Hillary Clinton on The Huffington Post

Does Hillary Clinton Have A Crush On David Miliband? (PHOTOS, POLL)

2009-11-16T16:02:48Z

Thankfully, Hillary Clinton's new job isn't all work and no play. In a profile on the secretary of state in the December issue of Vogue, writer Jonathan van Meter reveals that the secretary of state has some very nice things to say about British foreign secretary David Miliband.

When I mentioned to her over lunch that I had spoken with him, she lit up. "Oh, my God!" I joked that I got a crush over the phone in about five seconds partly because of his accent, and she said, "Well, if you saw him it would be a big crush. I mean, he is so vibrant, vital, attractive, smart. He's really a good guy. And he's so young!"

Miliband had nice things to say about her, too:

"She applies intellect but also psychology to the dossiers that she's studying. She uses her experience in a very impressive way. She brings it to bear in a way that enriches a conversation but doesn't swamp it. She learns from history without being trapped by it. I think it's also important to say that she's delightful to deal with one on one. She's someone who laughs and can tease, and she's got perspective as well."

Here's a photo montage of some of their most adorable moments together:

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Hillary Clinton's Singapore Style: Love It Or Lose It? (PHOTO, POLL)

2009-11-16T14:17:16Z

Hillary Clinton stepped out on Saturday night in Singapore sporting a rather elegant ensemble: a lacy-trimmed jacket, a pearl choker and earrings, a black headband and what looks like a take on the classic Chanel bag.

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Don McNay: President Obama's Entrepreneurial Mindset

2009-11-16T14:07:48Z

I can give you
anything but time

-Elvis
Costello

I'm sometimes critical of President Obama because it often seems to me that he doesn't understand people like me – an owner of a small
business in a small town.

I have not seen much evidence of Obama being in touch with
small-town
Kentucky, but
after reading David Plouffe's new book, The
Audacity to Win, I have become
convinced that he knows what it takes to run a business.

I'm a devoted student of Dan Sullivan, the “Strategic Coach" for
entrepreneurs. I went through Sullivan’s program in Toronto. Dan has devoted
his life to helping entrepreneurs become better at their craft. I am convinced that President
Obama operated his 2008 Presidential
campaign with a classic entrepreneurial mindset.

Common
traits of successful entrepreneurs include setting
seemingly impossible goals and challenging conventional wisdom.

Planning to be President of the United
States is a pretty high goal.
Especially for a guy who had been an Illinois state legislator just five years
ago.

When history goes back to studying the Obama
campaign, it will compare it to the William Jennings Bryan campaign of 1896 or
Ross Perot's in 1992. Those unconventional
styles of
campaigning set the standard for every
campaign after them.

No one focused on Larry King before Ross Perot did.
Now,
all candidates find their way to Larry, Leno, Dave, Ellen, Tyra and Oprah.

Now, every campaign is going to organize and raise
money using the
Obama model.

Like a Steven Jobs or Bill Gates, Obama changed the dynamic.

But unlike
Bryan and Perot,
Obama won.

And he
did in classic entrepreneurial fashion. He developed a campaign plan that
exploited
opportunities that seemed crazy to "Washington insiders.”

It was the same way Steven Jobs and Bill Gates seemed crazy to IBM and Xerox. Or the way that Google seemed crazy to Microsoft.

A good entrepreneur takes what "the
professionals" see as disadvantages and turns them into advantages.

Jimmy Carter had one of the most innovative
campaigns of
the modern era. People laughed when an unemployed, former governor of a Southern
state decided to be president. Carter understood that being unemployed
allowed him to campaign full time, and that being Southern allowed him to connect to a large segment of
the population who didn't want George Wallace as the primary symbol of southern
politics.

Obama took the unconventional candidate theory to a new
extreme. We have not had many senators become president, and especially not many one-term senators. I can't think of another president who was raised by an unmarried,
single mother. I’m sure
Obama is the first president born in Hawaii. He’s younger than all but a
handful of presidents and has an unusual name.

Also, did I mention that
he is African-American?

As Plouffe's book points out, Obama's
"negatives," like Jimmy Carter's negatives, turned out to be
positives.

Plouffe noted that among people who voted in the 2004 George W. Bush- John
Kerry election, Obama beat McCain by only a 50% to 49% margin. Depending on how
the electoral votes would have played out, Obama could have narrowly won, narrowly lost or faced the
same fate as Al Gore.

Instead, a huge turnout by African-Americans and younger voters propelled Obama to a landslide victory.

Obama did not run the
campaign by conventional rules. He
developed his own rules and made them work for him.

It’s tough to challenge conventional wisdom. Everyone wants to tell
you what you are doing wrong.

Programs like the Strategic Coach teach
entrepreneurs to develop written goals and to have ways to measure how people are progressing
towards those goals.

Plouffe noted the discipline exhibited
by the Obama campaign in sticking to their game plan.
The early campaign was roundly criticized by "experts" who didn't see the same
vision that the Obama people saw.

I was impressed by how they were able to use matrices to measure
every aspect of the campaign, like fundraising, organizing and coordinating, to track how successfully the campaign was meeting its plan.

It has been said that anything that
can be measured, can be obtained. In Obama's case, that
included the Presidency of the United States.

Dan Sullivan built most of his
coaching philosophy around something called the "entrepreneurial time
system." An entrepreneur's time is the
most precious resource of any business, and it needs to be treated as such.

I've seen way too many political candidates and business people
try to be everywhere, doing everything, and who wind up being nowhere and
getting nothing much done.

Until I read The Audacity to Win, I had no idea how
much campaign focus was directed
to proper use of Omaba's time. Time was also scheduled for the
candidate to relax and spend time with his family. There was a lot of pressure
to have Obama go to outside debates and rallies, but the plan called for him to stay focused on the Iowa primary and never to waver from
his central message.

His highly favored primary opponent, Hillary
Clinton, did not manage her time as
well and had a litany of campaign messages. Obama against Clinton was like
watching an energetic start-up go against a bureaucratic
mega-corporation.

We all rooted for David over Goliath. Entrepreneurs are those who
can look at Goliath and recognize
that a giant can be taken down.

Just like Barack Obama took the Presidency.

Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is
one of the world's leading authorities in helping people deal with “Big
Money” issues.

McNay
is an award winning, syndicated financial columnist and
Huffington Post Contributor.

You can read more about Don at www.donmcnay.com

McNay
founded McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement and financial
consulting firm, in 1983 and Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC
in 2000. You can read more about both at www.mcnay.com

McNay
has Master's Degrees from Vanderbilt and the American College and is in the
Eastern Kentucky University Hall of Distinguished Alumni.

McNay
has written two books. Most recent is Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers
and What to Do When You Win The Lottery

McNay
is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four
professional designations in the financial services field.

Mira Kamdar: The Shah Appointment at USAID

2009-11-16T12:13:49Z

Talkin' Bout a (Second Genetically-Engineered Privatized) Green Revolution

The Cold War is over! The Cold War is back! With the appointment of Rajiv Shah to head USAID, it's deja-vu all over again for the Obama administration. Welcome to Camelot redux, the 1960's re-engineered for the 2010s.

Michelle Obama's stylish sheathes may recall Jackie Kennedy's '60s elegance but it's in the realm of foreign policy where the Obama administration really gets on its 1960s, Cold-War mojo. The administration's plan to rehabilitate USAID and use it to restore agriculture and food security to the center of U.S. foreign policy is, well, so Kennedy.

USAID was created during the first year of the Kennedy administration in 1961. Then, communist armed insurgencies spreading among the developing world's poor masses threatened the American way of life. Now, terrorist armed insurgencies spreading among the developing world's poor masses threaten the American way of life. Then, USAID was created because smart Americans in the Kennedy administration thought that allowing developing countries' economies to collapse "would be disastrous to our national security, harmful to our comparative prosperity, and offensive to our conscience." Now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to re-empower USAID and intensify its focus on agriculture because "food security is not just about food. But it is about all security - economic security, environmental security, even national security."

There is nothing new here folks. Back in 1958, a senator from Minnesota named Hubert H. Humprey submitted a report to a committee convened under the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act and its Relationship to Foreign Policy. The report's title: Food and Fiber as a Force for Freedom. Makes for interesting reading.

Fast forward to 2009. Shah, a 36-year-old medical doctor freshly plucked from the Gates Foundation via the Department of Agriculture, is being hailed as just the medicine for the now ailing USAID. What Shah is being brought in to do is basically what he did with the Gates Foundation, where he oversaw the emergence of agriculture as one of the primary, long-term focuses of the Foundation's work, or what he did as undersecretary for research, education and economics at the USDA. In both cases, Shah distinguished himself not only for his brilliance and his acumen at managing a large spectrum of projects, large amounts of money and large numbers of people, but by his messianic belief in the ability of technology-based, market-driven solutions.

This is a vision Shah shares with Secretary Clinton. It is a vision that could forever change not only the essential workings of our government in its relationship with private corporations but also the genetic content of most of the plants we eat along with the market mechanisms that get those plants into the ground, out of the ground and onto our plates. In this vision, what the world needs to survive and what the United States needs to preserve its dominance (its security) is a deeply integrated effort between the United States government and agribusiness to advance a "second Green Revolution," a phrase actually coined by the Bush administration, which had already focused USAID on supporting the expansion of genetically engineered crops in the developing world. But, for the sake of the Obama administration, let's just skip that inconvenient truth. In the 1960s Green Revolution, the Democratic one, the U.S. government worked with the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundations to boost grain yields in the developing world with new hybrid seeds, a new infrastructure of big irrigation schemes, and a dramatic expansion in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The "second" Green Revolution basically adds two new elements to the original: biotechnology and private capital investment. This is really what Secretary Clinton is talking about as being deeply innovative in the Obama administration's approach. As she told the gathering of world leaders assembled at her husband's Clinton Global Initiative in September 2009: "I have to acknowledge that much of what we are attempting to do is derived from what I have seen happen here at CGI, the kind of new approach, the marrying of philanthropy and capitalism...". In other words, a deeper, broader level of what are known as "public-private partnerships" to advance policy goals, the same kind promoted by the Gates Foundation.

