Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

The Two Faces of Michael Mukasey

Posted by steveneidman on February 15, 2010

Michael Mukasey: Then and now

To promote his partisan fear-mongering attacks, the former Judge invokes the very arguments he once scorned

Glenn Greenwald

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey has become the leading spokesman for a Cheneyite national security attack, which relies on scaring Americans into believing that Obama is endangering their lives in those rare instances when he deviates from Bush’s Terrorism approach. Toward that end, Mukasey has yet another fear-mongering Op-Ed, this time on today’s oh-so-liberal Washington Post Op-Ed Page (along side Michael Gerson’s stirring tribute to the virtues of GITMO, Bill Kristol’s call for regime change in Iran, a warning from Blackstone Chairman Steven Schwarzman to stop being so mean to banks, and a Charles Krauthammer column blaming Obama for something or other). Mukasey specifically accuses the Obama administration of losing valuable intelligence by allowing Abdudlmutallab access to a lawyer, and insists that the accused Christmas Day bomber had no constitutional rights because — despite his being detained in the U.S. — he is merely an “enemy combatant.”

But when Mukasey was a federal judge, he made the opposite arguments. In 2002, the Bush administration detained Jose Padilla at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, publicly labeled him The Dirty Bomber, declared him an “enemy combatant,” transferred him to military custody, and refused to charge him or even to allow him access to a lawyer. When a lawsuit was brought on Padilla’s behalf, Mukasey was the assigned judge, and he ordered the Bush administration to allow Padilla access to a lawyer. When the Bush administration dithered and basically refused (asking Mukasey to reconsider), Mukasey issued a lengthy Opinion and Order threatening to impose the conditions himself and explaining that Padilla’s constitutional right to a lawyer was clear and nonnegotiable. So resounding was Mukasey’s defense of Padilla’s right to a lawyer that, when he was initially nominated as Attorney General, many anti-Bush legal analysts — including me — cited Mukasey’s ruling in Padilla to argue that he was one of the better choices given the other right-wing alternatives. Indeed, I analyzed his decision in Padilla at length to argue that, at least in that case, Mukasey “displayed an impressive allegiance to the rule of law and constitutional principles over fealty to claims of unlimited presidential power,” and that he “was more than willing to defy the Bush administration and not be intimidated by threats that enforcing the rule of law would prevent the President from stopping the Terrorists.”

What’s most striking is that, in the Padilla case, Mukasey emphatically rejected the very arguments he is now making to attack Obama. The Bush DOJ repeatedly insisted that Mukasey — by allowing Padilla access to a lawyer — would destroy their ability to interrogate him and obtain life-saving intelligence, thus endangering all Americans. As Mukasey put it: the Bush DOJ is “none too subtle in cautioning this court against going too far in the protection of this detainee’s rights, suggesting at one point that permitting Padilla to consult with a lawyer ‘risks that plans for future attacks will go undetected‘.” Incredibly, that argument — which Mukasey decisively rejected back then — is exactly the one he’s now making against Obama. Listen to what the Bush administration told Mukasey in demanding that he withdraw his order directing that Padilla be given access to a lawyer — this is what Mukasey quoted from a Bush DOJ brief and refused to embrace back then:

DIA’s approach to interrogation is largely dependent upon creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and the interrogator. Developing the kind of relationship of trust and dependency necessary for effective interrogations is a process that can take a significant amount of [redacted]. There are numerous examples of situations where interrogators have been unable to obtain valuable intelligence from a subject until months, or even years, after the interrogation process began.

Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool. Even seemingly minor interruptions can have profound psychological impacts on the delicate subject-interrogator relationship. Any insertion of counsel into the subject-interrogator relationship, for example — even if only for a limited duration or for a specific purpose — can undo months of work and may permanently shut down the interrogation process. Therefore, it is critical to minimize external influences on the interrogation process. . . .

Permitting Padilla any access to counsel may substantially harm our national security interests. As with most detainees, Padilla is unlikely to cooperate if he believes that an attorney will intercede in his detention. . . . Any such delay in Padilla’s case risks that plans for future attacks will go undetected during that period, and that whatever information Padilla may eventually provide will be outdated and more difficult to corroborate.

Mukasey dismissed all of those fear-mongering claims as speculative hyperbole, and explicitly told the Bush DOJ: “if the government had permitted Padilla to consult with counsel at the outset, this matter would have been long since decided in this court” — i.e., Mukasey told the Bush DOJ that the dilemma was its own doing because it should have allowed Padilla access to counsel from the start. Yet in order to try to convince Americans now that Obama is endangering their lives by allowing Abdulmutallab access to counsel, Mukasey resorts to the very fear-mongering that he long ago rejected. That’s called being a dishonest hack of the lowest order.

More dishonestly still, Mukasey in today’s Op-Ed claims that he ordered Padilla to have access to counsel only “as a convenience to the court and not for any constitutionally based reason,” and only because Padilla (unlike Abdulmutallab) was a U.S. citizen. Both of those excuses are blatantly and demonstrably false. The whole legal basis for Mukasey’s ruling was that (1) he would order Padilla to have access to counsel even if he had believed Bush’s fear-mongering claims because Padilla had a constitutional right to counsel; and (2) the basis for that right is not that Padilla is a citizen, but rather, that all “persons” on U.S. soil have that right. Just listen to what the Mukasey back then said in order to see how blatantly dishonest the Mukasey of today is (emphasis added):

Even if the predictions [of the Bush DOJ] were reliably more certain than they in fact are, I would not be free simply to take the counsel of Admiral Jacoby’s fears, however well founded and sincere, and on that basis alone deny Padilla access to a lawyer. There is no dispute that Padilla has the right to bring this petition, and, for the reasons set forth in the Opinion, the statute makes it plain that he has the right to present facts if he chooses to do so. . . .

Arbitrary deprivation of liberty violates the Due Process Clause, Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71, 80 (1992), which “applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States,” Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 693 (2001). . . . [U]nless he has the opportunity to make a submission, this court cannot do what the applicable statutes and the Due Process Clause require it to do: confirm what frankly appears likely from the Mobbs Declaration but cannot be certain if based only on the Mobbs Declaration — that Padilla’s detention is not arbitrary, and that, because his detention is not arbitrary, the President is exercising a power vouchsafed to him by the Constitution. . . .

The Court in Hamdi took pains to point out that its holding was limited to “the specific context before us — that of the undisputed detention of a citizen during a combat operation undertaken in a foreign country and a determination by the executive that the citizen was allied with enemy forces.” Hamdi, 316 F.3d at 465. That wise restraint is well worth following in this case by recognizing explicitly the limits of the current holding, and thereby recognizing as well the contrast between this case and Hamdi. Unlike Hamdi, Padilla was detained in this country, and initially by law enforcement officers pursuant to a material witness warrant. He was not captured on a foreign battlefield by soldiers in combat. The prospect of courts second-guessing battlefield decisions, which they have resolutely refused to do, e.g., id. at 474; cf. Stencel Aero Eng’g Corp. v. United States, 431 U.S. 666, 673 (1977), does not loom in this case.

It’s true that this decision did not address the question of Miranda warnings, but the point is that Mukasey’s reasoning there directly negates what he is now arguing. Based on those two findings — that (1) there was no clear evidence that allowing access to a lawyer would jeopardize intelligence-gathering and, even if there were, it wouldn’t matter, because (2) Padilla, as someone detained on U.S. soil., had a constitutional right to a lawyer — Mukasey ordered the Bush DOJ to comply with his directive in unusually strong language:

Lest any confusion remain, this is not a suggestion or a request that Padilla be permitted to consult with counsel, and it is certainly not an invitation to conduct a further “dialogue” about whether he will be permitted to do so. It is a ruling — a determination — that he will be permitted to do so.

Note, too, that Mukasey insisted that courts have the constitutional obligation to ensure that presidential-ordered detentions “are not arbitrary,” a claim both the Bush administration and now the Obama administration, in some circumstances, vigorously contests.

