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Category Archives: Situation Report
There Goes the Washington Consensus
The International Monetary Fund warns that spiraling food inflation threatens the survival of 100 million people; the World Bank warns that it could bring down some 33 governments.
The interesting thing, though, is that solving this particular crisis will require that the World Bank and IMF abandon the economic orthodoxy that they imposed globally during the 1990s — the “Washington consensus,” that frowns on things like government spending on feeding the poor. Continue reading
Posted in Situation Report
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Iraq: Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed
The testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker this week — and the ensuing congressional debate — were so utterly predictable, so bland and so basically unchanged from what we heard a year ago, that I thought I’d check in on what I wrote a year ago on the matter, under the title “Why the U.S. Can’t Leave Iraq.” And so much of it applied, with such minor variation, that I thought if Petraeus and Crocker — and a supporting cast of senators — can roll out pretty much the same speeches and analysis as they did a year ago, then why the hell shouldn’t I?
Here it is again, then, exactly as it appeared on April 26, 2007:
The debate in Washington over troop withdrawals from Iraq is largely a pantomime for domestic political consumption — the Democrats are maneuvering to disassociate themselves from an unpopular war that a majority of their senators originally backed, and that they know can’t be ended any time soon but for which they don’t want to share the blame come election year 2008. The reality is that the U.S. can’t leave Iraq for the foreseeable future without fundamentally altering the basic goals of its Middle East policy over the past half century, and the Democrats talk of “benchmarks” and “deadlines” is unlikely to be taken seriously by the Iraqi players — except to the extent that they need to humor the Americans. The failure of the Iraqi government to make significant “progress” towards achieving the Bush Administration’s benchmarks may be routinely reported here has a sign of infighting among them or their political weakness, but the reality may be that they have no intention of acting out Washington’s script. Continue reading
Healing Israel’s Birth Scar
With the 60th anniversary of Israel’s birth — and of the Palestinian Nakbah (catastrophe) — which are, of course the same event, almost upon us, I was reminded this week that April 9 was also the 60th anniversary of an event that has long epitomized the connection between the creation of an ethnic-majority Jewish state and the man-made catastrophe suffered by the Palestinian Arabs. That would be the massacre at Deir Yassein, a small village near Jerusalem where fighters of the Irgun, led by Menahem Begin, massacred up to 250 Palestinian civilians — in what later emerged as a calculated campaign of “ethnic cleansing,” using violence and the threat of violence to drive Palestinians to flee their homes and land, which were then summarily appropriated by the new state of Israel, which passed legislation forbidding the Palestinian owners from returning to their property. It was the events of 1948 that created the Palestinian refugee problem, and set the terms of a conflict that continues to define the State of Israel six decades later. No resolution of the conflict is possible without understanding the events of 1948 — something that precious few mainstream U.S. politicians do. The irony is that Israelis are far more likely to be familiar with the uglier side of their victory in 1948 than are their most enthusiastic supporters on these shores. Continue reading
A ‘Revolutionary’ Moment in Egypt?
The idea of the starving masses driven onto the streets to demand bread, and then being forced by the violent response of the state to seek its overthrow, had seemed impossibly quaint for decades — the stuff of a distant epoch, kept alive in Broadway musicals and Warren Beatty vehicles in a world where the masses were acquiring cell phones. Bread? Who needs bread? Let them eat arugula at globalization’s ever-expanding buffet table.
But a cursory look at the headlines of the past month — a general strike and mass protests in Egypt, the storming of the presidential palace in Haiti, violent protests in Cote D’Ivoire and Cameroon, demonstrations in Uzbekistan, Yemen and Indonesia, among others, suggests that the proverbial “wretched of the Earth” are arising, all over again, this time in response to skyrocketing food prices. And I’d say the regime in Egypt looks particularly vulnerable. Continue reading
Posted in Situation Report
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The Perils of a Banker’s War on Iran
Unable to secure meaningful sanctions through the U.N. and other government-to-government channels, the Bush Administration has made an end-run around the diplomatic process and moved to enforce a credit blockade on Tehran — via the U.S. Treasury, and its ability to intimidate foreign banks into doing U.S. bidding for fear of being shut out of U.S. financial markets. Smart move, from the narrow perspective of the neocons. But if the strategy actually works, Iran is likely to respond by inflicting pain where it is able, by bloodying U.S. forces in Iraq and by cranking up global oil prices. And the potential for chaos raises another question: How long are the foreign banks (and their governments) to which the U.S. owes hundreds of billions of dollars going to tolerate being bullied, via the banking system, into going along with unpopular geopolitical ventures? Continue reading
A Teachable Moment in Basra
It should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s disastrous offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr in Basra has had the exact opposite effect of that intended — strengthening rather than weakening Sadr, and making clear that he, and the Iranians, have far greater influence of Iraq’s future than does the Iraqi government or the U.S. That’s because Maliki’s shared the fate of pretty much every similar initiative by the Bush Administration and its allies and proxies since the onset of the “war on terror.”
The pattern is all too common: The U.S. or an ally or proxy launches a military offensive against a politically popular “enemy” group; Bush and his minions welcome the violence as “clarifying” matters, demonstrating “resolve”, or, in the most grotesque rhetorical flourish of all, the “birth pangs” of a brave new world. Each time, the “enemy” proves far more resilient than expected, largely because Bush and his allies have failed to recognize that each adversary’s power should be measured in political support rather than firepower; and the net effect of the offensive invariably leaves the enemy strengthened and the U.S. and its allies even weaker than before they launched the offensive. Continue reading
Iraq and U.S. Faith in Violence
Guest Column: Alastair Crooke warns of a dangerous fantasy that persists in Western capitals in which the West faces an “onslaught” from “radical Islam.” The problem is that this intersects all too tragically with a the persistent belief in Washington and elsewhere that by applying its overwhelming advantage in military force, the U.S. can do good in the world and vanquish evil, bringing to bear the transformative impact of violence in the way that a Hollywood hero might. Continue reading
Posted in Guest Columns, Situation Report
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Iraq, an American ‘Nakbah’
American Taliban council of war
Five years into the catastrophe (for millions of Iraqis, and ultimately, for millions of Americans) in Iraq, has the media really asked itself how it enabled this war. Not only was it patently obvious that there was no evidence to back up the case for war, there was no questioning of its basic premise, i.e. that certain categories of weapons in the hands of a rival regime forced the U.S. to “preemptively” invade another country without provocation Continue reading
The Abbas-Hamas Delirium
Those who’re always seeking a Palestinian Mandela ought to take notice of the latest survey results of Palestinian public opinion, that show the only candidate capable of beating Hamas in a free and fair election is the imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti. The problem, of course, is that Barghouti — far more popular in Fatah than is Abbas — is an Israeli prison. And more importantly, he has no intention of playing the Palestinian Petain role that has been created for Abbas Continue reading
Who’s Afraid of Dick Cheney?
If you’re among those who thinks that Cheney’s tour of the Middle East is a sign that the U.S. is preparing to attack Iran, you need to watch this video. Like Monty Python’s “Black Knight,” Cheney can threaten all he wants, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. is in any position to launch a war of choice against an opponent far more formidable than any it has faced on Bush’s watch Continue reading
Posted in Situation Report
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