Would isolation of the US persuade Obama not to veto?
By Alan Hart | January 23, 2011
Despite strong US opposition, a proposed resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank did make it to the UN Security Council. It was not put to a vote and no vote is expected for some time, if ever, because of the probability as things stand of an American veto. But given growing global support for the resolution, there is a case for wondering if President Obama can remain Zionist-like in his own implicit defiance of international law on Israel’s behalf.
Introduced by Lebanon, the resolution states that “Israeli settlements established in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace”. And it demands that Israel cease “immediately and completely” not only all settlement construction in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, but also “all other measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the territory, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”
US position ridiculous
Washington had hoped that signalling its opposition to the proposed resolution would be enough to cause its Palestinian and other Arab sponsors to back away from taking it to the Security Council. Deputy American UN Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said the US opposed bringing the settlement issue to the Council “because such action moves us no closer to a goal of a negotiated final settlement and could even undermine progress towards it”. She also said the Security Council should not be the forum for resolving the issues at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In my view that has to be among the most ridiculous statements any diplomat has ever made in any place at any time.
When the Arab sponsors discovered that they do have testicles and refused to be intimidated by Uncle Sam, the result was a huge embarrassment for Obama because, as noted by Tony Karon in an article for Time, the resolution’s substance “largely echoes the administration’s own stated positions.” In Haaretz under the headline “Settlements issue isn’t Israel’s problem, it’s Obama’s”, Natasha Mozgovaya was more explicit. The resolution has put Washington “in the awkward position of having to veto a resolution it absolutely agrees with”.
That was why a number of former senior US diplomats and officials wrote to Obama urging him to support the resolution. They included former Reagan Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci and former assistant secretaries of state Thomas Pickering and James Dobbins. They said the resolution is not incompatible with negotiating an end to the conflict and does not deviate from the US commitment to Israel’s security. They added:
The proposed resolution is consistent with existing and established US policies; deploying a veto would severely undermine US credibility and interests, placing us firmly outside of the international consensus, and further diminishing our ability to mediate this conflict.
USA internationally isolated
How far outside the international consensus the US already is on account of its unconditional support for Israel right or wrong was demonstrated by the fact that the resolution attracted the support of 120 nations. Diplomats were certain that the US was the only one of the five permanent members on the 15-country Security Council with veto power that would have vetoed if the resolution had been put to a vote when it was introduced. In other words, without a US veto it would have passed. That would have more or less confirmed Israel’s pariah status in much of the world and just might have been a game-changer.
In contrast to the Zionist lobby in America which has naturally been urging – ordering? – Obama to veto, J Street, the “dovish” Jewish advocacy group which is pro-Israel and more or less anti-AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], is among those who understand that a veto would not be in America’s own best interests. Or Israel’s, despite what its deluded leaders assert to the contrary. In a statement J Street said:
As a pro-Israel organization and as Americans, we advocate for what we believe to be in the long-term interests of the state of Israel and of the United States… Ongoing settlement expansion runs counter to the interests of both countries and against commitments Israel itself has made. While we hope never to see the state of Israel publicly taken to task by the United Nations, we cannot support a US veto of a resolution that closely tracks long-standing American policy and that appropriately condemns Israeli settlement policy”.
Because J Street almost certainly speaks for far more silent and troubled American Jews than AIPAC does, that’s quite an important statement.
The advocacy group Americans for Peace Now was more explicit in its message to Obama. It not only urged him to avoid vetoing the resolution, it also said this:
It is indefensible that the Netanyahu government, heedless of the damage settlement activity does to Israel’s own interests and indifferent to the Obama administration’s peace efforts, has not only refused to halt settlement activity, but has opened the floodgates, including in the most sensitive areas of East Jerusalem. In this context, the move by the United Nations Security Council to censure Israel’s settlement activity should surprise no one… Vetoing this resolution would conflict with four decades of US policy. It would contribute to the dangerously naive view that Israeli settlement policies do no lasting harm to Israel. And it would send a message to the world that the US is not only acquiescing to Israel’s actions, but is implicitly supporting them.
It might well have been their fear of a Tunisian domino effect that helped to embolden the regimes of the sponsoring Arab states to defy a US administration on this occasion. Their challenge to America’s unconditional support for Israel was, as Tony Karon noted, “a low-cost gesture that will play well on the restive street”. At least for a while, I add. (The truth about the Arab street is that for the past 40 years very many people on it have been humiliated and angered not only by Israel’s arrogance of power and American support for it, but also by the complete failure of their own governments to use the leverage they do have to put real pressure on the US to oblige Israel to end its occupation of all the Arab territory it grabbed in 1967.)
Crunch time for Obama?
If the sponsoring Arab regimes have the will to keep the heat on Washington over the resolution and insist that there must be a vote on it at some point in the not too distant future, and if the number of nations who support the resolution stays firm and better still increases, crunch time for Obama on the Israel-Palestine conflict will arrive.
If and when it does he will have three options: to veto; to order America’s vote in the Security Council to be cast for the resolution; or to abstain. An American abstention would have the same practical effect as a “Yes” vote – the resolution would be passed.
A veto would protect Obama from the wrath of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress. But it would also propel America further down the road to isolation, perhaps to the point where, like Israel, it was regarded as a pariah state by much of the world. Can Obama or any American president really afford that?
But an American vote for the resolution or even an abstention would, of course, put Obama into head-on confrontation with the Zionist lobby. Could he come out of it a winner (and, some will add, remain alive)?
My crystal ball doesn’t tell me the answer, but it does indicate how he could be the first American president to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on America policy for the Middle East. If he went over the heads of Congress and used his rhetorical skill to explain to his people why it is not in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel right or wrong, there’s a chance that he could win the argument. Americans are not stupid. What they are, most of them, is extremely gullible because of the way they have been misinformed, lied to, by a mainstream media which, for a number of reasons, are content to peddle Zionist propaganda.
