18 December 2009 re PLEASE CUT OBAMA SOME SLACK
We in Europe (for the most part) envy you who have a brilliant president, and we are dismayed that so many of you lucky Americans are so critical, even opposed, to him instead of helping him. Not just your right wing Christian freaks and your Cheney neo-conservatives, but your so-called "progressives" (we call ours "politically correct") who seem more interested in gay marriage, abortion at government expense, rushing out of Afghanistan and Iraq no matter the consequences etc.
Far too many Americans simply do not realise that even a political genius - and Obama may yet prove to be one - cannot quickly deal with "too many open files": in other words the ten year catastrophe of the G W Bush years. G W got us two "Vietnams" (he got us into and then abandoned Afghanistan for Iraq, and Obama has to find a way out of both without total disaster); ten years of neglect of climate change (maybe it's to late now to avoid appalling consequences); failure to get the US what we all have - universal health care; actual encouragement of the plutocracy and big business now all but all-powerful in US politics; and subservience of US mid East foreign policy to extremist Israeli governments. And the list of these open files goes on and on - and there's only 24 hours in a day.
Faced with such bitter opposition and a far from effectively Democratic Congress, he has tried to seek some bi-partisanship, but the hard right in the Senate (a most undemocratic institution!) won't yield - the Republicans have their eyes on the mid-term, even the Presidential election. So anything goes to bring down the US president.
For us in Europe the possibility of a return to Republican rule is a nightmare. American democracy plus the US Supreme Court got us G W Bush. And at one point it looked as if McCain would win in 2008 and quite possibly deliver us President Madame Pailin!
For heavens sake, you "progressives", recognise your (and our) existential predicament and back Obama! He's your (and our) best hope - at least he understands what needs to be done - and your extremists on left and right are out to ditch him! You too, must learn that compromise is an essential element in democracy - though of course the problem is just how far to compromise, and just what elements of one's own agenda can be postponed in order to get vital things done. Abortion, gay marriage, etc. and quitting wars precipitately alienate maybe half of the US electorate. Do you want to lose control of Congress in this year's elections?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Chilcot Inquiry
THE UK's CHILCOT INQUIRY: CAN IT REVEAL THE REAL REASONS FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ, AND WHY BOTH US AND UK DEMOCRACY FAILED TO STOP IT?
16 December 2009
The UK’s ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war has very broad terms of reference: to examine the UK’s involvement in Iraq both during the run up to the conflict and the military action and its aftermath – how decisions were made and actions taken over the period from the summer of 2001 to July 2009.
We may find out why Mr. Blair did not follow Harold Wilson’s precedent over Vietnam and refuse British involvement in Iraq. But this is an inquiry by UK "Mandarins" - the cream of the UK's bureaucracy. So there is much concern that two vital questions will be dodged :- what were the real reasons for the invasion? And why did both US presidential democracy and UK parliamentary democracy fail so spectacularly by voting for war without considering the consequences? Answers are essential if, as is claimed, the purpose of Chilcot is to draw lessons for the future.
How was it that UK and US elected representatives in Parliament and Congress – Labour and Conservative, Republican and Democrat – came to authorise the war (House of Commons, 18 March 2003, 412-149, House of Representatives 10 October 2002, 296-133, Senate next day 77-23). How did such overwhelming majorities ignore the equally overwhelming non-secret evidence of the unacceptably severe worldwide repercussions almost certain to follow an invasion not approved by the UN Security Council?
Yet there were several top “establishment” figures, on both right and left, warning against an “unapproved” invasion. To cite just three: Brent Scowcroft, widely respected Republican top security guru, warned on 4 August 2002 that an invasion “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the ‘war on terrorism’”,.and Robin Cook, former British Labour Foreign Secretary, in his resignation speech on 17 March 2003, stressed the dire consequences for the West of losing the extraordinary worldwide backing the US had achieved after “9/11”. Veteran Senator Byrd’s even more forceful and prescient speeches of 12 February 2003 and 19 March 2003 set out the principal reasons against giving war powers to President G.W. Bush. How was it that these and many other distinguished voices went all but unheard by major media and by elected representatives in the UK and the US?
We are not talking rocket science – just a basic knowledge of foreign affairs and a dose of common sense! My own piece in The Independent on 10 September 2002, six months before the invasion, merely voiced what many well qualified observers had warned several more months earlier – that 9/11 was clearly designed to provoke a unilateral disproportionate and ill-directed response from the United States to destabilise the Middle East, provoke a clash of civilisations, and create worldwide economic and political havoc to Al Qaeda’s advantage; President G. W. Bush’s occupation of Afghanistan had won all but unanimous support worldwide, and 9/11 had not succeeded - but an invasion of Iraq could well prove exactly what Al Qaeda had sought to trigger.
In 2002 any elected representative could have done as Senator Byrd did and gather their own cogent reasons for opposing an Iraq war. Among those circulating at the time:-
1. It would be folly to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq while Afghanistan was still unfinished business. It would inevitably lose to Iraq top priority for troops and reconstruction – so putting in jeopardy success in Afghanistan.
2. An invasion would much help Al Qaeda in stirring up anti-Western and anti-Israeli bitterness when what was needed was to undercut Al Qaeda’s appeal with a major effort to cure the running sore of Israel/Palestine - never had the chances of success been greater.
3. An invasion not approved by the UN Security Council would split the West and gravely weaken NATO given French and German opposition.
4. A weakened UN would inhibit the emergence after the Cold War of a new era of cooperation indispensable for confronting, not only terrorism, but other great issues from genocide to existential challenges, like climate change.
5. Occupying a second Muslim country would greatly assist Al Qaeda in provoking the“clash of civilisations” it needed to expand terrorism from Pakistan to Morocco and within the Western countries themselves.
6. Putting US forces in Iraq to its west as well as in Afghanistan to its east would surely end Iran’s tentative co-operation in 2002 over the removal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The reformists would lose out to the hard-liners. And Iran would use all means to exert maximum influence not just in Iraq but in the whole region.
7. Because Iraq is fissiparous – replete with ethnic and religious divides -. serious civil disturbance must be anticipated unless Saddam Hussein were immediately replaced by a firm interim governor. But the projected troop levels would be too low to cope. Even more ominously, Britain was known to have complained to the US of a lack of planning for the occupation and eventual withdrawal.
8. Saddam Hussein’s fascist style secular government was doing the West’s work – preventing Al Qaeda from getting a foothold in Iraq. So Iraq could wait at least while the French plan for beefed up inspections ran its course.
9. Independent experts were agreed that Iraq was far from obtaining nuclear weapons and had no means of effective delivery abroad of chemical or biological weapons. Invading Iraq would impede the urgent international effort required to deal with North Korea’s then imminent nuclear weapons capability, thus dissuading others, such as Iran, from proliferating.
And what we most need the truth about:-
10. There was compelling circumstantial evidence that Vice President Cheney and his fellow neo-conservatives in top positions in the Bush administration saw the occupation of Iraq as the key to clinching US dominance in a uni-polar world – so ensuring success for their much publicised Project for New American Century. A dazzling prospect for the G. W. Bush presidency, but one doomed to failure because so obviously based on ignorance of the realities of the Middle East and so heedless of the determined opposition to US global hegemony of Russia, China and even of some allies.
With such compelling arguments around - what prevented a cross-party refusal to follow Bush and Blair? Party loyalty on such a crucial issue should not have choked debate in the UK parliament just because the party leaders, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duncan Smith, were pro-war. Or do backbench MPs and members of Congress no longer perceive themselves as watchdogs for their constituents and their country? Were many simply beguiled by the intelligence that was so obviously being manipulated? How many naive humanitarians voted primarily to end a cruel tyranny? How many mistakenly believed Iraq would be a cake-walk? How many failed to seek independent advice on foreign affairs? How many – particularly in Congress but also some UK MPs – were influenced by electoral considerations?
While the UK and the US commend the virtues of democracy to the world we need to ask with Senator Byrd at that fateful Senate Debate why was the Senate – and equally the UK Parliament – “silent - ominously, dreadfully silent”. Why was there “no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out to the nation the pros and cons of this particular war“? This is all the more extraordinary when the British people, usually so un-demonstrative - were manifesting widespread opposition to the proposed invasion (e.g. the “March of the Million” through London) and polls suggested that a majority of Americans did not want an invasion without the British.
This grave failure of democracy in both the UK and the US must be explained and the facts faced if the political and media “establishments” of both countries are to make the fundamental readjustments needed to move on from the G. W. Bush era of confrontation and its dire worldwide consequences, into a long overdue era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.
To claim “we were tricked into war” is no excuse, rather it is an admission of culpable negligence if pleaded by our elected representatives. And to try to hide the full reasons for the invasion - especially the ill-conceived attempt to clinch US global hegemony via Iraq - will leave the unattainable dream of a uni-polar world alive for the far right and the neo-cons to brandish in an effort to wreck the Obama administration's efforts to bring in a new era of international cooperation after the self-destructive years of G.W. Bush confrontation.
Can Chilcot - an Inquiry by those closest to the UK government apparatus, and the US/UK media - so tainted by majority support for the invasion - now bring themselves to face the truth about Iraq and give it to the British and American people? Or will the lessons of "Iraq" never be learned?
[ends
16 December 2009
The UK’s ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war has very broad terms of reference: to examine the UK’s involvement in Iraq both during the run up to the conflict and the military action and its aftermath – how decisions were made and actions taken over the period from the summer of 2001 to July 2009.
We may find out why Mr. Blair did not follow Harold Wilson’s precedent over Vietnam and refuse British involvement in Iraq. But this is an inquiry by UK "Mandarins" - the cream of the UK's bureaucracy. So there is much concern that two vital questions will be dodged :- what were the real reasons for the invasion? And why did both US presidential democracy and UK parliamentary democracy fail so spectacularly by voting for war without considering the consequences? Answers are essential if, as is claimed, the purpose of Chilcot is to draw lessons for the future.
How was it that UK and US elected representatives in Parliament and Congress – Labour and Conservative, Republican and Democrat – came to authorise the war (House of Commons, 18 March 2003, 412-149, House of Representatives 10 October 2002, 296-133, Senate next day 77-23). How did such overwhelming majorities ignore the equally overwhelming non-secret evidence of the unacceptably severe worldwide repercussions almost certain to follow an invasion not approved by the UN Security Council?
Yet there were several top “establishment” figures, on both right and left, warning against an “unapproved” invasion. To cite just three: Brent Scowcroft, widely respected Republican top security guru, warned on 4 August 2002 that an invasion “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the ‘war on terrorism’”,.and Robin Cook, former British Labour Foreign Secretary, in his resignation speech on 17 March 2003, stressed the dire consequences for the West of losing the extraordinary worldwide backing the US had achieved after “9/11”. Veteran Senator Byrd’s even more forceful and prescient speeches of 12 February 2003 and 19 March 2003 set out the principal reasons against giving war powers to President G.W. Bush. How was it that these and many other distinguished voices went all but unheard by major media and by elected representatives in the UK and the US?
We are not talking rocket science – just a basic knowledge of foreign affairs and a dose of common sense! My own piece in The Independent on 10 September 2002, six months before the invasion, merely voiced what many well qualified observers had warned several more months earlier – that 9/11 was clearly designed to provoke a unilateral disproportionate and ill-directed response from the United States to destabilise the Middle East, provoke a clash of civilisations, and create worldwide economic and political havoc to Al Qaeda’s advantage; President G. W. Bush’s occupation of Afghanistan had won all but unanimous support worldwide, and 9/11 had not succeeded - but an invasion of Iraq could well prove exactly what Al Qaeda had sought to trigger.
In 2002 any elected representative could have done as Senator Byrd did and gather their own cogent reasons for opposing an Iraq war. Among those circulating at the time:-
1. It would be folly to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq while Afghanistan was still unfinished business. It would inevitably lose to Iraq top priority for troops and reconstruction – so putting in jeopardy success in Afghanistan.
2. An invasion would much help Al Qaeda in stirring up anti-Western and anti-Israeli bitterness when what was needed was to undercut Al Qaeda’s appeal with a major effort to cure the running sore of Israel/Palestine - never had the chances of success been greater.
3. An invasion not approved by the UN Security Council would split the West and gravely weaken NATO given French and German opposition.
4. A weakened UN would inhibit the emergence after the Cold War of a new era of cooperation indispensable for confronting, not only terrorism, but other great issues from genocide to existential challenges, like climate change.
