Middle East Research and Information Project: Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971
BEIRUT, Lebanon—My family and I are due to be evacuated from the American University of Beirut, where I have been teaching for the past three years. We will leave Beirut with only a knapsack each as we relocate to Columbia, where I will be assuming my new position at the University of South Carolina.
The Palestinians have long sought, and Israel has long resisted, the internationalization of efforts to construct a process that would lead to a durable and comprehensive peace. Independent advocates for a just peace have echoed this call out of the realization that the near monopoly of Washington on stewardship of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy has hindered — and even obstructed — meaningful progress. Never has this fact been more glaring than during the two administrations of President George W. Bush.
On a quiet, one-way street in Cairo’s middle-class Manial district, two bored security guards sit idly sipping tea. The building behind them houses a small apartment that serves as the main offices of the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist group in the Middle East. In Egypt, the Brotherhood is the country’s largest opposition group and its best-organized political force. No one would know it from the headquarters’ modest appearance, but the Brotherhood is likely to be the dominant force in Egyptian politics in the future. Yet the United States stubbornly refuses to deal with the Brotherhood, taking its cue from the sclerotic and hopelessly corrupt regime of Hosni Mubarak.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concluded her second trip to the Middle East in a month with little to show for her efforts. The meeting she hosted between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was undermined the day before it began. Olmert announced that Israel and the United States had agreed that they would boycott the Palestinian government of national unity which will be formed on the basis of the accords reached in Mecca unless it recognizes “the right of the State of Israel to exist,” stops “terrorism” and agrees to fulfill the agreements signed by the PLO.
On January 24, the US launched a second round of airstrikes in Somalia against alleged al-Qaeda terrorists believed to be responsible for the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Intended to eradicate these extremist elements from the Horn of Africa, the airstrikes instead exacerbated the chaos brought on by the fall of the Union of Islamic Courts to US-backed Ethiopian forces late last year. Continued instability renders Somalia ripe for the reemergence of the same kind of militancy the US strikes aimed to eliminate. Limited military actions cannot prevent Somalia from reverting to militant haven status, but a comprehensive, three-pronged US approach could.
For much of the time that I wrote my biography of Saddam Hussein between 2003-2005, its ending remained unclear. Throughout the process of researching and writing the book, Saddam’s government was overthrown, and he went into hiding. In December 2003, US soldiers participating in Operation Red Dawn found him hovering in a spider hole near his hometown of Tikrit. As he was captured, Saddam said, “I am Saddam Hussein. I’m the President of Iraq, and I want to negotiate.” As it turns out, his American captors chose not to take him up on his offer. In the months ahead, Saddam was held in solitary confinement at Camp Cropper, a US military complex near Baghdad, where he wrote poetry, gardened, and developed a taste for American junk food.
The latest convoluted set of events within Palestine, and at its borders, form a depressing tableau that mirrors the conflict as a whole.
It is time for the United States to leave Iraq.
Not because the consequences of withdrawal won’t be dire for Iraq, but because these consequences are occurring anyway, in slow motion. Civil war and chaos already envelop the country, both conditions are getting worse and the United States is powerless to arrest the downward spiral.
Slowly, but too slowly for those who will die unnecessarily in the meantime, this somber reality is dawning on Washington. The report of the vaunted Baker-Hamilton commission, released December 6, offers a blunt diagnosis of multiple problems besetting the Bush administration Mesopotamian misadventure.
Since Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent Middle East tour concluded without concrete results, and unity talks between Fatah and Hamas remain at a standstill, the possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian political compromise appears bleaker than ever. But Palestinian lives and livelihoods should no longer be held hostage to the reigning diplomatic stagnation.
Secretary Rice’s recent Middle East tour concluded without any discussion of peace between Israel and Palestine. Unity talks between Fatah and Hamas have hit a standstill. In other words, the possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian political compromise appears bleaker than ever. Meanwhile, US and European governments reiterate their demands of the Palestinian Authority after Hamas’ electoral victory in March: recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept past peace accords. While Hamas has repeatedly offered Israel a long-term truce, they have not announced their recognition of the Jewish state.
After passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 and the ensuing "cessation of hostilities," hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese are venturing across bombed roads and bridges returning to their destroyed homes and villages in the south.
Although Israel’s aerial bombardment has ended for the moment, Lebanon’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen because the unanimously passed resolution failed to address Israel’s blockade and the needs of all the internally displaced.
These two major problems demand the world’s urgent attention.
President Bush and many other supporters of the current Israeli assault on Lebanon and its reoccupation of the Gaza Strip justify these military actions on the grounds that Hamas and Hezbollah do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Negotiating with “terrorists” is impossible, they claim, because Hamas and Hezbollah exist only to destroy Israel.
The captivity of Israeli solider Gilad Shalit is over two weeks old, with no sign of a breakthrough, and a second front with Hizbullah now threatens to divert world attention from the conflagration in Gaza.
Following Israel’s grievously disproportionate military rejoinder to Shalit’s capture, over 70 Palestinians, including several civilians, and one Israeli soldier lie dead. A Gazan power plant insured by American taxpayers lies in ruins. Even Time magazine wants to know: “Where is the U.S.?”
Should the police be able to arrest you based on your religion and then imprison you indefinitely while they search for a crime to charge you with?
Of course not. The very idea flies in the face of American jurisprudence, whose traditions guarantee due process, equal protection and the presumption of innocence. The law works to prevent—not facilitate—arbitrary detention.
But that is not what a federal judge in Brooklyn recently ruled. According to District Judge John Gleeson, the U.S. government has the right to detain immigrants on the basis of their race, religion or national origin, and it can legally imprison immigrants indefinitely as long as their eventual removal from the country is “reasonably foreseeable.”
If you doubt that we are still “a nation of laws,” you haven’t visited the American Civil Liberties Union web site to peruse the thousands of pages of government documents concerning the “war on terror” made available through Freedom of Information Act litigation. While Bush administration policy may have developed in defiance of our proudest and most important legal principles—habeas corpus, the prohibition of torture, and the separation of powers, to name but three—there is no shortage of legal reasoning.
As Iraq continues to slide into civil war, there is certainly a crying need for fresh thinking. Though he finally admits sending a few “wrong signals” with his Iraq policy, President Bush still calls for staying the course. Not every alternative suggestion, however, is a good one.
The latest bad idea is the “Bosnification” of Iraq.
Once again, President George W. Bush is hinting at preventive war—this time, ostensibly, to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Given the catastrophe that followed Bush’s last “non-proliferation war” in Iraq, and the deceit employed to sell it, one would expect the public to rebel against the recent rumors of airstrikes on Iran.
“All options are on the table,” says President George W. Bush when asked about press reports that the Pentagon is drawing up plans to bomb Iran to derail the nuclear research program there. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shoots back: "The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity." Even if Bush’s saber rattling is merely a psychological ploy, and even if the Iranians are also just blowing smoke, the danger is that the cycle of threat and counter-threat could spin out of control.
By giving up his bid to retain his job, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq raised hopes on Thursday of a way out of the political impasse that had prevented the formation of a new government. But the premise that this political process will put Iraq onto a path to stability is doubtful.
A deeper problem compounds the sectarian differences plaguing Iraqi society: Iraq’s middle classes are under severe attack, and with them the prospect for real democracy. These middle strata, especially the educated and professional, form the backbone of any mature society.
As President George W. Bush said in his second inaugural address, and as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last summer at the American University in Cairo: “America will not impose our style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, to attain their own freedom and to make their own way.”
Contradicting their lofty rhetoric, the Bush administration, along with the European Union, is undermining democracy and U.S. credibility in the Middle East by sabotaging the result of the January 25 Palestinian elections. In completely rejecting the outcome they are also effectively giving up the biggest “carrot” in their arsenals for influencing Palestinian Authority policy.
