Just Foreign Policy News, December 13, 2011
Human rights groups slam Quartet on rising demolitions of Palestinian homes
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action – Tell Congress: Don’t Outlaw US Meetings with Iranian Officials
Section 601(c) of HR 1905 – the so-called "Iran Threat Reduction Act" – would prohibit meetings between U.S. officials and Iranian officials deemed a "threat." Ask your Representative to oppose Section 601(c) and HR 1905. The bill may be voted on Tuesday under "suspension," meaning it would need a supermajority to pass.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/hr1905
or call your Representative toll-free: 1-877-429-0678
[UPDATE: FCNL says, debate tonight, vote later this week, so please call or write!]
House Vote Today to Approve Iran Sanctions Bill Would Restore Bush "Cooties Doctrine"
Today the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote — under "suspension," requiring a supermajority to pass — on a provision which would restore as policy the Cooties Doctrine of the early Bush Administration — U.S. officials can’t meet with officials of the adversary du jour, because our officials might get contaminated. What’s remarkable isn’t that some people in Washington would want to prohibit U.S. officials from having contact with Iranian officials. After all, some people in Washington want to have a war with Iran as soon as it can be arranged. What’s remarkable is the possibility that the majority of Congressional Democrats might vote to approve the "Iran Cooties Provision." Aren’t Democrats supposed to be the diplomacy party, not the war party?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/iran-threat-reduction-act_b_1145945.html
CPC releases "Restore the American Dream for the 99% Act"
Would end the war in Afghanistan and cut military spending.
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/2One.Pager.RAD.99(2).pdf
On Complaints Over Iran Nuclear Weapon Claims, WaPo Ombud Rules for the Plaintiffs
Has your hometown newspaper drunk the Kool-Aid on claims that "the debate is over," and everyone now knows that Iran is pursuing the acquisition of a nuclear weapon? Help is on the way. On Sunday, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton, responding to complaints over a Post headline treating the unproven allegation as a known fact, came down firmly on the side of the complainants. Moreover, Post editors corrected the offending headline, conceding it had been an error to fail to acknowledge debate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/on-complaints-over-iran-n_b_1143480.html
Washington Post Ombudman’s piece, in which he notes Just Foreign Policy campaign
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/getting-ahead-of-the-facts-on-iran/2011/12/07/gIQAAvvCjO_story.html
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Reps. Kucinich, Stark, Conyers and Ellison wrote to their colleagues in opposition to H.R. 1905, "The Iran Threat Reduction Act," and its prohibition of contact between U.S. officials and certain Iranian officials. They noted that diplomacy is our most effective tool to prevent war, and urged their colleagues not to take diplomacy off the table.
2) Oxfam, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Christian Aid denounced the "Quartet" for failure to take action against the rising demolitions of Palestinian homes, AFP reports. The groups noted that Israeli demolition of homes in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem displaced more than 1,000 Palestinians in 2011, double the previous year.
"There is a growing disconnect between the Quartet talks and the situation on the ground," Oxfam said. "The Quartet should call ongoing settlement expansion and house demolitions what they are: violations of international humanitarian law that Israel should stop," said Human Rights Watch.
3) The senior US commander in Afghanistan said his plans for next year would emphasize deploying US and allied military trainers directly within Afghan security units, which could lessen the direct combat role of NATO, the New York Times reports.
4) Human Rights Watch said Western governments have turned a blind eye to criticism of torture and rights abuses in Uzbekistan to preserve relations with the state pivotal to supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan, Reuters reports. "The west has to wake up to the fact that Uzbekistan is a pariah state with one of the worst human rights records," HRW said. "Being located next to Afghanistan should not give Uzbekistan a pass on its horrendous record of torture and repression."
5) Writing in the Boston Globe, Farah Stockman suggests that perhaps the Pentagon can’t do a better job of weeding crooks out of contracting in Afghanistan because the contractors are inherently more likely to be criminal, and if you took away all the criminals, there wouldn’t be enough contractors. Some 30 defense contractors were criminally convicted of fraud between 2006 and 2009, Stockman notes, but only half were disbarred from receiving more federal contracts. Disbarments last only three years. [Stockman’s theory begs a larger question: isn’t an enterprise which can’t function without the participation of criminals, in some sense, inherently criminal? – JFP.]
