Middle East File 

2003-12-23 Bush has thrown open Pandora's box in a paradise for international terrorists  -  David Hirst

2003 has been a crucial year for the Middle East, with war in Iraq and the continuing intifada in Israel. The Guardian's acclaimed commentator on the region assesses what happened, what it means, and where it might lead next year

2003-12-17  Amnesty comment (from Guardian) re trial of Saddam  (see also Micheal Moore)

2003-12-10 
The (Melbourne) Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace is scathing in its criticism of Australia's part in the war in Iraq. "We broke with the UN efforts to prevent war and joined America in an illegal invasion."

"As a result, between 21,000 and 55,000 people are dead and our government is morally responsible for contributing to their deaths."

Full text at Commission's website

2003-12-02   Geneva plan for Middle East  (Guardian)  Excellent!

The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was among 58 former prime ministers, presidents, foreign secretaries and other leaders to offer support in a jointly published letter. At  the ceremony yesterday,  former US president Jimmy Carter said: "The people support it. Political leaders are the obstacle to peace... it is unlikely we shall ever see a better foundation for peace."

2003-11-21  What we do not grieve we cannot reclaim  National Catholic Reporter, USA

"What the eye does not see," the proverb reads, "the heart cannot grieve." I'm not sure how many Americans ever learned that little piece of human wisdom, but one thing's for sure, the U.S. government has.

There is a great deal we're not seeing these days that we should be grieving. That may be why we're not allowed to see it. If we did, we might want to change things.

We don't see what war really looks like anymore.

After Vietnam, in Persian Gulf War #1, the manner in which wars were allowed to be reported changed drastically. Reporters who once followed troops into battle, showing damages and casualties on both sides, are now kept at a distance from combat zones.

Military news releases rather than on-site third-party observations are now the norm. Reporters report what the government tells them to report. Or, like the rest of us, they are left to piece a story together one comment at a time. Too many a newscast in this war now begins, "Well, folks, like you, we can hear the explosions in the background but reporters are not allowed in that area and we've had no report yet about exactly what is being bombed. All we know is that it seems Baghdad is under heavy attack again."

Once "embedded" in units for the triumphant entry into Baghdad for all the world to see, news reporters are now refused access to areas where U.S. forces have been attacked or are attacking. We get military footage, perhaps -- as in the case of Jessica Lynch -- but not civilian coverage.

We are watching this war through blind eyes, in other words. Unless we have the opportunity to see how wars are fought, however, we will never get the chance again to mourn the barbarism that can only posture as reason and foreign policy and international relations in the lexicon of national politics.

But that's not all we're not seeing anymore.

We not only no longer see the waging of war, but we don't see the cost of war anymore, either. Thanks to orders from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, Americans no longer see the return of caskets from the battlefield, the solemn march from the back of the plane to the back of a hearse, the procession of flag-draped coffins.

Death is not a reportable activity in this war. There is, then, nothing much to mourn but the daily addition of one more number in a column of nothing but numbers. We put no faces on the numbers of wives or small children left with nothing but a picture on the mantel when everyone else comes home for Thanksgiving dinner.

The wounded, too, are simply numbers now. It's difficult to mourn the young, vital, laughing lives who come back without arms or legs, without hearing or sight, without emotional stability and hope and reduced only to a number. Over 6,800 soldiers have been "evacuated" from Iraq -- over 400 of them dead, over 2,000 wounded. The others, over 4,000 of them, with "non-battle injuries." Whatever that means. We don't know because we're not told -- and we never see them for ourselves so that we can grieve their losses with them.

We're also not seeing world reactions to us as a nation or the massive effort to paper over international response to our excursion into the iffy doctrine of "pre-emptive" war. The implications of this for national integrity and for U.S. standing in world opinion are almost impossible to calculate. Unless, of course, you take last week's announcement that the most feared nations in the world are Israel and the United States of America.

This month, CNN reports, the government made every attempt to have protests against the Bush administration banned in London during Bush's visit there next week. The hope was to get the British to agree to keep demonstrators -- of which they expect thousands -- far outside the area where Bush and Blair will be meeting. That way our government's PR machine could make sure that George W. Bush would not be seen in any picture with protestors. However many people there might be on the streets of London, the meeting would be sanitized to the ultimate, a bucolic picture of two great statesmen above the fray, no taint of conflict over ongoing U.S. policies, no question of the decline of democracy and the right to peaceful assembly -- only George Bush, Tony Blair and Marie Antoinette in cameo.

Interestingly enough, the British government, at the last moment, chose British democracy over U.S. control. No small thing for any state to do in the new American Empire. But the world knows, nevertheless, that the attempt was made, a reality that brings U.S. democracy itself into question.

Finally, we are not seeing -- or even hearing -- about the effect of this war on civilians in Iraq. No numbers of dead are reported. No sight of their wounded. No images of the homeless or the hungry or the displaced. When asked about those figures, one of our most senior officials responded to reporters by saying, "That is a number in which I have no interest whatsoever."

That kind of disinterest, that callous kind of disregard for the innocent must be mourned. Not because we are Americans but because, God willing, we like to think of ourselves as still human enough to care.

Finally, we are not seeing what the words really mean and do not say when we label this enterprise the "coalition of the willing," or insist on calling the damage waged in the course of it as the work of "coalition forces." Who the coalition is not is every bit as revealing as who it is.

The coalition is not 52 African nations. It is not the 116 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement who make up two-thirds of the member nations of the United Nations. It is not Canada, our number one trading partner, and it is not France, Germany, Russia, China or Brazil.

The coalition, outside of England and Australia, consists of countries with few or no military forces, small populations, little or no money. It is countries like Italy, Eritrea, Macedonia, Micronesia, Palau, Portugal, Romania, Costa Rica, Tonga and the Solomon Islands.

The "coalition" is, then, for the most part, us.

From where I stand, it's no wonder we have become one of the most feared -- rather than most admired, loved and respected -- nations in the world. But that's what happens, perhaps, when "the eye does not see what the heart should grieve." We have become a nation blinded by power, ignorant of grief. Whoever thought it would come to this?

