Category Archives: Politics

Craziness on Display

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One of the things writ­ing the U.S. media roundup on [IraqSlogger](http://www.iraqslogger.com) allows me to do is get a high dud­geon up over the crap that passes for analy­sis on op-ed pages … or sloppy writ­ing in the mid­dle of report­ing. (Michael Gor­don of the *New York Times* has been [raked over the coals](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/opinion/08pubed.html) for his indis­crim­i­nate use of “al Qaeda” to describe most Iraqis with a Kalash­nikov, but thank­fully that seems to have been reined in.)
Oth­ers have been less care­ful. On Fri­day, Leslie Sab­bagh of the *Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor* writes that Petraeus warned of “greatly increased sec­tar­ian vio­lence” if the U.S. pulls out too soon. It’s a fairly run-of-the mill story, with stats show­ing a drop in attacks against civil­ians and an increase against U.S. troops. Pretty much what you’d expect, but there is some sloppy lan­guage in here. Sab­bagh writes of a “quick with­drawal,” but few peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton are talk­ing about any­thing hasty. They’re talk­ing about the start of a with­drawal sooner rather than later — one that might take six months, a year, what­ever — not a pell-mell rush to the bor­der.
Sab­bagh does it again, writ­ing, “The prospect of any hasty removal of US troops has (Petraeus) con­cerned.” But the gen­eral actu­ally said, “If we pull out there will be greatly increased sec­tar­ian vio­lence, human­i­tar­ian con­cerns.…” Petraeus makes no men­tion of the speed of the pull­out; he ques­tions the wis­dom of a pull­out alto­gether. The mil­i­tary com­mand and the Bush White House seem to be envi­sion­ing a long-term pres­ence in Iraq that will last years, but reporters are think­ing of a evac­u­a­tion, Saigon style. Those are two very dif­fer­ent ideas. Reporters need to let the read­ers know when Petraeus, Bush, et al. are try­ing to reframe the debate as a choice between a hasty, unplanned retreat and an indef­i­nite pres­ence. What’s actu­ally being talked about is either an indef­i­nite pres­ence or an orderly with­drawal with proper force-protection over a period of time, but which begins sooner rather than never.
But for an egre­gious exam­ple of high weird­ness, check out the *Monitor*‘s pub­li­ca­tion of [an op-ed by Andrew Roberts](http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0712/p09s01-coop.html), author of “A His­tory of the English-Speaking Peo­ples Since 1900.” In this extra­or­di­nary op-ed, Roberts argues that “the English-speaking peo­ples” (ESPs) of the world are the ones best able to stand up to rad­i­cal, total­i­tar­ian Islam because Anglo­phones have never been invaded or fallen under the sway of fas­cism or com­mu­nism. “Coun­tries in which Eng­lish is the pri­mary lan­guage are cul­tur­ally, polit­i­cally, and mil­i­tar­ily different” — read, “better” — “from the rest of ‘the West,’” he writes. “They stand for moder­nity, reli­gious and sex­ual tol­er­a­tion, cap­i­tal­ism, diver­sity, women’s rights, rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions — in a word, the future.” Yeah! Suck it, Ger­many, Spain and Italy! (Who have all com­mit­ted troops and suf­fered casu­al­ties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and else­where since 9/11.)
Seri­ously, this offen­sively nativist tract must come as a sur­prise to the those non-English-speaking peo­ples of the world (poor sods), but maybe they’ll be con­tent to bask in the warm pro­tec­torate of the US-Canadian-British-ANZ imperium. There is just so much wrong with this op-ed — such as say­ing the inva­sion of South Korea by North Korea was a “sur­prise” attack for the world’s ESPs when it sounds like it was more a sur­prise to the South Kore­ans. And his rep­e­ti­tion of the whole ESP phrase is grat­ing. Finally, he just up and ignores the con­tri­bu­tions of Ger­man sol­diers in Afghanistan and the French Navy in patrolling the vital sea lanes through­out the Ara­bian and Indian oceans. And he trots out the old, “Al Qaeda can’t be appeased because the French would have already done so” trope. WTF? Is this a joke?
There’s much more — so much more. I’m leav­ing out the pablum from such lumi­nar­ies as Bill Kris­tol — “the Bush pres­i­dency will be seen as a sucess” — and the *Wall Street Jour­nal* edi­to­r­ial page. I mean, we all know what’s the score with those guys. But I expected a bit more from the *Mon­i­tor*.
Finally, my lat­est col­umn for [Spot-on.com](http://www.spot-on.com/) is avail­able. In it, I take up — what else? — [the 1st anniver­sary of the Israel-Hezbollah war](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/07/lebanons_war_one_year_later.html). (Some peo­ple call it the July War, but since half of it hap­pened in August, I’ll stick with my appel­la­tion, thanks.)
That’s all. More to come!

