Why Jack Straw Lost his Job

Posted on May 5, 2006 by Tony

Plainly, the Tony Party is in deep, deep trouble. Labour not only got thumped in local elections all over Britain, it actually finished third. Hardly surprising, really, given the shambles that Blair’s cabinet had become, with John Prescott gefuffling with his secretary, Charles Clarke inadvertantly losing a thousand convicts eligible for deportation, and so on. So Blair has announced sweeping changse to his cabinet to show he’s heeding the voters. But the most interesting change he announced on Friday was the demotion of longtime ally Jack Straw from the job of Foreign Secretary. After all, these were local elections, and why drop your top diplomat when his purview would seem to have nothing to do with Labour’s setbacks? Well, it’s worth noting that the British people know they were lied to and manipulated by Blair to get them to join the invasion of Iraq, and that’s a loss of confidence from which this Labour government won’t easily recover. (Especially now when the war drums are being thumped again over Iran.) Getting rid of Blair would be the optimal solution, which the Labour Party will no doubt do within a couple of months. But for now, Blair appears to have settled for the next best thing, which is axing Straw, the man who more than any other figure in the British government personifies Blair’s intimacy with the Bush administration. The Guardian’s Ewen McAskill also sees Iran as the reason for Straw’s demotion, although he sees the motivation as quite the opposite: Straw had made clear his opposition to a military strike on Iran, and had told the British public that such a strike was “inconceivable.” Blair, ever faithful to the reckless instincts of the Bush administration, doesn’t agree. (And, of course, like Bush, Blair won’t have to answer to his electorate when his mentor in Washington once again sets the East ablaze.)

P.S. Actually, the more I read about the tension between Blair and Straw over Iran (and in light of echoes of Bernard’s comment below), the more I’m inclined to see Straw’s axing as based on the fact that’s he’s a dissenter from the Bush administration hard line. If it was simply a response to public opinion, he wouldn’t have been pulled off the job at this critical moment in the Iran diplomacy — if Straw rather than Margaret Beckett had gone the foreign ministers’ meeting in New York on Monday, the Germans would have had important backing in their bid to bridge the U.S. and Sino-Russian positions. Now, instead, Britain will likely simply fall into line behind Washington.

Posted in Situation Report | 7 Comments

From Zarqawi’s Cutting Room Floor…

Posted on May 4, 2006 by Tony


In the director’s cut, Zarqawi looks every inch the rambo figure as he busts loose with a heavy machine gun. The outtakes show he needed some help to fire the thing

Yuck. You don’t really want to use the “cutting room floor” metaphor in reference to a man who became a visceral presence in America’s collective imagination by personally beheading hostages. Nonetheless, you have to hand it to the U.S. military for coming up with a far more effective way of countering the impact of Musab al-Zarqawi on the Iraqi political landscape than flattening whole cities like Fallujah.

Following Zarqawi’s latest video release in which he nonchalantly strolls about, unmask, blasting away with a machine-gun and showing off his muscles in what commentators in the Arab world said was a carefully constructed set of images aimed at showing his virility and vitality — no doubt to counteract suggestions that his role had been downgraded. (And also, I suspect, to show that he can walk around insouciantly unmasked in the middle of Anbar province, while Bin Laden is restricted to making audio tapes.)

Now the U.S. has retaliated by releasing outtakes from the same video shoot captured in a raid on a Zarqawi safe house. Here’s an AP TV video clip of the US presentation and here’s a link to a fuller version.

Showing Zarqawi mincing around in New Balance sneakers and struggling to fire his weapon does a lot more to undermine his image than portraying him to be the mastermind behind the chaos in Iraq does — until now his own propaganda and that of his portrayal by the U.S. have actually worked to reinforce each other.





Posted in 99c Blogging | 16 Comments

The Dragon of Mostar

Posted on May 4, 2006 by Tony

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The one thing all those years of brutal ethnic cleansing and pointless fratricidal war in the Balkans didn’t destroy was the dark sense of humor shared by all sides. Remember Mostar? The picturesque Bosnian town famous for its Ottoman era bridge became for a brief time a symbol of Balkan heartbreak? Well, it’s healing, now, sort of, in that way that the Balkans are, where war could break out again if only any side thought they had a realistic chance of winning — but they don’t, so it won’t. And so, the city fathers, sick of public art devoted to nationalist heroes who are inevitably villains to half the population, issued a playful put-down by commissioning a sculpture of Bruce Lee. The Kung-Fu movie legend was hailed as a symbol of “loyalty, skill, friendship and justice,” and the unveiling was hosted by a Chinese diplomat. And, of course, as one wag pointed out, nobody has anything to say about what Bruce Lee did in World War II, which in the Balkans appears to make him a unifying figure.


