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.

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)

Dr. Said Saadi Diagnoses Algeria’s Democratic Malaise

A delegation of Algerian parliamentarians headed by RCD (Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Democratie) chairman Dr. Said Saadi is heading back home after a lobbying effort in North America and Europe.  Here in Brussels for talks with European institutions, Dr. Saadi took time to speak at the Transatlantic Institute about the situation in Algeria.

The RCD is one of two mainly Berber parties, and though it has one deputy from Ilizzi in the geographic center of Algeria, it is mostly active in the northern Kabylie region and in the capital area, where Saadi represents an Algiers voting district.  Saadi, a psychiatrist by training, has been practicing politics for most of his adult life, and after a brief sojourn in the first Bouteflika government, has returned to the opposition.

Perhaps “loyal opposition” is a more apt term, since on the most important existential question facing Algerian democracy since independence – recognition of the 1991 parliamentary victory by the Islamist FIS party – Saadi and the RCD sided with the Army putsch that overthrew then President Chadli Bendjedid and overturned the elections.  That placed the RCD on the side of the “eradicators” who favored removing the Islamists from the political scene.  So while the RCD contests certain aspects of the Algerian regime, it essentially lends it democratic credibility.  Saadi bristles at the suggestion that he is playing the regime’s game, and sued the newspaper “Le Monde” in a French court in 1998 for suggesting it.

Saadi and his delegation have been lobbying European and American officials, according to his April 1 article in the New York Post, to

seek the help of the United States and other democracies to ensure international supervision of the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections. We also need their support to prevent a constitutional amendment to let the current president seek re-election despite the two-term limit.

Yesterday Saadi derided 2004 EU observers for certifying Algeria’s 2004 presidential elections, when Saadi accused the Army of stuffing ballot boxes.  That and other electoral fraud is the topic of an RCD brochure, which shows an “Ordre de Mission,” an official-looking laissez-passer issued by “candidate Abdelaziz Bouteflika” (who just happened also to be the President of the Republic) importuning “civil and security authorities” to lend “all necessary assistance” to the bearer of the cards.  Rather hard to refuse.  Saadi told EU election observers that if they can’t send a serious delegation in 2009, they shouldn’t send any.

Dr. Saadi’s analysis – or is it psychoanalysis? – of Algeria’s troubles on the socioeconomic front ring truest: desperate young people taking “suicidal” clandestine boat journeys across the Mediterranean; resurgence of diseases which had been eradicated previously; overcrowding in unsafe housing; and importation of Chinese labor when the unemployment rate is over 30%.  “The domination of the state by an old, corrupt and unpopular minority,” wrote Saadi, “has led to much social misery.”  Describing Bouteflika as a product of the old one-party state under the National Liberation Front (the FLN; road signs in Algiers used to point in the direction of “Le Parti”), Saadi says that the President is trying, by seeking a third term, to set himself up as a “president-for-life.”

Where is the Algerian Army in all this?  Here Saadi’s answer is more nuanced, but indicates that the Army attitude is not monolithic, which may prevent it from responding decisively should the situation further deteriorate.  Translation: in the Algeria of competing “clans,” the security forces are divided over the continuation of Bouteflika’s reign.

Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations has recently written on the behind-the-scenes role of the Algerian military in his book “Ruling Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.”  In his book, Cook describes the military’s use of “a facade of democratic practices and principles” while continuing to control key institutions.  Therein lies a clue to how the Algerian regime’s management of its nominal democracy may evolve: let the RCD and other “democratic” (meaning non-Islamist) parties play the role of loyal opposition, while ensuring that the real power – over Algeria’s increasingly valuable gas and oil reserves – never leaves the hands of the same “clan” that has been in charge since independence: the military and the “nomenklatura,” those few hundred families that form the nucleus of what Algerians still call “le pouvoir.”

In other words, other than the brief period from early 1990, when the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) won freely contested municipal and regional elections, to late 1991, when they again won nationwide parliamentary elections before they were canceled by the military, Algeria has had an authoritarian regime that tolerates a degree of civilian participation.  Whether or not President Bouteflika succeeds in getting his third term, as long as the movement that won the country’s only free elections is banned, “democracy” in Algeria remains a relative term.

