Avuncular American

American Diplomats in Tehran: Don’t Do Anything Stupid

(Photo source: National Security Archive, Iran Documentation Project)

Stupid, like Jimmy Carter’s offer of refuge to a dying Shah in 1979, after the US Embassy in Tehran had already been taken over briefly in February by Iranian militants who knew little and cared less about diplomatic conventions and immunities – a prelude to the infamous hostage drama that began in November of that year.  Stupid, like if the Bush Administration allowed the current covert war in Iran to become overt, with pictures of smoking American guns to wave in front of the American Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy.  Stupid, like leaving your diplomats exposed should Israel decide to pull off a daring air raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, like it did against Saddam Hussein’s reactor in 1981.

Diplomats – especially those representing countries that are, what shall I say, activist (?) like the United States – are always exposed when their country does something against the country that they are ostensibly supposed to conduct relations with.  In the best of times, American diplomats are the face of the US Government in ___ (fill in blank country).  When times are tense, those same diplomats can become the most convenient American target available.  When you have a few people hanging out on a limb in a country like Iran in 1979, it’s not the time to poke the hosts in the eye.  Which is what Jimmy Carter (bless his heart, I truly like him as an elder statesman) did when he opened the door to the Shah.

I remember keeping ears attuned to the news out of Washington, during the years when I exposed my family to life in the Arab world.  Don’t get me wrong: we enjoyed our years in North Africa and the Middle East, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.  But there were times when the administration’s (of either party) attitude toward, say, establishing the American Embassy in Jerusalem vice Tel Aviv could get the “street” riled.  Nice to have a little advance warning, if only to batten down the hatches.

So in the twilight months of the George W. Bush era, it appears that the Administration is giving serious thought to establishing a diplomatic presence in Tehran.  For practical purposes, like treating Iranian visa applications.  Okay, I’m all for it.  Gives us a chance to show the good citizens of Tehran that Americans do not all sprout Great Satan horns, and allows Americans to see life in Iran for themselves.

One proviso, though: keep VP Cheney away from the “ATTACK” button, and make it clear to Israel that they are not to send their bombers east.  Or has that already been done?  Prudent planning would call for that, but since when has the Bush regime shown any prudent forethought?  My advice to the American Foreign Service Officers who might get sent to Tehran: stay tuned to the news and have your “bug out bag” ready (my name for a little pre packed and pre-positioned kit with essentials should shouting people start coming over the wall of the Interests Section).  And watch “Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper,” the fact-based 1981 TV movie about how a few American diplomats and dependents escaped the hostage drama by averting the takeover and finding refuge with their Canadian counterparts.

Remember: when the US Government does something stupid, it’s handy to have friends locally.

The Sea in Between: Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Project

A Project Dear To The President’s Heart

On Monday’s July 14 Bastille Day in Paris, spectators will be treated to another grand military parade, one of the few such martial national day displays remaining in the democratic West.  The audience will include the leaders of the European Union member states as well as those from the (mostly Arab, but including Israel and Turkey) countries bordering the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean.  They will be gathered in the French capital for one of the most important events in the early days of the French EU Presidency, the launch of the “Union Pour la Mediterranée (UPM)” or the Union for the Mediterranean.

In Arabic, the Mediterranean Sea is poetically called Al-Bahr Al-Abyad Al-Muttawasit, "the middle white sea.”  President Nicolas Sarkozy was a schoolboy when Algeria (where his father had served in the Foreign Legion) became independent, though he may have had occasion to hear the geopolitical adage taught to generations of French schoolchildren: “The Mediterranean separates France, like the Seine separates Paris.”  Algeria was an integral part of France, and then suddenly, it wasn’t.  A million European settlers left independent Algeria, and in the intervening 46 years, millions of Algerians have settled in France.  The Med is definitely a middle passage between North and South.

With his present and former family connections in Ottoman-era Greece (mother's family), Corsica (first wife) Spain (wife No. 2, Cecilia), and Italy (current wife Carla), it is perhaps not surprising that the Mediterranean has had a special place in Sarkozy’s heart, even before his election to the Elysée Palace in spring 2007.  And this has all the hallmarks of a personal project: in June 2007, Quai d’Orsay diplomats responded with quizzical looks when asked about the new president’s Mediterranean ambitions.  Even now, on the eve of the summit, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs website gives much more space to the EU-Mediterranean Dialogue (an ongoing program) than to the Presidential UPM, which still has much to be defined (not the least of which, where will it be headquartered: Tunis on the southern shore, or Barcelona on the Spanish coast?).

