Hamas keeps aloof from PLO statehood bid - Middle East. Most Gaza officials choose to remain quiet on the PA's statehood bid, adopting a "wait-and-see" policy [Al Jazeera] Gaza City - The Hamas-led government in Gaza is distancing itself from the Palestine Liberation Organisation's upcoming bid for full membership in the United Nations for both political and ideological reasons. Hamas has said little about the bid, marking a sharp contrast to the frenzied political activity elsewhere in the region and beyond. In Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is planning a 10-day campaign, of rallies, marches and sloganeering, to promote the bid.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, will deliver a major address on the issue on Friday night. For Israelis, the UN vote, which most simply refer to as "September", is a looming diplomatic nightmare. The overwhelming attitude in Gaza, however, has been to keep silent. Many ordinary Gazans simply shrug the whole affair off, saying it will have little impact on their daily lives. 'Wait and see' Taliban attacks key sites in Kabul - Central & South Asia.
Taliban gunmen armed with suicide vests and heavy weaponry on Tuesday launched co-ordinated attacks in the Afghan capital, Kabul, targeting NATO's headquarters, the US embassy, and the Afghan intelligence agency. Heavy gunfire continued to be heard late into the night as Afghan forces battled to clear a building in the city's diplomatic quarter which had been taken over by heavily armed fighters.
Rockets have reportedly been fired at the US and other embassies in the area. At least three policemen and four civilians have been killed and many others injured, according to police and hopsital sources. Police surrounded the occupied building, calling in air support to flush out gunmen inside the building. NATO has confirmed that they are providing Afghan forces ground and air support in the operation. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, condemned the attacks and and said it could not not hamper the security transition from NATO to Afghan forces.
Multiple explosions 'Security transition' US twisted Seoul’s arm in drone deal. US twisted Seoul’s arm in drone deal By Sunny LeeAsia Times Sep 29, 2011 BEIJING – An investigation of leaked United States diplomatic cables surrounding the planned sale of US surveillance drones to South Korea reveals that Washington has exerted considerable diplomatic pressure to smooth the deal, even as media were reporting the Pentagon was reluctant over the sale. South Korean media reported this week that Seoul was mulling the cancelation of a deal to purchase by 2015 four RQ-4 Global Hawks – a high-altitude endurance remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) – after Washington more than doubled the initial asking price from 450 billion (US$385 million) won to 940 billion won. Using Global Hawks over the Korean Peninsula would provide an unprecedented view of goings-on in reclusive North Korea. The plane has the capacity to view targets at a distance of some 550 kilometers, meaning the drones could peer deep into the Hermit Kingdom without even crossing the inter-Korean border.
Congress Sees Middle East Through AIPAC-Colored Glasses. During August recess this year, 81 members of Congress went on a junket to Israel funded by the Israel lobby group AIPAC (well, funded by the American Israel Education Fund, but they are really one and the same) to "learn first-hand about one of our closest friends and allies.” While the representatives insist they got a balanced view, their itinerary belies that claim: 95% of their time was spent hearing the Israeli government point of view, with only one token meeting with Palestinian reps. CODEPINK has filed a complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee stating that these trips—and the upcoming ones scheduled for December--violate the Congressional prohibition on traveling with a lobby group. We feel these Potemkin voyages are part of AIPAC’s grand plan to control and monopolize Congress, which is not just unethical, but dangerous. Their bias reinforces a disastrous U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel that obstructs peace and runs counter to our national interests.
Who won the war in Iraq? (Here's a big hint: It wasn't the United States) Peter Van Buren also has a story in Foreign Policy today about his own experiences as a Foreign Service officer in Iraq. By Peter Van Buren Best Defense guest unraveller When wars end, usually there is a winner and a loser. Greeks burn down the city for the win; Trojans accept a dummy horse for the epic loss, like that. As we near the end of the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, and note the beginning of the State Department occupation (the formal mission handover is Oct. 1), it is a good time to decide who lost and who won, and what that means for the future of Iraq. For the minority, all-around Washington guy (now stopping off briefly to be Secretary of Defense) Leon Panetta thinks we and the Iraqis sort of won.
