25 Jan 2007 13:11:04 GMT
By Stella Dawson
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an "idiot decision" and Iraqi troops now need to secure Baghdad to ensure the country's future, Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Thursday.
"Iraq was put under occupation, which was an idiot decision," Mahdi said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Mahdi said the Iraqi government planned to bring troops in to Baghdad from surrounding areas and said it was "a technical question" for the United States to decide whether to deploy more soldiers.
President George W. Bush plans to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq, a move widely criticised in the United States. On Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted against the decision, which is due to go before the Senate next week.
"If we can win this war in Baghdad then I think we can change the course of events," Mahdi told a panel on the state of affairs in Iraq.
"As Iraqis, we think we need more (Iraqi) troops in Baghdad, and we are calling for some regiments to come from other parts of the country," he said.
Mahdi's party, the powerful Shi'ite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was one of the exiled opposition parties consulted by Washington as it planned the invasion.
Its leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is a key figure behind the U.S.-backed national unity government.
MORE CHAOS?
Some commentators are concerned that without the support of U.S. troops in Iraq, the already boiling sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites could break out into ever greater killing sprees.
Adnan Pachachi, a member of Iraq's parliament and a former acting speaker, said that if the United States could not stay in Iraq, other troops should be drafted in. "If because of domestic pressure in the United States, the U.S. feels it is not possible to continue undertaking this burden, then I think we should consider going to the United Nations and having an international force," said Pachachi.
"This is a last resort really, otherwise there would be total chaos in the country."
Bush, who this week pleaded for the United States to give his new Iraq plan a chance, does not have to abide by a Senate resolution if legislators vote against sending more troops.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Ex-Pentagon adviser and top neocon Richard Perle suggests Marines to be used in Bush Iran attack
Perle, Ricks face off
Richard Perle seemed to pull back from some of his sharpest comments on Iran here in New York last night, but even that couldn't win him any fans from an audience that came prepared to hate him. The former chairman of the Defense Policy Board was at the 92nd Street Y to participate in a forum with Washington Post journalist Thomas Ricks and PBS producer Martin Smith, moderated by Robert MacNeil, that was part of the promotional effort for a new PBS series, "America at a Crossroads," which will run in April.
Recently, Perle said he believed the president would attack Iran if he thought the country was coming close to acquiring nuclear weapons, but in an excerpt of one of the films in the series, a documentary on Perle himself, he was shown as saying that it would be a mistake to send Marines to Iran, and that it was not being contemplated. This drew boos and laughter from the audience. Later on, Perle remarked that the quote had been filmed several months earlier and that he "can't say [the same] now."
The night was, in general, a rough one for Perle, who faced a hostile audience -- he was booed and hissed several times and at one point a man who screamed that Perle "benefited from 9/11," among other things unintelligible to this reporter, had to be escorted from the room -- as well as two co-panelists who seemed unwilling to listen to the man often credited, rightly or wrongly, with being a driving force behind the war. So when Perle expressed his support for the recently announced troop surge, Ricks and Smith would have none of it. Ricks called Iraq a "Shakespearean tragedy," and said that the nightmare scenario the president and others have warned of if U.S. forces pull out "will occur no matter what." He said that the Baghdad of a year ago, when he last visited, was a "pure Hobbesian state," and that the president's plan meant "going back into Baghdad as the biggest militia in the neighborhood, and the only militia that doesn't understand the situation." Smith concurred, saying it was "a fantasy that as we leave everybody picks up a letter opener and goes after their neighbor," and that American forces were already doing little or nothing to quell violence in some areas of Baghdad.
But perhaps the darkest discussion of the night centered around the "standing up" of the Iraqi police and military. Smith, who is working on a documentary that touches on that subject for the PBS series, said that what the U.S. is currently attempting to do in training an Iraqi army is tantamount to trying to raise a neutral army in Kentucky during America's own Civil War, and Ricks told a story he'd heard about the police station in Ramadi renting arms, for 12-hour periods, to insurgents.
