Month: October 2008

Republicans Embrace the Cootie Effect

Posted on

Back in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, simply being friends with someone suspected of being a Communist could ruin your career. It became known as “guilt by association.” During this year’s presidential campaign, however, it’s been extended to guilt by spatial proximity, which could appropriately be called the “cootie effect.” If you sit on the same board, have appeared at the same event or otherwise have been in close physical proximity of someone deemed undesirable, you therefore must have been infected by their politics or, at minimum, have no problems with things they may have done in their past.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin, building upon a line of attack originally used by Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign, have raised alarms over the possibility that Barack Obama may have picked up radical terrorist cooties from Bill Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago who was active in the Weather Underground during his youth nearly forty years ago.

Though it is easy to dismiss such attacks as absurd, as they certainly are, it is surprising how easy it is for otherwise rational people to fall prey to such twisted logic.

Palin insists that Obama sees America as “being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Similarly, a recently released McCain ad declared, “Obama worked with terrorist William Ayers when it was convenient,” a charge that Bob Shrum, a senior fellow at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, notes “all but alleges that the candidate was there planting bombs.” Palin has defended such attacks on her Democratic rivals, arguing “We gotta start telling people what the other side represents.”

As has been investigated by The New York Times, Factcheck.org, Politifact, and other media, the links between Obama and Ayers are so minimal that it defies any semblance of rationality as to how — in the midst of two wars and the greatest financial crisis in generations — this has become a major campaign issue just two weeks before the general election. But it has.

Sitting on the Same Boards

Back in 1995, Ayers, along with two other education reformers, successfully applied for a $50 million grant from the conservative billionaire Walter Annenberg to support school reform efforts in the city. Ayers had been serving as an educational consultant for Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley and later received the city’s “Citizen of the Year” recognition for his education advocacy. According to the investigation by the New York Times, Obama was asked to chair the six-member panel that oversaw distribution of the funds, which became known as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, over a four-year period.

Fox News, however, reported that “Barack Obama and Bill Ayers had a close working relationship [with]…the two of them were running the foundation together” and that “Barack Obama was funding Bill Ayers’ radical educational projects.” A widely-circulated McCain campaign ad claimed “Ayers and Obama ran a radical educational foundation together.” Similarly, in the Wall Street Journal, Stanley Kurtz — ignoring other members of the team of applicants and the wide range of supporters who made the CAC possible — claimed that “Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit.” He also insisted that “No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his [Ayers’] approval” when, according to the Times investigation, the decision to ask Obama to head the committee was made at the recommendation of Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, at a luncheon meeting with Patricia Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation. Ayers wasn’t even present. Kurtz goes on to claim that “Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.” In reality Ayers attended no more than half a dozen meetings over the five years of CAC’s operation, which were open to the public, in which he — among many others — briefed board members on various issues effecting Chicago schools. As Obama pointed out in the final debate, the board also included Republicans.

Another example the Republicans have used of this supposed “close friendship” between Obama and Ayers is that from 2000 to 2002, Obama and Ayers overlapped on the eight-member board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago anti-poverty group. The New York Times quotes Eden Martin, a corporate lawyer and president of the Commercial Club of Chicago who was also on the board at that time, as noting, “You had people who were liberal and some who were pretty conservative, but we usually reached a consensus.” He also said that he found nothing remarkable about Obama and Ayers’ interactions on the board.

Being at the Same Place at the Same Time

One apparently does not have to be on a board at the same time to get somebody’s cooties. Simply appearing on the same panel or being in the same room can apparently lead to infestation as well.

In a nationally-broadcast special on Fox News, Sean Hannity claimed that Obama and Ayers “appeared together at various public engagements… it would seem that they are more than just a little bit friendly,” the assumption being that if you speak at the same public forum you must be socially and ideological close.

Hannity also claimed in his report that in 1995 Ayers “hosted a political coming out party for a young Barack Obama.” Palin, meanwhile, has insisted that “I think it’s fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy’s living room.” This meet-the-candidate gathering was actually organized for retiring state senator Alice Palmer to kick off her campaign for U.S. Congress. It was she who invited Obama to the event, not Ayers. While there, Palmer introduced those attending her event to Obama — who had already announced his candidacy for her soon-to-be-vacated seat in the Illinois state senate — and endorsed him as her preferred successor.

Still, Jerome Corsi, in his best-seller Obama Nation, insists that introducing Obama in that particular house was significant in that “Palmer would never have introduced Obama to the Hyde Park political community at the Ayres-Dohrn home unless she saw an affinity between Ayers and Dohrn’s radical leftist history . . . and the politics of Barack Obama.”

Such attacks do not just come from right-wing journalists and bloggers, but Senator McCain himself, who claimed that “if you’re going to associate and have as a friend and serve on a board and have a guy kick off your campaign” who is “an unrepentant terrorist, . . . I think really indicates Senator Obama’s attitude…” Indeed, a recent McCain ad claims that Obama “launched his political career in Ayers’ living room.”

Apparently, cooties can be spread through money as well: Republicans have also made much of the $200 contribution Ayers made in the spring of 2001 to Obama’s campaign for re-election to the Illinois State Senate, arguing that since Obama is “financially supported by terrorists,” Obama himself must be of a similar radical left-wing orientation.

It’s Not What You Actually Say or Do

If such indirect associations can really spread political cooties, they must not be very strong. Indeed, there is virtually nothing in these kinds of accusations against Obama that criticize things he has actually said or done.

Senator Obama is a cautious center-left Democrat whose advisors primarily come from the liberal mainstream of the domestic and foreign policy elite. Nothing in his career or in any spoken or written statements gives any indication whatsoever that he has been influenced by or is at all supportive of the kind of radical ideology or violent tactics advocated by or engaged in by Bill Ayers and his associates back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Obama has repeatedly condemned the acts of sabotage and other violence by the Weather Underground — including Ayers’ involvement specifically — virtually all of which took place when Obama was a young boy living thousands of miles away.

Indeed, Obama’s support for escalating the war in Afghanistan, shipping additional arms to repressive Middle Eastern allies, backing only a limited withdrawal from Iraq, increasing military spending, funding the Wall Street bailout, keeping open the option of promoting nuclear power and offshore drilling, and backing a health care plan which precludes the single-payer route taken by virtually all other industrialized democracies has alienated many potential supporters, not just on the far left, but on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party as well. The idea that Obama is a far leftist should be easily dismissible.

Despite this, there are those on the right who insist that this moderate persona is not the “real” Obama. For example, the National Review Online claims that the Democratic nominee is really “a man of the Left, doing his level-best to assemble a coalition free from the constraints of conventional, middle-ground Democratic politics” and that “Obama offers radicalism with a moderate face.” Republican blogger Nicholas Stix insists that Obama “is in fact a far-left politician who . . . seeks to force ever more socialist and racist laws and programs on the American people.” When Senator Joe Lieberman — for whom Obama campaigned against liberal anti-war challenger Ned Lamont in Connecticut’s 2006 Senate primary — was asked if Obama was a Marxist, the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee equivocated: “I must say, that’s a good question… I will tell you that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. . . I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.”

The Republican nominees apparently agree: Palin has claimed that Obama’s plan to modestly raise taxes on those making more than a quarter million dollars a year are “a little bit like socialism” and McCain has said, “At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives.”

The Attacks Keep Coming

Even though there is no evidence that the cootie effect from Obama’s periodic presence-in-the-same-room with a former anti-war radical has actually manifested itself in the Democratic presidential nominee’s career trajectory, there are those who will claim it has anyway. For example, Hannity insisted on Fox News that Obama’s “community organizing is a grand scheme perpetuated by none other than William Ayers,” even though Obama had been a community organizer years before meeting Ayers and Ayers was not involved with Obama or any of the organizations who employed Obama during his years as a community organizer.

Politifact analyzed the McCain ads linking Ayers with Obama closely, particularly the claim that Obama and Ayers ran a radical education foundation together, and rated it as a “pants-on-fire” lie, its most extreme category for a misrepresentation in a political ad.

Even after the initial rounds of attacks against Obama had been debunked, the chair of Virginia’s Republican Party compared Obama to Osama bin Laden since both of them “have friends that have bombed the Pentagon,” a comment McCain refused to renounce and, according to a recent Time magazine article, is being pitched by McCain campaign staffers in that state as a talking point for their canvassers. These Virginia Republicans apparently found it irrelevant that: 1) Ayers is not “friends” with Obama; 2) Ayers has never been linked to the 1972 Weather Underground bombing in a Pentagon rest room; 3) that bombing was deliberately designed to avoid casualties, so comparing it to the 2001 Al-Qaeda attack — which was designed to kill and cost 184 lives — is utterly ludicrous; 4) Osama bin Laden directly ordered the al-Qaeda attack on the Pentagon whereas Obama had nothing to do with the Weather Underground bombing, which took place when he was just ten years old.

Just this past week, voters in a number of swing states received pre-recorded phone calls claiming “Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayres, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans.” In reality, not only did Obama not “work closely” with Ayers, none of the Weather Underground bombings ever killed anybody and Ayers was never convicted of any acts of terrorism.

Shooting the Messenger

Some McCain/Palin supporters are so worried about Obama being infected by Ayers’ radical terrorist cooties that, even after the various independent investigations gave the Democratic nominee a clean bill of health, large numbers of them have refused to accept it, accusing the major corporate-owned daily newspapers and broadcast networks — which they ironically insist carry a “left-wing” bias — of actively engaging in a cover-up. Despite all the media investigations of the Republican charges regarding Obama and Ayers, Palin blames the media for not pursuing the “real story” about Obama, claiming “we’re in dangerous territory when mainstream media isn’t asking all the questions… [W]hen will the questions be asked, and when will we get the answers?”

Despite Obama’s version of his relationship with Ayers having largely been vindicated by these investigative reports, McCain insists, “We know that’s not true. We need to know the full extent of the relationship because of whether Sen. Obama is telling the truth to the American people or not.” In recent weeks, journalists covering McCain rallies have been heckled and given the finger from the Republican crowds, alleging dishonest reporting about Obama’s “terrorist connections.”

It is profoundly disturbing that mainstream American electoral politics has sunk to the level where a major party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees, along with many of their supporters, are now engaging in this level of smear tactics and guilt-by-spatial-proximity. Also troubling is that such attacks are being communicated as fact on the country’s largest cable news channel and in a #1 best selling book, and are thereby being taken seriously by millions of people.

Polls indicate that these attacks are not having much impact in terms of how people will actually vote. However, if a sizable minority of Americans can be convinced that Obama has been infected by radical terrorist cooties, there will be even more pressure against his administration initiating policies geared toward the left. It is presumably no coincidence that the attacks surrounding Ayers and his past affiliation with a Marxist-Leninist organization have been immediately followed by McCain and Palin labeling Obama’s centrist economic proposals as “socialist.”

As a result, though it is easy to dismiss the Republican reliance on the cootie effect as a sign of desperation for a campaign whose policy proposals have proven to warrant such limited support, it would be a mistake to underestimate its potential impact or to downplay the importance of forcefully challenging such attacks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/republicans-embrace-the-c_b_139718.html

Obama’s Missed Opportunity

Posted on

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama missed a number of key opportunities during the presidential foreign policy debate on September 26 to challenge the dangerous and reckless foreign policies of Republican nominee John McCain.