Leon said, "But the bottom line is, whether it's diplomatic or whether it's military, we've got a long-term relationship with Iraq. On firmer ground, it is less clear that the United States or Iraq won anything. Who won the war? , which also advances the United States vs. Neoconservatism. From Conservapedia A neoconservative (also spelled "neo-conservative"; colloquially, neocon) in American politics is someone presented as a conservative but who actually favors big government, interventionalism, and a hostility to religion in politics and government. The word means "newly conservative," and thus formerly liberal. A neocon is a RINO Backer, and like RINOs does not accept most of the important principles in the Republican Party platform. Neocons do not participate in the March for Life, stand up for traditional marriage, or advocate other conservative social values.
Neocons support attacking and even overthrowing foreign governments, despite how that often results in more persecution of Christians. Some neocons (like Dick Cheney) have profited immensely from the military-industrial complex. Description Many older neocons had been liberals in their youth and admired President Franklin D.
Neoconservatives were prominent in the George W. Dual origins Strauss Values Publications. Hamas calls for overthrow of Israeli-Palestinian Oslo peace accords. Neo-conservative. McCain hits back at Reid, White House over terrorist detainee provision. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) defended a terrorist detainee provision in a Pentagon policy bill Thursday, urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to negotiate instead of allowing the simmering dispute to keep the legislation in limbo. Reid says he will keep the 2012 Defense authorization bill off the Senate floor because it contains a provision inserted by the Senate Armed Services Committee after ample debate that would clear the way for indefinite detentions of suspects aligned with al Qaeda and similar groups.
The provision also would make it mandatory that terrorism suspects be held in military custody, while also putting strict restrictions on the transfer of detainees to the civilian court system. Reid said earlier this week he will not put the DOD authorization measure on the Senate schedule unless that language is changed or removed from the bill. The White House this week joined Reid in opposing the provision.
“That is simply wrong,” McCain said bluntly. “Instead, following Mr. GOP hawks use sharp rhetoric to fight deeper Defense budget cuts. Republican lawmakers are using increasingly sharp rhetoric to argue against additional cuts to defense spending, warning the military will cede its technical edge, manufacturing will further erode and conscription will return. House GOP lawmakers have not shied away from bluntly sounding alarms about what nearly $1 trillion in defense cuts over a decade would bring. Some have gone so far as to warn that a “dismantled force” would threaten the American way of life.
A House Armed Services Committee Republican staff report that surfaced this week concluded that cuts deeper than the $350 billion agreed to as part of the August debt deal would force Pentagon officials to shrink the military to pre-9/11 levels. The study also said most of the military’s big-ticket weapons programs would be placed “at risk” of termination or big changes to cut costs. But not everyone in the national security realm agrees with the kinds of dire warnings being put forth by House Republicans. The mainstreaming of Walt and Mearsheimer - Glenn Greenwald. (updated below) There were numerous reasons that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were accused in prominent venues of all sorts of crimes — including anti-Semitism — when they published The Israel Lobby, but the most common cause was the book’s central theme: that there is a very powerful lobby in the U.S. which is principally devoted to Israel and causes U.S. political leaders to act to advance the interests of this foreign nation over their own.
In The New York Times today, Tom Friedman — long one of Israel’s most stalwart American supporters — wrote the following as the second paragraph of his column, warning that the U.S. was about to incur massive damage in order to block Palestinian statehood: Isn’t that exactly Walt and Mearseimer’s main theme, what caused them to be tarred and feathered with the most noxious accusations possible? Is that not exactly the point which The New York Times‘ most “pro-Israel” columnist himself just voiced today? When They Were Kings - An FP List By Colum Lynch. How times have changed. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his top lieutenants have applauded the fall of an aging generation of Middle East and African autocrats, swept from power by a wave of uprising spurred by popular discontent. In the months leading up to this year's U.N. General Assembly which kicks off on Wednesday, Sept. 21, Ban has openly encouraged NATO's military efforts to topple the likes of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, and accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of reneging on his promise to halt military operations against unarmed demonstrators.
But in previous General Assembly sessions -- indeed as recently as last year -- U.N. officials and foreign dignitaries treated these very same leaders like diplomatic royalty, perhaps seeing them, wrongly, as bastions of stability in an otherwise unstable part of the world. How swiftly a leader can turn from being an honored guest at U.N. headquarters, to a defiled rogue. STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images Moammar al-Qaddafi. Quadrennial defense review report (Book, 2001. Broadcast Yourself. Quadrennial defense review report (Book, 2001. POLITICS: What Is a Neo-Conservative Anyway?