This entire Miranda/Abdulmutallab controversy has been rife with deliberate misconceptions from the start:

the inane notion that super-dangerous Terrorists innocently believe that they’re required to spill their guts if they aren’t given Miranda warnings (recall that the premise of Bush officials, including Mukasey, is that Terrorists are so hardened and Evil that they have to be tortured to get them to speak; the very idea that they would feel compelled to answer all questions unless told they did not have to is laughable on its face);
the empirically false claim that defendants stop co-operating — and that interrogations must stop — once they are Mirandized (huge amounts of co-operation from the accused occur once they’ve been Mirandized and have lawyers);
the invented allegation that Abdulmutallab was speaking freely until he was Mirandized, at which point he stopped talking;
the obviously misleading suggestion that it’s easier to interrogate and convict Terrorists in a military commission system than in civilian courts (the exact opposite has been true, by far); and,
the dishonest implication that we somehow lost something by Mirandizing and trying Richard Reid in our civilian court system, which sentenced him to life in prison with little effort, in contrast to the debacles produced by the military commission system).

The ignorance of media stars about these issues allows fear-mongering politicians to make these claims over and over without challenge (although see Savannah Guthrie’s impressively aggressive, well-informed and effective interrogation of Sen. Kit Bond about this case: it’s the exception that proves the rule, and illustrates what effective adversarial journalism can accomplish). And much of this is the fault of the Obama administration: because they themselves have embraced the Bush/Cheney policies of military commissions and indefinite detentions, they’re incapable of articulating any coherent principle why civilian trials are needed, and are instead reduced to the pitiful spectacle of relying on a “Bush-did-it-too” defense to try to show that they’re sufficiently “tough on Terror” (as though the same administration which Obama spent two years depicting as radical, destructive and lawless is the standard-bearer for how Terrorists should be handled).

Still, Mukasey’s dishonesty is worse than the standard political/media freak show, both because he knows better and because (as a judge) he renounced the very myths which (as a hardened right-wing partisan) he is now disseminating. He has become a leading practitioner of the hysterical fear-mongering he once rightly scorned.

* * * * *

Long-time commenter DCLaw1 has rejuvinated his excellent blog, InsideOutTheBeltway, and has a typically insightful post on how the media has re-cycled blatant myths — grounded in sheer ignorance — about Miranda and Abdulmutallab.

Posted in Democrats, Iran, Iraq, Law, National Security, Obama, Politics, Polls, Supreme Court, UN, history, terrorism | Tagged: Abdudlmutallab, Bush, Cheney, Conservative, Democrat, Eidman, GITMO, Glenn Greenwald, Guantanamo Bay, hate, Iran, Jose Padilla, Kristol, military tribunals, Mukasey, Obama, Politics, Republican, Steven Eidman, Supreme Court, terrorism | Leave a Comment »

No, Mr. Walt, The Iraq War is Bush’s Fault, Not Israel’s

Posted by steveneidman on February 15, 2010

Rinse, Wash, Repeat

John B. Judis

For the last time, Stephen Walt, Israel did not send the U.S. and Britain into Iraq.

I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a big fan of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main (as they put it) “pro-Israel” lobby in Washington. The only organization of that kind that I’ve ever given money to is Americans for Peace Now. And I have defended critics of AIPAC, including Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the authors of The Israel Lobby, from charges of anti-Semitism. But I think Walt and Mearsheimer have been dead wrong in trying to blame the Israel lobby or the Israeli government for America’s invasion of Iraq. And now Walt is repeating the same nonsense.

Walt, who blogs for Foreign Policy’s website, recently revived the argument, claiming in a self-congratulatory column titled “I don’t mean to say I told you so, but…” that Tony Blair’s testimony last month before Britain’s Iraq War Commission confirmed that “the Israel lobby … played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.” I have read Blair’s testimony. I don’t find it to be proof of anything of the kind; and I don’t think Walt’s accompanying restatement of the argument is any more persuasive than the version he and Mearsheimer put forward in his book.

Walt says that Blair’s statement to the commission “reveals that concerns about Israel were part of the equation [that is, the decision to go to war] and that Israel officials were involved in those discussions.” Here is what Walt, citing a column in the New Statesman, quotes Blair as saying about his early April 2002 meeting in Crawford, Texas, with George W. Bush:

As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.

Now there are at least three problems with the inferences that Walt draws from this statement. First, even if we were to grant that Blair is saying that he and Bush were talking about Israel’s role in or importance to the Iraq invasion, this certainly does not show that the Israel lobby had anything to do with the decision to go to war. Nor, secondly, does it show that the Israeli government pressured the U.S. to go to war. The “conversations” could have easily consisted of the Bush administration informing Israelis of their plans.

But these are minor objections. The real problem is that Walt does not seem to have taken the trouble to have read the transcript of Blair’s testimony. If he had, he would have realized that Blair was not talking about how invading Iraq might benefit Israel, but about the conflict then occurring between Israel and the Palestinians. The second intifada had reached a new height with the Passover and Haifa suicide bombings and the beginning of the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and Blair was concerned that the Bush administration was not actively pursuing the peace process. Blair wanted the administration to put the Arab-Israeli issue on a par with the threat of Iraq. The former prime minister makes this clear in other parts of his testimony. Here is an exchange between Blair and Sir Roderic Lyne:

Lyne: … Just one more point arising from Crawford, but not just from Crawford. You said–you reminded us that the Arab-Israel problem was in a very hot state at Crawford. You said you may even have had some conversations with Israelis from there, and obviously it was something that was a large part of your conversations with President Bush. I think it is right to say–indeed, Jack Straw said it–that you were relentless in trying to persuade the Americans to make more and faster progress on the Middle East peace process. Ultimately, Jack Straw said it was a matter of huge–in his evidence the other day–it was a matter of huge frustration that we weren’t able to achieve something which you had been seeking so strongly …

Blair: … I believe that resolving the Middle East–this is what I work on now–is immensely important, and I think it was difficult, and this is something I have said before on several occasions, it was difficult to persuade President Bush, and, indeed, America actually, that this was such a fundamental question …

Lyne: But surely you must have said to him, “Look, this thing is only really going to have a chance of working well if we can make this progress down the Arab-Israel track before we get there”?

Blair: Well, I was certainly saying to him, “I think this is vital,” and I mean, this was–you could describe me as a broken record through that period …

The talks at Crawford and subsequent discussions led eventually to getting Bush to launch the “road map” for peace. In other words, he and Bush were not saying that they had to invade Iraq to assist or appease the Israelis. Nothing that Blair said in his testimony should have provided the slightest evidence that this was occurring. And it seems clear enough that the discussions Blair and Bush had with the Israelis were not about Iraq but about the peace process.

I am sorry to say that this kind of sloppy research and reasoning is typical of the way that Walt and Mearsheimer deal with the question of whether the Israel lobby influenced the decision to go to war. In their book, they claim that the U.S. would “almost certainly” not have gone to war without the influence of the Israel lobby. That’s a very strong claim, but they do not back it up either in the book or in Walt’s current blogging. Let me briefly deal with their logic here.

There are three ways in which the Israel lobby could have made itself indispensable to the decision to go to war: first, in White House-Pentagon deliberations; second, in significantly influencing the critical Congressional vote in October 2002; and third, in dramatically shaping public opinion. Their argument falls short on all these counts.

White House: To contend that the “Israel lobby” influenced the White House decision to invade—which had more or less been made by the spring of 2002 when Blair visited Crawford—Walt and Mearsheimer expand the “lobby” to include “neoconservative intellectuals” such as Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense. They then imply that Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives favored regime change in Iraq primarily because it would benefit Israel. No evidence has surfaced to show that Wolfowitz was acting in this manner. There were other neo-conservatives in the administration – such as David Wurmser and Douglas Feith – who had in the past explicitly linked regime change in Iraq to Israel’s welfare, but they were not in a decision-making capacity. Indeed, the two people outside of the President who appear most responsible for the decision to invade — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney — could not be categorized, even by Walt and Mearsheimer’s absurdly broad standards, as part of an Israel lobby. So while it would be foolish to rule out that Israel’s welfare was not discussed or mentioned in discussions about whether to invade Iraq, there is no basis for saying that the White House decision to invade Iraq was driven by neo-conservative preoccupations with Israel’s security.