Obama did remind viewers that he strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq. He pointed out that the invasion created a tragic situation in that country that McCain — who vociferously supported the invasion and defends his decision to this day — now claims he’s better qualified to redress. Yet, in what was perhaps his most stunning failure of the evening, the Democratic nominee effectively conceded McCain’s claim that President George W. Bush’s “troop surge” in Iraq — long advocated by the Republican nominee and opposed by Obama — brought about the dramatic reduction of violence in that country in recent months.

In reality, a shift in the alignment of internal Iraqi forces and the tragic de facto partitioning of Baghdad into sectarian enclaves contributed more to lowering the death toll, and the current relative equilibrium is probably temporary. The decision by certain Sunni tribal militias that had battled U.S. forces to turn their weapons against al-Qaeda-related extremists took place before the announcement of the surge, and militant opposition leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s unilateral ceasefire resulted from internal Shia politics rather than any U.S. actions.

Nor did Obama raise questions over McCain’s assertion that Iraq, as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation, was well on its way to becoming a “stable ally.” McCain’s claims of stability are questionable. There’s an ongoing conflict between the two groups that the United States depends on to maintain stability — the Shia-led government and the Sunni militias of the Awakening Council. In addition, there are ongoing attacks by Sunni extremists and a continuing risk that the radical Shia Mahdi Army will once again end its ceasefire.

Nor should the United States consider the Iraqi government an “ally,” given that the two largest parties in the ruling coalition have historically allied themselves with Iran. During Saddam’s rule, Iran recognized the largest party now in government, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (then known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq), as Iraq’s government-in-exile, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard organized and trained the Council’s militia — known as the Badr Corps — which fought on Iran’s side during the Iran-Iraq War. The Iraqi government identifies far more with the ruling Iranian clerics and other Shia movements than with the United States or with America’s traditional Middle Eastern allies. For example, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki strongly sided with Hezbollah in the 2006 conflict with Israel.

Falsehoods Unchallenged

A glaring failure of Obama’s during the debate was his unwillingness to counter some of McCain’s demonstrably false statements. On no less than three occasions during the debate, for instance, the Republican nominee claimed that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” In reality, Ahmadinejad never said that.That idiom does not even exist in the Persian language. The Iranian president was quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini from more than 20 years earlier when, in a statement largely ignored at the time, he said that “the regime occupying Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of time.” While certainly an extreme and deplorable statement, the actual quote’s emphasis on the Israeli “regime” rather than the country itself and its use of an intransitive makes the statement far less threatening than McCain made it sound.

McCain even claimed that Ahmadinejad “is now in New York, talking about the extermination of the state of Israel, of wiping Israel off the map.” In reality, in response to a reporter’s question while in New York to attend the opening of this year’s UN General Assembly session, Ahmadinejad used the analogy of the Soviet Union disappearing from the map. In other words, as with his previous clarifications that McCain deliberately ignored, the Iranian president was calling for Israel’s dissolution as a state, not the country’s physical destruction. McCain, however, unchallenged by Obama, was trying to make Iran appear to be a greater and more imminent threat than it actually is.

When McCain criticized Obama for his refusal to support the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which urged the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist organization,” Obama conceded that he indeed believed they were “a terrorist organization. I’ve consistently said so.” Ironically, even the Bush administration has been unwilling to designate the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, which they correctly recognized as an irresponsibly sweeping characterization of the largest branch of Iran’s armed forces. Despite congressional pressure, the Bush administration only designated the al-Quds Force — a sub-unit of the Revolutionary Guards that has indeed engaged in terrorist operations, but doesn’t always operate with the full knowledge and consent of the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards or even Iran’s central government — as a terrorist group.

In another falsehood during the debate, McCain defended his support for Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorship in Pakistan by insisting that “there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power. Everybody who was around then, and had been there and knew about it, knew that it was a failed state.” While the democratically elected civilian government of Nawaz Sharif was certainly corrupt and inept in many respects at the time Musharraf staged his 1999 coup, Pakistan didn’t fit the usual definition of a “failed state.” This term is generally reserved for countries experiencing a near-total collapse of order and central authority, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, and such West African countries as Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s. Again, Obama failed to call McCain on this rewriting of history.

Other Misleading Statements Unchallenged

Obama even failed to challenge McCain’s statement that “the Russians are preventing significant action in the United Nations Security Council” against Iran’s ongoing refusal to abide my edicts of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In fact, the Russian government agreed to support a U.S.-sponsored resolution that very day, which included the toughest language to date, to force Iran to abide by legally binding Security Council edicts.

McCain then launched into his proposal for the formation of what he referred to as a “league of democracies” to bypass the UN system due to the alleged failure of the Security Council to enforce its resolutions, such as those targeting Iran’s nuclear program. In response, Obama could have pointed out that the United States has blocked enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 1172, which calls on India and Pakistan to eliminate their nuclear arsenals and their long-range missiles. Or that the United States has blocked enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 487, which calls on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the trusteeship of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Or that the United States has blocked the Security Council from adopting a resolution calling for a nuclear weapons-free zone for the entire Middle East. Or that, over the past 40 years, the United States has vetoed more Security Council resolutions than Russia and all other members of the UN Security Council combined. But Obama failed to do so.

Obama also failed to challenge McCain’s dubious statement that “Iranians are putting the most lethal IEDs into Iraq which are killing young Americans” and that “there are special groups in Iran coming into Iraq and are being trained in Iran.” Despite repeated claims to this effect by both McCain and the Bush administration, they haven’t put forward any credible evidence to support them. Obama also failed to point out that the vast majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq have come from attacks by anti-Iranian Sunni groups, and that the political movements in Iraq most closely allied with Iran are part of the U.S.-backed government. Nor did he remind listeners that McCain had earlier made the ludicrous claim that the Iranians were bringing al-Qaeda forces into Iran for training and sending them back into Iraq to kill Americans, something that McCain himself eventually acknowledged was false.

When the Republican nominee characterized Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili as a “great young president,” Obama could have pointed out that Saakashvili’s disastrous decision to launch a massive assault against South Ossetia prompted the devastating Russian attacks on his country. Doing so would have enabled Obama to defend himself from McCain’s criticism during the debate that Obama was wrong to have initially appealed to both sides “to show restraint” and that he should have instead placed all the blame on the Russian side for their illegitimate and disproportionate counter-attack. Obama could also have noted that Saakashvili responded to antigovernment protests within the Georgian capital of Tbilisi late last year with severe repression, shutting down independent media and detaining opposition leaders. Human Rights Watch criticized Saakashvili’s government for using “excessive” force against protesters and the International Crisis Group warned of growing authoritarianism in the country. Obama might have then been able to ask McCain what makes Saakashvili so “great” in his eyes and why McCain retains as his chief foreign policy advisor someone who served as the leading paid lobbyist for Saakashvili’s government.

Hawkishness Unchallenged

The hawkish approach of both Obama in particular and the Democratic party overall hampered his ability to more effectively challenge McCain during the debate on several key issues. For example, Obama couldn’t challenge McCain’s calls for increasing Bush’s already bloated military budget since Obama and the Democratic platform also calls for increasing the military budget. Most Americans are unaware that the United States, at less than 4% of the world’s population, accounts for approximately half of the world’s military spending. Military-related spending already accounts for a full 54% of the discretionary U.S. federal budget. Indeed, the only criticism during the debate regarding excessive Pentagon spending came from McCain, who challenged the waste caused by the cost-plus formula regularly awarded to military contractors.

When McCain insisted that the United States pursue a highly provocative policy of bringing Georgia into NATO, thereby risking embroiling the United States in the complex armed ethnic conflicts of the volatile Caucasus region, Obama largely agreed with the Republican nominee. He said that the United States should insist that Georgia be able to join NATO and that NATO “should have a membership action plan immediately to start bringing them in.”

Obama couldn’t challenge McCain’s call to send more troops to Afghanistan because Obama himself has called for increasing U.S. troop strength in that country. To his credit, Obama has called for holding the Afghan government to greater accountability, curbing the poppy trade, and dealing more forcefully with Pakistan, which has provided support and sanctuary for Taliban fighters. Yet the reality on the ground in Afghanistan contradicts the shared assumption of the two candidates that additional forces would stabilize that country. The U.S.-led war has worsened the security situation and the American bombing of civilian areas has led to a popular backlash that has strengthened the Taliban.

Flawed Logic Unchallenged

Obama also failed to fully challenge McCain’s flawed logic on several points, such as his claim that Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would pose an “existential threat” to Israel. While nuclear weapons controlled by any state can theoretically be an existential threat to anybody, the Iranians surely recognize that, given Israel’s massive nuclear deterrent capability, any such attack would be suicidal. If Iran indeed does have ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons, they would most likely be designed to deter threatened Israeli and American attacks. It’s also noteworthy that, while both expressed alarm at a hypothetical Iranian attack on Israel, neither expressed any concern about a far more plausible Israeli attack on Iran.

Similarly, Obama didn’t challenge McCain’s claim that Iranian possession of nuclear weapons would lead other countries in the region to “feel [a] compelling requirement to acquire nuclear weapons as well.” Obama could have pointed out that Israel’s procurement of nuclear weapons nearly 40 years ago had not led to any other Middle Eastern countries acquiring nuclear weapons, nor had Pakistan’s procurement of nuclear weapons in the 1990s — after India already joined the nuclear club — led additional countries in the region to develop nuclear weapons either. Instead, Obama conceded the point, claiming that a nuclear Iran would indeed “create an environment in which you could set off an arms race in this Middle East.”

Obama also gave a surprisingly weak retort to McCain’s preposterous claims that meeting with a foreign leader would be “saying they’ve probably been doing the right thing” and it would “legitimize their illegal behavior.” Obama could have pointed out that Bush and other U.S. presidents — as well as McCain himself — have met with foreign leaders who have also engaged in severe repression against their citizens and engaged in illegal behavior.

If Obama expects to defeat John McCain, who indeed has more foreign policy experience, he must be more willing to challenge his opponent’s record. McCain is in fact extremely vulnerable in the foreign policy realm. Obama, however, must be more rigorous in pointing out their differences and more effective in challenging McCain’s weaknesses.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/obamas-missed-opportunity_b_136537.html

Haidar’s Struggle

Posted on

Aminatou Haidar, a nonviolent activist from Western Sahara and a key leader in her nation’s struggle against the 33-year-old U.S.-backed Moroccan occupation of her country, won this year’s Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

This recognition of Haidar and her nonviolent freedom campaign is significant in that the Western Sahara struggle has often gone unnoticed, even among many human rights activists. In addition, highlighting the work of an Arab Muslim woman struggling for her people’s freedom through nonviolent action helps challenge impressions held by many Americans that those resisting U.S.-backed regimes in that part of the world are misogynist, violent extremists. Successive administrations have used this stereotype to justify military intervention and support for repressive governments and military occupations.

Unfortunately, given its role in making Morocco’s occupation possible, the U.S. government has little enthusiasm for Haidar and the visibility her winning the RFK prize gives to the whole Western Sahara issue.

