It’s Time For American Troops To Leave Iraq
It’s Time For American Troops To Leave Iraq
Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife
U.S. troops should leave Iraq. America’s job is done.
Baghdad has no WMDs — there never were any to seize. Al-Qaida only showed up after America’s invasion, and has been largely destroyed. Saddam Hussein long ago was captured, convicted, executed and buried. Democracy, such as it is, has been established and its survival does not depend on a foreign military presence.
Washington should close its 86 bases and bring home its 47,000 troops, 63,000 civilian contractors and mountains of military equipment.
The Obama administration’s attempt to keep U.S. forces in Iraq is further evidence that America has become an empire. Not in the traditional sense of conquering territory. But certainly in the sense of garrisoning foreign lands to extend Washington’s influence and creating advanced bases to impose Washington’s will.
World War II mercifully ended 66 years ago. U.S. troops are still spread about Europe and Japan. The Korean War thankfully concluded 58 years ago. American forces continue to provide a security “tripwire.”
Serbian troops were ejected from Kosovo 12 years ago. U.S. soldiers are still on station. If it hadn’t been for the killing of 18 rangers in Mogadishu, American personnel probably would still be in Somalia nearly two decades later.
The Afghan war blazes after a decade and American officials say some troops undoubtedly will remain after the formal withdrawal planned for 2014. Despite their promise to pull U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, American officials are browbeating the Iraqi government to accept a continued occupation.
It’s an odd spectacle: representatives of the American people begging another government to let Washington spend more money and risk more lives for nothing. In the case of America’s other major security commitments, the allies do the begging.
The Europeans, Japanese, and South Koreans all enjoy their very cheap (if not quite free) defense rides. They know that if U.S. troops came home they would have to spend more themselves. Far better in foreign minds for American taxpayers to continue picking up the defense check.
At least these military commitments grew out of the Cold War. America’s friends once were weak, even helpless, while America’s adversaries looked strong, even deadly. But Washington stayed well past this moment of vulnerability, allowing allied nations to under-invest in their defense well after they had recovered economically and surpassed their enemies.
Now the U.S. government wants to stay, potentially forever, in a land where values, histories, religions and cultures divide rather than unite and in a country which never mattered much to American security. “What has ever been must ever be” seems to be the Defense Department’s motto.
Even after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said no to extending Washington’s military role, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed his hope that U.S. forces could remain in Iraq for “years to come.” Pentagon officials said they were awaiting “an answer,” meaning the answer they desired. Late last month Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that Baghdad must decide “within weeks” because of the logistics involved in withdrawing or maintaining U.S. forces.
Exactly what the Pentagon wants to keep on station it won’t say. Secretary Gates said “It just depends on what the Iraqis want and what we’re able to provide and afford.” Providing bipartisan support for preserving America’s imperial presence was House Speaker John Boehner, who visited Iraq earlier this month.
For what purpose would U.S. troops remain? President George W. Bush and his aggressive neoconservative allies apparently expected to establish a permanent presence in the Middle East with which Washington could wage any number of other wars, such as against neighboring Iran.
The idea that the Iraqi people would willingly host foreign forces to bomb, invade, and occupy their neighbors and nations beyond was merely one of the Bush administration’s many foolish fantasies about the conflict. Yet the imperial dream lives on. Wrote Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations: “Having active bases in Iraq would allow us to project power and influence, counter the threat from both Iran and al-Qaida, and possibly even nudge the entire Middle East in a more pro-Western direction.”
The Obama administration speaks in less grandiose terms, with unnamed military officers talking of a “power vacuum,” “regional instability,” and warding off “threats.” Iraq lacks adequate forces, especially heavy equipment, to secure its frontiers and airspace. Of course, this problem was created by the invasion. Saddam Hussein had a sizable military and helped constrain his neighbors, most importantly Iran. By blowing up Hussein’s Iraq, Washington wrecked the balance of power and left the new Iraq temporarily weak.
Still, the possibility of smuggling or similar border incursions against Iraq shouldn’t worry Washington: even if U.S. troops remained, they presumably wouldn’t be used as border guards. More important, none of Baghdad’s neighbors seem likely to embark upon a war of conquest.