Emotion-Laden North-South Relationships

The love/hate relationship between France and its former “colony” (the word was never used by the French, but the Algerians still pride themselves, sometimes even define themselves, by being at the forefront of the anti-colonialist drive from the Fifties through the Seventies) has in some ways been the bellwether of the Sarkozy Mediterranean proposal.  France and its policies are always treated with circumspection in Algeria, and few domestic points are gained in Algeria by seeming to kowtow to the former masters. (Though Algeria's ace political cartoonist Dilem has it right when he shows what Algeria's unemployed "hittistes" want out of the UPM: calm Mediterranean seas for their rafts, or preferably, French visas; emigration is still a big drain/safety valve).  At one point, it seemed that Algeria would scupper the whole deal.

In the end, Algerian President Bouteflika’s foot dragging on the Mediterranean project was overcome by careful French diplomacy, though not in the case of the one remaining holdout, Colonel (do we still call him that?) Kadhafi of Libya.  Despite blandishments (nuclear project, arms deals, wife No. 2 Cecilia as emissary-of-charm, week-long state visit to Paris last year), Kadhafi has condemned the Sarkozy Med Union.  Anyway, his life long ambition has been to unify (often literally, through mergers and sometimes with weapons) the Arab and African worlds that are Libya’s home turf.

Sarkozy’s ambitions for a French-led Mediterranean project were severely modified by Germany, which succeeded in EU-izing (opening up to non-Med EU countries what had previously been seen as a Mediterranean riparian state grouping) Sarkozy’s vision.  As former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said today on France-Inter radio, the test of the new Med Union will be whether it can create a co-secretariat to build on the high-level co-presidential (France and Egypt) kickoff summit, and not just become a subcommittee of the EU.  Egypt, with its concentric Arab, African, and Middle East (especially longstanding relations with Israel) circles, and its experienced diplomatic corps, is an inspired choice to help France get the new grouping off the ground.

Another “Machin” or An Essential Tool?

Vedrine, along with a number of right and left of center European and southern Mediterranean luminaries, signed an “open letter” to the leaders gathering in Paris this weekend, published in Thursday’s Le Monde.  Though the letter enthuses about the Med Union’s potential for peacemaking (all eyes will be on the body language between Israeli and Syrian leaders this weekend), Vedrine on the radio spoke to the more nuts-and-bolts projects for the Union.  One not so trivial matter: North-South cooperation on cleaning up what is essentially massive a salty lake, one that gets dumped on, literally, with every effluent man and industry can produce.  If nothing else, Union for the Mediterranean success in this one crisis area could make the nascent organization worth all the hoopla.  As one commentator put it, success in "small" practical matters counts, and cited the EU's beginnings as a post-WW II coal and steel cartel combining the victors and the vanquished.

In his definitive work on the fall of France in 1940 “To Lose a Battle,” British historian (of France and Algeria) Alistair Horne starts off with a vivid portrait of another Bastille Day parade, that of the victorious French Army in July 1919, the first such parade after the end of the carnage of World War One the previous November.  At the time, the consensus was that the French Army was the biggest and best in the world.  True, but we know what the inter war period did to its relative standing against the Wehrmacht.  There was no follow up to the big show.

For the EU and Mediterranean leaders lined up on the Champs Elysées for Monday’s parade, what comes after will be the true test of the fine new Union For The Mediterranean to be unveiled this coming weekend.  Those 40 plus leaders, if not backed up by painstaking staff work, may be present at the creation of another “machin” (probably best translated as “thingy” - Charles De Gaulle’s ironic description of the UN and like multilateral organizations, which have to struggle to avoid being labeled talking shops).

Haraka mush Baraka: The Dangers of Perpetual Movement

Machin vs. functional coalition: does Sarkozy himself have the wherewithal and patience to stick with his bright shiny idea in the long term?  Wherewithal: yes (once the Quai d’Orsay is convinced that this is a going concern, it will apply itself to making it work).  Patience: this is Sarko’s Achilles heel.  The man, once described by an observant Brit as a kind of Tigger, bounces around from idea to proposal to next inspiration, whether domestic or international.  Bitter Lemons also has misgivings about his "frenetic" pace, and has devoted several articles to the Mediterranean Union plan from Arab, Israeli, and Turkish viewpoints.

The Mediterranean is timeless, but action is urgent; Sarkozy is a man in a hurry, but he’ll need to down shift and focus in this forum which will juxtapose cultures with different notions of time.  After all, his Maghrebi counterparts know the meaning behind a traditional expression, "Haraka mush Baraka."  Movement - for movement's sake - does not equate with benediction.

