Syria on The Huffington Post

Reflecting on Pres. Obama's maiden voyage to the East

2009-11-23T16:30:05Z

Obama t-shirt at Shanghai bazaar. Photo: Flickr user Shazari

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

Obama's first visit as president to China elicited considerable curiosity among the Chinese, but Obama could not expect the generally rapturous welcome he has received in Europe.

The Chinese government saw to it that his visit was strictly controlled and choreographed. The student audience at the “town hall” meeting was communist party members, who lobbed soft balls toward Obama. There was none of the raucousness or spontaneity one has come to expect in U.S. town hall meetings.

Similarly, the official talks with a confident and assertive President Hu Jintao appeared to avoid contentious issues. Human rights, Taiwan and Tibet were soft-pedaled by Obama. To his requests on the adverse effects on US-China trade of the artificially pegged reminbi, the Chinese currency, Hu Jintao was evasive.

Similarly, Obama got scant purchase out of him on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. China is a major importer of Iranian oil and a major trading partner.

China is an emerging super power poised to surpass the United States in the next few decades. Current estimates suggest that China’s will equal the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2027 and in 2050 China's GDP will be double that of the U.S.

These astonishing figures — plus China’s foreign exchange reserves which stand at a staggering $2.27 trillion — indicate why China is enjoying the sunshine of success. The wind is certainly at its back.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is indebted to China to the tune of almost $1 trillion, and rising. Worse still, the U.S. is borrowing largely from China and Japan at the rate of $2 billion per day!

Perhaps our Wall Street trained economic managers think there will never be a reckoning for this dizzying profligacy initiated in the last 8 years.

Granted that Obama is trying hard to stanch the hemorrhaging which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are causing to America's resources. The whole economic system nearly collapsed in the autumn of 2008. Obama is trying to put the economy on an even keel.

A key ingredient will be to head for the exits in these two countries sooner rather than prolonging the agony. Let's hope and pray he succeeds.

Meanwhile, a confident and assertive China has no need genuflect to the United States. If its march continues as predicted, the roles may be reversed.

Let's get our children motivated to learn Mandarin. That language is on track to replace English as the common language of diplomacy and commerce. We have to adjust to new realities. Reform or perish!

Worldfocus contributing blogger S. Azmat Hassan writes how President Obama's first visit to China elicited considerable curiosity among the Chinese, though Obama could not have expected the generally rapturous welcome he has received in Europe. Additionally, the Chinese government saw to it that his visit was strictly controlled and choreographed.
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Margaret Aguirre: Simple Pleasures and Long-term Care for Iraqi Refugees in Syria

2009-11-16T17:40:22Z

I noticed her the moment I walked into our health clinic on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. Eleven-year-old "Fatma," so pretty, but pale and reed-thin, her hair pulled back in a barrette, rings under her downcast eyes. I can only imagine what horrors have unfolded before her eyes.
Fatma is one of a dozen children gathered with their mothers at the activities center International Medical Corps operates for Iraqi refugees. They all have witnessed the killings of parents, siblings, neighbors, friends. They all fled the violence of Iraq for the safety of Damascus and its suburbs.

The numbers of refugees here are disputed, but estimates range from several hundred thousand, to 1.3 million. Many of them arrived with little or no money, and little or no support system. Their medical and mental health needs are enormous. And the population influx has put a huge strain on the country's health infrastructure. Damascus, like any large city, has noticeable wealth - as well as deep pockets of poverty and need.

International Medical Corps was the first American humanitarian organization allowed to operate in Syria, providing primary and secondary health care, mental health services, maternal/child health care, and dental care to refugees and vulnerable members of the host population.

As I sit on the floor while her mother recounts their story, Fatma occasionally gazes up at me sheepishly. Her expressions reveal only profound sadness. Her 5-year-old sister, clutching a red-haired doll she made at the center, vies for my camera's attention.

Fatma's mother says when they lived in Baghdad, her husband received repeated sectarian death threats. At one point Fatma was abducted, though she managed to escape. Then their house was bombed and Fatma suffered shrapnel wounds to the back of her head. That's when the family fled to Syria, about six months earlier. She says Fatma is traumatized and rarely speaks. She missed two years of school and cannot focus in class, her grades have plummeted from what they once were. She shows me Fatma's report card, taped back together after Fatma had ripped it in anger and shame.

Our psychosocial coordinator at the center is working with Fatma and her family to address their complex issues and get them more intensive medical and psychiatric treatment. Fatma is showing some improvement, though she will take a very long time to more fully heal.

I am amazed to see the enormous impact even the most simple, innovative measures can have.
At another center, situated in a run-down neighborhood on the opposite side of Damascus, International Medical Corps and our partners at the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are focusing on early childhood development for Iraqis and local children. Our staff and the kids together painted the walls of the center bright colors and planted a beautiful garden. We provide computer classes, plenty of children's books and a mini-jungle gym, all in a bright, lively setting. Nadia, our program coordinator, is the creative force behind the center. She placed colorful "wish boxes" in one room, where children can submit a simple request for us to fulfill on "Fun Fridays". Some of their wishes: to ride a horse, to eat a salad, to receive a pair of shoes. For these children - many of whom have lost parents - this center is a little slice of paradise they helped create.

All of the kids I met at this facility have witnessed unimaginable horrors, yet they are able to laugh and play like they haven't a care in the world. Nadia tells me one of the children's mothers remarked with astonishment: "What did you do? My child had stopped laughing. Now he is happy and smiling again."

Kathryn Schulz: Billie Jean in Baghdad

2009-11-16T14:40:21Z

On Watching the Michael Jackson Movie With Iraqi Refugees

Forgive me, but I am going to start at the end. I am sitting in a dark movie theater in Damascus, Syria. It is October 30 and This Is It, the Michael Jackson movie-slash-valediction, has just opened worldwide. In 24 hours, I will fly home to New York, after a month in the Middle East reporting on the Iraqi refugee crisis -- on the terrifying past, miserable present, and uncertain future of the estimated two million people who have fled the war. Right now, though, nine of those two million people are sitting next to me: my friend Z., who invited me to the movies, plus eight of his pals. Chronologically, they are just kids, college age or slightly older -- say, 19 to 25. Measured by life experience, they have nine or ten light years on me.

This is, as I said, an ass-backward way to begin. By rights I should start with the big picture: with those two million refugees, the other 2.6 million who are displaced within Iraq, the 1 million dead. I should tell you something about them -- about these doctors, engineers, artists, former U.S. Army interpreters, mothers of murdered six-year-olds, English teachers, hyper-articulate fifth-grade kids. I should tell you something about international refugee policy, about Sunnis and Shiites and Christians, about life in Iraq before and after the war.

Instead, here I am in this movie theater. Michael Jackson is up on screen: singing, sliding his astonishing feet, doing that thing where he points to precise, invisible spots in the air. Billie Jean is not my lover. I was in second grade when this song came out; I can barely remember a time when I didn't know it by heart. Down at the end of the row, a young Kurdish woman who sports a vintage MTV T-shirt and speaks perfect idiomatic American shouts, "We love you, Michael!" All around me, the other kids are singing. She's just a girl who claims that I am the one. They know every damn word. It is one of the happiest, strangest moments of my trip.

***

Here are five things you should know about these kids:

1. "College age" is a category, not a reality. Back in Iraq, kidnappings, gunfights, and bombings conspired to make going to school impossibly dangerous. As a result, almost all Iraqi kids have missed out on years of education. Z., a highly motivated student, persuaded his parents to let him keep going to high school throughout the war. When I asked him how he got there every day, he grinned broadly: "At top speed." But most kids just stayed home -- for months, for years.