Congress: Walt cites my quoting of AIPAC head Howard Kohr’s boast that AIPAC had been “quietly lobbying” Congress to pass the war resolution in October 2002. I don’t doubt that AIPAC officials favored going to war, as did the leaders of some other pro-Israel organizations. But AIPAC did not aggressively lobby for the war resolution the way it lobbied in 1981 against the AWACs surveillance plane sale to Saudi Arabia or recently for refined petroleum sanctions on Iran. I have interviewed AIPAC people and members of other Jewish lobbying organizations on this question, and they say the same thing. It was not a make-or-break legislative priority. And there is very good circumstantial evidence to back this up. Some of AIPAC’s most dependable supporters on the Hill—such as Senators Daniel Inouye and Carl Levin and Representative Jerrold Nadler—opposed the resolution. So, yes, AIPAC probably did “quietly” make its preference known; but it can’t be credited or blamed for the outcome of the vote. And no other pro-Israel or Jewish lobby possesses comparable clout on the Hill.

Public Opinion: Did the Israel lobby have a sine qua non influence on public opinion in favor of the war? If so, one would expect that its influence would at least show up among Jewish Americans, who would be most likely to listen to their arguments. In a 2003 survey, the American Jewish Committee found that 54 percent of Jewish Americans disapproved of going to war with Iraq and only 43 percent approved. At the time, a majority of Americans approved of going to war. So, far from being a leader in pro-war sentiment, American Jews were lagging behind. Walt and Mearsheimer concede this point, but it’s important nonetheless to include it because it is the only other way in which the Israel lobby might have had a decisive effect on the decision to invade, but did not.

There is, in other words, no basis at all for accepting Walt and Mearsheimer’s contention that, without the Israel lobby, the U.S. would likely not have invaded Iraq. It’s not anti-Semitic to make these charges–they have quotes and anecdotes in their book–but they don’t add up to the proof of any overriding influence. Nor does Walt’s use of Blair’s testimony to the Iraq War Commission. I think it’s time for Walt and Mearsheimer to put this part of their argument to rest.

Posted in Antisemitism, Democrats, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jew, Jewish Interest, Law, National Security, Obama, Politics, Steven Eidman, UN, history, terrorism | Tagged: AIPAC, anti-semitism, Blair, Bush, Cheney, Democrat, Eidman, Hamas, Iran, Iraq, Iraq war, Israel, Jewish, lobby, Mearsheimer, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Politics, pro-Israel, Republican, Rumsfeld, Senate, settlements, Steven Eidman, Walt, West Bank | Leave a Comment »

Posted by steveneidman on February 8, 2010

America: A fearsome foursome

By Edward Luce

The team seen most often in the Oval Office
David Axelrod, senior adviser A former journalist on the Chicago Tribune who quit to set up a political advertising firm, Mr Axelrod, 54, is Barack Obama’s longest-standing mentor, from his days in Chicago politics. Always at the candidate’s side during the election campaign, he is the chief defender of the Obama brand. Still a journalist at heart, he describes himself as having been “posted to Washington”.

Robert Gibbs, communications chief

The most visible face of the White House for his sardonic daily briefings. Mr Gibbs, 38, is perhaps the least likely member of the circle – he is a career Democratic press officer from Alabama who quit John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and shortly afterwards went to work for Senator Obama. A constant presence during the campaign, he is also seen as a keeper of the flame.

Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff

The best story about Mr Emanuel, 50, concerns the dead fish he delivered to a pollster who displeased him. The least honey-tongued politician in Washington, he is also one of the most effective. Friends say he is relentlessly energetic, critics that he has attention deficit disorder. He has enemies but even detractors concede he may well achieve his aim of becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House of Representatives.

Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser

An old friend of the Obamas, having hired Michelle to work in Chicago politics in the early 1990s, Ms Jarrett, 53, is probably the first family’s most intimate White House confidante. A former businessperson and aide to Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, she was briefly considered as a candidate to fill Mr Obama’s Senate seat. She was part of the circle he consulted before running for president.

At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”

Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

Two, Mr Emanuel and Mr Axelrod, have box-like offices within spitting distance of the Oval Office. The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present.

With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama’s brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans – like the president. And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

“It is a very tightly knit group,” says a prominent Obama backer who has visited the White House more than 40 times in the past year. “This is a kind of ‘we few’ group … that achieved the improbable in the most unlikely election victory anyone can remember and, unsurprisingly, their bond is very deep.”

John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and founder of the Center for American Progress, the most influential think-tank in Mr Obama’s Washington, says that while he believes Mr Obama does hear a range of views, including dissenting advice, problems can arise from the narrow composition of the group itself.

Among the broader circle that Mr Obama also consults are the self-effacing Peter Rouse, who was chief of staff to Tom Daschle in his time as Senate majority leader; Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff; the economics team led by Lawrence Summers and including Peter Orszag, budget director; Joe Biden, the vice-president; and Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser. But none is part of the inner circle.

“Clearly this kind of core management approach worked for the election campaign and President Obama has extended it to the White House,” says Mr Podesta, who managed Mr Obama’s widely praised post-election transition. “It is a very tight inner circle and that has its advantages. But I would like to see the president make more use of other people in his administration, particularly his cabinet.”

This White House-centric structure has generated one overriding – and unexpected – failure. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mr Emanuel managed the legislative aspect of the healthcare bill quite skilfully, say observers. The weak link was the failure to carry public opinion – not Capitol Hill. But for the setback in Massachusetts, which deprived the Democrats of their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate, Mr Obama would by now almost certainly have signed healthcare into law – and with it would have become a historic president.

But the normally liberal voters of Massachusetts wished otherwise. The Democrats lost the seat to a candidate, Scott Brown, who promised voters he would be the “41st [Republican] vote” in the Senate – the one that would tip the balance against healthcare. Subsequent polling bears out the view that a decisive number of Democrats switched their votes with precisely that motivation in mind.

“Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn’t want,” says Jim Morone, America’s leading political scientist on healthcare reform. “Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master.”

Whatever issue arises, whether it is a failed terrorist plot in Detroit, the healthcare bill, economic doldrums or the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan, the White House instinctively fields Mr Axelrod or Mr Gibbs on television to explain the administration’s position. “Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser.

Perhaps the biggest losers are the cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama’s health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. “I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,” says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently. “If you want people to trust you, you must first place trust in them.”

In addition to hurling frequent profanities at people within the administration, Mr Emanuel has alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters. At a meeting of Democratic groups last August, Mr Emanuel described liberals as “f***ing retards” after one suggested they mobilise resources on healthcare reform.

“We are treated as though we are children,” says the head of a large organisation that raised millions of dollars for Mr Obama’s campaign. “Our advice is never sought. We are only told: ‘This is the message, please get it out.’ I am not sure whether the president fully realises that when the chief of staff speaks, people assume he is speaking for the president.”

The same can be observed in foreign policy. On Mr Obama’s November trip to China, members of the cabinet such as the Nobel prizewinning Stephen Chu, energy secretary, were left cooling their heels while Mr Gibbs, Mr Axelrod and Ms Jarrett were constantly at the president’s side.

The White House complained bitterly about what it saw as unfairly negative media coverage of a trip dubbed Mr Obama’s “G2” visit to China. But, as journalists were keenly aware, none of Mr Obama’s inner circle had any background in China. “We were about 40 vans down in the motorcade and got barely any time with the president,” says a senior official with extensive knowledge of the region. “It was like the Obama campaign was visiting China.”

Then there are the president’s big strategic decisions. Of these, devoting the first year to healthcare is well known and remains a source of heated contention. Less understood is the collateral damage it caused to unrelated initiatives. “The whole Rahm Emanuel approach is that victory begets victory – the success of healthcare would create the momentum for cap-and-trade [on carbon emissions] and then financial sector reform,” says one close ally of Mr Obama. “But what happens if the first in the sequence is defeat?”