So, what did you do in the war, Bruce?

Posted in Annals of Globalization | 6 Comments

At Least Now England Have an Excuse

Posted on May 1, 2006 by Tony


Becks, Rooney and Owen: A Bridge Too Far?

Yes, of course the loss of Wayne Rooney is devastating to England’s imagined World Cup prospects, but to be frank, those prospects were hopelessly over-imagined by the English media. Rooney’s injury, and doubts over whether Michael Owen will regain his fitness in time for the tournament, simply highlights the lack of depth in the England squad. Take out Rooney and Owen, and you’re going to start with Crouch and Defoe.

But that’s conventional wisdom in the post-Rooney metatarsal hand-wringing — even Stevie Gerrard now says it’s impossible to win the World Cup without Shrek. But I’ve maintained all along that England were not going to win the World Cup simply because they lack the balance in their first-choice starting lineup to be world-beaters, even with a fully fit Rooney and Owen (both of whom are doubts, now). Rooney and Owen are deadly forwards, to be sure, but against a team with quick central defenders and a classy midfield wrecker of the Makelele variety, they can be contained. And talking of classy midfield wreckers, that, of course, is England’s major problem: They don’t have a holding midfielder.

Eriksson would presumably start Beckham out on the right and — lacking a natural player in that position — Joe Cole wide on the left. That leaves the two central midfield berths for whom the crowd favorites would obviously be Frank Lampard and our very own Steven Gerrard. Problem is that Lampard and Gerrard play exactly the same game rampaging in support of the strikers, and neither is a natural holding player. Stevie has played wide on the right for Liverpool to great effect in the second half of the season, but that wouldn’t really solve anything because Becks isn’t going to be a holding player either. (And the natural deputy for Becks in that role would be Sean Wright-Phillips, but because the fool went to Chelsea where he has spent the season warming the bench, it’s hard to know the state of his form.) Sven has been so desperate that he’s even tried Ledley King in that role, but he looked out of his depth against serious opposition — and Manchester United’s disasters with using Alan Smith to fill Roy Keane’s boots should serve as a warning against playing non-specialists in that position. My own pick for that position would be Spurs’ Michael Carrick, whose far and away the best English defensive midfielder in the premiership (although that isn’t necessarily saying much). But that creates a Lamps/Gerrard selection dilemma.

In the center of defense, John Terry is a marvel, and I suspect he’ll be partnered by Rio Ferdinand even though the latter has looked a little ponderous at times this season. If Ledley King recovers from injury, he’s a good alternate, and there’s always our very own Carra. Fullbacks are a problem, though: Ashley Cole is a world-class player on the left, but his fitness remains in doubt. Wayne Bridge makes a half-decent replacement on the left, more suspect defensively but good going forward. And the fact that Gary Neville remains the prime contender for the right back berth tells its own story.

I’d say that even with a fully fit Wayne Rooney, that team was going to struggle once in the group phase: If it finishes second in the group to Sweden (quite conceivable) its first group game would be Germany — a tough game, although Germany are a lot weaker than they have been in my lifetime. If that is the case, and they win, they’d face (by my reckoning) Holland. And it ends there (with or without Wayne). If they win their group, it’s Poland, and then Portugal. There again, I think it ends. (If they did manage to prevail over Scolari’s team, they’d face a semifinal showdown with — and another master class from — Brazil.)

Sorry, lads, ’66 was a long time ago. And yes, the English Premiership may be arguably Europe’s strongest domestic leagues, but there are only about 17 Englishmen among the 55 players that would make up the first-choice starting lineups of its top five clubs.





Posted in Glancing Headers | 4 Comments

As the Rebbe Goes, So Goes Hamas

Posted on April 27, 2006 by Tony


Satmar Hasidim bury Rabbi Teitelbaum
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Hamas-led Palestinian government is facing all manner of economic and political sanctions because of its refusal to “recognize” Israel’s right to exist. (There’s an absurd quality to this discussion, both because Hamas obviously recognizes Israel’s existence as a reality that it has no means of reversing — and also because, in general, nation-states do not come into existence because somebody recognized their “right” to exist; they come into existence when the cost of denying them becomes too prohibitive to rivals because of the prevailing politico-military balance. But let’s indulge the discussion anyway for a moment.) Today, accepting Israel’s right to exist has, in mainstream discourse, become something of an anti-semitism litmus test. But it may be a little more complex than that.

