U.S. Too Often Follows Israel's Lead In Diplomatic Situations

By Paul Findley

There is an open secret in Washington. I learned it well during my 22-year tenure as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. All members swear to serve the interests of the United States, but there is an unwritten and overwhelming exception: The interests of one small foreign country almost always trump U.S. interests. That nation of course is Israel.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18567.htm

The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes BY Charley Reese Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm

It's Time For The Banks To Face The Hangman By Mike Whitney Officials in the Treasury Dept----working with their colleagues at Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America---have concocted a scheme to rescue the banks from their massive losses in mortgage-backed securities. The group is planning to set up a $100 billion emergency fund which will purchase non-performing assets for short term debt. In truth, the fund is a bailout which provides the financial giants with an excuse for not reporting their enormous losses from bad bets.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18565.htm

Putin warns US against military action on Iran: The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, today warned the US not to use force against Iran in the current nuclear dispute.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2192195,00.html
Putin issues veiled warnings against U.S. in Iran: Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said nations shouldn't pursue oil pipeline projects in the area if they weren't backed by regional powers.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stori...ran_Russia.html
Iran, Russia warn against using Caspian territories for military action : Russia, Iran and other Caspian Sea countries strongly warned outside countries on Tuesday against using their territories for launching military action, but they failed to reach an agreement on ways to divide the sea's vast energy resources.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3460517,00.html
Gates says all options on table for Iran: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday all options for dealing with Iran must remain open and called for international pressure and tougher sanctions to curb Tehran's nuclear aspirations.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071016/pl_nm/...iran_gates_dc_1

Giuliani, McCain: U.S. should prepare to use force against Iran : Republican presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain said Tuesday they would be prepared as president to use military force against Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/913507.html

Chalmers Johnson : America on the brink of destruction through imperial over-reach?: Chalmers Johnson parallels the military over-reach of the United States with the Roman Empire and warns that financial bankruptcy could herald the breakdown of constitutional government in America.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/sto...007/2059724.htm

War is inevitable, Lieberman tells Rice:

An IDF operation to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Monday in a meeting at Jerusalem's David Citadel Hotel.
http://snipurl.com/1s95u

Caspian States Adopt Declaration On Repelling Aggressors
Tehran (RIA Novosti) Oct 17, 2007 - The five Caspian Sea littoral states adopted a declaration at their second summit on Tuesday in Tehran, pledging to deny access to third countries who intend to use force against any Caspian state. "The parties stress that they will not allow other countries to use their territories for acts of aggression or other military operations against any party," the declaration reads. The signatories ple ... more

Lack of troops, strategy hampering Afghan campaign: think-tank
London (AFP) Oct 16, 2007 - A lack of strategy plus troop shortages are hampering NATO's effort to beat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, a leading British foreign affairs think-tank said Tuesday. Chatham House researchers said it was generally accepted that the 39,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had suffered from a lack of troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But they said there ... more

Pentagon confirms accidental Patriot launch
Washington (AFP) Oct 16, 2007 - A US Patriot missile was accidentally launched in Qatar and self-destructed over an unpopulated farm area, causing no injuries, Pentagon officials said Tuesday. Lieutenant General Carter Ham, director of operations of the Joint Staff, said a Patriot missile unit at Camp As-Saliyah in Qatar was conducting a training exercise when the missile accidentally went off. "Don't know why or how t ... more

Putin sees US shift in missile shield row
Tehran, Iran (AFP) Oct 16, 2007 - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the United States may be ready to soften its position over plans to intall a missile defence shield in central Europe against Moscow's wishes. "The latest contacts with the Americans demonstrate that a certain change in their point of view is possible," Putin said in an interview with Iranian media during a visit to Tehran. "We will c ... more

Sukhoi Jets For Indian Skies
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Oct 17, 2007 - India has signed a contract with Russia for the licensed assembly of 40 multi-role Su-30MKI (Flanker-H) fighter jets, news agencies reported last week. According to experts, the agreement will cost India more than $1.5 billion. It will be a follow-up to the contract concluded in 2000 to deliver 140 fighters of the same type to New Delhi. The contractor will be the Irkut Scientific Production Cor ... more

US says NKorea must hand over plutonium
Sydney (AFP) Oct 16, 2007 - The top US nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that North Korea would have to hand over the plutonium it created with its atomic weapons programme to make further progress on an aid-for-disarmament deal. Christopher Hill, a US assistant secretary of state, said that the isolated Communist country possessed 50 kilogrammes (110 pounds) of plutonium that would be the focus of international talks in ... more

Bush defies China with Dalai Lama talks
Washington (AFP) Oct 16, 2007 - US President George W. Bush met privately Tuesday with the Dalai Lama, defying China's angry objections one day before an unprecedented US tribute to Tibet's spiritual leader, the White House said. "I wanted to express my appreciation to President Bush since he really took seriously the situation" in Tibet, aides quoted the Dalai Lama as saying after the talks. "We have developed a close fri ... more

Analysis: Iran, Syria in gas deal
Washington (UPI) Oct 15, 2007 - A $1 billion deal to pipe natural gas to Syria from Iran announced in early October signals increasing ties between the two foes of the United States, and its path through Turkey could inflame tensions at a time when U.S.-Turkish relations are strained. Iran plans to export about 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Syria every year, according to Iranian state-run media. The deal wo ... more