Lawrence of Arabia by Kevin Jackson

Lawrence of Arabia - BFI Film Classics
Kevin Jackson, 2007, paperback, 127 pages

What to do?  Center this review on TE Lawrence, the eponymous subject of the film about which this book is written, or tilt it towards director David Lean, whose centenary we celebrate this year?  Kevin Jackson, author of this beautifully illustrated, fact-filled little monograph, does both, and more.  In a short space, we have recurrent excerpts from the source of it all, Lawrence’s mystical war memoir “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” plus everything from glimpses into Lawrence’s semi-hermitic postwar period of “mind suicide” to a list of scenes cut from earlier releases.

Jackson, an apparently roguish Englishman who takes pride in his membership in the Collège de ‘Pataphysique  (worth looking up, as are several Oxford English Dictionary words in Jackson’s glossary) was an inspired choice to write this latest work on Lawrence.  His essay is not Middle East centric as an Arabist’s might be, and he realized that a cinephile’s evocative “eulogies would no doubt be a good deal more enjoyable for the writer than the reader.”  The result is a mix of fascinating detail on the “making of” and a sense of why the film and its underlying story remain timeless.

As a writer, Jackson gives proper recognition to the screenplay by Robert Bolt, whose triumph as a playwright (A Man For All Seasons) brought him to Lean’s attention.  Says Jackson:

Bolt knew how to shape complicated historical matter into forms that were dramatically appealing yet reasonably faithful to the record; he could render abstract political and philosophical issues in urgent, concrete terms; his dialogue was trenchant and witty.

We learn that Bolt was later forced to share the screenplay credit with Hollywood-blacklisted writer Michael Wilson, who had written an earlier, discarded, version of the screenplay.  It was only one of several controversies that swirled around the film once it reached blockbuster status.

But it’s not just the writing: Lawrence of Arabia, Jackson says, “usually comes somewhere near the top” of popular lists of Best Films Of All Time.  I first saw Lawrence on the wide screen, a rare treat (the film has been re-released only 3 or 4 times since its first showing in 1962).  Though I own a DVD of the 1988 restoration, everyone who loves this film needs to see it on the big screen.  Lawrence of Arabia is so good, so evocative of the romantic and tragic history of the Arab Revolt against the Turks that it continues to be a point of reference.

Actually, it is TE Lawrence who is still a reference: the US military has made him required reading for budding desert soldiers.  Jackson mentions the Iraq War re-issuance of Lawrence’s “27 Articles,” first published by the British Army at the height of the First World War in 1917 to give troops the benefit of his “lessons learned” in winning hearts and minds: Article No. 13: Never lay hands on an Arab: you degrade yourself...

Reading Jackson’s Lawrence of Arabia, one of the most striking sub-themes is what-might-have-been.  Can’t imagine anyone but Peter O’Toole in the title role?  How about Marlon Brando, Albert Finney, or, when initial interest arose in the 1930s in filming the Lawrence epic, Cary Grant or Laurence Olivier?  Maurice Jarre’s stirring soundtrack might have been otherwise: Sir William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Aram Khachaturian, and Richard Rodgers (but not Hammerstein) were all bruited at some point.  “Maurice Jarre’s score became such a powerful element in the film’s triumph,” Jackson writes, that it’s hard to imagine the alternatives.

Our 21st century sensibilities might be jarred by what Jackson calls the “cod-biblical style of Bolt’s Arab dialogue," and there's a tinge of Orientalism in the film's vision of desert society.  But I can’t think of any popular film made before – or since – that has given as positive a treatment to Arabs and their national cause.  Or a Super Panavision 70 epic that manages to show its hero as a complex bundle of contradictions.  “Bolt’s Lawrence,” says Jackson, “seethes with neuroses.”

David Lean’s directorial genius, Maurice Jarre’s memorable score, and Robert Bolt’s script combine to make Lawrence one of the best historical dramas in cinema.  Though purists have quibbled over the historical fidelity of the film, it is hard to imagine a more nuanced depiction of this incredible story of a blond Englishman leading a revolt in Arabia.  Kevin Jackson says it best:

I consider Lawrence of Arabia not just a remarkable and uniquely moving work, but one of the films which has vindicated the medium of cinema even as it expanded its possibilities.

Jackson’s motivation is amply fulfilled in this BFI volume.  I’ll put it in a place of honor, between “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” and my DVD of Lawrence of Arabia.

What the World Wants: An Obama Administration

Well, at least that's what Brussels' Radio Al Manar wants.  But it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the American Presidential election - especially the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama - has stirred enormous overseas interest in the United States.  And, for once in the last seven and a half years, interest in a positive sense.  And it's not just the good people at Radio Al Manar.  Over the past several months of the primaries, it has been clear that a potential Obama presidency has caught the imaginations of right and left, in Europe and beyond.