Iran
6) Republican frontrunners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have committed themselves to policies that would effectively put the U.S. at war with Iran, writes Tony Karon for Time Magazine. Both have stressed that regime-change in Tehran would be the goal of their Iran policy, and both have signaled a willingness to use military force to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
When talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, GOP candidates insist they’d take their cue from America’s generals, but on Iran they don’t seem to be paying much heed to the consensus among the top brass – as channeled by Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta, and before him, Robert Gates – that bombing Iran would at best delay Iran’s progress by a couple of years, but at a cost of triggering a war with potentially devastating consequences throughout the Middle East, and for the world economy, Karon notes.
Karon suggests that in addition to concern that Congressional sanctions on Europeans who buy oil from Iran could damage the US and world economy, the Administration may be concerned that "putting Iran’s economy in a chokehold" could "prove to be a not easily reversible step on the path to confrontation":
‘If such sanctions are adopted as the only alternative to war, as the current debate frames them, their (likely) failure to bring Iran to heel renders armed conflict inevitable – at least as long as the logic that "the only thing worse than bombing Iran is Iran getting the bomb" prevails in the Washington conversation,’ Karon writes.
7) Diplomats say Iran’s intelligence chief has met the Saudi crown prince in a rare visit to the kingdom, an apparent attempt to ease strained relations between the regional powerhouses, AP reports.
Israel/Palestine
8) Radical Jewish settlers attacked an Israeli Army base in the West Bank, lighting fires, vandalizing vehicles and throwing stones, the New York Times reports. Radical settlers have pursued a campaign they call "price tag," attacking Palestinian civilians and property as well as Israeli security forces in retaliation for government policies they oppose. Olive trees have been slashed and burned, mosques vandalized and army property damaged.
Iraq
9) A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that 78 percent of Americans support Obama’s decision to leave Iraq at the end of the year, the Washington Post notes. But most Republican presidential candidates [actually, all of them except Ron Paul – JFP] sharply attacked the decision.
Afghanistan
10) In Afghanistan, the U.S. has tried to defuse tribal rivalries but has only perpetuated and reconfigured an ongoing civil war, writes the Christian Century in an editorial. It’s time to declare that U.S. military objectives have been accomplished in Afghanistan and bring home those troops too, the editorial says.
Mexico
11) Impunity reigns in Mexico’s drug war, the Washington Post reports. Thousands of homicides linked to organized crime are not being investigated. After a two-year investigation, Human Rights Watch reported last month credible evidence that the security forces, led by the military, were responsible for 170 cases of torture, 39 disappearances and 24 extrajudicial killings in the five states they studied. Meanwhile, the drugs keep flowing, and the death toll in Mexico continues to mount. Newspaper tallies, estimates by academics and testimony by U.S. anti-narcotics officials put the current toll somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Kucinich, Stark Urge Diplomacy, not War with Iran: House Bill Could Outlaw Negotiating
Office of Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, December 12 http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=272137
Washington, Dec 12 – Congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Fortney Pete Stark (D-CA) [Conyers and Ellison also signed the letter – JFP] today wrote to fellow Members of Congress urging them to oppose counterproductive legislation that would make it illegal to conduct diplomacy with the state of Iran in certain cases. Kucinich and Stark pointed out that diplomacy is our most effective tool to prevent war and that H.R. 1905, the Iran Threat Reduction Act, would create an obstacle for the President as he presses Iran on its nuclear program.
The full text of the letter follows:
Don’t Take the Best Tool to Prevent War with Iran off the Table
OPPOSE H.R. 1905: The Iran Threat Reduction Act
Dear Colleague:
On Tuesday, the House is expected to consider H.R. 1905, the Iran Threat Reduction Act. Proponents of the bill claim it is a last ditch effort to prevent military confrontation with Iran. However, H.R. 1905 takes away the most effective tool to prevent war: diplomacy.