In his article last year "A Green Revolution for Africa?", which featured a photograph of Rajiv Shah at work in Africa, David Rieff ably dissected the ambitions of the Gates Foundation in market-based, technology-derived solutions, particularly biotechnology and genetic engineering, to alleviate hunger. The Gates Foundation partners with governments as well as with the Rockefeller Foundation, heavily involved in the original Green Revolution. It has also hired a former vice-president from Monsanto, and collaborated with Monsanto and Syngenta, the world's biggest players in the genetic engineering of food plants, on the creation of a vault to preserve the world's plant diversity . When Rajiv Shah moved from the Gates Foundation to the Department of Agriculture, he took the lessons he learned there in "creative capitalism" with him. On the creation of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) last year, a move many scientists hope will boost primary research at America's leading research and agricultural universities that is not funded by private agribusiness, Shah demurred that this was not really the goal. He even went so far as to call for even deeper integration between public university research and private enterprise, something hard to imagine in U.S. agriculture. According to an article by Bob Grant in The Scientist, Shah said: "The USDA hadn't been using these tools of deep collaboration," between the private and the public sectors. He continued: "We're going to do all these things very differently. We are going to engage the private sector much more than we have in the past."

Ah Camelot. Those glory days of elegance and smarts at the height of the Cold War. That brief burst of light brought to Washington by a young, ambitious Kennedy administration that allowed America to hold its head high in the world between the dark days of the McCarthy era and the morass of the Vietnam War. For a brief shining moment, idealistic young Americans could feel good again about our foreign policy. We were going to make the world a better place, not just for us, but for everyone. We created the Peace Corps and USAID. We rolled out the Green Revolution. This is the era the Obama administration is clearly trying to recreate. But there is no going back. The original Green Revolution boosted yields but also resulted in widely acknowledged environmental, social and political devastation. We can only imagine the risks of unleashing scores of genetically engineered crops on the developing world.

Many development experts believe that the long-term solution to world hunger lies in sustainable agricultural practices that are decidedly low-tech, coupled with government policies that protect farmers and consumers from the rapacity of monopoly agribusiness. If the Obama administration really wants to signal it is about change, it might turn to another brilliant Indian American, Raj Patel. Currently a visiting scholar at U.C. Berkeley, Patel is the author of the book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System Patel writes: "Global hunger and obesity are symptoms of the same problem and, what's more, the route to eradicating world hunger is also the way to prevent global epidemics of diabetes and heart disease, and to address a host of environmental and social ills. ... Guided by the profit motive, the corporations that sell our food shape and constrain how we eat, and how we think about food."

They're also apparently shaping how the Obama administration thinks about foreign policy.

Dems, GOP Split On NY Terror Trials

2009-11-16T09:48:04Z

WASHINGTON — Bringing those accused in the Sept. 11 attacks to New York for trial would increase the security threat to the city and give radical Islamists a platform to propagate their ideology, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Sunday.

Giuliani's view that the Obama administration is erring in trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others near the site of the World Trade Center was echoed by other Republicans on the Sunday news programs.

Palestinians To Appeal To UN For State, As Peace Talks Stall

2009-11-15T23:12:20Z

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian drive to ask the U.N. Security Council to endorse a state unilaterally, put forward by a top negotiator Sunday, appeared more an expression of frustration with U.S. and Israeli policies and stalled peace talks than a real effort to go it alone.

A resolution for a Palestinian state could face a veto from the U.S., Israel's main ally. But if the Security Council approved it, consequences could be even more severe.

Clinton: NY Governor Rumor Completely Unfounded

2009-11-15T10:15:33Z

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is waving off rumors that she is considering a run for governor of New York. And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says he hasn't decided whether he'll run.

Clinton tells ABC's "This Week" that she wants to put to rest speculation that she would seek the governorship of New York. She says she is committed to her duties as secretary of state.

Taylor Marsh: First Hillary, Now Sarah

2009-11-14T11:50:45Z

Here we go again. Hillary was made out to be a she devil, too unqualified from her first lady status to run for Senate, with the same thing being said during her presidential campaign. Now we've got the demonization of a diva. It all amounts to the same thing. With Sarah's book being fact checked by the AP before it hits bookstores. Did this ever happen with Newt's book? The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Andrew Sullivan has the distinction of being in Sarah's sights over the bogus baby Trig pregnancy scandal, something that would never have happened to a man:

Ms. Palin was particularly angry at bloggers and the media, associates said, for speculation that her baby Trig was really the child of Bristol, her daughter.

At one point, according to people familiar with the discussions, Ms. Palin considered pursuing a libel suit against at least one blogger, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. Ms. Palin decided against such a move because of the publicity it would bring.

Mr. Sullivan, in response, said asking "factually verifiable questions is obviously not libel."

The roll out to Sarah Palin's book has already been a strange trip, as we all wait for the big Oprah interview on Monday. The usual suspects are acting up, with Sarah squarely in their target range. Except for one, Chris Matthews, who never said a nice word about Hillary Clinton as she clawed her way up, with Bill Clinton still on his hate list. But Matthews has been laboring relentlessly to heap praises on Sarah, no doubt having chills run down his legs over the daydream that he might be the chosen one on MSNBC to actually land an interview with Sarah. Eat your heart out, Pat Buchanan.

I haven't read Palin's book and few of the people opining on it have either, I suspect, so I'm not going to posture about it. I'm also going to resist going down the usual low road when it comes to Sarah Palin. It's sport to hate Sarah, just like it used to be to hate Hillary. But to note, the weirdest thing to come out so far is the clip CBS has of Sarah and Oprah where she talks about Levi Johnson. It's hard to know what to make of that one, except that Mr. Johnson gives us his view:

"She's being smart," said Johnston, when a reporter told him last night that Palin didn't blast him in the interview she taped with Winfrey Wednesday afternoon. "She knows what I got on her. It's a smart move on her part."

What a crew. Not exactly First Family material, now is it.

That's on top of Sarah Palin's gravitas questions, which some on the right point to, in addition to her foreign policy knowledge canyons, which have still not been addressed.

However, for Sarah Palin, score settling is job one.

Matthew Continetti, who has written a book about Sarah's "persecution" by the media, has some advice for Mrs. Palin, as she begins her rehabilitation, get reacquainted with the real Sarah tour:

During her book tour, Ms. Palin is sure to mention that the Obama administration's opposition to offshore drilling and domestic nuclear power, and its support for an onerous cap-and-trade scheme, will raise energy prices across the board. But she also might spend less time discussing campaign intrigue and Alaska trivia, and more time outlining how to spur job creation through tax reform.

She might mention, too, that the Democrats' health-care plan would hike taxes, raise the cost of doing business, and lead to rationing down the line. She might point out that, on top of health care, the stimulus and bailouts, President Obama's 2010 budget will further bury the United States in debt. Every time the media try to shift the conversation to personal gossip or past mistakes, Ms. Palin should pull it right back to how the Obama agenda will hurt the middle class.

I realize I'm the only progressive who believes Sarah Palin is not done on the national scene, and that there is a lot of time for her to reinvent herself. She's going to need it, but she's getting a lot of help in an atmosphere that's a great stage for someone like her.

On the right, Joe Scarborough has pronounced her unelectable nationally, quarantined to getting 25% and that's all.

This analysis is not only wrong, but belies the appetite the American people have for comebacks, at least where men are concerned.

It also ignores two things many Democrats are dismissing, to our detriment. That there isn't a politician on the right who comes close to her charisma, crowd drawing power and ability to reach into people's hearts. And that the American people don't vote on intellectual prowess. They vote on emotion, which Sarah sure knows how to tap. That alone should make Democrats take notice. No doubt it has Romney and Pawlenty stewing.

Still some aren't buying it. But they don't understand how this works.

The Republican strategy Sarah is using has been around since Rush started wailing on radio. It amounts to turning on the emotional engine, which ends up fueling Republican surges. It's the best GOTV, throw the bums out tool the right has, because people like Sarah Palin not only know how to turn it on, but she's actually capable of delivering the message and hooking into people's hearts. As with all issues that hit people personally, non fact based motivation works for getting out the vote against us, as we saw with Palin's "death panels" squeal tour, but can also crystallize what they are for, as was the case in NY-23 where tea party activists and what they believed fueled the rise of a talentless spokesperson simply because he spoke their language, who almost took everyone down and now is wishing he hadn't conceded because the vote totals are getting that close.

Stranger things than a Sarah Palin comeback have happened. George W. Bush beat Democrats twice, the second time based on emotion that keyed in on the bigotry of people thinking America was changing just a little too much, with anti gay marriage amendments the tool. Are people really going to argue that Bush is smarter than Sarah?

And don't underestimate the bailout blues people are experiencing across this country, regardless of party affiliations, topped off by the Democrats seemingly aligning themselves with Wall Street. The populist anger exhibited through the classic brawl of Wall Street versus main street, something Sarah Palin knows how to tap into, is very dangerous for Democrats.

But whether Sarah runs for national office or not, you can bet there will be a huge audience for her interview with Oprah, as her makeover begins. At the very least, she's getting revenge and doing so by traveling battleground states one by one hawking her bestselling book.

People love to hate Sarah, just like they did Hillary. But strong, resilient, determined women can survive anything and live to rise again.

Taylor Marsh, with podcasts available on iTunes.

William Bradley: Obama In Flux

2009-11-13T16:25:20Z

As he embarks on his first big trip to Asia, President Barack Obama's strategies are in flux in many areas.

His first stop, Japan, is acting more independently of America after the long reign of the relatively conservative Liberal Democratic Party.

His next stop, Singapore, host of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, holds a host of trade challenges, as well as a sideline meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

Afghanistan is following President Barack Obama to Asia.

The stop after that, China, is the increasingly assertive great power on the cusp of superpower status, locked in a symbiotic economic relationship with America.

His final stop, South Korea, is friendly but embroiled in an endless stand-off with North Korea, another aspiring nuclear power.

It's no surprise that Obama is being followed on his Asian trip by other crises. Because so much in his geopolitics is so fundamentally unresolved, making that Nobel Peace Prize more than a bit premature.

He still doesn't have his newest strategy for Afghanistan. Pakistan is embroiled in its latest offensive against the Taliban.

Obama on Thursday began a week-long trip to Asia, touring a complex region where a newly assertive China and a more independent Japan are challenging America's traditional dominance.

Iran has refused to sign the nuclear agreement its representatives negotiated in Vienna.