Yesterday yours truly was the guest of Radio Al Manar, a private FM station with studios in the francophone Belgian cities of Brussels, Liege, and Charleroi.  Al Manar ("The Lighthouse," a reference to Alexandria's Pharos, one of the ancient Wonders of the World) broadcasts in French and in Arabic to a largely Moroccan-origin audience (both among the large Moroccan community in Belgium and back home via live audio streaming).  The venue was to have been a "debate" between a representative of Democrats Abroad Belgium (me) and someone from the Republicans; repeated efforts by station director Ahmed Bouda were met by frustration, though they still hope to get a francophone Republican to show up for a future show.  You have to wonder if the Republicans ever got any further than a Google search, where the keyword "al manar" will result in 697,000 hits, Number One of which is Al Manar TV in Lebanon, the Hizbullah station.  Definitely not our hosts of yesterday: Radio Al Manar in Brussels is located in the same building as the offices of Israel's El Al Airlines, and among their guests have been a host of Belgian government officials, an ecumenical group of religious leaders including Belgian rabbis, and a group of Israeli "refusenik" soldiers who object to service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Anyway, having the mike to myself wasn't all that bad (Al Manar's site should have an MP3 link of the interview up in a few days).  Michel, the Congolese-Belgian interviewer, was extremely well-prepared, with a list of questions for me and the non-existent (but potential show up) Republican.  I took a pass on at least one question: the trial of Tarek Aziz, Saddam's former foreign minister ("an issue for Iraqi justice").  And in retrospect I wish I had been more proactive in delineating the differences between Democratic and Republican approaches to economic and social issues, especially health care.

Michel and the Al Manar audience were particularly interested in the promise shown by the Obama candidacy in the context of American society.  The son of an African immigrant running for President of the United States... very resonant to an audience whose members have also embraced their new Belgian home, and have begun to fill a number of elective offices.  The new openness of the American electorate to candidates like Obama and Clinton speaks volumes to an audience that itself represents the new diversity in European societies.

But the main focus of Al Manar, again reflecting the interests of its audience, was American foreign policy.  Given the spike in attention to Obama's June 4 speech in front of AIPAC (full text here), and especially his statement "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," I fully expected an onslaught of questions on his intentions vis-a-vis the Israel-Palestine peace process.  No, what was a more burning issue was America's moral standing in the world.  Continuing to preach to others about human rights, when Guantanamo and prison ships dominate the news.  Luckily, I had another Obama quote to deploy: "I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus."

Given the timing - the eve of Senator Clinton's much-anticipated Saturday concession/congratulatory speech - my interviewers (technician Karim couldn't help asking questions during commercial or musical breaks; finally Michel let him ask one on-air) tried to draw me into the speculation fun.  Will his VP choice be Hillary Clinton?  How about John Edwards?  How about the significance of Caroline Kennedy helping to head the VP search committee?  My questioners were very well informed, and I mostly just rambled on about party unity.  In truth, I was extremely relieved that the interview had been rescheduled for June 6, since a week earlier I would have been forced to fall back on safe-but-boring talking points like "Democrats Abroad is not positioned to encourage or even discuss one candidate or another dropping out of the race..."

Fast forward to June 6, and I was able to move on, just as Hillary Clinton had done in a letter to her supporters: "On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy."  The DNC website had also adapted to the new reality.  Big picture of a smiling Obama, caption inviting readers to "Join Us and Help Elect Barack Obama," with a nice "Thank You, Hillary" picture just below.  Yes, Thank You, Hillary, for making my job easier - I was worried about seeming to be the last person on earth who didn't recognize the reality of the Democratic Candidate, Senator Barack Obama.

Ahmed, Michel, and Karim are rooting for him (Ahmed even wanted to send in a contribution, though I gently reminded him of the Obama website donation restrictions: "I am a United States citizen or a lawfully-admitted permanent resident").  They are rooting for him, and so is the rest of the world.  Now we Democrats just have to get our act together and convince Americans of the merits of a President Obama.

It’s My Party – Israel’s Nakba Denial

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

Lesley Gore, "It's My Party," 1963

In Europe, some countries outlaw Holocaust Denial, that despicable practice of far right parties (France’s Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has insisted on calling the Holocaust “a detail of history” and has made other outrageous outbursts.  He's had to pay stiff fines).  I know of no law against Nakba Denial, though Israel would like to outlaw talking about the Nakba at the United Nations:

Israel's UN mission is seeking to outlaw use of the term Nakba, after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon telephoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday night and expressed empathy with the Palestinian people in honor of Nakba Day.  Deputy head of Israel's UN mission, Daniel Carmon, complained that the word Nakba is meant to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's founding and, therefore, use of the term should be should be forbidden.

