With Paul De Rienzo

Thoughtcrime on Leftist attitudes to "anti-imperialist" thugs and murderers

Ban again, and again!

Ban shoots for the stars
By Ian Williams
Asia Times
June 7th 2011

WASHINGTON - It is very Asian, or at least Confucian, that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his team have kept so close-mouthed about his decision to run for a second five-year term, which was announced on Monday.

Ban's first term expires at the end of this year, and the vote for the next UN head could take place by the end of June at a General Assembly session. No other candidates are in the running so far.

It would imply a tremendous loss of face for Ban, South Korea and even to some extent Asia, if he had overtly indicated interest without being sure that that he had all the ducks in a row. In itself, it suggests some serious diplomatic skills to get member states united behind his candidacy, not least Japan and China, but he has clearly done so. There has not been a serious voice raised in


opposition, unless there is a serious misstep, and the reappointment will soon be confirmed by the Security Council and General Assembly.

It is possible that the last one in the convoy was indeed a Peking, or Beijing, duck, since he met the Chinese vice president last week. Human Rights Watch criticized Ban for not being more vociferous about human rights in China, and it would have been a great gesture if he had. But this would have been the diplomatic equivalent of seppuku (ritual suicide).

Ironically, John Bolton, the rebarbative former acting US ambassador to the UN, has endorsed a second term for Ban on the grounds that he did not regard himself as a "secular pope". Bolton is not known for nuance, and he was a strong supporter of Ban's original nomination.

Ban is South Korean, and thus reliably anti-communist, and Bolton and others saw a grey self-effacing bureaucrat who would not rock the boat. But perhaps they should have listened. Even on the hustings, Ban declared himself a strong supporter of, for example, the International Criminal Court, whose destruction was Bolton's great, and unsuccessful, crusade.

On issues like climate change, the financial crisis and certainly on human-rights issues and the Responsibility to Protect (the latter loved no more by Bolton than by Beijing) he has been far more outspoken than his predecessors.

To begin with, he spoke strongly about particulars in private, but in public expressed general principles. In Myanmar (Burma) he told off the junta, but kept lines of communication open publicly. However, as he gained confidence, on issue after issue he has become more open, more precise in his delineation of principles and their application.

On the Middle East, calling for a Palestinian state, an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and other UN positions forcibly has not prevented his office being the first port of call for Israeli politicians in New York.

Cynically, one can wonder if they are not using it to claim government expenses for fundraising trips to the diaspora's capital, but for whatever reason, it takes the UN out of the Israel Lobby's firing line in the US. This no bad thing for the beleaguered UN since the lobby in the US unites both conservatives and the liberal politicians who in many other countries provide the backstop for the UN's local support.

But that illustrates the dilemma. Bolton is of the ilk that finds it difficult to admit error, so he would not go out of his way to find fault with Ban. Even so, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week he called for the US Congress to again cut funding to the UN to force it to bow to Washington's and Israel's positions on Palestinian statehood - without mentioning Ban or his position. In times past conservative critics like him could be relied upon to personalize battles with the UN by belittling its secretary general.

It does suggest that Ban's outspokenness has been attenuated by his earlier self-effacement. He has pushed the boundaries of the sayable for the UN. Indeed even human-rights organizations who criticize him for not raising human-rights issues with China, have admitted that Ban has been outspoken on other human-rights issues, and indeed, during the Arab Spring, he has singled out heads of state like former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for criticism in a very public way, before self-professed human-rights champions like the US, whose recent statements on such issues have been extremely expedient.

Indeed, he has broken quite sharply with long standing UN practice of servile deference to any head of state, no matter how cruel or corrupt. One only has to contrast the respect the organization and its emissaries offered former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for example.

In that context, it is perhaps understandable that he demurred on public criticism of Chinese human rights. It would be somewhat Quixotic for the secretary general of the United Nations, with, as Boutros Boutros-Ghali once complained, no army nor police force, to take a tougher stand than the member states who appoint and give him orders.

Not least if it knocked him out of office to be replaced by someone else hand picked to be even more complaisant. In the absence of the Madeleine Albright and Senator Jesse Helms team that knocked out Boutros Ghali, the Chinese are the only ones to have nixed the reappointment of other secretaries general - such as Kurt Waldheim.

But the dilemma of his second term is inherent in such contradictions of office. Sixty-five years after its founding, there has never been such a concatenation of problems demanding a global response that only the United Nations is equipped to mediate. Climate change, food security, energy shortages, financial crisis, pandemic diseases, uneven development and a host of other issues cannot be solved by any one country, as even the indebted energy poor US is now discovering. They demand global solutions which entail a revived, re-energized and modernized United Nations.

Once confirmed, there are strong reasons to hope that, on his present trajectory, Ban will be able not just to say the right things, but also to inspire others, his staff, the member states and the peoples of the world, to do what is needed. He has shown strong principles so far. Now he needs to inject charisma-building steroids to ensure those principles are heard.

Having secured reappointment, he now has to draw up an agenda for his second term that will inspire a jaded world to unite against the common enemies and for Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms that originally inspired the UN: Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Once he does not have to look over his shoulder at Beijing and Washington about a second term, he will have the freedom not only to articulate positions that they would prefer unsaid, but to marshal others as well. Even so, one can be sure that while he will try to steer boats, he won't try to rock them. He is a diplomat above all, even if some might hope that he will indeed become the secular pope that Bolton did want!

Bank on Ban Ki Moon for term two

Tribune
Bank on Ban Ki Moon for term two
by Ian Williams
Sunday, June 5th, 2011

Sometime soon, Ban Ki Moon is almost certainly going to announce his willingness to accept a second term as United Nations Secretary General. He is unlikely to meet any serious opposition. In part that is because it would be rude not to reappoint him. After all the only other SG denied a second term was Boutros Ghali, because Madeleine Albright offered his head on a platter to Senator Jesse Helms as the price for her confirmation as Secretary of State.

But courtesy apart, there are good reasons to offer Ban a second term. Like his predecessor Dag Hammarskjold, who died fifty years ago, this year, Ban has been growing into the position and becoming increasingly effective. When Hammarskjold was appointed UN Secretary General, the eminently forgettable Trygve Lie, the first to hold the position, dismissed him as a colourless bureaucrat. Hammarskjold is now widely regarded as the very model for a UN Secretary General.

When first elected, Ban Ki Moon light-heartedly delighted in the title the Korean press corp had given him, “the Slippery Eel” for dodging questions and for his self-effacing diplomacy. With the lazy conservatism of the media, his image is still shaded by those first impressions. It did not help that his instinct in the first few years was to work behind the scenes rather than on the public stage, so much of his good work was unrecognised. US acting ambassador John Bolton and the Bush administration nominated him precisely because they wanted a gray apparatchik who would keep the UN its proper place – in the closet until wanted on occasion by the White House.

However, neither the White House nor much of the media checked the reality behind their presuppositions. Even before his election, for example, Ban was publically declaring his support for the International Criminal Court that Bolton had made his life’s work destroying. As soon as he had he taken office he was pushing positions on climate change calculated to get right up the nostrils of the Republican right.

When he first took office, he combined diplomatic delivery in public with strong words in private to national leaders. There was a notable change as he gained confidence and realised that the post of UN Secretary General demanded a public, pulpit role. For example, in the Arab spring, he has been outspoken about naming and shaming the leaders who have used force against demonstrators, which marks a break from the UN tradition of slavish respect for heads of member states.

While he has consistently displayed his principles in a similar way since, he has also been a quick learner. That has been most visible on Middle Eastern issues, where he started off with an almost reflexively pro-Israeli position adopted from his American friends. Now he is now far more outspoken than his predecessors – but as a testament to his diplomatic skills, his office is still the first port of call for Israeli politicians coming to New York. It was little remarked, but he actually made history by getting the Israelis to pay compensation for destroying UN premises in Gaza, and he has consistently condemned the Israeli blockade of the enclave.