We spoke with Perle after the event and asked him how he dealt with the kind of crowd reaction he faced. He shrugged it off, saying he'd faced worse, including a shoe thrown at him at one event in Portland, Ore., but said he was still disappointed. "I think you have a responsibility to take seriously the views of your fellow Americans," he said. "All [I] can do is try to explain what [I] believe."
In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 26, 2007; A01
Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.
This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."
It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.
With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. "Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday," she said. "Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday."
Martin, perhaps unaware of the suspicion such machinations caused in the press corps, lamented that her statements at the time were not regarded as credible. She testified that, as the controversy swelled in 2004, reporters ignored her denials and continued to report that it was Cheney's office that sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate allegations of Iraq's nuclear acquisitions. "They're not taking my word for it," Martin recalled telling a colleague.
Martin, who now works on the president's communications staff, said she was frustrated that reporters wouldn't call for comment about the controversy. She said she had to ask the CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, which reporters were working on the story. "Often, reporters would stop calling us," she testified.
This prompted quiet chuckles among the two dozen reporters sitting in court to cover the trial. Whispered one: "When was the last time you called the vice president's office and got anything other than a 'no comment'?"
At length, Martin explained how she, Libby and deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley worked late into the night writing a statement to be issued by George Tenet in 2004 in which the CIA boss would take blame for the bogus claim in Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa.
After "delicate" talks, Tenet agreed to say the CIA "approved" the claim and "I am responsible" -- but even that disappointed Martin, who had wanted Tenet to say that "we did not express any doubt about Niger."
During her testimony, Martin, a Harvard Law School graduate married to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and a close pal of Bush counselor Dan Bartlett, seemed uncomfortable, shifting in her chair, squinting at her interrogators, stealing quick glances at the jury, and repeatedly touching her cheek, ear, nose, lips and scalp.
Martin shed light on the mystery of why White House press secretary Scott McClellan promised, falsely, that Libby was not involved in outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. After McClellan had vouched for Bush strategist Karl Rove's innocence, Libby asked Martin, "Why don't they say something about me?"
"You need to talk to Scott," Martin advised.
On jurors' monitors were images of Martin's talking points, some labeled "on the record" and others "deep background." She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others. To deal with the Wilson controversy, she hastily arranged a Cheney lunch with conservative commentators. And when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof first wrote about the Niger affair, she explained, "we didn't see any urgency to get to Kristof" because "he frankly attacked the administration fairly regularly."
Questioned by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Martin described how Hadley tried to shield White House spokesmen from the Niger controversy. "Everybody was sort of in the dark," she explained. "There had been a decision not to have the communicators involved."
But Martin, encouraged by Libby, secretly advised Libby and Cheney on how to respond. She put "Meet the Press" at the top of her list of "Options" but noted that it might appear "too defensive." Next, she proposed "leak to Sanger-Pincus-newsmags. Sit down and give to him." This meant that the "no-leak" White House would give the story to the New York Times' David Sanger, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, or Time or Newsweek. Option 3: "Press conference -- Condi/Rumsfeld." Option 4: "Op-ed."
Martin was embarrassed about the "leak" option; the case, after all, is about a leak. "It's a term of art," she said. "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."
For all the elaborate press management, things didn't always go according to plan. Martin described how Time wound up with an exclusive one weekend because she didn't have a phone number for anybody at Newsweek.
"You didn't have a lot of hands-on experience dealing with the press?" defense attorney Theodore Wells asked.
"Correct," Martin replied. After further questions, she added: "Few of us in the White House had had hands-on experience with any crisis like this."
Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.
Cheney Forced Stall to Pre-War Flawed Intel Probe
Posted on Thu, Jan. 25, 2007
Rockefeller: Cheney applied 'constant' pressure to stall investigation on flawed Iraq intelligence
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.
In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.
In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.
"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.
Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.
In an e-mail response to Rockefeller's comments, Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: "The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee."
Roberts' chief of staff, Jackie Cottrell, blamed the Democrats for the investigation remaining incomplete more than two years after it began.