Iran is bedeviled by a domestic political crisis, requiring the regime to focus on internal security. Moreover, the two nations’ extensive religious, personal, and cultural ties discourage conflict. Boot worried that Tehran might possess “an extra element of coercive leverage,” but Iraq shows no signs of slipping into an Iranian protectorate.
No one else is a plausible aggressor. Syria’s attentions also are diverted within. Turkey cares about little more than Kurdish issues. Saudi Arabia has to worry about preserving its dysfunctional authoritarian monarchy. Jordan and Kuwait are small players militarily. American troops aren’t necessary to guard Iraq against any of these countries.
The Kurds would like Washington to stick around, mostly to protect their autonomy from the Iraqi government. Such is the reality of America’s new ally: it has enduring interests and faces persistent conflicts which run contrary to U.S. preferences. But to intervene on behalf of a group fighting Baghdad would put Washington at war with the new government over stakes largely irrelevant to American security. U.S. forces in effect would be working to destroy the very government they had helped create at enormous cost.
The only logical purpose of leaving troops in Iraq is to intervene in internal disputes, but on behalf of the Shia-majority regime. While no organized insurgency has reemerged, violence is ubiquitous and bombings and assassinations have returned. Sunnis remain disaffected while radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr remains an unpredictable member of the governing coalition. The “Arab Spring” has generated extensive protests, some violently suppressed.
Although Iraq is nominally a democracy, the Maliki government long has exhibited thuggish tendencies, which have worsened with rising discontent. Disagreements between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi imperil the “unity” agreement between the two. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) worries that “Iraq could go to hell.”
Attempting to sort out such a mess could keep Washington busy for a long time. Although American troops no longer are on patrol, they remain in the middle of Iraq’s unruly power scramble. In mid-May Special Forces raided a provincial headquarters of Sadr’s group. And nowhere are Americans secure. In April the State Department warned: “Violence and threats against U.S. citizens persist and no region should be considered safe from dangerous conditions.”
Now the American troop presence is turning into another bitter political issue. Maliki has proved to be among the slipperiest of politicians, insisting that U.S. forces leave before announcing a “consultation” to achieve a consensus within his political bloc. He explained: “The government is a partnership government, so everyone is responsible for the decision. The government, the Parliament and political blocs, it’s everyone’s responsibility, and all must bear this responsibility.”
Some Sunni as well as Kurdish leaders want America troops to stay. Sadr, an important Shia member of Maliki’s coalition, insists that U.S. forces leave; he threatened to return his movement to violence if they remain. Sadr may be bluffing, but he could further roil Baghdad’s politics.
J. Scott Carpenter, an assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration, observed: “The basic agreement that led to the governing coalition — that allowed Sadr to throw his support behind Maliki — is now breaking down.” Baghdad University Professor Hakeem Mezher went further, noting that if Sadr “walks out on this fragile alliance, it will encourage other blocs to do the same. Such a step will definitely collapse the government, or at least it will be considered illegitimate to sign any new pact.”
The situation is unpredictable and combustible, which is all the more reason to leave it to the Iraqis. There’s no need for the U.S. military to garrison every trouble spot around the globe.
The only good news is that Americans suffer fewer casualties these days. The new killing zone is Afghanistan, where the troop “surge” has led to rising deaths and injuries. However, Americans can ill afford to pay for another permanent occupation with no important benefit to them.
One can imagine continuing intelligence cooperation in Iraq, but that requires only a very small “footprint.” Iraqi forces would benefit from additional training. However, that sounds like a good job for the Europeans, who continue to shrink their militaries even as Washington continues to defend them from phantom threats. Or Baghdad could use its growing oil revenue to hire a private military contractor or two. And the Iraqi government can order needed military equipment without accepting an American military garrison.
Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Iraq in January and told American forces that Washington wanted to leave behind “a country that was worthy of the sacrifices” made by U.S. personnel. No amount of “stability” will be worth the 4500 dead Americans, perhaps 200,000 dead and far more wounded and displaced Iraqis, and two or more trillion dollars the war ultimately will cost the American people.
