachment from Egyptian society. Running water is still scarce in many areas of Sinai, another sign of the government's negligence. Although most Bedouins hold Egyptian citizenship, they are not allowed into the high ranks of the military, according to Aenizan and Menaei.
Aenizan, who is wanted on an 80-year sentence for allegedly smuggling goods, described how interactions with the corrupt judicial system often sour Bedouins on the state. "They jailed our women to force us to turn ourselves in," he said, attempting to justify his contempt toward the government. "I didn't even enter a court or have a lawyer. They ask you to be an informer. If you refuse, they frame you." The Bedouins' long-simmering frustration with the Egyptian state boiled over during the mass protests that led to Mubarak's fall from power. Three police officers were kidnapped by armed men in el-Arish during the height of the revolution, and their whereabouts still remain unknown. Tourists fled the city as lawlessness grew more pronounced. But while Sinai's disorder has mainly been exploited by people looking to make a quick buck, a disturbing ideological element has also tried to fill the political space. On July 29, during a protest calling for an Islamic state after Friday prayers in el-Arish, close to 100 armed militants mounted on motorcycles and pickup trucks stormed through the city waving black flags, terrorizing residents, and attacking the police station. Gun battles with security forces lasted for hours, leaving seven people dead, including two police officers and a 13-year-old boy caught in the crossfire, according to Gen. Saleh el-Masry, head of North Sinai security.
Masry said that the attackers belonged to the radical Islamist group Takfir wal-Hijra, as well as Palestinian factions that snuck through the tunnels. "The Takfiris" -- extremist militants with a dogmatic, exclusionary ideology -- "have become more active during the revolution," he said, claiming that Egyptian security forces had arrested 12 of the assailants in the el-Arish attack, including three Palestinians. The spike in violence has been fueled by outlaws who escaped Egypt's prisons during the anarchy that accompanied Mubarak's fall. Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Ahmed Gamal El Din told me in an interview that 23,000 criminals escaped from Egypt's prisons during the revolution and that only 7,300 had been rearrested or turned themselves in as of May. The prison breaks also freed some men allegedly linked to al Qaeda, who appear to be attempting to establish a foothold in Sinai's ungoverned spaces. Maj. Yaser Atia of Egypt's General Security confirmed that Ramzi Mahmoud al-Mowafi, also known as "the chemist" for his expertise in preparing explosives, escaped a Cairo prison on Jan. 30. The fugitive's prison files presented to me indicate that the 59-year-old Egyptian had fled to Afghanistan and joined al Qaeda. Upon his return to Egypt he was given a life sentence by a military tribunal, though more details on the charges against him remain unclear. Egyptian intelligence sources told me that Mowafi is currently in Sinai, though they played down the threat he posed. And then there is the matter of the fliers. On July 29, the residents of el-Arish found a flier labeled "A statement from al Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula" distributed throughout their neighborhoods. It describes Islam as the only true religion and criticizes the Camp David agreement that led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Gen. Abdel-Wahab Mabrouk, the governor of North Sinai, said that the fliers had been distributed outside mosques after Friday prayers by men who covered their faces with scarves.
Several days later, another purported al Qaeda flier appeared around el-Arish -- this time announcing that the organization was planning to attack police stations on Aug. 12. For the Egyptian security services, that was one provocation too far. On that day, stunned residents of el-Arish woke to find thousands of troops from the Egyptian 2nd Army, accompanied by police officers and border guards, deployed in an "anti-terror" crackdown in Sinai. The operation's first phase entailed securing government buildings, police stations, and the el-Arish prison. The offensive started on Aug. 15, as one Egyptian militant was killed and 12 were arrested, according Hazem al-Maadawi, a police officer involved in the operation. State news agency EgyNews said authorities are targeting 15 more people who participated in attacks at the el-Arish police station, including members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Palestinian group Jaish al-Islam. These extremist rumblings have frayed nerves in the Israeli government, which had already been skeptical of the Egyptian revolution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Knesset committee on May. 30, "Global terrorist organizations are meddling [in Sinai] and their presence is increasing because of the connection between Sinai and Gaza." If there is any hope of restoring order to Sinai, it lies in a historic rapprochement between the Bedouins and the Egyptian security forces to drive out these unwanted interlopers. Bedouins have signaled their willingness to help restore security, but are also calling on the Egyptian government to do its part by finally integrating them into Egypt's social fabric. "We will not let a single Palestinian suspected of ill intentions into Sinai after the attacks," said Muhammed al-Ahmar, a Bedouin and human rights activist. "But, we are fed up with empty promises, and if the police mentality does not change, then nothing will work. It's time for Sinai to flourish and regain its full rights." Egypt's new government has made tentative steps in that direction: Members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, accompanied by the deputy interior minister and members of the military intelligence, held a meeting on Aug. 20 in the el-Arish military club, in a conference hall with Bedouin sheikhs representing each tribe in Sinai. At the meeting speakers from both sides expressed their willingness to cooperate in bringing the security situation back to normal and to bury the hatchet "for love of Sinai." The government officials announced their concessions, including promises to soon issue a new law regarding land ownership in the region and to revisit the files of those Bedouins sentenced in absentia; the Bedouins dutifully clapped at the news. Several Bedouin sheikhs subsequently took to the podium and announced their intentions to assist in securing the region.