It is true that the UN no longer inspires the hopes it did at its founding, but it is a body whose relevance has been renewed by the demands of the era. From finance, to development to human rights and global warming, the world’s problems demand multilateral, global solutions and Ban shows every sign of appreciating that.

His first term has coincided with circumstances that have persuaded even Americans that they cannot singlehandedly run the world. Most of us noticed they weren’t very good at it anyway.

Ban’s approaching second term offers an opportunity for the world to reappreciate the role of the United Nations and its collective approach to the world’s problems and a revival of some of the idealism of its early days and the battle for the Four Freedoms seems appropriate when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to be hovering the on horizon of an overpopulated, financially precarious yet overarmed world.

Obama's Sound of Silence

Like many people, I expected little from Obama’s performance at AIPAC. He has to straddle parallel universes: the real one, in which most countries recognize Israel as tantamount to an international scofflaw, and the American domestic political universe in which Israel is always right. The US’s real allies and the rest of the world have long wearily resigned themselves to how, as with his speech at the State Department, the President has to pander to pro-Israeli organizations and the Congress members whose support he needs on domestic issues.

Obama congratulated himself, deservedly, for continuing to raise unpalatable issues with elections in the air, and while pandering in a traditionally nauseous way, but there was some reassurance from the sound of silence in his speech.

AIPAC’s conference is a mind-numbing experience. “My country right or wrong” is a rightly derided principle. But at AIPAC ten thousand people are assembled dedicated to the proposition that someone else’s country should be supported, right or wrong, even if it flouts every principle they support at home - and even if its civil laws on marriage and conversion deny the branches of Judaism to which most practicing American Jews adhere.

The organizations tend to be donor-driven rather than grass roots motivated. American Jews, true to their liberal roots, voted for Obama in higher proportions than any other ethnic group - even as a raucous minority of the community questioned Obama’s citizenship and Christianity. That minority is disproportionately represented in the counsels of AIPAC and many of the “official” organizations and tends to Republican, Likudnik hawkishness.

But they tend to think in slogans and catchphrases, without comparing them to reality, let alone with Robert Burn’s “giftie to see oursel’s as others see us.” They have been helped to remain in their parallel universe because Presidents and secretaries of state have pandered (with the notable exception of James Baker) for decades to AIPAC - and no one notices, As is customary, dogs are biting men.

The media attention to President Obama’s address is significant since for the first time in twenty years, there is visible crack showing between the White House and AIPAC - and Israel. It is going too far to say that Obama is biting the dog - but he is sinking his gums into the Lobby and Netanyahu. He is doing so to the background of an American Jewish community that is split more than ever before, and certainly more so than the “official” spokesmen and organizations reveal.


While admitting there are problems with a unity Palestinian government, “We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements,” he did not exclude negotiations, but in effect put conditions, which Hamas has, in reality, already gone a long way to meet and is on the way to go further.

One hopes that he realizes that the key phrases he used such as the need to accept Israel’s “right to exist” were introduced by Israeli leaders precisely because they were unacceptable to Palestinians. He might even have noticed how quickly Israel switched from refusing to negotiate because the authority was divided, to refusing because it is united! It is like demanding that American Indian tribes accept that their dispossession was right and goes beyond acceptance of the obvious fact of Israel’s existence and its now nearly universal acceptance as an established state.

Such phrases have traditionally been used to in the Levantine blame game in which the purpose of negotiations is not to reach a solution but to blame the other side for failure. But there is always a way to wiggle - a phrase that would irk some Israelis would be for the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s “right to exist under UN Decisions!”

One hopes that the President is now playing this game with Netanyahu. One also hopes he harbors grudges. For the world’s most benefitted welfare queen to publicly dress down the President of its benefactor at the White House should give most Americans some frisson of indignation.

While in the real world, Obama’s insistence on the 1967 boundaries as a basis for negotiation for land swaps has been generally accepted, Palestinians irate at this admitted denial of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,” may have missed, along with nuance-free AIPACers his endorsement of a The Palestinian people’s “right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state,” which presumably implies that in return for giving up some of the settled area, the Palestinian state will have a land bridge between Gaza and the West Bank. One can see why he might not have chosen to spell that out for AIPAC!

While he stated a fact, “No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state,” he did not state a principle. He said, “The United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the UN or in any international forum. Because Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate.” He did not say that the US would veto a UN acceptance of Palestine as a member state.

Indeed, he challenged the sloganeers with reality, “The number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal – to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.” Secondly he pointed to how atavistic the old obsession with territory as security is since “technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace,” and finally, he pointed to the changes in Israel’s neighbours, so peace can no longer be bought with few local kleptocrats, “Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.”

If the US is retain influence in the region, it can no longer pay exclusive attention to Israeli public opinion while sending a few billion to local rulers. It, and Israel, have to show ordinary Arab citizens that they are serious about peace. Obama cannot regret the consequences to Palestinians of occupation while carrying on passing the ammunition to Israel.

It is unlikely that Netanyahu will voluntarily relinquish the not so secret Likud desire for an Arab-free state all the way to the Jordan. Obama has, perhaps deliberately and adroitly, maneuvered the Israeli Prime Minister into insulting the President of the US. He now has to follow up and show that their are consequences for Israel.

Obama baulked at his best opportunity, which was the UN resolution on the settlements. He should stop equivocating and come out plainly with a declaration that if Netanyahu continues to refuse to come to terms with reality in the region, then he cannot take a US veto in the Security Council against Palestinian membership for granted nor even a nay vote in the General Assembly against a declaration of statehood. Indeed, if he really wanted to play for high stakes, he could suggest that embattled US tax payers will no longer continue to pay for free Israeli health care and higher education when they cannot afford it at home for themselves. It would almost be worth it to watch the Tea Partiers squirm, but it would show Israeli voters that there are indeed consequences from their choices.

Catskills up High

7 pm Saturday 7 May, on WJFF’s Catskill Review of Books, on 90.5 FM and streaming http:wjffradio.org this week Ian Williams talks to CNBC anchor Trish Regan about her book
Joint Ventures: Inside America’s Almost Legal Marijuana Industry.

Legalize it? Tax it? Could it put the Catskills and similar depressed areas on an economic high?



7 pm Saturday 14th May
Ian talks to the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach about his book
The Hole At the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher, just over a year after the oil hit the Gulf.



7 pm Saturday 21 May Ian talks to Internationally acclaimed Italian author Sandro Veronesi about his novel.

Quiet Chaos newly translated into English

Ryan, Royal Rogaine, and the Republican birthright.

The importance of birth, from Ryan, Royals & Rogaine to Republicans.
Ian Williams
Tribune 6 May 2011

Okay: get over it. The Royal Wedding was an embarrassment, but it is nothing compared with the circus that passes for politics here in the Land of Free. On the whole, I’d rather tolerate a monarchy.

As the vows were exchanged, President Obama released his full birth certificate in an attempt to buy off the baying packs of conservatives, a majority of Republicans, who do not believe he was born in the US. Within hours, he predictable response was that the certificate was a forgery! Republican controlled states are busily introducing “Birther bills” purporting to ensure that presidential candidates produce full documentation of their births.

All of this is just commentary. The real issue is that the President is black, not to mention not Republican, and this is anathema for a significant minority. While it embarrasses some of the Republican leadership, it serves them because it reminds a significant minority of voters of the real issue: there’s a black man in the White House.

And all of those in the UK who look longingly at primary elections should note that the issue of Obama’s birthplace was originally raised by the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primary, with precisely the same cynical intention of raising the race issue.