"Senator Rockefeller's allegations are patently untrue," she said in an e-mail statement. "The delays came from the Democrats' insistence that they expand the scope of the inquiry to make it a more political document going into the 2006 elections. Chairman Roberts did everything he could to accommodate their requests for further information without allowing them to distort the facts."
"I'm not aware of any effort by the vice president, his staff or anyone in the administration to influence the speed at which the committee did its work," said Bill Duhnke, who was Roberts' staff director.
Rockefeller's comments were among the most forceful he's made about why the committee failed to complete the inquiry under Roberts. Roberts chaired the intelligence committee from January 2003 until the Democrats took over Congress this month.
The panel released a report in July 2004 that lambasted the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for erroneously concluding that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was concealing biological, chemical and nuclear warfare programs. It then began examining how senior Bush administration officials used faulty intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion.
Robert promised to quickly complete what became known as the Phase II investigation. After more than two years, however, the panel published only two of five Phase II reports amid serious rifts between Republican and Democratic members and their staffs.
Rockefeller recalled that in November 2005, the then-minority Democrats employed a rarely used parliamentary procedure to force the Senate into a closed session to pressure Roberts to complete Phase II.
"That was the reason we closed the session. To force him" to complete the investigation, he said.
The most potentially controversial of the three Phase II reports being worked on will compare what Bush and his top lieutenants said publicly about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorists with what was contained in top-secret intelligence reports.
In the two reports released in September, the panel said that the administration's claims of ties between Saddam and al-Qaida were false and found that administration officials distributed exaggerated and bogus claims provided by an Iraqi exile group with close ties to some senior administration officials.
Rockefeller said it was important to complete the Phase II inquiry.
"The looking backward creates tension, but it's necessary tension because the administration needs to be held accountable and the country . . . needs to know," he said.
Rockefeller said that he and the senior Republican member of the committee, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., have put the frictions behind them and agree that the committee should press the administration for documents it's withholding on its domestic eavesdropping program and detainee programs.
Under the eavesdropping program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans' international telephone calls and e-mails without court warrants if one party was a suspected member or supporter of al-Qaida or another terrorist group.
Rockefeller charged that Bush had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain permission to eavesdrop on Americans from a secret national security court.
"For five years he's (Bush) has been operating an illegal program," he said, adding that the committee wants the administration to provide the classified documents that set out its legal argument that Bush has the power to wiretap Americans without warrants.
Rockefeller is among a handful of lawmakers who were kept briefed on the program after it started following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But he told Cheney in a handwritten note in July 2003 that he was deeply concerned about its legality.
In the interview, Rockefeller said the committee needs more details about how the program worked before it considers amending the eavesdropping act to give the administration the flexibility it says it requires to be able to track terrorists.
"How do we draw something up if we have no idea about what the president sent out in the way of orders to the NSA? What about the interpretation of the Department of Justice?" he asked. "Americans . . . should want us to discern what the facts are, what the truth is."
Rockefeller: Cheney applied 'constant' pressure to stall investigation on flawed Iraq intelligence
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.
In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.
In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.
"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.
Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.
In an e-mail response to Rockefeller's comments, Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: "The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee."
Roberts' chief of staff, Jackie Cottrell, blamed the Democrats for the investigation remaining incomplete more than two years after it began.
"Senator Rockefeller's allegations are patently untrue," she said in an e-mail statement. "The delays came from the Democrats' insistence that they expand the scope of the inquiry to make it a more political document going into the 2006 elections. Chairman Roberts did everything he could to accommodate their requests for further information without allowing them to distort the facts."
"I'm not aware of any effort by the vice president, his staff or anyone in the administration to influence the speed at which the committee did its work," said Bill Duhnke, who was Roberts' staff director.
Rockefeller's comments were among the most forceful he's made about why the committee failed to complete the inquiry under Roberts. Roberts chaired the intelligence committee from January 2003 until the Democrats took over Congress this month.
The panel released a report in July 2004 that lambasted the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for erroneously concluding that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was concealing biological, chemical and nuclear warfare programs. It then began examining how senior Bush administration officials used faulty intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion.
Robert promised to quickly complete what became known as the Phase II investigation. After more than two years, however, the panel published only two of five Phase II reports amid serious rifts between Republican and Democratic members and their staffs.