A couple of nights ago, the southern section of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood recalled the streets of Gaza, with tens of thousands of people on the streets to bury a revered spiritual leader who also refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, while helicopters hovered overhead. Except that the Williamsburg mourners were not Hamas, they were Hasidic Jews of the Satmar school turning out to bury their beloved Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum (and the police helicopters were there to monitor any trouble between rival factions led by the the Rebbe’s sons, both of whom seek to be his heir). Teitelbaum was the nephew of the legendary Satmar Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, who survived the Holocaust to rebuild the Satmar community in Brooklyn into one of the largest Hasidic sects, with an estimated 100,000 adherents around the world. The Satmars are also probably the world’s largest organization of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews: They refuse to recognize the State of Israel (even though thousands of their followers actually live there), because they maintain that Jewish prophecy has always been very clear that the Jews would return to the Land of Israel only once the Messiah comes — until such time, the Satmars (and other anti-Zionist Hasidic sects such as the more activist Neturei Kata believe, the Jewish people are expressly forbidden by the Talmud from returning to the Land of Israel as a group by force of arms. The purpose of their exile, so goes the argument, is penance, and the Jews are supposed to spend their exile doing good works in order to satisfy the conditions for the coming of the Messiah. The creation of a modern nation-state for Jews in the Land of Israel was therefore not only not Biblically ordained or prophesied, the Satmars say, but actually gives offense to what they call “true Torah Judaism” by trying to rush the Jewish return — and make it less likely that the Messiah will appear.


A Neturei Kata delegation meets with Palestinian
lawmaker
Dr. Aziz Dweik of Hamas

On that basis, Neturei Kata campaigns actively against Zionism and the State of Israel, making common cause with the Palestinian national movement.

I’ll not pretend to have much in common with the Hasidic idea of Judaism. The idea of a god who frowns upon Jews turning on and off the lights in their homes on the sabbath, but is quite happy for them to employ a “shabbos-goy” to do it for them, looks to my eye like a mockery. What I find interesting about the Satmars, however, is their principled consistency: So much Talmudic scholarship and jurisprudence appears, to my heathen eye, to involve creating elaborate rationalizations for actions that would otherwise be deemed contrary to Jewish Halachic law (e.g. you shouldn’t turn on and off the lights, but you can get a “shabbos goy” to do it — and that’s one of tens of thousands of examples). So, while most of the Hasidic sects had no part of Zionism before World War II, when the State of Israel emerged as a reality many of them adjusted their Talmudic reading of the prophesies to allow them to recognize — and benefit from — it.

Not the Satmars. And in the process they offer a scholarly negation of the claims that Israel’s emergence and actions are somehow Biblically sanctioned, and therefore above temporal laws and critique.







Posted in A Wondering Jew | 11 Comments

Does the New York Times Know Who Rules Iran?

Posted on April 25, 2006 by Tony


Iran, as Condi often notes, is run by unelected clerics.
President Ahmedinajad is not one of them

The election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad in Iran was the best thing that ever happened to the “real men go to Tehran” crowd in Washington. Here was a real live Iranian leader with the title of President who rattled sabers whenever he could, hinted at quitting the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, talked of wiping out Israel, and ferociously denounced any moves from Tehran towards accomodation and compromise with the West. A made-to-order bogeyman, whose florid rhetoric grabs headlines week after week and has, no doubt, helped sway American public opinion to the point where nearly half of the population believes Iran’s nuclear program is a threat that may have to be dealt with militarily.

In reality, of course, President Ahmedinajad does not actually run Iran, and is in no position to make the relevant decisions about Iran’s nuclear program, its relations with the West, Israel, or any other matter of national security and foreign policy. Executive power, and control over those decisions, remains in the hands of the unelected clerics, foremost among them the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini (pictured above). While propagandists for going to war are always going to overlook such niceties, you’d think the New York Times would know better. After all, throughout the presidency of Mohammed Khatami, it constantly made clear to its readers that while Khatami held the highest democratically elected office in the land, executive authority remained in the hands of the conservative clerics who stymied Khatami’s reform agenda. Nobody seems to have told the Times, and much of the rest of the Western media, that Ahmedinajad has no more power in Iran than Khatami had.