The government's planned reforms are a good start, but after years of neglect, it's going to take more than promises to win over the Bedouins. If Egypt is truly concerned about securing Sinai, it must quickly turn its words into actions.
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy is the author of Baghdad Bound and works as a freelance news producer/journalist for CNN in Cairo.
Article 4.
The National Interest
Foreign-Policy Failure
Dimitri K. Simes
August 24, 2011 -- PRESIDENT BARACK Obama is in many respects the opposite of Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush, both foreign-policy presidents who subordinated their domestic ambitions to America’s national-security requirements. Moreover, where Obama has succeeded internationally, his successes have been largely tactical rather than strategic, reflecting the fact that he is fundamentally a domestic leader with a European-style socialist agenda but little or no foreign-policy vision. This lack of an international agenda is why the president may be called a pragmatist, but not a realist.
One result of all this is that his administration’s foreign-policy choices often appear substantially driven by political expediency—and particularly a desire to avoid domestic criticism, something apparent in both the president’s surge in Afghanistan and his later plan for withdrawal. Another is that, lacking a vision, the administration rarely appears to engage in long-term thinking about the international environment, historical processes or the potential unintended consequences of its choices. In fact, its sense of history seems highly politicized and simplistic.
Short-term political thinking about foreign policy cannot sustain America’s international leadership, which requires clear distinctions between immediate tactical problems and longer-term strategic threats. Today, most analysts agree that the greatest danger to the United States is not from Iran, which does not yet have nuclear weapons, or even al-Qaeda, which has been seriously damaged, but rather from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Maintaining the Pakistani government’s ability to control its roughly one hundred nuclear weapons is a vital American national interest; the loss of a single warhead to extremists, whether through a government collapse or through a disaffected anti-American faction in Pakistan’s military or intelligence services, could be devastating.
Strikingly, U.S. policy has given relatively little weight to this concern: the Bush administration subordinated a coherent U.S. strategy in the region to the optional invasion of Iraq; both the Bush and particularly the Obama administrations have emphasized the war against al-Qaeda to such an extent that the U.S.-Pakistan alliance is in tatters. Now Islamabad’s very stability has come into question.
It is good to hear from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and other senior officials that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have suffered major setbacks. It was even better to hear that U.S. troops had finally killed Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, these triumphs have come at demonstrable cost. There was perhaps no reliable way to kill bin Laden without grievously offending Pakistan’s government and people, though a senior administration official has admitted that the United States “underestimated the humiliation factor” of the raid. Still, American officials could have structured U.S.-Pakistan relations in a way that would have made this necessary infringement on Pakistan’s sovereignty the exception rather than the rule in Washington’s approach to its admittedly frustrating and unreliable ally. Instead, the administration expanded drone attacks on less-than-essential targets (the average frequency of drone strikes under President Obama is one every four days, compared to one every forty days during the Bush administration); harshly criticized Pakistan’s government and military before the Abbottabad operation; embarrassed both by killing bin Laden inside the country; and then followed the action with further public criticism and cuts in assistance to the Pakistani military.