Rockefeller recalled that in November 2005, the then-minority Democrats employed a rarely used parliamentary procedure to force the Senate into a closed session to pressure Roberts to complete Phase II.
"That was the reason we closed the session. To force him" to complete the investigation, he said.
The most potentially controversial of the three Phase II reports being worked on will compare what Bush and his top lieutenants said publicly about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorists with what was contained in top-secret intelligence reports.
In the two reports released in September, the panel said that the administration's claims of ties between Saddam and al-Qaida were false and found that administration officials distributed exaggerated and bogus claims provided by an Iraqi exile group with close ties to some senior administration officials.
Rockefeller said it was important to complete the Phase II inquiry.
"The looking backward creates tension, but it's necessary tension because the administration needs to be held accountable and the country . . . needs to know," he said.
Rockefeller said that he and the senior Republican member of the committee, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., have put the frictions behind them and agree that the committee should press the administration for documents it's withholding on its domestic eavesdropping program and detainee programs.
Under the eavesdropping program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans' international telephone calls and e-mails without court warrants if one party was a suspected member or supporter of al-Qaida or another terrorist group.
Rockefeller charged that Bush had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain permission to eavesdrop on Americans from a secret national security court.
"For five years he's (Bush) has been operating an illegal program," he said, adding that the committee wants the administration to provide the classified documents that set out its legal argument that Bush has the power to wiretap Americans without warrants.
Rockefeller is among a handful of lawmakers who were kept briefed on the program after it started following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But he told Cheney in a handwritten note in July 2003 that he was deeply concerned about its legality.
In the interview, Rockefeller said the committee needs more details about how the program worked before it considers amending the eavesdropping act to give the administration the flexibility it says it requires to be able to track terrorists.
"How do we draw something up if we have no idea about what the president sent out in the way of orders to the NSA? What about the interpretation of the Department of Justice?" he asked. "Americans . . . should want us to discern what the facts are, what the truth is."
Cheap gas or democracy? US's Turkmen problem
World briefing
Simon Tisdall
Friday January 26, 2007
The Guardian
Simon Tisdall
Friday January 26, 2007
The Guardian
His patronymic included, Gurbanguli Myalikgulyevich Berdymukhamedov can probably claim to have the longest name of any national leader. But Mr B is giving short shrift to opposition hopes of a more open, democratic Turkmenistan as the central Asian country plods towards presidential elections on February 11. His almost inevitable victory over token rivals poses a larger problem for the US and Europe, whose interest in promoting "freedom's march" is surpassed only by their appetite for cheap energy.
Turkmenistan has some of the world's biggest natural gas fields, producing the equivalent of 11% of total EU consumption annually. But its pipeline export routes remain firmly under Russian control, a legacy of the Soviet era. Last September Moscow's state energy giant Gazprom won access to the large Yolotan field and an option on any surpluses until 2009. The deal marked the end of President Saparmurat Niyazov's bid to weaken Russia's grip. And in any case, in December Niyazov, known as Turkmenbashi the Great, died after 21 years running one of the world's most oppressive dictatorships.
Apparently oblivious to concerns about democratic transition, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, was quick to cement ties with Mr Berdymukhamedov, a Niyazov favourite, who was named interim president. The two men exchanged assurances about a continuing, close energy relationship.
Washington has not been totally inactive, sending two mid-level envoys to Ashgabat. But having tolerated Niyazov's authoritarian personality cult and courted his energy favours, its public statements about the succession have been cautious. The European Commission declared this month that the EU should expand its strategic stake in central Asia, human rights notwithstanding. But exiled Turkmen opposition leaders say that by turning a blind eye to a looming electoral travesty, western countries are passing up "a historic second chance" to advance democratic reform and reverse Moscow's energy dominance to their own advantage.
"Niyazov was a selfish, kleptocratic despot," said Nurmuhammet Hanamov, chairman of the exiled Republican party of Turkmenistan, writing in the Washington Post - and now, he suggested, there was a danger of history repeating itself. All the other official presidential candidates belonged to the ruling Democratic party, the media were under strict state control, and the supposedly independent election chief had already stated that Mr Berdymukhamedov was the best man for the job.