Today, for example, the Times reports that “Mr. Ahmadinejad vaguely suggested Monday, as he has before, that he would consider pulling his country out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if membership was no longer in Iran’s interests.” Well, no, that can’t be true, because Ahmedinajad does not have the authority to make a decision of that order. And that’s just one example of what has become a trend throughout the Western media, of reporting Ahmedinajad’s bluster as if it reflected Iran’s policies.


Ahmedinajad mugs for attention

The distinction between Ahmedinajad and the Supreme Leader is far from academic. Firstly, it’s important to understand that Khameini controls all foreign policy and security decisions, and he tends to make those in consultation with the National Security Council, a body of about 12 people on which Ahmedinajad has a seat but so do some of his key rivals. The Council is headed by Ali Larijani, who is handling the nuclear negotiations with the West and also the prospective talks with the U.S. on Iraq — Larijani reports not to Ahmedinajad, but to Khameini, and he actually ran against Ahmedinajad in the last election. Larijani projects a message quite different from Ahmedinajad on solving the nuclear issue, for example. On most matters that Ahmedinajad rants about — even Israel — more careful observers of the regime, such as the Economist’s Christophe de Ballaigue, conclude that the regime’s positions are far more nuanced and open to engagement than the president’s rhetoric would suggest.

The pragmatic conservatives who are closest to Khameini are alarmed by the impact of Ahmedinajad’s ranting on Iran’s diplomatic position, but this is hardly suprising, since part of the President’s agenda has been to sabotage the efforts by pragamatic conservatives such as Rafsanjani to reintegrate Iran with the world economy. Rafsanjani was the Supreme Leader’s candidate in the election that brought Ahmedinajad to power, and he remains the President’s arch enemy. For Rafsanjani and by extension Khameini, resolving the nuclear issue with the West is of critical importance because their priority is not to hold conferences on Holocaust denial, but to jon the World Trade Organization. Khameini has reportedly offered the U.S. comprehensive talks on all matters of concern to Washington

Ahmedinajad represents an element of the security forces hostile to the clerical leadership and the business interests represented by Rafsanjani. And the President has maneuvered on the nuclear issue to sabotage efforts to negotiate a compromise.

Indeed, Ahmedinajad, when he recently announced Iran’s “breakthrough” enrichment of a vial full of uranium gas in a laboratory setting, chose his words carefully: Iran would not compromise, he said. “Nobody has the right to compromise.” That’s not what you say when you’re the one making the decisions; they’re words directed at those who are in a position to compromise or not. So what we’re seeing here is a complex and increasingly bitter power struggle being played out within the arcane Iranian political system, in which the nuclear issue is one theater of conflict.

When the Western media treates Ahmedinajad’s his words as the policy of the Iranian regime, it suits the president’s agenda in Tehran just as much as its suits the agenda of the hawks who want to attack Iran. But it’s a misrepresentation of reality — and one that could ultimately have tragic results. The Mullahs have themselves to blame for sending such dangerously mixed messages to the outside world. But the media also has a responsibility to do whatever it can to convey the reality of Iran’s decision making.








Posted in Situation Report | 12 Comments

What We Learn from Adidas

Posted on April 21, 2006 by Tony


Zidane has a word with his player-coach

I caugt Adidas’s hilarious new World Cup “equipo” ad (click here to view as MPG), whose conceit involves two ten-year-old boys in an unnamed Latin American country picking imaginary teams to play each other in a game of soccer, and then the players appear.

The ad shows the unevenness of Adidas’s “squad,” of course: There’s Zidane and Raul and Beckham and Robben, Riquelme, Lampard and Gerrard, but they seem to think (against all evidence to the contrary) that Djibril Cisse is going to the World Cup. And then there’s the rather bizarre addition of Jermain Defoe, the English striker who can’t even get a game for Spurs with any regularity these days. (One wonders how these young fans in Latin America are supposed to know his name!) Seems the kids are onto this, too, because Jermain is sent to play in goal. He actually makes a save in the sequel spot, using his feet with a pirate’s laugh. But by far the highlight of that one is Robben taking the piss out of his own habit of going to ground as if hit by shrapnel every time someone comes within a yard of him — in the spot he howls with protest on the ground after being tackled by ten-year-old Pedro.