5. Occupying a second Muslim country would greatly assist Al Qaeda in provoking the“clash of civilisations” it needed to expand terrorism from Pakistan to Morocco and within the Western countries themselves.
6. Putting US forces in Iraq to its west as well as in Afghanistan to its east would surely end Iran’s tentative co-operation in 2002 over the removal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The reformists would lose out to the hard-liners. And Iran would use all means to exert maximum influence not just in Iraq but in the whole region.
7. Because Iraq is fissiparous – replete with ethnic and religious divides -. serious civil disturbance must be anticipated unless Saddam Hussein were immediately replaced by a firm interim governor. But the projected troop levels would be too low to cope. Even more ominously, Britain was known to have complained to the US of a lack of planning for the occupation and eventual withdrawal.
8. Saddam Hussein’s fascist style secular government was doing the West’s work – preventing Al Qaeda from getting a foothold in Iraq. So Iraq could wait at least while the French plan for beefed up inspections ran its course.
9. Independent experts were agreed that Iraq was far from obtaining nuclear weapons and had no means of effective delivery abroad of chemical or biological weapons. Invading Iraq would impede the urgent international effort required to deal with North Korea’s then imminent nuclear weapons capability, thus dissuading others, such as Iran, from proliferating.
And what we most need the truth about:-
10. There was compelling circumstantial evidence that Vice President Cheney and his fellow neo-conservatives in top positions in the Bush administration saw the occupation of Iraq as the key to clinching US dominance in a uni-polar world – so ensuring success for their much publicised Project for New American Century. A dazzling prospect for the G. W. Bush presidency, but one doomed to failure because so obviously based on ignorance of the realities of the Middle East and so heedless of the determined opposition to US global hegemony of Russia, China and even of some allies.
With such compelling arguments around - what prevented a cross-party refusal to follow Bush and Blair? Party loyalty on such a crucial issue should not have choked debate in the UK parliament just because the party leaders, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duncan Smith, were pro-war. Or do backbench MPs and members of Congress no longer perceive themselves as watchdogs for their constituents and their country? Were many simply beguiled by the intelligence that was so obviously being manipulated? How many naive humanitarians voted primarily to end a cruel tyranny? How many mistakenly believed Iraq would be a cake-walk? How many failed to seek independent advice on foreign affairs? How many – particularly in Congress but also some UK MPs – were influenced by electoral considerations?
While the UK and the US commend the virtues of democracy to the world we need to ask with Senator Byrd at that fateful Senate Debate why was the Senate – and equally the UK Parliament – “silent - ominously, dreadfully silent”. Why was there “no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out to the nation the pros and cons of this particular war“? This is all the more extraordinary when the British people, usually so un-demonstrative - were manifesting widespread opposition to the proposed invasion (e.g. the “March of the Million” through London) and polls suggested that a majority of Americans did not want an invasion without the British.
This grave failure of democracy in both the UK and the US must be explained and the facts faced if the political and media “establishments” of both countries are to make the fundamental readjustments needed to move on from the G. W. Bush era of confrontation and its dire worldwide consequences, into a long overdue era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.
To claim “we were tricked into war” is no excuse, rather it is an admission of culpable negligence if pleaded by our elected representatives. And to try to hide the full reasons for the invasion - especially the ill-conceived attempt to clinch US global hegemony via Iraq - will leave the unattainable dream of a uni-polar world alive for the far right and the neo-cons to brandish in an effort to wreck the Obama administration's efforts to bring in a new era of international cooperation after the self-destructive years of G.W. Bush confrontation.
Can Chilcot - an Inquiry by those closest to the UK government apparatus, and the US/UK media - so tainted by majority support for the invasion - now bring themselves to face the truth about Iraq and give it to the British and American people? Or will the lessons of "Iraq" never be learned?
[ends
Sunday, October 25, 2009
STOP BLAIR BECOMING EU "PRESIDENT"
STOP BLAIR BECOMING EU "PRESIDENT" 25 Oct. 2009
tags: stop Blair, Bush, EU Presidency, Sarkozy, Merkel, Iraq war, Afghanistan
Thank you, Lord Rees-Mogg! Yes - Blair must be stopped! How can any European leader - particularly a French or German leader - for a moment think of appointing Blair EU "President" ?
No European has done as much harm to the EU as Tony Blair who broke with France and Germany dividing our continent by invading Iraq with the hapless G.W. Bush. No one, not G W Bush nor Cheney, was so successful in deceiving the Anglo-American politicians and peoples with his forged arguments for war.
America's, Europe's, and NATO's desperate position in Afghanistan directly results from neglect due to the priority of the Bush/Blair folly in Iraq.
My consultancy is a Cassandra. From Sept 2002 we warned just why "Iraq" would end in catastrophe for the West. See our www.dipconsult.eu for the real reasons for the war, and its the worldwide consequences. But it was Blair they heard!
Isn't it enough that myopic Bush made Blair toothless peacemaker for the Middle East he has done so much to wreck?
tags: stop Blair, Bush, EU Presidency, Sarkozy, Merkel, Iraq war, Afghanistan
Thank you, Lord Rees-Mogg! Yes - Blair must be stopped! How can any European leader - particularly a French or German leader - for a moment think of appointing Blair EU "President" ?
No European has done as much harm to the EU as Tony Blair who broke with France and Germany dividing our continent by invading Iraq with the hapless G.W. Bush. No one, not G W Bush nor Cheney, was so successful in deceiving the Anglo-American politicians and peoples with his forged arguments for war.
America's, Europe's, and NATO's desperate position in Afghanistan directly results from neglect due to the priority of the Bush/Blair folly in Iraq.
My consultancy is a Cassandra. From Sept 2002 we warned just why "Iraq" would end in catastrophe for the West. See our www.dipconsult.eu for the real reasons for the war, and its the worldwide consequences. But it was Blair they heard!
Isn't it enough that myopic Bush made Blair toothless peacemaker for the Middle East he has done so much to wreck?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The only way forward in Afghanistan is internationalisation
The only way forward in Afghanistan is internationalisation. 24 Oct 2009
We hear all the time what America must do, what NATO must do. But, after the criminal folly of the Bush/Blair catastrophic (for Western interests) invasion of Iraq, America is in terminal decline as remaining superpower - it is now first amongst equals. And equals do not include Europe, the main part of NATO apart from the US. That's because Europe does not have a single voice in the world. And NATO is seen by the great powers as, like the US, an ailing entity. Worse - the Europeans see Afghanistan as where the US is trying to get them to pull American chestnuts out of the fire lit by Bush & Blair in Iraq (which deprived America and NATO of success in Afghanistan). Ask the chancelleries of the world if this is not privately their reading!
But the great powers (and all the Security Council veto-bearers) have a major common interest in the stabilisation of Iraq. So do all of Afghanistan's neighbours - the ex-soviets, Iran, Pakistan, and China. This is shared by many other countries notably India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and all the other Arab and Muslim countries.
This makes a formidable force if directed on that sole issue of Afghanistan stabilisation. Many of these countries have unique abilities to put pressure on the various parties from Taliban, warlords and others. Many, like the Saudis, have financial and other resources which they could bring to bear.
No, the stabilisation of Afghanistan is not impossible if approached as a major national interest of so many countries.
But America must first show clearly (if tacitly) that it has abandoned as unfeasable (after the disaster of the Iraq war) the G W Bush/Cheney/neo-conservative aim for a unipolar world, that is for US worldwide hegemony sought by the Project for a New American Century.
Determined but sensitive diplomacy such as the US now possesses could restore at least in so far as Afghanistan concerned, that astonishing international support that G W Bush threw away by invading Iraq. It would take a good year to determine what each power could provide and to organise their co-ordinated actions.
Meanwhile the US would have to hold the fort in Afghanistan. Of course, once this internationalisation was known to be the US objective, it would be much easier to gather the various elements of pressure to be exerted on the parties.
Such joint efforts involving countries that are no friends of each other are possible. Study the situations in Europe after the Wars of Religion and after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In the latter case France, the defeated former superpower, by good diplomacy recovered much ground (only to throw it away again!). The US, as first among equals could achieve Afghanistan stabilisation although it cannot win - after the Bush era neglect and the present perception by Al Qaeda and Taliban and many others - that America is the losing once-was-superpower.
We hear all the time what America must do, what NATO must do. But, after the criminal folly of the Bush/Blair catastrophic (for Western interests) invasion of Iraq, America is in terminal decline as remaining superpower - it is now first amongst equals. And equals do not include Europe, the main part of NATO apart from the US. That's because Europe does not have a single voice in the world. And NATO is seen by the great powers as, like the US, an ailing entity. Worse - the Europeans see Afghanistan as where the US is trying to get them to pull American chestnuts out of the fire lit by Bush & Blair in Iraq (which deprived America and NATO of success in Afghanistan). Ask the chancelleries of the world if this is not privately their reading!
But the great powers (and all the Security Council veto-bearers) have a major common interest in the stabilisation of Iraq. So do all of Afghanistan's neighbours - the ex-soviets, Iran, Pakistan, and China. This is shared by many other countries notably India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and all the other Arab and Muslim countries.
This makes a formidable force if directed on that sole issue of Afghanistan stabilisation. Many of these countries have unique abilities to put pressure on the various parties from Taliban, warlords and others. Many, like the Saudis, have financial and other resources which they could bring to bear.
No, the stabilisation of Afghanistan is not impossible if approached as a major national interest of so many countries.
But America must first show clearly (if tacitly) that it has abandoned as unfeasable (after the disaster of the Iraq war) the G W Bush/Cheney/neo-conservative aim for a unipolar world, that is for US worldwide hegemony sought by the Project for a New American Century.
Determined but sensitive diplomacy such as the US now possesses could restore at least in so far as Afghanistan concerned, that astonishing international support that G W Bush threw away by invading Iraq. It would take a good year to determine what each power could provide and to organise their co-ordinated actions.
Meanwhile the US would have to hold the fort in Afghanistan. Of course, once this internationalisation was known to be the US objective, it would be much easier to gather the various elements of pressure to be exerted on the parties.
Such joint efforts involving countries that are no friends of each other are possible. Study the situations in Europe after the Wars of Religion and after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In the latter case France, the defeated former superpower, by good diplomacy recovered much ground (only to throw it away again!). The US, as first among equals could achieve Afghanistan stabilisation although it cannot win - after the Bush era neglect and the present perception by Al Qaeda and Taliban and many others - that America is the losing once-was-superpower.
Friday, October 23, 2009
COMMENT ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT
COMMENT ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT 23 Oct. 2009
Tags: Goldstone report, Russia and Goldstone, Israel Palestine, Afganistan,
Obama & public option health, Obama and cessation settlement constuction
It is entirely the fault of the West for having allowed tiny Israel to become the tail that wags not just the US but the whole Western dog. Russia at least recognises its own self-interest.
Most of us Europeans have immense sympathy for the Jews after WWII. But we failed to give the Jewish survivors the welcome they desperately needed. Hence the very size of the desperate rush to Palestine and the determination of the Jewish terrorists in forcing the UK to abandon the Mandate.
The West then utterly failed in the basic humanitarian duty to look after the Palestinian victims of the establishment of Israel.
That the West helped Israel survive the Arab wars in no way required permitting a resurgent Israel to dominate our foreign policies in the Middle East and beyond.
But we did. And we let Israel/Palestine became an ever-worsening running sore on world affairs - the key focus of Arab and Muslim resentment and hatred against the West.
Well we knew this but - apart from a little palliative aid - we did nothing effective until Al Qaeda woke us up. We know that Al Qaeda & Co. derived (and still does) more support and recruitment from the oppression of the Palestinians than from anything else.
Yet we are STILL doing nothing to enforce a solution of Israel/Palestine even though the shape of a workable, fairly just, settlement has been clear for years.
An invasion of Afghanistan may have been politically inevitable after "9/11" but it was quite obvious, as many of us pointed out, that the essential corollary was to move quickly to a solution of Israel/Palestine (which was then more attainable than ever).
To win against Al Qaeda and Arab and Muslim resentment - the "War on Terror" syndrome - troops to Afghanistan will be far less effective than standing up to the present extremist Israeli government, AIPAC, Mossad, and its other foreign agents and force that indispensable Israel/Palestine settlement. All the powers that count know this full well.
Given the political power of Israel in the US, President Obama needs the help of all those countries and most of all Europe and Russia.
Two litmus tests: will Obama get that public option on US health care? That would mark a major victory towards ending financiers and corporate control of US society. And will he oblige Israel genuinely to stop all further settlement in the occupied territories and in E Jerusalem? That would mark the beginning of US recovering control from Israel of large areas of its foreign policy.