 2003-11-16  John Paul II Disapproves of Israel's Barrier  Says Holy Land Needs "Bridges" Not Walls

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 16, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The Holy Land does not need "walls" but "bridges," John Paul II said in reference to the barrier dividing the Palestinian Territories and Israel.

The Pope for the first time publicly expressed his disapproval of the Israeli government's initiative to build a fortified line of security. 
The Holy Father condemned "any terrorist action carried out, in recent times, in the Holy Land."

"At the same time," he added, "I must point out that, unfortunately, in those places the dynamism of peace seems to have stopped. The construction of a wall between the Israeli and Palestinian people is seen by many as a new obstacle on the road toward peaceful coexistence."

"In fact, the Holy Land does not need walls but bridges!" the Holy Father exclaimed in a voice that seemed clearer than in recent weeks. "Without the reconciliation of spirits, there can be no peace."

"May the leaders have the courage to return to dialogue and negotiation, thus opening the way toward a Middle East that is reconciled in justice and peace," the Pope said.

On Oct. 21, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling the sprawling network of fences and walls a "contradiction to international law" and ordering Israel to "stop and reverse" its construction on Palestinian lands.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government said that it would continue the construction of the barrier, which will eventually run 350 kilometers (215 miles)...

2003-11-15: Vatican cardinal condemns Israel security wall

 Cardinal Roger Etchegaray has said the Israeli "security wall" that is being built through Palestinian territories "inevitably creates a geography of apartheid, which provokes rather than controls violence".

Cardinal Etchegaray.... made his remarks in Jerusalem, during a short trip to the Holy Land.

He encouraged those "advancing down the long road toward peace with small gestures of reason and of pardon".

But he reported that during his trip, when he made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem to pray at the Basilica of the Nativity, he "saw the Palestinian settlements where Israeli authorities are building a 'security wall.'"

The wall cuts through Palestinian lands, separating neighbours and dividing communities. In some cases it cuts families from access to their own property. That project is "intolerable," he said, adding that he was joining many other religious leaders in condemning the Israeli plan.

The wall, Cardinal Etchegaray said, "lacerates the human fabric" of the community, "with grave consequences for the society, economy, education, and health." He argued that a more effective way to fight against terrorism would be to address the root cause of the conflict, and to undertake a realistic campaign to promote peaceful negotiations.

SOURCE
Vatican prelate condemns Israel's "security wall" (Catholic World News)

Divide and destroy

Israel's separation wall is creating a new kind of humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians who live in its shadow. Christian Aid's Alex Klaushofer witnesses the devastation of communities

Thursday November 13, 2003 (The Guardian)

Over the past few months, the barrier that Israel is building to cut itself off from the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank has come to symbolise the divide between the two peoples at the heart of the Middle East crisis.

Cutting into Palestinian lands by up to six kilometres, the barrier takes different forms along its length - here an imposing concrete construction, there a steel fence and a tangle of barbed wire.

But whatever the barrier's form, its impact on the communities it dominates is devastating. In the farming villages of the northern West Bank, what was once a self-sufficient way of life is dying out because farmers cannot access their land.

The fertile valley that supported most of Jayyous's 3,500 people with yields from olive groves and citrus orchards is now locked behind the barrier, accessible to some only through gates administered by the Israeli army.

A few farmers are just managing to cling onto their land, forced to accept the permit system imposed by the Israeli authorities to get through the gate. Yet even with permits they must queue for the gate openings at the beginning and end of each day.

Sometimes the soldiers refuse to open the gate at all. In September it was closed for 20 days during the Israeli holiday season. At other times the soldiers just do not allow farmers through.

To combat this problem, a new population of farmer-campers has sprung up behind the gate, living away from their families in sheds and tents rather than risk being refused access to their land by the soldiers. They risk arrest as they are not meant to stay on their land overnight.

They are the lucky ones. Jayyous resident Faheema Saleem has 11 children and a disabled husband. Her family is now one of the poorest in the village because most of their land was confiscated and destroyed by Israeli construction workers who cleared it to make way for the barrier.

"All our land is behind the wall," she says. "We had two greenhouses, two acres of irrigated land, a big orchard of olives and open grazing land of up to 25 acres. Now we have this" - she gestures to a small garden plot in front of her house - "and 13 olive trees."

To keep the family afloat, Faheema receives food parcels of basics such as lentils and flour as part of a new programme run by the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, an organisation supported by Christian Aid.

"We have a new humanitarian problem in the village and we now have a large number of families who are totally dependent," says Marian Shamasanah, the food programme co-ordinator and assistant head of the Jayyous women's club.

"I have been 14 years in this club. We never thought about humanitarian support until this year. In normal times it's not socially accepted to take food. Normally, we hold classes in first aid, family planning and handicrafts, but we are not involved in a humanitarian programme like this."

A few miles over the hills, the people of Jbarra are also turning to humanitarian aid as a direct result of the barrier. Most of the greenhouses in this farming hamlet of 350 people lie empty and its one road is lined with dying fruit trees as landowners outside the gate have been denied access to water their crops.

But Jbarra's odd status as one of 15 villages caught between the barrier and the Green Line that separates Israel from the West Bank has created further deprivations. In October the Israeli authorities declared the area a closed military zone and tried to issue its inhabitants with permits to access their land on the other side of the wall. Jbarra residents rejected the permits. For them it was a matter of principle. In response the Israeli army has refused to let them leave their village.

As a result, people have been unable to get to their jobs and businesses in the neighbouring towns and villages, or to the markets where they sell their produce.

Access to healthcare is also a problem. Ennas Awad tried to take her month-old baby to the doctor in Tulkarem but was denied access. "I told the soldiers the baby was ill, but they didn't believe me," she says. "They said: 'Everyone who wants to go to Tulkarem says their son or daughter is ill. But we will not allow you to pass. You are a liar.'"