But there’s a telling moment at the heart of the spot in which one of the kids suddenly says “Beckenbauer” — and the other cracks up laughing. Der Kaiser duly appears, of course, but that only makes you notice that the only other German player on hand is goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, who may not even be at the tournament since flying into a hissy fit after being told by his coach that he’s the number 2 pick.

Now I know the press releases tell you that the likes of Michael Ballack and Kevin Kuranyi make an appearance in subsequent ones, but the point remains — there are very few internationally recognizable stars in German football today. Adidas would obviously have a particular fondness for Beckenbauer, because his ’74 chmpions were the first Adidas-branded football team ever. But having him there at all seems to reflect the reality that ten-year-olds who pay attention to the global game today may struggle to name a single player in the German team that takes the field this summer.


Beckenbauer, left, leads the original Team Adidas in ’74

But looking at the lineup Adidas has assembled, I’d have to give Nike the edge this time around. And, of course, they draw attention to a point I’ve made before about Germany’s prospects.

P.S. A second dimension of the Adidas ad campaign involves spots depicting “international” pick-up games, in which an established star recruits ten of his countrymen to play against a similar team recruited from a different country. They’re a lot of fun, particularly the Kaka vs. Riquelme spot (in which both players trawl Milan in search of Brazilian and Argentinan waiters to make up their sides. But click on Kuranyi vs. De Jong and you get further evidence in support of my sociological argument against Germany’s prospects: De Jong goes out and recruits his team in exactly the sort of place that world-class talents are produced — an Amsterdam immigrant ghetto. Kuranyi goes out in search of a German XI in a gleaming upmarket mall. This may sound like vulgar Marxism, but I think Germany is far too middle class a society now to be a consistent fount of world-class footballing talent.





Posted in Glancing Headers | 13 Comments

You, Too, Can Invade Iran

Posted on April 21, 2006 by Tony


If you see this man, kill him, quickly and quietly…

This from Assault on Iran, one of the latest offerings from Kumawar.com, an online gaming company that offers live-action missions that allow you to solve all of today’s geopolitical problems in a hail of bullets:

“Your mission is to infiltrate the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. The site is underground, and much of what you’ll encounter has never been seen by military forces before.

“This is a dangerous mission that involves several undertakings. You must obtain the physical proof Iran is producing weapons of mass destruction to show the international community why this mission had to take place. The sample is weapons-grade enriched uranium, located in the scientists’ barracks. The area is heavily guarded, so move with caution, and utilize your night vision goggles to put yourself at an advantage.

“And then, it gets intricate.

“You have to extract one of your own—a scientist who has provided the US and its allies valuable information about Iran’s covert nuclear activities. Iran’s headline-grabbing activities have left the scientists and guards prepared for anything, including internal spies and US-Allied infiltration. Expect heavy resistance from every corner of the facility.

“Lastly, you must destroy the nuclear site and all traces of nuclear progress. Blow up the nuclear facility and make your way to the helicopter waiting at the extraction zone. The international community is counting on you. And the world is watching.”

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Take the toys from the boys, as the old saying goes.

I love the motivation they offer for doing this at all: “Iran, of all nations, doesn’t need a nuclear bomb. The only reason they could need one is to extort America out of the region or strike at us defensively, similar to what was demonstrated on 9/11. Our predicament is that Iran is not only intent on getting a bomb, but probably the most likely people in the world to actually use one. We have to do something, but the mission must have a small ideological footprint, one that won’t disturb the balance of power or the insurgency motivation in Iran.”

Uh, chaps — if the basis of “needing” a nuclear bomb is deterrence and security, you could argue that Iran needs one more than most, because it’s a target of “regime-change.” As for who are the most likely people in the world to actually use one, they might point out that only one nation has ever used them, the United States. And the U.S. also seems to be talking about using them again, albeit “tactical” ones that will supposedly destroy the nuclear facilities but not kill tens of thousands of people from radiation poisoning.

As for “small ideological footprint” — saying you could drop in a few commandoes and destroy a nuclear facility without disturbing the balance of power or raising the motivation for insurgency, let’s just say that “small ideological footprint” would be in your mouth.

But this is not reality, it’s just a videogame. Right?