The Iranian nuclear situation becomes more convoluted every day. Now the head of the Iranian military has stated that he favors the plan Iran agreed to last month in Vienna, only to stall on ratification, then say no, and then say it wanted to re-negotiate on "details."

There is either a power struggle under way in Tehran or Iran is trying to buy time against harsher sanctions and a possible Israeli attack.

The Obama Administration moved yesterday to seize a New York skyscraper and four mosques around the country -- including one in California, in the sleepy Sacramento suburb of Carmichael -- that it says are secretly controlled by Iran, serving as conduits of cash for the regime.

Then there is the endless question of Israel and Palestine. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set off a firestorm in the Arab world when she said that Israel had done enough on its program of settlements on the West Bank. Which it is continuing. That was walked back by the administration. But there is little progress in this possibly intractable situation, with neither side willing to compromise much.

With regard to Russia, whose president Obama is again about to meet, it may be shifting away from Iran. This may be part of a complex series of political changes in Moscow which sees power apparently flowing away from the siloviki, or core group of security/intel types. Relations with Russia have also been in flux, with kinder words and some better cooperation on Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation, but no clear agreement on Russia's preferred sphere of influence in its "near abroad."

Tony Blair's farewell speech to the British Labour Party conference in 2006, the beginning of his long goodbye tour.

And then there is the matter of Tony Blair. (I know, he's not a country. Though an old friend joked that when he listens to the Beatles' "Sun King" he thinks of Blair.) His bid to be the first president of the European Union is still alive, though heavily opposed. In part because of Iraq, in part because he is in other respects out of step with Europe's mostly center-right leaders, and in part because he is a superstar who would overshadow smaller countries and the aspirational leaders of larger countries.

European leaders will gather in Brussels next Thursday to make the decision. Blair is a longtime American ally, to put it mildly, so his election would be mostly welcomed in Washington.

While almost all of America slept, Obama held summit meetings with new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

Hatoyama's party swept the long-ruling LDP from power earlier this year. Amidst promises of a more independent relationship with America. But Hatoyama is no radical. Actually, he is part of the long-ruling elite of his island nation.

His father was the foreign minister in an LDP government. His paternal grandfather was prime minister and head of the LDP. His maternal grandfather was the founder of Bridgestone, one of the world's largest tire companies.

It's likely, in the Japanese way, that he will pursue a moderated course of independence.

And Obama, with his Nobel Peace Prize and global celebrity, is the president to work that through, while retaining America's longtime fundamental interests in the region.

Japan still wants protection from North Korea, and a place under America's nuclear umbrella with regard to China. America still wants bases. Both want favorable trade arrangements and free-flowing capital and technology.

But it's Afghanistan that looms over Obama's shoulder as he makes his way through a series of geopolitical minefields in Asia.

Obama won't accept any of the Afghanistan war options before him without changes as concerns soar over the ability of the Afghan government to secure its own country

As Obama works his way toward his newest strategy on Afghanistan, a new Gallup Poll finds the nation split down the middle, with only pluralities for any position.

35% of Americans say he should follow the recommendation of the commanding U.S. general in Afghanistan and increase troop levels by about 40,000. Another 7% support a smaller troop increase, meaning a total of 42% of Americans support a troop increase of some size. However, nearly the same percentage, 44%, would like to see the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan reduced.

With 44% of Americans in the Nov. 5-8 poll favoring a troop reduction and 7% wanting to keep troop levels where they are, a slim majority appears to oppose a troop increase. Last month, using a different question wording, Gallup also found the public largely divided on sending more troops to Afghanistan.

If Obama decides to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, he will be going against the wishes of the vast majority of rank-and-file Democrats. In fact, 60% of Democrats would like the president to begin to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, while 26% support a troop increase of about 40,000 (18%) or less than that number (8%).

On the other hand, the majority of Republicans side with Gen. McChrystal's recommendation and support an increase of about 40,000 U.S. troops, with an additional 6% of Republicans favoring a smaller troop increase.

Independents are evenly divided between favoring a troop increase of any size (36% would like Obama to follow McChrystal's recommended increase and 7% favor a smaller increase) and supporting a reduction in U.S. troops (43%).

This is a pretty slender reed on which to base an escalation.

There is also a big gender gap on Afghanistan.

Men are much more likely than women to favor expanding the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan. A majority of men favor a troop increase (including 45% who believe Obama should follow McChrystal's recommendation) while only 32% of women agree. A majority of women would like to see the U.S. reduce its troop presence in Afghanistan.

Obama took part in the memorial service at Fort Hood and also delivered an address, one of his best, on the enduring nature and value of military service in the changing world of the early 21st century.

In the midst of all that, Obama has wildly diverging advice from his new commander and his new ambassador in Afghanistan, a retired general himself.

Obama apparently now wants additional options beyond those presented by General Stanley McChrystal, US commander in Afghanistan. And an exit plan. As well he might.

The new US ambassador to Afghanistan, retired General Karl Eikenberry, sent several cables late last week to the president opposing an escalation in Afghanistan, saying that President Hamid Karzai is incompetent and corrupt and that a surge will only make Afghanistan more dependent on America.

The only reasonable mission for America in Afghanistan is to ensure that Al Qaeda can no longer use it as a base for its training and operations. That doesn't require the sort of nation-building as counter-insurgency that McChrystal is advocating. Advocating, that is, with no guarantee of success.

That there is so much unsettled doesn't mean that Obama isn't doing his job. It means that it's a complicated world not given to bumper sticker "solutions."

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: "Qum" Buy Ya

2009-11-13T16:20:59Z

On October 25th, inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were granted access to the secret and recently outed nuclear facility under construction in a secluded mountain inside an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base near the holy city of Qum.

We now have definitive confirmation from IAEA and European diplomats that the nuclear installation was too small for peaceful nuclear enrichment, but large enough to hold enough centrifuges to convert low grade enriched uranium into enough weapons-grade uranium needed to make nuclear warheads.

In other words, the Qum nuclear facility appears to be the smoking gun in Iran's secret nuclear weapons construction program. If the neutral IAEA has come to that conclusion, I can't wait to hear from those who would love to spin it as nothing more than an innocent doughnut factory.

So much for the value of the once vaunted November 2007 U.S. intelligence agencies' National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that proffered Iran was not engaged in any weapons-oriented uranium enrichment enterprise. Even before his inspectors finished their inspection of Qum, IAEA chief Mohamad ElBaradei directly accused Iran of violating its international legal obligations by failing to disclose the Qum facility to the IAEA.

Now what?

While the technical revelations regarding the Qum nuclear enrichment facility filter out as the IAEA prepares its final report to the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. is at a crossroads regarding Iran's nuclear program.

Cautious optimism that an Obama administration-orchestrated Geneva proposal whereby Iran would agree to ship 1200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium to a third country for further enrichment under international supervision has evaporated. Living up to everyone's worst expectations of Iranian negotiating duplicity, the deal is now so bogged down with Iranian preconditions and qualifications to make further Western concessions to revive the tentative deal pointless, unless of course, Iran reverses course.

To make matters worse, Obama's engagement entreaties to Iran keep getting a "return to sender" response. And just yesterday Iran's state prosecutor signaled his intent to bring espionage charges against three detained American hikers -- making them pawns in this high stakes showdown. Moreover, Ayatollah Khamenei has gone out of his way in recent days to make pointed accusations against President Obama.

Even in the face of these Iranian retorts engagement efforts remain justified. But Iran's continued rejection of the Geneva plan, coupled with the IAEA's revelations regarding the illicit Qum nuclear facility are severely narrowing the Obama Administration's engagement policy options. All this coming at the worst possible moment for an administration trying to cope with other major foreign policy challenges. The president has stated he would give Iran until December to abide by its international obligations. Then, there will an effort to increase economic sanctions on Iran.

The atomic ayatollahs appear indifferent to any carrot or stick. Let's hope that is another Iranian negotiating ploy. Perhaps with its hands caught red-handed in the nuclear cookie jar the Iranians may reconsider and seek a face-saving way to avoid a showdown with the West and Israel. Unfortunately, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest Iran's leaders wish to meet Obama's outstretched hand half way.

Terry Krepel: Newsmax 's Rehab of Bernard Kerik Fails

2009-11-12T17:48:24Z

I've detailed how Newsmax has labored over the past several months to rehabilitate the reputation of former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik, giving him a regular column and publishing articles that whitewashed the corruption charges he was facing.

But all of Newsmax's efforts have gone for naught, undone last week as Kerik pleaded guilty to eight of those charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials during his ill-fated 2004 nomination to be Homeland Security secretary. The plea deal included a recommendation that Kerik serve 27 to 33 months in prison.

Until reality so rudely intruded, Newsmax's Kerik rehabilitation efforts were going full-bore.

The September edition of Newsmax's magazine featured an article hyperbolically titled "Bernie Kerik: The Trial of an American Hero." Newsmax thought so much of this piece that it reformatted the article and posted it on the website. But following the Newsmax pattern, writers Dave Eberhart and Jim Meyers hide facts in order to portray Kerik is the victim of "overzealous federal prosecutors."

Eberhart and Meyers allowed Kerik's attorney to criticize "government tactics in this case, especially the recent third indictment in a new jurisdiction, Washington, D.C." But they failed to accurately explain why those charges were filed in the first place, repeating a claim in an earlier article by Eberhart that the dismissal of certain charges in the New York-based indictment against Kerik "apparently irked the prosecutors, who decided on May 26 to open up the new indictment against Kerik in D.C., including charging him with crimes [Judge Stephen] Robinson had dismissed."

In fact those charges were dropped specifically so they could be filed in D.C. The judge essentially told prosecutors to do exactly what they did -- as Newsmax itself reported at the time.

Also as Newsmax has done before, Eberhart and Meyers obfuscated about what exactly Kerik is charged with doing, selectively citing specific charges that they feel can be easily rebutted. There's no mention, for example, of what the Washington Post described as a $250,000 loan allegedly granted to him on an interest-free basis by an Israeli businessman that Kerik allegedly failed to disclose on federal tax returns and when he was nominated to be Homeland Security secretary in 2004. There's also no mention of Kerik's alleged failure to report $500,000 in income to the IRS and falsely claiming tens of thousands of dollars in tax deductions.

