Blackwater and the Business of War – Los Angeles Times editorial
On Sept. 10, 2001, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gave a speech at the Pentagon on the need to combat "an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America." The enemy wasn't Russia, China or Al Qaeda. It was the Pentagon bureaucracy. Rumsfeld declared a crusade not merely to attack waste but to transform the military into a technologically superior fighting force that would achieve what no modern military ever had: corporate-style efficiency.
Alas, the dream of managing the government more like a business is central to some of the Bush administration's most disastrous mistakes. It was at the heart of the decision to browbeat the generals into agreeing to invade Iraq with a "light footprint," which allowed the insurgency to flourish. Contempt for the bureaucratic process doomed serious postwar planning -- after all, governmental decision-making is political, collaborative and agonizingly slow, and the result is almost always a compromise that may avoid disaster but stifles innovation. To run the occupation of Iraq, President Bush chose a man who promised to make decisions like a CEO, which is why L. Paul Bremer III made the fatal mistake of disbanding the Iraqi army without consulting the cumbersome Washington bureaucracy. And corporate thinking about efficiency led to vastly expanding the outsourcing of functions traditionally performed by the military. The biggest beneficiary has been Blackwater USA, a private security firm with powerful political and personnel ties to an administration that has awarded it more than $1 billion in contracts since 2002…
Trouble for Hire – Ralph Peters, New York Post
Americans have always despised mercenaries. Our dislike of hired killers dates back to the days of our Founding Fathers. When Washington crossed the Delaware to defeat the Hessians at Trenton, he targeted hirelings who’d burned, raped and murdered their way across northern New Jersey.
During our Civil War, the fiercest insult Southerners hurled across the Potomac was the accusation that the Irish immigrants inducted into the Union armies were mercenaries. Men who fought for pay alone were repulsive to American values.
And now the United States has become the world’s No. 1 employer of hired thugs. By a conservative count, we and our partners in Iraq employ 5,000 armed American and other Western expatriates, at least 10,000 third-country-nationals or TCNs, and upwards of 15,000 Iraqis who should be serving their own country in uniform…
A Small Outbreak of Mideast Hope – Jim Hoagland, Washington Post
Hopes for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that will isolate the Hamas radicals who control the Gaza Strip have brightened measurably in recent days, according to European officials visiting here. The real news is that the Europeans report this possible outcome without a frown.
Their cautious but clear optimism is based primarily on movement in the private preparatory talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who are both so weakened politically that they may have no place to go but toward peace…
A Conversation with Mahmoud Abbas – Washington Post
When the Islamic radicals of Hamas kicked their more secular Fatah rivals out of the Gaza Strip in June, it looked as though the peace process was dead. But surprisingly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have held a series of in-depth talks that U.S. officials hope may culminate in some kind of deal or framework to be presented at a proposed meeting of Middle East leaders in Washington in November. Last week, the Fatah chief attended the opening of the U.N. General Assembly and met with more than 35 world leaders to encourage them to support whatever agreement he may reach with Olmert. Abbas discussed the peace talks with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth…
9/11 is Over – Thomas Friedman, New York Times
Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:
“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”
Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.
What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again…
Blogging Ahmadinejad in Tehran – New York Times Op-Ed Contributors
Americans might be forgiven for thinking they have heard everything there is to say about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University, but the story occupied Iranian bloggers at least as much as it dominated the American news cycle. Although Iranian authorities have introduced laws requiring citizens to register their blogs and Web sites with the government, Persian is the 10th most widely used language on blogs worldwide, according to Technorati, the blog-tracking service.
Despite official harassment and intimidation, Iranian blogs remain a vibrant source of debate and provide a valuable insight into popular opinion inside the country. Bloggers tend to be young, well educated and not very supportive of President Ahmadinejad, who typically attracts followers from the urban poor.
Here are excerpts from the conversation as it unfolded in Iran last week. They have been translated by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center from the Persian…
Rude Reception? – Mona Charen, Washington Times
Spread on the desk before me are news accounts of atrocities by the Iranian regime. Here's one from 2004: Amnesty International protested the death penalty carried out on 16-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi, in the northern province of Mazandaran, for "acts incompatible with chastity." Reports are sketchy, but it seems the mentally impaired Ateqeh had sex with a boy. The boy was punished by 100 lashes and released. Ateqeh was hanged in the main square after the Iranian Supreme Court upheld her sentence.
The Guardian newspaper reports hundreds of Tehran bus drivers who tried to strike were beaten and arrested in July 2007. Their families were targeted by plainclothes police, who burst into their homes and beat the women and children.