In Syria, Iraqi refugees can go to school -- in theory. In practice, fewer than 20% of them do so. Some can't afford the books and uniforms. (Refugees can't legally work in Syria, so even families that were affluent when they first fled have long since burned through their savings.) Some are too busy being the sole wage-earners for their families, since minors who work are far less likely to be busted than their parents. (I met a former government functionary whose family survives on the $17 per week that his 13-year-old son makes by cleaning a print shop.) Some drop out from sheer frustration and shame -- the shame of being so far behind, so much older than their classmates, so unwelcome and displaced.

2. These particular kids, however, want to be in school -- more than any young people I've ever met. One of them almost started to cry when telling me about missing out on four years of school (and these are kids who can describe the bombing that killed their best friend without shedding a tear). Specifically, they want to go to school in the U.S. To get there, they are banking on a program called the Iraqi Student Project, which connects qualified Iraqi kids with American universities that are willing to waive tuition.

3. As the dream of studying in the U.S. suggests, they have all made some kind of peace with the country that invaded their own, bombed it (in the words of the first George Bush) "back to the stone age," and opened up a power vacuum inside which every imaginable monstrosity now flourishes. Like almost all the Iraqis I met, the kids show a graceful ability to separate the actions of a government from the intentions of its people. Perhaps that's one legacy of life under Saddam. Or perhaps it's just an awkward concession to a country that gave them, in no particular order, a model for a free and democratic society, a war, crippling sanctions that devastated civilian life, another war, Thriller, Beat It, and Bad.

4. They have lived through hell. Z. lost 14 friends in three years, enough to fill the row of seats in front of us. Another kid I met arrived at school one day to find a decapitated body on the doorstep, an experience that left her seven-year-old sister mute for a week. Another saw two of her friends kidnapped from the street in front of her. Later, the parents found their children's remains in the garbage. She doesn't know why she was spared.

5. Most of the time, looking at these kids, you would never guess any of this. They act like kids everywhere, not least because they need to. They do it for their parents; they do it to pay their debts to the dead. They do it because no one can live in a state of crisis forever. It is only in rare moments that you see the price they've paid. The rest of the time, they play soccer and World of Warcraft and ultimate frisbee. They negotiate with their parents over what time they'll come home. They have Skype names and tricked-out cell phones and 60 bajillion Facebook friends. And they are seriously in love with Michael Jackson.

***

So now Michael is up there on screen singing all I wanna say is, they don't really care about us. The kids are stomping their feet so hard the whole row of seats is rocking back and forth. Later, when we get to the half-spoken, half-rapped part of Thriller made famous by Vincent Price, they go at it in unison:

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood.

To me, it sounds like the Iraqi national anthem. For them, though -- well, I hesitate to make too much of it. Part of Michael's beauty, after all, was just beauty. Thriller was brilliant when it came out, so brilliant that it did not age into campiness. Nor did its creator. Even at fifty, he could sing with the best of them, and dance everybody else into the ground.

Still, Michael Jackson's particular brand of genius had the fairy dust of American possibility and prosperity shining all over. Did he speak to the dispossessed, with his corny-yet-sincere bid to "Heal the World," and his indisputably successful bid to rule it? Of course. Ask Marjane Satrapi of Iran, or Helene Cooper of Liberia, both of whom have written movingly about their childhood obsessions with Jackson, that strange, single-gloved beacon of hope in dark times. And they are hardly alone. As a diehard Nabokov fan, it pains me slightly to say this, but for every five people who have read Lolita in Tehran (or in any other oppressive locale on earth) roughly a billion have tried, in the privacy of their own rooms, to master the moonwalk.

That is why -- let's face it -- Michael Jackson probably did more than anyone else in his lifetime to enhance America's image overseas. Granted, a plausible rival has recently emerged, in the form of another kinda-black-kinda-white guy who has lately come in for some serious global fame. But the jury is still out on that one. Not so Michael Jackson, King to Obama's president. Part of his allure was the way he threaded together the two great American fantasies: universal brotherhood (It don't matter if you're black or white) and collective progress through individual improvement (If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change). His ethos was our national one: just give a guy a fighting chance.

It's not perfect, but it is something. And it is, unquestionably, every refugee's dream. Watching This Is It in Damascus, next to my tough, sweet, somehow surviving Iraqi friends, it was impossible not to think that this is some of what they saw: Michael Jackson as (I think he'd appreciate the comparison) Lady Liberty.

Yvonne R. Davis: The Challenge of Arab Unemployment -- An Issue We Must Not Ignore!

2009-11-16T12:52:19Z

The 10.2% unemployment rate in the U.S. has the citizenry completely disillusioned and vexed with our government. Despite the “Average Joe/Jane” outrage, a slight fall in jobless claims this month, a number of the unemployed live in neighborhoods with foreclosure signs over their heads. They hang on by their fingernails praying for economic relief. Never perhaps returning to the days of “good and plenty,” fear runs rampant with an aging “Super Power” population. According to the U.S. Census by 2030, 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 years and older. Our Nation’s fastest growing population is 85 and above.

As the “Senior Citizen Hegemons” go through its most painful metamorphosis to facilitate in a Google Economy, another part of the world we are appendaged to due to our devoted dependency on its natural resources, foreign debt, Wall Street ownership, wars and terrorism, is facing perhaps its most solemn challenge in its entire existence -- massive unemployment in the Arab World. And while we in America might want to be NIMBYish (Not In My Back Yard) about it, we can’t. There is a link between violence, terrorism and Arab youth many educated not having the ability to have pride and self-esteem because they lack gainful and respectable employment to take care of their families. On the contrary to America's aging population, over 60% of the Arab population is 40 years of age and under; with a mean age of 27 or younger in some countries. Whether we like it or not, the issue of Arab unemployment is on our front step and maybe the very thing that ultimately turns the world upside down economically, socially and politically if we do not begin to face this reality.

Saeed Al Khabaz, a retired Human Resources professional and father of four is a successful business owner and communitarian from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Al Khabaz lives in the economic fulcrum of the Kingdom. Beyond the black gold that flows from the oil refineries, the region heavies with industries of steel, glass, construction materials, foodstuffs, aluminum products, pipes, air-conditioners, electrical equipment, carpets, soap, and rubber products. With all of this stuff going on, unemployment in the Eastern Province is climbing and so is the crime. “Right now in Saudi Arabia and throughout the entire Middle East and North Africa region, we are weathering a typhoon of unemployment,” declares Al Khabaz. “With an average jobless rate in some regions of 25%, the huge numbers of unemployment in the Arab world is creating all kinds of social problems, and no community can continue to survive this way.”

Ten years ago, after doing a very successful “turn around” on a medical clinic that was barely treating 40 patients per day, to over 100,000 annually, Al Khabaz made sure all of the employees he hired in his Al Hadi Medical Clinic in Qatif, Saudi Arabia were women under the age of 40. All of the women who work for Al Khabaz never want to leave him; despite receiving bigger opportunities because he believed in them and gave them a chance when no one else would and they succeeded. He meets the needs of a demographic with the greatest hardship. “You are talking about millions of young people who have the energy and they are frustrated and they have to vent their frustration at something,” says Al Khabaz. “I don’t think any community in history has been challenged like this before.” By 2015, the Arab population will be over 435-million. The United Nations and the International Labor Organization predicts by 2020, 100-million will unemployed in the MENA region. “No society can sustain that level of unemployment without exploding,” declares Al Khabaz.

Although reported to having some of the lowest crime rates in the world, in areas where unemployment is high with Arabs living on less than $2 per day in penury, coupled with the growing problem of jobs, there is a direct correlation between economic disadvantage and higher crime rates; especially among youth.The Investigation and Prosecution Commission (IPC) in Saudi Arabia reported a jump in reported crimes in 2009. This dynamic of low crime may change rapidly if solutions are not in place quickly enough to buffer the population explosion and need.

