News Item: Mission Accomplished

The George W Bush Presidential Library Is Open to the Public

Iraq on edge after raid fuels deadly unrest.

(Reuters)

More than 30 people were killed in gun battles between Iraqi forces and militants on Wednesday, a day after a raid on a Sunni protest ignited the fiercest clashes since American troops left the country.

The second day of fighting threatens to deepen sectarian rifts in Iraq where relations between Shia  and Sunni Muslims are still very tense just a few years after inter-communal slaughter pushed the country close to civil war.

The clashes between gunmen and troops were the bloodiest since thousands of Sunni Muslims started protests in December to demand an end to what they see as marginalisation of their sect by Shia  Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki.

On Tuesday, troops stormed one of the Sunni protest camps and more than 50 people were killed in the ensuing clashes which spread beyond the town of Hawija near Kirkuk, 170 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, to other areas.

Sporadic battles continued on Wednesday and hardline tribal leaders warned that protests could turn into open revolt against the Baghdad government even as Sunni moderates and foreign diplomats called for restraint.

Militants briefly took over a police station and an army base and burned a small Shia  mosque in Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, before army helicopters drove gunmen out of the town.

At least 18 were killed, including 10 gunmen and five soldiers, officials said.

An ambush on an army convoy near Tikrit with roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades killed three more soldiers. Three more troops were killed in an attack in Diyala province.

Later on Wednesday, clashes erupted in the northern city of Mosul, where gunmen launched an attack after using a mosque loudspeaker to call Sunnis to join their fight. At least three police and four soldiers died in the assault, officials said.

In a separate attack, at least eight people were also killed and 23 more wounded when a car bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, police and medical sources said.

A surge in Sunni militant unrest has accompanied growing turmoil among the Shia , Sunni and Kurdish parties that make up Maliki’s power-sharing government.

A decade after the U.S.-led invasion, sectarian wounds are still raw in Iraq, where just a few a years ago violence between Shia  militias and Sunni insurgents killed tens of thousands of people.

Sectarian bloodshed reached its height in Iraq in 2006-2007 after Al Qaeda bombed the Shia  Askari shrine in Samarra, triggering a cycle of retaliation.

Thousands of Sunnis have been protesting since December, venting frustrations building up since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the empowerment of Iraq’s Shia  majority through the ballot box.

‘We are staying restrained so far, but if government forces keep targeting us, no one can know what will happen in the future, and things could spin out of control,’ said Abdul Aziz Al Faris, a Sunni tribal leader in Hawija.

The two main Shia  militias, Asaib Al Haq and Kataeb Hizbullah, appear to have stayed out of the latest violence. But former fighters said they could take up arms again if needed.

Maliki has set up a committee headed by a senior Sunni leader to investigate the violence at the Hawija camp, which left 23 people dead. He has promised to punish any excessive use of force and provide for victims’ families.

The prime minister has offered some concessions to Sunni protesters, including proposed reforms to tough anti-terrorism laws, but most Sunni leaders say they will not be enough to appease the demonstrators.

The Shia  premier may also seek to consolidate his position before 2014 parliamentary elections by taking a tough stance against hardline Sunni.

That may be a risk which could further alienate Sunnis.

‘What we are now likely to see in western Iraq is a deteriorating cycle of confrontation between the central government and protesters that will benefit extremist groups,’ said Crispin Hawes at Eurasia Group.

Iraq’s Sunni community is deeply divided between moderates more keen to work within Maliki’s government and those who see resistance as the only way to confront Baghdad.

‘The Maliki government’s aggression against our people in Hawija has forced us to take our uprising on another course,’ said Shaikh Qusai Al Zain, a protest leader in Anbar province.

‘We call upon all tribes and armed groups to begin supporting our brothers in Hawija.’

Ten Years? It's Really Recent History. . . .

Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense!

Tom Friedman Give Chuck a Chance:

In case you haven’t heard, President Obama is considering appointing Chuck Hagel, a former United States senator from Nebraska and a Purple Heart winner, as the next secretary of defense — and this has triggered a minifirefight among Hagel critics and supporters. I am a Hagel supporter. I think he would make a fine secretary of defense — precisely because some of his views are not “mainstream.” I find the opposition to him falling into two baskets: the disgusting and the philosophical. It is vital to look at both to appreciate why Hagel would be a good fit for Defense at this time.