Putin Calls For Shared Use Of Most Of Caspian Sea
Tehran, Iran (RIA Novosti) Oct 17, 2007 - Russian President Vladimir Putin told a Caspian summit in Tehran that the bulk of the Caspian Sea should be left for the common use of its five littoral states. "The Caspian Sea should not be covered by numerous state borders, sectors and exclusive zones," Putin said. "The less territory they occupy and the more water remains in common use, the better." The Russian leader said the Caspian states ... more

Outside View: U.S., Russia at odds on BMD
Moscow (UPI) Oct 12, 2007 - On Friday and Saturday the Russian and U.S. foreign and defense ministers are planning to discuss in Moscow the U.S. plan to create the third position area in Europe for its national missile defense system. By tradition, on the eve of the meeting the sides outlined their positions on the issue. It is obvious the United States is not going to meet Moscow halfway and drop this plan. Nor ... more

Analysis: New homeland security strategy
Washington (UPI) Oct 15, 2007 - President Bush's homeland security adviser Fran Townsend says there will be no major changes to the administration's controversial border and identity programs as a result of the White House's new National Strategy for Homeland Security. The new strategy, which replaces one written in 2002, for the first time defines the goal of homeland security as "sustain(ing) our way of life as a fr ... more

Walker's World: Inflating Russian reality
Milan, Italy (UPI) Oct 15, 2007 - When the American secretaries of state and defense went to Moscow to see Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, they did not talk about the one topic on the minds of most ordinary Russians: the soaring cost of food. Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates talked about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the prospects of persuading Russia to join the United States and its European allies in impo ... more

Christopher Hitchens and Genocide
He's for it… by Justin Raimondo I'm not surprised that Christopher Hitchens, the village atheist, is now advocating genocide. His recent speech to a conference of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in Ann Arbor, Mich. – a portion of which can be seen here – dramatizes the completion of his evolution from a trendy leftist of the Trotskyist variety into a full-fledged, foaming-at-the-mouth neocon, whose homicidal tendencies have crystallized into a program, as he says in his talk, to "demolish" not only Iran but all religion everywhere.

Because, you see, it's not okay to be religious; it makes you, in Hitchens' book, a "positively wicked" person, and this necessarily involves "coercion" – so it's a war to the death. To his "credit," Hitchens doesn't discriminate: all religions come in for a vicious and quite emotional assault – including one riff on the evils of Judaism, which, I'm sure, will have Abe Foxman up in arms – but, not unexpectedly, he displays a particular animus for Islam. The portions of his speech posted on YouTube omit the more reprehensible pronouncements, but we have this account by Professor P.Z. Myers of the University of Michigan at Morris, which tells us all we need to know:

"It was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now – Rudy Giuliani – and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties….

"This was made even more clear in the Q&A. He was asked to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I'll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so.

"Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again."

Myers says Hitchens wasn't noticeably drunk, so he doesn't have his usual excuse for inexcusable behavior, such as in this previous instance. In any event, such antics are the logical extension of his increasingly warlike thought. This ex-Trotskyist, whose support for militant secularism led him to idolize the founder and first commander of the Red Army, has gone so over the top with his crusade against all religion that he has come to advocate wiping out entire populations. "Demolish it!" he said, when asked about Iran – with apparently no more moral compunctions about the slaughter of the innocent than one might normally exhibit toward a swarm of midges.

Myers is right: Hitchens is advocating genocide. Now, what we normally do with such people, in these sorts of situations, is isolate them: they are, after all, sick, and, furthermore, as history has shown, their sickness is sometimes very contagious.

I'm not advocating banning this sort of speech: he has the right to express his views, physically unmolested. That doesn't mean, however, that we are obliged to give him a forum.

After all, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or any other respectable organization, would not invite a Nazi or some other proponent of mass murder to speak at their conference. There is a taboo against having any association with those who deny the Holocaust, and a similar outcry against deniers of the Armenian genocide has been in the news lately. Why, then, are we so lenient with the advocates of a new genocide, one perpetrated against the inhabitants of the Middle East?

It's well known that an upper-class British accent allows the speaker to get away with practically anything, but, really, there is – or ought to be – a limit to our tolerance, and in this case such a loud proclamation of the desire to kill large numbers of people ought to motivate us to crack down on this sort of thing once and for all.

For all his charm and genuinely likable public persona, bad boy Hitchens needs to be taught a lesson, and this means ostracism: no organization that wants its reputation to remain unsullied ought to be inviting him to speak anywhere, on any subject, even if he offers to do it for free. No television station should solicit his appearance, no radio station should entertain its listeners with his ranting – in short, no decent person should have anything to do with him, period. Send him to intellectual and social Coventry, where he can commune with his fellow rogues and miscreants, and do as little harm as possible.

I hasten to add that Hitchens isn't alone in his genocidal jihad: the Objectivists, the latter-day followers of Ayn Rand, also advocate dropping nuclear bombs on Iran and any number of Arab countries, on the grounds of "self-defense." They, too, are militant atheists, ideologues of a secularist creed based on their rather distorted interpretation of what Rand believed. Although I am not religious, I'm acutely aware of the dangers posed by radical secularists in the course of modern history, and the death of communism has left people like Hitchens still itching for Armageddon, the final showdown between the forces of Modernity (represented by his fat, smug self), and the forces of medieval Reaction (represented by Iran, or the Muslim enemy of the moment).