The outcome of those two political battles may well determine the Obama presidency - for the American people themselves, for US success in opening a new era of international cooperation after the catastrophe of the G W Bush years. Those were a doomed armed search for a uni-polar world - the Cheney/neo-conservative hegemonic dream set out in their Project for a New American Century.
Final thought - it hardly needs saying (and a great many Jews are saying) that the establishment of a Palestinian state will do more for the security of Israel than any number of wars and bombs.
Tags: Goldstone report, Russia and Goldstone, Israel Palestine, Afganistan,
Obama & public option health, Obama and cessation settlement constuction
It is entirely the fault of the West for having allowed tiny Israel to become the tail that wags not just the US but the whole Western dog. Russia at least recognises its own self-interest.
Most of us Europeans have immense sympathy for the Jews after WWII. But we failed to give the Jewish survivors the welcome they desperately needed. Hence the very size of the desperate rush to Palestine and the determination of the Jewish terrorists in forcing the UK to abandon the Mandate.
The West then utterly failed in the basic humanitarian duty to look after the Palestinian victims of the establishment of Israel.
That the West helped Israel survive the Arab wars in no way required permitting a resurgent Israel to dominate our foreign policies in the Middle East and beyond.
But we did. And we let Israel/Palestine became an ever-worsening running sore on world affairs - the key focus of Arab and Muslim resentment and hatred against the West.
Well we knew this but - apart from a little palliative aid - we did nothing effective until Al Qaeda woke us up. We know that Al Qaeda & Co. derived (and still does) more support and recruitment from the oppression of the Palestinians than from anything else.
Yet we are STILL doing nothing to enforce a solution of Israel/Palestine even though the shape of a workable, fairly just, settlement has been clear for years.
An invasion of Afghanistan may have been politically inevitable after "9/11" but it was quite obvious, as many of us pointed out, that the essential corollary was to move quickly to a solution of Israel/Palestine (which was then more attainable than ever).
To win against Al Qaeda and Arab and Muslim resentment - the "War on Terror" syndrome - troops to Afghanistan will be far less effective than standing up to the present extremist Israeli government, AIPAC, Mossad, and its other foreign agents and force that indispensable Israel/Palestine settlement. All the powers that count know this full well.
Given the political power of Israel in the US, President Obama needs the help of all those countries and most of all Europe and Russia.
Two litmus tests: will Obama get that public option on US health care? That would mark a major victory towards ending financiers and corporate control of US society. And will he oblige Israel genuinely to stop all further settlement in the occupied territories and in E Jerusalem? That would mark the beginning of US recovering control from Israel of large areas of its foreign policy.
The outcome of those two political battles may well determine the Obama presidency - for the American people themselves, for US success in opening a new era of international cooperation after the catastrophe of the G W Bush years. Those were a doomed armed search for a uni-polar world - the Cheney/neo-conservative hegemonic dream set out in their Project for a New American Century.
Final thought - it hardly needs saying (and a great many Jews are saying) that the establishment of a Palestinian state will do more for the security of Israel than any number of wars and bombs.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
OUR COMMENT on Geert Wilders' arrival in UK
OUR COMMENT on Geert Wilders' arrival in UK 17 October 2009
tags: Geert Wilders, Islam and tolerance, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, choice of religion, atheism, religion and violence, Manuel II Paleologus, political correctness
RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
Although Mr. Wilders expresses himself with extremist language, we favour his admission to the UK - hoping though, that during his visit he will show a decent respect for the opinions of others.
A large number of people are interested in trying to find out if any religion can explain why we are here, or whether atheism is a more realistic position. Many others wonder whether the religion they were born into really does best explain the phenomenon of life and spirituality.
Making up your mind about this all-important matter implies the ability to have calm discussions with people of all views, and for theologians and others to be able to write and publish, freely and without fear, why they believe as they do. In the first decade of the 21st century we are still very far from these fundamentals underlying religious freedom - the freedom to worship or not to worship.
Unfortunately so many people are filled with hatred or resentment of anyone who does not hold their "faith" making fruitful discussion impossible. One notes too, that those least sure of the certainty of their beliefs are often the most full of hatred for "infidels" - for their intolerance helps protect them from doubt.
People so easily forget that their "faith" is faith and not certainty.
Islam seems to be going through a bad phase of such intolerance similar to what Christianity went through with the Inquisition and the 17th century religious wars.
As regards Islam: no one appears to have come forward to answer the question of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (which the present pope got so much blame for citing): "Show me just what it was that Mohammed brought that was new?" A fundamental question that surely deserves an answer? .
Or have we lost the freedom to talk about such things both in the Muslim world and in our own Islamophobic "politically correct" environment?
tags: Geert Wilders, Islam and tolerance, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, choice of religion, atheism, religion and violence, Manuel II Paleologus, political correctness
RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
Although Mr. Wilders expresses himself with extremist language, we favour his admission to the UK - hoping though, that during his visit he will show a decent respect for the opinions of others.
A large number of people are interested in trying to find out if any religion can explain why we are here, or whether atheism is a more realistic position. Many others wonder whether the religion they were born into really does best explain the phenomenon of life and spirituality.
Making up your mind about this all-important matter implies the ability to have calm discussions with people of all views, and for theologians and others to be able to write and publish, freely and without fear, why they believe as they do. In the first decade of the 21st century we are still very far from these fundamentals underlying religious freedom - the freedom to worship or not to worship.
Unfortunately so many people are filled with hatred or resentment of anyone who does not hold their "faith" making fruitful discussion impossible. One notes too, that those least sure of the certainty of their beliefs are often the most full of hatred for "infidels" - for their intolerance helps protect them from doubt.
People so easily forget that their "faith" is faith and not certainty.
Islam seems to be going through a bad phase of such intolerance similar to what Christianity went through with the Inquisition and the 17th century religious wars.
As regards Islam: no one appears to have come forward to answer the question of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (which the present pope got so much blame for citing): "Show me just what it was that Mohammed brought that was new?" A fundamental question that surely deserves an answer? .
Or have we lost the freedom to talk about such things both in the Muslim world and in our own Islamophobic "politically correct" environment?
US Christianity
BOTH ‘LEFT’ AND ‘RIGHT’ – THE CHRISTIAN DILEMMA IN AMERICA
tags: American Christians, religious right, US Catholic vote, G W Bush, Obama, politically correct, family values, Vatican foreign policy, Monica Lewinsky, Michael Moore, abortion, justice for Palestinians, US Senate voting
The 'religious right' and the Monica Lewinsky affair together gave us Europeans (who are too divided to have much political say in the world) the 8 year disaster (for the West) of the G W Bush neo-conservative presidency. But if the Catholic vote had been less divided these two factors would not have prevailed.
The categories of 'left' and 'right' don't help much with the Catholic vote. Almost one American in four is said to be Catholic. But this is a swing voting group: psephologists reckon 47% voted Bush in 2000, but gave him a 52% majority in 2004.
Among Christians as a whole (other than "religious right" said to be some 14%) there is much the same division. Pulling to the 'right' is opposition to abortion on demand (which makes the Catholic bishops politically a virtually "single sin" group), respect for the family as the basic unit of society, opposition to homosexual marriage, and concern for traditional morality as a whole as opposed to leftie "political correctness".
Pulling to the left though, is profound moral opposition to the prevailing "worship of the golden calf" - unbridled capitalism: Catholic Michael Moore's stance. There is too, a growing conviction that Christians should act to meet the existential challenges of climate change despite the cost. And recognition there is 'sin' too in aggressive war, genocide, lack of concern for the world's poor and for social justice (including justice for Palestinians), and also in failing support health care for all Americans. For Catholics that all fits in with Catholic social teaching at least since the 19th century, and with the international policies of the last two popes. Other ‘main-line’ Christians too, derive much the same convictions from the New Testament.
From what he has said, President Obama appears to share, at least in part, this Christian dilemma and to be trying to reconcile these by no means inconsistent concerns.
Achieving even limited success is another matter - especially given the undemocratic nature of the US Senate where two votes go to each state irrespective of population. That gives an inordinate say to mid-west sparsely populated staunchly Republican states with major ‘religious right’ constituencies. Enough maybe to deprive the Democrats of the 60 Senatorial votes needed to fend off an effective veto. Indeed the whole traditional Christian ethos (however tenuous) of US governments is being stifled by dollar-heavy lobbying (‘your election expenses paid’), AIPAC and Israel Government pressure, and monumental dishonesty in the financial sector. Not to mention pervasive racism subtly sapping the authority of a non-white president.
While working on the vital task of bringing cooperation instead of confrontation to intenrationla affairs, President Obama is now under internal attack from 'left' and 'right' and this is exacerbated by the divisions in main-line Christianity.
Perhaps all concerned would do well to study the holistic approach to all these issues and to the Obama presidency adopted by the Vatican under Benedict XVI.
tags: American Christians, religious right, US Catholic vote, G W Bush, Obama, politically correct, family values, Vatican foreign policy, Monica Lewinsky, Michael Moore, abortion, justice for Palestinians, US Senate voting
The 'religious right' and the Monica Lewinsky affair together gave us Europeans (who are too divided to have much political say in the world) the 8 year disaster (for the West) of the G W Bush neo-conservative presidency. But if the Catholic vote had been less divided these two factors would not have prevailed.
The categories of 'left' and 'right' don't help much with the Catholic vote. Almost one American in four is said to be Catholic. But this is a swing voting group: psephologists reckon 47% voted Bush in 2000, but gave him a 52% majority in 2004.
Among Christians as a whole (other than "religious right" said to be some 14%) there is much the same division. Pulling to the 'right' is opposition to abortion on demand (which makes the Catholic bishops politically a virtually "single sin" group), respect for the family as the basic unit of society, opposition to homosexual marriage, and concern for traditional morality as a whole as opposed to leftie "political correctness".
Pulling to the left though, is profound moral opposition to the prevailing "worship of the golden calf" - unbridled capitalism: Catholic Michael Moore's stance. There is too, a growing conviction that Christians should act to meet the existential challenges of climate change despite the cost. And recognition there is 'sin' too in aggressive war, genocide, lack of concern for the world's poor and for social justice (including justice for Palestinians), and also in failing support health care for all Americans. For Catholics that all fits in with Catholic social teaching at least since the 19th century, and with the international policies of the last two popes. Other ‘main-line’ Christians too, derive much the same convictions from the New Testament.
From what he has said, President Obama appears to share, at least in part, this Christian dilemma and to be trying to reconcile these by no means inconsistent concerns.
Achieving even limited success is another matter - especially given the undemocratic nature of the US Senate where two votes go to each state irrespective of population. That gives an inordinate say to mid-west sparsely populated staunchly Republican states with major ‘religious right’ constituencies. Enough maybe to deprive the Democrats of the 60 Senatorial votes needed to fend off an effective veto. Indeed the whole traditional Christian ethos (however tenuous) of US governments is being stifled by dollar-heavy lobbying (‘your election expenses paid’), AIPAC and Israel Government pressure, and monumental dishonesty in the financial sector. Not to mention pervasive racism subtly sapping the authority of a non-white president.
While working on the vital task of bringing cooperation instead of confrontation to intenrationla affairs, President Obama is now under internal attack from 'left' and 'right' and this is exacerbated by the divisions in main-line Christianity.
Perhaps all concerned would do well to study the holistic approach to all these issues and to the Obama presidency adopted by the Vatican under Benedict XVI.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Our comment on emerging new economic organisations in the US
Our comment on emerging new economic organisations in the US: (8.10.09)
Post-capitalist developments of this sort are extremely important. Our bankers and most of the West's leaders are struggling just to get back ante-meltdown 2008, to the Era of Waste which started half a century ago with the recovery from World War II. But even if they did, that would only prolong the agony.
The waste of finite resources, the ruin of the environment, cannot continue if mankind is to meet the existential challenges it now faces.
Capitalism - especially decontrolled laissez-faire capitalism - was and remains the largest factor in creating and continuing this Era of Waste. The worship of the Golden Cal - of the "bottom line", must be replaced partly by far stricter controls and partly by such new economic arrangements. Instead of blindly shifting from one immediately profitable path to another we must know what we are trying to do.
Capitalism plus government and non-governmental projects brought us through the great wars because all sought victory as an end.
In a word, humanity must have a "telos" - an end or purpose - that it is consciously moving towards. And the "telos" we can surely all agree on is doing all that is required for the survival of mankind.