Moroccan Occupation

In 1975, the kingdom of Morocco conquered Western Sahara — on the eve of its anticipated independence from Spain — in defiance of a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark 1975 decision by the International Court of Justice upholding the right of the country’s inhabitants to self-determination. With threats of a French and American veto at the UN preventing decisive action by the international community to stop the Moroccan invasion, the nationalist Polisario Front launched an armed struggle against the occupiers. The Polisario established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in February 1976, which has subsequently been recognized by nearly 80 countries and is a full member state of the African Union. The majority of the indigenous population, known as Sahrawis, went into exile, primarily in Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria.

Thanks in part to U.S. military aid, Morocco eventually was able to take control of most of the territory, including all major towns. It also built, thanks to U.S. assistance, a series of fortified sand berms in the desert that effectively prevented penetration by Polisario forces into Moroccan-controlled territory. In addition, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Morocco moved tens of thousands of settlers into Western Sahara until they were more than twice the population of the remaining indigenous Sahrawis. Yet the Polisario achieved a series of diplomatic victories that generated widespread international support for self-determination and refusal to recognize the Moroccan takeover. In 1991, the Polisario agreed to a ceasefire in return for a Moroccan promise to allow for an internationally supervised referendum on the fate of the territory. Morocco, however, refused to allow the referendum to move forward.

French and American support for the Moroccan government blocked the UN Security Council from providing the necessary diplomatic pressure to move the referendum process forward. The Polisario, meanwhile, recognized its inability to defeat the Moroccans by military means. As a result, the struggle for self-determination shifted to within the Moroccan-occupied territory, where the Sahrawi population has launched a nonviolent resistance campaign against the occupation.

Nonviolent Resistance

Western Sahara had seen scattered impromptu acts of open nonviolent resistance ever since the Moroccan conquest. In 1987, for instance, a visit to the occupied territory by a special UN committee to investigate the human right violations sparked protests in the Western Saharan capital of El Aaiún. The success of this major demonstration was all the more remarkable, given that most of the key organizers had been arrested the night before and the city was under a strict curfew. Among the more than 700 people arrested was the 21-year-old Aminatou Haidar.

For four years she was “disappeared,” held without charge or trial, and kept in secret detention centers. In these facilities, she and 17 other Sahrawi women underwent regular torture and abuse.

Most resistance activity inside the occupied territory remained clandestine until early September 1999, when Sahrawi students organized sit-ins and vigils for more scholarships and transportation subsidies from the Moroccan government. Since an explicit call for independence would have been brutally suppressed immediately, the students hoped to push the boundaries of dissent by taking advantage of their relative intellectual freedom. Former political prisoners seeking compensation and accountability for their state-sponsored disappearances soon joined the nonviolent vigils, along with Sahrawi workers from nearby phosphate mines and a union of unemployed college graduates. The movement was suppressed within a few months. Although the demands of what became known as the first Sahrawi Intifada appeared to be nonpolitical, it served as a test of both the Sahrawi public and the Moroccan government. It paved the way for Sahrawis to press for bolder demands and engage in larger protests in the future that would directly challenge the Moroccan occupation itself.

A second Sahrawi intifada, which because known as the “Intifada al-Istiglal” (the Intifada of Independence), began in May 2005. Thousands of Sahrawi demonstrators, led by women and youths, took to the streets of El Aaiún protesting the ongoing Moroccan occupation and calling for independence. The largely nonviolent protests and sit-ins were met by severe repression by Moroccan troops and Moroccan settlers. Within hours, leading Sahrawi activists were kidnapped, including Haidar, who was brutally beaten by Moroccan occupation forces. Sahrawi students at Moroccan universities then organized solidarity demonstrations, hunger strikes, and other forms of nonviolent protests. Throughout the remainder of 2005, the intifada continued with both spontaneous and planned protests, all of which were met with harsh repression by Moroccan authorities.

Haidar was released within seven months as a result of pressure from Amnesty International and the European parliament. Meanwhile, nonviolent protests have continued, despite ongoing repression by U.S.-supported Moroccan authorities. Despite continued disappearances, killings, beatings, and torture, Haidar has continued to advocate nonviolent action. In addition to organizing efforts at home, she traveled extensively to raise awareness internationally about the ongoing Moroccan occupation and advocate for the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination.

U.S. Increases Backing for Morocco

As repression increased, so did U.S. support for Morocco. The Bush administration has increased military and security assistance five-fold and also signed a free-trade agreement. The United States remained largely silent over the deteriorating human rights situation in the occupied Western Sahara while heaping praise for King Mohammed VI’s domestic political and economic reforms. This year’s Republican Party platform singles out the Kingdom of Morocco for its “cooperation and social and economic development,” with no mention of Western Sahara.

However, the occupation itself continues to prove problematic for Morocco. The nonviolent resistance to the occupation continues. Most of the international community, despite French and American efforts, has refused to recognize Morocco’s illegal annexation of the territory.

As a result, the Moroccan kingdom recently advocated an autonomy plan for the territory. The Sahrawis, with the support of most of the world’s nations, rejected the proposal since it would not allow them the choice of independence, as all those living in non-self-governing territories have the legal right to do.

Indeed, the autonomy plan is based on the assumption that Western Sahara is part of Morocco, a contention that the UN, the World Court, the African Union, and a broad consensus of international legal opinion have long rejected. To accept Morocco’s autonomy plan would mean that, for the first time since the founding of the UN and the ratification of the UN Charter more the 60 years ago, the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a country’s territory by military force, thereby establishing a very dangerous and destabilizing precedent.

In addition, Morocco’s proposal contains no enforcement mechanisms, nor are there indications of any improvement of the current poor human rights situation. It’s also unclear how much autonomy Morocco is offering, since it would retain control of Western Sahara’s natural resources and law enforcement. In addition, the proposal appears to indicate that all powers not specifically vested in the autonomous region would remain with the kingdom.

Despite this, the Bush administration refers to Morocco’s autonomy plan as “credible and serious” and the “only possible solution” to the Western Sahara conflict, further insisting that “an independent state in the Sahara is not a realistic option.” While visiting Morocco last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed her support for the “good ideas” put forth by the Moroccan occupiers. Referring to the 35-year-old conflict, she proclaimed that “it is time that it be resolved,” presumably with the Sahrawis accepting their fate as permanently living under Moroccan rule.

Key House Democrats have weighed in support of Morocco’s right of conquest as well, with Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), who chairs the Subcommittee on the Middle East, joining Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) in signing a letter endorsing the autonomy plan. Prominent Republicans signing the letter included Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). Indeed, more than 80 of the signers are either committee chairmen or ranking members of key committees, subcommittees and elected leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, yet another indication in this post-Cold War era of a growing bipartisan effort to undermine the longstanding principle of the right of self-determination.

Advocacy for Haidar

Ironically, the United States rejected a more generous autonomy plan for Kosovo and instead pushed for UN recognition of that nation’s unilateral declaration of independence, even though Kosovo was legally part of Serbia and Western Sahara is legally a country under foreign military occupation.

Alas, U.S. administrations have gone to great lengths to prevent RFK award recipients from even having the opportunity to tell their stories. For example, the Reagan administration denied entry to the United States to representatives of the 1984 winners CoMadres — the group of Salvadoran women struggling on behalf of murdered and kidnapped relatives and other victims of the U.S.-backed junta. They couldn’t even receive their award.

In addition to a modest cash reward, the human rights award includes the expectation the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights will launch an ongoing legal, advocacy and technical support through a partnership with the winner. According to Monika Kalra Varma, the center’s director, “The RFK Human Rights Award not only recognizes a courageous human rights defender but marks the beginning of the RFK Center’s long-term partnership with Ms. Haidar and our commitment to work closely with her to realize the right to self-determination for the Sahrawi people.”

Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), brother of the slain senator for whom the prize is named, stated, “I congratulate Aminatou Haidar for receiving this honor. All who care about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law for the people of the Western Sahara are inspired by her extraordinary courage, dedication and skilled work on their behalf.”

Next Steps

Western Sahara remains an occupied territory only because Morocco has refused to abide by a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling on the kingdom to end their occupation and recognize the right of the people of that territory to self-determination. Morocco has been able to persist in its defiance of its international legal obligations because France and the United States, which wield veto power in the UN Security Council, have blocked the enforcement of these resolutions. In addition, France and the United States served as principal suppliers of the armaments and other security assistance to Moroccan occupation forces. As a result, at least as important as nonviolent resistance by the Sahrawis against Morocco’s occupation policies would be the use of nonviolent action by the citizens of France, the United States and other countries that enable Morocco to maintain its occupation. Such campaigns played a major role in forcing the United States, Australia, and Great Britain to cease their support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. Solidarity networks have emerged in dozens of countries around the world, most notably in Spain and Norway, but don’t yet have a major impact in the United States, where it could matter most.

A successful nonviolent independence struggle by an Arab Muslim people under the Haidar’s leadership could set an important precedent. It would demonstrate how, against great odds, an outnumbered and outgunned population could win through the power of nonviolence in a part of the world where resistance to autocratic rule and foreign military occupation has often spawned acts of terrorism and other violence. Furthermore, the participatory democratic structure within the Sahrawi resistance movement and the prominence of women in key positions of leadership could serve as an important model in a region where authoritarian and patriarchal forms of governance have traditionally dominated.

The eventual outcome rests not just on the Sahrawis alone, but whether the international community, particularly those of us in the United States, decide whether such a struggle is worthy of our support.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/haidars-struggle_b_133005.html

Evaluating the Democratic Party Platform

Posted on

The excitement over the nomination of Barack Obama as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party has been tempered by some key foreign policy planks in the 2008 platform, particularly those relating to the greater Middle East region. These positions appear to run counter to Obama’s pledge early in the primary race to end the mindset that led to the Iraq War.

At the same time, substantial improvements in some foreign policy planks of the 2004 platform indicate at least modest successes by progressive Democratic activists in challenging the more hawkish proclivities of the party’s traditional leadership.

Among the positive aspects of the platform is a commitment to take concrete steps towards nuclear arms control and eventual disarmament. These include ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and recognizing U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The platform also contains new commitments to sustainable development in the Global South and treating Latin American nations as “full partners” with “mutual respect.” There is also a call to develop a civilian capacity to promote global stability and improve emergency response by creating a Civilian Assistance Corps of skilled experts to provide aid in international emergencies. And the platform pledges to rebuild international alliances, partnerships, and institutions so badly damaged by the arrogant unilateralism of the Bush administration.

Regarding the greater Middle East, however, the Democrats don’t appear to have yet learned the lessons of the past 40 years: that the more the United States militarizes the region, the less secure we become. Indeed, while rebuking some of the excesses of the Bush administration, the platform in some areas appears to be taking the country down the same dangerous path.

Iraq

In 2004, the Democratic Party platform supported the ongoing Iraq War and occupation. Its only criticism of Bush policy was that the administration did not send enough troops or adequately equip them. With the defeat in the primaries and caucuses of Hillary Clinton and others who voted to authorize the Iraq invasion, the Democratic Party – with a standard-bearer who had forcefully opposed the invasion at the outset – might be expected to have adopted a strong antiwar plank. And, indeed, this year’s platform calls for the redeployment of U.S. combat brigades by the middle of 2010.

Still, however, the 2008 platform endorses an ongoing U.S. military role in that violent oil-rich nation. It calls for an unspecified number of U.S. troops to remain as a “residual force” for such “specific missions” as “targeting terrorists; protecting our embassy and civil personnel; and advising and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, provided the Iraqis make political progress.”