Can the United States afford to push Pakistan over the edge? If not, we must find a way to balance our clear interest in defeating al-Qaeda and the Taliban against Pakistan’s continued stability—including our relationship with Pakistan’s government, military and citizens. Dennis Blair, forced to resign last year as director of national intelligence, has suggested coordinating drone strikes much more closely with Islamabad.
In the longer run, China’s rise will clearly be a historic challenge to the United States. Yet, while administration officials talk frequently about China in domestic contexts, the president’s policy toward Beijing is fundamentally incoherent.
Two recent books, Henry Kissinger’s On China and Aaron Friedberg’s A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, suggest two very different interpretations of Chinese conduct and propose alternative American responses. Kissinger views China as a rising but thus far moderate power and warns against creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that could lead to zero-sum competition between Beijing and Washington. He argues that such rivalry could lead to a pre–World War I situation with potentially devastating consequences for both nations and for the rest of the world. Friedberg ridicules this approach, arguing that the United States should seek to democratize China and, if this does not succeed, should practice assertive containment. In his view, if the World War I analogy has any value, it is in demonstrating that the British were too timid in responding to Germany’s rise.
Kissinger and Friedberg offer coherent proposals that are mutually exclusive. Kissinger’s is much more persuasive to me, but there is a choice—and America must make a decision. Accordingly, it is quite troubling to see the Obama administration trying to have it both ways: building a cooperative relationship with Beijing while visibly siding with China’s neighbors in every dispute. At the same time, after initially downplaying democracy promotion, the administration seems to have begun to pursue it with new energy, partly under the influence of Chinese dissidents and partly, insiders say, because officials are reluctant to be portrayed as China apologists. Whatever the motivation, Beijing is likely to view this combination of external and internal pressure as a serious threat.
Meanwhile, if the White House is seriously seeking to contain China or, alternatively, to shape a global environment that would make containment unnecessary, it is hard to imagine how this could be done without precluding any rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. The administration claims the reset with Russia is one of its most significant foreign-policy successes. But there is less here than meets the eye—on both sides. Russian concessions so far have been halfhearted and Russian policies, whether on Iran or Libya, do not coincide with those of America. For its part, the United States appears unprepared to address Moscow’s greatest concerns: integration into Europe’s security architecture and reliable assurances on missile defense.
More narrowly—but no less problematic for U.S. efforts to have better relations with Russia than Russia has with China—Obama’s team is risking alienating a large portion of the Russian elite in its response to corruption and human-rights violations. While the State Department has made clear its opposition to legislation punishing Russian officials allegedly linked to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky while in police custody, the administration has decided preemptively to deny visas to those it considers implicated in the case. Moscow has stated clearly that this could derail cooperation across the board, including on sanctions against Iran and transit to Afghanistan (a deal that becomes even more important as U.S. ties to Pakistan deteriorate).
Corruption in Russia is pervasive and is an obstacle to foreign investment and ultimately to any political or economic progress in the country. But with American blood and treasure safeguarding some of the most corrupt governments in the world in Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on Russia’s real and serious corruption in a way that could endanger America’s relationship with this important power is hard to justify.
Notwithstanding predictions of America’s decline, the United States is still the world’s greatest power and can remain so for quite some time. However, as other powers rise, and as America becomes increasingly preoccupied with its economic future, the margin for error is shrinking. The United States faces critical choices—and it needs leaders able to make them.
Dimitri K. Simes is the president of The Nixon Center.
Article 5.
NYT
Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07
Charlie Savage
August 24, 2011 — Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers — still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction” — expressed misgivings.
“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,” Mr. Cheney wrote about a meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”
Mr. Bush chose to try diplomatic pressure to force the Syrians to abandon the secret program, but the Israelis bombed the site in September 2007. Mr. Cheney’s account of the discussion appears in his autobiography, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,” which is to be published by Simon & Schuster next week. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Cheney’s book — which is often pugnacious in tone and in which he expresses little regret about many of the most controversial decisions of the Bush administration — casts him as something of an outlier among top advisers who increasingly took what he saw as a misguided course on national security issues. While he praises Mr. Bush as “an outstanding leader,” Mr. Cheney, who made guarding the secrecy of internal deliberations a hallmark of his time in office, divulges a number of conflicts with others in the inner circle.