Lebanese Army on the Move

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BEIRUT — The Lebanese army is on the move toward Nahr el-Bared. For the last three hours, the army has been pound­ing Fatah al-Islam posi­tions with artillery, tanks and mor­tars. Some believe this is a soft­en­ing up of posi­tion before a full-scale assault on the camp, which would break a 37-year-old prece­dent keep­ing Lebanese troops out of the Pales­tin­ian camps.
Or it might be another one of the exchanges of fire that have pep­pered the almost two week stand-off. Although this one looks pretty big.

Going in?

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BEIRUT — In my pre­vi­ous post, I men­tioned that Maj. Gen Ashraf Rifi, the head of the Inter­nal Secu­rity Forces told me, he “thinks the army will have to go in” to Nahr el-Bared to uproot the mil­i­tants of Fatah al-Islam.
“They are very dan­ger­ous,” he told me in his plush office. “We have no choice, we have to com­bat them.“
Per­haps I under­played his com­ments, because if he’s right, “going in” would be a huge devel­op­ment. The Pales­tini­ans have run their own secu­rity in the 12 camps under a 1969 agree­ment bro­kered by the Arab League. Now, that agree­ment was allegedly revoked in 1987 by the Lebanese Par­lia­ment, but there’s still at least a tacit agree­ment that the Pales­tini­ans mind their own store.
That’s not really a viable secu­rity option any­more, as we can see just north of Tripoli.
Now, what was Rifi try­ing to say? Was he merely repeat­ing the phrase of my ques­tion — “Will the army have to go in?” — because his eng­lish isn’t so good, as he protested a cou­ple of times? (He spoke well enough to con­duct an inter­view, mind you.) Was he try­ing to empha­size the point that there are ele­ments in the gov­ern­ment that are rarin’ to go get those Fatah al-Islam guys while oth­ers, per­haps Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Sin­iora, are will­ing to take a slower approach?
Or was he try­ing, in his own locu­tion, to empha­size the impor­tance for Lebanon of win­ning this bat­tle? Because this is make or break time for Lebanon as a sov­er­eign state.
If the army fails at this task of defeat­ing Fatah al-Islam — and I’m not talk­ing about some mealy-mouthed “arrange­ment” where a few of the mil­i­tants are hauled in — it will under­mine the legit­i­macy of the army as a state insti­tu­tion. And that will very much play right into Hezbollah’s hands.
See, Hezbol­lah has often said it is needed as an armed resis­tance because the army is too weak to stand up to Israel. (True.) But the Shi’ite group won’t put itself under the com­mand of the army because to do so would mean that any attack it launched on Israel such as, say, cap­tur­ing and killing Israeli troops, would mean _Lebanon_ was the aggres­sor and as such would bring down the wrath of the Israeli mil­i­tary on _Lebanon._
Of course, this is exactly what hap­pened last sum­mer, but let’s not quib­ble. In Lebanese pol­i­tics, there are appar­ently no lim­its on hypocrisy.
If the army fails and is seen as weak or ille­git­i­mate, Hezbol­lah has a strong argu­ment for say­ing it must keep its arms for the defense of Lebanon. Now, one of the def­i­n­i­tions of sov­er­eignty is the “monop­oly on the legit­i­mate use of phys­i­cal force”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_the_legitimate_use_of_physical_force, or vio­lence. Since Lebanon’s gov­ern­ment and weak army would be unable to claim that fol­low­ing a loss at the hands of Fatah al-Islam, there would be no real sov­er­eignty here. Hezbol­lah 1, Lebanon 0.
One can argue whether a sov­er­eign Lebanon is a good or bad thing in the grand scheme of things, an argu­ment I can’t address on this hum­ble blog, although I favor the for­mer. But it’s vitally impor­tant to the Lebanese gov­ern­ment.
It’s so impor­tant that some ele­ments of the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing Rifi’s for­mer boss, cab­i­net mem­ber Ahmad Fat­fat, “are call­ing for storm­ing the gates of Nahr el-Bared.”:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070526.LEBANON26/TPStory/International
There is some buzz that this will be resolved in 48 hours. That may be true, or it might not be. A lot can hap­pen in this small coun­try in that time.
By the way, the dona­tions are work­ing again, and cov­er­ing this place ain’t cheap. Fix­ers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and free­lanc­ing for news­pa­pers only cov­ers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blog­ging the devel­op­ments in Lebanon’s lat­est cri­sis, please con­sider drop­ping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.

