Abroad

Universal values?

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by liberal japonicus A few folks have lamented the absence of foreign policy posts, so I thought that some of you may be interested in discussing this article about the problems of US NGO's in other countries. A few grafs: The Times reports that the United Arab Emirates has shut down the offices of the National … Read more

Drones Don’t Declutter, And Neither Do Expulsions

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by Gary Farber

We can't "win" militarily in Afghanistan any more than we could in Vietnam. 

"AfPak" is still AfPak, no matter that it displeases Pakistan, no matter how the U.S. placates.

It's one war, and it can't be won militarily without invading Pakistan.  Anyone up for that? 

2 US servicemen mistakenly killed by drone attack in Afghanistan [UPDATE, 3:41 p.m., PST: erroneous link fixed; thanks, Ugh!].

[…] The Marines under fire were watching streaming video of the battlefield being fed to them by an armed Predator overhead. They saw a number of "hot spots," or infrared images, moving in their direction. Apparently believing that those "hot spots" were the enemy, they called in a Hellfire missile strike from the Predator.

Technology will triumph.

It worked in Vietnam! We're winning.

After all, unlike Vietnam, there are no safe havens across borders: Pakistan Tells U.S. It Must Sharply Cut C.I.A. Activities:

Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it halt C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan. The request was a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.

Pakistani and American officials said in interviews that the demand that the United States scale back its presence was the immediate fallout from the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. security officer who killed two men in January during what he said was an attempt to rob him.

In all, about 335 American personnel — C.I.A. officers and contractors and Special Operations forces — were being asked to leave the country, said a Pakistani official closely involved in the decision.

It was not clear how many C.I.A. personnel that would leave behind; the total number in Pakistan has not been disclosed. But the cuts demanded by the Pakistanis amounted to 25 to 40 percent of United States Special Operations forces in the country, the officials said. The number also included the removal of all the American contractors used by the C.I.A. in Pakistan.

This is what we call "big news."

It's also, when you read between the lines, leverage, and there will be a trade-off, and you'll have to read between the lines, at best, and look carefully at the right sources, to find information about it when it happens, should said information be findable — but traces always surface on the internet:

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Pottery Barn Libya, Pt 2: Anthony Cordesman, One Man Army, or Give Peace A Chance?

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by Gary Farber

In Pottery Barn Libya, Part 1, I began explaining the situation in Libya.  Now, more, and what America and NATO should do.

The tactical day to day sway of battle does not matter, save to those brutally slaughtered in it,  and suffering from it.  Suffering greatly.

What matters are the choices America and Europe make.  

Naturally, Joe Lieberman and John McCain want bombs away, all-out regime change.  Nothing makes John McCain happier: Back on the Battlefield: How the Libya debate snapped John McCain out of his 2008 funk—and into a fresh fight with Obama.

John McCain has never met a country he wouldn't like to bomb:

[…]

McCain, who insists on visiting Iraq and Afghanistan twice a year, often favors a muscular approach to projecting U.S. military power but is wary of entanglements with no exit strategy. The old aviator, who had both arms repeatedly broken in a Hanoi prison camp, says that experience has “also given me a sense of caution in light of our failure in Vietnam.” While McCain opposed the U.S. military actions in Lebanon and Somalia, he is sympathetic to humanitarian missions—and would even consider sending troops to the war-torn Ivory Coast if someone could “tell me how we stop what’s going on.”

Pressed on when the United States should intervene in other countries, McCain sketches an expansive doctrine that turns on practicality: American forces must be able to “beneficially affect the situation” and avoid “an outcome which would be offensive to our fundamental -principles—whether it’s 1,000 people slaughtered or 8,000…If there’s a massacre or ethnic cleansing and we are able to prevent it, I think the United States should act.”

McCain: bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran.


 

Bombs away.  "There will be other wars."

McCain: "We are all Georgians now."

Tough guy Anthony Cordesman naturally wants to fight.  Unsurprisingly, he used to be national security assistant to Senator John McCain.

Cordesman, who has, see previous links, always been deeply wired into the militarist networks of the Washington, D.C. village of talking heads and millionaire journalism, has a (surprise!) widely-quoted piece advocating we (surprise!) go all in.

Let's not.

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Pottery Barn Libya, Part 1

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by Gary Farber

What is to be done?