He wrote that George J. Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, resigned in 2004 just “when the going got tough,” a decision he calls “unfair to the president.” He wrote that he believes that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tried to undermine President Bush by privately expressing doubts about the Iraq war, and he confirms that he pushed to have Mr. Powell removed from the cabinet after the 2004 election. “It was as though he thought the proper way to express his views was by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government,” Mr. Cheney writes. His resignation “was for the best.”
He faults former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for naïveté in the efforts to forge anuclear weapons agreement with North Korea, and Mr. Cheney reports that he fought with White House advisers over softening the president’s speeches on Iraq.
Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the administration underestimated the challenges in Iraq, but he said the real blame for the violence was with the terrorists.
He also defends the Bush administration’s decision to inflict what he called “toughinterrogations” — like the suffocation technique known as waterboarding — on captured terrorism suspects, saying it extracted information that saved lives. He rejects portrayals of such techniques as “torture.”
In discussing the much-disputed “16 words” about Iraq’s supposed hunt for uranium in Niger that were included in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address to help justify the eventual invasion, Mr. Cheney said that unlike other aides, he saw no need to apologize for making that claim. He writes that Ms. Rice eventually came around to his view.
“She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk and tearfully admitted I had been right,” he wrote.
The book opens with an account of Mr. Cheney’s experiences during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he essentially commanded the government’s response from a bunker beneath the White House while Mr. Bush — who was away from Washington and hampered by communications breakdowns — played a peripheral role. But Mr. Cheney wrote that he did not want to make any formal statement to the nation that day.
“My past government experience,” he wrote, “had prepared me to manage the crisis during those first few hours on 9/11, but I knew that if I went out and spoke to the press, it would undermine the president, and that would be bad for him and for the country.
“We were at war. Our commander in chief needed to be seen as in charge, strong, and resolute — as George W. Bush was.”
Mr. Cheney appears to relish much of the criticism heaped on him by liberals, but reveals that he had offered to resign several times as President Bush prepared for his re-election in 2004 because he was afraid of becoming a burden on the Republican ticket. After a few days, however, Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Bush said he wanted him to stay.
But in the Bush administration’s second term, Mr. Cheney’s influence waned. When Mr. Bush decided to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense after the 2006 midterm elections, Mr. Cheney said he was not given a chance to object.
Mr. Cheney praised Barack Obama’s support, as a senator from Illinois, for passing a bank bailout bill at the height of the financial crisis, shortly before the 2008 election. But he criticizes Mr. Obama’s decision to withdraw the 33,000 additional troops he sent to Afghanistan in 2009 by September 2012, and writes that he has been “happy to note” that Mr. Obama has failed to close the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as he had pledged.
Mr. Cheney’s long struggle with heart disease is a recurring theme in the book. He discloses that he wrote a letter of resignation, dated March 28, 2001, and told an aide to give it to Mr. Bush if he ever had a heart attack or stroke that left him incapacitated.
And in the epilogue, Mr. Cheney writes that after undergoing heart surgery in 2010, he was unconscious for weeks. During that period, he wrote, he had a prolonged, vivid dream that he was living in an Italian villa, pacing the stone paths to get coffee and newspapers.
Article 6.
Ma'an News Agency
Palestine and Statehood: An historical overview
Abdullah Abueid
24/08/2011 -- Until 1923, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. In December 1917, British troops entered Jerusalem and ended 400 years of Ottoman rule. In 1922, the League of Nations issued the Mandate of Palestine which authorized the United Kingdom to become the Mandatory Power in Palestine.
The Mandate Document, however, included several paradoxical stipulations contrary to the Mandate System as set forth in Article 22 of the League's Charter.
Major stipulations
The Mandate Document included several paragraphs, which were considered by many historians and international lawyers as flagrant breaches of the word and spirit of the Mandate system. The system was intended to protect the territories occupied by the British and French from the axis enemy (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire), and to develop these territories to independence and freedom for their populations.
The MD, contrary to that system, stipulated that the UK must develop the territory of Palestine in cooperation with the Jewish Agency in order to achieve a national home for the Jewish people, ignoring the real interests of the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs or Palestine.