Section 601 of H.R. 1905 prohibits contact by a U.S. government official or employee with any Iranian official or representative who "presents a threat" to the United States. This provision was inserted into the bill during committee markup, after most of the cosponsors had already signed onto H.R. 1905. This language effectively ties the hands of the U.S. government by posing unnecessary restrictions on already difficult diplomatic engagement with Iran. It would pose obstacles for the President to press Iran on its nuclear program in negotiations and would prevent Members of Congress from potential dialogues with Iranian parliamentarians.
Former Ambassadors Thomas Pickering and William Leurs write in their article, "The House’s Iran Diplomacy Folly" that this provision is "not only ridiculous, it makes knowing our enemy-the best way to win or avoid a potential war-impossible."
Former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen has warned:
Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other. If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right – that there will be miscalculation which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world.
As we only now extricate ourselves from devastating military confrontations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must not allow the United States to be plunged into yet another disastrous war. Tensions with Iran are escalating rapidly and it is crucial we do everything necessary to prevent war, not take diplomatic options off the table.
U.S. policy toward Iran for the last three decades has primarily taken the form of economic sanctions, threats and isolationism. None of these things has created meaningful change in the behavior of the Iranian government or achieved the transparency we seek. Please join us in opposing this bill.
2) NGOs slam rising demolitions of Palestinian homes
AFP, December 13, 2011
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hzb9FiJpccC3QEtrYHqXGDS39Bsg
Jerusalem – Israeli demolition of homes in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem displaced more than 1,000 Palestinians in 2011, double the previous year, a coalition of international NGOs said on Tuesday.
"Since the beginning of the year more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns, and other essential structures have been destroyed in the West Bank including east Jerusalem, displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians," a joint statement by 20 human rights and aid organisations said. "This is more than double the number of people displaced over the same period in 2010, and the highest figure since at least 2005," it added, citing United Nations figures.
It went on to criticise the international peacemaking Quartet of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia.
[…] "There is a growing disconnect between the Quartet talks and the situation on the ground," the statement quoted Oxfam International’s Jeremy Hobbs as saying. "The Quartet needs to radically revise its approach and show that it can make a real difference to the lives of Palestinians and Israelis."
"The Quartet should call ongoing settlement expansion and house demolitions what they are: violations of international humanitarian law that Israel should stop," added Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.
Among other signatories were Amnesty International and Christian Aid.
The statement pointed to a sharp rise in Jewish settlement projects in mainly Arab east Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the Six Day war and unilaterally annexed shortly after in a move never recognised by the international community.
"Plans for around 4,000 new settler housing units have been approved in east Jerusalem over the past 12 months — the highest number since at least 2006," it said, citing figures from Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now.
It went on to cite UN data showing a 50 percent rise in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2011 compared to the previous year and the highest since 2005.
3) Afghanistan Plan Would Reduce NATO Combat Role
Thom Shanker, New York Times, December 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/world/asia/us-plans-afghan-shift-to-lessen-nato-combat-role.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The senior American commander in Afghanistan said Tuesday that his plans for next year would emphasize deploying American and allied military trainers directly within Afghan security units, which could lessen the direct combat role of NATO and accelerate local forces’ taking the lead in a growing number of missions.
The commander, Gen. John R. Allen of the Marine Corps, said he also was striving to consolidate security gains against Taliban forces in their traditional strongholds in the south and to counter insurgents crossing from Pakistan into volatile eastern Afghanistan.
[…] An accelerated program to install small numbers of allied military trainers within larger numbers of Afghan security units, as described by General Allen, certainly could help fulfill the American and NATO campaign plan – but with far fewer American troops.
At present, only smaller numbers of foreign trainers work within Afghan units. And where combat operations in the past have been carried out unilaterally by allied units, led by allied units or in partnership with Afghan forces, an emphasis on embedded trainers would put Afghans in the lead – but with a cadre of experienced officers and non-commissioned officers working with them from the inside.