“Nakba,” or catastrophe, is the term used by Palestinians and other Arabs to describe the loss of their homes and the refugee exodus that accompanied the birth of the state of Israel.  Palestinians, whether they are among the hundreds of thousands who stayed behind in what became post-1948 Israel, or the million-plus who are now living under one sort or another of Israeli control in the Occupied Territories since 1967, or the hundreds of thousands living as refugees (most in camps) outside of historic Palestine – most of these Muslim and Christian Palestinians, whatever their passport (if they even have one) says, must have felt like crying at Israel’s party.

To get some idea of what was lost, just read or listen to the May 15 interview on Democracy Now! with Palestinian doctor and writer Ghada Karmi.  Karmi, who was eight years old when her family “went away for a couple of weeks” from violence in her West Jerusalem neighborhood in 1948, has a unique view of this period, and has written about it in “Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine.”  She explains the unusual title:

The reason it’s called that is that I’ve taken that out of an anecdote... At the end of the nineteenth century, when the Zionists in Europe ... held a very big congress, a conference in Basel in Switzerland, at which they decided ... to create a Jewish state... And they decided that that state was to be in Palestine.

Now, they didn’t know what Palestine was like ... so they sent a couple of rabbis to this place called Palestine, and they said, “Let us know if this is a suitable place.” The rabbis went, they had a look, and they sent back this message to Vienna: they said, “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” Now, of course, it’s clear what they were saying is, yes, the land is very suitable, it’s wonderful, but it’s full of other people, it’s already taken. And, of course, it was taken by my ancestors. I mean, that’s who it was. That’s who the ‘other man’ was.”

It’s worth letting that anecdote sink in a while.  Those who have read their history books know about the 1917 Balfour Declaration expressing the opinion of His Majesty’s Government that there should be a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, which became operative when Great Britain was given a mandate to govern the former Ottoman province at the end of the First World War.  As James Parkes, in his classic “Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine” wrote, the Balfour Declaration “recognized that there existed already a historic Jewish right, not to but in the country.”  No matter; the Declaration led eventually to the United Nations Partition Plan, and the rest is – history.

Ghada Karmi concludes with devastating logic: “Without Britain, there would be no Israel.”  She takes issue with the notion of Jews In, Arabs Out:

And if you think about it, that has been the basis of the conflict ever since, that the Zionists wanted a territory free of non-Jews in a territory full of non-Jews, and therefore, they had to get rid of the non-Jews in order to make it a territory for Jews. Now, those non-Jews, i.e. the Palestinians, of course didn’t want to be dispossessed, they resisted being dispossessed, and hence, you have a conflict.

... Married to Another Man... had the Zionists said, “This is indeed married to another man. We can’t go here, because the land is already “married.” We can’t be bigamists. We’re going to move on. We’re going to look for somewhere else”—they didn’t. They were determined to do it, and they did it at the most enormous cost to us as Palestinians, because we were dispossessed and displaced in order to make room for the Jewish state, and of course it had a tremendous effect on the whole Arab region.

So, Israel, have your birthday party.  But don’t begrudge the Palestinians their right to commemorate their nation’s tragedy.  In Lesley Gore’s big hit “It's My Party,” she’s crying about Judy taking away her Johnnie.  She lost a boyfriend.  Palestinians lost a country.

You would cry too if it happened to you

We Are Not Appeased

"Never ask publicly for a favor unless you know it will be granted"

Picking up where I left off yesterday on the matter of appeasement, now that Saudi Arabia has sent President Bush packing without his hoped-for oil production increase, I defer to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, not known for its anti-Bush sentiments.  In "Beseeching the Saudis," the WSJ lets the administration have it:

A cardinal rule of presidential diplomacy is never to ask publicly for favors unless you know in advance they will be granted. The same request by Mr. Bush had already been rebuffed by the Saudis during his visit to Riyadh in January. This time around, the Saudi response was particularly blunt and condescending: "If you want more oil, you need to buy it," said Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister.

Anyone who watched the video clip of the royal audience would have seen a jocular, squirming Bush in the presence of a wooden, unamused King Abdullah.  If ever there was a filmed testament to the sunset of a failed administration, this one will vie with "Mission Accomplished."

The WSJ suggests that the White House fire whoever put Bush up to "this second presidential humiliation" at the hands of his Saudi buddies.  Neither the newspaper nor the President need look very far: Vice President Cheney, whose ties with the oil industry rival the President's own oil credentials, was there on a similar mission in March (see the International Herald Tribune "Bush Hopes Cheney's Mideast Visit Will Rein In Oil Prices").  Oops.

