Roger Cohen wrote today in the NY Times about an ordinary Israel, as opposed to an exceptional Israel.

I found this column significant in many ways. It captured something that had been the subtext of almost every international discussion of Israel and its actions beyond its legal borders in the last few years.

 As human beings, we usually have clearly defined perceptions of ourselves. In most cases, we are unaware or choose to be unaware of how we are perceived by the world around us. So unfortunately, we end up interacting with the world on the basis of how we see ourselves or how we wish to be seen. Nations do the same. They have national narratives that are sometimes manufactured for social cohesion, sometimes over-idealized versions of real events, sometimes just plain bogus. And unfortunately any external messages directed at them have to get through the thick fabricated glass windows.

Israel, Roger Cohen says in his piece "does not see itself as normal. Rather it lives in a perpetual state of exceptionalism". So it can have nuclear weapons while demanding that the US help prevent Iran from getting them. It can refrain from signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) while demanding that NPT signatories like Iran live up to their obligations. Basic notions such as fairness do not factor in these types of talks because there is the view of "we are rational, THEY are not!" and therefore it follows that "we can be allowed to do things THEY can never be forgiven for doing."  Now, Israel unlike many other nations on this earth was born out of a tragedy. A great tragedy. But as Cohen rightfully observes, that does not mean it should refrain from  "deal[ing] with the world as it is, however discomfiting, not the world of yesterday."

As Cohen quotes in the piece, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has often said that the only way to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons is "for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons as opposed to strengthened ." So what if the US as part of its Iran Strategy tried to convince Israel to go the way of South Africa and get rid of its nuclear weapons as a way of persuading the iranians that their security will not be compromised by not developing a bomb?
Because one important way and I believe the most important way to look at this Iran-Nukes Conundrum is through the lens of regional control and regional security. Israel has been the "Big Boy" of the Middle-East for the past forty years or so. Egypt reared its head for a bit in the days of Nasser and Sadat. But they were quickly smacked in the Six-Day War and in the Yom Kippur War. They then decided it was best to sign a peace treaty, get a Nobel Peace Prize for Sadat in the bargain and move on. Then Iraq rose slightly with a little help from the Reagan and George H. Bush administrations. They quickly lost their power when Saddam picked a fight with the Ayatollas to start the 8-year long Iran-Iraq war that drained them financially and otherwise. The American invasion of 2003 took care of whatever power was not erased by the UN sanctions that preceded it. The Gulf states (Bahrain, Koweit, Qatar, UAE, Oman) have as much military strength as five African bees.  Yet Israel with a lot of US financial and military help has remained strong.

So now the Iranians look to be on the rise again, paranoid and fearful. They do have valid reasons to be fearful. From Tehran, the Mullahs look to the east and they see NATO troops in Afghanistan (including nuclear armed nations like the US and the UK) and further east, they see Pakistanis with nukes. Indians with nukes. Further west, they see Israelis with nukes. In addition to being in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has a presence in the Gulf States. If you couple this with the constant threats of bombardments as enunciated by both US and Israeli officials, no wonder the Iranians want to get nuclear weapons as a way of preventing an externally-imposed "regime change".

Some will argue that Iran is not governed by "rational leaders" and therefore cannot be held to the same standard as other nations. I disagree. And I am not alone in this view. Many decades of Iranian peaceful co-existence with its neighbours back me up on this. So does the NY Times' Roger Cohen in the piece I quoted at the start of this post. "Iran makes rational decisions," he writes. "Rather than invoking the Holocaust -- a distraction -- Israel should view Iran coolly [and] understand the hesitancy of Tehran's nuclear brinksmanship."

So in many ways, the road towards Obama's nuclear-free world and therefrore a nuclear-free Middle-East, goes through Tehran as much as it goes through Tel Aviv.

In awarding the Peace Price, the Nobel Committee has gotten it blatantly wrong in the past. Sometimes it failed by omission. Many times it failed to research the complete body of work of the person being honored. Sometimes hope triumphed. And in some small instances, the Prize actually went to all too deserving individuals.

 

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 to Barack Obama on Friday represented perhaps a combination of all these past failures. To understand this, one has to re-examine the body of work of President Obama so far, but also the history of the Prize itself and its past winners through the lens of peace and peace-making.