Colin Powell famously said of Iraq, quoting Tom Friedman (who got it wrong)

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

Does anyone want to buy Libya, and own it for the next decade?

That's what's on order.

That, or negotiating a way out of this thing.

The Libyan rebels are a mess.  April 3rd:

[…] The rebel army’s nominal leader, Abdul Fattah Younes, a former interior minister and friend of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi whom many rebel leaders distrusted, could offer little explanation for the recent military stumbles, two people with knowledge of the meetings said.

Making matters worse, the men could hardly stand one another. They included Khalifa Heftar, a former general who returned recently from exile in the United States and appointed himself as the rebel field commander, the movement’s leaders said, and Omar el-Hariri, a former political prisoner who occupied the largely ceremonial role of defense minister.

“They behaved like children,” said Fathi Baja, a political science professor who heads the rebel political committee. 

Little was accomplished in the meetings, the participants said. When they concluded late last week, Mr. Younes was still the head of the army and Mr. Hariri remained as the defense minister. Only Mr. Heftar, who reportedly refused to work with Mr. Younes, was forced out. On Sunday, though, in a sign that divisions persisted, Mr. Heftar’s son said his father was still an army leader. [….]

On March 29th,  Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney told the press gaggle on AF1 that, in essence, he didn't know who the hell these people are, but let's hope for the best:

[…] Q    One of NATO’s military leaders testified on the Hill today that there had been signs of al Qaeda seen amongst Libyan rebels.  How does that affect the White House thinking on engaging with them?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, what I would say is that, as you know, we spend a lot of time looking at the opposition and now meeting with opposition leaders.  And the folks who are in London, the people that — and the leader that Secretary Clinton met in Paris, have made clear what their principles are and we believe that they’re meritorious — their principles.  I think they had a statement today that had some very good language in it that we support. 

But that doesn’t mean, obviously, that everyone who opposes Moammar Qaddafi I Libya is someone whose ideals we can support.  But beyond that, I don't have any detail about individual members of the opposition.

Q    Does it concern you about how much you don't know about the opposition?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, what I would say is that we have met with opposition leaders and we're working with them, but as the President said, and as the opposition leaders who put out a statement today said, it’s up to them to decide who their leaders are going to be.

But we do know something of who they are right now, as Jason Packer explains:

If you let strangers know that you research Libya for a living, there seems to be only one question on their minds: "Who are the Libyan rebels?" I've been asked it at cocktail parties, on ski lifts, at academic seminars, and even by Western journalists in Benghazi who have developed the flattering habit of Skype-ing me at odd hours. Americans seem captivated by this question, perhaps because they have heard senior U.S. officials from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to various Republican congressmen proclaim that they do not yet know enough about who the rebels are. I do not take such statements at face value. U.S. statesmen know quite well who the rebels are — but pretend otherwise to obscure the fact that the United States has yet to formulate a comprehensive policy toward them.

The rebels consist of two distinct groups: the fighters and the political leadership.

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Your zeitgeist post

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by liberal japonicus

I was one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement – the original Port Huron Statement, not the compromised second draft. And then I, uh – ever hear of the Seattle Seven? That was me… and there were six other guys.

 The Dude, Big Lebowski

In January of 1968, the reform movement known as Prague Spring began, which was initially/fundamentally President Alexander Dubček's program of economic decentralization and relief from censorship. The movement led to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR and Warsaw Pact allies 8 months later.

In March of 1968, Edson Luís de Lima Souto was killed by Brazilian Military Police during a student protest about the high price of meals at a student restaurant. This incident led to a number of protests in Rio de Janeiro and resulted in the enactment of Ato Institucional Número Cinco (Institutional Order 5), which closed the National Congress for a year, made political gatherings illegal and suspended habeus corpus for crimes that were politically motivated

