‘Mugged by Reality’ Part II – Thomas Sowell, Washington Times
Nothing is easier than to second-guess other people's decisions, ignoring the inherent limitations of knowledge, the pressures of circumstances, and the dangers of alternative courses of action.
Americans in all parts of the political spectrum have made serious mistakes about Iraq.
Some have been the mistakes of honorable people — indeed, mistakes to which honorable people may be more prone than others. Other people have acted with utter dishonor and dishonesty — the most shameful recent example the smearing of Gen. David Petraeus as a liar before he had said a word.
Precisely because congressional Democrats already knew there had been progress after the troop surge in Iraq — some of their own colleagues had been there and seen it — they had to discredit Gen. Petraeus to prevent the people from knowing it…
Countering Iran’s Designs – National Review editorial
As Americans wonder how to cope with Iran, Iran keeps killing Americans. The primary battleground is Iraq, where agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fund and arm the Shiite extremists whose IEDs pierce the armor of U.S. soldiers and whose bombs massacre Iraqi civilians. Within the next few days, four senators will introduce legislation that faces these facts unflinchingly and calls on America to win.
The resolution — an amendment to a defense appropriations bill — is sponsored by Jon Kyl, Joseph Lieberman, Norm Coleman, and Lindsey Graham. It expresses the sense of the Senate that the U.S. should “combat, contain, and roll back” Iran’s “violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq.” It counsels doing so “through the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of [U.S. power], including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments.” It also urges the administration to designate the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization…
Columbia Hosts a Thug – New York Post editorial
Having been summarily denied his wish for an officially sanctioned visit to Ground Zero, Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is headed for Columbia University - where he's set to be welcomed with open arms.
That Columbia would want to offer a platform to such a bloody handed villain - one who, to this day, presides over a country that's directly abetting the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq - says much about the state of Ivy League education…
No Place for That Photo-Op - Walter Reich, Washington Post
For a moment last week it looked as if, once again, a memorial to human atrocity would be hijacked for political purposes. Thankfully, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plans to lay a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center were quickly condemned and canceled. But it seems that memorials will always be tempting targets for misuse.
At first, some applauded the prospect of the visit. Even though Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust happened, has threatened to wipe out Israel and attack the United States, provides the munitions that kill U.S. troops in Iraq, is furiously trying to build nuclear weapons and is president of a country that Washington has declared the world's chief state sponsor of terrorism, some argued that he should be allowed to visit Ground Zero and see for himself the consequences of terrorism. Why not give Iran's president a chance to be educated and transformed? …
A Terrorist for Tea – John Podhoretz, New York Post
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address a forum at Columbia University on Monday; school President Lee Bollinger promises to ask tough questions…
Blackwater: Hired Guns, Above the Law - Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
My name is Jeremy Scahill. I am an investigative reporter for The Nation magazine and the author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. I have spent the better part of the past several years researching the phenomenon of privatized warfare and the increasing involvement of the private sector in the support and waging of US wars. During the course of my investigations, I have interviewed scores of sources, filed many Freedom of Information Act requests, obtained government contracts and private company documents of firms operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. When asked, I have attempted to share the results of my investigations, including documents obtained through FOIA and other processes, with members of Congress and other journalists.
I would like to thank this committee for the opportunity to be here today and for taking on this very serious issue. Over the past six days, we have all been following very closely the developments out of Baghdad in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of as many as 20 Iraqis by operatives working for the private military company Blackwater USA. The Iraqi government is alleging that among the dead are a small child and her parents and the prime minister has labeled Blackwater's conduct as "criminal" and spoke of "the killing of our citizens in cold blood." While details remain murky and subject to conflicting versions of what exactly happened, this situation cuts much deeper than this horrifying incident. The stakes are very high for the Bush administration because the company involved, Blackwater USA, is not just any company. It is the premiere firm protecting senior State Department officials in Iraq, including Ambassador Ryan Crocker. This company has been active in Iraq since the early days of the occupation when it was awarded an initial $27 million no-bid contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer. During its time in Iraq, Blackwater has regularly engaged in firefights and other deadly incidents. About 30 of its operatives have been killed in Iraq and these deaths are not included in the official American death toll…
War and Terror Inc. – Douglas Farah, Washington Post
Immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the rest of the world had to decide whether it was with us or against us. But it turns out that in the new world order, you can be both -- and make a boatload of money in the process.