It’s your call, Mr President. The fate of the region – the Middle East – and quite possibly the whole world will be determined by it.
Footnote
If the US endorses the Whitewash Israeli inquiry into Israel’s deadly attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla last May, we’ll know that the prospects of Obama putting America’s own interest first at crunch time are very, very remote, to say the least.
A State of Permanent Human Bondage
By Malcom Lagauche | January 19, 2011
The goal of Desert Storm was to destroy the country of Iraq under the guise of liberating Kuwait. In February 1991, during the height of U.S. bombing, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark visited Iraq and reported his findings. At that time, few photos had come from Iraq showing the devastation. Most reporters left Iraq on the eve of the bombing campaign and spent their time in Saudi Arabia listening to the daily propaganda given by the U.S. military. They became so bored that they began to interview each other.
What Clark saw was not pretty. He stated:
The effect of the bombing, if continued, will be the destruction of much of the physical and economic base for life in Iraq. The purpose of the bombing can only be explained rationally as the destruction of Iraq as a viable state for a generation or more.
Clark’s message was not widely reported. After all, the U.S. version of events stated that the only reason for the aggression was to remove Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait. The lack of coverage of what was occurring in Iraq was convenient for the U.S. because it allowed the destruction of Iraq to continue with no world outcry.
After the bombing ceased, pictures began making their way to the outside world. When this information reached the U.S., the administration called it lies and propaganda. At other times, it accused Iraq of destroying its own institutions and blaming it on U.S. bombs. Once people from outside Iraq began to visit the country, the blatant U.S. lies were exposed. The following is a list of the numbers of facilities destroyed during the 42-day bombing campaign. It was compiled and published by the Iraqi Reconstruction Bureau:
· Schools and scholastic facilities — 3960
· Universities, labs, dormitories — 40
· Health facilities (including hospitals, clinics, medical warehouses) — 421
· Telephone operations, communication towers, etc. — 475
· Bridges, buildings, housing complexes — 260
· Warehouses, shopping centers, grain silos — 251
· Churches and mosques — 159
· Dams, pumping stations, agricultural facilities — 200
· Petroleum facilities (including refineries) — 145
· General services (shelters, sewage treatment plants, municipalities) — 830
· Houses — 10,000 to 20,000
In April 1991, a fact-finding team from Greenpeace visited Iraq and nobody was prepared for the display of massive devastation. When Greenpeace issued its report, it said Iraq had been bombed back to a pre-industrial era. The report added, “New technology did not make the U.S. military better at preventing destruction, it just made it more efficient at destruction itself.”
The U.S. press ignored most of the reports by various groups that visited Iraq after Desert Storm. The few words reported, along with the absence of photos, assured a lack of public outcry condemning the slaughter.
The massacre should not have surprised those who followed incidents leading to Desert Storm. As early as September 1990, a high-up military person mapped the plans for the invasion. On September 16, 1990, General Dugan stated that the proposed plans for combat included the destruction of the Iraqi civilian economy and infrastructure. At that time, no one could envisage the U.S. attacking Iraq because the Iraqi soldiers were in Kuwait and the U.S. demanded their exit. Most people thought, if there was to be a war, it would be conducted in Kuwait, not Baghdad. General Dugan was immediately removed from office. The Bush administration negated Dugan’s claims and discredited him. In hindsight, we see that Dugan’s testimony was about the only truth we heard from the U.S. government or military at that time. He let the cat out of the bag, but government damage control quickly led the people to believe he made up the scenarios he predicted.
For the first week of Desert Storm, everyone seemed to be mesmerized by the “smart bombs” that were going down chimneys and smashing through the windows of weapons warehouses. When the odd person asked about civilians being hit, the standard response was, “We’re not targeting civilians.” What we were not told was that 93% of the bombs dropped were “dumb bombs” and the civilian infrastructure of Iraq was being destroyed. Only about 30 to 40% of the dumb bombs hit their targets. The others randomly created havoc by killing civilians and destroying Iraq’s cities and towns.
After Desert Storm, some military people admitted the real nature of the attacks. Air Force General Tony McPeak stated on March 20, 1991, “I’ve got photographic evidence of several where the pilot just acquired the wrong target.” When asked why that information had not come forth earlier, he added, “It ain’t my call. I made some recommendations about this; it got turned around, quite frankly.”
Those who questioned the U.S. government’s reports of only hitting military targets had their fears verified on January 22, 1991. Pictures of a destroyed baby milk factory in the region of Abu Ghraib were broadcast worldwide. Many people were aghast at the bombing of a civilian industry crucial for the existence of youngsters.
The Pentagon immediately went into high gear to try to dispel the protests of those who questioned such barbaric actions. The administration stated that it was a biological weapons plant. Colin Powell said”
It is not an infant formula factory, no more than the Rabta chemical plant in Libya made aspirin. It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are sure — and we have taken it out.
The administration came up with the excuse that “Baby Milk Factory” signs around the plant were written in English and Arabic and they had just been mounted after the bombing to try to make people think it was a baby formula factory. The American public bought the excuse.
The public never researched to discover that many signs in Iraq included both English and Arabic versions because of the substantial English-speaking population who worked in Iraq prior to Desert Storm. The sign at the baby milk factory had been in place for several years prior to its bombing. Peter Arnett of CNN stated after Desert Storm that the same factory and sign were evident in a documentary that CNN produced in the late 1980s.
Nestlé of Switzerland is a leading producer of infant foods. A spokesman for the company said, “We know this was a state-built infant formula plant.” Company officials said they had regularly observed its construction in the past, “because we like to be aware of the competition.”