We are reminded by the WSJ of another particularly galling aspect of the Saudi rebuff:

The Administration is defending its decision to sell the House of Saud billions of dollars in advanced weapons, over the increasingly hectic objections of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. The Administration is also proposing to help the Saudis develop civilian nuclear reactors to provide for their energy needs. That may help the Kingdom export more oil by easing its domestic requirements. But we await the explanation for why the world needs another politically unstable Islamic theocracy in possession of radioactive fuel rods.

Need anyone remind the lame ducks on Pennsylvania Avenue that investing billions in arms for unpopular, unstable Gulf monarchies has a way of backfiring on the US?  And, given the "Want more oil? Buy it" response of the Saudis, what have these risky arms deals been "buying" for the US?  Good will?  Try again.

Talking to rivals: squarely in the tradition of American diplomacy

Luckily, there is another type of foreign policy realism being propounded by Senator Barack Obama, whose call for engagement with Cuban, Iranian, or Palestinian leaders has been the target of the "appeasement" slur.  In the wake of the much-criticized Bush remarks, brandishing partisan internal American politics in front of a foreign audience, Senator Obama noted that his approach has been in the mainstream of "the history of U.S. diplomacy until very recently."  "Recently" would be post-January 2001.

When John McCain taunts his Democratic rival about a supposed "endorsement" from Hamas, he is treading on very thin ice.   There's a parallel to the 2004 argument over Osama Bin Laden's supposed preference for Kerry vs. Bush.  In this prophetic piece in London's The Observer of February 15, 2004, Henry Porter notes:

The rather chilling thing is to consider how bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants view the election. Would they rather have a President Kerry or Edwards, who would make overtures to Islam, embrace the UN and heed world opinion, or would they prefer four more years of a man who had done so much to isolate America from the rest of the world?

Osama needs George, and to a degree George needs the mystical fear that Osama evokes. And it is this fear that will see this second-rate, isolationist, spendthrift President re-elected to the White House.

Fast forward to 2008.  If you were Iranian President Ahmadinajad and you wanted to gain domestic popularity and rally your beleaguered citizenry against a foreign foe, would you prefer a conciliatory Barack Obama whose overtures might threaten opening up your regime to outside influence, or a fire breathing John McCain, singing Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran...?  I don't really care who Bin Laden or Ahmadinajad want for president - but I really don't want Americans falling for fear mongering and electing presidents who are their enemies' dreams come true.

When Is It Appeasement?

Is it appeasement (dictionary definition: “1. to bring to a state of calm; pacify: to appease an angry king”) when President George W. Bush flies from Israel to Riyadh to beg King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (source of 79 % of 9/11 kamikazes) to lower the price of his crude oil?

2. “To satisfy; relieve: The fruit appeased his hunger.”  Does sniping at Senator Barack Obama (and then denying that he targeted the Democratic front runner) from the Israeli Knesset satisfy the Republican appetite for Swift-Boating?  Nope, it just whets it – this is an opening salvo in the next phase of a stomach-churning American election campaign.

3. “To yield to the demands of in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of one’s principles.”  It’s this last definition (courtesy of Random House Webster’s College Dictionary) that Bush presumably had in mind when he warned against “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

But the root of appeasement is peace, and Neville Chamberlain’s efforts to stave off World War II only gave the word a negative connotation because he failed.  Luckily, this signal failure didn’t give peacemaking a bad name forever, or else we wouldn’t have the Middle East Peace Process as an eternal source of Presidential ambition.

The notion that an American president – a President Obama, for example – would be practicing appeasement if he had an open dialogue with leaders like Iran’s Ahmadinajad and the (elected, as Senator McCain reminds us below) Hamas government in Gaza is very selective, and almost entirely a function of American politics.  President Bush’s favored Palestinian interlocutor, PA President Abbas, hails from the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was for years anathema as a terrorist organization.

Luckily, some elements in the US government have long thought it politic to open up discreet channels of communication.  I once worked for a Republican political appointee ambassador who, in a previous life as a Senate staffer, was a regular interlocutor with Yasir Arafat’s Fatah and the PLO when us diplomats couldn’t even be in the same room as a Palestinian official.  Those back channel contacts eventually led to Oslo and Camp David, and to the modicum of Palestinian self-rule that is allowed to exist.

Bush has been castigated for criticizing (albeit not by name, but he’s kidding no one) the Democratic presumptive candidate while traveling abroad.  From the podium of Israel’s parliament, no less.  But Israel, more than most countries, can claim a “special interest” in the outcome of the US presidential elections.  Often dubbed “the 51st state,” many Israelis hold dual Israeli-US citizenship, and the settlements in the West Bank are especially popular with transplanted American Jewish emigrants.  Bush probably felt sufficiently at home to inject a bit of partisan politics into his address.