Hitchens is quite clearly marketing himself as a contemporary Robert Ingersoll, the spokesman for atheism and secularism in the English-speaking world, although, clearly, looking at the bestseller list, he has a lot of competition for that title. If someone with that kind of a public platform should use his status to spread and popularize the suggestion that it's a good idea to kill off the world's Muslims, then we, as a society, are poisoned by his prominence. Decent people cannot allow it.

Of course, television producers and radio talk show hosts will continue to book Hitchens, and publishers will no doubt continue to buy the rights to his written works: Vanity Fair will continue to employ him as a regular columnist, in spite of his increasingly indefensible views. But he's endangered all that and no longer deserves a platform: he's just begging to be treated like Don Imus – who, at least, was immediately and properly remorseful, quite unlike Hitchens.

At the Freedom From Religion conference, he was given the "emperor has no clothes" award for supposedly being a daring "freethinker," but the truth is that it is Hitchens who most resembles the emperor in that little parable. No one dares to say what everyone knows to be true: he's gone 'round the bend and over the top, and it's high time someone said so.

It's bad enough, as one wag pointed out – I think it was in Radar magazine – that all of the most prominent pundits who were the loudest voices in favor of the Iraq war have not suffered one whit for being so wrong: indeed, they have been rewarded with even more pulpits from which to preach their doctrine of perpetual war in the Middle East. So Hitchens isn't all that unique, in that sense, although his case is singular in one important respect: none of the neocons, not even the bloodthirsty Max Boot, has come out openly in favor of wiping out large numbers of Muslims by design. The implication is always there, of course: after all, what else can we expect if we invade Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Pakistan but large numbers of civilian dead? Hitchens, however, is the first one to plainly state that this ought to be one of our war aims: mass extermination as a deliberate policy, not the unfortunate result of "collateral damage."

So the next time you see this advocate of genocide on television, or hear him bloviating over the radio, take the trouble to write the station a note, expressing your displeasure that they would give Hitchens a platform. Would they have an advocate of the Khmer Rouge on as a guest? The next time he shows up at your university, you might show your displeasure in many ways, least of all being an inquiry into the expenditure of public funds to bring a well-known genocidal maniac to the campus. Who's next on the list of guest speakers – Charles Manson?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Speaking of Hitchens, there is another interesting piece on him by Richard Poe over at Taki's Top Drawer. And speaking of TTD, I've been blogging regularly over there: on David Horowitz getting caught in another lie, on how to take a look at Israel's WMD, and on what Wesley Clark is telling us about Washington's regime-change schedule.

The Mother of All Pretexts
by Uri Avnery When I hear mention of the "Clash of Civilizations," I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

To laugh, because it is such a silly notion.

To cry, because it is liable to cause untold disasters.

To cry even more, because our leaders are exploiting this slogan as a pretext for sabotaging any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. It is just one more in a long line of pretexts.

Why was the Zionist movement in need of excuses to justify the way it treated the Palestinian people?

At its birth, it was an idealistic movement. It laid great weight on its moral basis. Not just in order to convince the world, but above all in order to set its own conscience at rest.

From early childhood we learned about the pioneers, many of them sons and daughters of well-to-do and well-educated families, who left behind a comfortable life in Europe in order to start a new life in a faraway and – by the standards of the time – primitive country. Here, in a savage climate they were not used to, often hungry and sick, they performed bone-breaking physical labor under a brutal sun.

For that, they needed an absolute belief in the rightness of their cause. Not only did they believe in the need to save the Jews of Europe from persecution and pogroms, but also in the creation of a society so just as never seen before, an egalitarian society that would be a model for the entire world. Leo Tolstoy was no less important for them than Theodor Herzl. The kibbutz and the moshav were symbols of the whole enterprise.

But this idealistic movement aimed at settling in a country inhabited by another people. How to bridge this contradiction between its sublime ideals and the fact that their realization necessitated the expulsion of the people of the land?

The easiest way was to repress the problem altogether, ignoring its very existence: the land, we told ourselves, was empty, there was no people living here at all. That was the justification that served as a bridge over the moral abyss.

Only one of the Founding Fathers of the Zionist movement was courageous enough to call a spade a spade. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote as early as 80 years ago that it was impossible to deceive the Palestinian people (whose existence he recognized) and to buy their consent to the Zionist aspirations. We are white settlers colonizing the land of the native people, he said, and there is no chance whatsoever that the natives will resign themselves to this voluntarily. They will resist violently, like all the native peoples in the European colonies. Therefore we need an "Iron Wall" to protect the Zionist enterprise.

When Jabotinsky was told that his approach was immoral, he replied that the Jews were trying to save themselves from the disaster threatening them in Europe, and, therefore, their morality trumped the morality of the Arabs in Palestine.

Most Zionists were not prepared to accept this force-oriented approach. They searched fervently for a moral justification they could live with.

Thus started the long quest for justifications – with each pretext supplanting the previous one, according to the changing spiritual fashions in the world.

The first justification was precisely the one mocked by Jabotinsky: we were actually coming to benefit the Arabs. We shall redeem them from their primitive living conditions, from ignorance and disease. We shall teach them modern methods of agriculture and bring them advanced medicine. Everything – except employment, because we needed every job for the Jews we were bringing here, which we were transforming from ghetto-Jews into a people of workers and tillers of the soil.