Take Viktor Bout, a Russian air-transport magnate and the world's premier gray- market arms provider. Every year, warlords, gangsters, militiamen and terrorists kill tens of thousands of people in wars that are only sporadically reported to the outside world. They do their butchery using weapons obtained and delivered, to all sides of these conflicts, by Bout and his ilk. These are the real weapons of mass destruction in the post-Cold War world, taking lives and shattering communities from the slums of Baghdad to the jungles of Colombia, from the streets of Beirut to the impoverished diamond-mining hamlets of West Africa…
Want Electricity? Stop the Rockets – Benny Morris, Los Angeles Times
'It's about time" was the reaction of most Israelis to the government's decision on Wednesday to impose further economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip and to define it as "hostile territory." The government spoke specifically of cutting off electricity to Gaza's inhabitants if more Kassam rockets were launched from the Hamas-controlled territory, and of a possible fuel cutoff down the road.
A variety of terrorist groups -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-associated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade -- have been firing the primitive, home-made Kassams at Israel's border settlements since the end of 2001, and the first ones landed in the border town of Sderot in March 2002. The rockets have so far inflicted relatively few casualties and little damage -- more than 1,000 have been fired, killing about a dozen Israelis and seriously injuring several dozen -- but they have caused widespread unease or panic in Sderot. Dozens of families have moved out of the area in recent months after the Israel Defense Forces, deploying a variety of means including cross-border armored incursions, ambushes and helicopter missile attacks on the rocket teams, proved unable to stop the rocketeers. The IDF measures sometimes resulted in collateral damage and casualties, triggering condemnation by human rights groups and Western politicians and media…
The War on Gaza’s Children - Saree Makdisi, Los Angeles Times
An entire generation of Palestinians in Gaza is growing up stunted: physically and nutritionally stunted because they are not getting enough to eat; emotionally stunted because of the pressures of living in a virtual prison and facing the constant threat of destruction and displacement; intellectually and academically stunted because they cannot concentrate -- or, even if they can, because they are trying to study and learn in circumstances that no child should have to endure.
Even before Israel this week declared Gaza "hostile territory" -- apparently in preparation for cutting off the last remaining supplies of fuel and electricity to 1.5 million men, women and children -- the situation was dire…
Dying for Self-Rule in Lebanon – Boston Globe editorial
When Antoine Ghanem, a member of the Lebanese Parliament, was assassinated Wednesday in a horrific car bombing, he became the eighth anti-Syrian legislator to be killed since the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. To members of the March 14 Movement, an anti-Syrian coalition, there is no mystery about the ultimate power behind these murders, or the motive.
Leaders of the March 14 coalition - Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Druze - have accused the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad of Ghanem's murder. A United Nations tribunal is investigating the killing of Hariri and other anti-Syrian figures, and the coalition has asked the panel to take up this latest car bombing as well. The assumed motive is crudely political: to kill enough lawmakers in Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's anti-Syrian coalition to deprive it of a parliamentary majority. The benefit for Syria would be preventing legislators from electing a new president who, unlike current President Emile Lahoud, would not be in thrall to Damascus…
What Does Osama Want? – Victor Davis Hanson, Washington Times
We have been arguing over al Qaeda's aims since before September 11, 2001. Some take Osama bin Laden's specific complaints seriously. But we shouldn't, as we learned this month from his latest rambling taped communique, which faulted America for seemingly everything — global warming, high interest rates, shaky home mortgages and free-market democratic capitalism itself.
Remember that in the 1990s he declared war on America for three other reasons: We had troops in Saudi Arabia. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq. And America supported Israel. Now it apparently matters little that there are neither embargoes of Iraq nor American soldiers in Saudi Arabia…
Confronting our ‘Siberian Dilemma’ in Asia and Elsewhere – Kurt Campbell, New York Times
A trip through Asia, even a relatively brief one, reveals some disquieting concerns over the current American position in the region. In these waning months of the Bush Administration, with the country bogged down and preoccupied in Iraq, the United States faces the unpalatable choice posed by the “Siberian dilemma” in Asia. Just what is the Siberian dilemma and how does it apply to the unforgiving urban battlefields of Iraq? And more to the point, what does this have to do with Asia? …
The Poppy Problem - Vanda Felbab-Brown, Washington Post
The expansion of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has set off a scramble among policymakers for a magic counternarcotics policy that will rapidly reverse the trend. Opium production in Afghanistan this year topped the previous year's record by 34 percent. At 8,200 tons, the level of opium production is unprecedented in the history of the drug trade since World War I. But despite the frantic search for the counternarcotics silver bullet -- whether in the form of spraying or licensing -- no counternarcotics policy is likely to substantially and durably reduce poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, unless security is greatly improved and stability achieved throughout the country.