U.S. audiences rarely heard or saw what other countries reported concerning Desert Storm. A British TV show, “Panorama,” was broadcast on March 25, 1991 which included an interview with General Leonard Perroots, a consultant to U.S. intelligence in Desert Storm. He addressed the bombing of the baby milk factory and he quickly put the matter to rest as he said, “We made a mistake.”
The bombing of the baby milk factory put the world on alert that the information broadcast at the daily military briefings was untruthful. At that time, those who opposed Desert Storm were shocked at the widespread destruction in Iraq. They wondered how the U.S. public, which usually would have treated such barbaric designs with disdain, had acquiesced to cheering such actions. The answer lies in the demonizing of Iraq and its president, Saddam Hussein.
In George Bush’s Thanksgiving speech to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in 1990, he stated:
Every day that passes brings Saddam one step closer to realizing his goal of a nuclear weapons arsenal, and that’s why more and more your mission is marked by a real sense of urgency. You know, no one knows exactly who they may be aimed at down the road, but we know this for sure, he’s never possessed a weapon he didn’t use.
At the time of his speech, Bush knew that Iraq was at least five years away from developing its first crude atomic weapon, yet he made it sound as though Iraq was on the verge of obtaining a comprehensive nuclear arsenal. In further speeches, he suggested that in six months, Iraq would be a nuclear threat to the world. The myth of an Iraqi nuclear warehouse was a prime excuse for Bush II invading Iraq in 2003. And, to this day, many U.S. citizens believe Iraq possessed nuclear weapons.
Even after the bombing of the baby milk factory, the U.S. denied bombing civilians or buildings used in civilian industries. When the Iraqi government stated that a village or suburb was hit, the U.S. government would say the Iraqis weren’t telling the truth. Because of the demonizing of Iraq, most Americans thought all Iraqi information consisted of lies.
On January 31, an independent source announced that the U.S. was bombing civilians. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry stated that coalition planes had bombed oil trucks and civilians moving along the highway from Iraq to Jordan. Again, the U.S. denied the allegations, but some eyes were being opened.
In Iran, reports were made stating that the bombing was so intense that the ground in Iran was shaking. On February 5, 1991, an official in Basra described “a hellish nightmare” of fires and smoke so dense that eyewitnesses say the sun had not been clearly visible for days at a time; that the bombing was leveling entire city blocks; and that there were bomb craters the size of football fields and an untold number of casualties.
On February 7, the military still denied that civilians were being targeted. When asked about the allegations, General Richard Neal told the press, “It’s a target-rich environment and there’s plenty of other targets we can attack.”
While Neal was making his statement, Ramsey Clark was traveling throughout Iraq but his assessment differed greatly from that of the general. In describing the reality in Iraq, Clark stated:
Over the 2,000 miles of highway, roads and streets we traveled, we saw scores, probably several hundred, destroyed vehicles. There were oil tank trucks, tractor trailers, lorries, pickup trucks, a public bus, a mini bus, a taxi cab and many private cars destroyed by aerial bombardments and strafing. We found no evidence of military equipment or supplies in the vehicles.
Along the roads, we saw several oil refinery fires and numerous gasoline stations destroyed. One road-repair camp had been bombed on the road to Amman (Jordan). As with the city streets in residential and commercial areas where we witnessed damage, we did not see a single damaged or destroyed military vehicle, tank, armored car, personnel carrier or other military equipment, or evidence of any having been removed.
Basra was probably the hardest-hit city during Desert Storm. There was evidence of weapons that are normally used against military personnel having been deployed in civilian areas of Basra: cluster bombs. Clark saw this evidence and reported:
Small, anti-personnel bombs were alleged to have fallen here (Basra) and we saw what appeared to be one that did not explode imbedded in the rubble. We were shown the shell of a “mother” bomb which carries the small fragmentation bombs.
When he left Iraq in February 1991, Clark gave an overview of the situation:
United States annual military expenditures alone are four times the gross national product of Iraq. The use of highly-sophisticated military technology with mass destructive power against an essentially defenseless civilian population of a poor nation is one of the greatest tragedies of our times.
A few days after Clark left Iraq, an incident occurred that astonished the world. On February 13, a pair of Stealth F-117 bombers dropped two 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs on a concrete building in the Amiryah section of suburban Baghdad. The case-hardened bombs were directed to penetrate the steel reinforced roof and detonate inside. It was a civilian bomb shelter.
The reports of the number of civilians killed in the building — more than half were children — ranged from 400 to more than 1,000. Because the bodies were so badly burned and melted, no one will ever know the exact total.
The U.S. administration first proclaimed that the target was an Iraqi command-and-control post and the dead were Iraqi military personnel. The cameras eventually showed charred bodies of women and children, so the U.S. story had to be revised. The administration then said that the building was a military target in which Saddam Hussein placed civilians to protect the military personnel. Dick Cheney, then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, stated, “Saddam might be resorting to a practice of deliberately placing civilians in harm’s way.”
The U.S. government scrambled to try to explain the massacre of so many people inside a civilian bomb shelter. General Neal stated the government’s case as he said, “From a personal point of view, I’m outraged that civilians might have been placed in harm’s way, and I blame the Iraqi leadership for that.” Unfortunately, many Americans believed Neal’s twisted excuse of blaming the Iraqi leadership for the incineration of hundreds of people by deadly superbombs.
Within a few hours, the truth emerged. The Amiryah bomb shelter was built for civilian defense during the Iran-Iraq War. The engineer who designed it appeared on television and told the world there was no way it could be a military asset.
After the lies were put to rest, it became evident that the U.S. had either mistaken the target as a military venue, or it had deliberately destroyed it knowing it was a bomb shelter. Since February 14, 1991, the subject of the bombing of the Amiryah bomb shelter has been left unspoken in the U.S.