Eberhart and Meyers referenced an inquiry into "whether he aided a New Jersey construction firm in gaining city permits in return for a lowball price on the home work" without mentioning that, as the Post also reported, the construction firm in question was under investigation by four government agencies for ties to organized crime at the time it did the work for Kerik.

The writers also falsely suggested that one of the charges Kerik faces involves wiretapped phone conversations with then-local district attorney (and current TV judge) Jeanine Pirro, who "asked him to conduct surveillance on her husband, whom she suspected of marital infidelity. According to published sources, the tapes indicate Kerik had tried to talk Pirro out of the surveillance." But since Kerik apparently did nothing wrong, he was never charged in that particular incident, in which Pirro is the one who looked bad; the recordings came to light as part of the corruption probe of Kerik.

(Just as Newsmax enthusiastically touted Kerik's DHS nomination, it promoted Pirro's abortive 2005 Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton, declaring any and all unsavory claims against her -- and there were many, largely centering around her two-timing, out-of-wedlock-siring, tax-cheat hubby -- to be "old news" even though most people weren't aware of them.)

Eberhart and Meyers are much more interested in burnishing Kerik's credentials. For instance, they noted that "Kerik worked for the Interior Ministry in Baghdad training police recruits," but not that, as the Post reported, the stint "has been widely judged a failure" because Kerik abruptly quit after two months -- or, as Sen. John McCain put it: "Kerik was supposed to be there to help train the police force. He stayed two months, and one day left, just up and left."

The writers cranked up the melodramatic aspect of Kerik's purported victimhood:

Today, Bernard Kerik is fighting for his innocence with a criminal guillotine hanging over his head. Cut off from most of his business and media access, his income has withered.

[...]

Despite depleting his entire personal wealth, Kerik is going into the final rounds a wounded, but not beaten, man.

In other words, Eberhart and Meyers weren't doing reporting, they were writing a hagiography -- which was the whole point of Newsmax's career rehab project.

Even the revocation of Kerik's bail after being accused of trying to taint the jury pool for his trial -- which resulted in him being put in jail -- didn't faze Newsmax, which responded with an Oct. 22 article by John Noble that played up Geraldo Rivera's assertion that Kerik "is a 'patriot' whose civil rights, including the right to a fair trial, are being trampled upon by an overzealous federal prosecutor and federal judge."

(It was only a few months ago that Newsmax was happily repeating Lou Dobbs' description of Rivera as "intellectually challenged.")

Noble was in full protection mode on Kerik, even blaming the reporter to whom a Kerik associate leaked confidential court papers for reporting the leak to prosecutors:

The brouhaha that landed Kerik in prison began in September, when one of his attorneys, Anthony Modafferi, who headed up Kerik's legal defense fund and advised him on an unpaid basis, sent an email to reporter Jerry Seper at The Washington Times.

Though the email was clearly marked confidential, Seper, according to a letter from the federal prosecutor, forwarded the verbatim email he received from Modafferi to the New York City Department of Investigation.

The city department, in turn, turned over the email to the federal prosecutor, suggesting it detailed privileged information that should not have been released publicly.

Is Noble really saying that Seper should not have reported the violation that Modafferi's apparently illegal release of court-sealed information represents? We thought the boys at Newsmax were all law-and-order types.

Noble went on to editorialize that Kerik faces "a laundry list of charges, many trivial" and based on "flimsy evidence."

Newsmax followed up with an unbylined Oct. 25 article featured more ranting from Rivera that Kerik was the victim of a "cynical ploy by a runaway judge." The article also noted:

Joining Rivera was famed security expert Richard "Bo" Dietl, a former NYPD detective who said that revoking Kerik's bail was a "travesty" of justice.

"They should do the right thing - let the man go home, let the man go to trial,'' said Dietl. "If he's guilty, then they should prove that he's guilty. Don't do this to this man. You're destroying this man and his family. He was an American hero."

But, as the New York Post reported in September, Dietl has been accused by "Gambino crime family rat John Alite" of having "fed information to the mob and took part in crimes including drug dealing, armed robbery and murder." Alite is "expected to be the prosecution's star witness at the upcoming racketeering and murder trial of mob scion John 'Junior' Gotti." Dietl denied the allegations: "For this punk to say I took a penny from Richard Gotti, he's a f---- liar. ... I want to be put on the stand. I want to tell the guy to his face he's a f--- liar. My reputation is on the line."

Denied or not, Dietl hardly makes for the ideal character witness for Kerik -- and a particularly ironic one as well, considering that one of the charges against Kerik was accepting $250,000 in renovations to his apartment from a company accused of having ties to organized crime.

When news of Kerik's plea deal broke, Newsmax surprisingly played it straight. A Nov. 4 article by Jim Meyers stated that "is expected to accept a plea bargain agreement on federal corruption charges that would put him behind bars for at least 27 months, according to published reports."

It is rather difficult to put a positive spin on that. And Meyers wasn't as honest as he should have been, failing to note that Kerik is a Newsmax columnist or Newsmax's rehabilitation campaign on his behalf. Meyers also didn't note, as the New York Post did, that his prison time under the reported plea bargain is "more than double the time he would have faced if he'd done the same thing two years ago."

Newsmax went with an Associated Press story on Kerik's court appearance in which he entered his guilty pleas.

Kerik thus becomes the latest idle columnist at Newsmax. Longtime writer John L. Perry hasn't published a thing since Newsmax was forced to yank his column advocating a military coup against President Obama.

Newsmax's rehabilitation efforts, however, appear to be expanding. It has picked up another disgraced conservative to rehabilitate: Ralph Reed.

Reed, the longtime evangelical leader and former executive director of the Christian Coalition, was tarnished by his association with scandal-ridden lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who hired Reed to lobby on behalf of an Indian tribe in Mississippi to stop tribes in neighboring states from opening casinos that would compete with those of the Mississippi tribe. The Washington Post reported that Reed had received at least $4.2 million from Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters against the casinos. Those revelations played a role in Reed getting crushed in a 2006 Republican primary for Georgia lieutenant governor.

But as with Kerik, Reed's political humilation and links to a corrupt lobbyist are all water under the bridge as far as Newsmax is concerned.

Newsmax's Reed rehabilitation appears to have begun with a June 24 article touting Reed's new advocacy group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which is "aimed at using the Web to mobilize a new generation of values voters." This was followed up with a July 20 article (and accompanying interview with Newsmax's video operation) touting Reed's claim that "Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings can actually help Republicans in upcoming elections."

By August, Reed was writing columns for Newsmax and awarded a slot on Newsmax's "blog" page, complete with bio. Needless to say, neither of those previous articles nor his Newsmax bio mention Reed's ties to Abramoff nor his ignominious 2006 defeat in Georgia.

Reed, however, seems eager to use his Newsmax slot to discredit himself. In his Sept. 13 column, Reed claimed that President Obama's speech on health care reform contained "falsehood after fib after misrepresentation after distortion about both his plan and his opponents' opposition to it" -- even though Reed himself was making falsehood after fib after misrepresentation after distortion.

All in all, not an auspicious debut as a rehabilitation subject. Interestingly, he has not published a column at Newsmax since Sept. 21.

Reed better hope he quickly gets the full whitewash treatment Newsmax gave Kerik -- at least until reality sets in.

(A version of this column originally appeared at ConWebWatch.)

Sharmine Narwani: Did Clinton Just Change US Policy on Hezbollah?

2009-11-12T12:24:55Z

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to break with US policy on Tuesday when she discussed Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah on the Charlie Rose show, identifying only the organization's "military wing" as a terrorist concern.

Discussing the recent negotiations between the five UN Security Council nations plus Germany -- P5+1 -- and Iran, Secretary Clinton told Rose:

"I mean, the Iranians not only worry us because of their nuclear program, they worry us because of their support for terrorism, their support for the military wing of Hezbollah, their support for Hamas, their interference in the internal affairs of their neighbors, trying to destabilize gulf countries and other countries throughout the greater region."

Hezbollah has been on the US State Department's List of Terrorist Organizations since 1999, with no distinctions thus far made between the group's military or political branches. Hezbollah itself rejects distinctions between its various bodies.

Earlier this summer, the British government did make that distinction however, placing only Hezbollah's military wing on its list of organizations banned under the 2000 Terrorism Act. Globally, only the United States, Canada and Israel view Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

A State Department spokeswoman, however, denied any policy shift, saying: "The Secretary's statement is fully consistent with our existing policy. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization."

But if Clinton's statement during the lengthy interview with Rose was a mere slip of the tongue, it was a very precise and specific gaff.

Which begs the question, is the US administration about to tweak its decade-long position on Hezbollah, and if so, why now?

The US Secretary of State's new phrasing comes exactly one day after the formation of a unity government in Lebanon, led by US-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The government's new cabinet includes ten ministerial positions for the Hezbollah-led opposition, two of which will go to Hezbollah members.

Any change in the US's position on the Lebanese resistance group could reflect this new reality: that Hezbollah participated in democratically held elections and is now part of Lebanon's official governmental body.

In the background, however, lurks another possible incentive for a US policy shift. A war of words between Israel and Hezbollah has persisted since the end of Israel's 33-day war on Lebanon in mid-2006. The stalemate that resulted was widely viewed as a defeat for Israel, a country that has relied on the psychology of victory to act as a deterrent for its Arab neighbors. And this perception of defeat has caused significant frustration within Israel's military establishment.

This past summer, Israeli rhetoric threatening Lebanon peaked when it became clear that although the pro-US coalition had won the Lebanese elections, a unity government including Hezbollah was inevitable.

"If Hezbollah joins the Lebanese government as an official entity, let it be clear that the Lebanese government, as far as we are concerned, is responsible for any attack -- any attack -- from its area on the state of Israel," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as recently as August. These comments followed similar statements by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, increasing speculation that another military conflict could be in the offing.

Could the US administration be softening its stance on Hezbollah in order to give Lebanon's new government a shot at succeeding, and simultaneously warning Israel to back off? President Obama has a lot on his plate, juggling talks with Iran -- an Israeli foe and Hezbollah ally -- managing US military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to jumpstart peace talks between Palestinians and Israel. The last thing he needs is another large-scale armed conflict in the region to distract from his Mideast agenda.

In August, Obama's Assistant on Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism, John Brennan introduced more moderate language about the Lebanese resistance group at an event held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in DC.