It is not just a passing aberration, Donald Trump, whose name in older English appropriately means “fart” has led business after business into bankruptcy (he even managed to lose money with a casino!) is the favoured candidate of Republicans perhaps because he calls other countries, like those whose money bankrolls the US deficit, “Motherfuckers” and believes that the US should just go and take “our” oil from the Middle East. He was of course one of the leading “birthers,” and is now demanding Obama’s school records, hinting of course that the President, an ace scholar at Harvard only got in through positive discrimination.
But the Republican Party is inclusive in its lunacy. With wildfires sweeping across drought-stricken Texas, its Republican Governor declared three “Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas,” while governors in several Republican states, who must have had nightmares about Thomas the Tank Engine when they were kids, have turned down billions of dollars to build high speed rail networks.

Crowning it all was the “budget” for 2012 moved by Republican congressman Paul Ryan. Faced with a huge budget deficit, the Republican majority voted for an alleged deficit reduction plan that reduced taxes - on the rich - maintained military spending, but does cut out the few traces of civilization the United States has maintained - public health care provision for the elderly.

Almost all its budget cuts come from programmes that helped the poor and elderly - in a country with an already far from generous safety net.

However, what is refreshing is that for once ideology has trumped political expediency. Reducing taxes on rich people who have just rewarded themselves with huge bonuses for masterminding a global financial crisis is, shall we say, brave. So is attacking Medicare, a very popular government programme for the section of the population most likely to vote. In the land of cognitive dissonance, Republicans actually attacked Obama’s healthcare plan for making savings in Medicare, leading to, in the land of cognitive dissonance,Tea Party demonstrators saying “Keep government hands off my Medicare.”

There are already signs of a backlash against the budget plans, just as in Wisconsin the governors anti-labour agenda provoked a long belated upsurge from the unions and workers with recall petitions against many of the Republicans who voted for it. And not so covert attacks on immigrants and minorities might not be the best strategy when the census shows that the “minorities” are becoming the majority!

However, sadly, Obama and the Democrats are so closely tied to the business donors that polls suggest that they are far to the right of voters on on many issues and are failing to articulate the policies that would allow them to break the Republican majority. It all makes pondering why there is no royal Rogaine for the balding princeling seem a productive exercise.

Will Osama's Going Allow Obama new life?

Ian Williams 3 May 2011

Will the death of Bin Laden allow Obama with a leap and bound to declare an end to the “War on Terror,” pull out of Afghanistan, save Medicare, and make friends in the Middle East. Well it could, but it probably won’t.

But apart from that cynical thought, let us be straight about one thing. Bin Laden was killed this Sunday, and it does offer serious possibilities.

Gullibility and skepticism seem joined at the hip. People who would take their umbrellas if the Obama administration told them it was sunny outside are quite willing to believe and quote any deranged website with a conspiracy theory. It is interesting to note the convergence of left and right - Osama’s death was faked, Obama’s birth certificate was forged.

Occam’s razor compels me think that neither is true. And by the way, I was living close to the World Trade Center, saw and heard the planes, and commented at the time on Rudi Giuliani’s spectacular incompetence at putting his emergency headquarters in Number 7 World Trade Center and stocking it with tanks containing thousands of gallons of fuel in defiance of his own city Fire Department regulations.

That consistent incompetence is a factor has fueled a thousand conspiracy theories. Going after Saddam Hussein and downplaying Afghanistan allowed Bin Laden to get away. Trusting the Pakistani ISI, former CIA surrogates in the region, allowed him to stay away. The war in Afghanistan was consistently under-resourced so the Bush White House could exorcise its own familial ghosts in Baghdad.

But strategic incompetence has not obviated flashes of tactical brilliance on the part of conservatives. As I said at the time, the perennial TV news backdrop of the triptych of the burning World Trade Center flanked by Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein helped provide the emotional strength for the war on Iraq, despite it having nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the 9-11 attack. It occurred to me that some of the exultation on those young faces in the flash mob with their unseemly celebration of Bin Laden’s death could have derived from subliminal childhood exposure to those images. It is also that image which has given some metaphysical substance to the absurdity of a war on an abstraction, the “War on Terror.”

Which comes back to the death of Bin Laden. It was a very risky move for Obama. “Liberals” and democrats are not allowed the luxury of spectacular failure. Jimmy Carter’s abortive attempt to rescue the hostages from Teheran haunted his career. A similar helicopter crash in Pakistan could have sealed the fate for the Obama White House.

Of course an assassination on the territory of a foreign and allegedly friendly state could also have caused problems. It is indeed illegal in a prima facie way, but Bin Laden’s presence in a major Pakistani metropolis certainly embarrasses the government there. It was in everybody’s interest not to inform the local authorities. The Pakistan government could disclaim knowledge, and the US could be certain that any information they passed on would go straight to warn Bin Laden. Indeed, such is the climate of rancor among American conservatives one would almost wonder if one of the worries in Washington was a risk of leaks or sabotage from insiders there. But internationally, while, say Beijing and Moscow might tut tut about it, the heirs of the KGB are hardly in a secure pulpit to sermonize, and their real feelings are more likely to be admiration than admonition.

Even the burial at sea is, shall we say, a red herring. Few of his victims got to choose their funeral rights, and the Sunni Wahabi tradition is spartan in the extreme.

In any case the action has given Obama a big boost domestically at a time that he needed it. It would be ironic if healthcare for elderly Americans were protected because the President has overseen the assassination of an elderly Saudi, but that’s politics!

Internationally, it will not necessarily have that much effect. Bin Laden was no Lenin overseeing an Islamist international. Al Qaeda was a state of mind more than an organized conspiracy. He was no Old Man of the Mountains sending out his assassins, but his example inspired the varying spontaneous degrees of psychopathology among the disaffected.

But his rallying cause for jihad still holds: US support for Israel is as strong now as ever. Obama would have had more beneficial international results taking out Netanyahu politically than eliminating Bin Laden physically, since it would address that genuine cause. Recent poll results from Iran and Egypt suggest that the US still provides plenty of room for suspicion in the region.

One possible consequence is that Obama might be tempted to declare victory and pull out of Afghanistan. He could even claim budget savings to protect Medicare! However, the Taliban were not controlled by Al Qaeda and his death is unlikely to affect their belligerence. His elimination at least allows the US to get over its prejudices and get into serious talks with the Pushtoon communities for a negotiated settlement of some kind.

Indeed the exorcism of the Bin Laden ghost could even provide political cover for talks with Hamas and Hizbollah. Of course anyone except Fox news pundits knows that Al Qaeda had nothing to do with them at all, but with his shade out of the way, an emboldened Obama could do it.

But it comes back to the same core problem. At the core of America’s fractious relationship with most of the world, and particularly the Middle East, is Washington’s relationship with Israel - and he is unlikely to get Netanyahu’s “permission,” for it. Would he go ahead anyway? How about being tough on terror - and on the excuses for terror as well? It is possible and desirable, but is it likely?

Orwell's Take on Libya

Tribune, 8th April 2011

Ian Williams
Support the Good Deed, Not the Doer of It!
Orwell's Take on Libya

“What would George Orwell have said?” is an old game that is nonetheless relevant for Tribune, whose pages the grumpy “lower upper middle class” columnist graced for so many years. On Libya, there is little doubt that he would have supported intervention. Just as, almost certainly, the ranks of opposition to intervention include many of those who saw Orwell as a traitor to socialism for telling the truth about Soviet tyranny and exposing the eccentricities of some true believers on the Left, among whom, we can be sure he would pilloried some of anti-imperialist tourists who have made the trip to Tripoli to learn from the “Libyan revolution.”