The US - which took over from Britain in creating modern capitalism and is now suffering so severely from what it wrought - is surely the one country with the dynamism and imagination to lead the world toward that "telos" for survival. If the US shows a way to do that, China - already trying to re-organise for that same purpose - would join in.
But first we have to change the mind-set of politicians, the "old" media, and all the others who are now so blindly struggling to get back to "the good old days" before 2008.That first step forward may prove the most difficult one of all!
Post-capitalist developments of this sort are extremely important. Our bankers and most of the West's leaders are struggling just to get back ante-meltdown 2008, to the Era of Waste which started half a century ago with the recovery from World War II. But even if they did, that would only prolong the agony.
The waste of finite resources, the ruin of the environment, cannot continue if mankind is to meet the existential challenges it now faces.
Capitalism - especially decontrolled laissez-faire capitalism - was and remains the largest factor in creating and continuing this Era of Waste. The worship of the Golden Cal - of the "bottom line", must be replaced partly by far stricter controls and partly by such new economic arrangements. Instead of blindly shifting from one immediately profitable path to another we must know what we are trying to do.
Capitalism plus government and non-governmental projects brought us through the great wars because all sought victory as an end.
In a word, humanity must have a "telos" - an end or purpose - that it is consciously moving towards. And the "telos" we can surely all agree on is doing all that is required for the survival of mankind.
The US - which took over from Britain in creating modern capitalism and is now suffering so severely from what it wrought - is surely the one country with the dynamism and imagination to lead the world toward that "telos" for survival. If the US shows a way to do that, China - already trying to re-organise for that same purpose - would join in.
But first we have to change the mind-set of politicians, the "old" media, and all the others who are now so blindly struggling to get back to "the good old days" before 2008.That first step forward may prove the most difficult one of all!
Internationalise Afghanistan
AFGHANISTAN MUST BE INTERNATIONALISED [8 October 2009]
Those of left and right with simplistic ideas about what President Obama's strategy should be for Afghanistan fail to appreciate just how complex a "Vietnam" he has inherited from President G W Bush: "Now we're in, how the hell do we get out with least damage?"
This of course arose - as we and many other professionals, not attached to or paid by the US or UK governments, predicted in 2002 - because the invasion of Iraq by President G W Bush lost America the astonishing world-wide support it enjoyed after "9/11" and Afghanistan inevitably lost to Iraq its priority for money, troops and expertise. And now after 7 years of neglect, the US faces defeat or an endless unpopular guerilla war. At present Americans see this as an American problem that America - or rather President Obama - has to solve.
But for years now we have urged that "Afghanistan" be internationalised through an effort (by no means impossible) to recover that world-wide consensus the calamitous G W Bush threw away.
Why not impossible? Because, provided, the US now makes it plain (even tacitly) that it has abandoned the Cheney/neo-conservative aim of a uni-polar world (US hegemony in the 21st century) and now genuinely seeks international cooperation in place of 'Bushian' confrontation, that consensus can largely be rebuilt by determined yet sensitive diplomacy.
For virtually all countries have a major national interest in the stability of Afghanistan - even of "Afpak". So there is a real chance of gaining and exerting immense pressure from all parties on all parties to obtain that stability.
Fortunately President Obama, unlike his predecessor, is prepared to talk and negotiate with all concerned. The principal powers with a major interest in stability in Afghanistan are Iran, Pakistan, Russia and ex-Soviet Central Asia, the European Union, non-European NATO countries (Turkey & Canada), China (increasingly), India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, the Gulf States, other Arab and Islamic countries from Morocco to Malaysia and Indonesia. The list goes on.
But - recovering such consensus and agreeing the part each country can play will take at least a year. And meanwhile the US (thanks to the destructive Bush legacy) will have to hold the fort and take such immediate military and reconstruction measures as are needed.
Announcing such internationalisation would, in the interim, greatly help in removing the present widespread expectation that Americans are about to do a bunk - so encouraging for Taliban/Al Qaeda and so bad for the morale of Afghans and US/NATO troops. Even more importantly the American people and Congress would respond if President Obama makes it clear that his military and other decisions are determined by the need to hold the situation, improving the reconstruction and security requirements while the US works to bring about the largest possible international consortium for stabilising Afghanistan.
Probably the Europeans won't be much help with more than a dribble troops because here in Europe the perception of governments and people alike is that we're being asked to pull American chestnuts out of the fire that they themselves lit. But if we know where America is heading our governments can certainly be cajoled into doing much more, and much better, reconstruction and the training of Afghans - even at considerable cost at a time of financial woe. .
Successful US diplomacy rallying the key countries for the stabilisation of Afghanistan could lead to an international conference to put the seal on what had been agreed. The prospect of such a "Congress" - something on the lines of the Congress of Vienna which established a new order in Europe after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars - could mark an important step towards the establishment of an era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War, and the ending of the neo-conservative drive for that uni-polar dream which was to have been realised by taking over Iraq - but which, ironically, the Iraq adventure has put out of reach.
Without profound commitment by the great powers to a future of cooperation, humanity faces the Pentagon's alternative dread scenario of endless wars as neighbour struggles against neighbour for survival as the existential challenges mankind faces become more strident. So, with opposition to American hegemony out of the way, cooperation has considerable appeal. It has already shown its potential over North Korea and the world financial crisis.
So - given determination and an all out diplomatic effort - Afghanistan could become the catalyst heralding that long elusive New World Order. President Obama has the exceptional intelligence, the pragmatism, and a profound knowledge of the world today to navigate the many shoals and rocks to bring the "Vietnam" he has inherited in Afghanistan to the best possible conclusion.
But he faces, to us Europeans, astonishing opposition in his own country from both left and right. Apart from the two wars, he has "too many open files" - the environment, non-proliferation, Al Qaeda and terrorism, bolshie banks, rogue and failed states, health care nihilists, the social demands of "progressives", selfish corporate lobbying, Israel's dominance in US politics, the future of the dollar, relations with China and Russia, renewing infrastructure, US investment in the future to replace the last half-century's epoch of waste - and so on and on.
So the new US administration needs as never before all the support it can get for enlightened policies. To our shame we in Europe are too divided by our outdated petty nationalisms to give the support we owe and should give in our own interests. Curiously it could be Russia and China that, starting with Afghanistan, will rally to help America to decline with wisdom from its age of Imperialism and use its still immense power and influence in establishing a multi-polar world capable of answering the worldwide challenges all countries face.
[ends
Those of left and right with simplistic ideas about what President Obama's strategy should be for Afghanistan fail to appreciate just how complex a "Vietnam" he has inherited from President G W Bush: "Now we're in, how the hell do we get out with least damage?"
This of course arose - as we and many other professionals, not attached to or paid by the US or UK governments, predicted in 2002 - because the invasion of Iraq by President G W Bush lost America the astonishing world-wide support it enjoyed after "9/11" and Afghanistan inevitably lost to Iraq its priority for money, troops and expertise. And now after 7 years of neglect, the US faces defeat or an endless unpopular guerilla war. At present Americans see this as an American problem that America - or rather President Obama - has to solve.
But for years now we have urged that "Afghanistan" be internationalised through an effort (by no means impossible) to recover that world-wide consensus the calamitous G W Bush threw away.
Why not impossible? Because, provided, the US now makes it plain (even tacitly) that it has abandoned the Cheney/neo-conservative aim of a uni-polar world (US hegemony in the 21st century) and now genuinely seeks international cooperation in place of 'Bushian' confrontation, that consensus can largely be rebuilt by determined yet sensitive diplomacy.
For virtually all countries have a major national interest in the stability of Afghanistan - even of "Afpak". So there is a real chance of gaining and exerting immense pressure from all parties on all parties to obtain that stability.
Fortunately President Obama, unlike his predecessor, is prepared to talk and negotiate with all concerned. The principal powers with a major interest in stability in Afghanistan are Iran, Pakistan, Russia and ex-Soviet Central Asia, the European Union, non-European NATO countries (Turkey & Canada), China (increasingly), India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, the Gulf States, other Arab and Islamic countries from Morocco to Malaysia and Indonesia. The list goes on.
But - recovering such consensus and agreeing the part each country can play will take at least a year. And meanwhile the US (thanks to the destructive Bush legacy) will have to hold the fort and take such immediate military and reconstruction measures as are needed.
Announcing such internationalisation would, in the interim, greatly help in removing the present widespread expectation that Americans are about to do a bunk - so encouraging for Taliban/Al Qaeda and so bad for the morale of Afghans and US/NATO troops. Even more importantly the American people and Congress would respond if President Obama makes it clear that his military and other decisions are determined by the need to hold the situation, improving the reconstruction and security requirements while the US works to bring about the largest possible international consortium for stabilising Afghanistan.
Probably the Europeans won't be much help with more than a dribble troops because here in Europe the perception of governments and people alike is that we're being asked to pull American chestnuts out of the fire that they themselves lit. But if we know where America is heading our governments can certainly be cajoled into doing much more, and much better, reconstruction and the training of Afghans - even at considerable cost at a time of financial woe. .
Successful US diplomacy rallying the key countries for the stabilisation of Afghanistan could lead to an international conference to put the seal on what had been agreed. The prospect of such a "Congress" - something on the lines of the Congress of Vienna which established a new order in Europe after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars - could mark an important step towards the establishment of an era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War, and the ending of the neo-conservative drive for that uni-polar dream which was to have been realised by taking over Iraq - but which, ironically, the Iraq adventure has put out of reach.
Without profound commitment by the great powers to a future of cooperation, humanity faces the Pentagon's alternative dread scenario of endless wars as neighbour struggles against neighbour for survival as the existential challenges mankind faces become more strident. So, with opposition to American hegemony out of the way, cooperation has considerable appeal. It has already shown its potential over North Korea and the world financial crisis.
So - given determination and an all out diplomatic effort - Afghanistan could become the catalyst heralding that long elusive New World Order. President Obama has the exceptional intelligence, the pragmatism, and a profound knowledge of the world today to navigate the many shoals and rocks to bring the "Vietnam" he has inherited in Afghanistan to the best possible conclusion.
But he faces, to us Europeans, astonishing opposition in his own country from both left and right. Apart from the two wars, he has "too many open files" - the environment, non-proliferation, Al Qaeda and terrorism, bolshie banks, rogue and failed states, health care nihilists, the social demands of "progressives", selfish corporate lobbying, Israel's dominance in US politics, the future of the dollar, relations with China and Russia, renewing infrastructure, US investment in the future to replace the last half-century's epoch of waste - and so on and on.
So the new US administration needs as never before all the support it can get for enlightened policies. To our shame we in Europe are too divided by our outdated petty nationalisms to give the support we owe and should give in our own interests. Curiously it could be Russia and China that, starting with Afghanistan, will rally to help America to decline with wisdom from its age of Imperialism and use its still immense power and influence in establishing a multi-polar world capable of answering the worldwide challenges all countries face.
[ends
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Another piece on Afghanistan
26 September Another piece on Afghanistan:
Key recommendation for Afghanistan: US hang on until it can be internationalised.
President Obama has inherited two "Vietnams" ["now we're in, how do we get out with minimum damage"] from G W Bush - one in Iraq (on-going, NOT resolved) and the other in Afghanistan. Probably any US president would have invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 given the Taliban government's refusal to oust Bin Laden and co. But the invasion of Iraq - as so many of us military and diplomatic professionals foresaw in 2002 - had disastrous consequences not only in Iraq but world-wide. The first and worst being to end Afghanistan's priority for money, troops, and expertise so putting the success o the occupation at grave risk.
That was disastrous as no occupation remains popular for more than 3 or 4 years. Having lost because of "Iraq" the astonishingly wide international support Bush had for the invasion, the swift rehabilitation of Afghanistan - essential for stabilising the country - failed. In the ensuing eight years. According to our sources there - the US and NATO have simply made themselves as unpopular as we personally saw the US was in Vietnam. NATO has lost its prestige by this out-of-area intervention and its European public sees US appeals for help as a request "to pull G W Bush's chestnuts out of the fire".
What is to be done? A premature tail-between-the-legs withdrawal would have very grave consequences - worse than the precipitate rush from Vietnam. So sending sufficient extra troops to Afghanistan to hold the fort was pretty well inevitable.
If Afghanistan is to be stabilised it must be internationalised by rebuilding as far as possible the consensus G W Bush threw away in Iraq. This is not impossible because virtually every major player has considerable national interest in Afghan stability and in containing international terrorism. Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Iran, Europe, the Arab world, the wider Muslim world, Israel all share this major interest.