Posted in 99c Blogging, Situation Report | 7 Comments

Iran, Not Iraq, Fuels the ‘Rumsfeld Rebellion’

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Tony


Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld in their
Ford Administration days

The retired generals (presumably, as is typical in U.S. public life, speaking on behalf of those still on active duty, since they can’t speak for themselves) who have — in a political sense — dumped Donald Rumsfeld’s body on the White House lawn, are not men prone to launching offensives on the impulse of vengeance or any other whim. They have spent years in military academies and on battlefields learning the art of picking their battles with a view to advancing an overall strategy, with their targets and their timing always chosen not simply with the optimal conditions for winning a particular engagement in mind, but also with an overriding sense of how that particular engagement advances the overall aims of the war. (Trust me, it’s there in Clausewitz’s definitions of strategy and tactics; I never kept the page reference.)

While we may all enjoy the spectacle of the most stupendously arrogant member of Bush’s cabinet being taken down by those entrusted with defending America — even as a couple of generals he appointed rush to his defense, along with President Bush (“You’re doing a heck of a job, Rummy…”), we still need to ask why this is happening, and why now.

After all, the egregious errors of which Rumsfeld is being accused were made in 2003, and America has chafed under the burden in blood and treasure that the Iraq misadventure has cost for at least the past two years. So why have the military men chosen this moment to break their silence? And, for that matter, why have they chosen Rummy as their target?

While they accuse the Defense Secretary of resisting sound military advice and authoring spectacular tactical errors, it’s long been pretty obvious that the military brass regarded invading Iraq as a colossal strategic error even before the tactical mistakes came into play. It was the likes of former Marine commander Anthony Zinni who warned that taking down Saddam’s regime was a bad idea because it would produce precisely the sectarian equation we see today. And when members of the top brass, such as Shinseki, told the Pentagon civilian leadership that they’d need at least 300,000 or more troops to pacify Iraq, this was not simply because they believed it was true, but also because they believed that these numbers would render invading Iraq politically prohibitive for the Bush administration. And for the same reason, the war’s most fervent advocates, such as Paul Wolfowitz, shot down those estimates withouth even seriously contemplating them — they were seen as an attempt to delay or even cancel the march to war.

So, again, why Rummy, and why now?

Rumsfeld is, in some ways, low hanging fruit for the generals. After all, he’s the civilian political appointee who translates administration policy into the military, and as such is the obvious target of a backlash by the uniformed professional military against the administration. If the generals were going on Sunday talk shows calling for President Bush to resign, they’d be deemed to be part of a coup. The generals’ grievances over Iraq, and the no-win situation in which it has placed the U.S. military (and the epic weakening of the U.S. strategic position more generally it has occasioned) obviously extends to President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others. But to avoid appearing insubordinate, the generals are couching their criticism in terms of policy choices made in the Pentagon, their immediate overseers. (In corporate culture, disgruntled employees are permitted to complain to Human Resources about their immediate managers, but nobody in the company is going to hear out any complaints they may have about the strategic choices made by the CEO — thus the generals targeting Rumsfeld, rather than Bush.)

But Rumsfeld represents far more than a manager to the generals; he’s widely viewed along with Cheney as one of the key architects of a relentlessly hawkish policy, or set of policies, that has placed the military in a quagmire in Iraq and weakened its ability to deal with a number of other challenges. It’s not just Rummy the cost-cutting technocrat who is drawing the fire of the generals, but Rummy the Strangelovish champion of a “forward-leaning strategy of freedom.”

And the timing, of course, is everything.

There’s no obvious reason by the logic of the current situation in Iraq, or decisions that may be made shortly, for the generals to choose this moment to launch their offensive. They all believe that the U.S. needs to remain in Iraq as long as it takes to stabilize it in some way (although they may well differ with the administration on what that might involve).

But given what Seymour Hersh’s sources in the military and intelligence communities are telling him about plans for military action against Iran, there’s certainly a clear motive for those seeking to save the U.S. military from further calamitous misadventures to pick a very public battle with the administration over its handling of strategic matters.

Having watched the Iraq debacle take shape in no small part because those from the military establishment in a position to do so (think Colin Powell) failed to publicly challenge what they could see was a disaster in the making, the generals are clearly inclined to act preemptively this time. And given the diverse range of pressures and variables in the Iran equation, they also know that an attack on Iran is not a done deal, and can be prevented.

Smart military minds know that invading and occupying Iran is simply not an option (it has three times the size and population of Iraq, where a substantial portion of the U.S. military’s combat units remain embroiled), and also that simply bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities — those that are known, at least — is unlikely to deter Iran from seeking nuclear weapons. Indeed, it is more likely to spur them to accelerate their efforts. (If the Israeli air strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 is the model of preemptive action, then its limits should be made abundantly clear by the fact that ten years later, the IAEA found Iraq far more advanced in its covert bomb program than anyone had thought possible.)