Orwell, with his pragmatic realization that the world was not divided into saints and sinners, would certainly have supported intervention. “There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction,” he wrote after he returned from Spain, where, let us remember, he was on the liquidation list of the Soviet agents whose supporters were and are so quick to denounce Orwell as a traitor to the left.

He was well aware of the imperfection of the side he was fighting for. Of course, if the Spanish Republicans were to apply the same high ethical standards demanded by some on the Left of those now intervening in Libya, they would have scorned Moscow’s help. The famine, the purges and the camps were all in operation and at the time Stalin had far more blood on his hands than either Hitler or Mussolini. But nobody else was offering. It would indeed have been much better for France and Britain to have lent support to Madrid’s democracy, but as we know, in London at least there was a tendency to think Franco could be a force for stability. Who knew what would happen if the Republicans had won? After all, there were provably more Anarchists among the Republicans than Al-Qaeda among the Libyan opposition. And possibly some of the Left would have opposed such imperialist ventures - they did after all oppose intervention on behalf of Poland.

There are, of course, those who can greet with equanimity atrocities perpetrated under the guise of anti-imperialism, either by denying or ignoring them. The Slobodan Milosevic fan club that ignores the stench of Bosnian mass graves from Srebrenica, or of rotting Kosovo cadavers discovered under police stations in Serbia, is made of strong enough stuff to regard a few dead Libyans as a small price to pay to fight imperialism.

In contrast, this intervention is mandated by the United Nations Security Council and was response to the threat by the Libyan regime to massacre its own citizenry in Benghazi and Tobruk. The intended victims pleaded with the world to help them. So the real question to pose to those who oppose intervention is “What would you do about it?”

The dilemma is most manifest in Moscow. Russia could have vetoed Resolution 1973. It could have supported it, amended it, and insisted on a share of command and control. It did not. It recognised that even by its own relaxed Chechnyan standards, what Gaddafi was doing was insupportable. So it adopted the harlot’s prerogative of power without responsibility. It let the intervention go ahead and now carps from the sidelines to preserve its own purity.

Ideally of course, it would be better if the intervention had been conducted by countries without imperialist pasts, or oil interests. But Timor Leste, or Ireland, or Jamaica, do not have the wherewithal for such operations, and generally have their own problems. When the Good Samaritan crosses the road to help, we do not question whether he was point scoring over those bloody Pharisees, or checking the victim’s pouch to see if there was anything left, or even whether he treated his servants and wife well. We support the deed, not the person, or the country.

Goldstone yet again

It is still a mystery why he wrote the Washington Post article or what it was meant to achieve, but Goldstone sets the record straight - and if possible has made even worse enemies in Israel. I wonder if the invitation still stands?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_un_report_5

Debating Intervention

Strategic Dialogue: Libya War

By Robert Naiman and Ian Williams, April 5, 2011


In the second part of our strategic dialogue on the Libya War, Robert Naiman and Ian Williams respond to their initial essays. You can read the original essays here: Naiman’s anti-intervention essay Surprise War for Regime Change in Libya is the Wrong Path and Ian Williams’ pro-intervention essay Armchair Anti-Imperialists and Libya.
Ian Williams

Robert Naiman makes many excellent points, which tend however to prove my major point. Like many peers he looks at intervention in Libya from a narcissistic Americo-centric point of view, evading the key question. When a group of people who are about to be massacred ask for help, what do you do?

Instead, Naiman presents a survey of constitutional positions and American attitudes to the war which essentially replicates the lessons of 1939. The default American position is usually isolationist, and the Good Samaritan is not a popular parable in American political discourse.

It was not the White House that started the operation. The Libyan plea went to the Security Council of the United Nations – with the support of much of the Libyan diplomatic corps, one might point out. The UN resolution does not call for a no-fly zone. It called directly for military intervention to protect civilians – and to assuage those justifiably wary of US involvement in the region after Iraq, or indeed Susan Rice’s veto of the resolution against Israeli settlements, it precluded occupying forces.

It is not unilateral, or even mainly U.S. military intervention, and all the evidence is that Washington was chivvied into helping by its Middle Eastern and European allies. Washington, as we have seen, has been happily buying oil from Gaddafi and has a high tolerance for atrocities by its allies.

In fact, one would never guess that from news reports most of the close-up air sorties are being flown not by Americans but by French and other air forces, who, one hopes, would have proceeded regardless of the U.S,Congress.

Frankly, I wish the United States had stayed out of it and simply blessed and assisted the Europeans and Arabs. But having by far the world’s biggest military occasionally entails obligations as well opportunities for aggression.

It is indeed entirely possible that the respite awarded the rebels will result in regime change. And why is that a bad thing? This regime responded to peaceful demonstrations demanding popular power by gunning down its own people. This regime accepted the validity of the UN resolution and immediately declared a ceasefire, just before launching indiscriminate air and artillery attacks on its own cities.

If Hugo Chavez’s negotiations had delayed the attacks on Gaddafi’s tanks, Benghazi and its citizenry would today be a smoldering pile. The International Criminal Court referral was intended to send a message to Gaddafi that there would be consequences, that he had no impunity. He ignored that message. Is there a way to protect civilians that leaves intact a dictatorial regime that has pledged bloody vengeance against its own citizenry?

In the end, those who oppose the intervention would do so whether or not Congress approved it, just as those who opposed intervention in Iraq because it had no UN mandate, even though Congress shamefully approved, now oppose this one even though the UN voted for it – and Congress has not said anything either way.

When people cry for help you do what you can. And yes, what happened in Bahrain is shameful, even though the regime has yet to use airpower and artillery against its own city. So rather than opposing intervention in Libya, it would be much more constructive to call on the United States to cut off relations with Bahrain, or indeed Saudi Arabia, until the repression stops. But opposition is always easy, while calling for action involves taking responsibility for the results.
Robert Naiman

Ian Williams's initial tone is disturbing but perhaps revealing. He begins with an assault on progressive critics of the Western military intervention as "comfortable Western leftists" engaged in "cultural imperialism." The thrust of his argument here seems to be that if you criticize the Western military intervention, you must be a Gaddafi-lover.

Such insults are depressingly familiar. When we opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we were called Saddam lovers. When we questioned the indefinite U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, we were accused of supporting the Taliban.

Some may find such "arguments" convincing. On me, they have the opposite effect. If critics of military intervention are being accused of devotion to a foreign political force, probably the intervention is a rotten enterprise. After all, if supporters of military intervention had good arguments, presumably they would lead with those.

Williams suggests that "Libyans" support the current Western military intervention. Indeed, some Libyans do support it. Other Libyans do not. Clearly, many Libyans in Benghazi support the current Western military intervention. Just as clearly, many Libyans in Tripoli and Sirte don't support the current Western military intervention. If we care about the opinions of "Libyans," it's not obvious why the opinions of these Libyans in Tripoli and Sirte should count for zero.

Anytime the United States intervenes militarily on one side of a civil conflict there will be people in the country - and exiles - in favor. There were Iraqis who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There are Afghans who would like U.S. troops to stay indefinitely. Is the fact that this is so the end of discussion? We have to support a foreign military intervention if a group of Libyans, Iraqis, Afghans support it? These views should certainly be considered, but are we not allowed to consider anything else? Should the fact that a group of people support a Western military intervention automatically trump all other concerns? This argument does not seem serious to me.

Williams appears to be unconcerned by, and indeed to welcome, the morphing of the military intervention from "protecting civilians" to "regime change." But indifference to or support of this transformation would make a mockery of any kind of accountability for Western military operations. You could sell public opinion on one thing, obtain a UN Security Council resolution, and then do something else entirely. This would mean that "Responsibility to Protect" would become "unlimited license to do anything." One might think those who support the principle of "Responsibility to Protect" would see this as a threat to the invocation of this principle in the future. I was more sympathetic to "Responsibility to Protect" before I saw how it was used in this case; if the conclusion of the current military operation is military regime change rather than a negotiated solution, I will hold that against future invocations of "Responsibility to Protect."