When the ungrateful Arabs went on to resist our grand project, in spite of all the benefits we were supposedly bringing them, we found a Marxist justification: It's not the Arabs who oppose us, but only the "effendis." The rich Arabs, the great landowners, are afraid that the glowing example of the egalitarian Hebrew community would attract the exploited Arab proletariat and cause them to rise against their oppressors.

That, too, did not work for long, perhaps because the Arabs saw how the Zionists bought the land from those very same "effendis" and drove out the tenants who had been cultivating it for generations.

The rise of the Nazis in Europe brought masses of Jews to the country. The Arab public saw how the land was being withdrawn from under their feet, and they started a rebellion against the British and the Jews in 1936. Why, the Arabs asked, should they pay for the persecution of the Jews by the Europeans? But the Arab Revolt gave us a new justification: the Arabs support the Nazis. And indeed, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was photographed sitting next to Hitler. Some people "discovered" that the mufti was the real instigator of the Holocaust. (Years later it was revealed that Hitler had detested the mufti, who had no influence whatsoever over the Nazis.)

World War II came to an end, to be followed by the 1948 war. Half of the vanquished Palestinian people became refugees. That did not trouble the Zionist conscience, because everybody knew: They ran away of their own free will. Their leaders had called upon them to leave their homes, to return later with the victorious Arab armies. True, no evidence was ever found to support this absurd claim, but it has sufficed to soothe our conscience to this day.

It may be asked: why were the refugees not allowed to come back to their homes once the war was over? Well, it was they who in 1947 rejected the UN partition plan and started the war. If because of this they lost 78 percent of their country, they have only themselves to blame.

Then came the Cold War. We were, of course, on the side of the "Free World," while the great Arab leader, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, got his weapons from the Soviet bloc. (True, in the 1948 war the Soviet arms flowed to us, but that's not important.) It was quite clear: No use talking with the Arabs, because they support Communist tyranny.

But the Soviet bloc collapsed. "The terrorist organization called PLO," as Menachem Begin used to call it, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo agreement. A new justification had to be found for our unwillingness to give back the occupied territories to the Palestinian people.

The salvation came from America: a professor named Samuel Huntington wrote a book about the "Clash of Civilizations." And so we found the mother of all pretexts.

The archenemy, according to this theory, is Islam. Western Civilization, Judeo-Christian, liberal, democratic, tolerant, is under attacked from the Islamic monster, fanatical, terrorist, murderous.

Islam is murderous by nature. Actually, "Muslim" and "terrorist" are synonymous. Every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist a Muslim.

A skeptic might ask: How did it happen that the wonderful Western culture gave birth to the Inquisition, the pogroms, the burning of witches, the annihilation of the Native Americans, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings, and other atrocities without number – but that was in the past. Now Western culture is the embodiment of freedom and progress.

Professor Huntington was not thinking about us in particular. His task was to satisfy a peculiar American craving: the American empire always needs a virtual, world-embracing enemy, a single enemy which includes all the opponents of the United States around the world. The Communists delivered the goods – the whole world was divided between Good Guys (the Americans and their supporters) and Bad Guys (the Commies). Everybody who opposed American interests was automatically a Communist – Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Salvador Allende in Chile, Fidel Castro in Cuba – while the masters of apartheid, the death squads of Augusto Pinochet, and the secret police of the shah of Iran belonged, like us, to the Free World.

When the Communist empire collapsed, America was suddenly left without a worldwide enemy. This vacuum has now been filled by the Muslims-Terrorists. Not only Osama bin Laden, but also the Chechen freedom fighters, the angry North-African youth of the Paris banlieues, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the insurgents in the Philippines.

Thus the American world view rearranged itself: a good world (Western Civilization) and a bad world (Islamic civilization). Diplomats still take care to make a distinction between "radical Islamists" and "moderate Muslims," but that is only for appearances' sake. Between ourselves, we know of course that they are all Osama bin Ladens. They are all the same.

This way, a huge part of the world, composed of manifold and very different countries, and a great religion, with many different and even opposing tendencies (like Christianity, like Judaism), which has given the world unmatched scientific and cultural treasures, is thrown into one and the same pot.

This worldview is tailored for us. Indeed, the world of the clashing civilizations is, for us, the best of all possible worlds.

The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is no longer a conflict between the Zionist movement, which came to settle in this country, and the Palestinian people, which inhabited it. No, it has been from the very beginning a part of a worldwide struggle which does not stem from our aspirations and actions. The assault of terrorist Islam on the Western world did not start because of us. Our conscience can be entirely clean – we are among the good guys of this world.

This is now the line of argument of official Israel: the Palestinians elected Hamas, a murderous Islamic movement. (If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented – and indeed, some people assert it was created from the start by our secret service.) Hamas is terrorist, and so is Hezbollah. Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas is not a terrorist himself, but he is weak and Hamas is about to take sole control over all Palestinian territories. So we cannot talk with them. We have no partner. Actually, we cannot possibly have a partner, because we belong to Western Civilization, which Islam wants to eradicate.

In his 1896 book Der Judenstaat, Theodor Herzl, the official Israeli "Prophet of the State," prophesied this development, too.

This is what he wrote in 1896: "For Europe we shall constitute [in Palestine] a part of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as a vanguard of culture against barbarism."