Visions of Afghanistan - Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame

“Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame” is the latest film from the Makhmalbaf clan, the incredible Iranian family that keeps putting out films on the lives of ordinary people in Iran and Afghanistan.  Hana Makhmalbaf, now 18, has been living a life of cinema, and dropped out of school in second grade at age 8 to improve her education (how ironic that her main character in “Buddha Collapsed” risks everything to go to school).  Check out her lengthy interview at the "Makhmalbaf Film House," the family website.

Bamiyan is the site of the two immense statues of Buddha dynamited by the Taliban months before September 11, 2001, i.e., before all hell rained on them and their al-Qaeda allies.  Hana Makhmalbaf includes documentary footage of that affront to history, religion, and culture, and the film itself is shot at the foot of the ruins.

What to make of this film, which some reviewers have panned as an “obvious” anti-war story?  On one level, you can watch the story of the children (there are few adults in the film) as a sort of suspense yarn: will little Bakhtay (photo, from the Makhmalbaf website) make it, as she navigates the immensity of the valley, with all its dangers?

The imagery is striking, not least of which is the sight of Bakhtay (played with utter ease and credibility by little Nikbakht Noruz, five and a half years old), in a striking green robe, framed by the arid canyons.  At times, there are elements of magical realism, like a kite that catches fire, or a policeman on a traffic island, in a village with no cars.

The “anti-war” message is, yes, obvious in its depiction of boys playing Cowboys and Indians – though the Indians are the Taliban, and the Cowboys are the Americans.  But here is the way the director sees it:

By showing today’s picture of Afghanistan, I tried to depict the effects of the recent years’ violence on the country. So that the adults could see how their behavior affects the younger generation. Children are the future adults. If they get used to violence, the future of the world will be in great danger.

First, it was the Russian communists, then the Taliban showed up, and now the Americans. One was communist, the other Muslim and the last one either atheist or Christian. But they all had one thing common, and that was “Violence”.

I for one don’t have any qualms about Makhmalbaf’s “message,” and her cinematic skills and the talent of her little actors erase any sense of the burlesque.  You care about her characters, especially tiny waif Bakhtay (Nikbakht Noruz should be nominated for someone’s “Most Promising Actress” award – though she might need a stepladder to reach the podium).

No, this is a wonderful film, at times gripping (are the boys just “playing” Taliban, or are they true believers?) and funny (who said six year old Afghan girls don’t know about lipstick?).  And those cranky reviewers?  They are a distinct minority: the film has been racking up awards in film festivals from Berlin to Montreal to San Sebastian.  16 film festivals can't be wrong.

Contacts With the Opposition II: Ireland, Good Friday, and Terror

Today is the tenth anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has allowed Northern Ireland to regain a measure of peaceful coexistence, as well as a considerable economic rebirth.  On a visit to Belfast circa 1999, the change in atmosphere was already apparent; Belfast bloomed with construction sites, “boutique” hotels were catering to business travelers if not tourists, and I recall that Belfast had something like the UK’s highest concentration of Mercedes and BMWs.

But as the BBC’s Panorama program showed this week, all is not love and roses between the communities; some 47 “peace walls” separate the Protestant and Catholic communities in several Ulster cities.  Though former sworn enemies Martin McGuinness of the Sinn Fein Catholic nationalists and Ian Paisley of the Protestant unionists now cavort laughingly together at the Stormont regional assembly, so much so that they’ve been dubbed “The Chuckle Brothers,” things are not so cozy on the street, where sectarianism is very much alive and well.

Yesterday’s Terrorist Is Today’s Statesman

So though the Northern Irish peace is not perfect, it is unquestionably better than the alternative.  The same might be said of Bosnia in the years after the Dayton Agreement, though the country is still divided into ethnic enclaves.  People can at least go shopping in Sarajevo without being picked off by snipers.  And Kosovo, Europe’s newest state(let), which may need an international umbilical cord for the foreseeable future, has settled into a sort of modus vivendi among its warring factions.