The Bush administration originally hoped for permanent bases, but the Iraqis said no. In seeking a long-term military presence President Barack Obama again has morphed into his predecessor. However, the American people should say no thanks even if the Iraqi government asks Washington to stay. The U.S. was created as a republic, not an empire. Americans should keep it that way.
Latin America’s new shining path
Latin America’s new shining path
By Gideon Rachman
In the small towns of Peru’s Andean highlands, every spare surface has been commandeered for a poster or a mural proclaiming: “Keiko Presidente!” or “Ollanta”. The Peruvian presidential election, which will see either Keiko Fujimori or Ollanta Humala elected on June 5, will be the most closely watched poll in Latin America this year. It has become a test of whether the continent’s dramatic economic and political progress is irreversible; or whether the bad old days of authoritarianism, populism and economic chaos could still return to haunt Latin America.
In 1980, there were just three democracies in the whole of Latin America; now it is the autocracies that can be counted on the fingers of one hand. A continent that was once synonymous with the words “economic crisis” has become the toast of emerging market investors. Countries that lived in dread of capital flight now complain that there is too much “hot money” flowing in from abroad.
The rise of Brazil as a global power has overshadowed much of the rest of the continent. But the transformation of Peru, Brazil’s smaller neighbour, is in some ways even more remarkable. Once famous for a vicious Maoist insurgency, the country grew by almost 9 per cent last year – and has commitments for more than $40bn of new foreign investment in mining alone. (Peru also has the unique status of being the world’s leading exporter of both cocaine and asparagus.)
The figures show poverty falling fast in Peru – but the smart restaurants and gleaming offices of central Lima are still surrounded by crime-ridden slums, where 20 per cent of the population lack access to running water. It is a pattern of affluence surrounded by deprivation that is replicated in other megacities across Latin America – from São Paulo to Mexico City.
That inequality now threatens Peru’s stability. To the horror of many of the upper middle classes, Peru’s centrists were all eliminated in the first round of the presidential election last month. The race has come down to a contest between two populists with authoritarian streaks – Ms Fujimori and Mr Humala.
The 35-year-old Ms Fujimori is the daughter of an imprisoned former president, Alberto Fujimori. As president, Mr Fujimori laid the foundation for Peru’s success by suppressing the Maoist Shining Path movement, whose war had claimed thousands of lives. Abimael Guzmán, the renegade philosophy professor who led the Shining Path, is now in prison. But Mr Fujimori, the president who oversaw his capture, is also in jail – serving a 25-year stretch for corruption and links to death squads.
Peru’s technocrats fear a Keiko Fujimori presidency would repeat the sins of the father – undermining the country’s democratic institutions and fostering rampant corruption.
Most of the Peruvian middle class, however, seem to fear Keiko’s opponent even more. Mr Humala is a former army officer who literally shot to prominence when he led an attempted coup in 2000. His brother, Antauro, is in prison for leading yet another attempted coup in 2005. He was once close to Hugo Chávez, a ranting populist, whose “21st-century socialism” has subverted nearby Venezuela’s democracy and gravely weakened its economy. These days Mr Humala, who is just ahead in the polls, plays down his Chávez links – but many Peruvians are still wary.
If Peru, which has become a poster child for the success of liberal economic and political reforms, now slips backwards, it would send a worrying message about the fragility of reform across Latin America, where persistent inequality and weak institutions are common problems.
It is certainly possible that either a Humala or a Fujimori presidency would push Peru down the path of populist authoritarianism. Yet things need not be that grim. One reassuring aspect of the Peruvian election is the way in which both candidates have talked of Brazil, rather than Venezuela, as a model.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who recently stepped down as president of Brazil, has achieved cult-like status because he showed that it was possible to combine things that were too often mutually exclusive in Latin America: charismatic leadership and a respect for democracy; a booming market economy and social reforms that benefit the poor.
Brazil may soon be the world’s fifth-largest economy. On a recent visit there, President Barack Obama said that the US was cheering on its rise. Certainly to American eyes, Brazil is the cuddly rising power – less prickly than India and less threatening than China. It is a tribute to the skill with which Brazil is managing its rise that even a smaller neighbour such as Peru (with just 30m people to Brazil’s 190m), regards the country as a model rather than a threat.