International cooperation will only be possible if the US shows clearly - even tacitly - that it really has renounced the Cheney/neo-conservative aim to create a uni-polar world (the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century). But Obama does seem intent on doing just that, and his whole approach is towards the resolution of the great world problems by starting on a new era of cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.
So the US needs to hang on while this immense diplomatic task is gets underway.
Key recommendation for Afghanistan: US hang on until it can be internationalised.
President Obama has inherited two "Vietnams" ["now we're in, how do we get out with minimum damage"] from G W Bush - one in Iraq (on-going, NOT resolved) and the other in Afghanistan. Probably any US president would have invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 given the Taliban government's refusal to oust Bin Laden and co. But the invasion of Iraq - as so many of us military and diplomatic professionals foresaw in 2002 - had disastrous consequences not only in Iraq but world-wide. The first and worst being to end Afghanistan's priority for money, troops, and expertise so putting the success o the occupation at grave risk.
That was disastrous as no occupation remains popular for more than 3 or 4 years. Having lost because of "Iraq" the astonishingly wide international support Bush had for the invasion, the swift rehabilitation of Afghanistan - essential for stabilising the country - failed. In the ensuing eight years. According to our sources there - the US and NATO have simply made themselves as unpopular as we personally saw the US was in Vietnam. NATO has lost its prestige by this out-of-area intervention and its European public sees US appeals for help as a request "to pull G W Bush's chestnuts out of the fire".
What is to be done? A premature tail-between-the-legs withdrawal would have very grave consequences - worse than the precipitate rush from Vietnam. So sending sufficient extra troops to Afghanistan to hold the fort was pretty well inevitable.
If Afghanistan is to be stabilised it must be internationalised by rebuilding as far as possible the consensus G W Bush threw away in Iraq. This is not impossible because virtually every major player has considerable national interest in Afghan stability and in containing international terrorism. Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Iran, Europe, the Arab world, the wider Muslim world, Israel all share this major interest.
International cooperation will only be possible if the US shows clearly - even tacitly - that it really has renounced the Cheney/neo-conservative aim to create a uni-polar world (the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century). But Obama does seem intent on doing just that, and his whole approach is towards the resolution of the great world problems by starting on a new era of cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.
So the US needs to hang on while this immense diplomatic task is gets underway.
A primer on economics!
26 September - A primer on economics!
What is truly surprising is that neo-Keynesian economics - standard teaching of economics from the end of WWII for two or three decades - was replaced, even in leading US universities, with what is basically classical economics derived (none too accurately) from Adam Smith: slogans - "free market", "invisible hand", "self-correcting" etc. etc. In other words basically a return to pre-1929 theory.
Neo-Keynesians had long pointed out the many quite obvious flaws in classical market theory: just one example - that many producers inevitably require years to adjust to changes in supply and demand: one example, the years it takes to increase coffee production, and the social hardship caused by the near- impossibility of avoiding glut. This occurs not only in agricultural production but in manufacturing - look at the current excess capacity for car production in Europe. There are masses of other ways in which traditional markets do not work, or work badly.
More important, neo-Keynesian economics stresses two points a) that capitalism requires binding rules and effective enforcement or the crooks get the upper hand. But neo-classical economics, with its worship of "the market", "small government" etc., insists on de-regulation with the results we now suffer. b) neo-Keynesian economics points out that, while private enterprise does some things best, not-for-profit public organisations can do many things better. This is decried as "socialism" in today's absurdly ideological world of "left and right", "progressive and conservative", "religious and atheist".
Then there is the "political correctness" demanded by self-appointed "neo-moralists" which has prevented genuine reformers from working together. In the US you have the "red state/blue state division" where in "red states" those against "political correctness" find themselves voting for the huge cooperations and G W Bush bellicose confrontation with its Amerika Uber Alles neo-conservativism. And in the blue states family lovers and main-line Christians find themselves voting for the whole "progressive" agenda.
If we are to start to resolve our economic future after the disaster of deregulated capitalism brought on us not only by corporate and banking greed and their lobbyists, but by post-Keynesian neo-classical market economists, we must go
for what works, not these depasse ideologies: pragmatism must be the "non-ideology" of the future.
What is truly surprising is that neo-Keynesian economics - standard teaching of economics from the end of WWII for two or three decades - was replaced, even in leading US universities, with what is basically classical economics derived (none too accurately) from Adam Smith: slogans - "free market", "invisible hand", "self-correcting" etc. etc. In other words basically a return to pre-1929 theory.
Neo-Keynesians had long pointed out the many quite obvious flaws in classical market theory: just one example - that many producers inevitably require years to adjust to changes in supply and demand: one example, the years it takes to increase coffee production, and the social hardship caused by the near- impossibility of avoiding glut. This occurs not only in agricultural production but in manufacturing - look at the current excess capacity for car production in Europe. There are masses of other ways in which traditional markets do not work, or work badly.
More important, neo-Keynesian economics stresses two points a) that capitalism requires binding rules and effective enforcement or the crooks get the upper hand. But neo-classical economics, with its worship of "the market", "small government" etc., insists on de-regulation with the results we now suffer. b) neo-Keynesian economics points out that, while private enterprise does some things best, not-for-profit public organisations can do many things better. This is decried as "socialism" in today's absurdly ideological world of "left and right", "progressive and conservative", "religious and atheist".
Then there is the "political correctness" demanded by self-appointed "neo-moralists" which has prevented genuine reformers from working together. In the US you have the "red state/blue state division" where in "red states" those against "political correctness" find themselves voting for the huge cooperations and G W Bush bellicose confrontation with its Amerika Uber Alles neo-conservativism. And in the blue states family lovers and main-line Christians find themselves voting for the whole "progressive" agenda.
If we are to start to resolve our economic future after the disaster of deregulated capitalism brought on us not only by corporate and banking greed and their lobbyists, but by post-Keynesian neo-classical market economists, we must go
for what works, not these depasse ideologies: pragmatism must be the "non-ideology" of the future.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
President Obama, not the generals must of course be the one to decide the strategy for Afghanistan.
23 September 2009
President Obama, not the generals must of course be the one to decide the strategy for Afghanistan. Following our Sept 7 blog (below) here is a follow up on an Alternet item today:
Yes, of course it is vital that the US President and not the generals make that key tactical decision over Afghanistan.
No nation will for long accept military occupation by another - most particularly Afghanistan. Probably any American president would have invaded Afghanistan after "9/11" and the Taliban government's refusal to co-operate over Al Qaeda, particularly when an invasion had world-wide support or at least tacit acceptance.
But success obviously depended on keeping that support, and instituting a crash programme to rebuild Afghanistan after crippling decades of war. A crash programme because the occupation, no matter how beneficial to the inhabitants, would lose popular support after 3 - 4 years.
But probably only President G W Bush would have invaded Iraq in order to realise the neo-conservatives' Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The master idea was that occupying Iraq would give the US strategic control over the Middle East and thus clinch the attempt to ensure American planetary hegemony - or uni-polar world.
For reasons we among many others warned about in 2002, Iraq imploded and became the quagmire - or "Vietnam" - it remains.
Forced by the deadly consequences of the invasion to give Iraq total priority over Afghanistan, there was little rebuilding and growing opposition to the occupation now dragging into its 7th year.
It is probably too late now for any American administration to pacify Afghanistan. The only hope must be to internationalise the stabilisation of Afghanistan by re-assembling so far as possible that world-wide support G W Bush enjoyed before he threw it away in Iraq.
This is not impossible - for all countries that matter, from Russia and China to Iran, India and Pakistan - including the Arabs and Israel - have a major national interest in a stable Afghanistan and the suppression of international terrorism.
What is needed is the political wisdom to see that the generals cannot achieve this. But they can perhaps buy some time while such international support is gathered. The signs are that President Obama is working in this direction. But he needs that limited time and a great deal of support from his allies - and (perhaps the key to wider support), from Russia.
Sadly the US itself is so bitterly divided. Too few Americans give wholehearted support to the extraordinarily able president whom they have elected.
President Obama, not the generals must of course be the one to decide the strategy for Afghanistan. Following our Sept 7 blog (below) here is a follow up on an Alternet item today:
Yes, of course it is vital that the US President and not the generals make that key tactical decision over Afghanistan.
No nation will for long accept military occupation by another - most particularly Afghanistan. Probably any American president would have invaded Afghanistan after "9/11" and the Taliban government's refusal to co-operate over Al Qaeda, particularly when an invasion had world-wide support or at least tacit acceptance.
But success obviously depended on keeping that support, and instituting a crash programme to rebuild Afghanistan after crippling decades of war. A crash programme because the occupation, no matter how beneficial to the inhabitants, would lose popular support after 3 - 4 years.
But probably only President G W Bush would have invaded Iraq in order to realise the neo-conservatives' Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The master idea was that occupying Iraq would give the US strategic control over the Middle East and thus clinch the attempt to ensure American planetary hegemony - or uni-polar world.
For reasons we among many others warned about in 2002, Iraq imploded and became the quagmire - or "Vietnam" - it remains.
Forced by the deadly consequences of the invasion to give Iraq total priority over Afghanistan, there was little rebuilding and growing opposition to the occupation now dragging into its 7th year.
It is probably too late now for any American administration to pacify Afghanistan. The only hope must be to internationalise the stabilisation of Afghanistan by re-assembling so far as possible that world-wide support G W Bush enjoyed before he threw it away in Iraq.
This is not impossible - for all countries that matter, from Russia and China to Iran, India and Pakistan - including the Arabs and Israel - have a major national interest in a stable Afghanistan and the suppression of international terrorism.
What is needed is the political wisdom to see that the generals cannot achieve this. But they can perhaps buy some time while such international support is gathered. The signs are that President Obama is working in this direction. But he needs that limited time and a great deal of support from his allies - and (perhaps the key to wider support), from Russia.
Sadly the US itself is so bitterly divided. Too few Americans give wholehearted support to the extraordinarily able president whom they have elected.
Monday, September 07, 2009
On the need to internationalise Afghanistan
7 September 09
From JP Diplomatic Consultancy, France, dipconsult@hotmail.com, www.dipconsult.eu
On the need to internationalise Afghanistan
Re Ahmed Rashid's piece on Afghanistan in the Washington Post.
This is an excellent article on this desperately urgent and challenging subject.
Most importantly it stresses the disaster we at this consultancy and so many others predicted back in 2002 - going into Iraq would risk wrecking the occupation of Afghanistan.
No country for long accepts occupation and the occupation of Afghanistan had to show real results in rebuilding the country and restoring stability within about 3 years.
But Bush all but destroyed his own success and was abetted in this by a great majority of politicians of left and right in both the US and UK
Because politicians - like many others - find it extremely hard to admit mistakes (especially capital errors like voting for the Iraq war without any serious discussion or research) it is all the more difficult for the political class in the US and UK to see Afghanistan clearly, They should all read this splendid piece which coincides exactly with our own research partly based on information from a well-placed source in Afghanistan. But of course they won't - they will be fed more comfortable assessments.
One vital point Ahmed Rashid only touches on - it is vital that the situation in Afghanistan be internationalised. Merkel and Sakozy are making moves in that direction but they do not go far enough. Virtually every responsible government has a major interest in the stabilisation of Afghanistan. This of course includes Russia and China - and Iran and India..
None of these countries will put up troops and all of them believe that Bush went a long way to losing his Afghan "war". But none want the Taliban and Al Qaeda back. This means it IS possible for Obama and the Nato allies to rebuild the astonishing worldwide support Bush had after 9/11 for the invasion of Afghanistan. But that means eating humble pie. And above all recognising that America's bid for a uni-polar world is over. Nothing destroyed the Bush years more than the policy of confrontation to try to realise the Project for A New American Century of the neo-conservatives.
What is needed is a major conference meticulously prepared to focus world interest on the problem of stabilising Afghanistan.
From JP Diplomatic Consultancy, France, dipconsult@hotmail.com, www.dipconsult.eu
On the need to internationalise Afghanistan
Re Ahmed Rashid's piece on Afghanistan in the Washington Post.
This is an excellent article on this desperately urgent and challenging subject.
Most importantly it stresses the disaster we at this consultancy and so many others predicted back in 2002 - going into Iraq would risk wrecking the occupation of Afghanistan.
No country for long accepts occupation and the occupation of Afghanistan had to show real results in rebuilding the country and restoring stability within about 3 years.