 

In 1938, the Prize was awarded to the International Office for Refugees. However the short list for that year included one Adolf Hitler. Now, while this seems bizarre today with over seventy years of hindsight, the German Fuhrer was greatly popular as an international figure in 1938. He was Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938 and most of the horrendous crimes against humanity for which he is known today were yet to be committed. His desire for continental conquest was well known. So was his racism; Kritallnatch ended up taking place on November 9th of 1938. Yet the Committee somehow saw him as a peace-loving man worthy of their shortlist.

 

In 1973, the Peace prize was given to both Henry Kissinger & Le Duc Tho for negotiating an end to the Vietnam War, a war they escalated into Cambodia through Operation Menu and that ended up taking the lives of over 2 million Vietnamese people. Earlier in 1971, the NY Times published the Pentagon Papers that detailed the deception campaign of the Nixon/Kissinger cabal to keep the public uninformed about their war machinations. Whether this history was considered when the Nobel Committee decided on the Prize is anybody's guess. But as a double dose of irony, on September 11th 1973, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon and the CIA would concoct a coup to overthrow the democratically-elected President of Chile: Salvador Allende. And the co-winner of the Prize, Le Duc Tho would refuse it because he did not believe the end of the war meant peace for his country and continued fighting against the south Vietnamese until 1975.

 

In 1960 the Prize went to Albert Lutuli, the ANC President.

In 1964 the Prize went to Martin Luther King, jr.

However Mahatma Gandhi was short-listed five times in 1937, 1938 (alongside Hitler), 1939, 1947, 1948, but never won. Yet Yasser Arafat & Menachem Begin won The Prize.

In a final tidbit of historical WTF moments, George W. Bush & Tony Blair were both short-listed for The Prize in 2002. So was Hamid Karzai who the British-Pakistani writer Tariq Ali refers to (jokingly, I am sure) as "The Great Puppet of Kabul."

 

So this is the history that gave us this year's selection of Barack Obama. The Committee said it was for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But the obvious reply based on the facts of the last 8 months would be: "He has done nothing of the sort!" In a Q&A that followed the announcement, the choice was clarified as a way of nudging Obama to continue the work he started on nuclear non-proliferation and re-including the US in the community of nations. Right. But if Obama is working so hard at worldwide peace-making, why was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs waffling this week trying to explain why Obama did not seem to want to meet...of all people...The Dalai Lama. Amnesty USA even reported that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has decided that China's human rights record will not top her China agenda. Could all of this dallying and dallying have less to do with peace between China and Tibet and more to do with the $1 trillion dollars the US owes China or the commercial relations that need to be maintained there?

 

But many would have pointed to the recent talks with Iran, the decision to scrap a European missile defense system and the fact that Obama chaired a UN Security Council meeting on nuclear Non-Proliferation. While those are worthy noises that are a breath of diplomatic fresh air when compared to the idiotic bombast of the previous occupant of the White House, they do not constitute anything worthy of an international prize. It is important to recognize that Iran has not stopped developing nuclear weapons as a result of anything Obama did. On the contrary, because of the recent threats and demands, Iran has actually developed new Uranium enrichment sites. There is also no indication that Russia has reduced its stockpiles of weapons or is prepared to do so in the near future because of any action Obama has undertaken.

 

The record of the US itself under Obama is still dismal if peace on earth is the goal. The United States is still occupying two sovereign countries: Iraq and Afghanistan. And one of the first orders Obama issued when his Afghanistan strategy was announced was to order the deployment of 21,000 new US troops to Afghanistan. And if he is to act on General Stanley McChrystal's recent request, many more thousands of US soldiers will be shipping out to Afghanistan in the coming weeks and months. Renditions are still taking place. Guantanamo is still open and may not close next year as Obama originally promised. But even if it does close later in the year, The Bagram Prison in Afghanistan will remain open. And on the same day the Nobel Committee was rewarding Obama, it was announced that the US is preparing a $15 billion military buildup in the Pacific island of Guam.

 

Some have indicated that Obama's overtures to the Muslim World have swayed the Nobel Committee. But while Obama has made two speeches in the capitals of two majority-Muslim countries (Turkey and Egypt), he has done nothing to act on any of what he spoke of in the speeches. Netanyahu is still expanding Israeli settlements into Palestinian territory without any fear of repercussions. Women still can't drive in Saudi Arabia, a strong US ally. Hamas is still being its violent self. And just as a way of extending more olive branches all around the Middle East, the US has used its position in the UN Human Rights Council to both undermine the Goldstone Commission Report on the Israeli assault on Gaza and force Mahmud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership to defer its adoption.

 

Finally, to those who say the Nobel Prize is a "down-payment on Obama", one can just as well say: sometimes down payments can be for purchases that turn out to be worthless.