All the same, the country's ruling clique is leaving little to chance. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has published emigre reports that domestic security and surveillance have been stepped up "to ensure nothing happened to derail Berdymukhamedov's journey to power". And despite his reform promises, Robert Arsenault of the International League for Human Rights suggested little would change without concerted outside pressure. "The future of Turkmenistan and its more than five million people is up for grabs," he told the Baltimore Sun. "The US has a splendid opportunity to use its diplomatic influence to effect a democratic outcome."
But as was the case last year across the Caspian in democratically challenged Azerbaijan, Washington, harbouring hopes of energy deals, appears to prefer not to rock the boat. A friendly Turkmenistan, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, also has high strategic value. That has led exiled opposition presidential nominee Khudaiberdy Orazov to appeal to the US not to acquiesce in a cynical "gas for dictatorship" deal.
"Please show that human rights and human freedoms [are] not some abstract concept with you and that you are ready to fight for them, not only in the places that you find convenient, but wherever it is happening in the world," he said.
Libby trial witness leaves White House reeling
12.45pm
Mark Tran
Friday January 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran
Friday January 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
 |  Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis Libby. Photograph: Haraz N Ghanbari/AP |
President Bush's administration was today preparing for damaging repercussions from testimony by one of its own officials in the perjury trial of Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the former chief of staff to the US vice-president Dick Cheney.
Cathie Martin, Mr Cheney's former spokeswoman, yesterday told a court that she clearly remembered telling Mr Libby the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, whose husband, Joseph Wilson, had attacked the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq.
Mr Libby faces five felony counts of lying to a grand jury and FBI agents for claiming that he learned of Valerie Plame's identity from reporters. Her name was first disclosed in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak in July, 2003, just days after her husband had written a comment in The New York Times accusing the Bush administration of distorting intelligence to bolster the case for invading Iraq.
Mr Wilson had been sent to Africa to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger for his nuclear weapons programme. He reported back to the state department and the CIA that the reports were untrue, yet the claim surfaced in George Bush's state of the union speech in January, 2003.
Mr Libby is not being tried for the leak itself, but for the subsequent cover-up. The former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage subsequently admitted leaking Ms Plame's identity to Mr Novak and to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. But Mr Armitage says he did not realise Ms Plame's job was covert.
Ms Martin was the fourth prosecution witness in a trial that could prove highly embarrassing for the White House by shedding light on its deliberations in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Her testimony could be especially damaging as she worked closely with Mr Libby and Mr Cheney.
A staunch Republican, Ms Martin was recruited to work for Mr Cheney by Mary Matalin, a close friend of Mr Libby and Mr Cheney. She is married to Kevin Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and is currently the deputy director of communications for policy and planning for Mr Bush.
Her account of events backed up the prosecution's case that Mr Libby found out Ms Plame's identity from administration officials rather than from reporters, as he told investigators.
According to US reports of the trial, Ms Martin said she learned that Ms Plame worked for the CIA after Mr Libby told her to call the agency to get more information about Mr Wilson's trip to Niger. Ms Martin said she quickly passed on Ms Plame's name to Mr Libby and Mr Cheney.
Ms Martin also told the court of the White House's media strategy - including "strategic leaks" - personally directed by Mr Cheney to reject charges that Mr Bush had misled the public in his January, 2003 speech.
But Ms Martin said that neither man had suggested that Ms Plame's identity be revealed as part of the White House plan. She said that she had no knowledge of either actually doing so.
Theodore Wells, Mr Libby's chief lawyer, in his cross-examination of Martin, tried to challenge her memory, as he has done with other witnesses. Her cross-examination will continue when the trial resumes Monday. She will be followed on the witness stand by Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary.
The End of Zionism?