But Bush all but destroyed his own success and was abetted in this by a great majority of politicians of left and right in both the US and UK
Because politicians - like many others - find it extremely hard to admit mistakes (especially capital errors like voting for the Iraq war without any serious discussion or research) it is all the more difficult for the political class in the US and UK to see Afghanistan clearly, They should all read this splendid piece which coincides exactly with our own research partly based on information from a well-placed source in Afghanistan. But of course they won't - they will be fed more comfortable assessments.
One vital point Ahmed Rashid only touches on - it is vital that the situation in Afghanistan be internationalised. Merkel and Sakozy are making moves in that direction but they do not go far enough. Virtually every responsible government has a major interest in the stabilisation of Afghanistan. This of course includes Russia and China - and Iran and India..
None of these countries will put up troops and all of them believe that Bush went a long way to losing his Afghan "war". But none want the Taliban and Al Qaeda back. This means it IS possible for Obama and the Nato allies to rebuild the astonishing worldwide support Bush had after 9/11 for the invasion of Afghanistan. But that means eating humble pie. And above all recognising that America's bid for a uni-polar world is over. Nothing destroyed the Bush years more than the policy of confrontation to try to realise the Project for A New American Century of the neo-conservatives.
What is needed is a major conference meticulously prepared to focus world interest on the problem of stabilising Afghanistan.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
NEED TO GO FORWARD, NOT BACK TO THE UNSUSTAINABLE ERA OF WASTE THAT BROUGHT US DOWN.
5 September 2009 BLOG RE NEED TO GO FORWARD, NOT BACK TO THE UNSUSTAINABLE ERA OF WASTE THAT BROUGHT US DOWN.
We at JP Diplomatic Consultancy [www.dipconsult.eu] from the start of this financial meltdown have urged that the way out was the therapy recommended by Paul Krugman, Stiglitz, and other top interventionist experts:
Government buys enough shares in failing banks to get control (don't need 51% - the banks would know that once the Govt meant to get control and would go on buying until it did, even 20% of shares could suffice).
Then sack the top echelon of the guilty, and ensure responsible lending for now vitally needed projects such as renewal of infrastructure, alternative energy and energy saving, technology for cleaning up coal, education, health care etc. etc.
Starting on a new path for the economy would quickly translate into jobs and psychologically create hope in a new positive direction for the US. And at the same time address the mortgage crisis to limit foreclosures (there are several ways to do that) so returning consumer confidence.
Alas, Obama - whom we much admire - chose the "boost banks" policies of Geithner and Summers resulting only in a meagre trickle down to the high street and the "man in it" .
What is vital is NOT to go back to the unsustainable era of monstrous waste of the post-war years. What is so dangerous is that almost everyone is praying for just that - back to the those joyful days when everything seemed to be going so well. Dangerous - because it was not, and a return to that period would be catastrophe for humanity and the existential problems it now faces. These can only be solved by a new direction for the economy.
Now is the time for America to recover its leadership for international cooperation after the wreckage caused by Bush's two terms of confrontation
We at JP Diplomatic Consultancy [www.dipconsult.eu] from the start of this financial meltdown have urged that the way out was the therapy recommended by Paul Krugman, Stiglitz, and other top interventionist experts:
Government buys enough shares in failing banks to get control (don't need 51% - the banks would know that once the Govt meant to get control and would go on buying until it did, even 20% of shares could suffice).
Then sack the top echelon of the guilty, and ensure responsible lending for now vitally needed projects such as renewal of infrastructure, alternative energy and energy saving, technology for cleaning up coal, education, health care etc. etc.
Starting on a new path for the economy would quickly translate into jobs and psychologically create hope in a new positive direction for the US. And at the same time address the mortgage crisis to limit foreclosures (there are several ways to do that) so returning consumer confidence.
Alas, Obama - whom we much admire - chose the "boost banks" policies of Geithner and Summers resulting only in a meagre trickle down to the high street and the "man in it" .
What is vital is NOT to go back to the unsustainable era of monstrous waste of the post-war years. What is so dangerous is that almost everyone is praying for just that - back to the those joyful days when everything seemed to be going so well. Dangerous - because it was not, and a return to that period would be catastrophe for humanity and the existential problems it now faces. These can only be solved by a new direction for the economy.
Now is the time for America to recover its leadership for international cooperation after the wreckage caused by Bush's two terms of confrontation
Thursday, September 03, 2009
AFGHANISTAN - WHAT TO DO ABOUT THIS THIRD "VIETNAM"?
3 SEPTEMBER 2009 -
AFGHANISTAN - WHAT TO DO ABOUT THIS THIRD "VIETNAM"?
As our web site www.dipconsult.eu points out in several places ever since september 2002 we have warned repeatedly all the politicians and media people we know that the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq would inevitably have disastrous consequences for the occupation of Afghanistan.
Probably the invasion of Afghanistan was politically inevitable given that it was used as a platform for Al Qaeda not only for managing 9/11 but for the preceding terrorists acts.
But it was high risk and the invasion was only successful because it used warlords for success and so the occupation and resultant Afghan government were beholden to them. And Afghanistan's history showed it to be even more opposed to occupation than most countries.
So Bush had only say three years to use his then immense worldwide support to get the funding and international expertise to make a real difference in rebuilding Afghanistan after the Soviet war and the civil wars(s) which followed - not to speak of the devastation caused by thew Taliban.
But against all common sense and the dire warnings of we Cassandras - some very highly placed (like Senators Bird and Kennedy and Brent Scowcroft and our British Robin Cook) - Bush/Blair wrecked then good chances for a crash rebuiding programme in Afghanistan by invading Iraq which then had for years the top priority for troops, expertise, and funding. Perhaps worse was the loss of the wide international support for Bush from virtually every significant nation (including China and Russia and at least tacit support from Muslim countries).
Anti-Americanism soared worldwide - even in the UK. And Afghanistan remained on hold with no takers - not even Nato members - to share the financial and military burden.
By the time Obama came to power Afghanistan was all but lost. He inherited two "Vietnams" - in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is to leave both countries with the least possible damage to US and Western interests, and indeed to the interests of all countries opposed to international terrorism .
OK - that's the diagnosis. What's to be done? First there has to be a holding operation - no doubt involving temporary increased troop levels. Second there must be far less "collateral damage" - Vietnam was lost more by |"collateral damage" than any other factor - the writer was there twice during the war and found the entire population was anti-American from the President to the girl in the rice field.
Third - Bush's confrontation must be followed by a chastened US seeking international cooperation - not for fighting but for bringing about real change: a) in government, no matter who is proclaimed winner of flawed elections, b)in mounting wherever possible real effective reconstruction that will be felt by every Afghan who benefits. This would be a big incentive to others to want to better heir conditions - what does the Taliban offer? c) the mere re-asssembly of the support Bush had in the beginning in 2001 would go a long way to change the entire situation. Russia and China - and Iran - for example do not want the Taliban back giving a base to Al Qaeda.
Think cooperation as the only means left to try to get America out of this "Vietnam" that Bush made. Think - what would you do if you were Obama? Just pack up and go? Think through the consequences.
But for any success in getting international cooperation, Obama will have to show he really is moving America back to international cooperation and away from confrontation. And that means for starters making a real move to resolve the Israel Palestine running sore by standing up to Israel's hard line government in favour of America's and the world's real interests. Right now that means stopping settlement spread. It is still Palestine that is the recruiting serjeant for Al Qaeda and Muslim extremism.
Maybe it is too late now after Bush .
AFGHANISTAN - WHAT TO DO ABOUT THIS THIRD "VIETNAM"?
As our web site www.dipconsult.eu points out in several places ever since september 2002 we have warned repeatedly all the politicians and media people we know that the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq would inevitably have disastrous consequences for the occupation of Afghanistan.
Probably the invasion of Afghanistan was politically inevitable given that it was used as a platform for Al Qaeda not only for managing 9/11 but for the preceding terrorists acts.
But it was high risk and the invasion was only successful because it used warlords for success and so the occupation and resultant Afghan government were beholden to them. And Afghanistan's history showed it to be even more opposed to occupation than most countries.
So Bush had only say three years to use his then immense worldwide support to get the funding and international expertise to make a real difference in rebuilding Afghanistan after the Soviet war and the civil wars(s) which followed - not to speak of the devastation caused by thew Taliban.
But against all common sense and the dire warnings of we Cassandras - some very highly placed (like Senators Bird and Kennedy and Brent Scowcroft and our British Robin Cook) - Bush/Blair wrecked then good chances for a crash rebuiding programme in Afghanistan by invading Iraq which then had for years the top priority for troops, expertise, and funding. Perhaps worse was the loss of the wide international support for Bush from virtually every significant nation (including China and Russia and at least tacit support from Muslim countries).
Anti-Americanism soared worldwide - even in the UK. And Afghanistan remained on hold with no takers - not even Nato members - to share the financial and military burden.
By the time Obama came to power Afghanistan was all but lost. He inherited two "Vietnams" - in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is to leave both countries with the least possible damage to US and Western interests, and indeed to the interests of all countries opposed to international terrorism .
OK - that's the diagnosis. What's to be done? First there has to be a holding operation - no doubt involving temporary increased troop levels. Second there must be far less "collateral damage" - Vietnam was lost more by |"collateral damage" than any other factor - the writer was there twice during the war and found the entire population was anti-American from the President to the girl in the rice field.
Third - Bush's confrontation must be followed by a chastened US seeking international cooperation - not for fighting but for bringing about real change: a) in government, no matter who is proclaimed winner of flawed elections, b)in mounting wherever possible real effective reconstruction that will be felt by every Afghan who benefits. This would be a big incentive to others to want to better heir conditions - what does the Taliban offer? c) the mere re-asssembly of the support Bush had in the beginning in 2001 would go a long way to change the entire situation. Russia and China - and Iran - for example do not want the Taliban back giving a base to Al Qaeda.
Think cooperation as the only means left to try to get America out of this "Vietnam" that Bush made. Think - what would you do if you were Obama? Just pack up and go? Think through the consequences.
But for any success in getting international cooperation, Obama will have to show he really is moving America back to international cooperation and away from confrontation. And that means for starters making a real move to resolve the Israel Palestine running sore by standing up to Israel's hard line government in favour of America's and the world's real interests. Right now that means stopping settlement spread. It is still Palestine that is the recruiting serjeant for Al Qaeda and Muslim extremism.
Maybe it is too late now after Bush .
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Obama's presidency and the West Bank settlements
26 August 2009
Obama's presidency and the West Bank settlements
By John Pedler - Aug 25th, 2009 at 1:12 pm EDT
It is with bated breath that we in Europe - or those of us who follow foreign affairs - wait to see whether Obama will stand firm on his requirement that Israel at least freezes the illegal settlements on the West Bank - the sine qua non for any advance on Israel/Palestine.
The Israeli assessment is that for political reasons (Israel's immense hold in Congress and the public over US policies toward Israel) no US president will dare to put such pressure on Israel that its government will have to climb down and truly freeze the settlements not just on the West Bank but in East Jerusalem where building permission is being sought for further Israeli residences.
But some major move must be made toward resolving the long running Israel/Palestine conflict if any real improvement is to be expected in US/Islamic relations, or US relatons with the Middle East in general. The tension, similar to a state of war, between Israel and the Palestinians of all opinions lies at the root of the international violence termed the "War on Terror". The anguish of the Palestinians was and remains the main recruiting serjeant for Al Qaeda and the "jihadis" it has spawned worldwide.
If Obama blinks - as Israel and many US and international observers believe he will - and effectively accepts Israel's continuing expansion of the settlements, that will put paid to his claim to be bringing real change to US foreign policy. Not only Islamic states, but Russia, China, and indeed our European countries will assess him as weak and indecisive in foreign affairs. For on this point - the settlements - everyone knows America's interests require that he does not "blink".
Many originally assessed J F Kennedy as similarly a great orator but a weak president. Khruschev tried to exploit that - but Kennedy did not blink over the Cuba crisis. This was a major setback for the communist bloc and led eventually to its collapse.
President Obama - will you stand firm now the hour for decision on Israel/Palestine is at hand? Or will "they" write you off as irresolute?
The next few weeks will likely determine your presidency. For not only Israel/Palestine, but US health care demands you stand firm and many are now doubting your resolution on that too.
In Europe our hopes are with you though we are too weak and divided to do much to help you. The future you make is our future too!