If Martin McGuinness – former IRA commander and convicted under terrorism charges – can now share parliamentary power with his former enemy, what does that tell us about the nature of politics?  Examples of former “terrorists” graduating to statesman status abound: Israel’s Menachim Begin of Irgun/Stern Gang infamy, becoming a peace partner with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat; Nelson Mandela, though probably the world’s most respected former leader, was originally imprisoned as the leader of the “terrorist” ANC, and still has to be "waivered" into the United States for his link with anti-apartheid terrorism; and if the French Revolution hadn’t yet “invented” the term terrorism in the late 18th century, the colonial British had similar terms a few years earlier for their American Revolutionaries, whose guerrilla operations (the “Swamp Fox”) and privateering went beyond the bounds of conventional military etiquette.

Back to the Good Friday anniversary and Tony Blair’s Finest Hour.  Today’s BBC World Service radio program “Analysis” is an excellent 9 minute evocation of the true political courage and vision that was behind the British-Irish-American (former senator George Mitchell was a key intermediary during the talks) initiative that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998.  “Analysis” notes that Blair rightly judged that the men-with-guns had to be included in the process, which tended to sideline or at least diminish the role of moderate parties like the SDLP, the largely Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party.

But Blair’s approach – if the men-with-guns are talking, they might be distracted from shooting – is singular in its audacity.  Governments, whether it is Bush’s with-us-or-against-us “hunt ‘em down in their caves” approach to Islamist extremism or Algeria’s “eradicateurs” set on destruction of the Islamist opposition, whether terrorists or simply activists or even elected officials, tend to paint a simplistic picture of radical opposition, often with predictably disastrous results.  Blair, at least in his Northern Ireland peacemaker role, took a chance and it has paid off over the last decade.

The Backstory To Blowback - Neocon Vs. Neocon

Today US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has given her umpteenth speech on the Israel-Palestine "Peace Process," as the absence-of-peace process has been called for at least the last 40 years.  She, President Bush, and - let's not forget him, ex-British PM and sometime Quartet representative - Tony Blair can be counted on to deliver the most upbeat, optimistic prognostications on the prospects for peace-in-their-time, or at least a Palestinian state by the end of 2008.  Perhaps.  Inshallah.  But a glance at the destruction on both sides of the Gaza-Israel border would give anyone pause.

That's why David Rose's article in the April Vanity Fair, "The Gaza Bombshell," is such essential, urgent reading.  It's a long article, but well worth plowing through for its wealth of detail on what - as one of the sections is entitled - resembled "Iran-Contra 2.0."  It's the story of blowback (see last para) from the US plan to overturn the Hamas parliamentary election victory, and how the backfiring US plan in fact cemented Hamas control of Gaza.  (For a condensed but authoritatively annotated comment on the Vanity Fair article, you might also check out Helena Cobban's post in "Just World News," her excellent Mideast news blog.)

I won't even attempt to summarize the story, but suffice it to say that Rose's sources - both named and background - are impressive, and cover the gamut from Palestinian and Israeli to Bush Administration officials.  And you will be surprised, perhaps, that some of the fiercest critics are those neocons who are now outside the Administration:

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.  Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.  The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

Irony alert: Wurmser is not the only former Administration official exercised over White House meddling in this particular Pandora's box.  So is former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.  He deems the plan:

“an institutional failure, a failure of strategy.” Its author, he says, was Rice, “who, like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton." [note: Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, then U.S. security coordinator for the Palestine Authority]

Okay, the entire story is Byzantine, but shows the limits of American ability to meddle successfully in Middle Eastern affairs.  Which brings me back to "blowback."  I leave you with the Chalmers Johnson (author of "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire") definition of the term:

"Blowback" is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people. The CIA's fears that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of Iran were well founded. Installing the Shah in power brought twenty-five years of tyranny and repression to the Iranian people and elicited the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. The staff of the American embassy in Teheran was held hostage for more than a year. This misguided "covert operation" of the US government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy.