Those inside the bomb shelter died horrific deaths. First, a 2,000-pound bomb crashed through the shelter, creating a massive tunnel in which the second 2,000-pound projectile entered. Then, both exploded, leaving a huge hole. Those who died saw the first bomb and had a few seconds of life left before the second burrowed its way into the shelter and discharged.
Despite the ensuing international outcry about the destruction of the Amiryah shelter, the U.S. did not cut back on the bombing. Actually, the bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure increased. According to Greenpeace in a report called On Impact::
Despite numerous statements of U.S. military leaders that the Iraqi army had been defeated, as well as some confidence that contact between Baghdad and the front in the south had been severed, communications targets, mostly serving civilian functions, continued to be struck and re-struck to the end. If fact, according to Air Force Times, during the final ground phase, “Baghdad was targeted for some of the heaviest bombardments since January 17.”
The cease-fire did not solve all the problems for the civilians of Iraq. Shortly after, George Bush called for the Iraqi people to “take matters into their own hands” in ridding Iraq of its government. For the next few weeks, some Shi’ites in the south, heavily aided and infiltrated by Iranians, wreaked havoc, while certain Kurdish factions started an insurrection in the north of Iraq. There was bloody fighting and at one time, the Shi’ite and Kurdish elements controlled 16 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Both movements eventually were brought under control by the Iraqi government. Not content with destroying Iraq by bombing it back to a “pre-industrial era,” Bush prompted even more destruction by urging factions within Iraq to overthrow the government. He promised both groups military assistance from the U.S., but none came.
In April 1991, the outside world saw Iraq for the first time since it had been destroyed by U.S. bombs and missiles. The nightmarish pictures started to appear. They showed a country that was bombed so heavily that the most common sites were craters and twisted, melted and devastated structures.
Ramsey Clark made another trip to Iraq to document the devastation. Once there, he noticed an ongoing operation that was meant to terrorize the population:
On our second night there, and several other times, at about 2:30 a.m., U.S. jets flew over the city (Baghdad), deliberately creating an enormous sonic boom that sounded as if the bombing had started again. The next morning, people would describe how their children had awakened in terror.
Clark chronicled the civilian industries that were demolished during the bombing of Iraq:
Twenty minutes outside the city (Baghdad), in Al Taji, we saw the country’s largest frozen meat storage and distribution center; one of two main centers for the entire country, which also included a laboratory for testing meat quality. It had been completely obliterated by the bombing. The center held 14,000 tons of frozen meat. The plant had been bombed three times, at 8:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m., and workers inside the plant had been killed.
All over Iraq, Clark saw the same mindless destruction. In Babylon, he visited a textile weaving plant that was totally destroyed. The plant was bombed at 3:00 in the afternoon and two women were killed working at their stations. According to the plant manager, Mr. Hassan, the factory was built by an Italian company and the new structure next door, containing no equipment, was untouched.
Dr. Al Qaysi, an Iraqi medical official, put everything in perspective when he stated:
No home remained untouched, no family unharmed, if not through death in the war, through malnutrition, disease, or new-found poverty. This is a return to colonialism. The U.S. is asking for terms like another Treaty of Versailles. Iraq is dependent on the outside world to repair its infrastructure and I fear Iraq will be in a state of permanent human bondage.
The Iraqi Minister of Trade, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh, realized the enormity of the task of trying to rebuild Iraq, particularly with the encompassing trade embargo in place. Despite the U.S. administration maintaining that Iraq was able to import humanitarian goods, there was virtually no way to obtain food, medicine, and parts to repair destroyed machinery. Saleh stated, “If it was possible, the Bush administration would have prevented the air from coming in.”
Self-fulfilling prophecy: Dennis Ross Doesn’t Think Anything Can Get Accomplished
By Ali Gharib | Lobe Log | January 19th, 2011
I was struck by an article by Nathan Guttman in the legendary Jewish Daily Forward about Dennis Ross and George Mitchell jockeying for the position of Obama Administration’s point-person in the Middle East peace process. The whole thing is a fascinating read, but this line really jumped out at me:
Others have also described Ross as more skeptical [than Mitchell] about the chances of peace, based on his decades-long experience with trying to bring together the parties.
I don’t want to get all new-agey, but if you think something is difficult or impossible to do, the chances of being able to do it are greatly diminished from the get-go.
So why does this Ross guy keep getting jobs that he doesn’t think are possible? I picked up Ross’ book off of my shelf here in D.C., and it amazed me how many times he says you cannot make any kind of deal with the Iranians. Then, Obama put him in charge of making a deal with the Iranians. Ross, we now learn, doubts that a peace deal can be reached in Israel-Palestine, and Obama gives him a job making peace in Israel-Palestine.
On the Middle Eastern conflict, Ross’s credentials for the job are impeccable. After all, he’s been involved in decades — decades! — of failed peace processes. Ross has worked at the Washington Institute (WINEP), an AIPAC-formed think tank, and also chaired the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), an Israeli organization dedicated to “ensure the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization.” (The organization seems to oppose intermarriage with racist-sounding statements like “cultural collectivity cannot survive in the long term without primary biological foundations of family and children.”)
Ross was thought responsible for crafting Obama’s presidential campaign AIPAC speech — yes, the one with the line about an “undivided” Jerusalem that would spike a peace deal if implemented. Ross later reiterated the notion of an undivided Jerusalem as a “fact” in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
Ross was recently in the news following a secret but not-so-secret visit to the Middle East, which was fleshed out on Politico by Laura Rozen. Rozen was the reporter who carried a rather shocking anonymous allegation about Ross:
“[Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this administration.”
In an update, Rozen carried NSC CoS Denis McDonough’s defense of Ross:
“The assertion is as false as it is offensive,” McDonough said Sunday by e-mail. ”Whoever said it has no idea what they are talking about. Dennis Ross’s many decades of service speak volumes about his commitment to this country and to our vital interests, and he is a critical part of the president’s team.”