While the problem of unemployment in the Arab world seems insurmountable, there are a number of initiatives being implemented and proffered in the region to begin to put a dent in the problem.

Her Royal Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned, the consort of the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is the Educator in Chief in her country chairing the Qatar Foundation for Education. She is the first Royal in the Middle East to create an Education City initiative that brings together world class Universities under one roof to educate students in her country and the region.

Sheikha Mozah founded Silatech (Sila means 'Connection' in Arabic), to meet the urgent need to create jobs with a primary focus in the Arab World where the need is greatest. A social enterprise, her organization creates signature level East-West partnerships with the private sector to provide opportunities for the youth in diverse markets. Silatech works on several levels, policy (government participation), psychological (mindset), programmatic (training) and practical (partnerships for actual jobs). Thus far, Silatech has launched a number of initiatives that include intensive training programs in the areas of media, hospitality and tourism, and leadership for women. Partnerships include: Fortune 500 companies like Cisco and Manpower, senior academic institutions, research centers such as Gallup and sister countries i.e. United Arab Emirates, Syria, and Lebanon for various training, banking and financing initiatives for young entrepreneurs.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Ron Bruder wanted to make a huge difference by taking not taking an American isolationist approach to dealing with the tragedy. A powerful man on Wall Street, Bruder left his profession and founded the non-profit Education for Employment Foundation (EFE). EFE’s mission is combat chronic unemployment in the Arab World by providing young men and women professional and technical training. What makes his organization special is that it guarantees jobs for Arabs when they graduate from the program. Bruder believes his organization can contribute a great deal to promote peaceful environments by eliminating the despair, doubt and rage caused by not having a job. “In order to have world peace, the youth must have piece of the global pie,” said Bruder. “The key component of that is an education that enables one to be employable in the country’s labor market. Our mission is to train youth in cutting edge skills that will enable them to immediately enter the labor market.”

Located in Jordan, Gaza/West Bank, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen, the EFE has remarkably changed the lives of several thousand Arab Youths and their families. His latest initiative includes establishing a partnership Prince Sultan University in Riyadh. “We helped launch the "Prince Salman Education for Employment Initiative" and an accelerated a second Bachelor’s of Science nursing program for unemployed young Saudi women in association with Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts,” announced Bruder. Classes are expected to begin in January 2010.

While Al Khabaz clearly articulates the problem of youth unemployment in the Middle East, he believes Arabs in the region should first seek find their own solutions by forming strategic mentor/protégé partnerships that expands social capital by investing in human capital on a multi-community and multi-country level. He is not for any “token support” that foreign enterprise gives often times in the Middle East. “We want foreign expertise, but it is better when the local people come together,” states Al Khabaz. He strongly believes local level investment must always be the priority. He also feels any plans created must be cohesive and involve the people on the ground at all times. “We have to be self-determined.”

His thoughts are evidenced by establishing the Qatif Youth Achievement Award and launching a virtual world initiative entitled Arab Youth Supercomputer 2010 Project. In its second year, the Qatif Youth Achievement Award annually recognizes seven men and women who have demonstrated skills and talents in a most distinctive way. Judges select winners based upon creativity, leadership, ingenuity, invention and drive. This award encourages small and medium sized enterprises to take serious looks at youths involved in Qatif; hiring them for jobs.

The Arab Youth Supercomputer 2010 Project challenges Arabs 40 and under from all over the MENA region to build a Supercomputer by year end 2010. With nearly 300 members world wide supported by a sister organization of about 500, Al Khabaz is leading a worldwide movement for change for his people. Khabaz has garnered support for this program from business leaders, marketing professionals, academics, IT technology professionals, and security specialists from as far as Europe, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States. Those who support his initiative subscribes to the mission of building Arab economic sustainability -- “so that all that is being done benefits our community.”

Mourning the loss of life at one of the world's largest bases

2009-11-16T12:15:03Z

President Obama at the Ft. Hood memorial service. Photo: Flickr user USarmy

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing blogger for Worldfocus.

The implications of Major Nidal Malik Hasan's rampage at Fort Hood continue to excite public scrutiny. The US is no stranger to deranged individuals of different religious persuasions indulging in mass murder in the past.

President Obama, in a moving eulogy to the dead, cautioned against a rush to judgment. The facts would have to be painstaking pieced together before a fair approximation of what motivated Hasan's dastardly attack on fellow servicemen can be arrived at.

The fact that Hasan was an Army psychiatrist administering to the post traumatic stress syndrome issues faced by returning Army soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, added to the puzzling enigma of his act.

It seemed that a healer, trained to mend soldiers broken by the awful physical and psychological traumas inflicted on them by war, had himself cracked under the professional and personal strain he had apparently undergone.

There is little doubt that Hasan had increasingly become a misfit in the Army. Reportedly a loner, he found solace in increasing religiosity. As a Muslim-American, he appeared to be struggling to come to terms with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

He had publicly declared that he considered America's involvement in these wars as a war against Islam. He agonized over whether Islam permitted Muslims to fight Muslims in war. It seems these warning signs were not noticed by his superiors who were about to deploy him to Afghanistan.

If the U.S. Army draws the conclusion that its Muslim soldiers are not to be trusted, this would be a big mistake. Most Muslims soldier and officers have fought bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have given the supreme sacrifice for their country.

Colin Powell personally knew and attested to the valor of one such Muslim officer who died in Afghanistan. He rests in peace in the Arlington cemetery, an acknowledged hero. The acts of one deranged man cannot and should not sway our military leadership. If we succumb to this attitude how can we trust our Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani and other Muslim allies?

Instead, it would be better to reform Army procedures to catch its misfits in time. Such persons who cannot be nursed back to mental normality should be weeded out.

I cannot end without commenting on the ease with which weapons can be procured in America. In most first world countries this is not the case. There it is very difficult, if not virtually impossible to get a license for lethal weapons.

With stringent gun control imposed here, it might just be possible to avoid putting guns in the hands of alienated individuals who can wreak havoc on innocent citizens. Otherwise we are probably fated to see a repeat of such horrific incidents in the future. Civil society should take the lead in asking for reforms of the current gun laws.

When I served in Malaysia two decades ago, I noticed that it was a crime punishable by death to own an unlicensed revolver. Even owning bullets attracted heavy punishment. Crimes such as the recent rampage are unknown in Malaysia. They are also virtually unknown in Europe, although there are plenty of misfits in these countries.

Think about it.

Worldfocus contributing blogger S. Azmat Hassan writes about the recent shooting at the U.S. military base in Ft. Hood, Texas. He explains why the event should not cause Americans to question the presence of Muslims in the army and also why the U.S. needs better gun control.
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Israel says ready for direct peace talks with Syria

2009-11-15T10:02:08Z

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel was prepared to renew peace negotiations with Syria, adding that he would rather the talks be direct then held through mediation.
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Comment / Only precondition for peace is that Netanyahu be a statesman

2009-11-14T21:45:56Z

Another innovation has been added to the list of sophisticated negotiation-stalling tactics. It is known by the business term "without preconditions." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's latest message is that he is ready to conduct negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Assad without preconditions, and the same applies to Palestinian President

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Syria rejects Israel talks

2009-11-13T10:45:54Z

Al-Assad says he will not meet Netanyahu, but called for Turkish mediation.