The disgusting is the fact that because Hagel once described the Israel lobby as the “Jewish lobby” (it also contains some Christians). And because he has rather bluntly stated that his job as a U.S. senator was not to take orders from the Israel lobby but to advance U.S. interests, he is smeared as an Israel-hater at best and an anti-Semite at worst. If ever Israel needed a U.S. defense secretary who was committed to Israel’s survival, as Hagel has repeatedly stated — but who was convinced that ensuring that survival didn’t mean having America go along with Israel’s self-destructive drift into settling the West Bank and obviating a two-state solution — it is now.

I am certain that the vast majority of U.S. senators and policy makers quietly believe exactly what Hagel believes on Israel — that it is surrounded by more implacable enemies than ever and needs and deserves America’s backing. But, at the same time, this Israeli government is so spoiled and has shifted so far to the right that it makes no effort to take U.S. interests into account by slowing its self-isolating settlement adventure. And it’s going to get worse. Israel’s friends need to understand that the center-left in Israel is dying. The Israeli election in January will bring to power Israeli rightists who never spoke at your local Israel Bonds dinner. These are people who want to annex the West Bank. Bibi Netanyahu is a dove in this crowd. The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth. But most U.S. senators, policy makers and Jews prefer to stick their heads in the sand, because confronting Israel is so unpleasant and politically dangerous. Hagel at least cares enough about Israel to be an exception.

No one captured the despair in Israel better than Bradley Burston, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who wrote the other day: “This year, for Hanukkah, I want one person running this country, this Israel, to show me one scrap of light. One move — any move — for freedom, for all the peoples who live here. One step — no matter how slight — in the direction of a better future. What makes this Hanukkah different from all others? It’s the dark. It’s the sense that this country — beset by enemies, beset by itself — has locked down every single door against the future, and sealed shut every last window against hope. ... This country has begun to feel like a lamp whose body is cracked and whose light seems all but spent. On these long nights, we can make out little but an occupation growing ever more permanent, and a democracy growing ever more temporary.”

So, yes, put me in the camp of those who think that a few more bluntly outspoken friends of Israel in the U.S. cabinet would be a good thing.

The legitimate philosophical criticism of Hagel concerns his stated preferences for finding a negotiated solution to Iran’s nuclear program, his willingness to engage Hamas to see if it can be moved from its extremism, his belief that the Pentagon budget must be cut, and his aversion to going to war again in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, because he has been to war and knows how much can go wrong. Whether you agree with these views or not, it would be nothing but healthy to have them included in the president’s national security debates.

For instance, it’s impossible for me to see how America can secure its interests in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Lebanon without ending the U.S.-Iran cold war in the Middle East. I’m skeptical that it’s possible. I think the Iranian regime needs hostility with America to justify its hold on power. But with sanctions really biting Iran, I’d like to test and test again whether a diplomatic deal is possible before any military strike. I think Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction and has been a disaster for the Palestinians. But it is a deeply rooted organization. It controls Gaza. It is not going away. I don’t think America or Israel have anything to lose by engaging Hamas to see if a different future is possible. I think the world needs a strong America to maintain global stability. But the “fiscal cliff” tells you that our defense budget is coming down and we need to cut with a smart strategic plan. I think it would be useful to have a defense secretary who starts with that view and does not have to be bludgeoned into it.

So, yes, Hagel is out of the mainstream. That is exactly why his voice would be valuable right now.

Obama should grow a pair and quit letting McCain having a veto over the cabinet.

Top Romney Advisor Supports Negotiating With Terrorists

A top advisor to the Romney campaign has argues  that the United States must at times negotiate with some of the world's most objectionable actors, including terrorists, rogue states, and even the Taliban.

In his new book, Negotiating with Evil (2010), former U. S. diplomat named Mitchell Reiss praises the Obama administration for opening up channels of communication with the Taliban in 2009. However Reiss is critical of the Obama team for fumbling those interactions.

. . . . . .The president appeared to recognize that the United States could not kill or capture every Taliban member. Some would have to be co-opted, accommodated, or bargained with in order for Washington to accomplish its mission. . . . .