[…]
4) Uzbekistan torture ignored by the west, say human rights group
US and EU accused of turning blind eye to preserve relations with nation that provides key supply link to Afghanistan troops
Reuters, Tuesday 13 December 2011 04.44 EST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/13/uzbekistan-torture-ignored-west
Western governments have turned a blind eye to criticism of torture and rights abuses in Uzbekistan to preserve relations with the state pivotal to supplying Nato forces in Afghanistan, according to a human rights watchdog.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic of 28 million people, had failed to keep promises to stop the use of torture, including electric shocks and simulated asphyxiation, in its criminal justice system.
"The west has to wake up to the fact that Uzbekistan is a pariah state with one of the worst human rights records," Steve Swerdlow, HRW’s Uzbekistan researcher, said. "Being located next to Afghanistan should not give Uzbekistan a pass on its horrendous record of torture and repression."
Uzbekistan’s relations with the US and EU soured in 2005 after a government crackdown on an uprising in the eastern city of Andizhan. Witnesses say hundreds were killed when troops opened fire on crowds.
Following harsh western criticism of the bloodshed and systematic human rights violations in the mainly Muslim nation, Uzbekistan evicted US forces from a key air base.
But Washington and its major allies have since reconciled with the country, which is a vital link in the supply line to Nato troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
President Islam Karimov, 73, has ruled his resource-rich nation with an iron fist for more than 20 years. He defends his authoritarian methods by saying he needs to forestall any rise of Taliban-style Islam.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited Uzbekistan in October to thank Karimov for maintaining Uzbekistan’s role in a supply route that is becoming increasingly important since US ties with Pakistan deteriorated.
HRW said in March that Uzbek authorities had forced it to close its local office after obstructing its work. The group said its latest report, which cited numerous cases of torture, was based on more than 100 interviews conducted in Uzbekistan between 2009 and 2011.
An HRW spokesperson said: "The governments traditionally viewed as champions of the cause of human rights in Uzbekistan – the US, EU and its key members – have muted their criticism of the government’s worsening human rights record, including its continuing and widespread use of torture."
[…]
5) Opportunist Of War
In Afghanistan, an American businessman has carved a name for himself. But it’s not a good one.
Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, December 13, 2011
http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2011/12/13/opportunist-war/abaNCc6RHTwjByvTtiJhmO/story.html
If you have spent any time in Kabul during this God-forsaken war, chances are that you drank a strawberry daiquiri at Red Hot & Sizzlin’. That gated American-style steakhouse – with its crooning karaoke machines and crowded bar made of bamboo – is a magnet for private contractors who have made a killing in this war. Its owner, Roy Carver, is a symbol of so much that has gone wrong there.
Legend has it that Carver, one of the first US contractors to arrive, was so brilliant at getting military contracts that he could sketch out a successful proposal on a bar napkin. His contracts ran the gamut: from collecting garbage on military bases to renovating houses for the US embassy to driving trucks to Uzbekistan for the CIA. But a year ago, Carver – 76 and partially blind – was arrested by Afghan officials, and accused of owing his Afghan workers and subcontractors hundreds of thousands of dollars. "He owes everyone, everyone, everyone," one electrical supplier told me. Carver’s son-in-law, Dennis Carson, who worked with him for awhile in Afghanistan, blamed corruption for his mountain of debts. "Roy had bid into his contracts the cost of corruption – at 3 percent – but it turned out to be 30," Carson told me. "When he discovered someone stealing money at his company, I’d want to fire him, but Roy would say, ‘Oh let it go. Everybody does it.’ "
But corruption and an indulgent attitude toward theft weren’t Carver’s only problems. This wasn’t the first time he had been thrown in the slammer, or owed too many people too much money. It turns out that he is the same Roy Carver who pleaded guilty in federal court in the late 1970s to a major kickback scheme in Saudi Arabia. That scandal – exposed when Saudi spies bugged his apartment – rocked Raytheon, where he had been a senior executive.
Going to jail for fraud might make lesser men feel shy about building a career on military contracting. But not Carver. After his release from prison, Carver got right back in the game. He took over a company called Seair Transport, which had belonged to a co-conspirator still serving time for the Saudi scheme.