Sarkozy to tell Assad: Israel wants to renew peace talks

2009-11-13T02:01:25Z

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will deliver a message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Syrian leader Bashar Assad during the latter's visit to Paris on Friday, relaying Israel's desires to renew peace negotiations immediately without preconditions.
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Netanyahu to Sarkozy: Israel ready for Syria talks without preconditions

2009-11-11T15:16:31Z

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would be prepared to hold immediate peace negotiations with Syria, as long as the talks were held without preconditions.
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Report: Angelina Jolie planning to adopt child from Syria

2009-11-11T14:31:18Z

Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie is planning to adopt a child from Syria, OK! magazine reported Wednesday.
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Report: Angelina Jolie planning to adopt Syrian child

2009-11-11T14:16:50Z

Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie is planning to adopt her seventh child from Syria, OK! Magazine reported Wednesday.
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Christian Avard: Mothers and Soldiers: Healing the Bonds Destroyed by War

2009-11-10T20:30:26Z

The bonds established between mothers and children are sacred. Mothers provide unconditional love, caring and support, and they teach their children to live in the world with a sense of purpose. But life circumstances oftentimes get in the way of relationships and affect the outcomes for better or for worse. In times of war, the bonds between mothers and children can change in the blink of an eye. Strong relationships that took years to develop can be wiped out when a loved one is killed by enemy fire and other circumstances beyond their control. Many families in America have experienced this. So have many others in the Mideast.

Susan Galleymore is the author of Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak About War & Terror. Galleymore, co-founder of Courage to Resist, made international headlines as she traveled to Iraq to visit her son stationed in the Sunni Triangle. The more Galleymore learned about the military, the more she learned about how war affects mothers at home and mothers in Iraq. Her journey continued as she met with mothers in other war zones such as Israel and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and the U.S.. I spoke with Galleymore about her new book and how war affects mothers and children, communities and cultures, veterans, and current service members.

They say time and time again that "information is power"' and books can be used as an effective tool for social change. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring are two good examples. What role do you believe books play in effecting social change? Do you see Long Time Passing: Mothers speak out About War & Terror as a book to be used in the same means as Sinclair's or Carson's?

Galleymore: The goal of the book is to create a larger story around the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not just something that's happening here in the U.S. but that the ripple effects are occurring all over the world and we are really interdependent. I think Rachel Carson was trying to get at that as well. There are interdependencies that we're not really recognizing. If anything, my book is trying to do something like that by using a story format. In this case, every single story is exactly the way it was told to me. I didn't impose my own cultural values or understandings on it. So I'm trying show these human beings have stories that are really enrichening to not only people in the United States, but to the larger picture of what war does.

What life-changing experiences did you have in your travels to the Mideast? What myths were shattered?

Well, I come from another country where we've seen the effects of war. My grandparents were immigrants after the Second World War to South Africa and we experienced a war against the indigenous people, if you could call it that. I came to the United States as a young woman and had my son born here the first year I arrived. I never understood how the American military works but I also think it has changed, certainly in the last 30 years. I never understood there was such a push to recruit young people. That's particularly true now that we have a volunteer military. There's a lot about how things function in American culture that I, as an outsider, didn't know. But I've come to realize that people who actually live in this country for generations don't understand either how the American military works. That was a huge learning experience.

Once I realized that my son had been sucked up into the military, believing all the cultural values from the movies, such as what a hero is, what a man is, etc., I had this urge that I had to talk with him about it. Once I got to Iraq, I recognized that this was a much larger story. The first Iraqi woman I talked to said her whole family was essentially wiped out by American troops on a couple of Humvees. They just shot up the whole car, killing her husband and three kids. She survived, she was pregnant, and her eight year-old daughter survived. So there was a story to be told. We can't imagine being in America and having that happen.

I also lived in Israel during the mid-1970s and I came from apartheid South Africa. So I was very comfortable in Israel at the time because it reflected a lot of the values that I came from. Of course it is an apartheid system (in Israel). Anyone who knows anything about how systems function realize that Israel is an apartheid system.

One of the things I learned about Israeli and Palestinian boys is Israelis are socialized to join the military to defend the homeland. Palestinian boys are pigeonholed to be suicide bombers because they'll be seen as martyrs. Did you encounter this in your travels? How difficult is it for Israeli and Palestinian boys not to go down this path? Are there any efforts being done to raise boys not to pick up a gun or strap on explosives? What roles do mothers play in shaping their sons?

One of the mothers I interviewed lost her son in a suicide bombing while two other of her sons were in the Israeli Defense Forces. Now this is a family that came from a 'left perspective' and her sons have become Refusniks and they are very active in a group called Combatants for Peace. Combatants for Peace works with former Israeli soldiers working with former Palestinian prisoners. They always work together, they make joint statements, and there were many other groups in Israel doing joint work. It was fascinating because sometimes I would talk to people who say 'I'm a Zionist and I work in this particular group' (not necessarily for Combatants for Peace). But there's a lot of complexities in these issues. It's fascinating because it's kicking up the level of thinking. Americans need to do about how complex the situation is.

It's also hard to be a man, especially in American culture. There's no ritual for it. I think that's partly what brings a young man into the U.S. military, but in Israel there is (a ritual). In Palestine, it's much more of a male dominated society and the ritual there has been so disturbed by the Israeli invasion of the culture. Everything is on shaky ground there and people are really struggling to hold on to their culture.

In the book, you try to understand the tension between individualist American culture and the complex communities of family and residence that typify much of the Middle East. What were some of the things you learned when two different cultures came face to face like this?

It's interesting. In America, we're taught that the best thing you can do is become independent and self-sufficient as soon as possible. In the Middle East, that's not the case. It's a collectivist-based culture. What I find is, unless you understand that the basic assumptions are very different, you're going to have conversations that are meaningless. A person from an individualist culture who is talking to a person from a collectivist culture are going to have a conversation that's not grounded in a similar reality. It's very difficult for Americans to understand that people in the Middle East (if I can generalize) don't want to be Americans. They're proud of their culture, history and heritage. Americans tend to think everyone wants to be like us, because we've been told "we're the greatest, the best, the most powerful", etc. It's very difficult for people to conceptualize that it may not be the case. I think we're seeing that in Afghanistan right now. The Afghan people are saying "leave us alone! We don't want you or your democracy!" The Afghans have their own traditions of democracy and we're not allowing them to surface very much.

I know current service members have told me time and time again "we don't get to choose which wars we get to fight in. We go where our president and Congress wants us to go to." But they do have voices. They should speak and think for themselves.

Another discussion that needs to happen is, what is a volunteer? We often say, "These soliders volunteered to do this." Well, they didn't volunteer to go off and kill Iraqi and Afghani civilians. They went out to promote what they heard was the message of their country, which is, "we are about freedom and democracy." When they get over there, they discover it's about opening corporate markets. There's a tremendous element (of) trauma they begin to feel. What are the troops going over there to do? What does a volunteer actually mean and what rights do they have? If you're a volunteer, it should also mean you should be able to not be a volunteer when you've had enough or when you've decided to get out. That's not the case.

Today is Veterans' Day. What do your book and your experiences add to this national holiday? What did you learn about our soldiers and the wars they fight in, that would be appropriate for people to know on this holiday?

The stories of the troops are extremely important to hear and to make connections with other war or combat events the U.S. has perpetrated. There are books on Vietnam where atrocities were par for the course. We need to recognize that atrocities are par for the course in war, no matter which one. If you put a young person who's 18- or 19-years old in situations that are completely terrifying they're not at all like the movies. I hear a lot of that from the troops. Then you bring them back home and you do not allow them to tell their stories. As long as we shut our troops and veterans up, as long as we do not want to hear what they have to say, we're going to continue to have the devastation of our young people that we're seeing. There is battle fatigue, shell shock, and general trauma. That is the result of war and that is what our veterans are going to deal with. We, as their families, need to understand what we're asking them to do and we need to respect what they tell us.

Every Memorial and Veteran's Day, it's very difficult for groups like Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and others to have their voices heard. What kinds of obstacles are they up against in order to be heard?