Insiders attribute Mr Obama’s waning enthusiasm for the Arab-Israeli peace initiative to a desire to avoid antagonising sceptical lawmakers whose support was needed on healthcare. The steam went out of his Arab-Israeli push in mid-summer, just when the healthcare bill was running into serious difficulties.

The same applies to reforming the legal apparatus in the “war on terror” – not least his pledge to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year of taking office. That promise has been abandoned.

“Rahm said: ‘We’ve got these two Boeing 747s circling that we are trying to bring down to the tarmac [healthcare and the decision on the Afghanistan troop surge] and we can’t risk a flock of f***ing Canadian geese causing them to crash,’ ” says an official who attended an Oval Office strategy meeting. The geese stood for the closure of Guantánamo.

An outside adviser adds: “I don’t understand how the president could launch healthcare reform and an Arab-Israeli peace process – two goals that have eluded US presidents for generations – without having done better scenario planning. Either would be historic. But to launch them at the same time?”

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,” says one. “Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”

The White House declined to answer questions on whether Mr Obama needed to broaden his circle of advisers. But some supporters say he should find a new chief of staff. Mr Emanuel has hinted that he might not stay in the job very long and is thought to have an eye on running for mayor of Chicago. Others say Mr Obama should bring in fresh blood. They point to Mr Clinton’s decision to recruit David Gergen, a veteran of previous White Houses, when the last Democratic president ran into trouble in 1993. That is credited with helping to steady the Clinton ship, after he too began with an inner circle largely carried over from his campaign.

But Mr Gergen himself disagrees. Now teaching at Harvard and commenting for CNN, Mr Gergen says members of the inner circle meet two key tests. First, they are all talented. Second, Mr Obama trusts them. “These are important attributes,” Mr Gergen says. His biggest doubt is whether Mr Obama sees any problem with the existing set-up.

“There is an old joke,” says Mr Gergen. “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don’t think President Obama wants to make any changes.”

Posted in Antisemitism, Democrats, Healthcare, Iran, Israel, Law, Medicaid, National Security, Obama, Politics, Polls, Social Network, Steven Eidman, Supreme Court, Wall Street, business, celebrity, culture, economics, economy, history, terrorism | Tagged: Bush, Chicago politics, Conservative, David Axelrod, Democrat, Edward Luce, Eidman, Gibbs, hate, Healthcare, Insurance, Obama, Politics, Racism, Rahm Emanuel, reform, Republican, Senate, Senator, single payer, Supreme Court, Valerie Jarrett, Wall Street | Leave a Comment »

Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador, vs. Andrew Sullivan

Posted by steveneidman on October 8, 2009

Deep Denial

Why the Holocaust Still Matters

Michael B. Oren

Toughened by their frontier ethos, steeled by serial wars, Israelis are not prone to flattery. Most, in fact, eschew using the closest equivalent to the Hebrew word for flattery–chanupa–in favor of the derisive Yiddish-derivative, firgun. An Israeli joke holds that the word, slashed by a red diagonal line, graces the exit from Ben-Gurion Airport, together with the warning, “You are now entering a Firgun Free Zone.”

Not surprisingly, then, several Israeli commentators reacted unflatteringly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to the U.N. General Assembly. Though many international leaders and even the audience in the U.N. hall applauded Netanyahu, his words were lambasted in Haaretz by Tom Segev as “unnecessary and embarrassing” and by Gideon Levy as “demagogic” and “insulting to the intelligence.” Aluf Benn, one of Israel’s most respected journalists, faulted the prime minister for failing to address a global, rather than an Israeli, audience.

The bulk of the speech highlighted the threat of Iranian nuclearization, the travesty of the Goldstone Report, and Israel’s hopes for a peace with the Palestinians based on security and mutual recognition. Yet criticism of the prime minister virtually ignored these topics and focused instead on his opening remarks, about the Holocaust. “One third of all Jews perished in the great conflagration of the Holocaust,” Netanyahu reminded the delegates. “Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own.” He went on to assail President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the world’s premier Holocaust denier, who had addressed the same assembly the previous day, as well as those ambassadors who did not walk out on him. “Have you no shame?” Netanyahu upbraided them. “Have you no decency?”

Detractors of Netanyahu alleged that, by asserting the reality of the Holocaust, he stooped to Ahmadinejad’s level–worse, that he granted credibility to the Iranian thug by debating him over a universally accepted truth. “If 64 years after World War II concluded with Hitler’s fall … the debate on the reality of the Holocaust has reached the UN General Assembly,” Benn wrote, “then Ahmadinejad has succeeded in instilling doubt.”

Perhaps because they were raised in a society suffused with Holocaust consciousness, some Israelis might be unaware of the extent of ignorance of the Final Solution throughout the world, even in the United States, and especially among youth. Confronted with the enormity of the horror, many young people today–much like American Jewish leaders in 1942–react with incredulousness, rendering them susceptible to denial. Millions of Muslims, moreover, subscribe to the syllogism: If Israel was created by Europeans out of Holocaust guilt, and the Holocaust never occurred, then Israel’s existence is unjust. Where better than the General Assembly, a body established in response to World War II and affording a global audience, to reaffirm the veracity of an event now so widely questioned if not refuted?

But in concentrating on the prime minister’s preamble, critics overlook the deeper connections between the Holocaust and his subsequent themes. Recognizing the murder of six million Jews more than six decades ago is, in fact, vital for understanding the supreme dangers posed to six million Jews in Israel today by a nuclear Iran and by the Goldstone Report. Reasserting the factuality of the Holocaust is a prerequisite for peace.

Many factors contributed to the Holocaust–European anti-Semitism, mass murder technologies, and Allied indifference–but none more elemental than the Jews’ inability to defend themselves. Israel and its citizen Defense Forces represent the most palpable means for redressing that incapacity.

Accordingly, denying the Holocaust not only deprives Israel of its raison d’être, but, more nefariously still, it invalidates the Jews’ need to defend themselves. So, the Iranian leader proceeds to arm Hamas and Hezbollah and produce nuclear weapons while claiming that the Jews of Israel–like those of 1940s Europe–have nothing to fear. But Ahmadinejad does not stop short at merely deeming the Holocaust a “fairy tale;” rather, he portrays Israel as a Nazi state–guilty of perpetrating the very offenses against the Palestinians that the Nazis never did to the Jews.

Where Ahmadinejad leaves off, the Goldstone Report, or, as it is officially called, the “United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” persists. The U.N. mission purports to have investigated Israel’s military action in Gaza last winter, an operation launched in response to the firing of more than 7,000 Hamas missiles at Israeli towns since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Strip. But instead of probing Hamas’s deliberate effort to maximize Israeli civilian casualties and its doctrine of hiding behind Palestinian human shields, the judges interviewed handpicked Hamas witnesses, several of them senior commanders disguised as civilians, and uncritically accepted their testimony. Inexorably, the report, which presumed Israel’s guilt, condemned the Jewish state for crimes against humanity and for mounting a premeditated campaign against Gaza civilians.

The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents–as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed.

Ahmadinejad’s genocidal rhetoric and the iniquity of the Goldstone Report notwithstanding, Israel will, of course, continue to defend its citizens. No amount of vitriol will compel Israel onto a course of self-destruction. But what will be destroyed is any chance for peace. Having twice withdrawn unilaterally to recognized borders and received only onslaughts in return, and having suffered censure for protecting themselves from that aggression, Israelis will understandably recoil from additional retreats that will leave them vulnerable. Israelis, moreover, will not withdraw from any territory liable to become staging grounds for terrorist groups empowered by international agencies and convinced of their ability to murder Israelis with impunity.

Israel will pursue policies with or without firgun. But by making the connection between the Holocaust and its denial, the Iranian nuclear program, and the Goldstone Report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has exposed the venal narrative that concludes with Israel’s paralysis. By reaffirming Israel’s right to safeguard its citizens, he has demarcated the only path to peace.

Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

The Undiplomatic Michael Oren

Andrew Sullivan

I thought ambassadors were supposed to smoothe over rifts, not inflame them. And I thought they were supposed to speak to the broadest number of citizens in the countries to which they have been appointed, not provide inflammatory rants to the already-persuaded. But this Michael Oren piece in TNR abandons any pretense of diplomatic balance.