[…] Last year, workers started walking off the job of a construction contract because they had not been paid. Dyncorp, the prime contractor, said Carver hadn’t been paying his workers or suppliers. Red Sea was terminated and Carver arrested.
No formal charges were ever filed – not unusual in Afghanistan, where arrests are routinely used as a way to scare debtors into paying up. Carver was eventually released and promised to pay his debts. But he slipped out of the country, in fear of his life – one of at least six American businessmen to flee Afghanistan with huge unpaid debts to Afghans.
It makes you wonder why the Pentagon doesn’t do a better job of weeding crooks out of contracting. Some 30 defense contractors were criminally convicted of fraud between 2006 and 2009, but only half were disbarred from receiving more federal contracts. Disbarments last only three years.
Maybe the persistence, chutzpah, and creative accounting of guys like Carver are considered an asset in Afghanistan. Maybe they are the only ones willing to work in a war zone. As the Land Cruisers drive past armed guards into the parking lot of Red Hot & Sizzlin’, you can count the guys who have no intention of getting out of the game.
[…]
Iran
6) Tighter Sanctions On Iran: An Alternative to War – or a Road to War?
Tony Karon, Time Magazine, December 11, 2011
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/12/11/tighter-sanctions-on-iran-an-alternative-to-war-or-a-road-to-war/
Pity President Barack Obama trying to stay off the slippery slope to war with Iran in an election year, while his challengers perform crowd-pleasing, spoken-word versions of Senator John McCain’s "Bomb Iran" adaptation of the Beach Boys. As they demonstrated last Wednesday in a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), GOP presidential hopefuls are free to rattle imaginary sabers at Iran ("If I were president…") without risk or consequence, while branding Obama as feckless in the face of the grave and gathering danger of Tehran’s nuclear program. (The somewhat less alarmist consensus of U.S. intelligence remains that Iran has not made, let alone implemented, a decision to build nuclear weapons, despite steadily accumulating the means to do so.)
Republican frontrunners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney committed themselves, at the RJC forum, to policies that would effectively put the U.S. at war with Iran. Both stressed that regime-change in Tehran would be the goal of their Iran policy (now there’s an incentive for Tehran’s regime to seek a nuclear insurance policy), and both signaled a willingness to use military force to stop Iran’s nuclear program. When CNN interviewer Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich later how he would respond to the proverbial 3 a.m. White House phone-call telling him that Israel had bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, Gingrich answered that it would never come to that, because he’d plan a joint military operation with Israel rather than put it in a position where it felt compelled to act alone. Besides, the former House Speaker said, Israel would never spring that surprise on him; they know he’s an ally and willing to help.
Pummeled by Republican accusations of insufficient affection for Israel ("I’m close to Netanyahu," Gingrich told Blitzer; everyone knows Obama can hardly say the same…), the President last Thursday defended his Iran efforts, saying Tehran was under the toughest sanctions it has ever faced, and that he, too, is keeping all options (usually read as code for military action) "on the table."
Neither Israel nor Iran seems to take seriously the possibility of U.S. military action – an "option" that has been "on the table" for the past five years, during which Iran has forged ahead – and their skepticism would be underscored by repeated public warnings from the Pentagon of the strategic folly of exercising the "military option." When talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a default position for GOP candidates to insist they’d take their cue from America’s generals, but on Iran they don’t seem to be paying much heed to the consensus among the top brass – as channeled by Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta, and before him, Robert Gates – that bombing Iran would at best delay Iran’s progress by a couple of years, but at a cost of triggering a war with potentially devastating consequences throughout the Middle East, and for the world economy.
But slowing down the momentum towards confrontation with Iran isn’t going to win candidates much political support – or campaign donations – in this election season. Even as Republican presidential contenders tried to outbid one another in public displays of affection for Israel and hostility towards Iran (the latter apparently being the litmus test for the former these days), the Associated Press reports that the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) turned up the heat on Obama on Capitol Hill. AIPAC is the flagship Israel lobbying organization, and paying loquacious political tribute to its platforms has long been an essential rite of passage for politicians seeking national office, particularly because of the group’s ability to influence many donors who favor Democrats on domestic issues but hold hawkish views on Israel. Last week, according to the Associated Press, the organization sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers urging them to pass a package of crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy, despite objections from the Obama Administration on some of the legislation’s provisions.