While reiterating the US position on Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, Brennan painted a more nuanced picture of the group:

"Hezbollah started out as purely a terrorist organization in the early '80s and has evolved significantly over time. And now it has members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization ... And so, quite frankly, I'm pleased to see that a lot of Hezbollah individuals are in fact renouncing that type of terrorism and violence and are trying to participate in the political process in a very legitimate fashion."

In an article in The Nation a few days later, a State Department spokesman responded to Brennan's comments: "U.S. policy toward Hezbollah has not changed. We do not make any distinction between the political and military wings."

But his Secretary of State just did.

Whether Clinton on Tuesday deliberately meant to redefine US policy on Hezbollah or not, it seems the thinking within the administration has taken a turn anyway.

Clinton: U.S. Concerned About Afghan Corruption

2009-11-12T08:41:57Z

The United States is concerned about corruption and poor governance in Afghanistan and has raised those issues with the administration of President Hamid Karzai, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.

Bob Ostertag: Obama's Magical Surrealism in Honduras

2009-11-11T15:41:39Z

"I've heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras. I'm not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?"
- W. Lewis Amselem, Obama administration's representative to the Organization of American States

W-w-w-w-hat?!?! An American diplomat actually said that?!? In a meeting of the Organization of American States? Who is president now? Didn't Ronald Reagan die?

A little context: this was said at the OAS during a discussion of upcoming elections in Honduras. All the Latin American countries were announcing that they will not recognize the elections as valid because the current government, the one that will organize the elections, came to power through a military coup. The United States was isolated as the only government in the Americas ready to recognize the election. And Obama's representative decided that might be a good time to ridicule all the Latin American democracies for thinking that their refusal to recognize a government which come to power through military coups mattered.

Well gee, Mr. Amselem, why would it matter whether elections are recognized by the international community? As I recall, there were just elections in Iran and Afghanistan. What does it really matter whether other countries in the region recognize the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which is widely believed to have won the elections through massive electoral fraud? Does it matter who does and doesn't recognize the elections of the American-backed regime in Afghanistan, which was accused of electoral fraud on a similar scale? How about Zimbabwe, which has been teetering on the edge of catastrophe since similarly questionable elections? What exactly was your point, Mr. Amselem? Was it that democracy doesn't mean anything? Or was it that it doesn't matter what Latin American governments do? Or was it that small countries that have neither oil, nukes or terrorists don't matter? We could use a little clarification here.

Just what in the heck is going on in the Obama-Clinton State Department? As the New York Times reported today, the Obama administration's announcement of its policy regarding the upcoming Honduran elections "was celebrated by Republicans as a "reversal" of the administration's policy [and] ignited a storm of criticism from Mr. Obama's allies at home and across Latin America." Just like Hillary's reversal on the administration's position concerning Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories is being celebrated by the Israeli right wing and may trigger the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

Mr. President, you have some very urgent work to do. First, you need to demand W. Lewis Amselem's head on a pike, now. Just to show that you are at least paying attention.

Beyond that, it is going to be tough. You have dithered on the Honduras coup for half a year, and the elections are just weeks away. Here's an idea: start over. Announce that you are very sorry, but as a way of preparing your State Department for work in Latin America, you asked your diplomatic corps to take some time off to immerse themselves in magical realist literature, and they became so engrossed they simply lost track of time. No one noticed that a year had gone by since your election. But now everyone is ready to put down their novels and return to the real world, in which no one would ever imagine that a government led by Barack Obama would stand as the only government in the western hemisphere supporting coups in Latin America.

Elizabeth Lynch: A Necessary Addition to Obama's China Trip Agenda: Chinese Public Interest Lawyers

2009-11-11T11:17:53Z

You would never expect a group of professional attorneys to hold a serious meeting in a McDonald's, but for Chinese public interest lawyers, it is one of the few remaining safe places to meet. With constant surveillance and random harassment by Chinese police, a public place like McDonald's decreases the very real risk that the police will arbitrarily drag these public interest lawyers, known in Chinese as weiquan lawyers (pronounced way choo-ann and translated as "rights defending" lawyers), into custody.

So that is where I found myself last Friday when I met with three public interest attorneys, all recently disbarred, in Beijing to discuss their expectations for President Barack Obama's inaugural visit to China next week.

"The government took away our ability to work ... to help the people achieve their rights," Beijing lawyer surnamed Xie* (pronounced Syeah) said as he explained the recent disbarment of over 20 weiquan lawyers from practicing law in China. While acknowledging that the Chinese Ministry of Justice (MOJ), which controls all bar associations in China, has the right to initiate procedures to discipline poorly-behaved attorneys, Xie countered:

Here, they didn't even follow their own procedures. ... Because we did nothing wrong, they [the government] couldn't use the procedures ... instead, they used pressure on our law firms and other secretive means to punish us weiquan lawyers. This is becoming more common.

To say that public interest law in China is a small, burgeoning field is an understatement. Only a handful of lawyers take on the cases of the most weak and vulnerable of Chinese society, and in a country of close to 1.4 billion people, there are a lot of these cases. These are the cases on behalf of parents who lost their only child in the Sichuan earthquake and who want justice from the local government for shoddy school construction; or cases that seek to protect the rights of members of Falun Gong to practice their religion, a right guaranteed under the Chinese Constitution; and cases as simple as protecting individuals infected with HIV or AIDS from discrimination. While these lawsuits can all legally be brought under Chinese law, politically they are dangerous. And the weiquan lawyers who bring these cases, cases that the Chinese government sees as upsetting their narrative of a "harmonious society," subject themselves to harassment, disbarment, and, in the case of Hu Jia (pronounced Who Gee-ah), prison time.

These weiquan lawyers want President Obama, a fellow public interest attorney and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, to acknowledge the importance of their struggle when he comes to Beijing. "I don't have great hope [for the visit]," attorney Liu* (pronounced Leo) admitted, "but it is important for [President Obama] to say something."

"When Clinton and Pelosi came to China, they spoke little of human rights," Beijing lawyer Tang*, who was detained by police for a few days this past June, noted. "But I want Obama to speak more about these issues."

"President Obama and the U.S. government shouldn't just look at today's China, but where China will be in the future," Xie said. "They need to look at the Chinese people's hopes and their changing state of mind."

President Obama and many who are traveling with him to China, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, know all too well the importance of public interest lawyers in guaranteeing that the laws on the books are a reality for society's most vulnerable. Upon law school graduation President Obama returned to Chicago to help the poor and least represented achieve their legally entitled rights. As first lady of Arkansas, Secretary Clinton co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families and was the chair of the Legal Services Corporation.

In many ways, the difficulties that President Obama and Secretary Clinton surely faced as public interest lawyers are not unlike those of the weiquan attorneys in China - financially powerful adversaries, clients with little to no voice in society, and never-ending work with limited resources. But there is one additional factor that neither President Obama nor Secretary Clinton had to contend with as public interest attorneys in the U.S. - their government shutting down public interest organizations in order to squelch their missions as well as the entire public interest movement itself.

Because of this and because they are colleagues of these weiquan lawyers, during next week's visit, President Obama or Secretary Clinton needs to publicly acknowledge the increasingly difficult challenges faced by China's weiquan lawyers and stress the benefits a flourishing public interest law movement can bring to China.

The importance of U.S. opinion to these weiquan lawyers cannot be overstated. "America still serves as a model for human rights ... it's their duty to say something," Tang implored. Like many Americans, I have often read about the beacon of hope that the U.S. provides to rights' activists abroad. But it wasn't until last Friday, in talking to people ostracized by their own government for doing what they believe in, that I began to understand the significance of U.S. moral authority and the tangible dependence of activists abroad on it.

The U.S. is currently experiencing a great deal of self-doubt - our economy is tattered, we are in the midst of what appears to be two never-ending wars, our political parties can't seem to cooperate to get anything done, and to get out of some of these problems we appear dependent on China. But Tang is right - we should not shrink from the responsibilities of our ideals. If President Obama, who likely best understands the importance of rhetoric in defining a movement, does not say something on behalf of these weiquan lawyers, then who will?

Our relationship with China is between two nations, between two peoples, not just between two governments. The weiquan lawyers, and the poor and vulnerable people that they represent, are an indelible part of the Chinese people. Certainly the Chinese government, and maybe even many of the Chinese people, would prefer that President Obama not acknowledge this, but there are many in China that hope he does. I don't pretend to know exactly how President Obama should walk the fine line between encouraging these weiquan lawyers and not outright offending the Chinese government and other sections of the Chinese public.

The weiquan lawyers I met with would like him or someone in the Administration to meet with one of the lawyers. Others have called on the President to request the release of weiquan activists like Hu Jia. I think at the very least President Obama should acknowledge these weiquan lawyers in a public statement to the Chinese people and encourage the continued growth of China's public interest law movement in order to make the ideals of China's law a reality for 1.4 billion people.

* The lawyers requested that only their last names be used in order to protect their identities.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The Michelle Obama Fixation

2009-11-11T10:10:00Z

What difference could it possibly make whether Michelle Obama's approval rating plunged over 10 percent in the past couple of months, or that she even has any approval ratings? To make things look even worse, the November Gallup Poll that punched out her diminished ratings compared her ratings to Laura Bush, whose numbers never dropped during her first lady years in the White House even as hubby Bush's sunk to the ocean's depths.

Michelle's not the president. She holds no elected office. She's penned no legislation. Heck, she's not even Hillary. Clinton was arguably the closest that any first lady has come to being co-president since Eleanor Roosevelt. Clinton actively campaigned, raised funds, globe-trotted around pushing White House policy initiatives on women's rights, environmental issues, and, of course, her signature issue -- health care.

The surface answer to why Michelle as first lady rates poll numbers is because she's the first the African-American first lady. And as with President Obama, she's the subject of wonderment, pride, gossip, and incessant celebrity voyeurism.

There's a far more compelling reason for the Michelle fixation, good and bad. Despite the GOP pounding of Obama, the angst of liberals and progressives at Obama over Afghanistan, his health care reform water-down, gay rights issues, and voter jitters over the economy and unemployment, he's still wildly popular and virtually universally liked.