Temporary relief has come in the form of a mobile clinic run by the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees - another local charity supported by Christian Aid. The clinic was hastily assembled in someone's house and announced over the mosque Tannoy by the sheik. But Azam Mahmoud, one of the doctors in the clinic, is clear about the limitations of this one-off healthcare solution. "To resolve the problem in Jbarra, you must start a permanent clinic with doctors and medicines in the village," he said.

Malnutrition is already affecting villagers' health, he says. "I saw a pregnant woman who has very rough skin. It is a deficiency of vitamin A. I told her to eat egg and milk. She said: 'In Jbarra there is no egg, no milk.' It is difficult to believe this is the situation of a village in the 21st century."

The new dependency emerging in the communities destroyed by the barrier is yet another example of how the poverty afflicting the Palestinians is a human creation. Here aid is not just part of the solution, it's a symptom of the underlying problem.

As William Bell, Christian Aid's advocacy officer for Israel and the Palestinians told the parliamentary international development committee: "This is a political problem created by the occupation of the Palestinian territories. A political solution is needed to tackle this ongoing humanitarian crisis."

· Alex Klaushofer is the Middle East communications manager at Christian Aid

Useful links
Christian Aid's submission to IDC inquiry on Palestinian aid (pdf)
Christian Aid

(Bishop) Pat Power, Canberra   23 October 2003 (in front of Parliament House, while Mr Bush was inside)
  An appeal to President Bush

Last Tuesday morning I was preparing to say a Mission Mass for school students from our Archdiocese.  The theme of the Mass was "Peace for Life".  As students were about to enter the Cathedral a helicopter gunship flew over, seemingly in preparation for your visit.  The students saw the irony of the clash of the two events and prayed even more fervently for peace in our world.

That is surely the deep desire of every person of good-will - that there be global peace, peace based on justice which recognizes that we are all part of the one human family.

Gathered with the young people last Tuesday, I thought of youngsters of similar age in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other countries often viewed by you as "the enemy".  Those children along with their parents and grand-parents easily become the innocent victims of threats and hostile actions played out between you, the President of the United States, and their own political leaders.

I appeal to you today to demonstrate to the Australian people and to the world that you are a man of peace.  Up to now you have shown yourself to be more intent on issuing threats, on wreaking revenge and on waging war.

Can't you see how your so-called war on terrorism has only succeeded in increasing the threat of terrorists attacks?  Can't you see that our world has become far more volatile and fragile since you embarked on this senseless campaign?  Can't you see that there must be a better way of bringing stability into international relations?

I suggest that there is another way.  Instead of talking of waging war on terrorism, let us begin to talk about a war on poverty.  This means recognizing the great imbalance in the distribution of the world's wealth and resources.  Can countries like the United States and Australia continue to flaunt their extravagant life-styles in the face of the dire poverty of Third World countries?

During the Jubilee Year 2000, a campaign was conducted to remit or at least reduce the international debt of those Third World countries whose whole economy is locked into trying to pay off impossible interest debts.  A fraction of the price of the war on terrorism would have gone a long way towards lessening those crippling debts.

Surely it is in everyone's interest for the United States and its allies to be viewed as friends to the rest of the world, rather than trying to beat them into submission by threats and brute force.  Isn't it time for a bit of humility from you, Mr Blair and Mr Howard, admitting that you got it wrong over the invasion of Iraq, time to act in the interests of the people most affected by the war, rather than what is best for the United States?

It should be clear to you that there will never be peace in the Middle East until there is a resolution of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Clearly, the violence and terrorism on both sides needs to be condemned in the strongest terms.  But the United States needs to take a more even-handed role in the resolution of the conflict, condemning not only the desperate acts of Palestinian suicide bombers, but also the illegal occupation by the Israelis of Palestinian land, the unjust restriction of movement of the Palestinian people, the building of a wall that makes Palestinians prisoners in their own land and the heavy-handed use of sophisticated American-made weaponry against people barely able to defend themselves on such a scale.  A Jewish leader recently wrote that "peace can only come through deeds of peace"*.

The United States should use its influence (and its financial clout) with Israel to bring about negotiations with the Palestinian people.  Only then will the State of Israel be safeguarded and a truly free and independent Palestinian state come into being.

Pope John Paul frequently reminds us that there can be no true or lasting peace unless it is underlined by genuine justice.

It would be wonderful if you and the Australian Prime Minister this afternoon would declare yourselves men of peace in those terms - leaders prepared to offer a hand of friendship to your former enemies, leaders committed to a fairer distribution of the goods of this world, leaders who acknowledge the dignity of every human person, leaders brave enough to take the risk of loving, leaders renouncing hatred and fear, leaders who will boldly tell the world that every person is our sister or brother. 

* David Knoll, Vice-President, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Sydney, writing to THE TABLET (London) 4 October 2003.

The war game

David Hirst's account of the Arab-Israeli conflict, The Gun and the Olive Branch, caused a storm 25 years ago. In this edited extract from his new and updated edition he offers a personal and highly controversial view of the current crisis in the Middle East

Sunday September 21, 2003
The Observer

By the summer of 2002, George Bush had firmly set his new course: 'regime change' and reform in the Muslim and Arab worlds, and, where necessary, American military intervention to achieve it. Hitherto, it had been assumed that the US could not go to war in one of the two great zones of Middle East crisis - Iraq and the Gulf - before it had at least calmed things down in the other, older and more explosive one, Palestine. But the American administration's neo-conservatives had a very simple answer to that. The road to war on Iraq no longer lay through peace in Palestine; peace in Palestine lay through war on Baghdad.

It was all set forth, in its most comprehensive, well-nigh megalomaniac form, by Norman Podhoretz, the neo-cons' veteran intellectual luminary, in the September 2002 issue of his magazine, Commentary. Changes in regime, he proclaimed, were 'the sine qua non throughout the region'. They might 'clear a path to the long-overdue internal reform and modernisation of Islam'.

This was a full and final elaboration of that project, 'A Clean Break', which some of his kindred spirits had first laid before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu back in 1996. It was the apotheosis of the 'strategic alliance', at least as much an Israeli grand design as an American one.