Salamon Lerner, Mr Humala’s campaign manager, says that it is Brazil not Venezuela that his boss wants to learn from. A successful entrepreneur with a helicopter business, Mr Lerner told me in Lima last week: “If you look at Brazil and Venezuela, it is clear that Brazil is much more successful. We don’t want to drive away foreign investment. We are not crazy.” Ms Fujimori’s advisers also cite Mr Lula da Silva’s social reforms as a model.
There are plenty of good reasons for treating both candidates in Peru’s election with extreme caution. But if Brazil really has provided a model for democratic, market-friendly social progress, then Peru, and the rest of Latin America, may finally have discovered a genuine shining path.
Beaucoup B.S.
Beaucoup B.S.
The DSK case and the silly stereotypes about American and European morals.
Why is it that we cannot read any discussion of a political sex scandal, or a sex scandal involving a politician, without pseudo-sophisticated comments about the supposedly different morals of Americans and Europeans? And why is it that this goes double if the politician is French, or if the reactions being quoted are from Gallic sources? And when did this annoying journalistic habit become so prevalent? It must have sprung up quite recently, or at least since the time when Charles de Gaulle and John F. Kennedy were presidents of their respective countries. The first man was a strict and fastidious Puritan who never gave his wife Yvonne a moment's cause for complaint, while the second was a sensational debauchee who went as far as importing a Mafia gun-moll into the White House sleeping quarters. Yet the American culture, which regards Kennedy as a virtual Galahad, is the supposedly shockable one, while in France—ah, la France—a much more broad-minded and adult attitude prevails.
Surely France and its partisans are not saying that the attempted rape of a chambermaid would not rearrange so much as an eyebrow in the supposedly refined salons of Paris? (After all, the endlessly cited François Mitterrand may have had a daughter out of wedlock, but he took good care to keep it a secret for as long as he could.) The problem arises from mentioning the two types of sexual behavior in the same breath. A related problem derives from the belief that Americans will not tolerate marital infidelity from their politicians.
Take two recent episodes on this side of the Atlantic: the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the forced resignation of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank. To hear Clinton's defenders talk at the time, you would have imagined that he was impeached for receiving oral sex in the Oval Office (an endless source of pretended amusement and bewilderment on the part of the French faction), while to hear the detractors of Wolfowitz you would have had to believe that he arranged special treatment for a bank employee with whom he was conducting an affair.
In fact, Clinton's problem arose from the fact that he was exploiting a junior employee and lying about it under oath in the course of a lawsuit. That lawsuit in turn arose from an episode in which he had made use of his political office to "hit on" young women in his employ. Not content with forcing his whole Cabinet to join in the deception, Clinton used his own staff to suggest that Monica Lewinsky was "stalking" him, an accusation that was highly defamatory and damaging and might well have been believed if she had not been in possession of proof. This extremely sordid behavior led to the surfacing of many earlier allegations. These included charges of coerced sex, amounting to rape, from more than one believable witness. (The story of that revolting conduct is told in my book No One Left To Lie To.) But a majority of the country made light of the entire business, regarding it as a "peccadillo" or private matter. Two of Clinton's hastily recruited spiritual advisors, Jesse Jackson and Billy Graham, even defended the exercise of his special needs as an alpha male, overlooking the crucial fact that his entire defense consisted of denying having done so. Jesse Jackson has gone on to admit the fathering of an out-of-wedlock child, without any noticeable effect on the rate of his pious public appearances. So it seems that the American public is by no mean as censorious either as it believes itself to be or as others believe it to be.
Shaha Riza had been a senior employee of the World Bank before Paul Wolfowitz was appointed, and their long-term and stable relationship was no secret. The decision to find her another post was made in order to avoid even the faintest appearance of any conflict of interest. There was not the scintilla of a suggestion of any sexual harassment or exploitation. But a political vendetta, in which many high-minded European figures took an extremely active part, made it impossible for him to continue in his post. Contrast this with the letter sent to the investigators appointed by the IMF to look into the "affair" between Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Piroska Nagy, a female employee who had been subjected to unwanted attentions but had finally succumbed to them. Contesting the finding that their relationship met the proper definition of "consensual," she described Strauss-Kahn as "a man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command." (Her delicate phrasing is somewhat outdone by that of Tristane Banon, a young reporter who claims to have suffered an earlier attempted rape at his hands, in the course of which he behaved like "a rutting chimpanzee.") The IMF nonetheless decided that a formal apology would meet the case of Nagy and that no abuse of power had occurred. Exactly who, here, has been demonstrating astonishing naivete in matters sexual?