Herzl was thinking of a metaphoric wall, but in the meantime we have put up a very real one. For many, this is not just a Separation Wall between Israel and Palestine. It is a part of the worldwide wall between the West and Islam, the front-line of the Clash of Civilizations. Beyond the wall there are not men, women, and children, not a conquered and oppressed Palestinian population, not choked towns and villages like Abu-Dis, a-Ram, Bil'in, and Qalqilia. No, beyond the wall there are a billion terrorists, multitudes of bloodthirsty Muslims, who have only one desire in life: to throw us into the sea, simply because we are Jews, part of Judeo-Christian Civilization.

With an official position like that, who is there to talk to? What is there to talk about? What is the point of meeting in Annapolis or anywhere else?

And what is left to us to do – to cry or to laugh?

Not -So-New Homeland Security Strategy
Charles Peña
http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=11763
Last week, the White House issued a new National Strategy for Homeland Security. This new Strategy is supposed to reflect "our increased understanding of the terrorist threats confronting the United States today." Indeed, one of the key components of strategy is to know your enemy – a phrase often attributed to the ancient Chinese philosopher-strategist Sun Tzu, but this is the actual passage from his 2,300-year old treatise The Art of War:

"Knowing the other and knowing oneself,
In one hundred battles no danger.
Not knowing the other and knowing oneself,
One victory for one loss.
Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself,
In every battle certain defeat."

Yet the new National Strategy for Homeland Security demonstrates that – more than six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks – the Bush administration is guilty of not knowing the other. The letter from President Bush that accompanies the Strategy states, "We remain at war with adversaries who are committed to destroying our people, our freedom, and our way of life." In other words, the president continues to cling to the notion that "they" (al-Qaeda and radical Islamists) hate us for who we are.

That trap is easy to fall into. For example, an al-Qaeda computer purchased by journalist Alan Cullison in December 2001 contained an essay entitled "The Truth About the New Crusade: A Ruling on the Killing of Women and Children of the Non-Believers" by Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who worked with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in planning the 9/11 attacks. Shibh wrote, "In killing Americans who are ordinarily off limits, Muslims should not exceed four million noncombatants, or render more than ten million of them homeless." In June 2002, al-Qaeda spokesperson Suleiman Abu Gheith claimed, "We have the right to kill 4 million Americans – 2 million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands." But like the famous Gary Larson The Far Side cartoon about what dogs hear, we hear the part about killing Americans but tend not to listen to the reasons why.

In his August 1996 fatwa "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," bin Laden asserts that "the occupying American enemy is the principle and the main cause of the situation. Therefore efforts should be concentrated on destroying, fighting, and killing the enemy until, by the Grace of Allah, it is completely defeated." And in a February 1998 fatwa declaring jihad against the West and Israel, bin Laden wrote that "to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim."

In other words, bin Laden's calls for killing Americans are based on the affront to Muslims of U.S. military occupation of Muslim countries (previously Saudi Arabia, now Iraq and Afghanistan). According to University of Chicago professor Robert Pape (author of Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism, which is based on data from 315 suicide terrorism campaigns around the world from 1980 through 2003 and 462 individual suicide terrorists),

"The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign – over 95 percent of all the incidents – has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

Pape's conclusions about why America has become a target for terrorism are inescapable:

"Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life."

Finally, Pape makes this simple yet very important observation: "Absent the presence of foreign troops, Osama bin Laden could make his arguments, but there wouldn't be much reality behind them. The reason that it is so difficult for us to dispute those arguments is because we really do have tens of thousands of combat soldiers sitting on the Arabian Peninsula." This is an inconvenient truth that policymakers and leading presidential hopefuls refuse to recognize.

Ultimately, if we are to understand our enemy – as a prerequisite to formulating a successful strategy – we must be willing to acknowledge the reality that al-Qaeda's ideology is not simply driven by a desire to destroy America because they hate us, our freedom, and our way of life. Indeed, in an October 2004 video, Osama bin Laden said to the American people: "This is contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden." To paraphrase James Carville, it's not us, our freedom, and our way of life; it's our policies, stupid.

SIDEBAR

Perhaps the most confounding sentence in the new National Strategy for Homeland Security is on page 9: "Al-Qaeda likely will continue to enhance its ability to attack America through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups, particularly al-Qaeda in Iraq – currently the group's most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack us here." While al-Qaeda in Iraq may have expressed a desire to attack the United States, there is little (if any) evidence to indicate that they have any capability to do so (much like Saddam's anti-U.S. rhetoric did not match his capabilities, which was one of the reasons he was never the threat – military or terrorist – portrayed by the administration). In fact, the evidence is that al-Qaeda in Iraq is clearly a threat within Iraq. According to Pape, "Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled." The reality is that the potential terrorist threat is not from al-Qaeda in Iraq per se, but from the continued U.S. military occupation: "The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11."

PKK Vows to Confront Turkish Forces

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Six years of investigations and prosecutions have turned up little evidence of Islamic jihadists at work in the United States, according to a study released Monday.

Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in 2006 of conspiring to kill Americans on September 11, 2001.

1 of 2 var CNN_ArticleChanger = new CNN_imageChanger('cnnImgChngr','/2007/US/10/15/terror.study/imgChng/p1-0.init.exclude.html',1,1); //CNN.imageChanger.load('cnnImgChngr','imgChng/p1-0.exclude.html'); The study, conducted by New York University's Center on Law and Security, tracked 510 cases billed as terrorism-related when arrests were made.

But it found only 158 of those people arrested since al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks were prosecuted for terrorism.

In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the Justice Department said the report "reflects a serious misunderstanding" of anti-terrorism efforts and includes "wildly inaccurate" statistics.