WASHINGTON, Aug 12, 2003 (IPS) - With all the attention paid to neo-conservatives in the global media today, one would think that a standard definition of the term would exist. Yet, despite their now being credited with a virtual takeover of U.S. foreign policy under President George W. Bush, a common understanding of 'neo-cons' remains elusive. A brief description of their basic tenets and origin can help distinguish them from other parts of the ideological coalition behind the administration's neo-imperialist trajectory; namely, the traditional Republican Machtpolitikers (Might Makes Right), such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the Christian Rightists, such as Attorney General John Ashcroft, Gary Bauer, and Pat Robertson.
As neo-con godfather Irving Kristol once remarked, a neo-conservative is a ''liberal who was mugged by reality''. But neo-cons take ''man's'' capacity for evil particularly seriously, and for understandable reasons. Why? Osama crippled the American century. Osama crippled the American century By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - A decade after its spectacular September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City's twin World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and despite the killing earlier this year of its charismatic leader, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda appears to have largely succeeded in its hopes of accelerating the decline of United States global power, if not bringing it to the brink of collapse.
That appears to be the strong consensus of the foreign-policy elite which, with only a few exceptions, believes that the administration of president George W Bush badly "over-reacted" to the attacks and that that over-reaction continues to this day. That over-reaction was driven in major part by a close-knit group of Led within the administration by vice president Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and their mostly neo-conservative aides and supporters, the hawks had four years before joined the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). What Would A Two-State Solution Physically Require? By Ben Armbruster on September 12, 2011 at 12:39 pm "What Would A Two-State Solution Physically Require? " The Palestinian Authority will next week begin its push for membership at the United Nations.
It’s unclear at this point whether the Palestinians will seek full membership or some other form of recognition as an independent state. Palestinian leadership figures have said the move represents frustration with the lack of progress in direct peace negotiations with Israel toward a two-state solution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in late 2009 that he supports the creation of a Palestinian state — though one that is, as CAP’s Matt Duss noted, “so severely circumscribed that it’s unlikely that any Palestinian leader could accept it and hope to retain Palestinian popular support.” But the main obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state is Jewish Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Netanyahu has not made any serious effort to stop them. TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE — ReThink Review. U.S. envoys to visit region in last-ditch effort to avert Palestinian statehood bid. Reviving Bush's Best Unfulfilled Idea: Democracy Promotion - Shadi Hamid - International.
In the long run, democracy promotion remains the best and most effective way to fight terrorism Protestors gather in Tahrir square in Cairo / Reuters Crises have a way of provoking interesting, occasionally useful intellectual debates. September 11 was no exception, forcing foreign policy analysts and policymakers to grapple with bigger ideas.
Oddly enough, it was some in the Republican Party who made perhaps the most radical argument, that the attacks that day were, in fact, a direct result of Middle East's democratic deficit. In the absence of freedom, Arabs lacked legitimate outlets to express their political grievances, making them more likely to resort to political violence and terrorism. This formed the intellectual justification for the Bush administration's rhetorical emphasis on democracy promotion and for what would later become the "forward strategy for freedom. " Would the Arab spring have happened without September 11? The story then took a tragic turn. The Interrogator | FRONTLINE.
Jeb Bush's Favorite Neoconservative Yale Class. [Guest post by Alex Klein] Yesterday, Jeb Bush and Kevin Warsh chose to lead their Wall Street Journal column with a college shout-out: "As the economy continues to struggle, we are reminded of a course offered at Yale University titled "Grand Strategy. " Drawing on a weighty curriculum of history and philosophy, the course seeks to train future policy makers to tackle the complex challenges of statecraft in a comprehensive, systematic way. Clearly, U.S. economic policy is sorely lacking an effective grand strategy. " As a Yalie, it was comforting to see Warsh and Bush go populist by comparing our economic ills to an undergraduate Ivy League seminar.
The class is a history seminar that, despite Jeb's reference, has nothing to do with modern economic policy. So how do a group of influential and/or wealthy conservatives get a bunch of lefty Yalies to take their Hertog-funded course? But all the partisanship and Peggy Noonan aside, are Bush and Warsh right? Panetta assails plan for U.S. military cuts. Neoconservatism.