Despite the insistence of the same talk-TV zealots in the pre-Iraq days that a bit of shock and awe would presage the collapse of the mullahs, the military also knows that attacking Iran would almost certainly shore up the power of the regime, and tilt most debates in favor of its most hardline element. And the likely response from Iran, both in terms of direct strikes on U.S. personnel stationed in Iraq, as well as proxy terror strikes throughout the region — and also the likelihood that such an attack would crank up the hostility of Iraq’s Shiite majority to the U.S. presence — would imperil U.S. strategic interests across a wide front. And that, in turn, would force the U.S. to escalate its own response, opening a new war of attrition even if the original intention was simply to destroy particular Iranian assets.

While the arm-chair warriors of the Rumsfeld stripe pursue regime change through the Che Guevara type foco model — blow up a few things, and the masses will rise — the military would in all likelihood side with the grownups in the intel and diplomatic community who believe President Bush is making an adolescent blunder in simply refusing to talk to Iran because he doesn’t deem it a legitimate regime when that regime is offering a dialogue designed to address all issues of U.S. concern.

So why go after Rummy if the goal is to stop another bout of reckless adventurism for which the men and women in uniform pay the price? Well, it’s a key battle in pursuit of that goal, because by publicly challenging Rummy’s handling of Iraq, the generals send a none-too-subtle signal to the U.S. public, in an election year, that the Bush administration is strategically incompetent. And that would make it harder for Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld and co. to open a second front in Iran.








Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report | 38 Comments

Osama, the Gunners and Me

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Tony


Why Argentina? Yet another OBL
photoshop
job found on the Web

Note to CIA Bin Laden trackers: If you want to catch OBL on Wednesday April 19, find a pub anywhere in Waziristan that has ESPN access, or conversely, do a sweep of all ESPN-enabled satellite TV accounts in the area. (Update: The same is true for April 26).
The basis for my tip-off lies in this chant sung by the fans of Arsenal Football Club (to the tune of Volare):

Osama, Whoa-oa-oah
Osama, Whoa-oa-oah
He loves the Arsenal
He’s hiding near Kabul…

The wags of the North London club originally called Woolwhich Arsenal, whose logo is an artillery piece — hence the “The Gunners” — are referring to a widely touted urban legend some years back that had Osama bin Laden as a teenage Arsenal fan who visited its legendary Highbury ground in 1994 and even bought souvenir kit for his kids. So widesread was the retelling of this tale that Arsenal officials took the bizarre step of declaring Bin Laden persona non grata at Highbury. Bin Laden is certainly loves the game, it seems — the transcript of one of the videos of him and his men discussing 9/11 involves a dream of a Qaeda soccer match against the U.S. in which the Qaeda team play in pilots’ uniforms. Whether or not he loves the Gunners is another matter.

But if he does, he won’t dare miss next week’s Champion’s League semi-final encounter with Villareal, which like Liverpool last season, gives Arsenal the chance to cap a struggling season with a magnificent European triumph. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving team. (Update: Arsenal won the first leg 1-0; now they go to Villareal to defend that slender lead next week.)


The plot thickens: In the seething streets of Nepal, a Maoist protestor sports an Arsenal shirt

The Gunners are not my team, as you know — Liverpool have always been. But I go back a long way with a sense of them being, shall we say, a “fraternal” team.

My friend David Steere at Milnerton High was a Gunner, idolizing the legendary Charlie George. Charlie was a bad boy, very skilled, creative, courageous — but an instinctive rebel who strained against authority and its plans for him. David was similar, although both by appearance and character a little more like Steve Gerrard. And so, as long as they weren’t playing Liverpool, I was happy to cheer on the Gunners. I actually saw them live, too, at Highbury late in 1977, demolishing Ipswich (who in those days were a half decent side featuring a slew of England internationals and managed by Bobby Robson). And then again in 87, and a number of times from 89 – 91, during the latter half of which I lived on St. Thomas’s Road in Finsbury Park, about 50 doors down from Highbury, and spent many a rainy Saturday afternoon standing on the North Bank appreciating the likes of Michael Thomas, Ian Wright, Paul Davis and David Rocastle on their way to a title they cruelly nicked off Liverpool on the last day of the season. They were not my team, but they were, at least then, my “home” team.