A troubling aspect to these exceptions is the vagueness of the language. Given that the Bush administration has referred to all Iraqi insurgents fighting U.S. forces as “terrorists,” it raises questions as to what degree U.S. military operations and the number of troops to sustain them will actually be reduced. In addition, the U.S. “embassy” – the largest complex of its kind in the world, taking up a bigger area than Vatican City and situated in the heart of Baghdad – requires a substantial military force to adequately defend. And the number of “civil personnel” in the country is in the tens of thousands and would presumably require many thousands of troops to protect them. It is also unclear what kind of “support” is required for Iraqi Security Forces, which have thus far shown little ability to engage in major military operations without substantial U.S. personnel involved.

The platform also fails to mention that the invasion was an illegal war of aggression in violation of the UN Charter, the U.S. constitution and the most fundamental principles of international law, raising concerns as to whether the Democratic Party is willing to renounce the Bush Doctrine of “preventative war.” Indeed, the platform insists that the United States “must also be willing to consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense.”

Another concern is that rather than calling for bringing the troops home to their families following their withdrawal from Iraq, the platform insists that they will instead be redeployed on unspecified “urgent missions.” Given that, despite the withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Iraq, the Democratic Party platform also calls for increasing the armed forces by nearly 100,000 troops and dramatically increasing the already-bloated military budget, it is quite troubling to consider what future battlefronts the Democrats will deem as “urgent.”

On a positive note, the platform recognizes the humanitarian crisis created by the U.S. invasion and occupation. It calls for the United States to provide “generous assistance to Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.” In addition, recognizing that diplomacy is “the only path to a sustainable peace,” the platform declares that the United States should “launch a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic surge to help broker a lasting political settlement in Iraq,” though there are some questions as to whether, even under a Democratic administration, the United States still has the credibility to lead such an effort. Importantly, the platform also declares that “we seek no permanent bases in Iraq.”

Afghanistan

Even as it promises a de-escalation of the war in Iraq, the Democratic platform proposes to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending “at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, and use this commitment to seek greater contributions – with fewer restrictions – from our NATO allies.” Even assuming that the threat the Taliban poses to Afghanistan and the threat al-Qaeda poses to the United States and other countries require military responses, there is little evidence that sending additional combat brigades to Afghanistan will improve a situation that is deteriorating – not because of the lack of adequate U.S. war-making capability but in part in reaction to it.

Recognizing that the current emphasis on conventional army forces and airpower is inadequate, the platform does call on the United States to place greater emphasis on “special forces and intelligence capacity, training, equipping and advising Afghan security forces, building Afghan governmental capacity, and promoting the rule of law.” It also calls for increasing economic assistance to the Afghan people, grass roots economic development, support for education, investing in alternatives to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers, and cracking down on drug trafficking and corruption.

The platform also recognizes the danger posed by al-Qaeda’s sanctuary in the tribal regions of Pakistan and criticizes the Bush administration’s support for the Pakistani dictator recently forced from power.

Yet there is no indication in the platform that the Democratic Party recognizes what may be the most critical policy shift needed in Afghanistan: to cultivate stronger ties to more moderate, responsible, and democratic leaders within the national and regional governments, and end the Bush administration’s counterproductive policies of backing warlords and other criminal elements simply because they are willing to oppose the Taliban.

Combating Terrorism

While warning that there must be “no safe haven for those who plot to kill Americans,” the platform also calls for a “comprehensive strategy to defeat global terrorists” that “draws on the full range of American power, including but not limited to our military might.” In an implied rejection of the unilateral approach of the Republican administration, the Democratic platform calls for “a more effective global response to terrorism” [emphasis added] and enhanced counter-terrorism cooperation with countries around the world.

Recognizing the need to empower the vast majority of Muslims who “believe in a future of peace, tolerance, development, and democratization,” the platform recognizes how “America must live up to our values, respect civil liberties, reject torture, and lead by example.” The platform calls for the United States “to export hope and opportunity – access to education that opens minds to tolerance, not extremism; secure food and water supplies; and health care, trade, capital, and investment.” The platform also pledges the Democratic Party will “provide steady support for political reformers, democratic institutions, and civil society that is necessary to uphold human rights and build respect for the rule of law.” However, given the extreme anti-Americanism that has grown in Islamic countries in recent years, overt backing of opposition elements could in some cases backfire and be used to discredit indigenous movements for human rights and democracy.

Israel and Palestine

Though the Middle East is awash in arms, the Democratic Party platform endorses President Bush’s memorandum pledging an additional unconditional $30 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. The platform thereby rejects calls by human rights activists that military assistance to foreign governments be made conditional on their compliance with international humanitarian law and outstanding UN Security Council resolutions. U.S.-supplied Israeli weapons and ordnance have killed thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in recent decades, and Israel continues to violate a series of UN Security Council resolutions regarding its illegal settlements, its nuclear program, its annexation of greater East Jerusalem, and other policies.

Though strategic parity has long been considered the most peaceful and secure relationship between traditional antagonists, the Democrats instead call upon the United States “to ensure that Israel retains a qualitative edge” in military capabilities. As such, the platform implies that the principal U.S. concern isn’t Israeli security but the expansion of the U.S. ally’s hegemonic role in the region. Indeed, the platform doesn’t call for a reduction in the large-scale U.S. arms transfers to Arab governments historically hostile to Israel, a logical step if the Democrats actually were concerned about that country’s security.

The Democratic Party platform does support the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, which reverses the categorical rejection of Palestinian statehood that the party maintained as recently as 16 years ago. Yet the platform calls only for compromises from the Palestinian side in order to make such a two-state solution possible. Even though the Palestinians have already unilaterally recognized Israeli sovereignty over 78% of historic Palestine and are demanding statehood only on the remaining 32%, the Democratic platform dismisses as “unrealistic” any obligation for Israel to completely withdraw from lands seized in its 1967 conquests. It also denies the right of return to Palestinian refugees, insisting that they should instead only be permitted to relocate to a truncated Palestinian state that Israel might allow to be created some time in the future. While the Palestinians may indeed be open to minor and reciprocal adjustments of the pre-1967 borders and would likely offer a concession on the right of return, the Democratic platform unfortunately demands specific compromises by those under occupation while making no specific demands for compromises by the occupier.

Similarly, the Democratic platform appears to endorse the Bush administration’s racist double standards regarding Israel and Palestine. It pledges to “continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements” while failing to call for isolating Likud and other extremist Israeli parties that similarly fail to renounce attacks against civilians, recognize Palestine’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements. Similarly, the platform insists that “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel” without mentioning the possibility of it becoming the capital of an independent Palestine.

Still, this one-sided party platform – which appears to be more closely aligned with Israel’s center-right than more progressive Israelis – seems at odds with the increasingly balanced perspective of Democratic voters. Party supporters are beginning to recognize the interrelatedness of Israeli security and Palestinian rights as well as the platform’s stated goal for the United States “to lead the effort to build the road to a secure and lasting peace.”

Human Rights

The platform takes what appears to be a strong stand in support of human rights and freedom, arguing that the United States must be “a relentless advocate for democracy” and a steadfast opponent of repressive regimes. Promoting democracy became a key rationalization in the bipartisan call for the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ironically, however, the platform only mentions by name autocratic governments over which the United States has relatively little influence. For example, the platform states, “We will stand up for oppressed people from Cuba to North Korea and from Burma to Zimbabwe and Sudan.” Meanwhile, the platform fails to mention any allied autocracies over which the United States could potentially have far more significant influence. It says nothing about standing up for oppressed people from Saudi Arabia to Equatorial Guinea and from Brunei to Egypt and Azerbaijan, whose governments all receive U.S. aid and diplomatic support.

Like the Bush administration, the Democrats seem to believe that defending freedom is not important if your government is deemed to be a U.S. ally. (Ironically, the platform criticizes the U.N. Human Rights Council for being “biased and ineffective.”)

Regarding Cuba, the Democratic platform insists that the United States “will be prepared to take steps to begin normalizing relations” only if that socialist country “takes significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the unconditional release of all political prisoners.” However, the platform makes no demands for the release of the tens of thousands of political prisoners held by allied dictatorships. Nor does it call for withholding normal relations or even suspending military aid or police training and assistance to regimes pending “significant steps toward democracy.” What appears to most bother the Democrats, then, is not Cuba’s authoritarianism, but its socialism.

Similarly, while the platform demands that “Russia abide by international law and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors,” it says nothing in regard to such obligations regarding U.S. allies Morocco and Israel – over which the United States has far more leverage – which are engaged in illegal military occupations of neighboring countries.

When prominent Democrats do criticize human rights abuses by allied governments, the party leadership attempts to silent them. For example, in what was perhaps the most dramatic repudiation ever of a former president by his own party at a national convention, the Democrats marginalized Jimmy Carter in apparent retaliation for his outspoken support for Palestinian human rights. They limited his appearance in Denver to a videotaped segment speaking in praise of Barack Obama and interviewing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. (Some of Obama’s aides have falsely accused Carter of referring to Israel as an apartheid state, when he in fact had explicitly stated he was referring only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the establishment of Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and other strict segregation policies do indeed resemble the old South African system.)

Iran

Though scores of countries currently possess nuclear power plants and nuclear reprocessing facilities, the Democratic Party platform singles out Iran by insisting that it alone be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Though calling for “aggressive, principled, and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions” with the Islamic republic, the platform also calls for tougher sanctions against that country. Curiously, the platform demands that Iran abandon its “nuclear weapons program” even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the most recent U.S. National Security Estimate recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program. Nor does the platform mention the already-existing nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems of India, Israel or Pakistan. It fails to even mention proposals for a nuclear weapons-free zone for the region – such as those already in effect for Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and Latin America. As such, the platform is in apparent agreement with the Bush administration’s position that the United States, not international treaties based on principles of universality and reciprocity, should determine which countries can and cannot have nuclear weapons.

The platform also demands that Iran end its “threats to Israel,” but does not call on Israel to end its even more explicit threats against Iran. Failure to accept such demands, according to the platform, will result in “sustained action to isolate the Iranian regime.” Furthermore, despite years of U.S. refusal to even negotiate with Iranian officials, the Democrats insist that “it is Iran, not the United States, choosing isolation over cooperation.”

Toward a More Progressive Platform

Though many aspects of the 2008 Democratic Party platform’s language regarding the Middle East and related issues are well to the right of most Democrats, delegates at the national convention in Denver could do little about it. In 1968, despite the successful efforts by party bosses to hand the presidential nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey instead of the more popular antiwar candidates, the convention at least allowed debate and discussion of minority planks by liberal opponents to hawkish aspects of the party platform. This time around, however, the leadership allowed no such challenges from the floor.

This silencing of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing comes despite its critically important support of Barack Obama for the party’s presidential nominee. Furthermore, based on a series of foreign policy statements related to the Middle East and other policy areas prior to becoming a serious contender for the nomination, Obama himself may be somewhat to the left of the platform on a number of issues. The Democratic Party establishment, powerful military and economic interests, and an apparent fear of right-wing attacks have all apparently forced Obama to abandon some of his more principled foreign policy positions.