Maybe one day President Barack Obama will do enough to deserve this prize. We all hope so, given his power as the leader of the so-called Free World. But so far, the amazing promise that drove thousands to fill Grant Park in Chicago on November 4th last year, has only translated into Bush-Lite policies and in the words of one former presidential candidate, "lipstick on a pig." The Nobel Committee should have spent more time examining the dirty spots on the pig before falling in love with the lipstick.

We were probably wrong to believe that he was a revolutionary candidate. But after 8 years of Bush who could blame us?

Obama ran as a centrist candidate with a radical message. His Healthcare plan even then was not what most Progressives would have agreed with. Single-Payer it definitely wasn't. His economic plan was a wishy-washy amalgam of clean energy/regulating Wall Street/Re-negotiating NAFTA. After the debacle of the subprime mortgage meltdon, a proper economic plan would have involved a revamping of the system, a requirement to institute stringent regulations and an elimination of a "too big to fail" status. But again Progressives bought it because the alternative was too dreadly to even contemplate and they campaigned for the Land of Lincolner.

Now after over 6 months in power, after the novelty has worn off, after months of "Yes We Can!" should have become "Yes Let's Do It!", we all realize that the person that we supported is really a centrist who plays a Progressive on TV.

Barack Obama is a middle-of-the-road, serial compromiser President. He will probably remain that way for the remainder of his term unless he is forced to become something else. And so since he's been in power, he's enacted middle-of-the-road compromising policies:

1- Bailout of the banks when the banking system as it was shaped with its reward for speculation was the cause of the crisis

2-A continuation of the US presence in afghanistan that is less and less justifiable.

3-Indefinite detention of some Guantanamo prisoners

4-Bagram as the new Guantanamo

4-Israel can do no wrong even if in speeches there is some scolding

5-Now, a poorly presented, badly worded and overall incoherent healthcare policy that keeps the basic problem in place: the profit motive. 

Nobody should have to make a profit from the illness of others. Healthcare is not a product like Nike tee-shirts or Snickers chocolate bars and sick people are not mere consumers. This is precisely why most industrialized nations have single-payer systems or some highly regulated private system (Switzerland for instance). There is a recognition of the fact that every citizen is entitled to decent heathcare irrespective of their financial worth. There is also a recognition of the fact that we cannot pretend to be "buying a healthcare product" when we are in the dizzying, worried, anxious, scared state most people are in when they walk into a hospital. The profit motive is the elephant in the room of the healthcare debate.  But Senate and congressional Democrats, many of the ones (like Henry Waxman) who believe in single-payer, say they don't have the votes to pass single-payer so they took it off the table. They're not even sure they have the votes to pass a bill with the Public Option. "Then get the votes!", one is almost tempted to shout. What happened to fighting for what is right? Who said "Change we can believe in" was easy? Why vote for officials who only settle for the possible and never dare to even entertain a belief in what at first glance appears impossible? What happened to the America that saw a shining Republic through the barrel of an 18th century English cannon? what happened to the courage that saw the Voting Rights Acts through the racist eyes of a Ku Klux Klan hood? What about the 40-hour work week? universal suffrage? None of these things seemed possible at first. The congressmen, senators and citizens of those days didn't have the votes either. But they fought for the votes. They lobbied. They bargained. They argued. They petitioned. Many died. What happened to that spirit?

"Yes We Can!" wasn't just a campaign slogan.

So there he was, concluding an almost perfect news conference where he made the case for Health Care Reform to the American people; the perfect steak was ready to be served to the media masses for public consumption. The apprentice cook, six months into his training looked to have mastered the recipe.  Then at the last minute, he decided to add a little sizzle, just to "jazz things up a bit".

The next day the masses cried foul. The steak was too salty, too much pepper, too much coriander, not enough this, too much that. What was that sizzle? What colour was it? where did he get it from? Was the cook born in the US? Should he have held that salt-shaker like that? 

Nobody talked about the steak.

Obama, the "post-racial president", walked right into the Henry Louis Gates minefield and subsequently killed the very headlines he was trying to create around health care reform. Irrespective of the circumstances of the Gates affair, he shouldn't have waded into it at all. Not this time.

Race is an important subject in American politics. It has always been, since the creation of the union. But Healthcare is critical to America's survival as an economic powerhouse. And any attempt to reform it should not be held back by the same tired arguments that have always held back important discussion in American politics. The ballooning individual and national healthcare costs, the growing number of uninsured Americans and the sheer shame for a country so rich, yet still reliant on groups like Remote Area Medical  should have prevented Obama from discussing anything but healthcare during that press conference. But he did and gave the 24-hour news channels 24 hours of nonsensical material to regurgitate back to the dumbed down masses.