Johnson wrote the above in September 2001, in attempt to explain the "unintended consequences" that led to 9/11.  Johnson always stresses that these are "activities that have been kept secret from the American people."  Thanks to Vanity Fair and David Rose, that is no longer the case, and at least we now have the backstory to blowback.

Hearts & Minds, Housing & Marriage: Making Moderate Muslims

Build Them (Apartments) And They Will Come

The two leading US dailies, the New York Times and the Washington Post, today have compelling and competing views of how to explain and counter the rise of Islamic extremism.  I would suggest beginning with the NYT. The six minute video segment "Marriage Beyond Reach: Generation Faithful: Stalled Lives" by Craig Duff and Michael Slackman says it all:

With the cost of building a life beyond their grasp, many in the Arab Middle East are delaying marriage, losing hope and often turning to religion for solace.

The NYT video report starts with a Cairo wedding, the kind the wealthy can enjoy.  We lived in Egypt (Alexandria, its metropolis on the Mediterranean) in the '80s, and were at a couple of weddings.  Great fun.  In the '90s, we lived in Algeria, before the serious fighting got started.  Along with a few other postings in the Arab world, these glimpses into two countries that gave birth to powerful Islamist movements (the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamic Salvation Front or "FIS" in Algeria) provide the background to my view of the pull of Islamic extremism: that it is born out of despair.

As in the NYT video, we knew lots of young Algerians or Egyptians who couldn't get married.  Simply because they couldn't afford housing, or no housing was available.  The young Egyptian in the video is a shop manager, and makes what is considered in Cairo a "decent" income.  But it's not enough to get his own place, which means he lives with his parents - probably squeezed between younger siblings.  He'd like to get married, just like the idle young men lining Algiers' streets.  They even have a name for them, "hittistes," a combination of French and Arabic meaning roughly "holding up a wall."  Unskilled.  Unemployed.  Unmarried.  Under the influence of... radical preachers.

In 2004, I returned to Algiers after an absence of 12 years.  The first thing that struck me was the ubiquitous construction - in a country where, in 1990, not one new building had gone up in Constantine, the third largest city, since the French departure in the early sixties.  In 2004 there were cranes everywhere, and working day and night on building sites - Chinese laborers, in a country with sky high unemployment.  But President Bouteflika had made a strategic decision, after a decade of violence: it was more important to build housing units fast (therefore with imported Chinese labor) than to build them with unskilled Algerian labor.  Such was the urgent need to give young people some hope.  In the NYT video, you'll see Dr. Hamdi Taha, whose charity tries to provide such hope to young Egyptian couples, with furniture and appliances.

In the early '90s in Algeria, just like current day Lebanon (where Hizbullah provided housing grants after the Israeli air war of 2006), it was the Islamist party that was seen as responsive to the basic needs of society.  That's why (like Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections) the Islamist FIS won every freely contested election in Algeria in 1990 and 1991, before it was banned in an Army coup in early 1992.  After more than 100,000 deaths, the Algerian government saw the need to combat the lure of radical Islam with concrete (literally) measures: housing for young couples.

What The Muslim World Does Not Need: American "Ideological Infrastructure"

Contrast the bricks-and-mortar approach outlined above with the latest great idea coming from the banks of the Potomac: more propaganda.  Walter Pincus, in "Taking A Page From The Cold War," tells us that they're at it again:

"I think over time we're going to need to build that kind of infrastructure," [CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence John A.] Kringen told the House [Armed Services Committee] panel, "because many times, it's not going to be what the U.S. government per se says, but the kind of interactions that they have through other people."  [Acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in a speech Wednesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Michael] Leiter described the "global ideological engagement, referred to by some as the 'war of ideas,' " as "a key center of gravity in the battle against al-Qaeda, its associates and those that take inspiration from the group."

Kringen's "infrastructure" is not housing for young Arabs hoping to get married and raise kids: he's talking about aiding "non-government organizations, including intellectual publications, labor unions and student groups, sometimes providing secret financial support," as paraphrased by Pincus.