Williams dismisses concerns of critics of the military intervention as "ad hoc." But many of these concerns are longstanding. We are concerned about the exclusion of Congress and the pubic, as before. As I argued, this is not a side issue to those working against U.S. wars. Rather, it is crucial to future efforts. We are concerned about the expense of foreign military intervention at a time of domestic cuts, as before. We are concerned about proposals that the United States arm people who may have been involved in terrorism in the past and may be involved in terrorism in the future, as before. We are concerned about selective focus on abuses of a U.S. "enemy," while the abuses of U.S. "allies" are ignored and even encouraged, as before. And, as I argued in my piece, this is not merely a question of "hypocrisy" and "double-standards." In general, selective focus contributes to indifference and support of abuses by allies. In the present case, there is considerable evidence that the military intervention in Libya is directly related to effective U.S. support for the crackdown in Bahrain.

Williams does acknowledge problems going forward, when he suggests Russia (and presumably others) could be a better watchdog. Here we agree. But for this to happen, some things must change. It's hard to be an effective watchdog if those you're monitoring have carte blanche. This means we must insist that Security Council resolutions not give carte blanche in theory or practice and that sharp distinctions be maintained between "protecting civilians" and other measures undertaken and considered, such as supporting rebel military advances with air strikes, attacking military forces not engaged in attacking civilians or poised to do so, arming rebels, and military regime change.
Ian Williams

There is no doubt that some of the opposition to intervention does indeed come from Gaddafi lovers. As we saw with Saddam Hussein and see with Hugo Chavez now, an anti-U.S. posture seems to give sundry authoritarian thugs a lot of leeway in some sections of the left. But I did not once suggest that equation.

However the key issue is not affection for Gaddafi but rather indifference to suffering and injustice elsewhere. It is indeed possible that there was a cynical trade-off between Bahrain and Libya. But is anyone suggesting that if there had been no action in Libya, the United States would have swooped to the defense of Bahraini dissidents?

The issue is irrelevant to the core question. Did the intervention stop massacres of Libyans? The answer is, irrefutably, yes. The question now is: will it continue to improve their lot? The answer to that is probably yes, but naturally we cannot be entirely sure.

The simple test of Gaddafi’s popularity would of course be an election – which he refuses to allow, suggesting that whatever his eccentricities, deep down he is in touch with reality. I am all in favor of changing regimes that are oppressive and murderous, even though the principle, especially with foreign interference, is to make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease. That was certainly the case in Iraq, despite Blair’s attempt to mask it as a humanitarian intervention. It is not the case in Libya, as many living citizens of Tobruk and Benghazi can now testify.

As for the carte blanche, any reading of Resolution 1973 would show that far from carte blanche, it hemmed the operation in with many provisos, including a ban on occupying forces. Some of those restrictions actually increase the risk of civilian casualties but were understandable in the context of previous U.S. abuse of UN resolutions. But the apparatus for monitoring is clearly laid out in the resolution, more strongly than in previous Chapter VII resolutions. If the Russians had eschewed posturing for a domestic and international audience they could have refined those provisions and involved themselves more closely.
Robert Naiman

Again Ian Williams comes with the gratuitous insults: "narcissistic," "Americo-centric," etc. And again I say: among fair-minded people, those who engage in gratuitous ad hominem attacks weaken rather than strengthen their argument.

I see Williams’ argument as amounting to a classic bait-and-switch. On the one hand, all of us must declare whether we would support Western military intervention to block the Libyan government's assault on Benghazi, and we must answer this question in isolation. In answering this question, we are not allowed to consider anything outside of this. Most importantly, we are not allowed to consider where the Western military intervention would lead and what other consequences it would have.

But once we say yes to this hypothetical - hypothetical because the event does not exist in isolation - then it's made clear that what we have agreed to is not something that we can purchase a la carte. Rather, it is part of a package deal, "terms subject to change without notice," which may, among other things, include: bombing Libyan soldiers who are not attacking or menacing civilians, arming rebels, overthrowing the Libyan government with foreign military power; and increased likelihood of U.S. military interventions in the future.

Let's sharpen the hypothetical. Suppose that on the Saturday morning that the United States began bombing, President Obama called me on the phone and said, "Now, I realize that until now I haven't allowed you to have any effective input into this decision. But now I'm letting you decide. If you say yes, I go forward. If you say no, the military operation is called off. It's all up to you. But let me make one thing clear: this is the last time I will ever consider your opinion. If you say yes, you agree to everything that happens afterwards, in which you will have no say whatsoever."

At its root, this is the question I understand Williams to be asking.

And my answer is that I emphatically reject the premise. The central organizing principle of my political work on this front since 1983 is to reject the premise that I and my fellow members of the general U.S. public have no say in U.S. foreign policy, except perhaps to ratify wars that other people have already decided to embrace. If that will be called "narcissistic" and "Americo-centric," so be it. I take responsibility for living in the United States. Others should too.

Robert Naiman is the policy director at Just Foreign Policy and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. Ian Williams, senior analyst and long time contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, is a New York-based author and journalist. He is currently working on a new edition of his book, The UN For Beginners.

Stoning Goldstone

Why Did Richard Goldstone Throw the Goldstone Report Under the Bus?
Foreign Policy in Focus
By Ian Williams, April 5, 2011

GoldstoneI spoke to Richard Goldstone several times after his eponymous Report came out, and it was obvious that the personal slander and vilification from so many in his own community was wearing him down. He was certainly naive and did not expect the excreta storm that would head his way.

He had always been a person of integrity and his editorial in the Washington Post, allegedly “retracting” the Report named after him is saddening. If it had appeared the day before, one would almost suspect it of being an April Fool’s parody.

Indeed, the wording of the editorial, while confused and evasive, was eloquently indicative of heavy pressure -- not least since only two days before at a debate at Stanford University, he is reported as maintaining that “all the investigations showed that, thus far, the facts were as they were reported.”

One cannot help wondering what happened in the next two days to change his mind. Did his daughter, ex IDF and self-confessed Israeli patriot, pull the family chains? It certainly betokens a personal tragedy, since it will detract from his reputation and integrity in the human rights and international law field, with no chance at all of earning the forgiveness of the rabid and vindictive Zionists who have been hounding him mercilessly for two years.

Indeed, reading the editorial reminded me of Comrade Rubashov in Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness At Noon” -- a true believer doing one last duty for the group he had lived with for so many years. It reads like a “confession” rung out from someone trying to free hostages near and dear to him by giving the kidnappers what they want while trying to hold on to one’s own integrity and dignity. Sadly, of course, those who attacked his morals and probity before, will never, ever forgive him for telling the truth originally -- and like Rubashov, he will be shown no mercy once his confession has served its purpose for the cause.

It suited the Lobby to highlight Goldstone, a Zionist and judge whose international reputation made it even more difficult than usual to bury the message especially among Jews. However, those other members are distinguished jurists in their own right who were commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council and whose report became the property of the UN General Assembly, neither of whom are likely to drop the report just because complicit Israeli ministers misinterpret Goldstone’s editorial with the same liberty that they misinterpreted the original report -- which after all simply asked the parties to conduct credible investigations.

The core “retraction” in the editorial is the sentence, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” which is about as retractable as a rubber band. It certainly does not substantiate Netanyahu’s reaction “Everything we said was proved true,” although it does raise suspicions that Avigdor Lieberman’s attribution of the editorial to “diplomatic efforts on behalf of Israel,” might conceal some heavy advocacy conveying difficult-to-refuse offers.