The belated breakup of the Schwarzenegger-Shriver marriage and the hard time being given to Newt Gingrich by the "social conservatives" may seem to reaffirm the idea that broken marriage vows and a political career are not easily compatible in America. But in Paris, it is being openly said that Strauss-Kahn was the victim of some kind of setup. Much hypocrisy is, of course, involved in both reactions. But of the two, the display of the Gallic "shocked—shocked" reflex is by far the least "adult."
Christopher Hitchens' Kindle Single, The Enemy, on the demise of Osama Bin Laden, has just been published.
The End of an Idea — Why Affirmative Action Should Stop
The End of an Idea — Why Affirmative Action Should Stop
We have had about a half-century of racial preferences and often unspoken but real quotas for hiring and admission based on racial identity. If the original intent was to level the playing field for African-Americans and Latinos, who had been subject to systematic and often gratuitously mean discrimination throughout much of the American South and Southwest, nonetheless the current rationale for sustaining affirmative action has become a veritable nightmare of contradictions, biases, and incoherence that is now well beyond reform. Conservatives mostly believe this; an increasing number of liberals quietly think it.
Who Is What?
First, what exactly is race today in America in which intermarriage and immigration have increasingly made it — and its ugly twin racial purity — often irrelevant? We are no longer a country largely 85-90% “white” and 10-12% “black,” but something almost hard to categorize in racial terms. Do university admission officers adopt the 1/16, one-drop racial rule of the old Confederacy? Does being one fourth African-American qualify one for consideration; three-fourths Japanese; half Mexican-American? Does a simple surname add — and often by intent — authenticity and credulity? The son of Linda Hernandez and Jason Smith — a Bobby Smith — is not considered, without genealogical investigation, Hispanic, but the son of Linda Smith and Jason Hernandez — a Roberto Hernandez of equal 50/50 ancestry — is almost instantly? If so, is race a state of mind and personal choice more than circumstances of birth? What exactly is white and what a minority — a dark-skinned Armenian-American is the former, a light-skinned Colombian American is the latter? A dark Sicilian-American is white, Barack Obama is black?
We are reaching the point in a multiracial and intermarried America where admissions officers and employers simply would have to hire British genealogists to trace our bloodlines — and instead, in millions of cases, therefore resort ad hoc to what Americans profess or think they are. Plenty of societies in history have predicated preferences on race — apartheid South Africa, Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, and the Confederacy are the most obvious — but all at some point had to codify their prejudices by some sort of repugnantly explicit genealogical science. We differ only in that our racial categories are said to be for preferences and recompense rather than for discrimination and punishment, and that we believe in our intellectual and moral arrogance that racial biases can, in our careful hands, be used for good purpose.
Sins of the Father
Second, there is no longer an easy yardstick by which to calibrate skin color or racial identity with past or present oppression. The original, noble enough justification of affirmative action rested on two principles: a sort of reparations that extended preference to atone for undeniable past discrimination; and a leveling of the playing field that assumed ongoing prejudice based on outward appearance and accompanying stereotyping — usually in terms of white privilege used against the darker other. But in 2011, such notions have become surreal. Someone with quite dark skin from India or Egypt surely is more easily recognizable as “the other” than someone indistinguishable from the “white” majority who has a Latino surname; yet would not a college admissions officer more likely admit a Pedro Gomez than a Tarsam Singh?
Is there a color-coded graph somewhere that says the darker one is, the more consideration one is due? Apparently not — given that most East Asians and Arabs are not usually extended affirmative action status. OK, but do third-generation affluent Japanese-Americans qualify for preferences on the rationale that their parents as children were interned in camps in the American West; or fifth-generation Chinese because their great-great-grandparents were treated horribly while building the transcontinental railroad?