Under the guise of forcibly divesting Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, the US now sought to 'reshape' the entire Middle East, with this most richly endowed and pivotal of countries as the lynchpin of a whole new, pro-American geopolitical order. Witnessing such an overwhelming display of American will and power, other regimes, such as Hizbollah-supporting Syria in particular, would either have to bend to American purposes or suffer the same fate.

With the assault on Iraq, the US was not merely adopting Israel's long-established methods - of initiative, offence and pre-emption - it was also adopting Israel's adversaries as its own. Iraq had always ranked high among those; it was one of its so-called 'faraway' enemies. These had come to be seen as more menacing than the 'near' ones, and especially since they had begun developing weapons of mass destruction.

So excited was Israeli premier Ariel Sharon about this whole new Middle East order in the making that he told the Times, 'the day after' Iraq, the US and Britain should turn to that other 'faraway' enemy - Iran. For Israel, the ayatollahs' Iran had always seemed the greater menace of the two, by virtue of its intrinsic weight, its fundamentalist, theologically anti-Zionist leadership, its more serious, diversified and supposedly Russian-assisted nuclear armaments programme, its ideological affinity with, or direct sponsorship of, such Islamist organisations as Hamas or Hizbollah.

Nothing, in fact, better illustrated the ascendancy which Israel and the American 'friends of Israel' have acquired over American policy-making than did Iran. Quite simply, said Iran expert James Bill, the 'US views Iran through spectacles manufactured in Israel'. Impressing on the US the gravity of the Iranian threat has long been a foremost Israeli preoccupation.

By the early 1990s, the former Minister Moshe Sneh was warning that Israel 'cannot possibly put up with a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands'. That could and should be collectively prevented, he said, 'since Iran threatens the interests of all rational states in the Middle East'. However: 'If the Western states don't do their duty, Israel will find itself forced to act alone, and will accomplish its task by any [ie including nuclear] means.' The hint of anti-American blackmail in that remark was nothing exceptional; it has always been a leitmotif of Israeli discourse on the subject.

The showdown with Iraq has only encouraged this kind of thinking. 'Within two years,' said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, 'either the US or Israelis are going to attack Iran's [nuclear sites] or acquiesce in Iran being a nuclear state.'

To where this Israeli-American, neo-conservative blueprint for the Middle East will lead is impossible to forecast. What can be said for sure is that it could easily turn out to be as calamitous in its consequences, for the region, America and Israel, as it is preposterously partisan in motivation, fantastically ambitious in design and terribly risky in practice.

Even if, to begin with, it achieves what, by its authors' estimate, is an outward, short-term measure of success, it will not end the violence in the Middle East. Far more likely is that, in the medium or the long term, it will make it very much worse. For the violence truly to end, its roots must be eradicated, too, and the noxious soil that feeds them cleansed.

It is late, but perhaps not too late, for that to happen. The historic - and historically generous - compromise offer which Yasser Arafat, back in 1988, first put forward for the sharing of Palestine between its indigenous people and the Zionists who drove most of them out still officially stands. It is completely obvious by now that, without external persuasion, Israel will never accept it; that the persuasion can only come from Israel's last real friend in the world, the US; that, for the persuasion to work, there has to be 'reform' or 'regime change' in Israel quite as far-reaching as any to be wrought on the other side.

Given the partisanship, it is, admittedly, highly unlikely to happen any time soon. But if it doesn't happen in the reasonably foreseeable future, there may come a time when it can no longer happen at all. The Palestinian leadership may withdraw its offer, having concluded, like many of its people already have, that, however conciliatory it becomes, whatever fresh concessions it makes, it will never be enough for an adversary that seems to want all.

The Hamas rejectionists, and/or those, secular as well as religious, who think like them, may take over the leadership. The whole, broader, Arab-Israeli peace process which Anwar Sadat began, and which came to be seen as irreversible, may prove to be reversible after all. In which case, the time may also come when the cost to the US of continuing to support its infinitely importunate protégé in a never-ending conflict against an ever-widening circle of adversaries is greater than its will and resources to sustain it.

That would very likely be a time when Israel itself is already in dire peril. And if it were, then America would very likely discover something else: that the friend and ally it has succoured all these years is not only a colonial state, not only extremist by temperament, racist in practice, and increasingly fundamentalist in the ideology that drives it, it is also eminently capable of becoming an 'irrational' state at America's expense as well as its own.

The threatening of wild, irrational violence, in response to political pressure, has been an Israeli impulse from the very earliest days. It was first authoritatively documented, in the 1950s, by Moshe Sharett, the dovish Prime Minister, who wrote of his Defence Minister, Pinhas Lavon, that he 'constantly preached for acts of madness' or 'going crazy' if ever Israel were crossed. Without a 'just, comprehensive and lasting' peace which only America can bring to pass, Israel will remain at least as likely a candidate as Iran, and a far more enduring one, for the role of 'nuclear-crazy' state.

Iran can never be threatened in its very existence. Israel can. Indeed, such a threat could even grow out of the current intifada. That, at least, is the pessimistic opinion of Martin van Creveld, professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 'If it went on much longer,' he said, 'the Israeli government [would] lose control of the people. In campaigns like this, the anti-terror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing. I regard a total Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of the Israeli state and society. We'll destroy ourselves.'

In this situation, he went on, more and more Israelis were coming to regard the 'transfer' of the Palestinians as the only salvation; resort to it was growing 'more probable' with each passing day. Sharon 'wants to escalate the conflict and knows that nothing else will succeed'.

But would the world permit such ethnic cleansing? 'That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.'

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The Ayatollah: Iraq's archduke?

The killing of an Iraqi Shia leader could be the event that ignites the country's tensions and causes a regional conflagration, writes Brian Whitaker

Monday September 1, 2003 (Guardian)

The worst act of violence in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein was overshadowed in Britain's broadsheet papers on Saturday by news that Tony Blair's media adviser had resigned.