Obama's presidency and the West Bank settlements
By John Pedler - Aug 25th, 2009 at 1:12 pm EDT
It is with bated breath that we in Europe - or those of us who follow foreign affairs - wait to see whether Obama will stand firm on his requirement that Israel at least freezes the illegal settlements on the West Bank - the sine qua non for any advance on Israel/Palestine.
The Israeli assessment is that for political reasons (Israel's immense hold in Congress and the public over US policies toward Israel) no US president will dare to put such pressure on Israel that its government will have to climb down and truly freeze the settlements not just on the West Bank but in East Jerusalem where building permission is being sought for further Israeli residences.
But some major move must be made toward resolving the long running Israel/Palestine conflict if any real improvement is to be expected in US/Islamic relations, or US relatons with the Middle East in general. The tension, similar to a state of war, between Israel and the Palestinians of all opinions lies at the root of the international violence termed the "War on Terror". The anguish of the Palestinians was and remains the main recruiting serjeant for Al Qaeda and the "jihadis" it has spawned worldwide.
If Obama blinks - as Israel and many US and international observers believe he will - and effectively accepts Israel's continuing expansion of the settlements, that will put paid to his claim to be bringing real change to US foreign policy. Not only Islamic states, but Russia, China, and indeed our European countries will assess him as weak and indecisive in foreign affairs. For on this point - the settlements - everyone knows America's interests require that he does not "blink".
Many originally assessed J F Kennedy as similarly a great orator but a weak president. Khruschev tried to exploit that - but Kennedy did not blink over the Cuba crisis. This was a major setback for the communist bloc and led eventually to its collapse.
President Obama - will you stand firm now the hour for decision on Israel/Palestine is at hand? Or will "they" write you off as irresolute?
The next few weeks will likely determine your presidency. For not only Israel/Palestine, but US health care demands you stand firm and many are now doubting your resolution on that too.
In Europe our hopes are with you though we are too weak and divided to do much to help you. The future you make is our future too!
Monday, August 17, 2009
The two-pronged assault to bring down Obama – and the West
17 August 2009
The two-pronged assault to bring down Obama – and the West
Obama's presidency is particularly vulnerable over his attempt a) to give America what we Europeans have had for decades - inclusive healthcare, and b) to steer America away from G W Bush's international confrontation towards the era of cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War and now desperately needed to meet the existential challenges to mankind and avoid “endless war”. .
The Republicans and much of mega-business - reckless of America's true interests - see health care and foreign policy as Obama's Achilles Heel: two opportunities to wreck the Obama presidency and stifle the "aggiornamento" the United States so urgently needs.
Health Care:-
Hence the well-directed, well-funded, skillfully orchestrated artificial frenzy to wreck the plans for universal health care that the great majority of Americans so shamefully lack. This campaign seeks to distort or suppress the fact that we in Europe still have the option of private health care with insurance to cover it. But that we also have state participation for everyone - either wholly funded by contributions (as in the UK), or funded by contributions plus commercial insurance (as in France). Our overall costs are far below the costs of American health care and result in better medical and actuarial statistics. The major parties, left and right, support our European health care for all, though criticising aspects of it.
It is vital that Americans learn how far they lag behind other advanced countries, and learn too, that the campaign opposing universal health care is in fact a hyper-funded campaign of misinformation, even outright lies, to undermine Obama's presidency for political and commercial advantage.
The road to cooperation:-
It was obviously going to be extremely difficult to return America to international cooperation after the disasters caused by G W Bush's attempt to realise the neo-conservatives’ Project for a New American Century. The occupation of Iraq, intended as the master move to ensure American world hegemony by creating an American dominated “new Middle East", instead, ironically, buried that neo-conservative dream. So Obama inherited two "Vietnams" - in Iraq (thanks to Bush’s elective war) and in Afghanistan (where a brief “reconstruction” occupation with worldwide backing could have succeeded had Afghanistan not been put on the back burner in favour of Iraq).
Because Kim Jong Il, Ahmedinajad, and even more reasonable leaders like Putin and some others are spurning the new administration’s’ outstretched hand, the powerful forces of mighty conglomerates and politics opposed to Obama claim that confrontation – albeit with the spectre of “endless war” – remains is the only way to ensure US security.
It does not matter that it was a Republican president and his control of the military-industrial complex that led to these two Vietnams and the massive spike in anti-Americanism – Obama’s enemies are now using the international mess of the G W Bush years as a means to defeat the new administration’s attempt to undo some at least of the dire consequences of Bush’s two terms. Look, they say, in the world as it is (i.e. the world as Bush left it) there’s no way to avoid confrontation, cooperation is a chimera. Yet Obama’s efforts to win international support are indispensable if mankind is to meet the existential threats it now faces. More immediately there must be far greater international cooperation if such deeply divisive issues such as Israel/Palestine and the proliferation of WMD are to be resolved.
Neither America nor the world can afford to see the Obama presidency wrecked by self-seeking politicians and bottom-line worshippers of the golden calf whose dream is to get back power in 2012.
The two-pronged assault to bring down Obama – and the West
Obama's presidency is particularly vulnerable over his attempt a) to give America what we Europeans have had for decades - inclusive healthcare, and b) to steer America away from G W Bush's international confrontation towards the era of cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War and now desperately needed to meet the existential challenges to mankind and avoid “endless war”. .
The Republicans and much of mega-business - reckless of America's true interests - see health care and foreign policy as Obama's Achilles Heel: two opportunities to wreck the Obama presidency and stifle the "aggiornamento" the United States so urgently needs.
Health Care:-
Hence the well-directed, well-funded, skillfully orchestrated artificial frenzy to wreck the plans for universal health care that the great majority of Americans so shamefully lack. This campaign seeks to distort or suppress the fact that we in Europe still have the option of private health care with insurance to cover it. But that we also have state participation for everyone - either wholly funded by contributions (as in the UK), or funded by contributions plus commercial insurance (as in France). Our overall costs are far below the costs of American health care and result in better medical and actuarial statistics. The major parties, left and right, support our European health care for all, though criticising aspects of it.
It is vital that Americans learn how far they lag behind other advanced countries, and learn too, that the campaign opposing universal health care is in fact a hyper-funded campaign of misinformation, even outright lies, to undermine Obama's presidency for political and commercial advantage.
The road to cooperation:-
It was obviously going to be extremely difficult to return America to international cooperation after the disasters caused by G W Bush's attempt to realise the neo-conservatives’ Project for a New American Century. The occupation of Iraq, intended as the master move to ensure American world hegemony by creating an American dominated “new Middle East", instead, ironically, buried that neo-conservative dream. So Obama inherited two "Vietnams" - in Iraq (thanks to Bush’s elective war) and in Afghanistan (where a brief “reconstruction” occupation with worldwide backing could have succeeded had Afghanistan not been put on the back burner in favour of Iraq).
Because Kim Jong Il, Ahmedinajad, and even more reasonable leaders like Putin and some others are spurning the new administration’s’ outstretched hand, the powerful forces of mighty conglomerates and politics opposed to Obama claim that confrontation – albeit with the spectre of “endless war” – remains is the only way to ensure US security.
It does not matter that it was a Republican president and his control of the military-industrial complex that led to these two Vietnams and the massive spike in anti-Americanism – Obama’s enemies are now using the international mess of the G W Bush years as a means to defeat the new administration’s attempt to undo some at least of the dire consequences of Bush’s two terms. Look, they say, in the world as it is (i.e. the world as Bush left it) there’s no way to avoid confrontation, cooperation is a chimera. Yet Obama’s efforts to win international support are indispensable if mankind is to meet the existential threats it now faces. More immediately there must be far greater international cooperation if such deeply divisive issues such as Israel/Palestine and the proliferation of WMD are to be resolved.
Neither America nor the world can afford to see the Obama presidency wrecked by self-seeking politicians and bottom-line worshippers of the golden calf whose dream is to get back power in 2012.
World scene
17 August 2009
The two-pronged assault to bring down Obama – and the West
Obama's presidency is particularly vulnerable over his attempt a) to give America what we Europeans have had for decades - inclusive healthcare, and b) to steer America away from G W Bush's international confrontation towards the era of cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War and now desperately needed to meet the existential challenges to mankind and avoid “endless war”. .
The Republicans and much of mega-business - reckless of America's true interests - see health care and foreign policy as Obama's Achilles Heel: two opportunities to wreck the Obama presidency and stifle the "aggiornamento" the United States so urgently needs.
Health Care:-
Hence the well-directed, well-funded, skillfully orchestrated artificial frenzy to wreck the plans for universal health care that the great majority of Americans so shamefully lack. This campaign seeks to distort or suppress the fact that we in Europe still have the option of private health care with insurance to cover it. But that we also have state participation for everyone - either wholly funded by contributions (as in the UK), or funded by contributions plus commercial insurance (as in France). Our overall costs are far below the costs of American health care and result in better medical and actuarial statistics. The major parties, left and right, support our European health care for all, though criticising aspects of it.
It is vital that Americans learn how far they lag behind other advanced countries, and learn too, that the campaign opposing universal health care is in fact a hyper-funded campaign of misinformation, even outright lies, to undermine Obama's presidency for political and commercial advantage.
The road to cooperation:-
It was obviously going to be extremely difficult to return America to international cooperation after the disasters caused by G W Bush's attempt to realise the neo-conservatives’ Project for a New American Century. The occupation of Iraq, intended as the master move to ensure American world hegemony by creating an American dominated “new Middle East", instead, ironically, buried that neo-conservative dream. So Obama inherited two "Vietnams" - in Iraq (thanks to Bush’s elective war) and in Afghanistan (where a brief “reconstruction” occupation with worldwide backing could have succeeded had Afghanistan not been put on the back burner in favour of Iraq).
Because Kim Jong Il, Ahmedinajad, and even more reasonable leaders like Putin and some others are spurning the new administration’s’ outstretched hand, the powerful forces of mighty conglomerates and politics opposed to Obama claim that confrontation – albeit with the spectre of “endless war” – remains is the only way to ensure US security.
It does not matter that it was a Republican president and his control of the military-industrial complex that led to these two Vietnams and the massive spike in anti-Americanism – Obama’s enemies are now using the international mess of the G W Bush years as a means to defeat the new administration’s attempt to undo some at least of the dire consequences of Bush’s two terms. Look, they say, in the world as it is (i.e. the world as Bush left it) there’s no way to avoid confrontation, cooperation is a chimera. Yet Obama’s efforts to win international support are indispensable if mankind is to meet the existential threats it now faces. More immediately there must be far greater international cooperation if such deeply divisive issues such as Israel/Palestine and the proliferation of WMD are to be resolved.
Neither America nor the world can afford to see the Obama presidency wrecked by self-seeking politicians and bottom-line worshippers of the golden calf whose dream is to get back power in 2012.
The two-pronged assault to bring down Obama – and the West
Obama's presidency is particularly vulnerable over his attempt a) to give America what we Europeans have had for decades - inclusive healthcare, and b) to steer America away from G W Bush's international confrontation towards the era of cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War and now desperately needed to meet the existential challenges to mankind and avoid “endless war”. .
The Republicans and much of mega-business - reckless of America's true interests - see health care and foreign policy as Obama's Achilles Heel: two opportunities to wreck the Obama presidency and stifle the "aggiornamento" the United States so urgently needs.
Health Care:-
Hence the well-directed, well-funded, skillfully orchestrated artificial frenzy to wreck the plans for universal health care that the great majority of Americans so shamefully lack. This campaign seeks to distort or suppress the fact that we in Europe still have the option of private health care with insurance to cover it. But that we also have state participation for everyone - either wholly funded by contributions (as in the UK), or funded by contributions plus commercial insurance (as in France). Our overall costs are far below the costs of American health care and result in better medical and actuarial statistics. The major parties, left and right, support our European health care for all, though criticising aspects of it.
It is vital that Americans learn how far they lag behind other advanced countries, and learn too, that the campaign opposing universal health care is in fact a hyper-funded campaign of misinformation, even outright lies, to undermine Obama's presidency for political and commercial advantage.
The road to cooperation:-
It was obviously going to be extremely difficult to return America to international cooperation after the disasters caused by G W Bush's attempt to realise the neo-conservatives’ Project for a New American Century. The occupation of Iraq, intended as the master move to ensure American world hegemony by creating an American dominated “new Middle East", instead, ironically, buried that neo-conservative dream. So Obama inherited two "Vietnams" - in Iraq (thanks to Bush’s elective war) and in Afghanistan (where a brief “reconstruction” occupation with worldwide backing could have succeeded had Afghanistan not been put on the back burner in favour of Iraq).