Goldstone is a lawyer, and this imprecisely flexibly wording of “different document,” could mean almost anything. If he knew about the ferocity of the tribal scapegoating that was to follow? If he knew that the report was going to spur Israel into mounting a series of pseudo-independent investigations into events that they refused to look into earlier? It certainly is far from an unequivocal retraction of the original, which is not “his” to retract since it was, after all, the product of a team including three others, commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

His claim that Israeli investigations “also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy,” does not contradict his early report, which never suggested that. The My Lai massacre, for example, was no less a war crime because the Pentagon did not directly order it.

His most wrenching default is when he says “the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently (my italics) the consequence of an Israeli commander's erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.”

Looking at the abysmal track record of Israeli investigations -- and bearing in mind that it was the original Goldstone Report that brought about the apology for an investigation he refers to here, Judge Goldstone really has to explain to his own conscience on what grounds he is “confident” of an appropriate response, let alone how the finding of “negligence” came about.

Throughout, he is upsettingly equivocal. “While I welcome Israel’s investigations into allegations, I share the concerns reflected in the McGowan Davis report that few of Israel’s inquiries have been concluded and believe that the proceedings should have been held in a public forum. Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn't negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.”

But then later he says “McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree.” How significant is “significant” if after two years, “few of Israel’s inquiries have been concluded” and if the proceedings, conducted by the same military body that defends the military, are carried out in private?

In the face of that, his second thoughts about calling upon Hamas calling for its own inquiry are totally gratuitous. Surely he never expected them to. But they did let him and his colleagues in to investigate themselves, which Israel did not, and which, as he reiterates, refused to present evidence to his committee.

Even though it is unlikely that the UN bodies will drop the report, Goldstone’s pseudo-retraction has provided the opportunity for Israeli “Hasbara” to trumpet its misinterpretations. It does a disservice to international justice and humanitarian law and tries to accord to Israeli leaders the impunity which he had spent his career fighting, in South Africa, Rwanda, the Balkans and Central America.

It is a tragedy that such a career should end this way, generating as much sorrow as anger. Sorrow for the damage it has done to the universality of justice, and anger at the unscrupulous manipulation of familial and tribal loyalties that likely brought it about.

For more by Ian Williams visit Deadline Pundit.

Armchair Anti-Imperialism

Armchair Anti-Imperialism and Libya

Foreign Policy in Focus
By Ian Williams, April 4, 2011

In the first part of a new FPIF Strategic Dialogue on the Libyan War, Ian Williams argues that the choice is clear: to support the popular uprising and not the unpopular tyrant. See Robert Naiman's anti-intervention argument here.

Ian WilliamsIt is a particularly pernicious form of cultural imperialism for comfortable Western leftists to disregard what the actual Tunisians, Libyans, Kosovars, or Bosnians themselves have asked for - intervention to stop “their” rulers killing them. This setting aside of the wishes of people threatened with massacre in favor of Western armchair anti-imperialism is all the more remarkable coming from the left, which once swore by internationalism.

The calls to respect national sovereignty echo those of the despots of Africa and other regimes around the world who believe that it’s nobody’s business what a ruler does in his “own” country. Or even worse, such calls emulate the know-nothing isolationists on the right who do not care what happens to foreigners.

The ad-hoc arguments marshaled against the intervention in Libya have included:

The unconstitutionality of the president ordering military action
The expense of military action at a time of cuts
The invalidity of a UN resolution passed with abstentions
The Security Council exceeding its authority by violating Libyan sovereignty
The self-interested motives of those intervening
The “discovery” of ex-al-Qaeda supporters among the rebels
The failure of the West to intervene in other places where civilians face potential massacres such as Bahrain, Gaza, Ivory Coast, and Yemen

Many of these arguments are deployed to flesh out an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative that evades the crucial question: should the world let Libyan civilians die at the hands of a tyrant?

Gaddafi’s heavily armed forces were headed to Benghazi, in defiance of Security Council resolutions, to carry out acts against international humanitarian law. In fact, they had already started bombing and shelling the city indiscriminately and had a track record of massacres, mass arrests, and brutality in cities they had already occupied.
Intervention: Always Wrong?

Opposition to interventionism has sometimes been muted in other circumstances, for instance Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and Laos, Tanzanian intervention in Uganda, or indeed India's military incursion that gave birth to Bangladesh. In none of these cases was the result utopian, but in each case it certainly improved the situation. Indeed Cuban intervention in Africa and Che’s disastrous guerrilla escapades in Latin America are the subject of reverent leftist legend rather than calumny.

Perhaps the archetypal case, in leftist lore, is the Spanish Civil War. Few of those opposing intervention in Libya are likely fans of George Orwell who, after returning from Spain, commented that “there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.” Orwell and many others went to Spain to fight Franco and supported calls for intervention by the Western powers to help the Republic.

Orwell was also well aware of the imperfection of the side he was fighting for, since he not only witnessed the repression of dissidents on the Republican side but barely escaped with his life from KGB agents. Of course, the Spanish Republicans should have refused aid and weapons from the Soviet regime, which was already killing people in quantities that at the time exceeded what the Nazis were accomplishing. But nobody else was offering.

However, all the bluster notwithstanding, intervention, as now enshrined in the “Responsibility to Protect,” is now an established part of international law. The intervention in Libya is legal. Whether it was the right thing to do, or whether the United States should be involved, is a separate issue, as indeed is the permanently debatable but entirely domestic issue of presidential versus congressional prerogatives on the matter of war powers.

A British or European might want to point out, however, that many of us are glad that Franklin Roosevelt did an end run round Congress in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, even if his clear aim was to grab the British Empire before it fell into Axis hands. Indeed, the non-intervention rule is particularly ironic for the United States, which owes its independence to the timely intervention of a reactionary French Royalist regime.

There would be more consistency, and indeed humanity, if protestors refined their arguments so they did not oppose intervention in general, but specified why they opposed intervention by particular countries, which in this case means the United States.
Should We Oppose the U.S. Involvement?

As a rule of thumb, one should always be wary of U.S. intervention, and it is indeed always worth questioning both Washington’s motives and its methods.

But the positions of many of those who have reflexively opposed the implementation of the UN resolution on Libya do not really involve questioning. Rather they consist of a series of dogmatic assertions, which tend to distill down to the assertion that the United States is always wrong. Even a stopped clock is right occasionally, and their assertion of perpetual American malice and greed is a form of metaphysical mirror image of the equally untenable premise that the United States is always virtuous and right.

In the case of Libya, as in Kosovo, the United States was dragged unwillingly into its role by the Europeans and others and by the events on the ground, namely Gaddafi’s murderous threats and actual behavior. The United States had developed cynically good relations with Gaddafi. The West had no problems gaining access to Libyan oil. Regime change puts these relationships at risk.

Above all, the Security Council mandated this intervention, fulfilling its mandate to preserve peace and security, as interpreted by the General Assembly, which decided that that remit includes the failure of governments to protect their own people - or their persistence in attacking them.
The UN Resolution

UN Security Council Resolution 1973 was the classic smorgasbord that comes out of negotiations, with potential vetoes lurking in the background. To assuage the fears of those opposed to U.S. imperialism rightly concerned about what happened in Iraq (without a UN mandate), the resolution precluded troops on the ground. Sadly that left air operations as the only weapon. U.S. affection for massive fire power and force protection perhaps led to the unnecessarily massive bombardment of the first days. But on the other hand there has been no significant anti-aircraft action from Libya. Libyan geography has also lent itself to attacks on military columns strung out along the few roads with less risk of civilian casualties.

The mandate to protect civilians is at once limited - and flexible. If a regime shows no intention of stopping its repression and bloodshed, the mandate can't be fulfilled without getting rid of him.

Frankly, Libya and the world would not suffer from Gaddafi's departure.
Why Libya?