In the popular tabloids meanwhile, two celebrity stories vied for readers' attention: Madonna's "lesbian" kiss with Britney Spears and the publication of David Beckham's autobiography.

Well, that's journalism. But a few years from now we may look back on the bombing that killed Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, along with more than 90 other Shia Muslims, as a pivotal event that tipped the balance towards civil war and the disintegration of Iraq.

The killing of Ayatollah Hakim, the country's most prominent Shia cleric, has been likened to murdering the Pope, but it's more serious than that because popes these days have little real influence.

Ayatollah Hakim was also head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the leading Shia political organisation. A better comparison would be the murder of the Austrian archduke that sparked the first world war.

Before his return to Iraq in May, the ayatollah had spent more than 20 years in exile in Iran, where I met him last October, in the company of several other British journalists.

Getting to see him was quite a performance. Concrete blocks surrounded his headquarters building in Tehran to keep car bombers away. At the door, we were given thorough body and bag searches by guards who apologised profusely for their intrusion. In fact, he had far more protection than Iranian government ministers, who we were able to meet without anyone taking the slightest interest in our baggage.

Such security was obviously lacking at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf last Friday - though the Americans say that was out of deference to the site's religious significance.

Ayatollah Hakim had every reason to expect a violent end. One wall in his Tehran headquarters was hung with 20 portraits, each frame adorned with a single red rose. These, an assistant explained, were the Hakim family's leading martyrs - including five of the ayatollah's brothers and six of his nephews. Altogether, 28 of his relatives had been killed by the Iraqi regime and 22 others had disappeared.

As he entered the room for our meeting, Ayatollah Hakim cut an impressive figure with his pale, ascetic face, a luxuriant grey beard and black turban. Multiple silver rings bedecked his fingers. He wore no shoes but his socks were spotless white.

He talked of his eagerness to remove Saddam Hussein but was also apprehensive about American military plans.

"Invasion is very dangerous for Iraq and the region," he said. "The people should make the change from inside Iraq."

He dismissed newspaper reports circulating at the time that the US was considering an extended period of military rule in Iraq rather than letting the Iraqis themselves take charge immediately after the overthrow of Saddam.

"The Americans gave their promises not to do such things," the ayatollah said, referring to a meeting he had last August with the US secretary of state, Colin Powell. If the Americans insisted on staying in Iraq, then Sciri, for one, would "make all efforts" to get them out, he added.

After the invasion, Iraqi self-rule was not forthcoming as apparently promised, but Ayatollah Hakim agreed - rather reluctantly - to let Sciri join the powerless new governing council, set up in July.

This brought no obvious reward from the Americans and placed him under further pressure from Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical young cleric based in the impoverished Shia district of Baghdad.

His assassination will certainly strengthen the hand of al-Sadr and may also force Sciri to adopt a more radical attitude towards the Americans in order to maintain its popular support. More importantly, though, it will also inflame Sunni-Shia tensions.

Iraq as a country was stitched together after the first world war, from three incompatible provinces of the old Ottoman Empire: the Arab and Persian Shia of the south and south-east, the Sunni Arabs in the middle and south-west, and the Kurds (who are also Sunnis) in the north.

Although the Sunni Arabs were the smallest of the three groups, Britain decided they should be dominant and installed a king from Saudi Arabia to rule the new country. This arrangement was more for the benefit of Britain's relations with Gulf rulers than for the Iraqis themselves; the difficulty of holding Iraq together was one reason why it ended up with such a brutal dictator as Saddam Hussein.

The underlying religious and ethnic tensions were kept at bay through decades of minority rule. Saddam Hussein suppressed them with utter ruthlessness but also, as the Americans are now learning, with considerable skill.

Fear of opening up a can of worms in Iraq was one of the main reasons why George Bush Sr held back from invading in 1991 after the liberation of Kuwait. Now, though, his son has lifted the lid off.

In the days of Saddam, Ayatollah Hakim's death might simply have gone down as one more in a long line of Shia martyrs, but circumstances have changed and he is unlikely to be forgotten so easily. After many years of oppression, the Shia of Iraq now have an opportunity to assert themselves - and his death provides the rationale.

A weekly bulletin issued by security consultants Kroll Associates last Thursday - the day before the assassination - carried the prescient heading: "Spectre of ethnic and inter-religious violence looming".

Besides highlighting a failed attempt to kill Ayatollah Hakim's uncle in Najaf, the report looked at the worsening situation in northern Iraq, where clashes erupted between Kurds and Turkoman tribesmen, leaving at least 12 people dead.

There was a danger, it said, that this could expand to encompass the Arab minority who were transplanted to the region by Saddam to dilute the Kurdish population.

"Tensions have been brewing between all three communities over control of the north, especially Kirkuk," it continued. "The Kurds' rush to redressing years of repression at the hands of the old regime has ignited major tensions."

It might not be quite so bad if these internal conflicts were a self-contained Iraqi matter, but they are not: they affect almost all of Iraq's neighbours.

The stateless Kurds, for example, are spread across four countries. Apart from the five million in Iraq, about 15 million live in Turkey, six million in Iran and up to 1.5 million in Syria - and Kurdish assertiveness in Iraq worries all of these nations.

Turkey is also concerned to protect the two million Turkomans of Iraq from the Kurds. The Turkomans, as their name suggests, speak Turkish and have an affinity with Ankara. If they are seriously threatened Turkey could feel obliged to intervene.

To the south, meanwhile, the predominantly Sunni countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states - worry about Shia assertiveness in Iraq. There are already some signs of Saudi attempts to bolster Iraq's Sunnis against the Shia.

Iran, on the other hand, has a natural affinity with Iraq's Shia and supports them to some extent. Its support, however, is limited because it does not want the Shia to become dominant in Iraq, for fear it would undermine Iran's own status as the centre of the Shia world.

The danger here is not just that Iraq will plunge into civil war but that the warring elements will find sponsorship from neighbouring countries, with all the attendant risks of a region-wide conflict.