Because Kim Jong Il, Ahmedinajad, and even more reasonable leaders like Putin and some others are spurning the new administration’s’ outstretched hand, the powerful forces of mighty conglomerates and politics opposed to Obama claim that confrontation – albeit with the spectre of “endless war” – remains is the only way to ensure US security.
It does not matter that it was a Republican president and his control of the military-industrial complex that led to these two Vietnams and the massive spike in anti-Americanism – Obama’s enemies are now using the international mess of the G W Bush years as a means to defeat the new administration’s attempt to undo some at least of the dire consequences of Bush’s two terms. Look, they say, in the world as it is (i.e. the world as Bush left it) there’s no way to avoid confrontation, cooperation is a chimera. Yet Obama’s efforts to win international support are indispensable if mankind is to meet the existential threats it now faces. More immediately there must be far greater international cooperation if such deeply divisive issues such as Israel/Palestine and the proliferation of WMD are to be resolved.
Neither America nor the world can afford to see the Obama presidency wrecked by self-seeking politicians and bottom-line worshippers of the golden calf whose dream is to get back power in 2012.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Iraq inquiry
THE REAL IRAQ QUESTION: HOW COME BOTH THE US AND UK DEMOCRACIES FAILED IN THE RUN-UP TO THE IRAQ WAR?
The UK’s intended Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war will be confined to examining the behaviour of Tony Blair’s Labour government leading up to British participation in the G.W. Bush Administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Maybe we shall find out why Mr. Blair did not follow Harold Wilson’s precedent over Vietnam and refuse British involvement in Iraq.
But a bigger question needing an answer is: how did Britain’s parliamentary, and America’s presidential democracy both fail so spectacularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war? How was it that UK and US elected representatives in Parliament and Congress – Labour and Conservative, Republican and Democrat – came to authorise the war (Parliament, 18 March 2003, 412-149, House of Representatives 10 October 2002, 296-133, Senate next day 77-23). How did such overwhelming majorities ignore the equally overwhelming non-secret evidence of the unacceptably severe worldwide repercussions almost certain to follow an invasion not approved by the UN Security Council?
Yet there were several distinguished voices, on both right and left, warning against an “unapproved” invasion. For example Brent Scowcroft, widely respected Republican top security guru, warned on 4 August 2002 that an invasion “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the ‘war on terrorism’”,.and Robin Cook, former British Labour Foreign Secretary, in his resignation speech on 17 March 2003, stressed the dire consequences for the West of losing the extraordinary worldwide backing the US had achieved after “9/11”. Ignored too, by Senators and major media alike, was veteran Senator Byrd’s even more forceful and prescient speech of 12 February 2003 setting out the principal reasons against giving war powers to President G.W. Bush.
We are not talking rocket science – just a basic knowledge of foreign affairs and a dose of common sense! My own piece in The Independent on 10 September 2002 merely voiced what many well qualified observers had warned months before – that 9/11 was clearly designed to provoke a unilateral disproportionate and ill-directed response from the United States to destabilise the Middle East, provoke a clash of civilisations, and create worldwide economic and political havoc to Al Qaeda’s advantage. President Bush’s occupation of Afghanistan had been all but unanimously supported, so 9/11 had not succeeded. But an invasion of Iraq could prove to be just what Al Qaeda had sought.
In 2002 any elected representative could have done as Senator Byrd did and gather their own cogent reasons for opposing an Iraq war. Among those circulating then:-
It would be folly to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq with Afghanistan still unfinished business. It would inevitably lose to Iraq top priority for troops and reconstruction – so putting the whole Afghanistan operation at risk.
An invasion would greatly help Al Qaeda in stirring up anti-Western and anti-Israeli bitterness when what was needed to undercut Al Qaeda’s appeal was a major attempt to cure the running sore of Israel/Palestine.
An invasion not approved by the UN Security Council would split the West, the Western stance in the UN, and weaken NATO.
A weakened UN would inhibit the emergence after the Cold War of a new era of cooperation indispensable for confronting, not only terrorism, but other great issues from genocide to existential challenges, like climate change.
Occupying a second Muslim country would help Al Qaeda provoke the “clash of civilisations” it needed to expand its destabilising influence – not just from Pakistan to Morocco, but within the Western countries.
Iran’s tentative co-operation in 2002 over the removal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda would likely be replaced by a struggle for influence in Iraq once US forces arrived on its western as well as on its eastern frontier.
Because Iraq is fissiparous – replete with ethnic and religious divides -. serious civil disturbance must be anticipated unless Saddam Hussein were immediately replaced by a firm interim governor. But the projected troop levels would be too low to cope,.and Britain had complained to the US of a lack of planning for the occupation and eventual withdrawal.
Saddam Hussein’s fascist style secular government was doing the West’s work – preventing Al Qaeda from getting a foothold in Iraq. So Iraq could wait at least while the French plan for beefed up inspections ran its course.
Independent experts were agreed that Iraq was far from obtaining nuclear weapons and had no means of effective delivery abroad of any chemical or biological weapons. Invading Iraq would impede the urgent international effort required to deal with North Korea’s then imminent nuclear capability.
Vice President Cheney and his fellow neo-conservatives in top positions in the Bush administration evidently saw the occupation of Iraq as the key to clinching US dominance in a uni-polar world – so ensuring success for their much publicised Project for New American Century. A dazzling prospect for the G W Bush presidency, but one clearly contradicted both by the realities of the Middle East and by the determined opposition to US hegemony of Russia, China and others.
With such compelling arguments around – all of which proved correct - what prevented a cross-party refusal to follow Bush and Blair? Party loyalty on such a crucial issue should not have choked debate in the UK parliament just because the party leaders, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duncan Smith, were pro-war. Or do backbench MPs and members of Congress no longer perceive themselves as watchdogs for their constituents and their country? Were many simply beguiled by the intelligence that was obviously being manipulated? How many humanitarians voted primarily to end a cruel tyranny? How many mistakenly believed Iraq would be a cake-walk? How many failed to seek independent advice on foreign affairs? How many – particularly in Congress – were influenced by electoral considerations?
While the UK and the US commend the virtues of democracy to the world we need to ask with Senator Byrd at that fateful Senate Debate why was the Senate – and equally the UK Parliament – “silent - ominously, dreadfully silent”. Why was there “no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out to the nation the pros and cons of this particular war?“ This is all the more extraordinary when the British people were demonstrating widespread opposition to the proposed invasion and polls suggested a majority of Americans did not want an invasion without the British.
This grave failure of democracy in both the UK and the US must be explained and the facts faced if the political and media “establishments” of both countries are to make the fundamental readjustments needed to move on from the G. W. Bush era of confrontation and its dire worldwide consequences, into a long overdue era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.
John Pedler, a former British diplomat with worldwide experience, is now a diplomatic consultant based in France. An old Indochina hand, he warned that invading Iraq could lead to two “Vietnams” – in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a founder of the Cambodia Trust.
[Ends, 1175 words
The UK’s intended Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war will be confined to examining the behaviour of Tony Blair’s Labour government leading up to British participation in the G.W. Bush Administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Maybe we shall find out why Mr. Blair did not follow Harold Wilson’s precedent over Vietnam and refuse British involvement in Iraq.
But a bigger question needing an answer is: how did Britain’s parliamentary, and America’s presidential democracy both fail so spectacularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war? How was it that UK and US elected representatives in Parliament and Congress – Labour and Conservative, Republican and Democrat – came to authorise the war (Parliament, 18 March 2003, 412-149, House of Representatives 10 October 2002, 296-133, Senate next day 77-23). How did such overwhelming majorities ignore the equally overwhelming non-secret evidence of the unacceptably severe worldwide repercussions almost certain to follow an invasion not approved by the UN Security Council?
Yet there were several distinguished voices, on both right and left, warning against an “unapproved” invasion. For example Brent Scowcroft, widely respected Republican top security guru, warned on 4 August 2002 that an invasion “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the ‘war on terrorism’”,.and Robin Cook, former British Labour Foreign Secretary, in his resignation speech on 17 March 2003, stressed the dire consequences for the West of losing the extraordinary worldwide backing the US had achieved after “9/11”. Ignored too, by Senators and major media alike, was veteran Senator Byrd’s even more forceful and prescient speech of 12 February 2003 setting out the principal reasons against giving war powers to President G.W. Bush.
We are not talking rocket science – just a basic knowledge of foreign affairs and a dose of common sense! My own piece in The Independent on 10 September 2002 merely voiced what many well qualified observers had warned months before – that 9/11 was clearly designed to provoke a unilateral disproportionate and ill-directed response from the United States to destabilise the Middle East, provoke a clash of civilisations, and create worldwide economic and political havoc to Al Qaeda’s advantage. President Bush’s occupation of Afghanistan had been all but unanimously supported, so 9/11 had not succeeded. But an invasion of Iraq could prove to be just what Al Qaeda had sought.
In 2002 any elected representative could have done as Senator Byrd did and gather their own cogent reasons for opposing an Iraq war. Among those circulating then:-
It would be folly to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq with Afghanistan still unfinished business. It would inevitably lose to Iraq top priority for troops and reconstruction – so putting the whole Afghanistan operation at risk.
An invasion would greatly help Al Qaeda in stirring up anti-Western and anti-Israeli bitterness when what was needed to undercut Al Qaeda’s appeal was a major attempt to cure the running sore of Israel/Palestine.
An invasion not approved by the UN Security Council would split the West, the Western stance in the UN, and weaken NATO.
A weakened UN would inhibit the emergence after the Cold War of a new era of cooperation indispensable for confronting, not only terrorism, but other great issues from genocide to existential challenges, like climate change.
Occupying a second Muslim country would help Al Qaeda provoke the “clash of civilisations” it needed to expand its destabilising influence – not just from Pakistan to Morocco, but within the Western countries.
Iran’s tentative co-operation in 2002 over the removal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda would likely be replaced by a struggle for influence in Iraq once US forces arrived on its western as well as on its eastern frontier.
Because Iraq is fissiparous – replete with ethnic and religious divides -. serious civil disturbance must be anticipated unless Saddam Hussein were immediately replaced by a firm interim governor. But the projected troop levels would be too low to cope,.and Britain had complained to the US of a lack of planning for the occupation and eventual withdrawal.
Saddam Hussein’s fascist style secular government was doing the West’s work – preventing Al Qaeda from getting a foothold in Iraq. So Iraq could wait at least while the French plan for beefed up inspections ran its course.
Independent experts were agreed that Iraq was far from obtaining nuclear weapons and had no means of effective delivery abroad of any chemical or biological weapons. Invading Iraq would impede the urgent international effort required to deal with North Korea’s then imminent nuclear capability.
Vice President Cheney and his fellow neo-conservatives in top positions in the Bush administration evidently saw the occupation of Iraq as the key to clinching US dominance in a uni-polar world – so ensuring success for their much publicised Project for New American Century. A dazzling prospect for the G W Bush presidency, but one clearly contradicted both by the realities of the Middle East and by the determined opposition to US hegemony of Russia, China and others.
With such compelling arguments around – all of which proved correct - what prevented a cross-party refusal to follow Bush and Blair? Party loyalty on such a crucial issue should not have choked debate in the UK parliament just because the party leaders, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duncan Smith, were pro-war. Or do backbench MPs and members of Congress no longer perceive themselves as watchdogs for their constituents and their country? Were many simply beguiled by the intelligence that was obviously being manipulated? How many humanitarians voted primarily to end a cruel tyranny? How many mistakenly believed Iraq would be a cake-walk? How many failed to seek independent advice on foreign affairs? How many – particularly in Congress – were influenced by electoral considerations?
While the UK and the US commend the virtues of democracy to the world we need to ask with Senator Byrd at that fateful Senate Debate why was the Senate – and equally the UK Parliament – “silent - ominously, dreadfully silent”. Why was there “no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out to the nation the pros and cons of this particular war?“ This is all the more extraordinary when the British people were demonstrating widespread opposition to the proposed invasion and polls suggested a majority of Americans did not want an invasion without the British.
This grave failure of democracy in both the UK and the US must be explained and the facts faced if the political and media “establishments” of both countries are to make the fundamental readjustments needed to move on from the G. W. Bush era of confrontation and its dire worldwide consequences, into a long overdue era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.
John Pedler, a former British diplomat with worldwide experience, is now a diplomatic consultant based in France. An old Indochina hand, he warned that invading Iraq could lead to two “Vietnams” – in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a founder of the Cambodia Trust.
[Ends, 1175 words
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