The premise of Oren’s piece is that Israel faces a new Nazism represented by Ahmadinejad and Holocaust deniers but, to an even greater extent, by the South African liberal, Richard Goldstone, and the United Nations. Oren seems to be arguing that Gaza was a war of survival for the Jewish state and that Israel had no choice but to launch a war that killed, by one conservative Israeli count, 320 children, destroyed 4,000 homes, and up to 80 government buildings. Even if one is sympathetic to the horrific barrage of Hamas rockets that Israeli citizens endured (and what decent human being wouldn’t be?) – every single rocket being a war crime – it helps no one to use language this extreme or to distort history in this manner.

One might ask what the response of Michael Oren would be if Palestinian terrorists pulled off a major coup by killing 320 Jewish children, and destroying 4,000 homes in Tel Aviv, because Israel had lobbed primitive missiles at its territory, missing human targets an overwhelming proportion of the time. This is not to defend Hamas’ wickedness and war crimes. It is not to say that Israel deliberately targeted children. It is to insist that the laws of war be applied equally to both parties in a conflict. It is to ask Israel to live up to its own ancient moral values – values that were pioneered when my own ancestors were running around painted in wode.

It is also to ask beleaguered Israel to get some perspective and to see, for a moment, how things might look from the outside. I can see why they may feel encircled and alone. But they’re not. Even those of us who have been made angry by their recent actions and seeming unconcern for the needs of their most powerful friend, want to help. God knows I love Israel and its people; and I understand that some of the extremism among neocons is really an excess of passion and love rather than mere belligerence and orneriness. But, seriously guys, get a grip. Help the US help you. And try to see the wider picture.

Here’s a graph that tells the story of the comparative human toll in the year before the conflict broke out:

Over eight years, 28 Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets in what were clearly war crimes, as Goldstone emphatically reports. Four times that many Palestinians were killed by Israelis in one month in 2008. In the subsequent conflict, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths was close to 100 – 1. With this tally, Oren writes:

If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all.

Seriously? No; the issue is whether Israel committed war crimes in its self-defense in Gaza and whether that self-defense was disproportionate to the threat it faced. At the time Bret Stephens offered the just war theory behind the Gaza war thus:

For every single rocket that falls randomly on Israeli soil, an Israeli missile will hit a carefully selected target in Gaza. Focusing the minds of Hamas on this type of “proportionality” is just the endgame that Israel needs.

Does that sound like the desperate act of a country on the brink of extinction? Glenn Reynolds explained the actual rationale:

Israel’s just playing by Chicago rules: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”

Whatever else that is, it is not a just war. The disproportion was the point: it was designed to teach the Gazans and Hamas a lesson they would never forget. Michael Goldfarb, McCain’s former spokesman, echoed Reynolds’ statement but embraced the murder of children as well:

The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it’s not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man’s entire family, it’s hard to imagine that doesn’t give his colleagues at least a moment’s pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions. Or maybe not, and the only way to stop Hamas is to eliminate its capacity for violence entirely.

Now it is a completely fair point that many other nations are in no position to criticize, including the US. Israel has to survive on a tiny strip of land which is surrounded by enemies. The Jews have achieved there such a miraculous, inventive, dynamic state it puts most other countries to shame. And its moral standards and its internal airing of debate have no peer in its own region. In some respects, the US has recently had lower standards.

The US, by invading Iraq and failing to provide any security for the civilians trapped in the chaos the US tolerated, (“stuff happens”), by torturing hundreds of prisoners, innocent and guilty, and by unleashing entities like Blackwater on civilian populations is in no position to judge. 3,000 Americans died on 9/11. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the Iraq occupation in sectarian violence that an invading army has a fundamental moral responsibility to restrain. To have invaded a country with no thought for the security of its civilians is one reason I came to see the execution of the Iraq war as morally intolerable. Israel, moreover, has seen its Supreme Court outlaw the torture methods championed by the US under Bush and Cheney. The US, in stark contrast, refuses to investigate its seven-year policy of torture and abuse of individuals, some of whom it knew to be innocent.

But that doesn’t make either war just. As Matt points out, even if you believe the Israeli attack on Gaza was justified, that doesn’t exclude the possibility of war crimes in its execution. Is this so hard to understand? Jews of all people – the victims of war crimes of unimaginable evil – should know this. And exchange anger and paranoia for the integrity they once had.

Posted in Antisemitism, Iran, Israel, Jew, Jewish Interest, Law, National Security, Obama, Politics, UN, culture, history, terrorism | Tagged: Andrew Sullivan, Conservative, Democrat, Gaza, Goldstone, Holocaust, Iran, Israel, Jewish, Michael Oren, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Oren, Palestinians, Politics, settlements, Steven Eidman, West Bank | Leave a Comment »

Did Bin Laden Ever Visit THe U.S.?

Posted by steveneidman on July 1, 2009

Osama in America: The Final Answer

by Steve Coll

The question of whether Osama bin Laden has ever visited the United States, a subject on which I have expended an unhealthy amount of energy in the course of various journalistic and biographical research, has now seemingly been settled. Osama was here for two weeks in 1979, it seems, and he visited Indiana and Los Angeles, among other places. He had a favorable encounter with an American medical doctor; he also reportedly met in Los Angeles with his spiritual mentor of the time, the Palestinian radical Abdullah Azzam. All this is according to a forthcoming book by Osama’s first wife, Najwa Bin Laden, and his son Omar Bin Laden, to be published in the autumn by St. Martin’s Press.

First, some context for the book’s disclosures:

In the autumn of 2005, while conducting research in Saudi Arabia for the book that became “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century,” I met a Saudi journalist named Khaled Batarfi, who had been a neighbor and friend of Osama Bin Laden in their teenage years. During one of our interviews, Batarfi offered an account of Osama’s early travels—to London, to Africa on Safari, and to the United States—that was suggestive of a young man who had more direct experience of the West than was generally understood. Batarfi’s account of Osama’s American trip was particularly striking. In December of that year, I wrote a story for this magazine about the private high school Osama had attended in Jedda, and how he was first introduced to the tenets of radical Islamic politics. In that story, I also reported Batarfi’s on-the-record but unconfirmed account of Osama’s visit to America; Batarfi believed the travel had occurred not long before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in 1979. U.S. customs and immigration records from the relevant period had been routinely destroyed—and so the question of whether Osama had personal experience of America, and what that experience might have been, remained elusive. (Bin Laden has never referred to any trip to this country in his writings or statements.) While I found Batarfi to be credible, a single-source account, based on hearsay, could hardly be regarded as satisfactory.

Over the next several years, I came across several other fragments suggesting that Batarfi was essentially correct—these bits of evidence included a published account by one of Osama’s workplace supervisors in Saudi Arabia reporting that Osama had once traveled to the United States, and more recently, an interview with Yassin Kadi in the Times in which Kadi recalled meeting Osama during the nineteen seventies in Chicago.

After the original 2005 interviews with Batarfi, I reported that

only one aspect of the journey made a particularly strong impression on bin Laden: On the way home, Osama and his wife were sitting in an airport lounge, waiting for their connecting flight. In keeping with their strict religious observance, his wife was dressed in a black abaya, a draping gown, as well as the full head covering often referred to as hijab. Other passengers in the airport “were staring at them,” Batarfi said, “and taking pictures.” When bin Laden returned to Jedda, he told people that the experience was like “being in a show.” By Batarfi’s account, bin Laden was not particularly bitter about all the stares and the photographs; rather, “he was joking about it.”

Batarfi had it right, it now seems. Here is Najwa’s forthcoming account of their journey, according to a bound galley of “Growing Up Bin Laden” provided by St. Martin’s Press.

One evening he [Osama] arrived home with a surprise announcement: ’Najwa, We are going to travel to the United States. Our boys are going with us.’

