Friday, August 19, 2005

I think the New York Times got it right in an editorial on Monday.

"This morning Israel finally began withdrawing from the teeming, thirsty strip of land where it settled nearly 9,000 Jews in the middle of more than a million Arabs. Gaza has always been the ultimate example of the bankruptcy of Israel's settlement policy, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should be congratulated for finally doing what he and his predecessors should have done years ago."
I think the Times notes what this story is really about. And I say that because the pullout has gotten way too much media coverage in my opinion. Not because its not an important story, but because the coverage is mostly about the human aspect of the pullout -- "settlers" clinging to their homes. Okay, that's nice for one or two stories, but the rest is overkill. Shouldn't the story be about Israel finally leaving territory it has occupied illegally for 38 years? Even if you don't think the occupation is illegal, shouldn't the story then still be about the decision to pullout and implications for the future of Palestine instead of so many items about soliders pulling people out of their homes? All I'm saying is the historical import of this episode is mostly being ignored in favor of the human spectacle angle and that is a shame but sadly once again not surprising.

# posted 9:19 PM

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Remember when John Kerry called Dubya out because he was scared to go before the 9/11 comission? Bush was so frightened that he only wanted to appear for an hour before the comission investigating the event that he loves to use to define his presidency. Kerry zinged "If the president of the United States can find time to go to a rodeo, he can find the time to do more than one hour in front of a commission that is investigating what happened to America's intelligence."

I'm not one of those that buys the "working vacation" thing going on in Crawford right now. If this were a president that burned the midnight oil, then I'd say he deserves a two-hour bike ride while American servicemembers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So in the spirit of John Kerry, if this president has time to take a bike ride with Lance Armstrong, he's got time to meet with Cindy Sheehan.

# posted 7:38 PM

Robert Scheer also weighs in on the White House's confused Iran policy. Though he's headed in the right direction, he gets some things wrong.

The latest exhibition of this approach was President Bush's thinly veiled threat this weekend to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities or even invade the country as a last resort, sparked by Tehran's troubled negotiations with the West over its nuclear program.

It is telling that Bush made the comments on Israeli television, which makes them exponentially more provocative. Israel is, of course, not only Iran's archenemy but is also believed to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the immediate region.

It is as if Bush is not content to rattle his saber at Tehran's hard-liners; he also wants to ensure that he infuriates and publicly embarrasses even moderate Iranians.
Excellent point. This smacks of Dick Cheney.

Neither the security of the Iranians nor of the world is enhanced by any nuclear program that includes weapon capabilities.
Wrong. Iran's security is enhanced by nuclear weapons. If Iran were discoved to have a couple of off-the-shelf nuclear weapons bought from Pakistan, you would never hear such belligerence as "all options are on the table" from Dubya. Nuclear weapons are a powerful deterrent whether you like that or not.

If Tehran refuses to be transparent and open to inspections, the U.N. Security Council can take up the issue of imposing sanctions.
This is the media parroting White House threats. The "problem" is Iran has been transparent. The only thing that could be referred to the Security Council are a few past trangressions. The media keep implying that if Iran refuses the current offers of the EU-3, they can be referred to the Security Council. That's really misleading. It's like your landlord saying that if you're late on your rent again, he's taking you to court.

To hear Ken Pollack explain this in terms the media cleary has trouble with, listen to this NPR story.

# posted 9:15 AM

Fareed Zakaria on the poverty of Bush's Iran policy.

# posted 9:08 AM

Thursday, August 11, 2005

The Washington Post is way late in its editorial today on the crisis in Niger.

If Niger's largely unpolitical emergency cannot trigger prompt sympathy, it's time to rethink the way relief is organized. The world depends on an ad hoc, pass-the-hat system; there's no standing ability to respond quickly when the first signs of disaster appear. This raises the cost of action. In the Sudanese province of Darfur last year, donors didn't provide enough relief before the onset of the rainy season, so part of their belated assistance had to be airlifted into the region at enormous expense. Similarly in Niger, the United Nations estimates that saving a life would have cost a dollar of aid back in November but may cost $80 or more now.
There's no mention in the editorial about the role of the most widely read newspapers in the world ignoring the crisis and the effect that had on getting to governments to act. What a surprise!