Frequently, opposition to intervention has depended, oddly, on the traditional “Israeli defense” at the UN. Israeli diplomats often argue that no one should criticize Israel when there are so many Arab states guilty of similar or worse atrocities. In this context, the West's silence and inaction – indeed, the complicity in the repression in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria – preclude any action in Libya.

In the real world, of course, such an all-or-nothing approach translates into “nothing.” In Libya, the deployment of aircraft, tanks, and artillery against civilians certainly goes a stage beyond the admittedly pernicious use of small arms in those other countries - not of course in Gaza, but we know the circumstances there.

In fact, the UN-sanctioned intervention in Libya seems so far to have fulfilled the promise of the Responsibility to Protect. It averted the threatened massacre of the citizens of Benghazi by Gaddafi’s supporters. It has so far crippled the regime’s main strength, its heavy weaponry, so that the local Libyan opposition has been driving the former government forces out of city after city. So far, unless you take the word of the mendacious Gaddafi regime, there have also been minimum civilian casualties.
Endgame?

Humanitarian intervention under the auspices of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is indeed a dangerous tool, subject to expedient abuse. Which is why its proponents insisted it needed a UN mandate. The Libyan intervention has that. The Security Council needs to monitor its execution carefully, and it could do that much more effectively if Moscow, in particular, would stop flip-flopping.

Behind Russian discomfort over R2P is its all-too-apparent relevance to Chechnya. But Moscow could have vetoed the resolution. Its abstention implicitly went along with the wording of the resolution, and its experience of the Gulf War resolutions taught it what to watch out for in terms of mission creep. If it stopped grandstanding and got more actively involved, it would be a better watchdog.

Gaddafi’s is clearly a failed regime. Its collapse in almost every population center when challenged demonstrates a lack of popular and institutional support. The provisional government in Benghazi has claimed democratic principles and has so far lived up to them. There are some strange stirrings of Islamophobia among anti-interventionists who claim either that intervention is anti-Islamic or that the new government will be fundamentalist Islamic.

In any case, the rebels seem to have popular support. Those who respect popular sovereignty, as opposed to state sovereignty, should really let the Libyans decide whether it is better to die in a flood of tanks and rockets, or overcome them by calling for international aid.

Libya and R2P

I had drafted this before the vote, and am pleased that many of the worries I had were dealt with in the Resolution, not least the exclusion of foreign occupation. I would also like to think that if my points on command and control were included, it might just have reduced the number of abstentions.

Deadlinepundit



We can accept that a patient with a brain tumour might desperately need surgery, but there is still cause for alarm if Jack the Ripper offers to operate. Both method and motive are open to question.

So while no person with a conscience wants Gaddafi to win his sanguinary battle of repression against his own people, there are more than enough doubts that the US is the appropriate specialist to call. However, like Jack the Ripper - they do have the knives. We should avoid the reflexive binary positions both of those who support any intervention in an Arab country and those who equally obdurately oppose any intervention by any Western power, anywhere.

In fact, ever since the 2005 General Assembly when Kofi Annan steered the UN General Assembly into accepting that that the Security Council’s remit over threats to peace and security extended to what was happening inside sovereign nations, there is legal grounds for Security Council intervention.

There is clearly present need, unless the world is prepared to stand by and watch massacres of disloyal Libyans. And of course, one of the problems with the US as a self-appointed instrument in this case is that Washington seems neutral about not dissimilar events in Bahrain, Yemen or even in Gaza, preferring to arm the perpetrators and provide some measure of diplomatic protection. The sudden US rediscovery of Libyan tyranny is also somewhat problematic, as indeed are its previous military attacks on Libya.

Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN spoke eloquently, and from her previous record, probably sincerely, about the need for intervention. However, a few weeks before she had with deep insincerity cast a veto expressing her own and American opinion on Israel’s repression and breaches of international law in the West Bank!

Even accepting the motive, method is a problem. Consistently in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the US has shown a predilection for high technology ariel warfare and shown a propensity to risk civilian life rather put its own military at risk. Even in Kosovo, which most of the locals consider gratefully to have been a “good” war, President Clinton’s refusal to countenance ground forces or risk American casualties by bombing from below 15,000 feet incurred unnecessary casualties and eroded international support, while not frightening Serb leader Milosevic in the slightest.

In Libya, it might be different. Clearly identifiable columns of government forces trailing along the few passable roads along the coast would make an easily identifiable targets. But US over-caution, in wanting to take out Libya’s negligible air defences before acting could easily involve serious mistakes and casualties. No one who saw the WikiLeaks video of the helicopter gunning down journalists in Baghdad is going take the sensitivity of the US military for granted. We do not want Benghazi destroyed to save it.

On the positive side, decisive intervention would send a clear message to Gaddafi’s forces, largely one might presume motivated by fear of reprisals from the regime that there were speedier and worse consequences than that, or indeed an eventual trip to International Criminal Court in The Hague.

As to motive, one of the reasons that Russia has been reluctant to consider a military option, apart from its own bugbears like Chechnya, has been Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s personal experience of American arrogance in times past. Moscow supported intervention against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait, and then as UN Ambassador he was consistently snubbed and humiliated by the US and UK as they pursued the resolutions, the sanctions, the air strikes and the rest, far beyond the intention of the resolutions or the will of the majority of the Security Council.


So, immediate surgery is needed. It would be best to find a more trusted surgeon, but if Jack the Ripper has the only scalpels, what do you do? There are two elements that could be considered in a UN resolution, both to get Russian and maybe even Chinese support, and to reassure many others around the world.

The first is to ensure a sunset clause. Any mandate for military action should have precise limitations both about the nature of operations and a time limit. It should return to the Council within days or weeks for a renewal of authority. Secondly, there is a need to ensure that there is some element of shared control over operations. After the Rwanda and Srebrenica debacles no one, including the UN Secretariat itself, would or should entrust this task to international civil servants. But a subcommittee of the Security Council, or even a revival of the long somnolent UN Military Staff Committee, of representatives of the Permanent Five members should provide some reassurance against irrational exuberance on the part of the Pentagon. The machinery is there just waiting reactivation. Indeed the Pentagon has a Military Staff Committee whose purpose is to liaise with the UN body. usun.state.gov/about/c31791.htm

Those who are opposed to intervention on principle will of course continue to do so. But the Libyan opposition, who have asked for help, are the ones who will pay the price for others’ high-mindedness. Pragmatic mandates could help.

Israel Unwilling to Apply the Same Law to Itself That It Demands Be Applied to Others