Obama's Newest Ambush
Obama's Newest Ambush
By Caroline GlickIt is hard to believe, but it appears that in the wake of the Palestinian unity deal that brings Hamas, the genocidal, al-Qaida-aligned, local franchise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, into a partnership with Fatah, US President Barack Obama has decided to open a new round of pressure on Israel to give away its land and national rights to the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that this is the case. But apparently it is.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in Washington, and before the premier has a chance to give his scheduled address to a joint session of Congress, Obama will give a new speech to the Arab world. In that speech, Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more.
On the one hand, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told the Journal that Arab leaders are clamoring for a new US initiative to force Israel to make new concessions. Joining this supposed clamor are the administration-allied pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, and the administration-allied New York Times.
On the other hand, the Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.
The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas and its partners in Fatah.
THE SIGNALS that Obama is setting his sights on coercing Israel into agreeing to surrender its capital and heartland to Hamas and its partners in Fatah came in three forms this week. First, administration officials are trying to lower the bar that Hamas needs to pass in order to be considered a legitimate political force.
After Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal in March 2007, the US and its colleagues in the so-called Middle East Quartet - Russia, the EU and the UN - set three conditions that Hamas needed to meet to be accepted by them as legitimate. It needed to recognize Israel's right to exist, agree to respect existing agreements with Israel, and renounce terrorism.
These are not difficult conditions. Fatah is perceived as having met them even though it is still a terrorist organization and its leaders refuse to accept Israel's right to exist and refuse to abide by any of the major commitments they took upon themselves in precious agreements with Israel. Hamas could easily follow Fatah's lead.
But Hamas refuses. So, speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius two weeks ago, administration officials lowered the bar.
They said Hamas had made major concessions to Fatah in their agreement because it agreed to accept provisions of the 2009 unity deal drafted by the Mubarak government that it rejected two year ago and because Hamas agreed that the unity government will be manned by "technocrats" rather than terrorists.
Even if these contentions are true, they are completely ridiculous. In point of fact, all the 2009 agreement says is that Hamas will refrain from demanding to join the US-trained and funded Fatah army in Judea and Samaria. As for the "technocratic" government, who does the Obama administration think will control these "technocrats"? And as to the truth of these contentions, in an interview last week with the New York Times, Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashal denied that he had agreed to the terms of the 2009 agreement.
Indeed, he said that Fatah agreed to add annexes to the agreement reflecting Hamas's positions.
The second pitch the administration and its friends have adopted ahead of Obama's address next week is that Hamas has become more moderate or may become more moderate.
Robert Malley, who in the past advised Obama's presidential campaign, made this argument last week in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Malley claimed that by joining the government, Hamas will be more moved by US pressure. A New York Times editorial last Saturday argued that Hamas may have moderated, and even if it hasn't, "Washington needs to press Mr. Netanyahu back to the peace table."
Adding their voices to the din, Middle Eastern leaders like Amr Moussa, the frontrunner to serve as Egypt's next president, and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan, have given interviews to the US media this week in which they denied that Hamas is even a terrorist organization.
Here it is important to note that none of the administration's statements about the Hamas- Fatah deal and none of the media coverage related to it have included any mention of the fact that Hamas deliberately murders entire families and targets children specifically. No one mentions last month's Hamas guided rocket attack which deliberately targeted an Israeli school bus. Hamas murdered 16-year-old Daniel Viflic in that attack. No one has mentioned the café massacres, the bus bombings, the university campus massacres, the breaking into homes massacres, the Passover Seder massacres Hamas has carried out and bragged about in recent years. No one has mentioned that when seen as a portion of the population, Hamas has killed far more Israelis than al-Qaida has killed Americans.
The final pitch the administration and its surrogates are making is that the deal needs to be seen as part of the overall regional shift towards popular rule. This pitch too is difficult to make.
After all, the first casualty of the Arab world's shift towards popular rule is the 30-year-old Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Now that Egypt's citizens have gotten rid of US-ally Hosni Mubarak, they have committed themselves to getting rid of the peace he upheld with Israel throughout his long reign.
Again, despite the difficulties, the Obama administration is clearly willing to make the case. Regarding Egypt, they argue that the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power is a good. This was the point of Obama's Passover and Israel Independence Day messages.