Michelle is a different story. She's a woman, a black woman, and a soft target for the frustrations and even scorn of the Obama loathers. During the campaign Obama opponents eagerly latched onto out-of-context statement she made at a campaign rally in which she allegedly questioned her faith in America, and made a supposedly less than reverential reference to the flag. They brutally tarred her as a closet anti-American, race-obsessed, black radical. That made her an instant campaign liability. For weeks she virtually disappeared from the campaign trail. She later reemerged as a much softer role player in the background. She smartly sloughed off any talk that she would be a Hillary-type, White House fill-in for Obama on major policy issues.

This didn't diminish the media's and a wide swath of the public's compulsive looking glass fascination with her. Or their insatiable need to know every bit of motherly, womanly, wifely, and presidential gossip about her. It's made her even more vulnerable to serve as a surrogate to take veiled hits against Obama, no matter how low-key and supportive she's remained. She got knocks for the failed Chicago Olympic bid, and for uttering a few words on health care reform. Her shopping excursions, the couple's date night in New York, and her White House Garden have been ridiculed.

A viral email has been buzzed around the nets and blogs hammering her for her high-salaried and top-heavy staff (legitimate criticism is warranted here). A British tabloid even engaged in malicious mischief when it claimed that Michelle's undergraduate thesis written in 1985 with the hardly incendiary title of "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" was an open call for black militancy.

Obama's historic win ensured that he'd be the most watched, admired, and reviled president since Lincoln. Michelle's equally historic step into the first lady spot assured that she would be the most watched, admired and reviled first lady since Eleanor. The added draw with her is that she is the back door to knock her still popular husband. This explains the Michelle fixation.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

Qanta Ahmed, MD: Cairo to Fort Hood: Broader Engagement at Home and Abroad

2009-11-11T06:01:13Z

Armistice Day, Atlanta, Georgia

The atrocious mass murder committed last week at Fort Hood has shaken the nation. Unusually, I didn’t learn of the news until many hours later, spared from the continuous news cycle in transit from the West Coast to New York. When I finally reconnected to CNN late that evening, like many others, I found it hard to absorb in its entirety. I am still having difficulty digesting the multidimensional implications.

Mass murders have become a depressingly familiar punctuation in the rhythm of modern day American despair. The death and destruction of our soldiers overseas has assumed a jarring place in the unending carnage of our foreign involvements. Remote deaths of unknown soldiers in lands far removed from the experience of most Americans are honored with private and largely invisible funerals. A public inured to eight years of warfare now seeping into a third administration is dangerously disconnected from the national costs exacted by bloody wars.

The loss of life at the hands of a psychiatrically disturbed individual is also one familiar to society here. We have survived Waco and the Unibomber, we are enmeshed in a protracted, anguished recovery from 9-11 and most weeks, even now, I see at least one stoic man, sometimes two, who served as first responder at Ground Zero and is finally able to articulate the edges of their psychological pain.

But the cumulative impact of Fort Hood is staggering. A Muslim American military officer who was a practicing military psychiatrist experiencing his own psychotic break from reality in America’s largest domestic military base has resulted in the slaying of 13 souls and the decimation of many more lives the departed have left behind in mourning. Even the most experienced physicians and military leaders are appropriately reeling. As a Muslim physician myself, I am experiencing these events in several dimensions.

As a physician I feel frustration at the lack of recognition of Major Hasan’s mental deterioration presumably within the ranks of his professional physician colleagues. Physicians are notoriously poor at recognizing psychological distress among their own ranks and even more recalcitrant towards seeking therapy or asking for help. As a sleep specialist who treats individuals with affective disorders and post traumatic stress disorder I feel a sense of futility at the inability for timely intervention. I wonder whether Major Hasan was experiencing insomnia before the events, a common companion of severe PTSD. As a civilian, I find it hard to understand the opaque and regimented world of the military and wonder what their procedures for identifying impaired colleagues may be. Yet it is as a British Muslim who makes her chosen home in America that I find my response is most troubled.

Until 9-11, being Muslim for me was an intensely private and little examined experience, one to which I rarely devoted serious introspection. For many reasons, the heinous event on that fateful Tuesday morning (events which I watched from a thunderstruck Saudi Arabia where I was working at the time) compelled me to confront my relationship and my own place within Islam. In the years since, people everywhere have begun identifying themselves strongly with religious or non-religious beliefs often above nationality or ethnicity. We have, whether we like it or not, become a much more divided and polarized global community. In the post 9-11 era, my search deep into my Islam has been rewarding and yet challenged, tested and stretched and you can read about that turbulent internal journey in my book, In the Land of Invisible Women.

Part of the struggle of being a thoughtful Muslim today comes with dispelling the persistently accumulating myths pertaining to Islam which pile up as quickly as one tries to dispel them. Actions like those of the deranged, deeply disturbed Major Hasan are ripe fodder for fueling dangerous and combustible Islamaphobia. How can I keep explaining Islam calls for peace, non violence and preservation of life at all costs, even above the rights of the Divine on mankind, when Muslims among us are driven to do the exact opposite and wreck devastating destruction in the name of Islam? This is my jihad: the jihad of the pen seeking to overcome the jihad of the sword.

Jihad has been one of the casualties of the schizophrenic, dichotomous rift which has magnified to separate moderate, intellectual sincere Islam from ritualistic, fanatical radicalism exercised in the name of Islam by nihilists who seek to extinguish all which is true about this great religion. Jihad captures a number of meanings. Foremost is the internal jihad each insightful Muslim must engage with his or her core: our struggle as creatures of free will who chose to rise against our baser desires. Belief in Islam is founded on the essential basis of free will. There can be no compulsion in Islamic belief. Belief must come as a choice and not mandate and like many aspects of being Muslim, we must not only choose once in life but constantly choose to follow our scriptured ideals. Islam is an orthopraxy much more than an orthodoxy. This effort, this conscious choice, this self discipline and awareness it demands is the result of introspection, sincerity and quiet resolve. This is the private jihad every living Muslim who truly understands the nature of Islam’s basis on free will must engage in daily. There is no external focus for this jihad.

Jihad can also mean the struggle to nurture improvement around ourselves in our external world, whether advancing our local communities through service, or collaborating with one another and indeed people of other faiths in the pursuit of development. Collaboration towards improving society at large, for example in the construction of libraries, universities, facilities for the ill or weak or disadvantaged are all forms of collective jihad, Again, such jihad is completely disarticulated from combat.

And finally there is the form of jihad which has been so removed from its original essence yet appears on an almost daily basis in a deviant, distorted form: jihad sanctioned by Islam when a Muslim’s right to observe Islamic practice has been emphatically prohibited. Note that this is extremely specific and in fact restrictive to a defensive response following an offensive threat which has been executed rather than merely articulated as a threat. Note also that such jihad is not what is considered a Holy War, for Islam sanctions no war as holy. Wars are seen as inherently undesirable and are widely discouraged in Islam. Instead, Muslims are enjoined to seek the path of peace and diplomacy whenever possible and whether jihad or a non holy war are ultimately undertaken having exhausted all options possible, the conduct of the Muslim at War comes under precise and highly specified codes of conduct which include carefully defined codes of non combatants: women, children, the sick, the disabled.

Unfortunately we are now almost at the end of ten years of ‘ jihad’ conducted in the name of Islam for the most appalling and offensive citations which do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Whether we examine the sectarian violence between sects of Muslims, the villainous actions of the Taliban and their attempts to extinguish thinking powerful womanhood, the nihilistic destruction of Muslims and non Muslims to sate the bloodthirsty Al Qaeda movement and its various nefarious derivatives or the extraordinarily distorted and psychotic practice of suicide bombings which my mentor Dr. Joan Kirschenbaum Cohn appropriately refers to as homicide bombings (since so many other people die in these acts along with the bomber)-none, NOT ONE of these conflicts is based on a defense of observing Islamic practices. None of this is jihad, yet we sadly see it as such when Anderson Cooper explains to us the latest heinous events. Such nuances are hard to enunciate in a 90 second network sound-byte and most often lost on an increasingly depleted, anxious and fearful America and the jaded newsmen and women who must report these events.

Fortunately, this and other such challenges have not been lost on the Obama administration who have been accumulating sound and incisive advice on exactly these issues. In his Cairo Speech on June 4th 2009, President Obama spoke about the need for ‘broader engagement’ with the Muslim world at large. His advisors had been preparing for this ‘broader engagement’ for sometime and the President made these recommendations with an informed perspective. We are already beginning to see some exciting changes which speak to new vehicles with which to have complex, sophisticated and peaceful dialogue.

A salient publication emerged quietly and without fanfare, first mentioned in the New York Times late last September. Published by a non governmental foundation without elected authority, the Changing Course: A New Direction for US Relations with the Muslim World document has been a valuable roadmap for the path this administration is taking towards what has become a truly Gordonian knot of cumulative losses, alienations and failures in America’s relationship with Muslims. Much of the report suggests specific areas where Americans can seek engagement with counterparts in the Muslim world and how such engagement might advance our relationships.

In Cairo the President reiterated some of the key points seemingly inspired from this valuable treatise on what has gone wrong and where we can improve. Only today, at the Forum for the Future in Marrakech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced new plans focusing on augmenting US collaboration in the realm of science and technology with international Muslim communities. Excited scientific Muslim friends from the Middle East were among the first to share this news with me in the middle of the East Coast night. Perhaps they care more about US engagement than many Muslim Americans?

The first three U.S. Science and Technology Envoys who are a pivotal part of the US Science Envoy Program, all heavy weight academics have already been appointed, reflecting the administration’s sentiment of nurturing international endeavors with actions and not only words. For the first time ever, around a week after the Cairo speech the President underlined his intent at engaging America in new ways internationally in the imaginative appointment of the first Special Representative at the State Department for Global Partnership, Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley.

The U.S. Science Envoy program is one of the components of the historic presidential speech in Cairo and one of the first physical manifestations of that powerful moment in the Middle East. Shepherded in by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Richard Lugar those of us who are Muslim and in the field of medicine and science understand the brilliance of this move. For centuries Islam has revered both the quest for knowledge and the application of its bounty. Sharing knowledge is considered a responsibility for Muslims. Science and medicine in particular, relate to solving universal problems such as health and environmental threats. Serving these needs, nurturing these fields benefits all of humanity, particularly the most challenged sectors of society and can be interpreted as an act of zakat or charity one of the five pillars of Islam. Muslim countries everywhere revere physicians in their society, much more so than we experience customarily in the West, and the basis for this likely rests partly in the spiritual place given to the pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination to ease suffering.