Strange doings in Tripoli

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TRIPOLI — What the heck is going on up here? That seems to be the big ques­tion at the moment. Last night around 9 p.m., fight­ing started up again between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam. This prompted spec­u­la­tion that the push against the jihadi group had come, and I raced back up to Tripoli from my spot of being stuck in a check­point just out­side Beirut. (The cap­i­tal is locked down after three bombs this week, so secu­rity is tight.)
Atop the build­ing where the tele­vi­sion crews have set up, the owner of the build­ing — a tightly wound guy in the best of times — car­ried around a Kalash­nikov and threat­ened to shoot any­one who turned on their tele­vi­sion lights.
In the dark­ness, you couldn’t see who was who, and a rumor — goosed, appar­ently by Lebanese mil­i­tary intel­li­gence — swept through the gang that Fatah al-Islam had sent sui­cide bombers through­out the nearby area and one might be on the roof. A quick evac­u­a­tion ensued.
This morn­ing it’s quiet again. The fight­ing stopped around 6 a.m., and we’re back to wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen.
My feel­ing is that Fuad Siniora’s gov­ern­ment is a bit con­fused, as the Pales­tin­ian issue is a tricky one. The sta­tus of Pales­tini­ans in Lebanon is not a purely inter­nal affair, but one belong­ing to the Arab League thanks to a 1969 agree­ment that keeps Lebanese author­ity out of the 12 camps scat­tered around the coun­try. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters, the camp isn’t empty. There has been a more or less steady trickle of refugees get­ting out of the camps, either on foot or in cars, but there are still about 18,000 civil­ians in the camp, accord­ing to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The human­i­tar­ian sit­u­a­tion is grow­ing worse by the hour inside the camp, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tional Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross, and scat­tered demon­stra­tions in other camps have already occurred. More casu­al­ties among civil­ians is going to inflame the Pales­tini­ans in Lebanon — an already seething peo­ple who make up about 10 per­cent of Lebanon’s pop­u­la­tion. Sul­tan Abu Aynan, the head of Lebanon’s branch of Fatah — the main group in the PLO — has warned of a gen­eral upris­ing among the Pales­tini­ans could occur. Other Arab gov­ern­ments have also expressed con­cern over the casu­al­ties (even while they pledge a rush ship­ment of weapons to the Lebanese army.)
So a long siege is unten­able to the Pales­tini­ans and Arab gov­ern­ments around the region. But leav­ing Fatah al-Islam alone is equally unten­able to the Lebanese gov­ern­ment. Going into the camp, no mater how care­fully, will result in hor­rific casu­al­ties among both the Pales­tini­ans and the Lebanese army, per­haps the only state insti­tu­tion almost widely admired by all of Lebanon’s quar­rel­ing con­fes­sional groups. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters, mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion, led by the Syr­ian– and Iranian-backed Hezbol­lah, camped out in down­town since Dec. 1, have started mak­ing polit­i­cal hay out of this sit­u­a­tion by accus­ing the U.S.-backed gov­ern­ment of incom­pe­tence and dither­ing — charges which aren’t entirely untrue.
I men­tion the var­i­ous back­ers because solv­ing the prob­lem of Fatah al-Islam has impli­ca­tions far beyond the bor­ders of Lebanon. While mass casu­al­ties on the army’s side would be bad, in Lebanon, the fear of the “other” over­rides all. It’s highly unlikely Siniora’s polit­i­cal allies in the Chris­t­ian and Druze camps would desert him no mat­ter how bad a mil­i­tary assault might be.
(On a side note, Saad Hariri, the son of the slain for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri, urged his sup­port­ers — of which there are many in this con­ser­v­a­tive Sunni area — to help the army. Allegedly, some have taken that to heart because I’ve heard sto­ries from Pales­tini­ans who say Future Move­ment fol­low­ers are shoot­ing into the camp at any­thing that moves. How do they know the bul­lets are from Future Move­ment sup­port­ers? Who knows, but the truth is almost irrel­e­vant in this case; the sus­pi­cions indi­cate the depth of dis­trust between Pales­tini­ans and local res­i­dents up here.)
So while army casu­al­ties would be bad, large num­bers of dead among the Pales­tini­ans would be worse. Arab gov­ern­ments in the region such as Egypt, Jor­dan, Saudi Ara­bia and the var­i­ous Gulf sheikhdoms would be seen by their own restive pop­u­la­tions as help­ing a gov­ern­ment mas­sacre Pales­tini­ans — and it would be an _Arab_ gov­ern­ment doing it. Talk about betrayal! (Al Jazeera, by far the most pop­u­lar news chan­nel through­out the Mid­dle East, “is allegedly push­ing this narrative”:http://beirutspring.com/blog/2007/05/23/why-many-lebanese-are-shunning-aljazeera/, although I can’t ver­ify this just yet.) So Cairo, Amman and oth­ers are watch­ing this sit­u­a­tion very closely.
This would be bad for Sin­iora because he relies not only on sup­port from the West, but from friendly Arab gov­ern­ments who want to check the Iranian-Syrian axis. Weak­en­ing Sin­iora means strength­en­ing Hezbol­lah in Lebanon’s zero-sum pol­i­tics, which would fur­ther strength­en­ing Syria, right when it’s fac­ing a pos­si­ble United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion that would set up the Hariri tri­bunal under Chap­ter 7.
The com­mon thread in all of this is Syria. Fatah al-Islam is sus­pected of being a Syr­ian mar­i­onette and Hezbol­lah is a Syr­ian ally. With threats from the north, south and east, the lit­tle prime-minister-that-could is rapidly run­ning out of room to maneuver.