Bureaucrats with seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal can and do dream up all kinds of things to "highlight the poverty of extremist thought," as Leiter put it.  But how about this: scrap all the Pentagon's new "Strategic Communication" websites that target the Muslim world, transfer an equivalent amount to "Habitat For Humanity" and similar organizations that actually help people house themselves, and let - to use a good conservative approach - the "market take care of the rest."  Nothing is as simple as that, of course, but I would wager that dollars well spent in housing people would go much farther than yet more ill-conceived programs in the "war of ideas."

SOTU 2003: Unparalleled History

Yes, it's time again for one of our "Parallel History" episodes, going back 5 years to this day in 2003, when the US was $1,200,000,000,000 ($1.2 trillion: I think I have my zeros right) richer, and not yet mired between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

SOTU or "State of The Union" 2003 was also delivered on January 28.  Here is what bears recalling from President Bush's second SOTU speech:

• Saddam Hussein is mentioned 19 times; Osama Bin Laden not once

• "Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax — enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it."  [Question: whatever became of the investigation into the anthrax scare in the US of fall 2001?]

• There are lots more scary statistics: "38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent; 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents."  [Question: while we know now that these weapons were either destroyed by Saddam or had ceased to function, guess what weapons continue to cause death and destruction to US forces and Iraqi civilians alike?  Answer: plain old high explosives, left unguarded in the aftermath of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's headlong rush to Baghdad.]

• The President who made "waterboarding" a household term was exercised by Saddam's brutal practices: "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages — leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained — by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." [But Saddam was using all of these barbaric methods when Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld as a goodwill messenger, when Saddam was the enemy of our enemy, Iran.]

• "The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's legal — Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups." [Stay tuned for another chapter of Parallel History on February 5.]

• "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.  We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know — we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.  May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America." [Question: is it blasphemy when you invoke God's name five times in a speech presaging war on false pretences?]

Just to show that SOTU wasn't all about Iraq, you'll be happy to know that the President also had good domestic news:

• "To bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief in a generation." [five years later, what will the President say tonight about how his leadership has landed the US not only in another recession, but in a massive nationwide loss of housing values, the fall of the dollar as a world reserve currency, and a worldwide stock panic?]

• "Our second goal is high quality, affordable health care for all Americans. The American system of medicine is a model of skill and innovation, with a pace of discovery that is adding good years to our lives. Yet for many people, medical care costs too much — and many have no coverage at all. ...We must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need." [Just watch Michael Moore's "SiCKO" for a look at how well George W. Bush has handled this one.]

• "I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years. I have sent you a Healthy Forests Initiative, to help prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of treasured forest.  I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.  With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.  Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy." (emphasis added) ["Clear Skies" - an exercise in Orwellian black-is-white terminology if there ever was one - and other tree-hugging mimicry from the Administration that made the United States much more dependent on foreign sources of energy, and stood in the way of world consensus on countering climate change.]

• "Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country — the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted — the need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.  Americans are doing the work of compassion every day — visiting prisoners, providing shelter for battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise; they deserve our personal support; and when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of the federal government.  I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act, to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America, one heart and one soul at a time." [Remember, this was said two years before Bush utterly failed his "compassion" test in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.]

Sorry to burden readers with old SOTU when tonight you can listen to brand new SOTU.  By the way, all SOTUs, dating back to George Washington's, are available at Infoplease.  For Washington readers who want a serious after-action report on tonight's SOTU, the Brookings Institution has a roundup Tuesday morning.

The Persian and/or Arabian Gulf: Arms Packages for Our Best Friends

I could have made this post one in my "Parallel History" series, but I'll try to keep to the "5 years ago today" theme for that, so that we can look at how the US invasion of Iraq came to pass.