With a few conscientious exceptions, Democratic Party leaders have rarely led. They have usually been forced to adopt more progressive policies as a result of pressure from the grass roots of the party. For example, the Democratic Party in 1968 had a platform supporting the war in Vietnam War and a pro-war nominee. By the next presidential election in 1972, the Democratic Party had a strong antiwar platform and an outspoken antiwar nominee in Senator George McGovern, which helped force the Nixon administration to sign a peace treaty by January of the following year. The four years in between saw massive antiwar mobilizations with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Washington, DC, and elsewhere, as well as large-scale civil disobedience campaigns, widespread draft resistance, and other forms of opposition.

Other examples include the Nuclear Freeze campaign’s success in pushing the party to support major arms-control treaties, the anti-apartheid movement’s successful campaign to get the party to support sanctions against South Africa, the Central America solidarity movement’s eventual victory in forcing the party to challenge the Reagan administration’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran junta, and supporters of self-determination for East Timor forcing a reluctant Clinton administration to a cut off military aid and training for the armed forces in Indonesia.

Grassroots pressure has already helped shift the foreign policy positions of leading Democrats in this decade. Indeed, every single candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008 advocated more progressive positions on Iraq, Iran, international trade, nuclear weapons, climate change, and a number of other foreign policy issues than did the 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry, who was then considered one of the more liberal members of the U.S. Senate. As such, although aspects of this year’s Democratic platform fall short on the Middle East and some other foreign policy issues, an engaged activist community can ensure that a better platform will emerge by the next elections.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/evaluating-the-democratic_b_124428.html

Mauritania’s coup is a setback for democracy

Posted on

By Stephen Zunes and Hardy Merriman

The overthrow in August of what arguably constituted the most democratic government in the Arab world marks a serious setback in Africa as well as the Middle East.

There had been great expectations for Mauritania when the country had its first free elections in 2006. As one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world and, as with many other African countries, its boundaries and nationhood largely an artificial creation of European colonial powers, Mauritania fanned hopes that if democracy could take hold there, it could triumph anywhere.

Mauritania’s elected government under President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi proved a disappointment in many ways, with widespread corruption and factional disputes with parliament. What brought down the government, however, was the all-too-familiar scourge faced by many nascent democracies: the coup d’état.

Whatever the failures of President Abdallahi’s administration, history has shown that military coups against an unpopular leader, even when the generals claim the best of intentions, tend to create more problems than they solve. Furthermore, there are far more democratic means of holding leaders accountable.

Coups tend to concentrate power among a small number of individuals and therefore make it more difficult for the people to hold their government or military accountable. When military officers have taken the risk to launch a coup, they often feel entitled to exercise state power themselves. For example, in Mauritania, a puppet civilian State Council announced by the putschists never materialized, leaving no formal checks and balances available to hold the new military leadership accountable.

Furthermore, in violating international norms by taking over a government by force, coup plotters usually require the support of a foreign power, thereby compromising their country’s sovereignty. In the case of Mauritania, its powerful neighbor Morocco,­ where coup leader Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz received his training, ­appears to be backing the military takeover. Such support can hardly be reassuring for Mauritanians, since the U.S.-backed Moroccan monarchy for many years claimed Mauritania as Moroccan territory and has invaded and occupied the neighboring country of Western Sahara, on which it had made similar territorial claims.

Finally, coups set a terrible precedent for future transitions of power. As we have seen in Haiti, Thailand and a number of African countries, once coups are established as the de facto method of power transfer, they are far more likely to continue in the future. In Mauritania, the military takeover of Aug. 6 has shattered the dreams of Mauritanians who wanted political change in their country to take place through free elections, not just the force of arms.

There are better ways to hold corrupt and inept leaders accountable. If circumstances make it impossible for a population to exercise their will through free and fair elections, there is the option of massive civil resistance. In such countries as the Philippines in 1986, Bolivia in 1981, Serbia in 2000, Mali in 1991, Chile in 1988, Czechoslovakia in 1989 and Ukraine in 2004, corrupt and autocratic regimes have been brought down nonviolently without leadership from the military or external forces. In these and other cases, ordinary people, using such nonviolent methods as strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, mass demonstrations and the establishment of parallel institutions, expanded the political space available to them, fought for their rights and emerged victorious.

Such nonviolent civil resistance movements avoid not only the pitfalls of coups and foreign intervention but also provide a surer basis for sustainable democracy. Nonviolent civil resistance movements help correct the imbalance of power in a society by stimulating wide and diverse civilian participation, thereby decentralizing power away from a ruling elite and toward the people themselves.

The exercise of such “people power” can do much to break the cycle of coups and other non-democratic transfers of power that have afflicted Mauritania and other countries, and holds far greater promise for bringing about democratic and responsible government. We may even see it in Mauritania.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. Hardy Merriman is a senior adviser to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

http://ncronline.org/node/2011

What the Prospective VPs Got Wrong

Posted on

The October 3 debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden was disturbing for those of us hoping for a more enlightened and honest foreign policy during the next four years. In its aftermath, pundits mainly focused on Palin’s failure to self-destruct and Biden’s relatively cogent arguments. Here’s an annotation of the foreign policy issues raised during the vice-presidential debate, which was packed with demonstrably false and misleading statements.

Getting the Facts Wrong on Iraq

PALIN: I am very thankful that we do have a good plan and the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that has proven to work… You guys opposed the surge. The surge worked. Barack Obama still can’t admit the surge works.

Obama actually has claimed that the surge worked. This makes both he and Palin wrong, however. The decline in violence in Iraq in recent months has largely resulted from a shift in the alignment of internal Iraqi forces and the tragic de facto partitioning of Baghdad into sectarian enclaves. What’s more, the current relative equilibrium is probably temporary. The decision by certain Sunni tribal militias that had been battling U.S. forces to turn their weapons against al-Qaeda-related extremists took place before the surge was even announced. Similarly, militant opposition leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s unilateral ceasefire resulted from internal Shia politics rather than any U.S. actions.

PALIN: And with the surge that has worked we’re now down to pre-surge numbers in Iraq.

This is completely untrue. Prior to the “surge” in January 2007, the United States had approximately 132,000 troops in Iraq. Currently, there are 146,000 troops in Iraq. This is less than at the surge’s peak, but the decline had to do with the fact that U.S. forces could not be realistically maintained at that level, not from a decision to pull down the number of forces because of any success.

For no apparent reason, Biden didn’t challenge Palin on this clear misstatement.

BIDEN: With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power [in the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution]. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.

This was perhaps the most seriously misleading statement of the entire debate.

Palin correctly countered with the fact that “it was a war resolution.” Indeed, the resolution supported by Biden explicitly stated that “The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate.” Biden certainly knew that.

It’s also hard to imagine that Biden actually believed Bush’s claim that it was necessary to “keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.” There was absolutely no serious effort in the UN or anywhere else at that time to lift any sanctions against Iraq in a manner that could have conceivably aided Iraq’s ability to make war, develop “weapons of mass destruction,” or in any other way strengthen Saddam Hussein’s regime.

It’s particularly disturbing that a man who may well be the next vice president seems to think that the United States has the right to try to “to keep the UN in line.” The United States is legally bound — by a signed and ratified international treaty pursuant to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution — to provisions of the UN Charter. And the charter prohibits wars of aggression, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The UN’s job is to keep nation-states in line regarding international law, which the Iraq War — made possible in part through Biden’s vote in support its authorization — was one of the most serious and blatant violations since the world body’s establishment in 1945.

In any case, at the time of the Iraq War resolution, the UN had for well over a decade imposed the most comprehensive disarmament regime in history and had already successfully disarmed Iraq of its biological and chemical weapons; its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs; and its long-range delivery systems. Furthermore, at the time of the resolution and as a result of pressure from the UN, Iraq had already agreed to the return of UN inspectors under strict modalities guaranteeing unfettered access to confirm Iraq’s disarmament. As a result, Biden’s belief that the United States had to “keep the UN in line” is indicative of his contempt for the UN Charter and the post-World War II international legal order, thereby raising serious questions regarding Obama’s judgment in choosing him as his running mate.

PALIN: I know that the other ticket… opposed funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In reality, Biden has consistently supported unconditional funding for Bush’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as evidence of torture, widespread killings of civilians, the resulting insurgency, and other problems have become apparent. Furthermore, as Biden pointed out, John McCain also voted against “funding for our troops” when the appropriation was tied to certain conditions he disliked. Similarly, Obama’s votes against other appropriations bills were because he had objections to certain provisions.

PALIN: We cannot afford to lose against Al-Qaeda and the Shia extremists who are still there, still fighting us, but we’re getting closer and closer to victory. And it would be a travesty if we quit now in Iraq.

There was no heavily-armed al-Qaeda or Shia extremists in Iraq until the Bush administration — backed by Senators McCain and Biden — decided to invade that country and overthrow Saddam Hussein, who had prevented such groups from emerging. Prior to the invasion, authorities on Iraq repeatedly pointed out the possibility of such extremists gaining influence in Iraq. If the Republicans were actually concerned about the rise of such extremist groups, they would never have supported the war in the first place. This is simply an excuse to defend the long-planned indefinite occupation of Iraq to control its natural resources and maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in this strategically important region. Claims of being “closer and closer to victory” have been made by Republican leaders ever since the initial invasion in March 2003, and it remains doubtful whether a military victory can ever be achieved.

PALIN: Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that’s for sure. And it’s not what our nation needs to be able to count on.

As Biden pointed out, Prime Minister Nouri al–Maliki has pushed for a withdrawal plan that’s essentially the same as Obama’s. And public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans — including most U.S. troops currently in Iraq — prefer Obama’s plan over McCain’s open-ended indefinite commitment of U.S. forces. And Obama’s plan calls only for the redeployment of combat units, which would not be completed until well into 2010.

Much to the disappointment of those in the anti-war movement, Obama’s plan also calls for maintaining thousands of other U.S. troops within the country to ostensibly protect U.S. personnel, train Iraqi forces, and engage in counter-terrorism operations. Furthermore, Obama’s plan calls for stationing many tens of thousands of U.S. forces in neighboring countries for possible short-term incursions into Iraq.

To claim that this is the same as “a white flag of surrender” is demagoguery at its most extreme.

BIDEN: But let’s get straight who has been right and wrong: …John McCain was saying the Sunnis and Shias got along with each other without reading the history of the last 700 years.

McCain was indeed wrong about many things in regard to Iraq, but the fact is that Sunnis and Shias in Iraq largely did “get along” – until the U.S. invasion supported by Biden created the conditions that led to the subsequent sectarian conflict. Saddam’s secular regime did persecute Shia, but the widespread sectarian massacres of recent years were a direct consequence of the divide-and-rule policies of the U.S. occupation. Prior to the U.S. invasion, millions of Sunni and Shia Iraqis lived peacefully together in mixed neighborhoods, intermarriage was common (particularly in urban areas), and many in rural areas worshiped in the same mosques.

Furthermore, as with conflict in Northern Ireland, the inter-communal violence in Iraq hasn’t simply resulted from religious differences but has erupted over perceived national loyalties, with the Sunnis traditionally identifying with pan-Arabist nationalists and the U.S.-backed ruling Shia parties historically allying with Iran.

Distorting Iran

PALIN: Israel is in jeopardy of course when we’re dealing with Ahmadinejad as a leader of Iran. Iran claiming that Israel…should be wiped off the face of the earth. Now a leader like Ahmadinejad who is not sane or stable when he says things like that is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad… seek[s] to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel.