That's a good question. The average American is very resistant to know what is being done in their name. There is a lot of resistance to know what our veterans bring back to our country when they return from war. Veterans trying to speak out about atrocities, the immoral wars, etc. are shut up by other veterans. It's this thing that if we talk about the kinds of things we are generally silent about, then what does it mean about who I am? What does it mean about what I did over there? What does it mean about who we are as a country? It's not just accepting some new information. It's really reconfiguring your whole reality and that's a very difficult thing to do. That's what needs to happen and I think that's why there's so much resistance. You'll see the Veterans for Peace or the IVAW with antiwar banners, and you really see other veterans coming down really heavily on them! It's about that, "don't share the secret, don't tell!" We saw what happened to John Kerry when he ran for president. He was swift-boated. What was that about? That was about not wanting to hear the reality of war and I think some of that has to do with the enormous profits made in war.

You mentioned the stigma and attacks soldiers face from other soldiers for speaking up against war and occupations. Could you elaborate on that?

I think the most commonly known example of this is the Swift Boat Veterans' effort to discredit John Kerry during his presidential bid. As you know, Kerry came out against the Vietnam conflict, supposedly throwing his medal over the White House fence after participating in the very first Winter Soldier Hearings. It turned out it was really only his ribbons, not the actual medals. As you probably recall the Swift Boat Vets piled on Kerry, denigrating his service, his courage, etc. These days, when groups such as Veterans for Peace or IVAW parade (or even apply to participate) they are often roundly scorned from the sidelines or refused permission to participate officially. I see this as stemming from a complex set of issues: an inability to distinguish between "the war" and "the warrior"; a refusal to admit how terrifying and confusing combat is, for "we" are "men" and so don't admit fear etc. If "we" talk about what happens in war, we'll let the cat out of the bag and have to re-examine some basic cultural concepts and if one decent person (say a service person) admits to war atrocities, it raises the spectre of other decent people being capable of the same- the "we're all painted with the same brush" syndrome when something shameful comes to light. These are the sorts of complexities inherent in how war is sold and consumed.

Despite all the trauma mothers experience and share in the book, you said that despite it all "the basic humanity of people shine through." What examples stand out for you the most?

What has become much clearer to me is that the human heart is a vibrant living entity and that underneath all the collective and individualist categories we have, that the human heart wants to reach out and make contact. I found tiny villages in south Lebanon where people would say 'Oh, you're an American. Weren't those people hostile to you?' That was never the case. It was more, "Come in! Who are you? Yes, we can share our story with you. Yes, please tell people about us." I would say my faith in human beings has become much deeper and become more determined to surface; that reality that we want to make contact with one another.

Assad: Failure of peace talks will bring resistance

2009-11-09T08:31:06Z

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday warned that the failure of Middle East negotiations would lead Palestinians to renew resistance efforts as an "alternative solution".
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Syria to Turkey: Keep Israel ties strong in order to broker peace

2009-11-08T13:46:02Z

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday said that Turkey must maintain good relations with Israel if it planned to mediate peace negotiations between the two enemy countries.
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ANALYSIS / How Israel's war with Iran will be fought

2009-11-06T15:01:47Z

It is precisely from the events of the passing week, which culminated in an impressive show of force reminiscent of the good old Israel Defense Forces ? the IDF that carried out Entebbe and bombed the reactors in Iraq and in Syria - that Israel can glean an important lesson about the limitations of

William Bradley: Obama's Off To A Very Good Start

2009-11-04T10:45:59Z

One year ago, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. Is his presidency delivering on the promise of his candidacy? Yes. I think he's off to a very good start. But I'm not doing handstands.

I keep Obama's book containing his campaign program, Change We Can Believe In, on my desk. Is Obama doing what he said he would do? Yes, mostly.

It's important to be clear about something. Obama is not a left-wing politician; he's a center/left politician. That's clear when you examine what he ran on last year. He ran on a center/left platform, not a left-wing platform.

President-elect Barack Obama gives his victory speech one year ago in Chicago.

Many on the left and the right, either through misunderstanding or pursuit of their own agendas, get this wrong. Each wing imagines (or pretends to imagine) that Obama is a lefty, and alternately prods and assails him on that false basis.

But let's not clear space on Mount Rushmore just yet. Just as I didn't think he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize -- which looks even more premature now than it did when it was announced last month -- yet, as I wrote here on the Huffington Post. I don't think that Obama's very good start equates to a great presidency.

Though Obama may well turn out to be a great president. Let's keep in mind that little of what he's trying to do is easy. He inherited an enormous, complex mess when he took office. And he's only been in office for nine and a half months.

Let's look at what he's done. Actually, for starters, let's look at what he's doing. It's a very expansive and complex agenda. I run his schedule on my site, NewWestNotes.com, with explanations, every day to frame the day. It's hard enough to keep up with all the things Obama is doing. Imagine how hard it would be to try to do all those things.

Here's a look at the biggest things Obama has been up to.

Bruce Springsteen introduced the Obamas at a rally of 80,000 the weekend before the election in Cleveland.

Obama has established an excellent, and elevated, new tone for America, here and abroad. That counts for a lot, even though his foes on the far right insist on trying to bring him down with the most toxic, demonizing sort of politics.

The economy has definitely improved greatly. When Obama took office, there were widespread fears that the system was on the verge of collapse, that we were headed into a New Great Depression. That hasn't happened, and it won't happen. And the economy has finally started growing again. Employment lags, but it is always a lagging indicator.

The economic stimulus program has helped, as has the massive reinflation of the financial system.

Could both those things have been done better? Sure. I wish the stimulus had more infrastructure spending in it and less pork. But that's what you get when Congress plays a heavy hand in writing the plan and you need 60 votes in the Senate.

The other good thing about the stimulus is that most of the money still hasn't been spent. This backloading, which looked bad early this year, looks better now, as this nascent recovery is going to have to be nursed into a full-fledged recovery with a lot more jobs.

In a speech entitled "A New Beginning," President Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world five months ago at Cairo University in Egypt.

The reinflation of a deflating financial system could go better, too. Frankly, it looks like Obama cut a deal with Wall Street -- which still labors under the misapprehension of its unique brilliance even after nearly tanking the global economy -- to exhibit a lighter hand in re-regulation along with all that money that has been poured into the system.

Of course, it's not at all clear that Obama could get really tough financial re-regulations through Congress.

On national health care, it looks like Obama will get a major bill through Congress. It hasn't been pretty and it hasn't been easy.

If it were easy, national health care reform would have already passed sometime in the more than 100 years since it was raised by Teddy Roosevelt. Obama's efforts have been hindered by the loss of his great ally, Ted Kennedy, who would have made an enormous difference in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi has things covered for Obama in the House.

On the environment and energy, Obama has taken major steps. Among other things, he's allowing California to move forward with its landmark climate change program, which had been blocked by the Bush/Cheney Administration, and which other states will follow. He's sharply increased fuel efficiency standards. He's promoting a big green tech industry with a focus on renewable energy and a smart transmission grid.

Because Congress is again a potential roadblock, and because national health care was deemed the priority this year, we won't play a big role in Copenhagen next month when the United Nations will try again to develop a global program on climate change. But Copenhagen is in trouble for other reasons, including the seeming inability of the European Union to come up with a subsidy plan for developing nations.

Obama says that he is surprised that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

On human rights, Obama has ended the policy of torture that has given America such a black eye around the world. And he is moving to shut down the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay. But torture is more popular than some would like to think, so closing Gitmo isn't as easy as imagined. The Senate has been unhelpful in that.

On LGBT issues, he's made some moves. But he hasn't been able to end the don't ask/don't tell policy in the military yet. And gay marriage is no closer to reality now than it was a year ago, when it was defeated in California. Even liberal Maine repealed its gay marriage law in yesterday's public vote.