The US Science Envoy program therefore appeals at a number of levels while speaking deeply to the core of ancient Muslim sentiment. This program contains the potential for broader engagement at its best. But we need the same broader engagement here at home too and that has also been part of the administration's approach to Muslims at home. Fort Hood is perhaps the first and most immediate test of our President’s resolve to bridge the chasms and begin the probing and evaluation of a deep wound which has failed to heal since 9-11. Unlike his predecessor, Obama recognizes healing and dialogue are not one-way affairs but bilateral processes requiring willing participants on both sides.

Fort Hood requires all of us to respond, and respond with the same grace, wisdom and courage that the family of slain Physician Assistant Michael Cahill displayed. His articulate grieving daughter Ms. Kerry Cahill encapsulated precisely the courage and nobility required of all of us in these demanding times in her caution against reflexive, indiscriminate hate. Her grace and humanity soothed and ennobled a grieving nation. We must follow her thoughtful lead as we assess our own responses to this tragedy.

Whatever his diagnosis and motive, Major Hasan committed the irrevocable and the immoral act of destroying innocent lives. His distorted thinking and his relationships with shadowy forces and darkness will become clearer under military and judicial scrutiny. But what is clear is his actions represent no version of Islam that I can recognize or that which countless other Muslims do either. However as Muslims we must all engage in public, peaceful, proactive dialogue. While our President is creating opportunities for the US to engage with the Muslim world, Muslims must engage here at home with America.

As we remember those veterans on Armistice Day who gave their lives to safeguard the very nations were we as Muslims are free to explore our faith in its many variations, freely and at will, it seems enormously appropriate that we remember our responsibilities to society and our abilities to soothe those who are deeply wounded in our name. Muslims everywhere recognize the triumvirate of our responsibilities: our duty to ourselves, to our Maker and to society.

Right now, duty to society calls. We must rise to it. We must engage.

Daniel Altschuler: Stakes Rise for the United States in Honduras

2009-11-11T00:03:52Z

The stakes for the United States in the Honduran political crisis are higher than ever. At the end of October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton celebrated the unprecedented overturning of a coup through dialogue. That assessment has now proved naïve, and the State Department finds itself in the awkward position of distancing itself from the rest of Latin America after saying it would recognize the Honduran elections whether or not Manuel Zelaya is restored to power. This crisis is an extremely important moment for Honduras, but it also now has the potential to undermine the Obama administration's efforts to mend the US's relationship with Latin America.

Since President Obama took office, his administration has worked hard to heal the wounds left by President George W. Bush in Latin America. Obama's most symbolic moves came with respect to Cuba, as he condoned the island nation's re-admission into the Organization of American States (OAS) -- long a rallying cry of the OAS's other members -- and eased the terms of the embargo. Obama has also toned down the rhetoric vis-à-vis Venezuela, cutting away at Hugo Chávez's platform for America-bashing. Whereas President Bush seemed to court confrontation in the region, the Obama administration has thus far sought compromise and consensus. These efforts have not radically altered US policy, but they have represented significant first steps towards repairing relations with Latin America.

Before last week, the United States had also marched in step with the rest of the Americas in its response to Honduras's June 28th coup. The United States supported the OAS's denunciation of the coup, suspended aid to Honduras and visas to leaders of the de facto regime, and continually demanded the restitution of President Manuel Zelaya. Until late October, the US assiduously avoided taking the lead on the Honduras issue, instead abiding by regional consensus and making sure not to stoke the flames with Hugo Chávez and the ALBA nations. State Department representative Thomas Shannon's deal-making visit to Honduras also built directly on the work of the OAS and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, assuring that the fleeting victory was shared by all partners.

But then the deal broke down. Roberto Micheletti insisted that the agreement did not guarantee Zelaya's restitution -- a strict reading of the text reveals that he is right -- while Zelaya insisted it did. This would have been a moot point if international pressure had remained strong enough to convince the Honduran Congress that it needed to restore Zelaya to power. The agreement began to unravel, however, because it established a deadline for creating a unity government without imposing a deadline on the Honduran Congress's determination on Zelaya's restitution. Whether Shannon did not realize the importance of placing a deadline -- which is hard to believe -- or simply wanted to do anything necessary to quickly reach an agreement, this omission could now prove extremely costly for both Honduran democracy and the United States' position in Latin America.

Shannon compounded the error when he declared in a CNN interview that the signing of the agreement assured that the US would recognize the elections whether or not Zelaya was reinstated. This was the moment when the US first strayed from its Latin American neighbors in handling the crisis, and it took the pressure off of the Honduran Congress to reinstate Zelaya.

The State Department had an obvious reason for wanting to wash its hands of the Honduran crisis as quickly as possible. Certain conservative Republicans -- most notably, Senator Jim DeMint -- have been a constant headache for Obama since the coup, defending Micheletti's assumption of power as a "constitutional succession". DeMint has exercised leverage by holding up two of Obama's Latin America appointments -- Arturo Valenzuela and Thomas Shannon himself -- to prove his point, and the State Department used its promise of recognizing the election to get DeMint to relent.

But the State Department jumped the gun, and the Obama administration now finds itself having strayed from its Latin American neighbors. While Shannon declared the US' intention to recognize the elections, the countries of the Río Group demanded Zelaya's immediate restitution. Meanwhile, OAS secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, conditioned OAS support on full compliance with the agreement, and he has now rejected Micheletti's self-proclaimed "unity" government. This means that the OAS election observation team is now on hold, while the US position remains unclear.

The State Department has now placed itself in an unenviable position. If it sticks to the position laid out by Shannon, it will risk alienating the Latin American countries that have vociferously demanded Zelaya's restitution. And if it backtracks from Shannon's declaration, conservative Republicans will raise Cain in Washington. Simply put, if the Honduran crisis is not resolved before the November 29th elections, the Obama administration will not come out unscathed.

The State Department should be willing to risk Conservatives' ire, however, because the first scenario would create much bigger and long-term problem for President Obama. If the United States recognizes the elections without Zelaya's restitution, it could undermine much of the work President Obama has done -- and the goodwill he has developed -- in the region in his first nine months. It could also provide cover for other countries, such as Panama, to defect from the regional consensus. Such defections would provoke intra-regional discord and undermine what, until now, has been a strong defense of the Inter-American Democratic Charter in response to the Honduran coup. This would be deeply unfortunate for the region as a whole. It would also undermine the Obama administration's avowed support for multilateralism and mutual respect in Latin America and provide fodder for anti-American rhetoric in Caracas and Managua.

It remains unclear whether the State Department will see the light. Already, spokesman Ian Kelly has criticized both sides for the failure to form a unity government, but the State Department has not retracted the position laid out by Thomas Shannon. On Saturday, the New York Times called for Shannon's hasty return to Honduras, but at least as important will be pressure from the agreement's Verification Commission--which includes former Chilean President, Ricardo Lagos, and the US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis--on Micheletti and the Honduran Congress to reinstate Zelaya. If the Verification Commission adopts a strong stance, this could provide the State Department with the necessary cover to condition its support for the elections on good-faith compliance with the agreements.

Whatever happens, US intervention in Honduras backfired. In a rush to get a deal signed, the State Department prematurely took pressure off of the Micheletti regime and made Zelaya's restitution -- never a certainty -- less likely. The United States cannot afford to compound this error. The State Department must be willing, again, to take a strong stand against the Honduran coup, or it will jeopardize President Obama's policy goals in the region.

(Copied with permission from www.americasquarterly.org.)

Bob Ostertag: The World's Original "Banana Republic" Strong-Arms the World's "Last Remaining Superpower?"

2009-11-09T18:48:42Z

The deal to reinstate Honduran President Manuel Zelaya unraveled this week, leaving the Obama administration as the only government in the western hemisphere willing to let the recent military coup there stand. What can you say when the "world's only remaining superpower" gets strong-armed by the world's original "banana republic"?

This is not "bold leadership." It isn't even status quo, for it has been years since Latin America has seen a military coup like those that plagued the region for much of the twentieth century. There were none, for example, during George W. Bush's time in the White House.

Honduras is one of the smallest, poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. It has about the same population as New York City. It is the country where the term "banana republic" was coined. For one hundred years it has been dominated by agribusiness giants like United Fruit which grow bananas and compliantly corrupt governments there with equal success. In the political turmoil that engulfed Central America in the 1980s, with major civil wars in all of its neighboring countries, Honduras played the role of Washington's doormat in the region, with the U.S. training a proxy army along the Nicaraguan border, running secret air missions over El Salvador, and running enough spies and spooks to keep the internal politics of Honduras on complete lock-down.

This corrupt, compliant, inept doormat of an army is what hustled the country's elected president out of bed at gunpoint and on to a plane out of the country five months ago. And now the Obama administration is left as the only government in the western hemisphere that can't find the cajones to stand up to this doormat military?

Could the problem have something to do with the $400,000 the illegal Honduran government has paid to lobbyists with close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton? Hey wait a minute, wasn't Obama the guy who was going to run the lobbyists out of Washington?

Two weeks ago, Clinton spent 30 minutes on the phone with the leader of the illegal government, and announced that she had secured a deal that would put the elected president back in office, a deal she called a "big step forward for the inter-American system and its commitment to democracy." But no sooner had the deal been announced than the Honduran regime reneged on it, with the apparent blessing of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr., while the rest of Latin America sputtered about the "mixed messages" coming from Washington that were undermining Honduran democracy.

Wait a minute. The U.S. is the only country in the hemisphere backing a military coup? Who is in the White House again?

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has announced he is resigning in the face of "mixed messages" from Clinton about Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, which could leave Israel and the U.S. to deal with Hamas as the sole organized voice of the Palestinian people. Nice work Hillary. Say, aren't you the one who wanted me to vote for you because you were "Ready to be Commander in Chief from Day One?"

With such high stakes in the Middle East, what's the big deal about Honduras? The coup there comes at a point in history when it seemed like Latin America was at long last done with military coups. Democracy has spread throughout the region in recent years as military dictatorships which came to power through coups fell and democratically elected governments took their place. Tens of thousands of people died as the direct result of these coups, in many cases while enduring the sorts of ferocious torture the US has recently been accused of at Guantánamo. In almost every case, the military governments were supported by the U.S.