The US, of course, has warned Iraq's neighbours to keep out, but it won't work. The fact of the matter is that the Americans have upset the status quo in Iraq, forcing its neighbours to reflect on the consequences and protect their own national interests as far as possible.

Instead of huffing and puffing about foreign subversion, the US, if it really wanted to avoid a civil war, would engage the neighbours in a dialogue about Iraq's future - now, before it's too late.

That, unfortunately, is impossible. Most of the neighbours do not recognise the American occupation as legitimate, or at least can't be seen to recognise it. The Americans in turn are unable to deal with the issues sensibly because of their loathing of Iran as a founder-member of the "Axis of Evil" and Syria as a member-in-waiting.

Once again the US, despite its self-appointed role as the world's policeman, is stuck. All it can do is pretend that everything will turn out fine in the end.

As President Bush assured the world on August 19 - just hours after the bombing of the UN building in Baghdad - "Iraq is on a irreversible course toward self-government and peace."

Email
brian.whitaker@guardian.co.uk

MPs compare Gaza to Warsaw ghetto

Press Association
Thursday June 19, 2003

Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was today compared to the Nazis' creation of the Warsaw ghetto by MPs who recently returned from the region.

The controversial comparison, drawn by Oona King and Jenny Tonge, will anger the pro-Israel lobby and the visiting Israeli finance minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, who met Tony Blair at Downing Street this morning.

Labour MP Ms King, who is Jewish, said Gaza was "the same in nature" as the infamous Polish ghetto.

"No government should be behaving like that - least of all a Jewish government," the Bethnal Green and Bow MP said.

Ms King and Liberal Democrat MP Dr Tonge were holding a Westminster press conference today following their fact-finding trip.

The pair were caught up in the aftermath of the Israeli gunship assassination attack on a leading Palestinian extremist. A building they were in just minutes earlier was hit in retaliation.

The MPs were also confronted by an Israeli soldier armed with a grenade as they tried to leave the strip.

Speaking ahead of the press conference, Ms King said the visit, organised by Christian Aid, had opened her eyes.

The MP, a member of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, said: "I recognise the terror many Israelis live with as a matter of their daily lives.

"I was more surprised perhaps by the everyday terror that Palestinians live, the detail and nature of which I had not understood.

"We must support the moderate voices as opposed to strengthening extremists."

Referring to Warsaw, scene of the historic uprising by its Jewish inhabitants, Ms King said: "It is the same in nature but not extent."

She stressed the "very, very big difference" between Gaza and the infamous ghetto established by the Nazis in Poland's capital.

"Palestinians are not being rounded up and put in gas chambers," she said.

But the MP said: "What makes it similar is what happened to the Jewish people in that time which was the seizing of land, being forced from property, torture and bureaucracy - control used in a demeaning way over the smallest task.

"On top of that building a wall around them - and that is precisely what the Israeli government is doing. In doing so it is building a political ghetto. I don't think it can escape that conclusion."

Ms King also said: "As a Jewish person, I hoped I would never live to see the day I was ashamed of the actions of the Jewish state."

The situation had worsened considerably since she last visited with pressure group Labour Friends of Israel in 1998, she added.

Ms Tonge agreed: "You are almost getting a situation like the Warsaw ghetto - people can't get in or out. They can't work, they can't sell anything. There is this gradual squeeze."

However, the Richmond Park MP also offered a comparison of her own.

"I feel it was an apartheid system and it is certainly getting worse - the area where the Palestinians live is getting smaller."

Ms Tonge wants to see economic sanctions against Israel unless the situation improves and says EU or UN troops should be sent in to keep the peace.

"Israel says everything it does is for security but they are not addressing the cause of terrorism, only terrorism itself," she added.

At their meeting this morning, Mr Blair and Mr Netanyahu discussed the Middle East peace process.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "The Prime Minister reiterated his commitment to see the road map implemented and his willingness to do everything that he and the British government can to help."

Later, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy said: "It is a terrible shame that a British MP could make this comparison. We were shocked by the ignorance of comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto.

"Such views only encourage extremists elements to become involved in terror against Israel as we recently faced in the suicide bomb in Tel Aviv."

Spinning out of control

Australians are a politically disengaged bunch, writes David Fickling, but their government's deception over the war in Iraq may yet jolt them out of their apathy

Monday June 16, 2003

Certain aspects of character are assumed to be more or less the same the world over: fear of failure, hope for the future, hatred of injustice. You might have thought that the response to dishonesty would be similarly universal, but if public reaction around the globe to the lying and spin used to promote war in Iraq are anything to go by, it is anything but.

In the US, news that Washington ignored the testimony of its own intelligence agencies has been greeted by the plunging of heads into sand. For conservatives and much of the US mainstream, such matters are best not thought about. The four-square solidarity behind the White House following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks will admit no imperfection on the part of government.

Britain sees things differently. As any pom resident in Australia soon learns, Brits have an international reputation for whinging about things, and the Iraq war has consequently spawned ministerial resignations, blanket news coverage, and a select committee inquiry.

If national stereotypes are anything to go by, Australians might be expected to concentrate on their desire for good times, rather than worry about what's going on in Canberra. And true to form, public reaction from the third member of the coalition of the willing has largely been one of ennui.

This is strange, given the strength of the case against the government here. In Britain, journalists, politicians and activists have spent weeks trying to dig up evidence that the government made up its intelligence claims relating to Iraq. In Australia, that evidence was on the front page of the country's biggest news weekly a full two weeks before the first cruise missile was launched on Baghdad.

The revelation came with the resignation of Andrew Wilkie, a senior analyst at Australia's top intelligence body, the Office of National Assessment (ONA). A former soldier with an open, affable manner, Wilkie used to sit in his Canberra office reading raw intelligence reports from Australian and international spy agencies, weighing them up and then boiling them down into briefings for the prime minister and cabinet.

His military background meant he was given a particularly wide-ranging role in the run-up to the Iraq war, though the government has done its best to downplay his importance among ONA's staff of 30.

Wilkie does not mince his words. Claims of collaboration between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda were "preposterous". "They were clearly concocted. There was no strong intelligence to support it whatsoever," he says.