The study found only four people -- including confessed al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid -- were convicted of planning attacks within the United States.

"The vast majority of cases turn out to include no link to terrorism once they go to court," the report found. The analysis "suggests the presence of few, if any, prevalent terrorist threats currently within the U.S."

The report questioned the usefulness of the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act, passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks, finding prosecutors relied primarily on previous laws.

"Although we are just beginning to discern the true extent and manner in which the administration has used the sweeping investigative powers granted by the Patriot Act, the record indicates that the criminal law provides an adequate tool set for trying suspected terrorists," the report stated.

In his 2006 State of the Union address President Bush urged Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act.


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"We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late," Bush said.

"So to prevent another attack --- based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America."

Receiving applause, Bush said, "If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."

The Justice Department disputed the law center's figures in Monday's study, saying more than the 62 people who the study cited have been convicted of terrorism-related offenses since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

But the law center said most of those 62 cases involved people planning attacks overseas, not inside the United States.

And looking at possible attacks worldwide, just 7 percent of those arrested in what authorities called terrorism-related cases have been convicted of terrorism charges or providing material support for terrorism, the report said.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said that as of late September prosecutors had won 312 convictions in "terrorism and terrorism-related cases with an international nexus" since the 2001 attacks. And Justice Department statistics found far fewer defendants had been charged with terrorism offenses between September 11, 2006, and September 11, 2007, than the 109 the report asserted.

"Our efforts to prevent terrorist attacks have moved our focus to the preparatory stages of terrorist planning and to those who would support and actively encourage such activity," Boyd said.

He added, "We have used other criminal charges that apply to the facts of each case to disrupt terrorist activity before it occurs."

In many cases, prosecutors used criminal conspiracy charges to obtain convictions against suspects like Jose Padilla, the accused al Qaeda operative found guilty in August of plotting to support overseas terrorism.

The Bush administration jailed Padilla without charges for nearly four years on allegations that he planned to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States, but eventually tried him on unrelated charges.

The report praised what it called the increased effectiveness of the FBI, which it credited with breaking up plots to bomb fuel pipelines at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and attack an Army post at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

But it questioned the use of what it called "preventive arrests" by federal agents to disrupt plots rather than let agents continue watching suspects and gathering more evidence.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/15/terror.study/index.html

[b]Syrian officials have admitted that the site attacked by the Israeli air force last month was a nuclear facility[/b]

[b]It's the resistance, stupid: ultimate nightmare for White House/Pentagon designs on Middle East energy resources is not Iran after all: it's a unified Iraqi resistance, Sunnis and Shi'ites[/b]

THE ROVING EYE
It's the resistance, stupid
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ17Ak03.html

The ultimate nightmare for White House/Pentagon designs on Middle East energy resources is not Iran after all: it's a unified Iraqi resistance, comprising not only Sunnis but also Shi'ites.

"It's the resistance, stupid" - along with "it's the oil, stupid". The intimate connection means there's no way for Washington to control Iraq's oil without protecting it with a string of sprawling military "super-bases".

The ultimate, unspoken taboo of the Iraq tragedy is that the US will never leave Iraq, unless, of course, it is kicked out. And that's exactly what the makings of a unified Sunni-Shi'ite resistance is set to accomplish.

Papa's got a brand new bag
At this critical juncture, it's as if the overwhelming majority of Sunnis and Shi'ites are uttering a collective cry of "we're mad as hell, and we won't take it anymore". The US Senate "suggests" that the solution is to break up the country. Blackwater and assorted mercenaries kill Iraqi civilians with impunity. Iraqi oil is being privatized via shady deals - like Hunt Oil with the Kurdistan regional government; Ray Hunt is a close pal of George W Bush.

Political deals in the Green Zone are just a detail in the big picture. On the surface the new configuration spells that the US-supported Shi'ite/Kurdish coalition in power is now challenged by an Iraqi nationalist bloc. This new bloc groups the Sadrists, the (Shi'ite) Fadhila party, all Sunni parties, the partisans of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, and the partisans of former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. This bloc might even summon enough votes to dethrone the current, wobbly Maliki government.

But what's more important is that a true Iraqi national pact is in the making - coordinated by VicePresident Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, and blessed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani himself. The key points of this pact are, no more sectarianism (thus undermining US strategy of divide and rule); no foreign interference (thus no following of US, Iran, or Saudi agendas); no support for al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers; and the right to armed resistance against the occupation.

Last Friday Grand Ayatollah Sistani finally confronted the occupation in no uncertain terms. Via Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, his representative in the holy city of Karbala, Sistani called for the Iraqi parliament to rein in Blackwater et al, and most of all the "occupation forces". He has never spoken out in such blunt language before.

For his part Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), one of the two key, US-supported Shi'ite parties in government, is back in Baghdad after four months of chemotherapy in Tehran. But it's his son, the affable Ammar al-Hakim - who was the acting SIIC leader while his father was away - who's been stealing the limelight, promising that the party will do everything in its power to prevent those US super-bases being set up in Iraq. Up to now SIIC's official position has been to support the US military presence.

Ammar al-Hakim even went to Ramadi on Sunday to talk to Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, brother of the late Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the former leader of the tribal coalition Anbar Awakening Council who was killed by a bomb last month. It was the first time since the invasion and occupation that a SIIC leader went to hardcore Sunni Anbar province. Ammar al-Hakim glowingly described the dead sheikh as "a national hero".