But after blasting Obama for supposed “appeasement,” Bush then hops on a plane for Saudi Arabia, where appeasement is happenin’ big time.  You don’t have to be a Michael Moore to note that US consumers help appease Saudi Arabia every day by paying sky-high prices for its oil.  And that of all people, George W. Bush, who owed his pre-presidential oil wealth to his family’s Gulf sheikhdom connections, should now lecture Obama about kowtowing (Webster’s: “1.  To act in an obsequious manner; show servile deference”) to foreign leaders.

And what of Senator John McCain, that “clean” campaigner who touched off the latest firestorm by equating Senator Obama’s openness to discussions with pariah states and organizations with weakness against terrorism?  Today’s Washington Post carries a stinging op-ed by former Clinton Administration official James P. Rubin, who assails McCain’s “guilt by association” attack as hypocrisy of the worst sort.  He recalls a Sky News TV interview with McCain two years ago, after Hamas won freely-contested Palestinian elections, when he asked The Maverick "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"  McCain then:

They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy.  Fatah was not giving them that.

Apparently it wasn’t appeasement then, when the Straight Talk Express was rolling.  Huffington Post has a nice video of the Rubin-McCain interview.  Now, if Michael Moore just had a video of Bush and Abdullah...

(Photo source: "House of Bush, House of Saud," by Craig Unger)

More Reading on the Syrian Peace

For further reading on the intriguing possibilities for peace between Israel and Syria, here are some links:

• bitterlemons-internatinonal - weekly bulletin of Israeli and Palestinian analysis; the current issue is devoted to Syria/Israel.  Sample quote, from Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, head of PASSIA, Jerusalem: "For all the posturing of the two sides, the border between Syria and Israel has been a quiet front for the last four decades. This inaction has led the Israeli leadership to believe that in Syria it has found a partner that will be responsive and pliable, one that can be led along slowly in a process of normalization."
• The Carter Center - Jimmy Carter's NYT op-ed on his recent Mideast trip, "Pariah Diplomacy."  Sample quote: "Syria's president, Bashir al-Assad, has expressed eagerness to begin negotiations with Israel to end the impasse on the Golan Heights. He asks only that the United States be involved and that the peace talks be made public." (see below*)
• Whirled View - Cheryl Rofer, who tracks nuclear and strategic issues, speculates on motivation behind Syrian development of a nuclear facility: "A reactor could be used as a bargaining chip in at least two ways: toward the return of the Golan Heights, or toward a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. In fact, in 2003, it was Syria that called for the formation of such a zone. Arab states have been issuing such calls for some long time, no doubt partly to show up Israel's hypocrisy and even scores. The calls are routinely rejected by Israel and the United States."

*It is worth noting that in an entire press conference devoted to "Moving Forward On The Tracks Of The Annapolis Conference" on May 3 en route to Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said nothing about the Syrian Peace.

When Presidents Deliver Inconvenient Truths: The Carter Example

For the second time in a week, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times Op-Ed page inspires me to write a meager post in response.  Asking “Who Will Tell the People?” Friedman longs for an American leader who might level with the American people:

We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

Friedman comes close to recognizing the potential for such truth-telling leadership in Barack Obama.  It’s true that Obama has shown a willingness to talk frankly about difficult issues – his speech on race in America was one such example, though it’s still not clear whether the citizenry is ready for his message.

Almost thirty years ago, on July 15 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered what would come to be known as his “Crisis of Confidence” speech.  PBS, in its documentation for the “American Experience” series, provides the full text of Carter’s speech here.  Carter warned:

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

Andrew Bacevich, in his 2005 classic The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, devotes several pages of analysis to Carter’s speech, calling it “prescient, but completely misconceived” – in that “his policy prescription reflected a fundamental misreading of his fellow countrymen.”  We know that little more than a year later his Republican rival Ronald Reagan won the Presidency with his upbeat “Morning in America” message.  But as Bacevich shows, Carter was right:

Carter... sensed intuitively that a failure to reverse the nation’s energy dependence was sure to draw the United States ever more deeply into the vortex of Persian Gulf politics...  This is, of course, precisely what has come to pass, with massive and problematic implications for the nation’s security and for U.S. military posture and priorities.

Bacevich goes on to document the downward spiral:

When Carter spoke, the United States was importing approximately 43 percent of its annual requirement for oil...  Some twenty-five years later, energy imports have risen to 56 percent of annual needs.  Today, increasingly, the profile of the American military presence abroad corresponds to the location of large oil and natural gas reserves.