In 1922 Palestine was still considered as a part of the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, which became Turkey after that date. It wasn't until Turkey signed the Lausanne Treaty in 1932 that Turkey relinquished her claim to sovereignty on Palestine. Thus, the MD was in clear breach of the rules of international law.
The Legal Status of Palestine
The UK's rule over Palestine contained flaws and several breaches. The Mandatory Power (UK) was considered, by many international lawyers, as a colonial power, which should have supervised the Mandate Territory and developed it as an honest trustee, which it failed to do.
In regards to sovereignty over Palestine during the years of the Mandate, many international experts consider that sovereignty was inherent to the people of that territory and was temporarily in the hands of the League of Nations. Palestine was considered as an embryo of a state.
It had its constitutions in 1922, its nationality law in 1925 and several other laws and by-laws covering almost all aspects of life and social and economic activities.
The Mandatory Power exerted all its efforts to help the Zionist Organizations, represented by the Jewish Agency, the Jewish Keren Ha' Kayemet, the Jewish Keren Ha'yesud and the Zionist Haganah [the armed organization of the Jewish agency], to bring an influx of Jewish immigrants into the Mandated Territory, to develop their own independent economy, arms and to construct armed settlements, in all Palestine.
All of this was claimed to be in conformity with the MD of Palestine, which was the legal fig-leaf in concealing the real goals of both the imperial power and Zionist Organizations.
During the whole of British rule, Palestinians revolted and demonstrated, but the British forces dealt with these revolutionary acts in utmost cruelty, putting them down and killing thousands of Palestinian Arabs and deporting or imprisoning tens of thousands.
In 1947, the UK government, unable to control the strong Zionist terrorist organizations, decided to refer the whole issue to the United Nations General Assembly which issued in November 26, 1947 a resolution dividing Palestine into two states: A Jewish state consisting of 54 percent of the territory of Palestine, an Arab state consisting of 44 percent of that territory, and the Jerusalem Area, as a Corpus Separatum, consisting of 2 percent of Palestine.
Furthermore, the Resolution decided to have an Economic Union between the two states and stipulated that the Jerusalem Area, which included Bethlehem, should be a separate area under the control of the UN.
The Zionist leadership pretended to accept the resolution, relying on the fact that it would be refused by the reactionary Arab leadership.
After the UN Resolution, clashes broke out among the two communities. The armed Zionist organizations, well prepared and organized, as well as heavily armed, defeated the poorly armed Palestinians and the weak unorganized Arab armies.
They occupied and annexed 70 percent of Jerusalem and 50 percent of the territory allocated to the Arab State, and on May 15, 1948, declared the State of Israel on 78 percent of historical Palestine territory, leaving the Palestinians without a state and in limbo.
All these events happened in collusion among the colonial British government, the Jewish Agency and some Arab regimes, ruled and/or controlled by the British.
Aftermath of the 1948 War
As mentioned above, there was an enlarged Jewish state [Israel], but the remaining territories of Palestine were either annexed to Jordan [The West Bank], or put under Egyptian rule [The Gaza Strip].
So, the Palestinian people, who constituted 67 percent of the population of Palestine in 1947 and owned 93 percent of its land, were betrayed and left in a state of destitution.
Sixty-two percent of them were driven out of their home under gunpoint and in several massacres committed by armed Zionist organizations.
At present, there are 10.5 million Palestinians, including around 5 millions refugees, scattered in several Middle Eastern countries and other Diaspora states.
As for Palestinian Statehood: The UN General Assembly by great majority has recognized the right of the Palestinian people to self determination and statehood in more than 40 resolutions.
Most famous of these resolutions were the two issued in October, 1974: 3236 and 3237. The latter recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and stipulated that it would be granted the status of Observer in all UN organs and affiliated organizations and its sponsored conferences.
In December 15, 1988, a month after the declaration of the State of Palestine by the PLO conference in Algiers, the UN General Assembly decided in its resolution of December 15, 1988 to recognize the PLO declaration of the State of Palestine and to substitute the use of PLO for the name of Palestine in all its organs and conferences.
UN membership
After the Oslo accords in 1993 and the failure of peace negotiations which lasted for 18 years, the PLO intends to bring to the UN General Assembly once again, through the UN Resolution number 377 of 1950, the issue of recognition of the State of Palestine on the