An English Club?


Nice one Sammy, Nice one son
Nice one Sammy, Let’s have another one…

A couple of weeks ago, an acquaintance enthused about Arsenal’s awesome Champion’s League victory over Real Madrid: “That was the first time in years an English team has come away from the Bernabeau with a victory.” I had to remind him that there were only two Englishmen on the field at the Bernabeau that day, and both were playing for Real Madrid. Arsenal have assembled arguably the most talented young squad in the English Premiership (I said “arguably,” I said “young”…), and easily the most attractive to watch — they never stop attacking, never resort to negative tactics, sweep the ball around in sweet passing movements that recall the heyday of Johann Cruyff’s Dutch masters… And more often than not these days (since Ashley Cole got injured and Sol Campbell lost his moxie) there’s not an Englishman among them.

While this fact is the source of endless complaints from English purists, I don’t mind too much. They play such a beautiful game that nothing else matters. Of course the Arsenal team I watched when I stayed in St. Thomas’s Road had only a solitary Swede in an otherwise almost all-English lineup (Georgie Graham, the manager was Scottish) — compared with today’s typical lineup featuring a German, two Ivoirians, a Swiss, a Togoan, a Brazilian, a Belarussian, two Spaniards, three Frenchmen, two Dutchmen and, of course, the obligatory Swede. But the Gunners side I first watched, and adopted as a “friendly” team back in 77, was essentially an Irish team: Pat Jennings in goal, Pat Rice and Sammy Nelson at fullback, David O’Leary in the heart of defense, Liam Brady orchestrating the midfield, Frank Stapleton one of the best strikers in the league. That was another meeting point with Liverpool a few years later, when we supplied the likes of Steve Staunton, Ronnie Whelan, Ray Houghton and John Aldridge to the men in green.
(Update: It was a joy to see, when Bergkamp was getting ready to go on as a sub against Villareal, that he was getting his instructions from none other than Pat Rice!)

And if the urban legends are to be believed (I wouldn’t!) then it was this same mostly Irish team that first won Bin Laden’s sympathies in the late 1970s. Curiously enough, Arsenal back then also had the active support of those of the ANC’s operational leadership who happened to be based in London.


But never mind all the politics. Here’s why all lovers of decency and beauty in football ought to be rooting for the Gunners this week:

1. They personify the beautiful game in Britain — you’ll never see Arsenal resorting the physical tactics often deployed by the likes of Chelsea and Man Utd. on their way to titles. Arsenal just keep pouring forward, passing that ball around, their exquisite off the ball movement creating easily the most delightful spetacle left in the Premiership. Sure, they concede goals, but they score more!
(Update: I lie. Arsenal have yet to concede in this Champion’s League campaign.)

2. Arsene Wenger is a genius. The French coach has, in a year in which he lost his midfield anchor Patrick Vieira, managed to rebuild a team of teenagers, in a single year, into one of the most exciting outfits in the premiership. Cesc Fabregas, Matthieu Flamini, Emmanuel Eboue, Vassiriki Diaby, Alexander Hleb, Robin Van Persie, Antonio Reyes — these guys are babies, and they’ve been turned into world beaters. And you just know there are more to come — particulary that 16-year-old Theo Walcott who sits on the (expanded) bench of Champion’s League games.

3. Thierry Henry. The French striker is without peer in England, with a glorious first touch, amazing vision, rare tactical nous for a striker, an ability to run a game like a midfield general and a confidence born by his ability to score audacious goals (that backheel against Charlton is one of my all time favorites).

4. Cesc Fabregas: Handed Patrick Vieira’s mantle at age 16, the Spanish starlet runs the midfield with the confidence of a player ten years his senior — as he showed when he played Vieira off the pitch when Arsenal met Juventus. Awesome talent.

5. Emmanuel Eboue and Kolo Toure: Cote d’Ivoire will carry Africa’s hopes in the world cup this summer, and looking at these two Ivoirians performing wonders in the Arsenal defense, there’s every reason for confidence. Kolo has stepped up as a stalwart in the absence of the hapless Campbell. And Eboue is a complete revelation as an attacking right back, covering so much ground and presenting such an attacking threat that he reminds me of Roberto Carlos in his heyday. I could go on and on, but that would be boring. (About as boring as the offside trap played by Georgie Graham’s outfit in the later years…)







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