[…] The Administration has sought to soften the impact of (or "gut," in the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial on the matter) the new measures, reportedly urging an extension of the grace period before such measures takes effect, and seeking to remove the provision for U.S. sanctions against any foreign bank engaged in oil transactions with Iran’s central bank. The bill allows President Obama to waive implementation where U.S. national security is affected, although on the time-lines in the current version, he would have to issue three such waivers before election day to prevent a de facto oil embargo on Iran going into effect.
The Administration has warned that using the banking system to block Iran from selling oil could trigger a sharp increase in global oil prices, threatening the U.S. and world economy’s fragile recovery – even without such measures, tensions with Iran are already steadily pushing the price up. And Iran has previously warned that it would treat any attempt to bar its ability to sell oil as an act of war. But the legislators are hanging tough. "The goal … is to inflict crippling, unendurable economic pain over there," explained New York Democrat Representative Gary Ackerman. "Iran’s banking sector – especially its central bank – needs to become the financial equivalent of Chernobyl: radioactive, dangerous and most of all, empty."
But it’s not only Iran that could be antagonized by the new legislation. The U.S. and its partners do very little business with the Islamic Republic today; the purpose of the new measures is to punish those who do. The Western powers have failed to persuade many of Iran’s key trading partners – China, Russia, Turkey and India, among others – to voluntarily support new sanctions, which they believe are neither justified nor likely to produce a positive outcome. The new measures envisioned by Congress use the centrality of the U.S. banking system in the world economy to strong-arm reluctant partners into complying with Western sanctions. Administration officials warned that such measures could break the consensus on existing U.N. sanctions, and serve Iran’s purpose by driving a wedge between the key players in the international community. But Iran hawks can just as easily point out that existing sanctions, which represent the outer limit of the consensus, are clearly ineffective in changing Iran’s behavior. Still, China has invested heavily in Iran’s energy sector over the past three years, and may at some point balk at being told with whom it can do business by a country that owes it more than $1 trillion.
There may also be a deeper, unspoken concern, behind the Administration’s hesitation over putting Iran’s economy in a chokehold at this point: it could prove to be a not easily reversible step on the path to confrontation. If such sanctions are adopted as the only alternative to war, as the current debate frames them, their (likely) failure to bring Iran to heel renders armed conflict inevitable – at least as long as the logic that "the only thing worse than bombing Iran is Iran getting the bomb" prevails in the Washington conversation.
Escalation could even happen relatively quickly. Most states would treat an effective economic blockade that imposed "crippling, unendurable pain" as an act of war, and if Iran responds militarily, directly or via proxy forces or terror attacks, the two sides could find themselves quickly locked into potentially disastrous war. Yet, the domestic political dynamic in both Washington and Tehran raises the cost for leaders in both capitals of restraining the momentum towards confrontation.
It’s election season in Iran, too, with a parliamentary poll in March and a presidential vote in 2013 – and talking tough in the face of U.S. and Israeli threats is as popular inside Iran’s political system as promising regime change in Iran at the Republican Jewish Committee. In the broader Iranian public, there’s a growing sense of fatalism about the inevitability of war, and plenty of support for belligerent nationalist positions.
But the Administration is in a bind: It insists, correctly, that it has mustered an unprecedented level of sanctions against Iran, yet it is unable to demonstrate that those efforts are likely to change the game. Hawkish critics insist a clock is ticking, and most Iran analysts believe the current sanctions efforts are unlikely to produce a diplomatic breakthrough. Hence the apparent schizophrenia described in the Washington Post: last week: "Current and former U.S. officials say the administration is ramping up its covert efforts inside Iran, even as the White House is seeking a thaw in bilateral relations."