But the new Forward article, as MJ Rosenberg points out, backs up the notion that Ross was extremely concerned with “advocat[ing]” for Israel. The source is none other than Israel-advocate extraordinaire Abe Foxman (who doesn’t negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government):
“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for ‘advocate.’”
Do you get the feeling that Ross advocated for Iran? Or, as the Forward article put it (with my strikethrough), has “strong ties to Israel” Iran? Guttman writes that Ross is considered to have a “reputation of being pro-Israeli.” As for Iran? Not quite: Ross’s Iran experience seems to boil down to heading United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group that pushes for harsher, broad-based sanctions against Iran (despite a stated goal to not hurt ordinary Iranians) and that has criticized Obama’s policy of engagement. Ross left the gig, as with JPPI, when he took the job with the administration.
The group also launched an error-filled fear-mongering video (while Ross was still there; he appears in the video) and a campaign to get New York hotels to refuse to host Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he comes to town each year for the U.N. General Assembly, which hardly lays the groundwork for good diplomacy.
Oh, and about the Iran engagement designed by Ross: The administration’s approach has been questioned by several leading Iran experts. “It is unlikely that the resources and dedication needed for success was given to a policy that the administration expected to fail,” National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi observed. In December, Ross publicly defended the administration against charges that engagement was less than sincere from the U.S. side. But it is Ross himself who has apparently long held a pessimistic outlook on engagement.
Ross’s 2007 book, “Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World“, is fascinating in light of where Ross has come from, and where he’s taken Iran policy. I was struck at a five-page section of the first chapter called “Neoconservatism vs. Neoliberalism,” in which Ross writes, “[Neoconservatism’s] current standard-bearers — such as Richard Perle, David Frum, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan — are serious thinkers with a clear worldview,” (with my links).
Later, in several long sections about the run-up to George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Ross notes that Paul Wolfowitz was highly focused on Iraq before and after 9/11. He also mentions “political difficulties” in the push for war: “Once [Bush] realized there might be a domestic problem in acting against Iraq, his administration focused a great deal of energy and effort on mobilizing domestic support for military action.”
But Ross never acknowledges that some of his neoconservative “serious thinkers” — such as Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine — were involved in the concerted campaign to mislead Americans in an effort to push the war… just as the same figures are pushing for an attack on Iran. Frum, who does seem capable of serious thinking, was the author of the “axis of evil” phrasing of Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address. The moniker included both Iraq and Iran, despite the fact that the latter was, until the speech, considered a potential ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. (Marsha Cohen chronicled an Israeli effort to squash the alliance, culminating in Frum’s contribution to the Bush speech.)
Ross never mentions that neocon Douglas Feith, a political appointee in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), was responsible for cherry-picking intelligence about Iraq within the administration, and whose office was feeding cooked information to the public via Scooter Libby in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Through Libby, the distorted information made its way into the hands of the Standard and sympathetic journalists like ideologue Judith Miller at the New York Times. In August of 2003, Jim Lobe wrote (with my links):
[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA [the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia bureau] and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. …
Other appointees who worked with… both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud ‘Jerusalem Post’; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.
Ross has personal experience with many OSP veterans, working with them at WINEP and signing hawkish reports on Iran authored by them.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ross was a member of a task force that delivered a hawkish report apparently co-authored by two veterans of OSP, Rubin and Michael Makovsky. (Ross reportedly recused himself as the presidential campaign came into full swing.) Lobe, noting Ross’s curious involvement, called the report a “roadmap to war with Iran,” and added, a year later, that the group that put out the report was accelerating the plan, calling for a military build-up and a naval blockade against Iran.
After taking his position within the Obama administration, Ross released a book, co-authored with David Makovsky, that was skeptical of the notion that engagement could work. Nathan Guttman, in a review of the book for the Forward, wrote:
The success of diplomatic engagement, according to Ross, is not guaranteed and could be unlikely. Still, he and Makovsky believe that negotiations will serve a purpose even if results are not satisfying. “By not trying, the U.S. and its refusal to talk become the issue,” said Makovsky in a June 1 interview with the Forward. “What we are saying is that if the U.S. chooses engagement, even if it fails, every other option will be more legitimate.”
The attitude of Ross and Makovsky seems closer to that of the Israeli government then to that of the Obama administration.
OSP, Feith, the Makovsky brothers, and Rubin are not listed in the index of “Statecraft,” nor have they appeared in the many sections that I’ve read in full.
In his book, Ross does have many revealing passages about concepts that have been worked into the Obama administration’s Iran policy. One such ploy, which has not been acknowledged or revealed publicly, is using Israel as the crazy ‘bad cop’ — a potentially dangerous game. Ross also writes that international pressure (through sanctions) must be made in order to cause Iran “pain.” Only then, thinks Ross, can concessions such as “economic, technological and security benefits” from the U.S. be offered:
Orchestrating this combination of sticks and carrots requires at this point some obviously adverse consequences for the Iranians first.
This view does not comport with the Obama plan for a simultaneous dual-track policy toward Iran — which holds that engagement and pressure should occur simultaneously — and serves to bolster critics who say that engagement has not been serious because meaningful concessions have not been offered. But it does hint at another tactic that Ross references at least twice in the book: the difference between “style” and “substance.” With regard to Iran, he presents this dichotomy in relation to public professions about the “military option” — a euphemism for launching a war. But publicly suppressing rhetoric is only used as a way to build international support for pressure — not also, as one might expect, a way to assuage the security fears of Iran.