Effective government control over the entire territory and the absence of armed conflict are crucial preconditions for the suppression of illicit crops. During major insurgencies or civil wars, no counternarcotics policy has ever succeeded in eliminating cultivation. This rule applies to both coercive measures, such as forced eradication, and non-coercive approaches, such as alternative livelihoods programs and licensing…
It's High Time that We Squared Up to Mugabe – Simon Heffer, London Daily Telegraph
I think we are all supposed to be impressed that our new Prime Minister has decided to adopt an "empty chair" policy at the forthcoming EU-Africa summit in Portugal, by refusing to attend if Comrade "Butcher Bob" Mugabe, the tyrant of Zimbabwe, is invited. The one consolation I draw from this is that it seems to replace what might best be termed the "empty brain" policy pursued by the Government towards the butcher and his benighted country: for that is precisely why we have this problem.
There are few matters in which it is less enjoyable to say, "I told you so", than this. For years I have written pieces arguing that if we did not intervene in Zimbabwe the time would come when our television screens would be full of the pitiful sight of starving children with distended bellies that are familiar from so many other countries in Africa where the local despots run their affairs so humanely. Now, indeed, that time has come…
Africa’s Sudden Splash of Good News - John Prendergast, Washington Post
As someone who has worked in Africa's worst war zones for the past quarter-century, I usually write about atrocities, tyranny and famine. That's what Americans are used to in articles with Africa datelines: grim tales of a hopeless and devastated continent. But after years of dealing with the likes of Somali gunmen, the Janjaweed militia in Sudan's Darfur region and abducted child soldiers in northern Uganda, I am far more optimistic about Africa's future than I was when I started.
The election of a 53-year-old former insurance executive as president of Sierra Leone last week was the latest sign of progress coming out of the continent. Though there were some isolated incidents of unrest, the democratic swearing-in of Ernest Bai Koroma was contrary to what much of the world has come to expect from Africa…
Australian Republic Without the Queen? – London Daily Telegraph leader
If Kevin Rudd becomes Australia's next prime minister – and that is what the opinion polls suggest – then the new Labour government will push very hard for a republic. There is a strong possibility that, following a proposed referendum in 2010, Australia will no longer have a Queen. And that would be a terrible shame. We realise that it is not our business to tell Australians who should be their head of state: unsolicited advice from Poms is rarely welcome. But there is a very good reason for keeping our ties to Australia, quite apart from the exemplary way in which the Queen discharges her constitutional duties. It is that – contrary to expectations – our two countries have recently grown closer together, not further apart…
Burma Stirs – Washington Post editorial
For years, jaded diplomats and academics have rebuffed Burma's democracy activists with one question: Why don't the people of Burma rise up? For the past month, they have been doing exactly that, against unimaginable odds and with unimaginable courage. So now a different question arises: Is the world -- its leaders, diplomats, academics and others -- going to stand on the sidelines or offer some help?
Yesterday, more than 1,000 Buddhist monks marched peacefully along the rain-soaked streets of Burma's largest city, with thousands of spectators encouraging their protest. At the head of the procession a monk carried an alms bowl turned upside down, symbolically refusing to accept any more support from the military regime, one of the world's most repressive. In an overwhelmingly Buddhist Southeast Asian nation of 50 million people, this was a withering rebuke. The echoes of the last great uprising, in 1988, must be alarming the country's corrupt ruling generals -- the roots in economic discontent and the slow stirrings from students to monks to the general population and from the capital to smaller cities across the nation…
Restive Monks: Myanmar's Rulers are Finally Facing Pressure – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial
Weeks of demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Myanmar are calling into question conventional wisdom that the country's military rulers are free to ignore popular dissent.
Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been under military rule for more than four decades now. Its repressive, uniformed bosses changed the country's name, changed the name of its capital from Rangoon to Yangon, then moved the capital into the interior to a new town, Naypyidaw.
Through a combination of heavy-handed misrule and corruption they have reduced its economic circumstances to a place now among the poorest countries in the region -- in fact, the world -- and have caused Myanmar to miss out almost entirely on the impressive growth of the Asian tigers…
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