In March of 1968, students occupied the administration building at the University of Paris in Nanterre. In the previous decade, the student population of the university had tripled, with little extra funding to support the university. The students occupying the admin building, issued a manifesto that called for "Outright rejection of the Capitalist Technocratic University". After the manifesto was distributed, the students left. 2 months later, on May 2nd, the French government closed down the university. Students at the Sorbonne organized a protest the following day and police entered the university. Protesting that hitherto unprecedented police invasion of a French university, the UNÉF (Union Nationale des Étudiants de France) and the union of university teachers marched thru Paris on May 6th. 20,000 protesters were sealed off by police, barricades were erected, and hundreds of students were arrested, with a confrontation between police and students in the Latin Quarter yielding many of the iconic images of that event. High school student unions also organized protests, and on May 7th, a large demonstration took place at the Arc de Triomphe focused on three demands: That all charges against the students be dropped, that police leave Nanterre and the Sorbonne and that both those universities, which had been closed, be reopened. The French government was not too concerned with these protests, there were industrial labor actions the previous year and continuing industrial action at Renault. On May 13th, the participating unions issue a call for a general strike. This is picked up in the press, and the call was published on the front page of L'Humanité. The action was held on May 15th. link and link  

In June of 1968, students at Tokyo University boycotted all classes. This action was led by medical students whose initial grievance was the service they were required to do upon completing their degrees. The boycott led to other actions at university across Japan. While a huge range of sweeping changes were enacted, a sit in at Yasuda Hall, continued until January 1969, when 8,000 riot police evicted the protesters. Protests occurred at approximately one-third of all the universities in Japan, all with various local origins pdf link

In October 1968, a large riot over the banning of a university lecturer active in the Black Power movement, Walter Rodney, occurred in Kingston, Jamaica. link

On Oct 2nd, 1968, October 2, a student demonstration in Mexico City resulted in the police and paramilitary forces killing over 100 people, in what is now known as Tlatelolco massacre link

In October, 1969, the party of Korean president Park Chung-hee forced through a constitutional amendment that permitted him to seek a 3rd term over the objections of the minority party. Park declared a state of national emergency in 1971, martial law in 1972 and Korea was riven by protests and riots for the next 10 years until the assassination of Park by the head of the director of the Korean CIA. 

In addition, there are a number of other incidents and historical points that I think are related, but may occur outside this 1968-69 period. The Cultural Revolution began in China in 1966, and by 1968, the Red Guards were virtually in charge of the country.

In Thailand in October 1973, 400,000 students and residents of Bangkok protested and were suppressed by the military. The student organization that was one of the main organizers, the NSC of Thailand, was formed after a bus fare hike in 1969 led to a protest. (link)

In the Phillipines, January 1970 marked the event known as the First Quarter Storm, where 50,000 demonstrators stormed the Presidential Palace.

I've purposely left out the 1968 events in the US (MLK assassination, Chicago, etc) and in some places in Europe because there is a tendency for USAians to view those events thru the lens of civil rights and Vietnam (I dare say we have a number of people who were at those protests here, and I'm not trying to denigrate or minimize what was done). I don't think that is wrong so much as I think looking at the period of time as a worldwide phenomenon, you get a different picture. More about that picture is below the fold. (if I did the extended entry code correctly.)

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You Say al-Gaddafi, They Say al-Qaḏḏāfī, Let’s Colonel The Whole Thing Off

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By Gary Farber

Libya appears to be in full revolt.  Residents say troops defect in Libya's Benghazi:

Members of a Libyan army unit told Benghazi residents on Sunday they had defected and "liberated" Libya's second city from troops supporting veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi, two residents said.

Habib al-Obaidi, who heads the intensive care unit at the main Al-Jalae hospital, and lawyer Mohamed al-Mana, told Reuters members of the "Thunderbolt" squad had arrived at the hospital with soldiers wounded in clashes with Gaddafi's personal guard.

"They are now saying that they have overpowered the Praetorian Guard and that they have joined the people's revolt," al-Mana said by telephone. It was not possible to independently verify the report.

Obaidi said the bodies of 50 people killed on Sunday had arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon. Most had died from bullet wounds.

Tripoli flagpole

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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised; It Will And Has Been Tweeted

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by Gary Farber

Revolutions have happened in the Mideast?  How?  Why?  Because this is the 21st century, and the revolution is online.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and I will give you 5000 in five pictures:

Egypt

Experiation%20date_%20from%20twitter%20user%20@nadiae 
 
 
Political%20Pictures%20-%20Best%20Egyptian%20Protest%20Signs 

Political%20Pictures%20-%20Egyptian%20Protest%20Signs 

Political%20Pictures%20-%20Egyptian%20Protest%20Signs-1 

What happened?  This.   

[…] 

The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.