But those aren’t the only ideas from the 2007 book that seem to have made their way into U.S. policy toward Iran. In “Statecraft,” Ross endorses the use of “more overt and inherently deniable alternatives to the use of force” for slowing Iran’s nuclear progress. In particular, he mentions the “fragility of centrifuges,” which is exactly what is being targeted by the Stuxnet virus, a powerful computer worm thought to be created by a state, likely Israel, and perhaps with help from the U.S., according to the latest revelations.
Some critics of this website complain that the level of attention given to neoconservatives is too great, but they should consider this: Look at Dennis Ross. He works extensively with this clique, and no doubt has the occasional drink or meeting with them. And, most importantly, he writes approvingly about neoconservatives, noting that their viewpoint affects political considerations of “any political leader.” Because of these neocon “considerations,” he writes, this is how we should view the Islamic Republic: “With Iran, there is a profound mistrust of the mullahs, and of their perceived deceit, their support for terror, and their enduring hostility to America and its friends in the Middle East. … No one will be keen to be portrayed as soft on the Iranian mullahs.”
This from the man that formulated a policy that has offered “adverse consequences” but so far no “carrots.” Ross’s predictions are a self-fulfilling prophecy — and since he gets the big appointments, he gets to fulfill them. Taking reviews of his book with Makovsky, the Bipartisan Policy Committee report, and “Statecraft” as a whole, I’m not at all surprised that little progress has been made with Iran.
But, at least, that was his first try. He’s a three-time-loser on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. With Iran, I had to put the pieces together, whereas with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, his record is right there for all to see. Putting Ross in charge of peace-making between the two seems to perfectly fit Einstein’s definition of insanity.
See Also:
March 8, 2009
STL Prosecutor Submits Indictment in Hariri Probe
Al-Manar – 17/01/2011
One hour after denying a press report over the matter, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon confirmed the rumors: the indictment in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s case was submitted…
The indictment, believed to be part of the American-Israeli plot against Lebanon and the Resistance, is expected to remain confidential for a while.
INDICTMENT SUBMITTED, TO REMAIN CONFIDENTIAL
According to a statement issued by the tribunal’s press office, STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare submitted the confidential indictment Monday against suspects in the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
“The prosecutor of the tribunal has submitted an indictment and supporting materials to the pre-trial judge,” the tribunal said in a statement in The Hague, where it is based for security reasons.
Bellemare presented the documents, widely believed to unfairly implicate Hezbollah, to the tribunal’s registry at 4:35pm (15:35 GMT), it said.
They “will now be reviewed by the pre-trial judge, Daniel Fransen”, who has to confirm the charges before any arrest warrant or summons to appear can be issued.
The pre-trial judge should need six to 10 weeks to confirm the charges, tribunal registrar Herman von Hebel told journalists in The Hague in December. He could also decide to reject the indictment in whole or in part, or ask the prosecutor for additional information. A trial could follow “four to six months” after the confirmation of the charges, according to Von Hebel.
The STL’s amended rules allows for a trial to be held “in absentia”, meaning without the accused being present, if arrests are impossible.
INDICTMENT RELEASE PART OF POLITICAL EXPLOITATION
The submission’s timing is believed as well to have political meanings, especially after the collapse of the Lebanese government headed by Saad Hariri following the “death” of the Syrian-Saudi initiative aimed at dealing with the repercussions of the indictment.
One day earlier, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said that the release of the indictment was part of the political exploitation of the STL and its indictment. His eminence emphasized that the Americans and Israelis worked hard to accelerate the indictment’s release after obstructing the Saudi-Syrian initiative.
“It is obvious that the Americans and the Israelis were against the Arab effort and they bargained on its failure because they had in mind that the crisis was complicated and eventually, they will not need to interfere. However, when they realized that the process was yielding positive results, they interfered in a decisive way. This is why the efforts stopped so suddenly.”
HEZBOLLAH WILL NOT LET ANYONE DAMAGE ITS REPUTATION
During his Sunday speech, Hezbollah Secretary General also anticipated the indictment’s expected release, vowing that the Resistance group would “defend” itself against likely charges by the tribunal. His eminence warned that Hezbollah will not let anyone damage its reputation and dignity and will not allow anyone to conspire against the Resistance or accuse it of spilling the blood of martyr Rafiq Hariri.
“I reassure those who are still after this project that they are miscalculating,” Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out. “We tell those who believe they can use the indictment to target the resistance that they are extensively miscalculating.”
“I will have another speech in light of what Bellemare will issue in the next couple of days,” Sayyed Nasrallah concluded.
Israel Tested Stuxnet on Iran, with US help: Report
Al-Manar – 16/01/2011
US and Israeli intelligence services collaborated to develop a destructive computer worm to sabotage Iran’s nuclear efforts, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The newspaper quoted intelligence and military experts as saying Israel has tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, which allegedly shut down a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in November and helped “delay its ability to make its first nuclear weapons.”
The testing took place at the heavily guarded Dimona complex in the Negev desert housing the Middle East’s sole, albeit undeclared nuclear weapons program. Experts and officials told the Times the effort to create Stuxnet was a US-Israeli project with the help, knowingly or not, of Britain and Germany.
“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” a US expert told the newspaper. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”
There has been widespread speculation Israel was behind the Stuxnet worm that has attacked computers in Iran, and Tehran has blamed the Jewish state and the United States for the killing of two nuclear scientists in November and January.
Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s strategic affairs minister and former military chief, said last month that a series of “technological challenges and difficulties” meant Tehran was still about three years away from being able to build nuclear weapons.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said international sanctions against Iran would only be effective if they were backed by a “credible” military threat.
The Stuxnet worm apparently included two major parts, one intended to make Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spin out of control.
Another secretly recorded normal operation at the nuclear plant, then played those recordings back to the site’s operators so all would appear usual during the sabotage operation, according to the Times.
Stuxnet targets computer control systems made by German industrial giant Siemens and commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other critical infrastructure.