Ahmadinejad never said that “Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth.” That idiom doesn’t even exist in the Persian language. The Iranian president was quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini from more than 20 years earlier when, in a statement largely ignored at the time, he said that “the regime occupying Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of time.” While certainly an extreme and deplorable statement, the actual quote’s emphasis on the Israeli “regime” rather than the country itself and its use of an intransitive verb makes the statement far less threatening than Palin was trying to make it sound. As recently as the week before the debate, Ahmadinejad once again clarified that the statement was analogous to the way that the Soviet Union is today no longer on the map, emphasizing his desire for Israel’s dissolution as a state, not the country’s physical destruction. Biden inexplicably refused to challenge this apparently deliberate effort by Palin to make American viewers believe Iran is a greater and more imminent threat than it actually is.

Palin’s argument that nuclear energy is something the United States cannot “allow [Iran] to acquire” was rather bizarre since Iran has had nuclear power since the 1950s, as a result of a program initiated by the United States. The United States continued to be the primary supporter for Iran’s nuclear program through the 1970s.

Finally, as Biden observed, Ahmadinejad doesn’t control Iran’s security apparatus. Unlike in the United States, the Iranian president isn’t the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Such responsibilities lie with the Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, the Iranian presidency is relatively weak compared with other centers of power in that regime.

PALIN: “Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the Castro brothers, others who are dangerous dictators are ones that Barack Obama has said he would be willing to meet without preconditions being met first. And an issue like that taken up by a presidential candidate goes beyond naiveté and goes beyond poor judgment. A statement that he made like that is downright dangerous. “…These dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women’s rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do. That is beyond bad judgment. That is dangerous… But diplomacy is hard work by serious people. It’s lining out clear objectives and having your friends and your allies ready to back you up there and have sanctions lined up before any kind of presidential summit would take place.”

As Biden observed, Obama never said he would meet with Ahmadinejad, but with Iranian leaders, presumably those with more power and less extremist views than the Iranian president. And, for reasons mentioned above, while Ahmadinejad is part of an oppressive, authoritarian regime, he is not, strictly speaking, a “dictator.”

Secondly, if it is really poor judgment and “downright dangerous” to meet with dictators without preconditions, why hasn’t Palin ever taken issue with decisions by such former Republican presidents as Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush, who met with dictators who were as bad or worse than the ones she mentioned and did so without self-defeating preconditions like those demanded by the current administration and by McCain? Indeed, President Bush himself has met with the king of Saudi Arabia, whose regime is far more repressive in terms of freedom, democracy, tolerance, and women’s rights than Castro’s Cuba: the rights of women under Castro have improved greatly relative to previous Cuban regimes, while the U.S.-backed family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia remains the most reactionary and misogynist regime on the planet; religious tolerance is Cuba is far greater than in Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims are forbidden to worship openly; and, while individual freedom and electoral democracy is certainly quite limited in Cuba, that country still compares favorably to Saudi Arabia.

Finally, Palin’s insistence that the goal of the Cuban, North Korean, and Iranian regimes is to “destroy” America’s freedom, democracy, tolerance, and respect for women’s rights is completely inaccurate and ahistorical. The anti-Americanism of these regimes is rooted not in opposition to America’s values, but U.S. militarism and intervention in relation to those countries, which were taken not in defense of freedom and democracy, but in support for previous Cuban, Korean, and Iranian dictatorships. Biden, however, didn’t challenge Palin on this simplistic distortion.

Israel and its Neighbors

BIDEN: Here’s what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, “Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.” What happened? Hamas won.

Biden’s position of opposing democratic elections in Arab countries is quite disturbing and represents a significant step back from the Bush administration’s limited support for such elections. The lesson that should have been learned from Hamas’ victory in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections isn’t that the United States should oppose free elections. Instead, Biden should have recognized that Hamas’ victory came about as a direct result of U.S. policies, supported by Biden, that have provided Israeli occupation forces with the sufficient military, financial, and diplomatic support to engage in its ongoing repression and colonization in the Palestinian West Bank. It’s such policies that led to the rise of this radical Islamist group, which did not even exist until after a quarter century of U.S.-backed Israeli occupation and the failure of the United States to move the peace process forward in a manner that could have provided the Palestinians with any realistic hope that a viable Palestinian state would result.

Failure to prevent the Palestinian government from allowing all major Palestinian political parties from participating in a parliamentary election doesn’t “legitimize” Hamas. Unfortunately, Hamas was already seen as legitimate by the plurality of Palestinian voters who gave them their parliamentary majority.

PALIN: “We will support Israel[,]…this peace-seeking nation, and they have a track record of being able to forge these peace agreements…They succeeded with Egypt. I’m sure that we’re going to see more success there, also.”

Israel “succeeded” in its peace agreement with Egypt because, under pressure from the Carter administration, the Israeli government agreed to withdraw from all Egyptian territory captured in the 1967 war. By contrast, Israel — with the support of the Bush administration as well as Senators McCain and Biden — has refused to consider a complete withdrawal from Palestinian and Syrian territory despite assurances by Syrian, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders of full diplomatic relations and strict security guarantees in return.

The refusal of Israel to agree to a complete withdrawal from these occupied territories — even with minor and reciprocal border adjustments — as called for in a series of landmark UN Security Council resolutions and by virtually the entire international community, raises serious questions regarding Palin’s characterization of Israel as a “peace-seeking” nation.

BIDEN: When [in 2006] …along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because…if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Neither France nor the United States “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” France was the primary supporter of the August 2006 UN Security Council resolution — initially opposed by the United States because it wanted the devastating war to continue in the hopes of a more clear-cut Israeli victory — which required forces of Hezbollah’s armed militia to withdraw from areas south of the Litani River, located about 20 miles north of the Israeli border. Hezbollah forces withdrew and UN peacekeeping forces have moved into the area. (These forces include troops from NATO countries, but aren’t part of a NATO operation, which would have likely been unnecessarily provocative in a region that had suffered under the colonial rule of three NATO countries.) There’s no “vacuum” in the southernmost parts of Lebanon where the UN peacekeeping forces are stationed and Hezbollah does not “control it.”

In any case, there was never a serious attempt to kick Hezbollah — which is one of Lebanon’s largest political parties, not simply an armed militia — out of Lebanon as a whole.

Furthermore Hezbollah was already “a legitimate part of the government” of Lebanon during the time period referred to by Biden; the Lebanese government at that time included one Hezbollah cabinet member and a second cabinet minister of an allied party. It’s not “what’s happened” subsequent to the alleged failures of the Bush administration to push for the deployment of NATO forces, as Biden claimed. Biden actually knows this: he was a cosponsor of a Senate resolution in July 2006 that included the clause, “the Government of Lebanon, which includes representatives of Hezbollah,…”

BIDEN: Iran[’s] … proxies now have a major stake in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza Strip with Hamas.

Neither the Palestinian Hamas nor the Lebanese Hezbollah are “proxies” of Iran.

Hamas evolved out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni movement that came into being decades before the Iranian revolution and that has had no significant ties with Iran. From Hamas’ founding in the early 1980s until just a few years ago, this Palestinian Islamist group’s primary outside funding came from Saudi Arabia and other Arab monarchies in the Gulf region that have traditionally been hostile to Iran. Since the U.S-led international sanctions against the Hamas-led branch of the Palestine Authority was launched in early 2006, Iran has contributed funds to help keep the government functioning, but this does not make Hamas an Iranian “proxy.”

By contrast, Iran played a significant role in the establishment of Hezbollah as an armed resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in the mid-1980s, and Iran has provided some funding and armaments for the militia. However, Hezbollah has long evolved into a populist political party with substantial support from Lebanon’s Shiite population — the country’s largest community — and follows its own agenda.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

PALIN: Barack Obama had said that all we’re doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians. And such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause.

Obama never said that that is “all we’re doing in Afghanistan.” Furthermore, it’s well-documented by the Afghan government, independent journalists, reputable human rights groups, and even the U.S. military itself that U.S. air strikes on Afghan villages have killed civilians. Indeed, the civilian death toll is in the thousands and has been a major contributing factor in losing the hearts and minds of the Afghan population, particularly in the countryside. Strangely, however, Biden refused to defend Obama on this point.

BIDEN: There have been 7,000 madrassas built along that [Afghan-Pakistani] border. We should be helping them build schools to compete for those hearts and minds of the people in the region so that we’re actually able to take on terrorism …

A madrassa is a school. Most madrassas offer a general education with a special emphasis on Islamic principles. Only a small minority are affiliated with reactionary strains of Islam that preach the kind of doctrine that rationalizes terrorism. Biden’s comment simply reinforces Islamphobic bigotry.

It’s also important to note that most of the extremist madrassas in that area were started in the 1980s when the United States — in a policy Biden supported — armed and financed hard-line fundamentalist mujahideen fighters based in that border region who were then engaged in a war against the Communist regime and its Soviet backers then in power in Afghanistan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/what-the-prospective-vps_b_131836.html

The VP Debate: Dishonest Foreign Policies

Posted on

The October 3 debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden was disturbing for those of us hoping for a more enlightened and honest foreign policy during the next four years. In its aftermath, pundits mainly focused on Palin’s failure to self-destruct and Biden’s relatively cogent arguments. Here’s an annotation of the foreign policy issues raised during the vice-presidential debate, which was packed with demonstrably false and misleading statements.

Getting the Facts Wrong on Iraq

PALIN: I am very thankful that we do have a good plan and the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that has proven to work… You guys opposed the surge. The surge worked. Barack Obama still can’t admit the surge works.

Obama actually has claimed that the surge worked. This makes both he and Palin wrong, however. The decline in violence in Iraq in recent months has largely resulted from a shift in the alignment of internal Iraqi forces and the tragic de facto partitioning of Baghdad into sectarian enclaves. What’s more, the current relative equilibrium is probably temporary. The decision by certain Sunni tribal militias that had been battling U.S. forces to turn their weapons against al-Qaeda-related extremists took place before the surge was even announced. Similarly, militant opposition leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s unilateral ceasefire resulted from internal Shia politics rather than any U.S. actions.

PALIN: And with the surge that has worked we’re now down to pre-surge numbers in Iraq.

This is completely untrue. Prior to the “surge” in January 2007, the United States had approximately 132,000 troops in Iraq. Currently, there are 146,000 troops in Iraq This is less than at the surge’s peak, but the decline had to do with the fact that U.S. forces could not be realistically maintained at that level, not from a decision to pull down the number of forces because of any success.

For no apparent reason, Biden didn’t challenge Palin on this clear misstatement.

BIDEN: With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power [in the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution]. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.

This was perhaps the most seriously misleading statement of the entire debate.

Palin correctly countered with the fact that “it was a war resolution.” Indeed, the resolution supported by Biden explicitly stated that “The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate.” Biden certainly knew that.

It’s also hard to imagine that Biden actually believed Bush’s claim that it was necessary to “keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.” There was absolutely no serious effort in the UN or anywhere else at that time to lift any sanctions against Iraq in a manner that could have conceivably aided Iraq’s ability to make war, develop “weapons of mass destruction,” or in any other way strengthen Saddam Hussein’s regime.