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Secrets, Iran and a Healthy Skepticism

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by Robert Mackey First, a quick introduction and greeting. My name is Robert R. Mackey (not to be confused with the Lede author) and I'm an historian and retired US Army officer.  My specialty, oddly enough, is a strange mix of American Civil War history, history of intelligence, and counter-terrorism.  In the past, I've worked … Read more

Global Warming: Even More Bad Consequences Than You Thought

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by hilzoy This is not good news at all. "Ninety percent of Pakistan's agricultural irrigation depends on rivers that originate in Kashmir." There is a treaty in place dividing Kashmir's waters between Pakistan and India, and it "has survived three wars and nearly 50 years." But guess what: "The treaty's success depends on the maintenance … Read more

More Puzzlement

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by hilzoy Daniel Larison says a(nother) wise thing (h/t): "Americanists believe that any statement from the President that fails to build up and anoint Mousavi as the preferred candidate is discouraging to Mousavi and his supporters, because they apparently cannot grasp that being our preferred candidate is to be tainted with suspicion of disloyalty to … Read more

Puzzled By Honduras

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by hilzoy From the New York Times: "The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the army on Sunday after pressing ahead with plans for a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election, in the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war. Soldiers entered … Read more

The Idea Of An Islamic Republic

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by hilzoy

Andrew Sullivan posted an email from a reader that I think is interesting but wrong. Its author disagrees with the idea that Mousavi and his followers are essentially trying to restore the Islamic Republic. He writes: "Mousavi, insofar as he is a vessel of Iranian contempt for and rage at Khamenei, is the undoing of the 1979 revolution, not its restoration." Partly this is because the author thinks that the Islamic Republic is identical with "the institutions created after 1979". I wouldn't describe any change to those institutions as the abandonment of the Islamic Republic, but I suppose that if one did, one might argue that that might be Mousavi's goal, though he would not describe it that way. 

However, the author also says this:

"In this contest, there is a claim on both sides for the spirit of the 1979 revolution. But there is also a recognition, I think for Mousavi, that the Islamicness of the Islamic Republic has led Iran to this depraved state of affairs."

I am not privy to Mousavi's innermost thoughts, but it would surprise me if this were true of him or of most of his followers. If you believe in Islam, the problem cannot be that the Islamic Republic is too Islamic. It has to be something else — for instance, that the Islamic Republic is insufficiently Islamic, not in the sense of not having enough mullahs in positions of power, but in the sense of not being set up in the way that a proper understanding of Islam would suggest.

What is true, I think, is that the current events in Islam will force a reexamination of the theological underpinnings of the Islamic Republic. 

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“What The Hell Do I Know!”

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by hilzoy NIAC has published an interesting account of yesterday's demonstrations. It's really worth reading. One bit that stood out: "There is a woman who is being beaten. She's horrified and hysterical but not as much as the anti-riot police officer facing her. She shrieks, 'Where can I go? You tell me go down the … Read more

In A Moment Of Neglect I Might Fly

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by hilzoy The woman who wrote the letter I posted last night made it through the demonstrations, and has posted another letter, about the woman who was shot in the video: "I'm here to let you know I'm alive but my sister was killed… I'm here to tell you my sister died while in her … Read more

Iran: Saturday

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by hilzoy Barack Obama: "The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United … Read more

6:45 am In Tehran

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by hilzoy Via Nico Pitney, Carnegie Endowment Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour: "The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to … Read more

Coming To You Live From An Alternate Reality …

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by hilzoy Today the Washington Post, fresh from canning one of its best writers, lets Charles Krauthammer send us a dispatch from the alternate reality in which he lives. In that reality, apparently, Iranian demonstrators "await just a word that America is on their side." Joe Klein, just back from the real Tehran, asks: "They … Read more

There But For The Grace Of God …

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by hilzoy Charles Brown at Undiplomatic picks up a gem from John McCain that I missed yesterday (Brown's emphasis): "DAVID GREGORY: Let's get right to it on Iran. How does the U.S. deal with an emboldened Iranian President Ahmadinejad? SENATOR JOHN McCAIN: Well, we lead; we condemn the sham, corrupt election. We do what we … Read more

A Mystery Solved!