Some of today's democratically-elected Latin American governments are hanging on by a thread in face of real threats of military coups. Just two days ago Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo fired the commander of Paraguay's armed forces amidst loud rumors of an impending military coup. There is open talk of a coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales, the country's first fully indigenous head of state in the 470 years since the Spanish conquest. A coup in Bolivia would be a catastrophe for Latin America. Blood would flow. You can bet your last dollar that the generals and businessmen who are the subjects of coup rumors in Bolivia, Paraguay and elsewhere have been watching Washington's response to the coup in Honduras with intense interest.

When Barack Obama was elected President of the U.S., there was no place in the world where his rousing call to democracy fell on more receptive ears than in Latin America. The new American president was going to face tough going in many parts of the world, but not Latin America. The troubled relationship between the US and its southern neighbors appeared to be on the brink of a new era.

So when the military coup happened in Honduras, I was incredulous. I thought to myself, "These guys don't know what century they are in. What a bunch of fools!" I mean, had these guys been asleep? Didn't they notice the change that had just happened in the U.S.? They would be gone in a few days, no doubt about it. Yet there they are, five months later, in power and going nowhere. And it looks like the upcoming elections there will be recognized by no government in the western hemisphere except mine.

So I ask you: who is the fool now?

Clinton And Merkel Don Nearly Identical Outfits (PHOTO)

2009-11-09T14:07:51Z

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Berlin on Monday for the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall. But before the celebrations began, she held bilateral talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel--and fashion faux pas!--the two women dressed almost identically. Both sported short blond bobs, blue jackets, black pants, and black kitten heels.

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Daoud Kuttab: The End of the Oslo Phased

2009-11-09T08:32:19Z

In the midst of discussions regarding possible scenarios following Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' decision not to run for president, few have paid attention to the larger picture.

Abbas' refusal to run for a second term as president of the Palestinian Authority signals a clear end of the Oslo phase in which he, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres were key players.

The Oslo process called for a step-by-step process as the best way to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The idea was that easier issues will be dealt with first, with the hope that confidence will be built between the two sides, making the resolution of the more difficult issues at a later stage possible. A five-year interim plan was suggested in the agreement signed on September 13, 1993, at the White House.

Some ambiguity was agreed upon in the written text of the agreement, but both sides were clear that the ultimate goal was the end of the 1967 Israeli occupation and the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The Palestinians reluctantly agreed then not to insist on a settlement freeze, because Rabin said he needed time to convince the Israelis of the eventuality of a Palestinian state. Rabin didn't live long enough to carry out his promise; his political heirs took the easy way out and failed to carry out this unwritten promise.

As the 20th century came to an end, it became clear that the five-year interim agreement was becoming permanent, negotiations were not reaching any conclusion and Jewish settlement building was continuing unabated. With no end in sight and the Israelis refusing to deal fairly with the requirements of peace, it was a question of time before the occupied territories exploded in a second, much more violent, uprising.

During the dark early years of the 21st century, Abbas was one of the few Palestinian leaders that clung to the hope that a negotiated process would eventually produce results that would address the minimum Palestinian national aspirations.

Sixteen years after that historic White House handshake, it has become clear that no effort is being made to convince the Israelis to come to term with Palestinian national aspirations. The number of illegal Jewish settlers in Palestinian areas has doubled and more and more Palestinians are convinced that negotiations are a waste of time.

Many still remember the threats of former Israeli prime minister Shamir to drag negotiations. Speaking to the Israeli daily Maariv, Shamir was quoted as saying: "I would have conducted negotiations on autonomy for 10 years and in the meantime we would have reached half a million people in the West Bank."

The failure of the step-by-step negotiations has focused on the need to follow a different paradigm.

Abbas outlined the Palestinian red lines. His disappointment with the US administration has led him to believe that the way out of the present impasse is to work backwards. The Palestinian leader believes that instead of wasting time in wasteful negotiations, there must be a firm decision about the end result of the negotiations and then talks can deal with a schedule for implementation of such a results, rather than what negotiations should contain.

The two-state solution has become accepted bipartisan policy in Washington. The Palestinian and Israeli public have repeatedly been polled about a compromise solution roughly on the 1967 borders, with slight adjustments and a fair solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Such a solution is best codified in what is referred to as the Clinton parameters. It is also detailed in the Israeli-Palestinian blueprint titled the Geneva Agreement.

Another approach is that of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who is convinced that Palestinians must prepare for statehood in spite of the occupation. In two years, Fayyad believes that a de facto Palestine will exist and it will then seek international recognition.

The flurry of US officials' visits to Ramallah is likely to stop unless a major and important change takes place in Washington. In the meantime, Abbas will pay more attention to the home front, trying to stitch together some type of agreement with Hamas.

The PLO will most likely gain much from Abbas' decision, as the Palestinian leader will likely de-emphasise the status of the president of the Palestinian Authority, while raising the profile of his position as the chairman of the PLO's executive committee.

Abbas cannot resign from his post, so as not to allow the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council to take over, and he has not given up his position as the head of the PLO and the leader of its biggest faction, Fateh. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that any Palestinian official from the PLO will be running for the position of president without Abbas' approval until a new mechanism for an end to the occupation is found.

Clinton: Berlin Wall Festivities Not Just A Party

2009-11-08T22:59:07Z

BERLIN — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Europeans and Americans on Sunday to see the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a call to action against new global threats.

On the eve of celebrations marking 20 years since the collapse of the wall that divided East and West Berlin, Clinton said the hard work that went into ending the Cold War must be channeled to meet fresh challenges, including the fights against extremism and climate change.

Reese Schonfeld: "Informed Sources": What Really Happened When Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin Got Into Upstate New York Politics

2009-11-08T19:50:04Z

As New York residents know, ever since Governor Spitzer got caught in the wrong hotel room, Albany has been in turmoil. The latest tempest involved the 23rd Congressional district where, to the astonishment of the political establishment, the Republican candidate was forced out of the race because of her positions on gay and abortion rights. Her departure left the field wide open for the Conservative Party nominee.

Who forced her out--Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the other far-right Conservatives, who argued that a woman who supported abortion rights and gay marriage should not run be on the Republican ticket. (The Democratic candidate won, but that's beside the point.) The question is why did the Republican Party drop its own nominees and abandon out the race?

The answer (according to "informed sources"): former NY Governor George Pataki brokered a deal in an attempt to sew up his nomination on the Conservative line if he runs for the Senate in 2012. After the deal was announced Pataki made a statement in support of the Conservative candidate and campaigned for him. Pataki had been backed by the New York Conservative Party when he ran for Governor, but he was perceived as relatively "moderate" during his three terms in office. According to my sources, Pataki's political ambitions are centered on a Senate run for the seat formerly held by Hillary Clinton and now, thanks to Spitzer's successor as Governor David Paterson, occupied by Kirsten Gillibrand, a former upstate Democratic Congresswoman.

How did she get the nod from Paterson? My sources suggest that former Republican Senator Al D'Amato, a close Pataki political ally, and now an equally close advisor to Democratic Governor Paterson, persuaded him to choose the little known Gillibrand over Caroline Kennedy (JFK's daughter). who had been expected to gain the appointment. Paterson's decision seemed abrupt and strange, and was certainly badly handled. The appointment brought upon him the wrath of many in the Democratic Party, and according to polls, has reduced his popularity with Democrats in the state to a mere 17%.

Who has it helped? Certainly George Pataki, Al D'Amato's close pal. Gillibrand, who has done a pretty good job as Senator, is a far less formidable opponent than Caroline Kennedy would've been if Pataki decides to run in 2012.

But still, why did Pataki broker the deal in the first place? The answer: he wants to ensure the support of the Limbaugh-Palin wing of the Republican Party; he doesn't want a challenge for the Senate spot on the Conservative Party line either. So according to my upstate New York "informed sources", the biggest winner in last Tuesday's New York election is George Pataki. Republicans may have lost a seat in the House of Representatives, but that's a small price to pay if they gain a Senate seat in 2012.

As for pro-tem Governor David Paterson, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is favored to win the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2010 and Patterson may be consigned to the dustbin of Albany history. It cannot come too soon.

Tom Friedman: "It Is Time For A Radically New Approach" Toward Israeli-Palestinian Peace

2009-11-08T10:36:23Z

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clich�s -- and that no one believes any of it anymore. There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency -- not even a sense of importance anymore. The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. And yet, as much as we, the audience, know this to be true, we can never quite abandon hope for peace in the Holy Land. It is our habit.

It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our "Peace-Processing-Is-Us" sign and just go home.

Ali A. Rizvi: Is the United States Gearing Up to Go Into Pakistan?

2009-11-07T11:22:15Z

In 2007, Barack Obama attracted controversy during his campaign by declaring that if elected, he would be willing to go into Pakistan if there is "actionable intelligence about high-value targets" in the country, and if the Pakistani government "won't act" against them.

During her three-day visit to Pakistan this week, Hillary Clinton seemed to indicate that those two criteria may now have been fulfilled.

On actionable intelligence about high-value targets, Clinton seemed confident that Al Qaeda's leadership is present in Pakistan: "Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002 ... it is just a fact that Al Qaeda had sought refuge in Pakistan after the US and our allies went after them because of the attack on 9/11 ... Our best information is that Al Qaeda leadership is somewhere in Pakistan."

On unwillingness to act, she suggested that Pakistani officials know where these terrorists are, but are hesitant to go after them: "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to. Maybe they're not gettable. I don't know."

Even while commending Pakistan's military efforts in Swat and South Waziristan, she said that it was "not sufficient."

Meanwhile, President Obama has been "dithering" (as Dick Cheney put it) on a decision about how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, if any.

He may be listening closely to his vice president. Newsweek's recent cover story on Joe Biden started off highlighting the veep's concerns about resources and strategy in the region: "So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?"

The question is a good one, and Biden's observations are shared by others, notably National Security Adviser Retd. Gen. James Jones, who said of Afghanistan earlier this month: "The Al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

On Friday, the White House stood behind Clinton's blunt comments, calling them "completely appropriate."

While it may be too early to tell whether Obama will follow through on his 2007 campaign pledge, it does seem like his administration is setting the stage.