Evidence about that missing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was similarly unreliable. "It was clear before the war that some of the evidence on WMD coming out of Britain and America was garbage," he says. "It was being skewed by political information from Iraqis who were trying to encourage a US invasion."

Only half-jokingly, he talks about sitting at his desk and rapidly directing Pentagon-originated intelligence reports to the ONA rubbish bin.

Wilkie was initially stunned by the level of interest his resignation generated. With typical journalistic understatement, the columnist who broke the story forewarned him that he could expect a few days of calls from the media. In fact, he says that fielding press queries has been a full-time job in the three months since he left.

This week he is in London, where the foreign affairs select committee will question him further about the subterfuge used to sell the war. His testimony is likely to be explosive. Governments in Washington, London and Canberra, he will say, were simply lying to the public about Iraq.

The intelligence reports Wilkie passed to the Australian cabinet did not begin to justify the unequivocal claims made by politicians, including prime minister John Howard, about Iraq's "massive" WMD programme.

Furthermore, assessments of the British and American governments made by Australian diplomatic staff and defence attaches showed a similar gulf between claimed and genuine motives.

"I know for a fact that in Australia, the government was being well advised that WMD was not the sole reason for Washington going to war," he says. "In fact, it wasn't even the most important reason ... The British and Australian governments were well aware of the real reasons for the war."

That the Australian government was aware of this, but kept it from the public while sending Australian troops off to battle, ought to have caused a scandal in Australia. But despite all those media calls Wilkie has faced, public feathers remain, for the most part, unruffled.

The Labor opposition is dragging its feet in launching a Senate inquiry into the abuse of intelligence, and its embattled leader, Simon Crean, has failed to confront the government in parliament.

No surprise there, a cynic might say. The Australian public have grown used to their government lying, most scandalously during the xenophobic campaign for the 2001 federal election.

In a masterpiece of innuendo and misinformation, ministers told the public that refugees on a stricken ship off the northwest coast of Australia were throwing their own children into the sea in an attempt to force the coastguard to pick them up and take them ashore. A photograph was given to the media purporting to show those children floating in the water.

Ministers hinted that Islamist terrorists might be choosing this hazardous route to get into Australia, particularly absurd claim given that Western-qualified English-speakers like Mohammed Atta are precisely the sort of Muslim immigrants that Australia's immigration department is still happy to welcome.

In fact, the photograph showed an Australian coastguard rescuing adult refugees after their ship sank. The "children overboard" claim was inspired by a single, unconfirmed report in which a refugee on deck was seen through binoculars lifting her child into the air.

For the most part, the government has emerged unscathed from the exposure of these lies, and Howard's unique talent for ambiguous rhetoric saved him from charges of outright misinformation. When asked about the children overboard affair, he said that parents who might do such things were not the sort of people he wanted in Australia, stopping just short of saying that children had in fact been thrown overboard.

But even Howard could be in trouble if a genuine inquiry is launched into the misinformation that preceded the Iraq war. Intelligence agencies are for the most part docile creatures, but recent events in Britain suggest that they can lash out if pushed too far. Current attempts by the government to pass off the overselling of the WMD issue as an intelligence failure may just goad them into action.

Wilkie is not the only spook to have questioned the government's line. At a senate committee hearing earlier this month, the serving head of Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, Frank Lewincamp, suggested that the prime minister's pronouncements went well beyond what was known.

"The Australian government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons," Howard told parliament in February, while Lewincamp insists it was too early to make a definitive judgement.

If Howard is found to have lied to parliament, perhaps even the Australian public will be woken from their customary political apathy. Who knows? They might even have a bit of a whinge.

Email
david.fickling@guardian.co.uk

Israel can halt this now

Oona King in Gaza
Thursday June 12, 2003
The Guardian

The no man's land separating Israel from the Gaza Strip gives way to what can only be described as desecrated land. Razor wire and crushed buildings line the route. Torn slabs of concrete look like tattered cardboard on a rubbish heap. In front of us two Israeli tanks block our path. Behind us, the border will shortly be sealed to prevent Palestinian reprisals for the helicopter attack launched hours earlier against the extremist Hamas leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Rantissi - who is still alive. A Palestinian woman and her young child, on their way to hospital, are dead, and 35 are injured.

Later that afternoon we hurriedly leave the building we are in when a missile lands nearby. As two British MPs travelling with Christian Aid, myself and Jenny Tonge are alarmed. For Gaza residents this is business as usual. More than 1 million Palestinians live on this tiny piece of land (smaller than the Isle of Wight) - more than three-quarters of on less than £1.30 a day. Life below the poverty line for these Palestinians contrasts with the 5,000 Israeli settlers who occupy one-third of the land and enjoy watered gardens, first world housing and protection by the Israeli army. This protection means Palestinians wait for hours - sometimes days - at Israeli checkpoints, trying to find work or get access to essential services such as medical care.

The sun is setting on Gaza. From my hotel balcony I hear demonstrations in the street below. It occurs to me that I can put on a headscarf and slip into the crowd as a Palestinian. No one will guess I'm Jewish, still less that I'm a British MP. The sounds lead me to the hospital where Rantissi is being treated. Cars rush into the compound, horns blaring, people hanging out of windows. A man carries an injured girl into the hospital. But most of the Palestinians just stand waiting. They wait for Israelis to stamp their permits, and they wait for a Palestinian state. They are no different from us: deny them human rights and they will respond with unacceptable terrorist violence.

That's what Jews did when they set up the Stern Gang and blew up the King David Hotel in the 1940s. Ninety-four people died. The leader of that terrorist group, on Britain's "most wanted" list, went on to be the Israeli prime minister. Many Jews revere him, even while they abhor the terrorism that ruins their lives today. Israelis must be freed from terrorism - such as yesterday's horrific attack in Jersualem. All terrorism, not least Palestinian terrorism, is abhorrent. But it is also predictable. When the Israeli government chose Tuesday to launch an attack in Gaza (as it did again after yesterday's bombing), it cannot have been ignorant of its effect on the peace process and the certainty of Palestinian reprisals.