As for the regional shift, the fact that Obama reportedly intends to place the so-called Palestinian- Israeli peace process into the regional context signals that he sees potential for an agreement between Israel and Syria as well. His advisers telegraphed this view to Ignatius.
Obama's advisers made the unlikely argument that if Syrian leader Bashar Assad survives the popular demonstrations calling for his overthrow, he will feel compelled to distance his regime from Iran because his Sunni-majority population has been critical of his alliance with the Shi'ite mullocracy.
This argument is unlikely given that the same officials recognize that if Assad survives, he will owe his regime's survival to Iran. As they reminded Ignatius, US intelligence officials reported last month that Iran has "secretly supplied Assad with tear gas, anti-riot gear and other tools of suppression."
WHAT IS perhaps most remarkable about Obama's apparent plan to use the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an excuse for a new round of diplomatic warfare against Israel is how poorly coordinated his steps have been with the PLO-Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat always viewed the US obsession with getting the Arabs and Israel to sign peace treaties as a strategic asset. Anytime they wanted to weaken Israel, they just needed to sound the fake peace drum loudly enough to get the White House's attention. US presidents looking for the opportunity to "make history" were always ready to take their bait.
Unlike his predecessors, Obama's interest in the Palestinians is not opportunistic. He is a true believer. And because of his deep-seated commitment to the Palestinians, his policies are even more radically anti-Israel than the PLO-Fatah's. It was Obama, not Abbas, who demanded that Jews be barred from building anything in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It is the Obama administration, not the PLO-Fatah, that is leading the charge to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood.
Like his belated move to demand a permanent abrogation of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Abbas arguably embraced Hamas because Obama left him no choice. He has no interest in making peace with Israel, so the only thing he can do under the circumstances Obama has created is embrace Hamas. He can't be less pro-Islamic than the US president.
ALL OF this brings us to Netanyahu and his trip to Washington next week. Obviously Obama's decision to upstage the premier with his new outreach-to-the-Arab-world speech will make Netanyahu's visit more challenging than it was already going to be.
Obama is clearly betting that by moving first, he will be able to coerce Netanyahu to make still more concessions of land and principles.
Certainly, Netanyahu's earlier decisions to cave in to Obama's pressure with his acceptance of Palestinian statehood and his subsequent acceptance of a Jewish building freeze give Obama good reason to believe he can back Netanyahu into a corner. Defense Minister Ehud Barak's hysterical warnings about a diplomatic "tsunami" at the UN in September if Israel fails to capitulate to Obama today no doubt add to Obama's sense that he can expect Netanyahu to dance to his drums, no matter how hostile the beat.
But Netanyahu doesn't have to give in. He can stick to his guns and defend the country. He can continue on the correct path he has forged of repeating the truth about Hamas. He can warn about the growing threat of Egypt. He can describe the Iranian-supported butchery Assad is carrying out against his own people and note that a regime that murders its own will not make peace with the Jewish state. And he can point out the fact that as a capitalist, liberal democracy which protects the lives and property of its citizens, Israel is the only stable country in the region and the US's only reliable regional ally.
True, if Netanyahu does these things, he will not win himself any friends in the White House.
But he never had a chance of winning Obama and his advisers over anyway. He will empower Israel's allies in Congress, though. And more importantly, whether he is loved or hated in Washington, if Netanyahu does these things, he will be able to return home to Jerusalem with the sure knowledge that he earned his salary this month.
Federal Food Police Against Business and Science
Federal Food Police Against Business and Science
By Steven MalangaLate last month a host of government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission and the Agriculture Department proposed what the media described as "tough'' but "voluntary" new standards for food companies that advertise to children, designed to pressure the businesses into incorporating much lower amounts of fat, sodium and sugar in foods aimed at a young audience.
Barely a week later the Journal of the American Medical Association published new research which suggested that lowering sodium consumption not only doesn't benefit most people, it may actually increase risk of heart attacks for some. The research was apparently so disturbing to government regulators that some felt the need to step out and criticize the results in the media, something that they rarely do.