Most Stuxnet infections have been discovered in Iran, giving rise to speculation it was intended to sabotage nuclear facilities there.
The report came after Clinton, who was on a five-day trip to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar last week, urged Arab states to stay focused on sanctions against Iran.
The UN Security Council last June imposed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in a bid to halt its uranium enrichment program.
Iran says its aims are peaceful, denying charges by Israel and the West that its uranium enrichment work masks a drive for nuclear weapons.
The Islamic republic is set to hold a new round of nuclear talks with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States in Istanbul on January 21 and 22.
The Well-Deserved Collapse of Lebanon’s Government
Blame Hillary, Not Hezbollah
By RANNIE AMIRI | CounterPunch | January 14, 2011
Wednesday’s timeline from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet.com read as follows:
5:17 pm Agence France Presse: Prime Minister Saad Hariri went into talks with U.S. President Barack Obama at the moment that Opposition ministers resigned from the Lebanese government.
5:32 pm Minister of State Adnan Sayyed Hussein announced in a statement his resignation from Cabinet.
In that 15 minute span, President Obama went from meeting Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri to ex-Prime Minister Hariri. The unity government under his premiership had fallen, and deservedly so.
Events had rapidly unfolded.
Last weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Hariri in New York. The visiting prime minister was holding consultations with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, recuperating from recent back surgery there, on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) impending indictments.
The STL is widely expected to implicate Hezbollah members in the February 2005 assassination of late premier Rafiq Hariri despite evidence pointing to Israel’s complicity in the crime. Saad Hariri’s Western-backed ruling March 14 coalition backs the tribunal while the opposition March 8 coalition has called for its boycott.
Hopes have been riding on a Saudi-Syrian, or “S-S” initiative that would effectively mediate between the rival camps on how best to handle the STL’s imminent verdict. Syrian President Bashar Assad and King Abdullah, respective patrons of the March 8 and March 14 blocs, sought to broker a solution to both side’s satisfaction.
Although details of the alleged initiative were not made public, speculation exists it may have entailed Hariri distancing himself from the STL decision in exchange for March 8 dropping its pursuit of charges against the “false witnesses”—those who initially fingered Syria for Hariri’s murder but whose testimony against Damascus was ultimately found to have been fabricated. Some of these witnesses are thought to be Hariri confidantes.
Not long after Hariri had finished meeting with Clinton, opposition leader and Free Patriotic Movement head Michel Aoun declared Tuesday the S-S initiative was dead:
“We thank the Saudi king and the Syrian president for the efforts they have exerted, although their initiative has ended with no results. The Hariri-led camp didn’t respond to these efforts, that’s why we’ve reached a dead end.”
A statement released by the opposition said the endeavor “ … reached a dead end due to U.S. pressures and the other camp’s compliance with these pressures, despite the fact that we had positively dealt with that initiative and provided it with chances of success.”
Progressive Socialist Party head and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt remarked, “Saad Hariri was on the brink of making a major concession as concerns the tribunal, but occult forces prevented him from doing so.” After meeting with the Maronite Patriarch on Wednesday, he said, “dark forces intervened in the ongoing Syrian-Saudi talks and sidetracked this initiative from its original course.”
According to Labor Minister Muhammad Fneish, the Saudi-Syrian effort was sabotaged by “American intervention and the inability of the other side to overcome American pressure.” When asked why it ultimately failed, Fneish replied, “Ask Mrs. Clinton.”
The Obama administration and the U.S. State Department never wanted, nor would they have tolerated, an intra-Arab solution to Lebanon’s predicament. They ensured there would be no obstacle in the way of a discredited tribunal from issuing its findings based on doctored evidence, one that would sully Hezbollah’s reputation in Lebanon and throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
When it became clear the S-S initiative and whatever promise it held had been quashed, opposition members called on Hariri to urgently convene a cabinet meeting by the following day (Wednesday) to address what the government’s position toward the STL would now be.
The prime minister, still in New York, refused.
Ten opposition ministers in his 30-member cabinet then proceeded to tender their resignations.
Because the “one-third-plus-one” formula mandates at least 11 resign before the cabinet can be dissolved, one more minister was needed. That came when Minister of State Adnan Sayyed Hussein—one of five ministers directly appointed by President Michel Suleiman—announced his resignation. With that, Hariri’s 14-month-old government fell.
“The grace period has ended, and the waiting stage that we lived through without any result has ended,” said Energy Minister Jibran Bassil.
Saad Hariri rightly wants to see those who murdered his father and 22 others that fateful February day brought to justice. It is a wish shared by all Lebanese.
But Hariri and his coalition allies could not put their political and sectarian biases aside long enough to see how badly compromised the STL had become; its subjective investigatory methods, its reliance on Israeli-infiltrated telecommunication data, its refusal to even entertain the notion that Tel Aviv could possibly be involved in the assassination despite plausible evidence procured against it (not to mention the military benefits it reaped from Rafiq Hariri’s killing).
Although a compromise appeared at hand, one that would satisfy both coalitions and guarantee the nation’s well-being, Hariri was unwilling to overcome U.S. pressure. He allowed Secretary of State Clinton to veto overnight a plan that was months in the making.
What Clinton’s action did make clear is that any outside solution will always be subject to such interference. It only reinforced calls for the Lebanese to assume control of their own affairs and reach an agreement a third party cannot abrogate.
After meeting with Hariri, Clinton embarked on a tour of Persian Gulf countries, continuing the mission to promote division between Arab and Iranian, Sunni and Shia. When asked on Al-Arabiya television to comment on the situation in Lebanon, she said “stability requires justice.”