It’s particularly disturbing that a man who may well be the next vice president seems to think that the United States has the right to try to “to keep the UN in line.” The United States is legally bound — by a signed and ratified international treaty pursuant to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution — to provisions of the UN Charter. And the charter prohibits wars of aggression, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The UN’s job is to keep nation-states in line regarding international law, which the Iraq War — made possible in part through Biden’s vote in support its authorization — was one of the most serious and blatant violations since the world body’s establishment in 1945.

In any case, at the time of the Iraq War resolution, the UN had for well over a decade imposed the most comprehensive disarmament regime in history and had already successfully disarmed Iraq of its biological and chemical weapons; its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs; and its long-range delivery systems. Furthermore, at the time of the resolution and as a result of pressure from the UN, Iraq had already agreed to the return of UN inspectors under strict modalities guaranteeing unfettered access to confirm Iraq’s disarmament. As a result, Biden’s belief that the United States had to “keep the UN in line” is indicative of his contempt for the UN Charter and the post-World War II international legal order, thereby raising serious questions regarding Obama’s judgment in choosing him as his running mate.

PALIN: I know that the other ticket. . . opposed funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In reality, Biden has consistently supported unconditional funding for Bush’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as evidence of torture, widespread killings of civilians, the resulting insurgency, and other problems have become apparent. Furthermore, as Biden pointed out, John McCain also voted against “funding for our troops” when the appropriation was tied to certain conditions he disliked. Similarly, Obama’s votes against other appropriations bills were because he had objections to certain provisions.

PALIN: We cannot afford to lose against al-Qaeda and the Shia extremists who are still there, still fighting us, but we’re getting closer and closer to victory. And it would be a travesty if we quit now in Iraq.

There was no heavily-armed al-Qaeda or Shia extremists in Iraq until the Bush administration — backed by Senators McCain and Biden — decided to invade that country and overthrow Saddam Hussein, who had prevented such groups from emerging. Prior to the invasion, authorities on Iraq repeatedly pointed out the possibility of such extremists gaining influence in Iraq. If the Republicans were actually concerned about the rise of such extremist groups, they would never have supported the war in the first place. This is simply an excuse to defend the long-planned indefinite occupation of Iraq to control its natural resources and maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in this strategically important region. Claims of being “closer and closer to victory” have been made by Republican leaders ever since the initial invasion in March 2003, and it remains doubtful whether a military victory can ever be achieved.

PALIN: Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that’s for sure. And it’s not what our nation needs to be able to count on.

As Biden pointed out, Prime Minister Nouri al–Maliki has pushed for a withdrawal plan that’s essentially the same as Obama’s. And public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans — including most U.S. troops currently in Iraq — prefer Obama’s plan over McCain’s open-ended indefinite commitment of U.S. forces. And Obama’s plan calls only for the redeployment of combat units, which would not be completed until well into 2010.

Much to the disappointment of those in the anti-war movement, Obama’s plan also calls for maintaining thousands of other U.S. troops within the country to ostensibly protect U.S. personnel, train Iraqi forces, and engage in counter-terrorism operations. Furthermore, Obama’s plan calls for stationing many tens of thousands of U.S. forces in neighboring countries for possible short-term incursions into Iraq.

To claim that this is the same as “a white flag of surrender” is demagoguery at its most extreme.

BIDEN: But let’s get straight who has been right and wrong: …John McCain was saying the Sunnis and Shias got along with each other without reading the history of the last 700 years.

McCain was indeed wrong about many things in regard to Iraq, but the fact is that Sunnis and Shias in Iraq largely did “get along” – until the U.S. invasion supported by Biden created the conditions that led to the subsequent sectarian conflict. Saddam’s secular regime did persecute Shia, but the widespread sectarian massacres of recent years were a direct consequence of the divide-and-rule policies of the U.S. occupation. Prior to the U.S. invasion, millions of Sunni and Shia Iraqis lived peacefully together in mixed neighborhoods, intermarriage was common (particularly in urban areas), and many in rural areas worshiped in the same mosques.

Furthermore, as with conflict in Northern Ireland, the inter-communal violence in Iraq hasn’t simply resulted from religious differences but has erupted over perceived national loyalties, with the Sunnis traditionally identifying with pan-Arabist nationalists and the U.S.-backed ruling Shia parties historically allying with Iran.

Distorting Iran

PALIN: Israel is in jeopardy of course when we’re dealing with Ahmadinejad as a leader of Iran. Iran claiming that Israel…should be wiped off the face of the earth. Now a leader like Ahmadinejad who is not sane or stable when he says things like that is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad…seek[s] to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel.

Ahmadinejad never said that “Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth.” That idiom doesn’t even exist in the Persian language. The Iranian president was quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini from more than 20 years earlier when, in a statement largely ignored at the time, he said that “the regime occupying Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of time.” While certainly an extreme and deplorable statement, the actual quote’s emphasis on the Israeli “regime” rather than the country itself and its use of an intransitive verb makes the statement far less threatening than Palin was trying to make it sound. As recently as the week before the debate, Ahmadinejad once again clarified that the statement was analogous to the way that the Soviet Union is today no longer on the map, emphasizing his desire for Israel’s dissolution as a state, not the country’s physical destruction. Biden inexplicably refused to challenge this apparently deliberate effort by Palin to make American viewers believe Iran is a greater and more imminent threat than it actually is.

Palin’s argument that nuclear energy is something the United States cannot “allow [Iran] to acquire” was rather bizarre since Iran has had nuclear power since the 1950s, as a result of a program initiated by the United States. The United States continued to be the primary supporter for Iran’s nuclear program through the 1970s.

Finally, as Biden observed, Ahmadinejad doesn’t control Iran’s security apparatus. Unlike in the United States, the Iranian president isn’t the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Such responsibilities lie with the Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, the Iranian presidency is relatively weak compared with other centers of power in that regime.

PALIN: “Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the Castro brothers, others who are dangerous dictators are ones that Barack Obama has said he would be willing to meet without preconditions being met first. And an issue like that taken up by a presidential candidate goes beyond naiveté and goes beyond poor judgment. A statement that he made like that is downright dangerous. “…These dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women’s rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do. That is beyond bad judgment. That is dangerous…But diplomacy is hard work by serious people. It’s lining out clear objectives and having your friends and your allies ready to back you up there and have sanctions lined up before any kind of presidential summit would take place.”

As Biden observed, Obama never said he would meet with Ahmadinejad, but with Iranian leaders, presumably those with more power and less extremist views than the Iranian president. And, for reasons mentioned above, while Ahmadinejad is part of an oppressive, authoritarian regime, he is not, strictly speaking, a “dictator.”

Secondly, if it is really poor judgment and “downright dangerous” to meet with dictators without preconditions, why hasn’t Palin ever taken issue with decisions by such former Republican presidents as Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush, who met with dictators who were as bad or worse than the ones she mentioned and did so without self-defeating preconditions like those demanded by the current administration and by McCain? Indeed, President Bush himself has met with the king of Saudi Arabia, whose regime is far more repressive in terms of freedom, democracy, tolerance, and women’s rights than Castro’s Cuba: the rights of women under Castro have improved greatly relative to previous Cuban regimes, while the U.S.-backed family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia remains the most reactionary and misogynist regime on the planet; religious tolerance is Cuba is far greater than in Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims are forbidden to worship openly; and, while individual freedom and electoral democracy is certainly quite limited in Cuba, that country still compares favorably to Saudi Arabia.

Finally, Palin’s insistence that the goal of the Cuban, North Korean, and Iranian regimes is to “destroy” America’s freedom, democracy, tolerance, and respect for women’s rights is completely inaccurate and ahistorical. The anti-Americanism of these regimes is rooted not in opposition to America’s values, but U.S. militarism and intervention in relation to those countries, which were taken not in defense of freedom and democracy, but in support for previous Cuban, Korean, and Iranian dictatorships. Biden, however, didn’t challenge Palin on this simplistic distortion.

Israel and its Neighbors

BIDEN: Here’s what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, “Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.” What happened? Hamas won.

Biden’s position of opposing democratic elections in Arab countries is quite disturbing and represents a significant step back from the Bush administration’s limited support for such elections. The lesson that should have been learned from Hamas’ victory in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections isn’t that the United States should oppose free elections. Instead, Biden should have recognized that Hamas’ victory came about as a direct result of U.S. policies, supported by Biden, that have provided Israeli occupation forces with the sufficient military, financial, and diplomatic support to engage in its ongoing repression and colonization in the Palestinian West Bank. It’s such policies that led to the rise of this radical Islamist group, which did not even exist until after a quarter century of U.S.-backed Israeli occupation and the failure of the United States to move the peace process forward in a manner that could have provided the Palestinians with any realistic hope that a viable Palestinian state would result.

Failure to prevent the Palestinian government from allowing all major Palestinian political parties from participating in a parliamentary election doesn’t “legitimize” Hamas. Unfortunately, Hamas was already seen as legitimate by the plurality of Palestinian voters who gave them their parliamentary majority.

PALIN: “We will support Israel[,]…this peace-seeking nation, and they have a track record of being able to forge these peace agreements…They succeeded with Egypt. I’m sure that we’re going to see more success there, also.”

Israel “succeeded” in its peace agreement with Egypt because, under pressure from the Carter administration, the Israeli government agreed to withdraw from all Egyptian territory captured in the 1967 war. By contrast, Israel — with the support of the Bush administration as well as Senators McCain and Biden — has refused to consider a complete withdrawal from Palestinian and Syrian territory despite assurances by Syrian, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders of full diplomatic relations and strict security guarantees in return.

The refusal of Israel to agree to a complete withdrawal from these occupied territories — even with minor and reciprocal border adjustments — as called for in a series of landmark UN Security Council resolutions and by virtually the entire international community, raises serious questions regarding Palin’s characterization of Israel as a “peace-seeking” nation.

BIDEN: When [in 2006] …along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because…if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Neither France nor the United States “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” France was the primary supporter of the August 2006 UN Security Council resolution — initially opposed by the United States because it wanted the devastating war to continue in the hopes of a more clear-cut Israeli victory — which required forces of Hezbollah’s armed militia to withdraw from areas south of the Litani River, located about 20 miles north of the Israeli border. Hezbollah forces withdrew and UN peacekeeping forces have moved into the area. (These forces include troops from NATO countries, but aren’t part of a NATO operation, which would have likely been unnecessarily provocative in a region that had suffered under the colonial rule of three NATO countries.) There’s no “vacuum” in the southernmost parts of Lebanon where the UN peacekeeping forces are stationed and Hezbollah does not “control it.”

In any case, there was never a serious attempt to kick Hezbollah — which is one of Lebanon’s largest political parties, not simply an armed militia — out of Lebanon as a whole.

Furthermore Hezbollah was already “a legitimate part of the government” of Lebanon during the time period referred to by Biden; the Lebanese government at that time included one Hezbollah cabinet member and a second cabinet minister of an allied party. It’s not “what’s happened” subsequent to the alleged failures of the Bush administration to push for the deployment of NATO forces, as Biden claimed. Biden actually knows this: he was a cosponsor of a Senate resolution in July 2006 that included the clause, “the Government of Lebanon, which includes representatives of Hezbollah,…”

BIDEN: Iran[’s] … proxies now have a major stake in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza Strip with Hamas.

Neither the Palestinian Hamas nor the Lebanese Hezbollah are “proxies” of Iran.