On geopolitics, Obama has moved dramatically to fix relations with the rest of the world. He is really very popular around the world and that helps America. His Cairo address to the Islamic world five months ago was brilliant. He's balancing better relations with mainstream Islam with going after jihadists who threaten America.

Iraq is a troubled country, but we are on schedule to withdraw combat troops as promised. Obama is diplomatically engaging Iran and Syria, and we'll see how that turns out. Israel and Palestine remain, not surprisingly, seemingly intractable. Pakistan, with more aid from America, largely civilian, has rolled back big Taliban gains there. Which brings us to Afghanistan.

Obama has a fateful decision to make on Afghanistan. Actually, he has several, as the sequence of events plays out.

Obama inherited a president, installed by Bush and Cheney after the successful takedown of the Taliban and disruption of Al Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks, who has certainly not worked out. The recent elections there took place -- which they could not have last year -- but have been a disaster.

Last Thursday, Obama went to Dover Air Force Base for the return of 18 Americans killed last week in Afghanistan.

Now Obama has to decide whether to continue or even expand a nation-building exercise there, or focus on the much more limited and much more reasonable goal of ensuring that Al Qaeda cannot again use Afghanistan as a base of operations. It looks like he will split the difference in Afghanistan, which amounts to continuing on a course which is not promising. What Obama does after he does that may tell the tale of his presidency.

In terms of politics, he's doing fine. Obama has settled into the mid-50s in job approval, which I think is good given the straits that America remains in.

The off-year elections yesterday weren't a referendum on Obama. But we did learn a few good things to know.

* There were no Obama coattails in states where he has good numbers, i.e., Virginia and New Jersey. At least not for weak (Virginia ) or unpopular (New Jersey) candidates.

* It was a bad night for big business moguls with Corzine going down and Bloomberg winning relatively narrowly in New York City after record-setting spending.

* Gay marriage still isn't quite there.

* And the big split in the GOP between far right and moderate Republicans worked badly for the Republicans in upstate New York where Democrats (with a late swooping visit from Vice President Joe Biden) took the longtime GOP seat previously held by Obama's new secretary of the Army.

Since that Republican intra-party battle is not only continuing but spreading, that's great news for Obama.

So, with regard to Obama one year after his election, I think he's doing well. No handstands, though.

It's not nirvana. Just an impressive, imperfect man dealing with the real world.

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

Betwa Sharma: No Toilets or Air For "Forgotten Prisoners"

2009-10-29T17:45:38Z

Prison conditions worldwide are worse than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture could have imagined. So he said, while presenting his latest findings from detention centers in different regions. Jails without air, toilets and food are not rare.

The UN produces a steady stream of reports every year that are judiciously discussed and web-linked. Occasionally, some of these studies before being archived, invite a raised eyebrow.

In Equatorial Guinea, Rapporteur Manfred Nowak reveals that the government does not provide food and water to the prisoners who must wait for their families to bring water in plastic bottles and food in plastic bags.

Since there are no toilets, prisoners use the same bottles to urinate and the plastic bags to defecate. In most police stations, including the police headquarters in the capital Malabo, tons of filled and stinking plastic bottles and bags had been thrown through the bars to the corridors and open yards.

The government of Equatorial Guinea has rejected the report. “So many countries are not living up to their obligations to respect the basic dignity of human beings in detention,” says Nowak.

In prisons little bit outside of Montevideo in Uruguay, detainees used the water in the toilets for drinking. The sewage system does not work so inmates use plastic bags for defecation, which they later throw outside.

In Uruguay, hundreds of convicts and pretrial detainees spend years in tiny metal boxes called “las latas” (tin cans) under conditions described by the Rapporteur as “inhuman.”

During the summer, heat in these metal boxes reaches 60° C and the lack of ventilation means that detainees had to sit in shifts in front of tiny openings to breathe. They also had to cut themselves in order to get medical assistance.

In Nigeria, a small hole in the corner of the cell served as a toilet for 100 detainees whose cell had a makeshift roof making the temperature and humidity unbearable.

In many cases, prisoners have to wait for hours before a guard lets them out to use a toilet, and most detainees are watched by others as they use a hole in the corner of an overcrowded cell.

The Uruguayan leadership gave orders to close down that particular prison three days after Nowak’s visit in March. In Nigeria, the government decided to release 20,000 prisoners since their pre trial detention lasted longer than their maximum term. Many people above the age of 60 have already been released.

Worse than the beatings and torture to extract confessions.... is living in prisons where the government does not provide food or health services. Instead, it the responsibility of individual families to organize meals and toilet articles.

“If you’re a foreigner or you don’t have a family....you might starve or you may try to get food from other detainees in exchange for slavery like services, sexual services and other services….”says Nowak. “The poor are at the bottom of the prison hierarchy.”

The study declares the “re-education through labour” programme in the infamous Chinese Falun Gong camps equivalent to brainwashing. Then, in Togo, three detainees with serious mental disabilities were simply left unattended in a dark cell.

It is a conservative estimate that one million children are behind bars. Under international law, children can be jailed only under exceptional circumstances for a short period of time.

The report finds that children as young as eight or nine are packed away for minor crimes, end up for prolonged periods in pre-trial detention, and are treated much worse than the grown-ups. “Children more often than adults are subject to beatings and institutionalized corporal punishment......sexual violence,” says Nowak.

This is the Rapporteur’s fifth report since 2004, and now the UN agent is pushing for an international convention that will protect the rights of detainees as a vulnerable group. “Most people have no idea how life behind bars looks in reality,” he says.

In many instances, the UN’s requests to come and inspect the prisons have been denied for several years. “Unfortunately in the Arab world on the one hand torture is wildly practiced and secondly most countries did not request favorably to my request,” he says.

Countries suspected of human rights violations, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria have not responded to requests.

In Jordan, Nowak found that while there was no systematic torture, practices like beating on the soles and then walking on salt were carried out in a prison in Amman. The notorious Al-Jafr prison, located in the desert 350 km south of Amman in Jordan, was closed after the Special Rapporteur visited.

The UN estimates that the 10 million persons deprived of liberty worldwide are living in unacceptable conditions. The Rapporteur stresses that abuses also occur in industrialized nations particularly with aliens awaiting deportation or minors who have broken immigration laws.

Several countries have avoided a check-up including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Israel, Russia and United States. Cuba has invited Nowak for a visit in 2010.

Croatia offers to broker Israel-Syria talks

2009-10-29T03:16:11Z

Meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres last week, Croatian President Stjepan Mesic offered his government's help in restarting negotiations between Israel and Syria and suggested that his country's Brijuni Islands be used as the site for talks.
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UN Tests Text-Messaging Food Vouchers To Iraqi Refugees

2009-10-27T13:19:38Z

GENEVA (AFP) -Iraqi refugees in Syria will receive UN food vouchers through text messages on mobile phones, the World Food Programme said Tuesday.

Leon T. Hadar: Getting the Vietnam Analogy Right in Afghanistan

2009-10-21T15:20:51Z

The ghosts of the Vietnam War seem to be hanging around the White House Situation Room as President Barack Obama and his national security aides are debating a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, and in particular whether to deploy more U.S. troops to that country. Indeed, if to judge by their required reading list, Vietnam is very much on the minds of President Obama and other officials, lawmakers and pundits in Washington.

The headline above a recent report in The Wall Street Journal,"Behind the War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages," seem to illustrate the way supporters and opponents of increasing U.S. troop level in Afghanistan have been making use of what they see as the lessons of Vietnam, and applying them to the debates over the process of presidential national security policymaking and civilian-military relationship.