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Now that Carter has put the comparison with apartheid South Africa squarely on the table, it might be time to ask whether Zionism might soon go the way of South African political racism. There are some signs in the current constellation of factors that suggest this might actually happen. In particular, if we look at 1) the current geopolitical environment in the Middle East, 2) Israel's ongoing and apparently irresolvable political crisis, and 3) the increasing exhaustion of the political myths that underlie the country's civil society, we see the possibility of a coming conjuncture in which Israelis themselves, like their white South African predecessors, might simply decide that enough is enough and it is time to allow a more just society to come into being.
The current geopolitical environment is the most unfavorable for Israel as it has been at any time in my conscious lifetime, due in large part to the spectacular failure of the Bush-Likud/Kadima alliance's attempt to remake the Middle East. The only previous time that I can recall that even comes close to the current moment are the dark days of the Yom Kippur War, when for a brief instant it appeared that the Egyptian-Syrian offensive might actually threaten the territory of Israel proper. Today, however, after the US conveniently removed the Iraqi bulwark to Iranian expansion into the Arab world and Israel's unilateralism has failed in both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel is facing a local geopolitical environment in which its sworn enemies not only enjoy momentum but also have little reason to wish to compromise with the Zionist state.
Israeli rhetoric has always claimed the country is surrounded by enemies who wish to drive it into the sea. Today, that rhetoric is not only approaching reality (though the Hashemite kingdom, as always, proves the exception to the general rule), but those enemies -- Hezbollah, Hamas, and their Iranian sponsors -- for the first time might actually be nearing the military capacity necessary to bring the goal within reach.
At this very moment, Israel's political system is nearing collapse. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert enjoys almost no popularity (a recent poll has him at about fourteen percent favorable), but the virtual collapse of both Labour and Likud has put his government "into an unusually solid position." Even as high-ranking former officials openly call for the government's resignation, a Kadima policy-maker can state:
There is no crisis. A crisis is when the government is about to fall.
With the (ceremonial) president indicted for rape and all the political parties discredited, it is fair to say Israel's political system is in crisis.
Finally, there is a growing recognition inside Israel itself that the country's self-image, as the innocent victim of Arab perfidy, is seriously at odds with the facts. Our blogroll attests to the increasing number of Israel civil organizations that have come to question Israeli's role in creating and sustaining violent relations with the Palestinians. That questioning extends all the way back to the nation's founding, as Israeli historians unearth ever greater evidence of Zionist war crimes and atrocities during the War for Independence.
Way back in 1985, at the height of Reagan's "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime, when even the most optimistic of the regime's critics despaired of ever seeing it come to an end, the anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano published Waiting: The Whites of South Africa. The book, sadly, is now out of print and hard to find, but J.M Coetzee's New York Times review gives a good flavor for the text:
The malaise Mr. Crapanzano detects in the soul of white South Africa is the malaise of waiting ; and the keenest pages of his book are given over to its description.
''Wittingly or unwittingly, the whites wait for something, anything, to happen. They are caught in the peculiar, the paralytic, time of waiting. . . . To talk about dread, angst, guilt or being overwhelmed, all of which are components of the experience of waiting, adds a metaphysical dimension, a melodramatic tension, to the very ordinary experience I am trying to describe. Such terms 'elevate' the experience. They give it importance. . . . Waiting - the South African experience - must be appreciated in all its banality. Therein lies its pity - and its humanity.''
Of the tenor of existence in the valley where Wyndal is situated he writes:
''(Their life) impressed me as somehow truncated. . . . Their experience was not open-ended, expansive, and adventurous. . . . Their present seemed devoid of the vitality that I associate with leading a fulfilling life. . . . In waiting, the present is always secondary to the future. . . . The world in its immediacy slips away; it is derealized. It is without elan, vitality, creative force. It is numb, muted, dead.''
I wonder if Israelis might not be in a similar state: waiting, waiting for something external to happen, to bring their country's multiple crises to a final resolution. In the end, of course, white South Africans were forced to take the future into their own hands, to cede power willingly and on their own to the country's black majority. Eventually, the tension of living a truncated existence became too great, and they accepted their own capacity to take control of their lives by acknowledging the great lie they all were living.
Could something similar happen in Israel? Only time will tell.
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