Carter deserves credit for being ahead of his time, but the trick for the 2008 presidential candidates is how to provide the truth (the real thing, not McCain's “Straight Talk Express” variety that is really warmed over Bush) without further depressing an already shell shocked electorate.  This is where Obama comes in.  As Friedman says today:

... the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

Let’s try to remember the power of positive thinking – tempered with a dose of Carter’s realism – as we slog through what only promises to be a debilitating finale to an endless 2007-2008 election marathon.  And refuse to play the gotcha game, while ignoring the same fundamental problems that Jimmy Carter identified almost thirty years ago.

The Syrian “Peace” and the Uses of Old News

Reams have already been written about the strange “Senior Administration Official” briefing last week on the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor apparently bombed by Israel in September 2007.  Much of what has been written in the intervening week has been speculation on the motivation to dredge up old news: this is aimed at recalcitrant North Koreans... it’s really to send a message to Iran...  Now, thanks to President Bush, we don’t have to wonder anymore: “Bush Says Syria Nuclear Disclosure Intended to Prod North Korea and Iran.” (NYT, April 30, 2008)

Since the SAO briefing was itself about old news, I feel completely justified in only getting around to blog about it a week later.  Some analysts have looked at the Syrian-Israeli angle, which really should be the place to start.  I do not want to (nor am able to) analyze the orientation of the photos or their pixel (re)arrangement, nor do I want to parse the lengthy transcript of the SAO’s briefing for telltale hints of the motivation.

I will simply look at the timing, via my admittedly selective timeline:

•    September 6, 2007: Israel hits a target in Syria but maintains media silence, ostensibly to allow Syria to save face (if nothing happened, you don’t have to retaliate)
•    November 27, 2007: Annapolis Conference, which Syrian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Fayssal Mekdad attends, and where enthusiasm runs high in certain Israeli circles (especially the army) that peace over the Golan Heights is at hand
•    January 10, 2008: President Bush's Jerusalem speech on the peace process,where he says of Syrian-Israeli peace overtures: precisely nothing
•    March 12, 2008: In The Guardian of London, Jonathan Freedland (see more below) says that Israeli PM Olmert is given intelligence briefing on Syrian rapprochement
•    April 24, 2008: As the sun rises over the Middle East, a flurry of articles appears in the world press over Turkish mediation and possibly imminent Israel-Syria deal on the Golan Heights (statements by President Bashar al-Assad and Israeli MFA confirm; Israeli rejectionists object)
•    April 24, 2008: Same day, a few hours later, Washington time, the SAO briefs a closed Congressional session, then tells the press the same thing an hour later – breathless revelations on the September 2007 incident - seven months after it occurred.

Media manipulation mission accomplished?  Now, if you Google Syria + Israel, you’ll get zillions of articles on “nuclear” “bombing” “intelligence” – while those hopeful articles about the imminent Israeli-Syrian peace deal are submerged.  Don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout no pixels, but I throw in my lot with those probing to find a peace deal saboteur somewhere in the bowels of Washington’s and/or Jerusalem’s anti-Syria camp.

Oh yes, back to that prescient March 12 Jonathan Freedland article in the Guardian, “To Rescue the Two-State Solution, Israel Must Make Peace With Syria.”  After outlining the peace overtures, and the logic that from peace with Syria flows the de-fanging of Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Palestinian Hamas, Freedland warned:

There is one last obstacle in the way of a Syrian-Israel peace. Those in the know say flatly that the Bush administration will not allow Jerusalem to talk to Damascus, which it deems an associate member of the "axis of evil".  Put it down as one more reason why the world waits, ever more impatiently, for January 20 2009 - the day George W Bush will at last be gone.

Rami Khouri in yesterday’s Daily Star (Beirut) notes the American absence from the Middle East peace scene:

The most important diplomatic process these days is the Syrian-Israeli one. Israelis and Syrians alike have made it clear that something serious is taking place behind the scenes.  It is telling of the damage that the US has done to its own role and impact in the Middle East that the potentially most important diplomatic development in the past generation seems to be taking place without any significant American role.

Was the SAO “Syria briefing” (though we are told that its target was North Korea, etc.) a not-so-back door way of killing (for reasons best known to the people who brought you “the way to Jerusalem is via Baghdad” and other wonderful hallucinations about the Middle East) the Syrian Peace?  As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery says in Counterpunch: “War with Syria? Peace with Syria?...

... A big military operation against Hamas in the Gaza strip? A cease-fire with Hamas?  Our media discuss these questions dispassionately, as if they were equivalent options. Like a person in a showroom making a choice between two cars. This one is good, and so is the other one. So which should one buy?

Beware of the used car salesman who, five years ago today, tried to sell us “Mission Accomplished.”