Hence, political scientist Gordon Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster which depicts a President Lyndon Johnson being pressed to escalate the war in Vietnam by a somewhat narrow-minded military is being cited by those skeptical about the recommendation by General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, to increase the number of troops there.

At the same time, military analyst Lewis Sorley's A Better War, which describes the administration of President Richard Nixon under public and Congressional pressure to get out of Vietnam and rejecting what could have become an effective counter-insurgency strategy by the military, is being touted by those who leaning in the direction of General McChrystal's recommendations.

Applying historical analogies à la "the lessons of..." to contemporary foreign policy dilemmas could certainly be instructive. As President Obama prepares to make his decisions in Afghanistan, he should consider the pitfalls faced by U.S. presidents, starting with John Kennedy as they tried to calibrate U.S. strategic choices in Vietnam by drawing on the input of their military and civilian advisors and juggling conflicting political pressures from the public, Congress and the bureaucracy.

But the historical analogies of Vietnam could become confusing if not misleading when one shifts the focus from the decision making processes to ideological premises of U.S. involvement the Cold War. In fact, Obama and his advisors should recall that as President Johnson and the members of his national security team were deliberating whether to expand U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia, it was the specter Munich 1938 that was haunting Washington then, and that the lessons of British attempts to appease Nazi Germany's dictator Adolph Hitler were being employed in a way that seemed to be leaving the White House with no other choice but to hang tough and stay the course in Vietnam lest U.S. policymakers would be perceived as lacking the resolve to stand-up to Hitler-like aggressors.

The reason that the lessons of Munich in the context of World War II seemed be so relevant to U.S. policymakers during the Vietnam War taking place at the height of the Cold War was that American intervention in the two wars were driven by grand Manichean narratives in which a U.S.-led Western alliance was confronting a powerful global aggressor representing a threatening and dynamic ideology.

Indeed, for the American foreign policy establishment as well as for the general public, North Vietnam was perceived to be an integral part of a monolithic Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, including its Eastern European satellites, China and Cuba. The only serious debate in Washington was over the kind of mix of diplomacy and military force that the U.S. needed to employ in defending South Vietnam and confronting North Vietnam. And in that context, it wasn't difficult for the "hawks" in Washington to suggest that just like Czechoslovakia in 1938, South Vietnam was being threatened by a regional satellite of an antagonistic global adversary and thus required forceful American military support.

Recognizing that nationalism and not adherence to communist ideology or solidarity with the Soviet Union and China was the main driving force behind North Vietnamese policy could have changed the strategic calculations of policymakers in Washington. Indeed, the growing realization that there was no Soviet-led global communist bloc led to the U.S. opening to China -- which ended-up going to war against Vietnam -- and to the use of the "China Card" in dealing with the Soviet Union. And it helped accelerate U.S. détente with the Soviet Union as well West German rapprochement with Eastern Europe or "Ostpolitik."

In the aftermath of 9/11 and in the period leading to the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seemed for a while as though President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors would be successful in constructing a new grand Manichean narrative that conceived of a U.S.-led West confronting a global Islamofascist threat or a Caliphate-in-the-making that allegedly included Al Qaeda, a radical Muslim-Sunni fundamentalist terrorist group; Taliban, an Afghani-Pashtun and Sunni-fundamentalist movement allied with U.S. partners, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; Iran, a Muslim-Shiite fundamentalist state and Hizbollah, a Lebanese-Arab Shiite movement as well as the secular Syrian Ba'ath regime and the Palestinian-Sunni Hamas movement, elected to power in a U.S.-sponsored election and a mish-mash of national and regional militant Muslim groups -- in the Horn of Africa and North Africa, and in places like Chechnya (Russia), Kashmir (India), and Xinjiang (China).

In a way, it was the costly and failed Iraq War that helped disprove the Islamofascist myth -- after all, the collapse of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban helped strengthen Iran -- and undermine the ideological premises of short-lived grand narrative that steered the U.S. into the war in Mesopotamia while preventing it from achieving its original and limited goals in Afghanistan (destroying Al Qaeda). Indeed, any serious discussion of the political realities in the Greater Middle East taking place in Washington today would have to assume that the U.S. has to deal today -- including in Afghanistan -- not with a unified and monolithic adversary or "axis" but with a hodgepodge of Muslim governments and movements that lack any shared ideology or common interests.

To apply the historical analogies here, the choices facing the U.S. in Afghanistan are unlike the dilemmas the U.S. confronted during the Vietnam War, in the same way that the "loss" of South Vietnam wasn't akin to the destruction of Czechoslovakia by Hitler's Germany. Even under a scenario under which the Taliban ends up controlling even more territory than it already does today, the impact on core U.S. national interest would be limited. Local and regional players (India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) would be forced to work together or separately to prevent the country from becoming a source of instability and a center of international terrorism. Hence, taking limited steps towards securing U.S. narrow goals of preventing Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a military base should not be regarded as a new and dramatic chapter in a grand narrative but as a cost-effective exercise in fighting terrorism.

Harut Sassounian: Turkey Exposed: Cannot Pretend to be Both Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli

2009-10-20T17:12:30Z

Playing the skillful political games of their Ottoman predecessors, Turkey's current masters present their country under various guises -- as European and Middle Eastern, Islamic and secular, pro-Arab and pro-Israeli.

It now appears that the end is near for at least one of these Turkish charades. Israeli officials have finally awakened from their prolonged coma to discover that their erstwhile "strategic partner" is far more hostile than their Arab enemies.

For a long time, Turkish leaders have been calling the Israelis all sorts of unsavory names and accusing Israel of committing barbaric acts, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Strangely, Israel has shown little indignation, even in the face of persistent racist and anti-Semitic outbursts by large segments of the Turkish public.

The latest display of Turkish hostility was the exclusion of Israel from a multinational military exercise which was to start in Turkey on October 12. In protest, the United States, Italy and Holland pulled out of these maneuvers, causing their cancellation. In a move designed to further irritate the Israelis, Turkey announced that it would instead hold joint military exercises with Syria, Israel's main adversary.

Turkey's Prime Minster Rejeb Erdogan told the Anatolia Press Agency last week that he had banned Israel from the military drill in response to the wishes of the Turkish public. "Turkey does not take orders from anyone in regards to its internal affairs," Erdogan boasted. Some Turkish officials indicated that the ban was instituted because the Israeli jets assigned to the exercise had participated in the Gaza bombings earlier this year.

This episode marks a major escalation of the long-standing Turkish bitterness towards Israel. For the first time, the Turkish military joined the civilian government in adopting an anti-Israeli position. Furthermore, Turkey went beyond mere verbal condemnation to taking concrete action. For years, the Israeli government was willing to swallow insults from Turkish officials, as long as its Air Force was permitted to make practice runs in the vast Turkish airspace, shared intelligence, and sold military hardware to Turkey.

Making matters worse, Israelis were deeply offended by the broadcast of a Turkish show on state TV last week, depicting graphic scenes of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children and committing other atrocities.

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reacted by summoning the Turkish ambassador and accused Turkey of inciting hatred against Israelis. Lieberman stated that not even Israel's enemies would air such a hostile TV series. Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom urged Turkey "to come to its senses." Another Israeli official stated: "We need to stop accepting the Turkish dictates and humiliations. It is inconceivable that they should insult us at every opportunity, and we should continue to hold our tongues."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu categorically rejected any future mediating role for Turkey in talks with Syria. An unnamed "senior Israeli official" was quoted by Haaretz as stating that the strategic ties with Turkey may "have simply ended." Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post quoted some Israeli defense officials as stating that "advanced weapons sales to Turkey would now be reviewed."