White House criticizes Democrats, gives GOP a pass

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BEIRUT — U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi came under fierce crit­i­cism from the White House for her pro­posed trip to Syria tomor­row, but, oddly, a Repub­li­can con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion yes­ter­day to Syria was given a free pass by the same White House.
As Dana Perino, White House spokes­woman, “said”:http://newsblaze.com/story/20070331153944tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html:

I do think that, as a gen­eral rule — and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this appar­ent trip that she is going to be tak­ing — that we don’t think it’s a good idea. We think that some­one should take a step back and think about the mes­sage that it sends, and the mes­sage that it sends to our allies. I’m not sure what the hopes are to — what she’s hop­ing to accom­plish there. I know that Assad prob­a­bly really wants peo­ple to come and have a photo oppor­tu­nity and have tea with him, and have dis­cus­sions about where they’re com­ing from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.

Fair enough. But Reps. Robert Ader­holt, R-Ala., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Joe Pitts, R-Penn., “met with Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/04/02/international/i083853D66.DTL&type=printable
The Repub­li­cans released a state­ment that said, “We came because we believe there is an oppor­tu­nity for dia­logue … We are fol­low­ing in the lead of Ronald Rea­gan, who reached out to the Sovi­ets dur­ing the Cold War.“
_Quelle horreur!_ Dia­logue? Crick­ets were the only response from the White House.
Again in fair­ness, I spoke with a source at a West­ern embassy in Beirut about this, and the source said the Repub­li­cans had been dis­cour­aged from going, just as Pelosi and her del­e­ga­tion had been. But, the source said, if a Con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion is deter­mined to go to Dam­as­cus, the U.S. embassy in Beirut would help them out. (He asked for anonymity because he’s not autho­rized to talk to the press — he also com­mit­ted the unpar­don­able sin of call­ing Con­gress a “co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment.”)
Pelosi is the high­est U.S. offi­cial to visit Syria since Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton in the mid-1990s.