I was shocked, to tell you the truth…Pregnant, and busy with two babies, I remember few details of our travel, other than we passed through London before flying to a place I had never heard of, a state in America called Indiana. Osama told me that he was meeting with a man by the name of Abdullah Azzam. Since my husband’s business was not my business, I did not ask questions.

I was worried about Abdul Rahman because he had become quite ill on the trip and was even suffering with a high fever. Osama arranged for us to see a doctor in Indianapolis. I relaxed after that kindly physician assured us that Abdul Rahman would soon be fine.

…I am sometimes questioned about my personal opinion of the country and its people. This is surprisingly difficult to answer. We were there for only two weeks, and for one of those weeks, Osama was away in Los Angeles to meet with some men in that city. The boys and I were left behind in Indiana with a girlfriend whom I would rather not name…

My girlfriend was gracious and guided me on short trips…We even went into a big shopping mall in Indianapolis…

I came to believe that Americans were gentle and nice, people easy to deal with. As far as the country itself goes, my husband and I did not hate America, yet we did not love it.

There was one incident that reminded me that some Americans are unaware of other cultures. When the time came for us to leave America, Osama and I, along with our two boys, waited for our departure at the airport in Indiana. I was sitting quietly in my chair, relaxing, grateful that our boys were quiet….

I saw an American man gawking at me. I knew without asking that his unwelcome attention had been snagged by my black Saudi costume…

I took a side glance at Osama and saw that he was intently studying the curious man. I knew that my husband would never allow the man to approach me…

When my husband and I discussed the incident, we were both more amused than offended. That man gave us a good laugh, as it was clear he had no knowledge of veiled women…

We returned to Saudi Arabia none the worse for our experiences.

Not a particularly consequential experience, perhaps, but surely one that has a life in Osama’s memory and imagination—and another indication, among many available in his life, that he should be understood not only as a self-isolating radical imbued with millenarian religious narratives, but also as a modern and globalized figure whose experiences and outlook belong very much to our age.

Posted in Iran, Israel, Jewish Interest, National Security, Politics, culture, history, terrorism | Tagged: Abdullah Azzam, Bin Laden, doctors, hate, Middle East, Osama bin Laden, Osama in America, Politics, Steve Coll, Yassin Kadi | Leave a Comment »

Rejecting Shmuley Boteach’s “War on the White House”

Posted by steveneidman on June 29, 2009

SHELTER FROM THE STORM

by Steven Eidman

I was puzzled by Shmuley Boteach’s sounding of the battle cry against the Obama administration and its call for Israel to stop all building activity in the settlements: http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/content/item/the_coming_storm_obama_and_u.s._jewry/.

While I have no problem championing Israel’s interests and jeopardizing any dinner invitation which the President might be thinking of extending, I would first need more evidence that Israel was indeed threatened by U.S. demands. Successive Israeli governments, both left and right-leaning, have agreed to dismantle the majority of the settlements and to surrender more than 90% of the land in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, in the context of a negotiated peace treaty. Furthermore, Israel agreed to a settlement freeze in 2002, included in Phase I of the “roadmap for peace”. While the nuances of the word “freeze” may well need to be settled on, this can’t be the casus belli that Rabbi Boteach makes it out to be, as quiet diplomacy between our countries is already bringing us to an agreed upon definition. I suspect the clear majority of the 78 percent of U.S. Jews who voted for Obama have no problem in supporting the President’s call for the freeze, especially as it was accompanied by a clear and forceful demand for an end to all terrorism and violence by the Palestinians. The presumption by Rabbi Boteach that only a “sunshine Jewish patriot” could support President Obama’s forceful attempt to make both sides adhere to their commitments in moving the peace process forward is unjustified, and doesn’t take into account the dramatic shifts that have already taken place- in Lebanon, in Iran, on the Syria-Iraq border- since the election of Obama. Israel’s new ambassador to the United States, appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the blessing of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is on record as supporting a unilateral withdrawl by Israel from the West Bank. Other than in the Orthodox community, I expect most U.S. Jews to react to our President’s initiatives with cautious optimism. A rapproacment between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and the release of Gilad Shalit – both distinct possibilities- can change the entire landscape of the peace process. Let us press the White House to bring about these stepping stones to peace, rather than gird for war with it.

Steven Eidman

Posted in Iran, Israel, Jewish Interest, National Security, Obama, Politics, history | Tagged: Avigdor Lieberman, Eidman, Hamas, Iran, Israel, Jewish, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Politics, settlements, Steven Eidman, West Bank | Leave a Comment »

Shalit’s Release May Reveal Who Israel’s REAL Friends Are

Posted by steveneidman on June 26, 2009

Neocon enemies, using diplomacy, reach deal for Shalit’s release

by Glenn Greenwald

Last night, I noted the sudden and obviously hypocritical concern about detainee abuse emerging from The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb now that the transfer of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by the Palestinians to Egypt appears imminent and it’s time to exploit his detention. In service of that same mission, Goldfarbalso tries to attribute this deal for Shalit’s release to the heroism of Benjamin Netanyahu, excitedly claiming that, if it happens, it will cause the Israeli Prime Minister’s “approval numbers [to] skyrocket, further undermining Obama’s leverage over him” (i.e., Israel will be able to continue to expand settlements on land that isn’t theirs).

But as Omooex points out in comments, the Haaretz article which Goldfarb himself cited makes clear that it was not Netanyahu, but numerous other parties — Jimmy Carter, Egypt, Syria and the Obama administration — who engineered the agreement to transfer Shalit from Gaza to Egypt (followed eventually by his release to Israel, pending the release by Israel of Palestinian prisoners):

The move is part of a new United States initiative that includes Egyptian and Syrian pressure on Hamas . . . The idea to transfer Shalit to Egypt in exchange for the release of Palestinian women, teens, cabinet ministers and parliamentarians being held in Israeli prisons was raised about a year ago during a visit by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter to Damascus, Jerusalem and Gaza. . . . Carter raised it again on his visit earlier this month, during which he met Noam Shalit, Gilad’s father. . . . The European source said Shalit’s transfer to Egypt was the first stage of the Egyptian-brokered agreement hammered out between Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions, in coordination with the U.S. and with Syria’s support.

In other words, the deal for Shalit’s release was secured by some of the neocon’s most despised enemies (Jimmy Carter and Syria), with the help of a President they insist hates Israel (Barack Obama), relying on tactics they have long scorned (diplomacy, negotiating with Terrorists, including Hamas). Of course, Jimmy Carter — who neocons endlessly smear as being Israel-hating and even anti-Semitic — did more to advance the interests of Israeli security than every neoconservative keyboard-tough-guy combined (indeed, more than virtually any single individual on the planet) when he engineered the 1979 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, which — even 30 years later — continues to pay dividends for Israel in the form of this apparent agreement for Shalit’s release. Identically, the Shalit deal is possible only because, as Haaretz notes, Hamas knows that there is now an American administration willing to negotiate with hostile parties, rather than trying to feel “tough” by ignoring and/or threatening them:

Hamas, which controls Gaza, has increasingly tried to reach out to the Obama administration in recent weeks.

This is but one of the numerous inanities of neoconservatives: as destructive for the U.S. as their obsession with Israel and mindless belligerence are, those fixations also do nothing for Isarel but jeopardize it further. Years of neocon rule and moronic chest-beating in Washington did nothing to help Shalit. But a deal is struck for his release — long a top priority of Israelis — only months into a new administration committed to engagement with Syria and other ostensible Enemies, as well as an emphatic rejection of neoconservative ideology at least when it comes to dealing with some Muslim states. But even those clear and obvious facts — whereby this apparent success is possible only with them out of power, their ideology repudiated and their Enemies engaged — won’t stop them from claiming that this somehow vindicates their tawdry mindset.

[Along those same lines, Omooex also highlights what will be an overlooked part of the story: namely, that Israel is imprisoning "Palestinian women, teens, cabinet ministers and parliamentarians" (including, until his release this week, "Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Sheikh Aziz Dweik after three years in prison" who is "a leader of Hamas in the West Bank [and] espouses a moderate line in the organization”). If this Shalit deal ends up being consummated (and that still remains to be seen), the American media narrative will undoubtedly dramatize the detention of Shalit, an actual Israel solider, even while Israel imprisons scores of “Palestinian women, teens, cabinet ministers and parliamentarians.”]