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

March 2011, Pages, 28-29, 32
United Nations
Israel Unwilling to Apply the Same Law to Itself That It Demands Be Applied to Others
By Ian Williams
(http://www.mideastweb.org/unpartition.htm)
"O wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!" wrote Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet. For those who need a translation, he prays for the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us after seeing a louse crawl out of a young lady's hair in church.
Observers of the Middle East have long noticed Israeli insouciance to the lice swarming in that country's head.
According to the commentary from pro-Israel government sources, it is unthinkable, provocative and anti-Semitic for states like almost the whole of Latin America to recognize Palestine—until they do, of course, in which case it immediately becomes a futile and wasted gesture. Israeli hasbara (propaganda) is indeed capable of believing three impossible, and contradictory, things before breakfast. Fortunately, Israel is not trying to agitate an American attack on Latin America, so countries there have some leeway.
In particular, the polemics from some Israeli think tanks against the idea of the U.N. recognizing a Palestinian State would surely benefit from Jehovah's largesse in this matter.
Alan Baker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, for example, solemnly intoned for the benefit of foreign diplomats and press that the recognition of a Palestinian state was illegal "as set out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, relating to a capability of governance, permanent population, defined territory, and capacity to enter into relations with other states." From 1985-89, before becoming Israel's ambassador to Canada, Baker was seconded by the Israeli government to the U.N.'s Department of Legal Affairs, where he seems to have survived despite his interpretation of international law being so notably at variance with that of everyone but Israel and its supporters.
Nothwithstanding his insistence on "permanent population, defined territory, and capacity to enter into relations with other states" for Palestinian recognition, Baker's time at the U.N. clearly was not spent in the archives. When Israel was admitted to the world body in 1949, if it had any recognized frontier at all it was the boundaries of the Jewish State demarcated by the commission that recommended partition, and explicitly excluded both parts of Jerusalem. This is why, of course, not one single member state now has an embassy to Israel in that city.
Israel's admission was delayed until the conclusion of armistice agreements with its neighbors, which came at heavy cost: the assassination of U.N. representative Count Folke Bernadotte by the party led by Yitzhak Shamir, which now, of course, rules Israel.
And that state at the time had a temporarily permanent population that included a majority of Arabs, but a much less permanent population of outsiders who were deemed to be automatic citizens. It is a little too late to call for nullification of Israel's accession to the U.N., although perhaps less tardy to remind the state of the promises it made on that accession to abide by U.N. decisions.
Baker also solemnly said that any attempt to secure recognition of Palestine was a violation of Palestinian commitments under the Oslo agreements. Of course, one would have to look hard in the Oslo agreements to see where they countenanced repeated Israeli military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza, assassinations and arrests of elected PA officials, blockading Gaza, and blowing up U.N. facilities.
And with hallmark chutzpah he solemnly accused the Palestinians of violating undertakings under "Article XXXI, para. 7, not to initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations." Unlike, of course, doubling the settler population since the agreements were signed. Indeed, so damning was a recent EU report on Israeli activities that European foreign ministers vetoed its publication—fruitlessly in the age of WikiLeaks since The Independent newspaper in Britain promptly leaked it. The report accused Israel of "restrictive zoning and planning, ongoing demolitions and evictions, an inequitable education policy, difficult access to health care, the inadequate provision of resources and investment," policies which it concluded had a demographic intent.
Describing the political consequences of Israeli policy in Jerusalem, the document added: "Over the past few years the changes to the city have run counter to the peace process. Attempts to exclusively emphasize the Jewish identity of the city threaten its religious diversity and radicalize the conflict, with potential regional and global repercussions."
In the face of this accurately depicted reality, Baker's breathtaking audacity, indeed mendacity, should be beyond satire. But across the world, some politicians, headline-writers and letter-writers will repeat it—and do so sincerely. After all, if one's worldview is that Israel is never wrong, then clearly reality must be ignored or adjusted accordingly.
In fact, it has been some years since I pointed out in this column that the status of Jerusalem can indeed be negotiated between the parties—but that their agreement has no validity until and unless the U.N. rescinds that partition resolution which made Jerusalem an international city under U.N. jurisdiction. It is indeed unfair and anomalous that the world's diplomats, by refusing to base embassies in Jerusalem, respect the residual authority of that resolution over the city, but forget the only legally sanctioned boundary between the Jewish and Arab states.
Baker invoked Brazil's words in the Security Council in 1967 to decry the Latin American states' recognition of Palestine "within the 1967 boundaries." He quotes them as saying, "Its acceptance does not imply that borderlines cannot be rectified as a result of an agreement freely concluded among the interested States. We keep constantly in mind that a just and lasting peace in the Middle East has necessarily to be based on secure permanent boundaries freely agreed upon and negotiated by the neighboring States."
Indeed, the pre-1967 boundaries were armistice lines without permanent legal foundation, and the Latin Americans, like the Palestinians, often invoke international law, since it is one of their defenses against neighboring bullies, notably the U.S. Everyone agrees that the 1967 boundaries are negotiable—but international law and the U.N. Charter also outlaw the acquisition of territory by force, which is why not one single country in the world has recognized Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, its legal title to the West Bank and Gaza, or even the Golan Heights.
But there is no rule saying Israel is entitled to keep the 1967 boundaries and then add more territory. Indeed, the Palestinians would be legally and morally justified (albeit at the risk of some questioning of their grip on reality) in demanding in negotiations a return to the original U.N. partition lines of 1947.
The Lake of Tiberias Strip
Also, to return to a theme the Palestinians seem to have forgotten, while the Golan Heights are indisputably occupied Syrian territory, the strip along the Lake of Tiberias is, under the Mandate boundaries, equally indisputably occupied Palestinian territory. The British and French had drawn up the boundaries and left a 10-meter strip—the beach, effectively—as part of Palestine to ensure what was then British control of the lake and the headwaters of the Jordan.
That strip was indeed allocated to the Jewish state in the U.N. partition plan, but one suspects that the Israelis would not be eager to cite that plan as definitive on the boundary front, since it would imply that their boundaries would shrink way behind the 1949 Armistice Line. In fact, to the south of Lake Tiberias the Syrians controlled more extensive Palestinian territory that was later designated a demilitarized zone. The IDF continually encroached on it, of course, but in 1949 Ralph Bunche sent a letter to Israel and Syria denying Israel's claims of sovereignty over the area to be included in the Armistice Agreement. In language that ironically foreshadowed current Israeli diplomacy he declared, "Questions of permanent boundaries, territorial sovereignty, customs, trade relations and the like must be dealt with in the ultimate peace agreement and not in the armistice agreement."
In 1967, the Israelis took the lot, and subsequently annexed the whole of the Golan Heights. But since Resolution 242 calls for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967, that presumably includes the Golan, and the strip of Mandatory Palestine and the DMZ, which should fall to the Palestinian State. At the very least, if the 1967 boundaries are to be negotiated, then these territories should be Palestine's to regain—or at least to be countered with equivalent concessions from the other side.
Over on the other coast, Lebanon raised the issue of U.N. help in demarcating the maritime boundary in the Mediterranean, where Beirut considers that it has claims to some of the natural gas fields Israel is claiming as its own. Indeed, a quick glance at a map suggests that the Lebanese do indeed have a point. However, the U.N. spokesman said—correctly—that Resolution 1701 only covered the U.N. delineating the land boundary between the two countries. Now Israel has become very upset because the U.N. Special Representative for Lebanon, Michael Williams has said—equally correctly—that the U.N. could help clarify the boundary.
In fact, not only are there clear legal principles, not least under the International Treaty on the Law of the Sea, for marking maritime boundaries, but there are fora, such as the Hamburg-based International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, and the International Court of Justice itself, where interpretations of those principles could be argued. Israel's distress at this suggests that it does indeed have some doubts about its legal claim to the full extent of the gas fields. As the American poet Robert Frost noted, "good fences make good neighbors." On land and at sea, it is in everyone's long term interest to agree upon boundaries—unless a party has designs to move the posts permanently.
Bringing together these issues, the Palestinians have been threatening to take two issues to the U.N. Firstly, to recognize Palestine as a state, as well over 100 U.N. members already have and secondly to condemn the illegal settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
It is a sad epithet on Obama's initial enthusiasm for building relations with the Muslim world that Washington seems to have promised Netanyahu to veto both. Perhaps in gratitude for the prime minister's compliance with oft-repeated and humiliating U.S. pleas for a mere settlement freeze?
It is a great opportunity missed. Despite its bluster, the Israeli government is worried about U.N. resolutions and not vetoing them would be a painless way for the U.S. to exercise some leverage on the recalcitrant Likudniks. If Hilary Clinton can condemn settlements, then why veto the U.N. Security Council doing the same? If President Obama can look forward to a Palestinian state, then why shouldn't the U.N. follow the wishes of a clear majority of its members?
Sadly, like Israeli legal exegesis, these are mysteries beyond understanding.