For this post, I simply want to comment on the soon-to-be-concluded Bush Middle East tour, especially the place where he spent the lion's share of his week: the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia.  My only contact with that part of the world was two years spent in Oman - one of the places where the President did not go.  So I defer to those who track Gulf matters, notably these comments from Lebanon's "The Daily Star," quoted in "Snuffysmith's Blog," which show that Gulf commentators were less than enthralled by Bush's call to arms (or at least vigilance) against Iran:

US President George W. Bush used his speech in Abu Dhabi on Sunday to reiterate many of the same accusations about Iran that we have heard him throw around since his first weeks in office seven years ago. Back then, Iran's president was Mohammad Khatami, a reform-minded leader whose efforts to promote inter-cultural understanding earned him the recognition of international institutions such as the United Nations, which acted on his suggestion to proclaim 2001 the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. The ensuing election of Khatami's hard-line successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made Bush's talk of the Iranian "threat" an easier sell, but Arab audiences still seem less worried today about the possibly nefarious aims of the Islamic Republic than they are about the US president's proven track record of stirring up chaos and instability in the region.

Our own favorite Bush-watcher, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, has caught the spirit of the Bush swing through the land of "Louis Farouk" gilt and "Saudi Gaudy" bling in her op-ed today:

In Abu Dhabi, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan gave the president — dubbed “the Wolf of the Desert” by a Kuwaiti poet — a gigantic necklace made of gold, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, so gaudy and cumbersome that even the Secret Service agent carrying it seemed nonplussed. Here in Saudi Arabia, the king draped W. with an emerald-and-ruby necklace that could have come from Ali Baba’s cave.

Time’s Massimo Calabresi described the Kuwaiti emir’s residence where W. dined Friday as “crass class”: “Loud paintings of harems and the ruling Sabah clan hang near Louis XVI enameled clocks and candlesticks in the long hallways.”

Now you know where "Louis Farouk" was invented.

But consider this little historic gem, thanks to the January 16, 1979 item from BBC's "On This Day"

1979: Shah of Iran flees into exile

The Shah of Iran has fled the country following months of increasingly violent protests against his regime.

There have been calls for the Ayatollah's return - and news of the Shah's departure was greeted with mass celebrations across Iran.

British and United States' ex-patriates living in Iran - regarded as symbols of westernization - have been the frequent target of attacks. Thousands have left the country.

In the Seventies, I remember the precursor to today's British Airways - the British Overseas Airways Corporation or BOAC - going to the expense of printing identical English-language brochures for their Arab and Iranian clients.  Identical in all respects but one - the map.  For the Iranian market, the body of water that separates the Arabian Peninsula from the rest of Asia was marked "Persian Gulf" (the nomenclature used by most of the world).  You guessed it: for the Arab market, the brochures showed the "Arabian Gulf."

In those days, when the Shah was still on his gilded throne, no expense was too much for the American administrations who for decades hailed him as a bulwark of stability, a solid advance post against the encroachments of the then boogie man, Soviet Communism.  No weapons system was too sophisticated, no expense too great for the "Shah of Shahs" (read Ryszard Kapuscinski's 1982 classic study of the same title, a must-read on the sources of the Iranian Revolution).

But decades of multi-billion dollar arms deals, in the end, did the Shah of Iran absolutely no good whatsoever in the face of righteous wrath from his oppressed population.  Fast forward to 2008: in our wisdom, what makes the West (remember, the UK and France have been arming the Saudis with multi-billion pound and euro weapons systems too) so sure that the Saudi monarchy will last longer than the Shah's Pahlavi dynasty?

And should it not survive, what will become of all those weapons that the West is happily selling to the Saudis?   Ask the Iranian Army - they're used to maintaining American equipment.

European Immigrants & Islam: Radically Different Visions

(Photo Source: Unifrance.org)

A Franco-Arab Immigrant Version of "Big Night"

The Germans have entitled it "Warten auf Couscous," the original title is "La graine et le mulet," and it will be known as "Secret of the Grain" when it is eventually brought to the anglophone world.  Yes, couscous does feature prominently in the film, but that is like saying that "Gone With the Wind" should have been called "She Grows Cotton."