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by hilzoy Slate answers a question about Iran that came up in comments: "In many photos, riot police wear uniforms with the English word police on them. Ambulances, too, bear the word ambulance in English. Why not use Persian words instead of their English equivalents? Because everyone knows English. Like many capital cities, Tehran has … Read more

Each Country Is What It Is, And Not Another Country

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by hilzoy There's an Eastern European theme developing on the right. Here's one version: "Someday a future president may have to apologize to Iranians for Mr. Obama's nonfeasance, just as Mr. Obama apologized for the Eisenhower administration's meddling. But the better Eisenhower parallel is with Hungary in 1956. Then as now a popular uprising coalesced … Read more

Realism

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by hilzoy George Packer has written that rare thing: a thoughtful, serious, and interesting post with which I almost completely disagree. It's on the tension between realism and idealism as manifested in the Obama administration's response to Iran. I start disagreeing here: "For eight years, George W. Bush maintained that there was no tension, let alone … Read more

Tehran

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by hilzoy Here's video of the demonstration in Tehran. As you watch it, bear in mind not just that the demonstration had been banned, which means that all these people are breaking the law, but that there were rumors on various Iranian Twitter feeds that the demonstration had been cancelled, that the police had been … Read more

Iran: Sunday

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by hilzoy Laura Rozen: "Iranian opposition presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi is planning a march of his supporters at 4 p.m. Monday in Tehran, Iranian sources said. He apparently went to see the supreme leader Sunday to seek a permit for it, but one hasn't yet been obtained. If he is prevented from getting permission, … Read more

Iran

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by hilzoy I don't have any more idea than anyone else what's happening in Iran. (Note to news media: please do a better job of covering this!) People who know a lot more than I do are convinced the election was stolen. (Gary Sick, Suzanne Maloney, Juan Cole, a source of Steve Clemons'.) Gordon Robison … Read more

Pirates In Parliament!

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by hilzoy I love Sweden. First the annual burning of the Christmas Goat, and now this: "Sweden's Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament. The group — which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law — secured 7.1% of the Swedish vote. The result puts the Pirate Party in fifth place, behind … Read more

“Natural Growth”

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by hilzoy One Congressman seems to be confused about what freezing "natural growth" in West Bank settlements would mean: "Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said focusing on settlement activity "detracts" from top U.S. goals in the region. However, he added: "I … Read more

The Cairo Speech

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by hilzoy I thought Obama's speech was really good. There was a lot to it, but I thought the key to the whole thing was this: "I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed … Read more

Settlement Freeze

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by hilzoy From the NYT: "Senior Israeli officials accused President Obama on Wednesday of failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement "freeze." (…) The Israeli officials said that repeated discussions … Read more

Picking Up The Trash

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by hilzoy This is a wonderful story: "A group of young Pakistani friends, sick of hearing their families complain about the government, decided to spite them by taking matters into their own hands: every Sunday they would grab shovels, go out into their city, and pick up garbage. It was a strange thing to do, … Read more

Sri Lanka

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by hilzoy After twenty five long horrible years, one of the longest-running civil wars on earth might just have come to an end: "The ethnic Tamil separatist rebels of Sri Lanka, one of the world's most feared and enduring guerrilla movements, acknowledged Sunday that their war of more than a quarter-century for a homeland had … Read more

Refugees

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by hilzoy From the UNHCR: "The number of people who have fled the fighting in northwest Pakistan this month and been registered or recorded by authorities reached 670,906 on Wednesday, up from just over half a million the day before. The majority of those registered by Pakistani authorities with the assistance of UNHCR are staying … Read more

Exodus

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by hilzoy Kevin Drum linked to this story about the evacuation of the Carteret Islands, a tiny atoll in the South Pacific. The sea levels have been rising, toppling trees and swallowing up the coastline. Salt water bubbles up from what were once the gardens where the islanders used to grow food. Every so often, king … Read more

Children Of The Taliban

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by hilzoy There's a really good segment on Pakistan on Frontline World called 'Children of the Taliban'. I can't seem to embed the video here, but just click through and watch it, or at least read the synopsis, which is long enough to give a lot of the details, but a lot quicker than watching … Read more

Iceland: Special Elven Edition

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by hilzoy Michael Lewis has a piece (h/t) about Iceland and its economic collapse in Vanity Fair. Besides being fascinating, it's also wonderfully written. Felix Salmon excerpted this bit, and I will too: "Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant … Read more