. . . . .The United States has numerous examples of leaders engaging with terrorists and rogue regimes. . . . .

. . . . .American presidents have negotiated with terrorists and rogue regimes to secure the release of hostages, to arrange temporary ceasefires, and to explore whether a more permanent truce might be possible, although they have sometimes gone to great lengths to disguise their direct involvement. . . . .

. . . . The most powerful reason not to engage with certain enemies is the judgment that no amount of concessions will pacify their hostile behavior. Attempts to do so are usually termed ‘appeasement' and may result in disaster. . . .

Reiss argues that the Taliban is not a monolithic adversary, and that it does not have territorial ambitions that extend beyond Afghanistan.

White Entitlement and White Rage

I have been much enraged of late. As usual the culprit has been the idiocy of my fellow Americans. But my mature mind is easily dissuaded from giving expression to my outrage. 'Have the wisdom', it says to me, 'to see what little you can change'.

But two items cause me to set pen to paper.

The First Lady met with victims of the Sikh Temple Shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

Readers will recall that last August 5th a gunman with ties to a white supremacist group strode opened fire at the temple. Six Sikhs were killed and three others injured.

Ms Obama's message was one of condolence and apology.

The second item was reading of these advertisements which are posted along the Connecticut commuter lines by Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

These two photos, placed together, represent one of the (there are many) biggest blind spots which afflict American politics.

A recent article by Priyamvada Gopal in the Manchester Guardian, How Privilege-Blindness Stops Us Understanding The Roots of Terrorism which goes a long way in explaining the origins of this myopia. Here are the money paras:

While mass killing always has a madness to its method, white supremacists are all too often declared to be psychopathic loners, where others are seen as part of organised ideological networks. Instead, there were suggestions that Page had targeted Sikhs "unfairly", alongside irrelevant discussions about Sikhism. Chances are that Representative Peter King will not hold hearings, as he did for Muslims, on the "extent of radicalisation in the American white Christian community and that community's response".

While black and, more recently, Muslim anger are widely seen as the problematic pathologies of our times, and thus subjected to the full weight of sociological, scriptural, political and even economic analysis, declared white rage is routinely relegated to the fringes, written off as the result of individual psychopathy, and eliciting passing interest only after blood is shed.

Supremacists warn that there are "thousands of other angry white men like Page out there, the vast majority of them unknown". Yet as former department of homeland security analyst Daryl Johnson points out, an extensive report on rightwing terrorism, including white extremism, was angrily repudiated by Congress in 2009 and the number of security analysts devoted to domestic non-Islamic terrorism slashed to just one.

This marginalising of the real and present danger of white terrorism at a time when other forms of religious or nationalist militancy are under unprecedented scrutiny has to do with how "whiteness" itself operates.
. . . . .
Sociologists note that in Europe and America, whiteness and the privileges that have accrued to it historically are reliant on invisibility. To have white privilege is to not identify or be identified as racially specific unlike, say, "black athletes", "Asian entrepreneurs" or just an ethnic minority air passenger.

White supremacists make it difficult to uphold the individualist axiom that society is now "post-racial" or "colour blind". By asserting racial affiliation and calling for (the perpetuation of) an endangered white domination, they paradoxically undermine a more quotidian white power which, writes scholar Richard Dyer, "secures its dominance" by remaining ostensibly featureless and general. It can sit aloof from "multiculturalism", which is deemed a special pleading thing that only ethnic minorities do.
.....
No murderer represents a community. But all killers, however psychopathic, act in a context, whether of economic deprivation, racism, militarisation, gun proliferation or lack of mental healthcare. To minimise these social realities in favour of individual psychopathy condemns us all to shooting in the dark.

There is no light at the end of this tunnel.

Putin & Assad: Where Is the Outrage?

I am baffled as to why there aren't world-wide demonstrations against Putin's Russia. There should be hundreds of thousand marching in Paris, London, NYC, Bonn? Putin has blocked effective U.N. action at every step, because he has a personal & vested interest in keeping whoever is in power, in power. Even in the case of this hereditary dictatorship.

Insurgent attacks spike in Afghanistan | The AfPak Channel

Insurgent attacks spike in Afghanistan | The AfPak Channel