La graine et le mulet (the couscous in question is the mullet variety, as those who know Tunisia's fish couscous have come to appreciate) is a French film by a Tunisian-born director, Abdelatif Kechiche.  French, because it's almost all in French, takes place in Sete, a Mediterranean fishing port, and with a cast almost exclusively  composed of hyphenated French, mostly of North African origin.

Kechiche has explored this world before, in "La Faute a Voltaire" and "L'esquive," both of which garnered awards in European film festivals, as has La graine et le mulet.  But here's the thing: in his latest film, there's not a Muslim fundamentalist to be seen.  You would be hard-pressed to guess that the Maghrebi families depicted practice any religion - it's just not shown to be a part of their lives.

What we do see are lots of family: extended family, immigrant family, second generation family, mixed marriages, divorces, infidelity, and love.  The only skin you'll see is during an extended belly dance at the family restaurant (that's the converted fishing boat you see in the poster).  But I would say that certain fundamentalist elements in European Muslim communities will rail against the film, simply for its naturalistic depiction of secular Muslims going about the business of adapting to life in Europe.

For someone who has spent a chunk of his life in North Africa, the film is a joy.  The acting is natural, understated at most times, volcanic when the situation calls for emotion.  There is humor, pathos, and an uncanny feel for relations among and across France's communities.  The film's acting revelation is Hafsia Herzi, under twenty when the film was made in 2005 (it was only released in 2007).  If Marion Cotillard just won a very deserved Golden Globe for her portrayal of Edith Piaf, then Hafsia Herzi deserves honors for this, her first film role (she did win the "Marcello Mastoianni Prize" at the Venice Film Festival).

As the Hollywood Reporter said of Kechiche at Venice, "the director's lack of discipline in failing to yell cut while he's ahead" is really the only serious criticism that can be rendered against this two and a half hour film.  In all other respects, it's all thumbs up.

Another Side of European Islam, Made in Saudi Arabia

(Photo Source Bol.com) 

Leaving secular Sete, we now move to Muslim Molenbeek, a heavily-Arab immigrant neighborhood of Brussels.  Thanks to a friend at a local think tank devoted to Middle East issues, I learned about the work of Hind Fraihi, a young Belgian writer of Moroccan origin.  In this rather disturbing Deutsche Welle TV clip (thanks to You Tube), Fraihi reports on the near-takeover of Molenbeek by Muslim fundamentalists.

Thanks to Karine Ancellin Saleck of the blog "Women's International Perspective", we have this on Fraihi's work

Hind Fraihi, a young Moroccan journalist, has just published in Belgium a book entitled Infiltrated. She tells the story of how she tried to infiltrate the Islam activist groups in Brussels for her newspaper, Niewsblad.

The newspaper entrusted her with the mission to uncover Islamic political activism in Brussels. So she went out to meet the Muslims in Molenbeek, an area that is well known for being the hideout for the most radical Muslim groups in the city.  Hind roams the streets of Molenbeek and follows paths that lead her behind closed doors of clandestine mosques. She holds passionate discussions with her sisters, all dressed in black from head to toe, but she understands she is clearly kept at a fair distance. Hind Fraihi meets with the Cheikh Ayachi Bassam, who married a young Moroccan woman to the murderer of commander Messaoud, the lion of the Panchir.

But of all her expeditions amongst the “salafist” and the “jihadist” and other fundamentalists, only the deluded nihilism of young subway delinquents who live on petty theft really threatened her personally. She called upon her brother to be her bodyguard.

All along, what we feel is a diversity, rather than an invading fundamentalist presence that could be a menace on the Belgians, like some London groups with their hate speeches toward the West. Nevertheless she takes notice of the fact that right before her book was completed, a 38 year old Belgian woman, Murielle Degauque, blew herself up in Iraq. She also stresses the enormous potential that lie for Islamists to recruit society’s dropouts and orient them towards more aggressive stands (emphasis added).

Miss Fraihi concludes by unveiling another group of this Moroccan community: the far right activists. Those who support a political party which intends to get rid of them, or keep them at the lowest level of society to exploit them as much as possible. Moroccan men and women who favour Belgian nationalism or racism like the Vlams Belang and the National Front…

Hind Fraihi throws clear light, not judgmental, on the relief felt by young women who feel at odds with modern women and feel attracted by the Muslim feminists, and in the wake by Muslim activists, that she calls the Muslim Punks.