There were also widespread calls last week for the Israeli public to boycott Turkish resorts. National Public Radio (NPR) reported that Israel's largest labor union would no longer plan for thousands of its workers organized tours of Turkey, and would direct them to go instead to Greece and Bulgaria. Since January, there has been a 47% drop in the number of Israelis spending their vacations in Turkey, according to Time magazine. An Israeli coffee shop chain expressed its displeasure by announcing that it would no longer serve Turkish coffee to its customers. In an unprecedented move, several Israeli cabinet ministers declared that they would turn down the Turkish Embassy's invitation to attend Turkey's Independence Day celebrations later this month.

Many outraged Israelis advocated that, in retaliation, Israel acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Dan Margalit of "Israel Hayom" newspaper accused the Turks of not only committing Genocide, but also the "ongoing crime, which is expressed in energetic Turkish activity to deny the atrocity and to incite against any country and government and artist who wish to express their horror."

Ephraim Inbar, head of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, reminded the Turks that they are still in need of "Israeli influence in Washington to prevent the passage in Congress of a resolution declaring the killing of Armenians during World War I a genocide."

In an unprecedented action, the "Im Tirtzu" Israeli student movement held a protest last week in front of the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv. The students displayed bloody pictures of victims of the Armenian Genocide, handed out books on the Genocide to passersby, and carried signs calling on Turkey to formally recognize the Genocide.

To atone for its past sin of siding with Turkish denialists, Israel must officially affirm the Armenian Genocide as well as actively lobby for its recognition by other states. Israel should also permit the erection of a monument at a prominent location to commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide and reverse its long-standing ban on TV broadcast of documentaries on this subject. It is certainly in Israel's own interest to side with the victims of genocide rather than with its perpetrators!

Instead of maintaining at all cost its unholy alliance with Turkey, Israel should earnestly pursue a peace settlement with the Palestinians and live in peace with its Arab neighbors, thus obviating the need to curry favors with the Turkish denialist regime.

Leon T. Hadar: Counter-Factual History: McCain Is President and Bono Wins the Nobel Prize

2009-10-14T16:20:43Z

"I have to admit that I'm beginning to miss George W. Bush," is the way former Republican Senator "Chuck" Hagel responded when being asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer to assess the foreign policy record of the administration of Republican President John McCain. "We probably should have paid more attention to what candidate was saying [on the top of the television screen: McCain declaring "We are all Georgians today!"] or singing [on the top of the television screen: McCain singing "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran"] during the presidential campaign," Hagel said.

Indeed, after occupying the White House for nine months, McCain's historic diplomatic and national security decisions have led to a dramatic transformation of the international system. The U.S. and its allies in the 10-member League of Democracies (LOD) are being drawn into a diplomatic and military confrontation with the Shanghai Treaty Organization (STO) headed by China and Russia in several geo-strategic hot spots around the world -- in the Caucasus (Russia-Georgia), the Balkans (Serbia-Kosovo), the Middle East (Israel-Syria) and East Asia (China-Taiwan), and the Straits of Hormuz (Iran).

A few weeks after his inauguration, President McCain dispatched his Secretary of State and former Senator Joe Lieberman to Europe to lobby France, Germany and Britain in support of giving a green light to Georgia's speedy accession into NATO. "A new iron curtain has descended across the Caucasus," Lieberman declared during an address at Charles University; in attendance were two former anti-Soviet dissidents, Poland Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa and former president of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel as well as representatives of Ukraine and the three Baltic states. Lieberman explained that in face of strong opposition from Berlin and Paris to offering NATO members to Georgia, the McCain Administration was planning to sign a bilateral defense accord with Georgia and deploy U.S. troops to that country. Secretary Lieberman also reiterated the McCain Administration's commitment to install a planned anti-missile shield system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev, who described the U.S. decisions as "only steps away from a U.S. declaration of war against my country," responded by inviting the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Transnistria, to join the Russian Federation. "The fascist clique in Washington, just like Hitler and Napoleon, has misjudged the will of the Russian people to defend their motherland and defeat the aggressors," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told cheering crowds in Moscow, setting the stage for a series of international crises that seemed to threaten world peace.

First, a parliamentary election in Serbia brought to power a nationalist political movement that called for strengthening economic and military ties with Russia. Russia welcomed the outcome of the election and invited Serbia's new leaders to Moscow where a Russian-Serbian defense treaty was signed; it included a commitment to challenge "with all the necessary" Kosovo's declaration of independence.

China expressed support for what became to be known as the Moscow Declaration. Alluding to the separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Chinese government explained that Beijing and Moscow were united in their opposition to "the secessionist puppets and their American puppeteer."

At the same time, the growing tensions in Ukraine over a proposal by the leading pro-Western political parties to apply for membership in NATO seemed to be degenerating into a civil war in the country, with Russia pledging to come to the assistance of the "courageous neighbors who favor independence over submission to American imperialism." Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states called on NATO to come to Ukraine defense and "prevent another Munich," a plea that was backed by the McCain Administration.

In Washington, President McCain proposed that the "recent Russian aggression requires America and the great democracies to form a new league of freedom." But most of the West European states with the exception of Britain rejected the idea, with Germany and France warning the Americans the new aggressive U.S. approach toward Russia could return Europe to "the dark age of the Cold War." In response, National Security Advisor Robert Kagan stated, "Old Europe is getting even older and seems to remain stuck in Venus," adding that he was worried that much of Europe would be "Finlandized" and become "a dependency of Russia."

A growing split in NATO and Europe ensued, with the Czechs, Poles, Latvians, Lituinians and Estonians deciding to join the new LOD and take part in its founding session in Washington, on July 4th. Other members of the group included Costa Rica, Colombia, Israel, Mongolia, Kosovo, Albania, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In an opening address, McCain proposed that NATO be transformed into a global security arm of the LOD and recommended that it add Israel, Colombia and Mongolia -- and Taiwan - to its ranks.

The Chinese leaders responded to McCain's speech by recalling their ambassador from Washington and inviting Medvedev and Putin to Beijing. The two governments announced that they were planning to turn the STO into a global defense alliance that would consist of "all the anti-imperialist forces in the world" including Venezuela, Honduras, Iran, Syria, Serbia and Belarus. It also revealed that the STO was planning to dispatch a Russian cruiser and two nuclear missile submarines to the Straits of Hormuz to take part in a planned Iranian military exercise.

And on October 8th after Iran announced that it detonated five nuclear devices, Russia and China convened an emergency meeting of the STO in Caracas, Venezuela, which concluded with a warning to Washington that the members of the organization were ready to help Iran "protect itself from American-Israeli aggression." Adding to the worries about an approaching war, were reports from the Middle East indicating that Israeli military forces were massing at the border with Lebanon and Syria in the aftermath of number of deadly clashes between Israeli troops and Hizbollah guerillas.

"I don't want to sound despairing, and I do hope that I'm wrong, but I fear that we are heading towards a new and costly Cold War, or even - God forbid! - a World War III," Hagel said during his CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer the next day. Blitzer also interviewed noted musician and singer Bono who was just awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his successful efforts to relieve third world debt and promote AIDS awareness in Africa. "I'm very, very sad that our efforts to promote peace around the world are being overshadowed by the gathering war clouds," Bono told Blitzer. "My guess is that if Barack Obama would have been elected as the U.S. president, the lights would not be going out all over the world today," he said, adding: "It's quite possible that President Obama would be the one receiving the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Imagine that."

Today in History - Oct. 14

2009-10-14T00:00:58Z

Today is Wednesday, Oct. 14, the 287th day of 2009. There are 78 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

Turkey and Syria forge closer ties

2009-10-13T11:31:28Z

Turkey's improved relationship with Syria contrasts with its worsening ties with Israel.

Read more: Syria, Turkey, Israel, Home News