# posted 10:22 AM

Friday, August 05, 2005

Finally!

Today three major news outlets all front the Niger famine story. Coincidence. I think so. Perhaps because CNN has featured Christiane Amanpour Anderson Cooper from Niger all week. Today the NYT, LAT, and NPR all ran "front page" stories (in the case of NPR it was "Morning Edition") on Niger. Why so late to the story? In summarizing the NYT story (in a couple of sentences) for Slate's "Today's Papers", Eric Umansky cherry picks a misleading quote

Though a recent drought has made things worse, the country has perennial problems—primitive farming, poor health care, etc. Perhaps that helps explain the international community's response to the famine, which by May consisted of "7,000 tons of food and one $323,000 donation, from Luxembourg."
So one might surmise that because of this news outlets could be excused for ignoring the story. Of course when have the media in any years past reported on this problem such that they can take the high road of "we warn about this every year"? The NYT article goes on to report that the perennial bad conditions in Niger are besidet the point (Umansky doesn't mention this). This year is much worse. "That it is a perennial problem...in no way minimizes the urgency of Niger's current disaster - erratic rainfall and severe food shortages in the agricultural and herding belts where many of Niger's 11 million to 12 million people live. Together, they are pushing the death rate for small children even higher than Niger's customary one-in-four level, and killing off the livestock upon which the nation's nomads depend."

It's great that the mainstream U.S. media has finally caught on. But let's not try to minimize the situation by suggesting it's regularity or rationalize being late to the story. After all, if it's only business as usual then why put the story on the front page?

# posted 10:10 PM

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Donald Rumsfeld is the latest high-ranking official/pundit/hand-waver to put forth the "there's no link between the bombings in London and the war in Iraq, because I say so" argument. Rumsfeld was speaking before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and hoped no one there would notice the illogic of his "argument."

"Some people seem confused about the motivations and intentions of terrorists and about our coalition's defense of the still-young democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said. "They seem to cling to the discredited theory that the recent attacks in London and elsewhere ... are really in retaliation for the war in Iraq or for the so-called occupation of Afghanistan. That is nonsense.

"The United States and its allies did not provoke the terrorists," Rumsfeld emphasized. "The terrorists attacked America. There was no war in Iraq or Afghanistan when America was attacked on Sept. 11th, and there was no war in Iraq or Afghanistan when terrorists attacked Americans in the Beirut barracks in 1983, in the Khobar Towers (in Saudi Arabia) in 1996, or the African embassies in 1998, or when they attacked the USS Cole in the year 2000."
This is stupid and insulting. It again require one to subscribe to the notion that terrorism has nothing to do with any state's foreign policy. And this other line of argument which conservatives are trying now is to point out that the Iraq war happened after 9/11. Huh? This line of reasoning requires us to believe that all terrrorists are the same, come from the same place, have the same grievances, and are generally monolithic. Therefore, "the terrorists" we are fighting who attacked us on 9/11 are the same terrorist that commit every terrorist act from then on. It's really insulting that "smart" people (Rumsfeld, not Bush) stand up and try (and generally succeed) in pushing this argument.

It's even more remarkable because people who are actually experts on these sorts of things say just the opposite.
IRAQ has become “a dominant issue” for Islamic extremists in Britain, MI5 has admitted.

In a fresh analysis of the threat facing Britain from international terrorist groups, the acknowledgement underlines the view of the security and intelligence services that Iraq has provided an extra motivating force for terrorists.

Contributing to the agency’s official website after the July 7 bombings, under the heading “Threat to the UK from international terrorism”, a team of MI5 analysts concludes: “Though they have a range of aspirations and ‘causes’, Iraq is a dominant issue for a range of extremist groups and individuals in the UK and Europe.”
But you know MI5 -- a bunch of lefty, terrorist sympathizers.

# posted 10:00 PM

Monday, August 01, 2005

CNN discovers there's a famine in Niger

Eight months in the making -- don't wait for CNN to explain why they are so late. But to show how serious they are about it now, they sent Wolf Blitzter Anderson Cooper.