Most interesting is that Ammar al-Hakim was flanked by none other than feared Hadi al-Amri, the leader of the Badr Brigades - the SIIC militia trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, that in fact comprises the bulk of death squads involved in the avalanche of sectarian killings.

Ammar al-Hakim may now be against permanent US bases and in favor of Sunni-Shi'ite union. But although he now says he is against federalism, he's actually in favor of "self-governing regions". That makes him for many Iraqis a partisan of "soft partition" –- just like US congressmen. He qualifies the central government in Baghdad as "tyrannical".

For their part the Sunni Arab sheikhs in Anbar are totally against what would be a Western Iraq provincial government - possibly encompassing three, majority-Sunni provinces, Anbar, Salahuddin and Nineveh.

If on one Shi'ite side we have Ammar al-Hakim from SIIC, on the other side - literally - we have Muqtada al-Sadr. The same day Ammar al-Hakim was courting the tribal sheikhs, pan-Islamic Muqtada was saying he was against any soft partition or provincial governments. That's exactly what the sheikhs like to hear.

So now, in theory, everyone in the Shi'ite galaxy seems to want (more or less) the same thing. Tehran worked very hard to forge the recent peace pact between the al-Hakim family and the Sadrists. SIIC and Sistani are now explicitly saying that a unified Iraq must rein in the Pentagon and throw out the occupation - that's what Muqtada had been saying all along. Tehran and Tehran-supported SIIC must obviously have seen which way the Shi'ite street wind was blowing, so now we have a new, anti-sectarian, anti-occupation SIIC.

But it will require concentric halos of forgiveness for Sunnis to forget that the Badr Brigades have been responsible for a great deal of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, have cynically collaborated in synch with both the US and Iran, and have been focused on building a virtually independent "Shi'iteistan" in southern Iraq.

'We want you out'
Away from the Anbar sheikhs, the Sunni front is also moving fast. Last week six key, non-Salafi jihadist resistance groups, on a video on al-Jazeera, officially announced their union under the "Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance". They are the Islamic Army in Iraq, the al-Mujahideen Army, Ansar al-Sunna, al-Fatiheen Army, the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (JAMI), and Iraqi Hamas.

The whole process has been on the move since early summer. The council has a 14-point program. The key point is of course guerrilla warfare as the means to throw the occupiers out. A very important point - deriding the usual Pentagon rhetoric - is that the council is fiercely against al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers. The council also rejects all laws and the constitution passed under the occupation; calls for an interim government; defends Iraq's territorial integrity and rejects sectarianism.

It has been the Sunni Arab guerrillas that have virtually defeated the US in Iraq. And what's even more remarkable is that, unlike Vietnam, this has not been a unified resistance of Sunnis and Shi'ites.

A very important issue concerns a group that decided not to be part of the council: the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The brigades are basically Iraqi nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. They totally reject any sort of collaboration with the US.

But they may join the council in the near future. In a statement released in early September, the brigades stressed what an overwhelming majority of Sunnis agree on: "The democrats have a chance to end this conflict in a face-saving solution for the US, by first declaring that they recognize the factions of the Iraqi resistance as the representatives of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Republic. After which a negotiating team would be arranged to negotiate your troop withdrawal, compensation for Iraq, and matters of future interest. It is only through the Iraqi resistance that a solution may be born."

Or else, it's "variable, adaptable and reversible asymmetric warfare that will set the standard for years and years to come".

And there's still more - the coordinated, "new Ba'ath" front: 22 resistance groups, under the command of former Saddam star Izaat al-Douri, already seriously talking with the Iyad Allawi bloc - thus part of the nationalist front - and dictating their conditions, which include a resistance ceasefire in exchange for a precise US timetable for withdrawal.

As far as all the key Sunni and Shi'ite factions in Iraq are concerned, they all agree on the basics. Iraq won't be occupied. Iraq won't hold permanent US military bases. Iraq won't give up its oil wealth. And Iraq won't be a toothless pro-Israel puppet regime.

As far as a concerted Iraqi resistance is concerned, the only way is up. What a historic irony that would be - before the Bush administration is finally tempted to attack Iran, it may have to face a true benchmark imposed on it in Iraq.

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

This week's summit of the Caspian littoral states in Tehran has opened up new breathing space for Iranian diplomacy from the Caspian to the Arab world and brought Iran to the verge of a new strategic relationship with Russia. Simultaneously, the US's coercive diplomacy in the region has been frustrated. Washington will be particularly incensed by Moscow's siding with Tehran on its nuclear program. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Oct 17, '07)

Turkey into Iraq? Easier said than done
Turkey is taking final steps toward a military foray into Iraqi. Such a move, favored by the public and the military, would be fraught with danger, with the Turkish military likely to confront well-organized Iraqi Kurdish forces, and possibly even US troops. (Oct 17, '07)

Iran jails its conscience
Iran's leading human rights activist is in solitary confinement in Tehran's sinister Evin prison. Tehran is in need of a new public relations strategy. Just when it most needs friends, it sends Emadeddin Baghi to jail - not exactly a brilliant move. (Oct 17, '07)

Koreas summit leaves unanswered questions
The party's over and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun left Pyongyang with a lot of symbolism and plenty of IOUs due to North Korea's reclusive Kim Jong-il, who promised little and gave less. Left dangling are questions about the North's committment to de-nuclearization, and what impact a separate peace between the North and South would have on China's role in regional affairs. - Jing-dong Yuan (Oct 17, '07)

JACK DAVID: They want to win this war. “Listen to the Enemy” 10/17 4:00 AM

THE EDITORS: What great cause justifies taking such grave risks? “History Lesson” 10/17 7:00 AM

FRED GEDRICH: The U.S./Turkey relationship is too important to be sacrificed on the altar of self-serving domestic political interests. “Congressional Turkeys” 10/17 7:00 AM

Arabs Won't Be Rice's Rabbit-in-the-Hat by Rami G. Khouri
Despite Condoleezza Rice's sudden earnestness, the Arabs will not come to Annapolis to resolve magically all the disastrous policies and actions perpetrated on the Middle East by the United States and Israel during the Bush years.
more...