Iran Focus recounts that a 13-year-old girl was raped by her brother. She became pregnant and gave birth to a child. The result? An Iranian court sentenced her to death by stoning. Her brother received 150 lashes…
Echoes of Tiananmen Square - Yang Jianli, Washington Post
In the early hours of June 4, 1989, I was on Chang'an Street, just west of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, when I saw Chinese soldiers open fire and kill many of my fellow protesters. I barely escaped the same fate. The horror of that day is seared in my mind like it was yesterday.
In recent days, my memories of Tiananmen have come rushing back as I have watched the mass demonstrations in Burma and the junta's bloody crackdown. After decades of military dictatorship, hundreds of thousands of the people of Burma -- a diverse outpouring of Buddhist monks, democracy activists and ordinary civilians -- are standing up to confront the country's brutal regime…
The Generals Who Would Be Kings - Bertil Lintner, Washington Post
To understand the unrest wracking Burma, consider a new town built in the lush hills northeast of Mandalay. It's near the British-built hill station of Maymyo, where Burma's old colonial masters went to escape the heat and dust of the plain. Maymyo still boasts red-brick mansions covered in ivy and pleasant gardens with roses, which flourish in the almost alpine climate of the hills.
The new town is also a kind of refuge -- but for the Burmese military. Instead of the British Victorian-style mansions of the old Maymyo, you'll find gaudy luxury villas in the new one. The town is also home to the Defense Services Academy, Burma's West Point, which trained many of the generals who ordered last week's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations led by saffron-robed Buddhist monks. When construction on the officers' town began in late 2005, the Irrawaddy, a magazine published by Burmese exiles in Thailand, reported that "no expense has been spared to allow the generals to live in what basically is a resort, complete with an artificial beach and a man-made stretch of water to lap onto it." The theme-park retreat will also include replicas of a famous pagoda in Rangoon, the old royal palace in Mandalay and a popular beach resort -- which, the magazine dryly noted, "is probably where the fake beach comes in." …
The Saffron Revolution - Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard
At this writing, on Friday, September 28, the Burmese military regime has brought its heavy hammer down on the thousands of people demonstrating against the country's 45-year-old dictatorship. Police and troops have fired on protesters, killing at least 13 people. Buddhist monasteries have been raided and sealed, including the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most famous and beautiful building in Rangoon, and some 200 monks are under arrest. Internet traffic, which dissidents used to report events to the world, has been cut.
It may be pardonable to begin comment on a land almost completely sealed off from the rest of the world with the only trace of humor in its situation--the difficulty some English-speaking newsrooms have had in deciding whether to adopt the nationalist renaming of the country and its main city, from Burma and Rangoon to Myanmar and Yangon. The Washington Post sticks with the former; the New York Times and other leading dailies prefer the new system, though the mouthful "Myanmarese" has failed to gain currency, leaving pretty much everyone still saying "Burmese." …
Mugabe: A Tyrant From the Start - James Kirchick, Los Angeles Times
As Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, presides over what might be the most rapid disintegration yet of a modern nation-state, it has become de rigueur for journalists, politicians and academics to offer what has become a near-universal analysis: Mugabe, who has ruled his country uninterrupted for 27 years, was a promising leader who became corrupted over time by power.
This meme was popularized not long after Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms in 2000. Four years ago, in response to these raids, the New York Times editorialized that "in 23 years as president, Mr. Mugabe has gone from independence hero to tyrant." Earlier this week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that "I'm just devastated by what I can't explain, by what seems to be an aberration, this sudden change in character." …
Surveillance Showdown – David Rivkin Jr. and Lee Casey – Wall Street Journal
Would any sane country purposefully limit its ability to spy on enemy communications in time of war? That is the question Congress must answer as it takes up reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Privacy activists, civil libertarians and congressional Democrats argue that both foreign and domestic eavesdropping must be subject to judicial scrutiny and oversight, even if this means drastically reducing the amount of foreign intelligence information available to the government, without ever acknowledging the costs involved. It is time the American people had an open and honest debate on the relative importance of privacy and security.
FISA, of course, is the law regulating the government's interception of "electronic communications" for foreign intelligence purposes. Earlier this year the special FISA court narrowed dramatically the National Security Agency's ability to collect overseas intelligence under the law, so Congress passed a six-month amendment before its August recess to allow current surveillance programs to continue. That amendment should be made permanent…
Dangerous Logjam on Surveillance – David Ignatius, Washington Post
When a nation can't solve the problems that concern its citizens, it's in trouble. And that's where America now finds itself on nearly every big issue -- from immigration to Iraq to health care to anti-terrorism policies.
Let us focus on the last of these logjams -- over the legal rules for conducting surveillance against terrorists. There isn't a more urgent priority for the country: We face an adversary that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans if it could. But in a polarized Washington, crafting a solid compromise that has long-term bipartisan support has so far proved impossible…
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