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr would have been fine. He was fine even before the news conference started. He went on the Gayle King Show, he would have gone on other shows to discuss the matter of his arrest and any ramifications or national discussions that were meant to be had. He didn't need Obama's help. Racial discussions are  a tricky affair, which is precisely why Obama avoided them for most the campaign until his former Pastor forced him to confront them. Why he chose to engage this time is anybody's guess.

But in one sense the distraction was useful. It gave some of us time to read the fine prints and peruse the back pages to realize that although Obama discussed reforming the Health Care system, what both congress and the Senate are proposing does not amount to much reform because it does not eliminate the cancer at the heart of the system: the profit motive.

Nobody should be allowed  to make a profit when the health of human beings is involved. That is precisely why all industrialized nations either have a single payer public healthcare system or a heavily regulated private one where the profit motive has been neutralized.

 

Lately with everything that is happening in Iran, many people have become improvised "Iran Experts" on Tv and they continuously preach about the goodness of Moussavi and the Badness of the Mullahs and Ahmadinejad.

First, if we are to be honest with ourselves, we'll agree that for the most part we don't care about iranians. The only reason anybody the western media even covers the iranian elections is because of their oil reserves, their proximity to the oil reserves of Iraq, Koweit and Saudi Arabia, their proximity to Israel, their closeness to the Straits of Ormuz and ...oh our dependence on that oil for the functioning of our economy. Beyond that, Iranians could elect a naturalised Kim Jong Il as their next President and none of us would dare raise our heads long enough for our Starbucks lattes to go cold.

Second, Moussavi is not a reformer. He's not Iran's Obama as some have called him. A quick glance at his bio would convince anybody of that fact. He is perhaps Ahmadinejad Lite, but not the kind of leader that would take on the Theocratic Establishment to make Iran safe for capitalism.  

Third, Even if Moussavi was a reformer, he would be Iran's reformer. A president for the Iranians, as it should be and not a stooge of the West. And unfortunately being a local reformer means implementing an agenda that may have local traction but foreign opposition. This may include things that Western countries would object to. i.e: the continuation of the nuclear programme and continuous support for terrorist groups.  

So next time you see an "Iran Expert" on your favourite Tv channel going on about Iran... do some quick research before accepting the good guys vs. bad guys narrative.

What are Western soldiers doing in Afghanistan? Is it to "reconstruct" the country as some of our leaders keep telling us? Is it to root out Bin Laden? Does it matter still? Is it in preparation for the impending takeover of Pakistan by the Taliban? Is it to act as a potential shield given the tensions between the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and India and their WMDs?

Listening to recent pronouncements from our leaders, one wonders.

First President Barack Obama admitted to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in a recent interview that a "win" in Afghanistan (I am paraphrasing here) meant preventing the country from becoming a launching pad for attacks on the US and its allies. That is a very scaled down version of the lofty goal of George W. Bush which was among other things transplanting democracy to the Land of Burqas and Poppies.  

Then, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, speaking to Fareed Zakaria of CNN said: "Frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency! " Now that is as blunt as anybody can get. Then there are the increasingly reluctant European allies who view this mission as similar to that other doomed one in Iraq.

So why is the West in Afghanistan given all these parameters?

I will venture some explanations here although as a word of caution, I don't accept these as valid reasons for stationing thousands of troops in a foreign country. I simply think this is what is guiding our leaders' decisions. So here goes...

I think first there is the WMD factor. India and Pakistan are at loggerheads over Kashmir and other recent entanglements including the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan is increasingly shaky given the military's power over the executive branch and the Intelligence services' links to insurgent groups. So since the worse case scenario of this situation is either a nuclear Pakistan leaking secrets to insurgents or a nuclear Pakistan going after a nuclear India, the West deeems it necessary to be present and ready to intervene. Here's why this does not work however: preventing any conflict between these two countries is a matter of diplomacy. There is no military deterence for nuclear armed enemies. The presence of foreign troops in either of these countries has in the past only served to rally the population againts the foreigners viewed as "invaders".