"Like some London groups with their hate speeches toward the West..."  This brings me to another revelation from my friend: a British think tank report from The Policy Exchange (Conservative Party), entitled "The Hijacking of British Islam" (download available).  Among the key findings:

* Most of the extremist literature is published and distributed by agencies linked to the Saudi Arabian government.
* Among the literature available are extracts from the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (published by the Saudi Ministry of Education), and other publications peddling bizarre conspiracy theories alleging that birth control is a plot against Muslims and Arabs, and that pornography is spread as part of a Jewish plot to corrupt Muslims.

A few years ago, when I was working at the US Embassy in London, my wife and I took a stroll on a Sunday morning through Hyde Park, and made a compulsory visit to "Speakers' Corner," the place where generations of eccentrics would peddle their theories and wacko philosophies.  Only in the 21st century, the harmless eccentrics were long gone, and they were replaced - to a man - by fire-breathing exponents of an Islam that The Prophet would probably not recognize.

"The Hijacking of British Islam," cataloging books, pamphlets and all kinds of screeds subsidized by Saudi Arabia, had this as its first policy recommendation:  "i) The Saudi Arabian government must be told to stop distributing extremist literature in Britain or else risk its good relations. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is currently on a state visit to the UK [note: the study was issued in time for the October 2007 visit] and the British government should address this matter directly with him."  There is no indication that the issue of Saudi dissemination of hate literature in British mosques was ever raised.

Fast forward to... today.  Two presidents - one American, one French - both courting Saudi Arabia on their respective first visits to the Kingdom.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy:  According to Reuters

France would be an honest friend to Saudi Arabia.  "France wants to be a friend of Saudi Arabia ... who does not seek to give lessons, but says the truth, a friend who asks for nothing, but is there when needed," Sarkozy told the Saudi parliament which is an appointed body.

US President George W. Bush: AP says that while Bush told a group...

"I also want you to understand something about America — that we respect you, we respect your religion and we want to work together for the sake of freedom and peace."

... National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was telling reporters that the administration was notifying Congress of its intent to sell $20 billion in weapons, including precision-guided bombs, to the Saudis. It is "a pretty big package, lots of pieces."

Anyone who still harbors the notion that US, French, or British leaders can lecture the Saudis about their central role in proselytizing for obscurantist Islam should go back to reading their favorite fairytale.  The big three Western powers are only doing what is natural in power politics: paying obeisance to the people who count - the Saudi monarchy, the same people who can open (or close) the oil valves.

Here's what former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman said of the Kingdom after a recent visit

With Baghdad flattened, Cairo immobilized, Damascus sidelined, and the oil wealth pouring in, Riyadh has become the center of the Arab diplomatic world. Hardly a day passes without the arrival in Saudi Arabia of at least one chief of state or government who must be greeted by the 85-year-old Saudi monarch.

But Bush and Sarkozy should be wary of being taken in by what they hear; again, Amb. Freeman:

Meanwhile, there is a disturbing tendency by Americans and Arabs to hear what we want to hear when we discuss the challenges posed by Iran. Arab politesse then assures that mistaken impressions linger without correction. An example is our tendency to interpret Saudi pleas that something urgently be done to counter Iran and its nuclear weapons program as endorsement of a U.S. military attack on the Islamic Republic. Some Saudi aficionados of air power may indeed wish for this but they are a distinct minority. In urging action to counter Tehran, most are simply expressing nostalgia for a past in which they routinely looked to the United States as patron-protector to come up with some way of solving problems without demanding anything of them except, perhaps, some of their money. But the U.S. now seems to have no ideas, only bombers.

Give us our $20 billion in weapons (US), and our €40 billion in nuclear and energy contracts (France), and don't give us any lessons on our missionary work.  Thank you, Your Majesty, for allowing us to even land in your Forbidden Kingdom.