The very idea of a "bilateral thaw" with Tehran coming amid a covert war is absurd – Iran’s leaders told Obama at the beginning of his presidency that there could be no rapprochement while sanctions remained in place; they’re hardly likely to soften up with drones flying overhead and key assets blowing up.
Clearly, the leaders on both sides could have their hands full in the year ahead simply avoiding a rapid march to a war they’d prefer to avoid, because the demands of domestic politics are pushing them towards confrontation.
7) Iran intelligence chief in Saudi Arabia for a rare visit to try to reduce tensions
Associated Press, Tuesday, December 13, 3:16 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/iran-intelligence-chief-in-saudi-arabia-for-a-rare-visit-to-try-to-reduce-tensions/2011/12/13/gIQALvQNsO_story.html
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – Diplomats say Iran’s intelligence chief has met the Saudi crown prince in a rare visit to the kingdom, an apparent attempt to ease strained relations between the regional powerhouses.
The diplomats said Tuesday the visit a day earlier came upon request from Iran. They said it was believed to be an attempt to work out problems between Tehran and Riyadh, particularly following an alleged Iranian government plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
[…] The diplomats said Prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz Al Saud, also the interior minister, discussed regional issues, including developments in Syria and Bahrain with Iranian Intelligence Minister Haidar Moslehi.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
8) Radical Jewish Settlers Clash With Israeli Troops
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, December 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/world/middleeast/radical-jewish-settlers-clash-with-israeli-troops.html
Jerusalem – Dozens of radical Jewish settlers, reacting to a rumor that several of their outposts would be dismantled, attacked an Israeli Army base in the West Bank on Tuesday, lighting fires, vandalizing vehicles and throwing stones, hours after another group of settlers occupied a border post with Jordan.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak condemned what he called "a string of violent attacks by criminal groups of extremists," adding that such "homegrown terror" would not be tolerated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an urgent meeting of defense officials, saying, "We must take care of these rioters with a heavy hand."
In the past few years, small groups of settlers have pursued a campaign they call "price tag," attacking Palestinian civilians and property as well as Israeli security forces in retaliation for government policies they oppose. Olive trees have been slashed and burned, mosques vandalized and army property damaged.
In the attack on the base, about 50 settlers used paint, nails and rocks, the military said. Soldiers dispersed the rioters and detained one man. In a separate episode, settlers stopped a car driven by a local Israeli commander and threw a brick at him. He was slightly injured.
[…] Late on Monday night, other settlers blocked a main West Bank road and threw stones at Palestinian vehicles.
[…]
Iraq
9) Obama And Maliki Outline Postwar Partnership Plan
Scott Wilson and David Nakamura, Washington Post, December 12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-maliki-meet-at-white-house-to-discuss-future-us-iraq-relations/2011/12/12/gIQA9BLqpO_story.html
President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki outlined a broad agenda for postwar cooperation Monday as they marked the impending end of America’s long conflict in the Middle East.
[…] The president announced in October that he would bring all U.S. troops home from Iraq, still fragile and fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines, by the end of the year, declaring that "after nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over."
The decision provoked sharp criticism from most Republican presidential candidates, who have suggested that the move was motivated more by domestic politics than by military advice. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that 78 percent of Americans support Obama’s decision to leave Iraq at the end of the year.
The withdrawal timeline was set by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. But negotiations between Iraqi and U.S. officials to extend the presence of several thousand American troops, for training and counterterrorism operations, collapsed when Iraq’s parliament refused to grant U.S. military personnel immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts past the deadline.
[…] Since taking office, Obama has withdrawn nearly 150,000 U.S. troops from Iraq, and, for the first time in more than a decade, no American service member is preparing to deploy there. About 4,500 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, and the war has cost the Treasury nearly $1 trillion.
[…]
Afghanistan
10) Out of Afghanistan
Christian Century, Dec 13, 2011
http://christiancentury.org/article/2011-12/out-afghanistan
[…] When running for office in 2008, President Obama accused his predecessor of taking his eye off the ball-the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan-by focusing on regime change in Iraq. He argued that Iraq was a war of choice, Afghanistan a war of necessity.