2- The perenial "let's get them there so we don't have to fight them here" argument: The Taliban is based in Afghanistan & Pakistan. Al Qaeda and other affiliate terror groups are also based in the Middle-East. So if they were to be fought and destroyed as units there, they will cease to be a threat to the West in the West. This argument works if one assumes that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and all the other groups that hold a deep hatred of Western societies are units that once destroyed in a specific geographic location can essentially be eliminated and prevented from threatening societies anywhere. Ever. This assumption however ignores centuries of colonial adventures that prove the exact opposite. Nihilistic organizations or ones that view their mission as their people's overarching cause tend to be very loosely structured. The guiding principle being their message. Once it catches on, leaders can be killed or jailed, bases can be ransacked, the message lives on. It becomes like a virus that can only be completely destroyed if all the infected victims are located, except as more are located, more are infected.  Think of the FLN in Algeria in the late 1950s and 1960s or the Mau Maus in Kenya in the 1950s or the ANC in South Africa or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Insurgencies succeed against traditional armies because insurgents know their terrain, insurgents know the locals, insurgents know the local languages, culture and customs and more importantly because insurgents have the ability to easily disappear when the fight overpowers them and resurface depending on the conditions on the ground. The history of Afghanistan is littered with corpses of foreign generals who thought the size of their armies or the power of their weapons would allow them to conquer what they saw as mountainous savages. That is perhaps why Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recognized that Afghans cannot be defeated in their own country.

So one has to wonder: why is Obama commiting lives and resources to Afghanistan when there are more pressing problems at home?

If the purpose of running for office is to acquire power and if the purpose of acquiring power is to do some sort of lasting public good with it, then it would be fair of the American people to expect Pres. Barack Obama's report card to show significant accomplishments by the time the 2010 congressional elections roll in.

After today's announcement of Al Franken  as the winner of last November's Minnesota Senate race, the Democrats now have 60 senate seats and 257 congressional seats, more than enough to push through the Democratic President's agenda. Any fears of a filibuster have now been eliminated. There is no longer a need to court Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins or any other so-called moderate Republican. The Democrats, if they only allow themselves to agree can now bring Americans single-payer Universal Healthcare, enact proper regulations of the financial industry, withdraw troops from Iraq, withdraw troops from a useless war in Afghanistan, confirm Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and much more...

But I suspect very few of those things will happen. Obama is a serial compromiser and Democrats and Progressives in general relish argument and debate even when it stands in the way of useful  and valuable accomplishments. And that's probably going to be the Legacy of the 111th Congresss: immense possibilities but very few tangible results. I would love to eat my words in a few months but I don't think I will.

http://daily44.wordpress.com

Many have been thinking it, now it's time we all said it.

 

Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic thinks so:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/the-gop-has-dec.html

So does this guy: http://daily44.wordpress.com

The Repubican party does not care about the country though that's for sure!

 

Now before you start sending me your hate mail, read this guy's post:

http://daily44.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/sanjay-gupta-is-an-opportunistic-dick/

I am only quoting him.

My favorite line in the post: "This is the kind of behavior pathological social-ladder climbers learn to perfect early. This is typical of  what the Canadian thinker John Ralston Saul calls a "courtier" or a "Voltaire bastard"; a man who either has no opinions of his own or is perfectly happy to substitute them with anything that can advance his carrier, create new friends that can advance his carrier or open doors to new carriers or new revenues."

Ok, that was just to get your attention. Blago is not innocent. But in the case of the Senate seat sale, he may not be all that guilty after all.

I posted this this guy's blog entry  (http://daily44.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/blagoobama-why-this-matters-and-doesnt/) a few days ago and got a lot of flack for it. Now I think the New York Times is wondering whether Fitzgerald's case is really all that air-tight! Was Blago just exercising his First Amendemen rights? What was he doing that other politicians don't do on a regular basis without getting in trouble for it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16legal.html?_r=1

 

Before you proclaim Rod Blagojevich guilty, read this...

http://daily44.wordpress.com

 

Hillary at State? Ahead of Bill Richardson a seasoned diplomat who negotiated with the North Koreans and Saddam Hussein?

Why? I think this guy: http://daily44.wordpress.com agrees with me.

I would add that John Kerry and Tom Daschle as the people who essentially shepperded Obama in the Senate deserved better prizes than Hillary. But I could be wrong.

 

...at leaving on a sour note.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/opinion/10herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

"I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites."

Looks like we better brace ourselves....

Did anybody notice that Hillary Clinton did not wear a flag pin last night and has not worn one consistently? If this is the badge of patriotism as the silly questions of late seem to indicate, why does she not get questionned on this? Why is this treatment reserved for Obama? Oooh wait... I think it's because the Liberal media supports Obama so they rerserve all the silly shenanigans for him and him alone.