Notably, Goldfarb seems to think that Obama’s leverage over Israel is dependent upon the domestic approval ratings of Netanyahu. Actually, that leverage is grounded in the tens of billions of American dollars in aid to Israel, the supplying of American weapons for Israel’s various wars, and the multiple forms of diplomatic protection the U.S. extends to Israel. At least preliminarily and from all appearances, the Obama administration has been using that leverage for U.S. interests by demanding that Israeli actions that harm the U.S. cease. Ironically, despite all the right-wing rage about that (in both Israel and the U.S.), the refusal to cater to neoconservatives when it comes to U.S. policy towards Israel just so happens — as demonstrated by this Shalit episode — to be benefiting Israel as well.

UPDATE: From a Haaretz Editorial last year, entitled “Our Debt to Jimmy Carter” (h/t thomas c):

The government of Israel is boycotting Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, during his visit here this week. Ehud Olmert, who has not managed to achieve any peace agreement during his public life, and who even tried to undermine negotiations in the past, “could not find the time” to meet the American president who is a signatory to the peace agreement with Egypt. . . . Carter, who himself said he set out to achieve peace between Israel and Egypt from the day he assumed office, worked incessantly toward that goal and two years after becoming president succeeded – was declared persona non grata by Israel. . . .

The boycott will not be remembered as a glorious moment in this government’s history. Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to humanitarian missions, to peace, to promoting democratic elections, and to better understanding between enemies throughout the world. . . .

Whether Carter’s approach to conflict resolution is considered by the Israeli government as appropriate or defeatist, no one can take away from the former U.S. president his international standing, nor the fact that he brought Israel and Egypt to a signed peace that has since held. Carter’s method, which says that it is necessary to talk with every one, has still not proven to be any less successful than the method that calls for boycotts and air strikes. In terms of results, at the end of the day, Carter beats out any of those who ostracize him. For the peace agreement with Egypt, he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life.

That all speaks for itself, and speaks volumes about our current Middle East predicaments and what to do about them.

UPDATE II: Speaking of using leverage, the original road map “quartet” — the U.S., the EU, the U.N. and Russia — have now jointly adopted the Obama administration’s position that Israel must ”freeze all settlement activity, including ‘natural growth’.” Israel is long accustomed to ignoring worldwide consensus because the U.S. sides with them on those matters. Where, as here, the U.S. is publicly and privately in favor of the consensus, Israel’s ability to defy it will depend upon how much leverage Obama is really willing to use.

UPDATE III: Goldfarb replies here, with the full array of textbook neoconservative platitudes. The only point worth noting is that he agrees with the observation I expressed last night that Goldfarb’s views (like those of most neonconservatives) ”ultimately come down to nothing more complicated than: what we do is Good and Right because we are superior and because they are inferior.” Goldfarb admits he thinks torture is tolerable when we do it to Them but not when They do it to us because — as he puts it — “Of Course We Are Superior and They Are Inferior ” (that, of course, is the very definition of “moral relativism,” which Goldfarb and his allies like to pretend they oppose even as they exemplify its core premise). And — other than a view that Muslims generally are inferior — what possible ground is there for claiming moral superiority over the numerous detainees at Guanatnamo and elsewhere who, even by the Bush administration’s reasoning, were guilty of nothing? Independently, it’s bizarre to hear someone proclaim themselves morally superior when, just a few months ago, they were celebrating the benefits of the wholesale slaughter of an entire extended family — including small children — in Gaza.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: “I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X — my group — is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly” . . . . Here again we find the same adolescent self-absorption: the group into which I was born and was instructed from childhood to believe is the best [] is, objectively, superior. It is so much better than everyone and everything else that even to suggest that we have flaws comparable to others is to engage in “false moral equivalencies.” To do anything other than emphatically proclaim my group’s objective superiority is to treat my group unfairly.

Goldfarb’s reply is a pure expression of that warped and self-glorifying mentality.

Posted in Democrats, Iran, Israel, Jewish Interest, Law, National Security, Obama, Politics, economics, history | Tagged: Carter, Conservative, Egypt, Goldfarb, Greenwald, Haaretz, Hamas, Iran, Israel, Jewish, Middle East, neo-con, neocons, Netanyahu, Obama, Omooex, Palestinians, Politics, Schalit, settlements, Shalit, Syria, Weekly Standard, West Bank | Leave a Comment »

Think Obama’s Soft? Think Again

Posted by steveneidman on June 24, 2009

The Obama Method

First he did it to Boehner, now Ahmadinejad.

by Jonathan Chait

The thing that people haven’t figured out about President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy is that it’s the same as his conduct of domestic policy. Obama believes in the power of negotiation and public dialogue to split his adversaries–Republicans at home, Islamists abroad–and strengthen his own position. Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was simply the foreign analogue of his dealings with the GOP.

Obama’s method begins with attempts to find common ground, expressions of respect for the adversary’s core beliefs, and profuse hope for cooperation. In his iconic 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, Obama famously announced that Democrats, too, “worship an awesome God.” In his Cairo speech, Obama pointed to the contributions and freedoms of American Muslims. In both speeches, Obama signaled cultural respect by adapting the other side’s own rhetorical formulations–invoking “a belief in things not seen” (2004) or calling the Middle East the region where Islam “was first revealed” (Cairo).

This rhetoric removes the locus of debate from the realm of tribal conflict– red state versus blue state, Islam versus America–and puts it onto specific questions–Is the American health care system fair? Is terrorism justified?– where Obama believes he can win support from soft adherents of the opposing camp.

Naturally, Obama’s pacific expressions tend to alarm the more hawkish elements of his own camp, who interpret his idealistic rhetoric as naivete or weakness. A few months before the 2008 presidential primary, columnist E.J. Dionne reported, “Several Democrats also said Clinton’s claim that she can deal with the Republican ‘attack machine’ rings truer to an angry party than Obama’s call for an end to partisan polarization.”

Democratic partisans think the enemy is vicious and must be met with uncompromising force. That’s exactly how conservative foreign policy hawks feel about the world. Unsurprisingly, the right-wing foreign policy critique of Obama today sounds eerily like the partisan Democratic critique of Obama during the primary.

In January 2008, Obama told a newspaper editorial board that Ronald Reagan provided a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.” Paul Krugman complained, “Where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?” Likewise, in his Cairo speech, Obama touted the historic role of Muslims in the United States. Conservative pundit David Frum complained: “One of the most disturbing things about the Cairo speech is the persistent misrepresentation of history. It is really absurd to say that Islam for example has ‘always been a part of America’s story.’”

Obama probably realizes that Muslims have played a marginal role in American life throughout most of its history. He also probably believes that the U.S. economy in the 1970s suffered primarily from oil shocks and irresponsible monetary policy rather than from the absence of a Reaganesque cheerleader for entrepreneurship. But Obama’s method entails small acts of intellectual dishonesty in the pursuit of common ground.

Critics such as Krugman and Frum are correct that surrendering intellectual ground comes at a cost. Our most successful presidents articulate clear, forceful public rationales for their beliefs –think of Roosevelt or Truman excoriating reactionary Republicans at home, or Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan standing up to the Soviets internationally. It is a mistake, however, to view Obama’s strategy as an act of submission.

Consider how Obama explained his approach toward Iran during a recent interview with Newsweek:

Now, will it work? We don’t know. And I assure you, I’m not naive about the difficulties of a process like this. If it doesn’t work, the fact that we have tried will strengthen our position in mobilizing the international community, and Iran will have isolated itself, as opposed to a perception that it seeks to advance that somehow it’s being victimized by a U.S. government that doesn’t respect Iran’s sovereignty.

This is a perfect summation of Obama’s strategy. It does not presuppose that his adversaries are people of goodwill who can be reasoned with. Rather, it assumes that, by demonstrating his own goodwill and interest in accord, Obama can win over a portion of his adversaries’ constituents as well as third parties. Obama thinks he can move moderate Muslim opinion, pressure bad actors like Iran to negotiate, and, if Iran fails to comply, encourage other countries to isolate it. The strategy works whether or not Iran makes a reasonable agreement.