Bin Laden's New Strategery? by Monica Crowley What if Al Qaeda used our law and politics against us?

Follow the Leader

The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby
By PAUL FINDLEY

There is an open secret in Washington. I learned it well during my 22-year tenure as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. All members swear to serve the interests of the United States, but there is an unwritten and overwhelming exception: The interests of one small foreign country almost always trump U.S. interests. That nation of course is Israel.

Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue give priority to Israel over America. Those on Capitol Hill are pre-primed to roar approval for Israeli actions whether right or wrong, instead of at least fussing first and then caving. The White House sometimes puts up a modest and ineffective show of resistance before it follows Israel's lead.

In 2002, President Bush publicly ordered Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to end a bloody, destructive rampage through the Palestinian West Bank. He wilted just as publicly when he received curt word from Sharon that Israeli troops would not withdraw and would continue their military operations. A few days later President Bush invited Sharon to the White House where he saluted him as a "man of peace."

I had similar experiences in the House of Representatives. On several occasions, colleagues told me privately that they admired what I was trying to do in Middle East policy reform but could not risk pro-Israel protest back home by supporting my positions.

The pro-Israel lobby is not one organization orchestrating U.S. Middle East policy from a backroom in Washington. Nor is it entirely Jewish. It consists of scores of groups -- large and small -- that work at various levels. The largest, most professional, and most effective is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Many pro-Israel lobby groups belong to the Christian Right.

The recently released book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," co-authored by distinguished professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, offers hope for constructive change. It details the damage to U.S. national interests caused by the lobby for Israel. These brave professors render a great service to America, but their theme, expressed in a published study paper a year ago, is already under heavy, vitriolic attack.

They are unjustly accused of anti-Semitism, the ultimate instrument of intimidation employed by the lobby. A common problem: Under pressure, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs withdrew an invitation for the authors to speak about their book. Council president Marshall Bouton explained ruefully that the invitation posed "a political problem" and a need "to protect the institution" from those who would be angry if the authors appeared.

I know what it is like to be targeted in this way. In the last years of my long service in Congress, I spoke out, making many of the points now presented in the Mearsheimer-Walt book. In 1980, my opponent charged me with anti-Semitism, and money poured into his campaign fund from every state in the Union. I prevailed that year but two years later lost by a narrow margin. In 1984, Sen. Charles Percy, then chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and an occasional critic of Israel, was defeated. Leaders of the Israel lobby claimed credit for defeating both Percy and me, claims that strengthened lobby influence in the years that followed.

The result is that Members of Congress today loudly reward Israel as it violates international law and peace agreements, lures America into costly wars, and subjects millions of Palestinians under its rule to apartheid-like conditions because they are not Jewish.

It is time to call politicians to account for their undying allegiance to a foreign state. Let the Mearsheimer-Walt book be a clarion that bestirs the American people to political action and finally brings fundamental change to both Capitol Hill and the White House.

Citizen participation in public policy development is a hallmark of our proud democracy. But the pro-Israel groups subvert democracy when they engage in smear campaigns that intimidate and silence critics. America badly needs a civilized discussion of the damaging role of Israel in U.S. policy formulation.


Paul Findley represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives for 22 years. He is the author of They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront the Israel Lobby.

Can We Prevent an Iran Attack?

Peter Galbraith, The New York Review of Books and TomDispatch

War on Iraq: Is there hope of averting another war on the Persian Gulf?

Norman Solomon:

The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal
A real hazard of preoccupations with Blackwater is that it will become a scapegoat for what is profoundly and fundamentally wrong with the U.S. effort and mission.

Iran: Reframing the US Case for War
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, claims that the United States government is now focusing on the Islamic Republic’s role in international terrorism, especially in Iraq, rather than on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The counter-proliferation effort is thus being redefined as a counterterrorism project.Read Article

Iran: Reframing the US Case for War
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, claims that the United States government is now focusing on the Islamic Republic’s role in international terrorism, especially in Iraq, rather than on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The counter-proliferation effort is thus being redefined as a counterterrorism project.Read Article

No Sanctions, No Strikes: Plan C for Iran
Manjana Milkoreit of the public policy group and Jason J. Blackstock of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government note that economic sanctions aren’t working on Iran as Plan A, and the military Plan B is even worse. We need a plan C that provides for civilian uranium enrichment and addresses external political changes.Read Article

Israel's Security in a Changing Strategic Environment
Ambassador Yaakov Levy, Director of Policy Planning for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, argues that a major change in the nature of warfare has taken place. Israel faces a “new reality” which presents a fundamental challenge to existing norms of international law. Read Article

Gates says all options on table for Iran