But the case for a military presence in Afghanistan was already waning. The primary objective in Afghanistan-the dismantling of al-Qaeda networks there-has been largely accomplished.
What remains is a tribal conflict which, as Jonathan Steele points out in his book Ghosts of Afghanistan, preceded even the Soviet Union’s occupation of the country in the 1980s. The Soviets and now the U.S. have tried to defuse tribal rivalries but have only perpetuated and reconfigured an ongoing civil war.
The American military’s costly, decadelong presence in Afghanistan hasn’t resolved the underlying problems. It ranks 135 out of 135 countries on the United Nations Human Poverty index, and in 2010 Transparency International declared it the third most corrupt state in the world. Indeed, the U.S. presence has only made matters worse. It’s time to declare that U.S. military objectives have been accomplished in Afghanistan and bring home those troops too.
Mexico
11) After 5 years, Mexico’s drug war still rages
William Booth, Washington Post, December 10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/after-5-years-mexicos-drug-war-still-rages/2011/12/10/gIQAIocUlO_story.html
Mexico City – On Dec. 1, 2006, within hours of taking office after the closest real election in Mexican history, President Felipe Calderon ordered his military and police to confront the drug-trafficking and criminal organizations flourishing in his home state.
Joint Operation Michoacan began immediately. In a blunt demonstration of force, the government threw everything it had into play: 4,260 soldiers, 1,054 marines and 1,400 federal police officers, along with dozens of airplanes and helicopters.
The take? A hundred marijuana farms, 13 alleged traffickers, 5,000 pounds of cocaine, 20 tons of cold medicine used to make meth and a handful of AK-47s.
The interior minister at the time, Francisco Javier Ramirez Acuna, told Mexicans that the operation had been launched to protect their children, reclaim public space, end impunity for criminals, and return peace and tranquility to their communities. Curbing drug traffic appeared to be less of a priority.
Five years later, Calderon’s U.S.-backed war rages on, and despite victories here and there, many Mexicans would say Ramirez Acuna’s objectives have not been met.
Impunity reigns. The El Diario newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, dubbed "Murder City," reported last month that 6,000 homicides since 2008 that have been linked to organized crime are not being investigated because state and federal prosecutors are bickering over jurisdiction.
Nobody wants the cases.
Calderon promised that the military would be a temporary solution, as the corrupt federal police force was culled and reformed. Today, with U.S. help in training at academies, the country has more than 30,000 new or retrained federal police officers. Yet 50,000 troops continue to patrol the streets and will do so until the end of Calderon’s six-year term next year.
But not without a price.
After a two-year investigation, Human Rights Watch reported last month credible evidence that the security forces, led by the military, were responsible for 170 cases of torture, 39 disappearances and 24 extrajudicial killings in the five states they studied.
Just this week, a U.S. parole commission concluded that a young American who had been arrested by Mexican soldiers for allegedly carrying suitcases containing marijuana in Ciudad Juarez, on his way home to El Paso, was tortured in Mexico. Extradited a year later, he was freed by a U.S. court.
Meanwhile, the drugs keep flowing. Seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border indicate that marijuana and heroin are moving north unchecked, although in a rare piece of good news, cocaine sales in the United States appear to be down.
And the death toll in Mexico continues to mount.
No one knows exactly how many people have died in this war. The government released a tally of "deaths due to criminal rivalry" late last year, a total of 34,612. Despite promises of updates, it has been silent since.
Newspaper tallies, estimates by academics and testimony by U.S. anti-narcotics officials put the current toll somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000.
Calderon argues, correctly, that the homicide rates in many countries are much higher than Mexico’s. But it is impossible to overstate the extent, and barbarity, of the violence here.
In Mexico, a mutilated woman hung from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo is a one-day story, quickly forgotten. Five severed human heads dumped near an elementary school in Acapulco is a five-paragraph news item. Whose heads? Why?
[…] Psychologists here have begun to suspect that the population is suffering from a kind of collective post-traumatic stress.
[…]
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