The results remain to be seen. But it eerily resembles the way Obama has already isolated the GOP leadership. Obama began his presidency by elaborately courting the opposition party. Republicans in Congress believed that, by flamboyantly withholding cooperation, they could deny Obama his stated goal of bipartisan harmony and thus render him a failure. Instead, they wound up handing Obama the alternative victory of appearing to be the reasonable party. Polls showed that the public, by overwhelming margins, believed that Obama was trying to work with Republicans and that Republicans were not reciprocating.

Likewise, by defusing the complaint among Islamists that the United States disrespects their religion, Obama can more easily force the Iranian leadership to negotiate on the terms of its stated goals. This is actually “a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers,” as American Prospect editor Mark Schmitt wrote in 2007. “One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in,” Schmitt explained, “treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem.”

This apparent paradox is one reason Obama’s political identity has eluded easy definition. On the one hand, you have a disciple of the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky turned ruthless Chicago politician. On the other hand, there is the conciliatory post-partisan idealist. The mistake here is in thinking of these two notions as opposing poles. In reality it’s all the same thing. Obama’s defining political trait is the belief that conciliatory rhetoric is a ruthless strategy.

Posted in Democrats, Healthcare, Iran, Israel, Obama, Politics, UN, business, economy, history | Tagged: Cairo, Chait, Democrat, Healthcare, Iran, Israel, Krugman, Middle East, Muslims, Obama, Palestinians, Politics, reform, Republican, settlements | Leave a Comment »

A Mathematician Looks at Iran’s Election Results, With Surprising Results

Posted by steveneidman on June 17, 2009

Guilt by CalculationIt takes more than an Excel sheet to prove the Iranian election was fixed.

By Jordan Ellenberg

Were Iran’s election numbers too good to be true? That’s the question that the blog Tehran Bureau raised hours after Friday’s election, when it noted a strange trend in the government’s electoral data: Each time a new vote total was released, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a nearly identical percentage, around 67 percent. As more results rolled in, his tally climbed in linear lock step.

We’re used to watching the lead fluctuate wildly in American elections as returns come in, particularly early in the night, so the perfect straight line on Tehran Bureau’s graph suggested the numbers were faked—and ham-handedly at that. Within hours, the graph was showing up in tweets and blogs all over the world. Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan saw it as conclusive evidence. “They didn’t even attempt to disguise the fraud,” he wrote. “This graph is a red flag to Iran and the world.”

This kind of statistical gumshoeing has a long history. In 1936, for example, English biologist and statistician R.A. Fisher went gunning for Gregor Mendel, whose experimental results Fisher believed had been tweaked to be more favorable to Mendel’s ideas. “Fictitious data can seldom survive a careful scrutiny,” Fisher wrote, “and, since most men underestimate the frequency of large deviations arising by chance, such data may be expected generally to agree more closely with expectation than genuine data would.” In other words, it was precisely the beautiful agreement of experiment with theory that exposed Mendel’s thumb on the scale. Only once in 15,000 times, Fisher computed, could one expect such strong conformity. (The controversy over Mendel’s research practices continues to this day, with notable scientists lining up on both men’s sides.)

More recently, John Darsee, a rising star in cardiology, was caught reporting an unusually consistent series of measurements. When his supervisor demanded to see the original printed-out readings, Darsee said he’d thrown them out to make room in a filing cabinet. In the end, Darsee lost his position at Harvard, and 82 of his research papers had to be junked.

So it’s natural to be suspicious when you see that the vote total at each of the six official reporting times follows a linear formula almost exactly. In fact, that’s precisely what we expect from the way the data were reported. As more and more of the total vote was counted, it would have taken larger and larger surges by one or the other candidate to noticeably tip the proportions. Political stats whiz Nate Silver made a roughly analogous chart of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, based on the imaginary scenario in which states reported in alphabetical order, and found a linear trend just about as strong as the one reported in Iran.

A better way to assess the plausibility of the Iran data is to examine the six batches of votes separately, instead of the cumulative way it appeared in Tehran Bureau’s graph. You see a big first batch, 36 percent of the total vote, which comes in 70 percent for Ahmadinejad. Next come two smaller batches, 18 percent and 21 percent of the electorate, respectively, each of which Ahmadinejad wins with about 66 percent of the vote. The last three batches are smaller still—10 percent, 6 percent, and 8 percent of the population—and the incumbent takes these by 67 percent, 64 percent, and 62 percent margins. So Ahmadinejad’s official share really is fairly consistent from batch to batch.

But unbelievably so? Fisher used sophisticated statistical techniques to track down Mendel’s fiddling, but we can get away with much less. We’re simply asking the following: How much do we expect Ahmadinejad’s percentage to deviate from his overall total of 67.2 percent, based on a generally diverse electorate that will vary in allegiances from place to place? The answer is given by a standard deviation, a mathematical measure that tells about how far we expect any given measurement to stray from the overall average value. Here’s one way to scratch out an estimate: Let’s say the 27 million Iranians who voted last week are divided into 1,000 different regions with 27,000 voters each. For the sake of argument, we’ll say that half of these regions are 87.2 percent for Ahmadinejad—20 points over his overall average—while half are 47.2 percent for Ahmadinejad—20 points below. For each region, the deviation from Ahmadinejad’s overall vote total is exactly 20 percent, and when you add them all up, you get his 67.2 percent average.

Now let’s look at that first batch of votes, made up of 360 of our 1,000 regions (corresponding to the first real batch of 36 percent of the votes). Absent any reason to think that this particular sample is skewed compared with the overall vote, we can employ the following beautiful and simple formula: “The standard deviation of the average over N regions is the standard deviation of each region divided by the square root of N.”

So the amount by which it’s reasonable to expect that batch to differ from overall average of 67.2 percent is 20 percent divided by the square root of 360, or 1.05 percent. In other words, even if we assume a wide variance in the support for Ahmadinejad in any region—20 points in either direction—a batch consisting of 36 percent of the electorate is likely to wander from the average only by somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 percent.

And Ahmadinejad’s reported total of 70 percent for the first 36 percent of the vote misses his average by substantially more than that, suggesting even messier data than our scenario predicts. The same argument estimates the standard deviations of the other five batches as 1.5 percent, 1.4 percent, 2 percent, 2.6 percent, and 2.2 percent, respectively. In other words, these figures, though they may seem eerily consistent at first glance, are actually just what we would expect. That’s the nature of large batches of data, governed by what’s called the Law of Large Numbers: Averages of widely varying quantities can, and usually do, yield results that look almost perfectly uniform. Given enough data, the outliers tend to cancel one another out.

Of course, these estimates depend vitally on the arbitrary guesses about the sizes of the regions and their individual vote totals we made when setting up our estimate. But every reasonable guess I tried yielded the same result; on purely statistical grounds, the Iranian election numbers look more or less reasonable. It might be a different story if Ahmadinejad had drawn between 67.1 percent and 67.3 percent in all six batches, suggesting a standard deviation of less than 0.1 percent—or if 500 mini-batches of data, each making up 0.2 percent of the vote, were all in that 62 percent to 70 percent range. (One reason American readers may be more used to seeing wide swings in the vote totals is that our fine-grained media start reporting results when just a few percent of the votes are in.)

I’m not saying the election wasn’t fixed; Juan Cole and Richard Sexton offer more reasons for doubting the government’s numbers. On the other side, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty argue that their pre-election polling is consistent with a big Ahmadinejad win. Either way, the final verdict on the Iranian election won’t be settled by drawing a graph. The official numbers may or not be authentic, but they’re definitely messy enough to be true.

Posted in Iran, National Security, Obama, Politics, Polls, history | Tagged: Ahmadinejad, Andrew Sullivan, Democrat, Ellenberg, fraud, Iran, Iranian election, mathematics, Middle East, Mousavi, Nate Silver, Obama, Politics, Polls, statistics | Leave a Comment »

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