# posted 10:25 PM

Oh my god! India has nuclear weapons!

There's a thread running over at Daily Kos that I just have to comment on. It concerns the recent deal the White House made to supply India with civilian nuclear technology. (This is a big deal because sanctions prohibit this because India has detonated a nuclear explosion and is not a nuclear weapons state within the Nonproliferation Treaty.) The uproar center on this Reuters article.

A recent U.S.-India nuclear agreement was so hastily concluded the Bush administration is only now beginning to figure out how to implement it in the face of tough questions from the U.S. Congress and nonproliferation experts.

The agreement, announced July 18 after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met President Bush at the White House, upends decades-old nonproliferation rules and will require changes in U.S. law and international policy.

...

With the new deal, the United States in effect accepts India as a nuclear-weapon state.
I'm not sure what this last line means or what all the uproar is about. If you want to get excited, that time was right after September 11, 2001 when the U.S. rolled back sanctions on both India and Pakistan imposed after their nuclear tests in 1998. (It's fashionable to forget that India's first "peaceful" nuclear explosion was in 1974). That was the point where the U.S. accepted India as a nuclear weapons state.

A lot of the comments at Daily Kos seem to equate civilian nuclear technology with nuclear weapons -- i.e. with sharing the secrets of miniturizing warheads. Like this one: "This way india can test our new weapon designs, or detonate old weapons to test if they still work, without the embarassment of reneging on another treaty." I didn't realize that the U.S. gave away nuclear weapons designs, to anyone. Please. And there wouldn't be any huge deal if they did. India is an ally. Its nuclear program exists as a deterrent to Pakistan. They have already mastered the nuclear fuel cycle. There's not much the U.S. can do to help along its nuclear program except make it more cost-effective. Sure it's a bit unsavory and hypocritical and undermines the nonproliferation regime. But those glorious days ended after 9/11. That's when the outrage should have come out. I'm not saying I'm in favor of this deal. But the realpolitik essence of it is the norm now. Why are these people so suprised by it? (Remember Israel??? And get your facts straight on nuclear technology.)

# posted 9:01 PM

The Washington Post editorial page today sort of weighs in on a pending deal in Colombia that would

"grant limited immunity to thousands of right-wing fighters known as "paramilitaries." In exchange for turning in weapons and disclosing information about their organization and financial assets, the militants would be eligible to receive quick trials and prison terms limited to a maximum of eight years. Those involved in drug trafficking, as many of the paramilitary groups have been, would be exempted from extradition to the United States."
I think this disturbs the editorial page. I say, I think because what follows the above quote is a form of the now ubiquitous he said, she said journalism. And the editorial doesn't seem to understand or at least doesn't explain the complexity of Colombia's civil conflict.

has the Bush administration's support but has drawn objections in Congress, both from Democrats and Republicans.

Part of the resistance comes from representatives disturbed by the idea that the paramilitaries would be held less than fully accountable for crimes that include massacres and acts of terrorism in addition to cocaine trafficking.

...

If the demobilization plan fails, Colombia will have no choice but to return to fighting -- and paramilitary leaders who continue to traffic drugs will once again face extradition to the United States. In the meantime, the United States ought to do what it can to give this crucial initiative by a democratic ally every chance to succeed.
Pretty tepid support. Where has the Post been on this issue? We love to have discussions in the abstract about American foreign policy and grand strategy? Is American an empire? Let's have a semantic discussion and beat that dead horse.

Here's an idea let's discuss policy. Why doesn't the Washington Post run editorials suggesting what to do in Colombia? This isn't a new problem. The insurgency in Colombia has been simmering for decades. Left wing insurgents make inroads, then right wing paramilitaries crack down. Let's not forget the Colombian government's historical ties to some of those pararmilitaries. I didn't read any of that in the editorial. Let's have a discussion about policy. Let's stop waiting until a situation reaches a tipping point and then reporting on what different sides think about the less than perfect solution. Darfur? Niger? (Hint: Iran is next. Get to work).

# posted 7:13 PM