Ironically, a concept she tried to subvert and one Hariri never understood.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
Lebanon: The Fate of The Indictment Under a Caretaker Government
Al-Manar – 13/01/2011
Lebanon entered a transitional stage Thursday, only a few hours after the collapse of PM Saad Hariri’s government, as President Michel Sleiman declared the government in caretaker capacity pending the formation of a new government. On Wednesday, 11 ministers resigned from Hariri’s government in protest at his refusal to convene the Cabinet to discuss the Special Tribunal for Lebanon especially after the Saudi- Syrian effort to defuse the STL crisis was presumed dead.
It is the first time in Lebanon’s history that a government is toppled by the resignation of more than a third of its members, but it’s not the first time a government continues functioning in a caretaker capacity. Only this time, there is a slight difference with the STL expected to issue an indictment regarding the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Martyr Rafiq Hariri, and no official authority to receive it. The indictment is expected to implicate Hezbollah in the murder; a move widely seen as politicized serving US and Israeli interests in Lebanon and the region.
CARETAKER GOVERNMENT HAS NO DIRECT MANDATE
According to former minister and lawyer Issam Naaman, the Lebanese Constitution states that there are only three cases in which the government is considered resigned: the resignation or death of the Prime Minister, the end of the parliamentary cycle (i.e. parliamentary elections), in addition to the resignation of more than one third of the government’s members.
Naaman told Al-Manar website that in any of these cases, the president should call for parliamentary consultations to appoint a new prime minister. He noted that pending the formation of the new government, the resigned one functions in caretaker capacity and therefore, its ministers are required to act in this capacity.
The former minister defined the principle of “caretaker government as a task to manage the simple, routine and daily operations which do not require endorsement or Cabinet approval. “However, the caretaker government does not have the mandate to take decisive decisions that usually require a Cabinet meeting,” he explained.
Asked whether there were exceptional cases in which the caretaker government could take decisive resolutions, Naaman said that only in urgent cases such as catastrophes, the concerned minister has the right to take specific measures such as spending money without credence.
Naaman, meanwhile, pointed out that there was no specific constitutional deadline for the formation of a new government following any government resignation. “Customs stipulate, however, that parliamentary consultations, appointment of a prime minister and the formation of a new government take place without delay,” he said. “Yet, there are some cases where the country is severely divided, that the process extends to a relatively unlimited time” he added.
GOVERNMENT COLLAPSED WITH RESIGNATION OF 11th MINISTER
For his part, veteran legal expert and former head of the State Consultative Council, Yusuf Saadallah Khoury said the government collapsed the moment the 11th minister tendered his resignation. According to the constitution, more than one third of the ministers should resign to topple the government. In this case of a 30-member Cabinet, 11 ministers were required to withdraw.
“The constitution stipulates that the president then calls for binding parliamentary consultations to appoint a new prime minister. After that, the president, alone, issues a decree mandating the appointed PM to form the new government, and when the government is formed, the president releases a second decree” for the government take the oath and start functioning officially.
Like Naaman, Khoury stressed the caretaker government doesn’t have the direct mandate or the moral authority to take crucial decisions. “In case it adopts any resolution with relation to fateful events, it would be in violation of the law and should be penalized,” he explained. “The government has resigned and therefore its task is limited to taking care of necessary operations and transactions,” he elaborated.
The former head of the State Consultative Council also stated that the constitution has not specified any time limit for the President to issue the decree calling for parliamentary consultations. “The President is not obligated by any time limit in this regard. He can take the political circumstances into consideration before releasing it,” he said, stressing at the same time that the parliamentary consultations to appoint a new Prime Minister are mandatory.
The Lebanese are already divided over the legal and structural aspects of the STL, which the opposition regards as another political tool in US and Israeli hands to target the country and the resistance, yet the resignation of the government raises question marks on the fate of the international tribunal and the indictment which, if issued now, will find no official authority to receive it.
“Following the government’s resignation, the expected indictment will have absolutely no impact on Lebanon at any level,” former minister Issam Naaman told Al-Manar website, adding that the tribunal officials are aware that the STL wouldn’t be able to execute its indictment, especially after the speeches of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah who called for boycotting the illegal and unconstitutional tribunal. He recalled that the national opposition has rejected the agreement of coordination with the STL, which was adopted by the unconstitutional government of Fouad Saniora January 23, 2007, in violation of the Constitution and all laws,” reminding that then President Emil Lahoud didn’t sign it and the parliament did not endorse it.
For his part, Khoury ruled out any possibility of forcing Lebanon into dealing with the tribunal, which is subject to the United Nations Security Council’s Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows the UNSC to resort to military interference and imposing sanctions. “This is not applicable at all,” Khoury told Al-Manar. He explained that the United Nations is powerless in this regard, especially with a caretaker government, given that the Security Council has the power to militarily interfere only in exceptional cases such as war, which is not the case in Lebanon.
OPPOSITION WILL NOT RE-APPOINT HARIRI…
Naaman explained the circumstances that led to the Saudi-Syrian initiative before being obstructed by the United States. “The Saudi-Syrian initiative was built on three main pillars: suspending financial aid, withdrawing Lebanese judges and transferring the issue of the false witnesses to the Lebanese Judicial Council. The US administration has rejected the settlement and exerted pressure on former PM Saad Hariri and Riyadh to foil it.”
“That’s why the national opposition decided to put an end to the whole game and chose to consult with President Michel Sleiman and convince him to influence Hariri to call for an immediate Cabinet session. But Hariri didn’t, turned down the opposition’s demand, leaving the opposition with no choice but resignation,” Naaman noted.
He expected that the formation of a new government would not take place very soon, adding that the opposition has basically decided not to re-appoint Saad Hariri as Prime Minister and seek other national figures suitable for the position of PM.
By its resignation from the government, the national opposition launched an era of democratic change; a sensitive transitional stage that will define the shape of the country for at least the 20 months left for the president’s tenure.
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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