Hamas evolved out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni movement that came into being decades before the Iranian revolution and that has had no significant ties with Iran. From Hamas’ founding in the early 1980s until just a few years ago, this Palestinian Islamist group’s primary outside funding came from Saudi Arabia and other Arab monarchies in the Gulf region that have traditionally been hostile to Iran. Since the U.S-led international sanctions against the Hamas-led branch of the Palestine Authority was launched in early 2006, Iran has contributed funds to help keep the government functioning, but this does not make Hamas an Iranian “proxy.”

By contrast, Iran played a significant role in the establishment of Hezbollah as an armed resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in the mid-1980s, and Iran has provided some funding and armaments for the militia. However, Hezbollah has long evolved into a populist political party with substantial support from Lebanon’s Shiite population — the country’s largest community — and follows its own agenda.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

PALIN: Barack Obama had said that all we’re doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians. And such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause.

Obama never said that that is “all we’re doing in Afghanistan.” Furthermore, it’s well-documented by the Afghan government, independent journalists, reputable human rights groups, and even the U.S. military itself that U.S. air strikes on Afghan villages have killed civilians. Indeed, the civilian death toll is in the thousands and has been a major contributing factor in losing the hearts and minds of the Afghan population, particularly in the countryside. Strangely, however, Biden refused to defend Obama on this point.

BIDEN: There have been 7,000 madrassas built along that [Afghan-Pakistani] border. We should be helping them build schools to compete for those hearts and minds of the people in the region so that we’re actually able to take on terrorism …

A madrassa is a school. Most madrassas offer a general education with a special emphasis on Islamic principles. Only a small minority are affiliated with reactionary strains of Islam that preach the kind of doctrine that rationalizes terrorism. Biden’s comment simply reinforces Islamphobic bigotry.

It’s also important to note that most of the extremist madrassas in that area were started in the 1980s when the United States — in a policy Biden supported – armed and financed hard-line fundamentalist mujahideen fighters based in that border region who were then engaged in a war against the Communist regime and its Soviet backers then in power in Afghanistan.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_vp_debate_dishonest_foreign_policies

Distorting Obama’s Views on Israel

Posted on

Barack Obama has alienated key sectors of his progressive base with statements and policy proposals regarding Israel in which he allies himself with right-wing Republicans.

These have included: rejecting calls by human rights activists to condition military aid to Israel on an improvement in the government’s human rights record; defending Israel’s massive 2006 assault against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, which killed more than 800 civilians; disputing findings by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable human rights organizations citing Israeli violations of international humanitarian law; calling for an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel without supporting the right of the Palestinian-populated eastern half of the city to be the capital of a Palestinian state; making exaggerated claims about Iran’s threats towards Israel while refusing to express any concerns regarding Israel’s threats towards Iran; and bringing in Dennis Ross — a prominent supporter of Israeli government policies — as his principal Middle East advisor.

Nevertheless, the Republican Jewish Coalition has launched a series of ads in Washington Jewish Week, Detroit Jewish News, and other major Jewish newspapers across the United States claiming that the stridently pro-Israel Obama is actually “reckless,” “naïve,” and “dangerous” when it comes to Israel and its security. One ad not-so-subtly warns of “tragic outcomes for the Jewish people” in a headline over a photo of Obama speaking in Berlin.

Guilt by Association

One major point of the ads is to declare guilt-by-association. Many of these efforts are as tenuous as the Republican attacks regarding Obama’s connections with education professor and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. One ad, for example, is dominated by a photograph of Obama next to a photograph of the right-wing political commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. The ad quotes the Anti-Defamation League as saying Buchanan “publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views. Yet, Buchanan calls his views on Israel, Iran and the Palestinians the same as Obama’s.” In reality, Buchanan never claimed that the staunchly pro-Israel Obama has the same views as him. Instead, he has said that on certain specific questions — such as negotiating with Iran and recognizing the suffering of the Palestinians — he agrees with Obama more than McCain.

Another ad falsely claims that “Barack Obama surrounds himself with a number of individuals and advisors who are hostile to Israel and American Jews,” warning readers “You know a man by the company he keeps.” Every example given, however, either grossly misrepresents the political positions of the people in question and/or exaggerates their role in the campaign.

For example, former Democratic Congressman David Bonior, along with Middle East scholar and former peace negotiator Robert Malley, are labeled as “anti-Israel.” In reality, while they have been critical of Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Arab territories and some conduct by Israeli officials in negotiations, both have steadfastly upheld Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and have emphasized that their support for a two-state solution is based in large part because it’s necessary for Israel’s survival.

Despite supporting tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military and economic aid to Israel while in House of Representatives, Bonior is labeled in one ad as “a stalwart opponent to Israel.” The ad also claims Bonior “refused to stand by Israel while in Congress, after repeated terrorist attacks.” In reality, Rep. Bonior strongly and consistently condemned terrorist attacks by Palestinian extremists. His refusal to “stand by Israel” was in reference to his opposition to a resolution introduced by right-wing House Republican leader Tom DeLay which defended Israel’s massive April 2002 military operations in the West Bank, which Amnesty International reported as appearing “as though the main aim was to punish all Palestinians” through actions “which had no clear or obvious military necessity,” but which the resolution claimed were “aimed only at dismantling the terrorist infrastructure.”

Malley — who worked with President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat — is further attacked as “a Palestinian apologist” for pointing out that Israel shared the blame with the Palestinians for the breakdown of the peace talks. Ironically, Malley has had virtually no contact with the Obama campaign and whatever limited ties he did have were formally severed when it was learned that, as part of a conflict resolution initiative through the International Crisis Group, he had met with some civilian Hamas leaders.

The ad even goes after two of the more conservative members of the national security establishment who are allied with the Obama campaign, whom the ads also falsely claim are “anti-Israel.” Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski — that one ad, in citing his opposition to Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, refers to as having “an aggressive dislike for Israel” — has had only a very marginal advisory role and has apparently never talked with Obama about Israel. General Tony McPeak is attacked for having expressed concern back in 2003 over how right-wing American Jews had made it difficult for the United States to more aggressively pursue the peace process. Obama strongly denounced that statement. McPeak himself is actually a supporter of Israel and has developed close relationships with top Israeli security officials.

Another example of the alleged “company he keeps” is Obama’s now-estranged former pastor Jeremiah Wright, whom the ads refer to as an “an anti-Semite.” The Jerusalem Post has argued that the allegation is completely unsubstantiated, noting how, despite some statements critical of Israel, “Wright is not known to have targeted Jews and had friendly relations with Chicago Jewish groups.”

Ironically, the person who has emerged as Obama’s principal advisor on Middle East issues is Dennis Ross, a former top official in the senior Bush administration, an analyst for Fox News, and a fellow at the right-wing Washington Institute on Near East Policy. Ross, long a staunch defender of Israeli policies, was a leading supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and remains an outspoken hawk on Iran.

Misrepresenting Obama on Iran

Two of these ads in Jewish newspapers falsely claim that Obama said he would meet personally with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. In reality, Obama said he would meet with “Iranian leaders,” which is in reference not to the Iranian president — who does not wield much real political power — but to the less extremist Iranian clerical leadership, who actually run the country and control its military.

One of these ads misleadingly claims that “Obama is opposed to critical legislation labeling Iran’s revolutionary guard a terrorist organization.” This particular piece of legislation was a non-binding amendment, so it could hardly be considered “critical legislation.” Obama opposed it because other language in the amendment raised concerns that it effectively gave the Bush administration a green light to attack Iran.

More importantly, Obama actually has supported labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Ironically, this puts Obama to the right of the Bush administration, which has been unwilling to designate the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. The government has instead correctly recognized that this would be an irresponsibly sweeping characterization of the largest branch of Iran’s armed forces. (The Bush administration only designated the al-Quds Force — a sub-unit of the Revolutionary Guards that has indeed engaged in terrorist operations, but doesn’t always operate with the full knowledge and consent of the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards or even Iran’s central government — as a terrorist group.) In short, these Republican ads are criticizing Obama for taking a position he actually opposes but which has actually been adopted by the Bush administration.

The ads quote out-of-context an Obama statement in which the Democratic nominee challenged the hyperbole regarding the Iranian threat by noting how less serious it was compared to the Soviet Union, which once possessed thousands of nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States. According to one ad, this shows that “Obama has not shown the wisdom, experience or strength to stand up to the people who would do us harm.”

Rather than being “soft on Iran,” Obama has taken increasingly hawkish positions. He has emphasized that any talks with Iran would be focused on ending Iran’s nuclear program and its support of terrorist groups and that such talks would serve as a step in building international support for imposing even tougher sanctions and other measures targeting Iran. He has sponsored legislation that would protect pensions that divest from companies dealing with Iran from lawsuits. And he has also refused to rule out unilateral military action against that country.

Misrepresenting Obama on Jerusalem

Another ad cited a speech in which Obama called for an undivided Jerusalem but claims that he shortly thereafter “changed his tune” as a result of “facing criticism from the Palestinian Authority and Arab nations” by then saying that the future of Jerusalem should be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. The ad declared that therefore “His shifting views on Jerusalem are reckless.”

The ad is misleading on several counts.

First of all, the main criticism he faced from his initial statement was from progressive Democratic Party activists — including prominent liberal Jews — concerned that he was endorsing Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian-populated occupied East Jerusalem. The annexation not only violates international law and a series of unanimous UN Security Council resolutions, but endorsing such a predetermined status precluding any Palestinian control would effectively end any hope of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

In addition, there is no contradiction in saying that a city should be physically undivided and that it could be under two sovereigns. Furthermore, the view that the future of Jerusalem would need to be decided through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians has been U.S. policy under the Bush administration as well as previous administrations. Indeed, the United States is obligated to uphold this position as the guarantor of the 1993 Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Obama’s Hawkish Positions Not Helping

Despite the ad campaign and similar tactics, polls indicate American Jews support Obama by a more than 2:1 margin. However, even assuming an Obama victory with overwhelming Jewish support, by raising doubts within the Jewish community and beyond over Obama’s commitment to Israel’s legitimate security needs, it will make it all the more difficult politically for an Obama administration to take the necessary steps to apply the needed pressure to make a peace settlement possible. As a result, the dovish pro-Israel group J Street has mounted a campaign against the Republican attacks.

Apologists for Obama have insisted that his hard-line positions on issues related to Israel don’t indicate actual right-wing proclivities on his own part regarding foreign policy. Instead, it’s argued, they are simply a means of protecting himself from being targeted by the Republicans for being anti-Israel. However, Obama is being attacked for being “anti-Israel” anyway.

For example, Obama acknowledged last year how the Palestinians had suffered more than anybody as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Soon thereafter, he insisted that their suffering wasn’t because of the ethnic cleansing suffered at the hands of Israel in 1948 or the more than 40 years of Israeli occupation, colonization, and repression, but “from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region.” Though Obama’s defenders have insisted that his “clarification” was necessary to prevent right-wing attacks, the original quote without the later clarification is still highlighted in this recent series of ads.

Rather than being necessary for getting him to the White House, Obama’s right-wing positions regarding Israel and its neighbors are actually hurting him. They have become a major target of Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney and independent candidate Ralph Nader, who correctly observe that their more evenhanded positions are supported by a majority of the American people, and have weakened his support within the peace and human rights community.

Meanwhile, as indicated by this recent series of Republican ads, they’ve done nothing to stop attacks from the Republicans.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/distorting_obamas_views_on_israel