If you've been following the latest research on diet in the scientific journals, you would understand why the regulators appeared so defensive. Increasingly, some of the basic assumptions about nutrition that have formed the core of the government's recommendations on what Americans should eat are being questioned by studies which suggest the advice is not merely ineffective but may be counterproductive, contributing among other things to the rise in obesity which the White House decries. Rather than be humbled and made cautious by such research, however, government regulators are simply plowing ahead with a conviction that their ideas about nutrition are correct. Businesses are expected to fall into line, regardless of the implications for their products.
The sodium controversy is a good example of how distorted the arguments have become. The regulators dismissed the new study by suggesting that the results were unusual because the research was flawed. But this was not the first time that a peer-reviewed study had cast doubt on the idea that most of us consume too much sodium. Indeed, more than a decade ago Science Magazine highlighted the controversy with a piece entitled "The (Political) Science of Salt" which noted that, "Three decades of controversy over the putative blood pressure benefits from salt reduction are demonstrating how the demands of good science clash with the pressures of public health policy." More recently, in a February, 2010, article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Michael Alderman, a leading hypertension expert, reviewed the relevant recent research and found a disturbing lack of consistency in the results of a dozen studies on the relationship of salt to our health, which prompted him to observe in the New York Times that any potential population-wide government requirements or recommendations on sodium reduction would amount to a giant uncontrolled experiment with the U.S. population with potentially unintended consequences.
The legacy of the government's dietary guidelines may turn out to be a disturbing list of unintended consequences, including possibly the current obesity epidemic. Since the 1970s, the government's food recommendations have largely been aimed at cutting our consumption of cholesterol and fat, especially saturated fat, to reduce cardiovascular disease and stroke and the conditions that might lead to them, including obesity.
The guidelines, first produced by Sen. George McGovern's Select Subcommittee on Nutrition and Human Needs, were controversial from the start because there was no conclusive evidence at the time that diet was a major contributor to heart disease. But the committee and its scientific advisers proceeded because, they argued, there were no risks in "eating less meat, less fat, less saturated fat...more fruits, vegetables, unsaturated fats and cereal products." Over the years this has become a mantra of the public health establishment about diet, namely that even when the research is inconclusive, what could possibly be the harm in consuming less of things like meat and salt?
With the federal bureaucracy behind them, the guidelines became widely accepted even though subsequent research often questioned them. Two of the government's principal studies on diet and heart disease, published in the 1980s, were intended to offer reassurances, but instead produced results that were inconclusive, at best. The science has only gotten more troubling since then, as researchers have begun to wonder if the obesity epidemic is in some way related to the change in diet prompted by the guidelines. A 2008 article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine argued that Americans have actually followed the government's advice, reducing intake of fat and increasing the proportion of our calories from carbohydrates. The result had been a rise in overall calorie intake, leading the authors to wonder if, "the U.S. dietary guidelines recommending fat restriction might have worsened rather than helped the obesity epidemic." They criticized the government for relying on "weak evidentiary support" in the guidelines.
In April of last year Scientific American reviewed the mounting number of studies contradicting the governments point of view in a piece entitled, "Carbs Against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart." And in October of 2010 the journal Nutrition weighed in with a piece by five researchers entitled "In the Face of Contradictory Evidence: Report of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee," which cited dozens of peer-reviewed studies questioning the science at the foundation of the guidelines.
None of this has deterred the government. The new, 2010 guidelines, for instance, ignored the contrary evidence and recommended significantly lowering salt consumption for everyone over age 50. As in the past, the food regulators seem to have little concern for the unintended consequences of their untested theories. Food companies have argued, for instance, that the sodium goals set by the government are so low that they will make some foods like prepared soups unpalatable to kids. We have no idea what other foods kids will turn to instead.
More than three decades of government involvement in dietary recommendations have led to a situation our grandparents and great-grandparents would have found unthinkable: people turning to government for advice on what to eat. In the interim a whole industry of nutrition writers and diet books has emerged to interpret the Washington diet to us, or contend against it. Not surprisingly, some Americans are confused.
If the federal government unleashed a Pandora's Box of unintended consequences more than three decades ago, it's going to be awfully hard to undo much of what Washington has done. We haven't even begun trying yet.
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