The original founders of the Jewish state could surely not imagine the irony facing Israel today: in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto.

Any visitor to the Palestinian ghetto can see the signs: residents are sealed off and live under curfew; the authorities view torture as acceptable and use collective punishment as a means of control; soldiers drive families from their homes, confiscate property and demolish neighbourhoods; unemployment runs in places at 80%, and utilities such as water are withheld; the economy has "client" status, and is subservient to the occupiers in every way.

As the more powerful side in the dispute, Israel must break the cycle of violence, comply with UN resolution 242 and withdraw from territories occupied in 1967. As the occupying power, Israel must uphold the fourth Geneva convention and end all collective punishments. Illegal settlements must be dismantled. Repair of water, sewage, and other essential infrastructure should take place immediately.

Just under 80% of all water resources in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are redirected from Palestinians to Israelis. The international community has to recognise the scale of the humanitarian disaster facing Palestinians and George Bush must put greater pressure on Sharon to give meaning to the road map. Yes, there are two sides to every story. But no story should hold within it the horrors I have witnessed here, so similar in detail to humiliations suffered by the Jews.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that, given the scale of the atrocities and collective punishment waged by the Israelis against the Palestinians, I have no choice but to boycott Israeli products. On reflection, whether Jewish or not, you might decide to do the same.

· Oona King is Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow

miahr@parliament.uk

May 10, 2003

Dear MoveOn supporter,

The war in Iraq is over; the U.S. occupation of Iraq has now begun. In an unnecessary war, victory is never sweet: American and British soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and Iraqi soldiers lost their lives in a conflict that never should have happened. That's not victory, that's tragedy.

While global opposition failed to stop the war, we achieved something remarkable -- a unified world-wide grassroots working together to solve international problems. There are plenty of problems left to solve; it's our hope that we can build on the momentum started with opposition to the war to create true global democracy and security.

In service of that goal, we'll be providing an international bi-weekly bulletin with some food for thought on these important issues. Since we're based in the United States, our bulletins will be especially attentive to the role the U.S. plays in the world -- for better and for worse. This week's issue is a good example: it contains an expose of the conservative American think tank that in many ways made the war on Iraq happen. I hope you enjoy it. You can unsubscribe at the link below at any time.

Sincerely,
--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, and Zack
  The MoveOn Team

Subscribe online at:
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/

SPECIAL FEATURE: INTERVIEW SENATOR BYRD
This week, we kick off a feature of the new MoveOn Bulletin: the Grassroots Interview. In each issue, we'll provide an opportunity for MoveOn members to ask five questions of a prominent political figure. U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) has graciously agreed to be the first subject. Senator Byrd has been in the news recently for his comments on President Bush's "victory" speech.

What are your questions for Senator Byrd? We'll ask MoveOn users' five favorite questions on Wednesday, and report the Senator's answers in the next issue. Post your questions and review others' at:
http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?forum_id=255

CONTENTS:
1. Introduction: American Leadership, American Empire
2. One Link
3. Forming the Bush Doctrine
4. Pax Americana
5. September 11, 2001
6. Who's Steering This Ship?
7. Who Pays the Bills?
8. Pax Israelica?
9. Post-War Iraq
10. Neo-conservatism
11. What Next -- Syria? Iran?
12. Challenging the Project
13. Conclusion
14. About the Bulletin

------------------------------

INTRODUCTION: AMERICAN LEADERSHIP, AMERICAN EMPIRE
Many of us first heard about the Bush administration's plan to invade Iraq last August. However, a small group of political elites planned the takeover of Iraq years ago. With that goal achieved, now is the time to look at who these people are, how they created a war on Iraq, and most importantly their plans for the future.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a Washington-based neo-conservative think-tank founded in 1997 to "rally support for American global leadership." PNAC's agenda runs far deeper than regime change in Iraq. Its statement of principles begins with the assertion that "American foreign and defense policy is adrift" and calls for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."

While their tone is high-minded, their proposal is unilateral military intervention to protect against threats to America's status as the lone global superpower. The statement is signed by such influential figures as Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

PNAC is not alone, nor did it arise from new wells of power. Most of the founding members of PNAC held posts in the Reagan or elder Bush administration and other neo-conservative think-tanks, publications, and advocacy groups.

The effect of PNAC's ideology is great on Bush -- the presidential candidate who promised a "humble," isolationist foreign policy. The events of September 11, 2001 provided a window of opportunity for furthering PNAC's agenda of American empire. Understanding that agenda can help us anticipate the Bush administration's next steps and organize accordingly.

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ONE LINK
If you only read one article in this bulletin, it should be this one. This article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel superbly covers the influence of PNAC in Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. As the author writes, the goal is to transform the Middle East through a show of U.S. military might and "the obvious place to start is with Iraq, which was already in trouble with the United Nations, had little international standing and was reviled even by some Arab nations."
http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/apr03/131523.asp

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FORMING THE BUSH DOCTRINE
The motivating event for the neo-conservatives who founded PNAC was the end of the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq. With Saddam's power weakened, the neo-conservatives believed he should be eliminated permanently. Instead, the elder President Bush encouraged the Iraqi opposition to rise up against the Ba'ath government. As their rebellion was put down by Iraqi troops, Bush ordered the U.S. military not to intervene, choosing instead a strategy of containment for Saddam.

In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, authored an internal policy brief on America's military posture in the post-Cold War era: to prevent the emergence of a new rival power through preemption rather than containment and acting unilaterally if necessary to protect U.S. interests. When a draft was leaked to the press, controversy erupted and the report had to be softened.

The web accompaniment to the PBS Frontline special "The War Behind Closed Doors" features an excellent chronology showing how Wolfowitz's draft would become the basis of the Bush Doctrine.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html

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PAX AMERICANA
An important step in PNAC's chronology is its major publication, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" (RAD), released in September, 2000. The report takes Wolfowitz's draft as a starting point, hailing it as "a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests."

RAD rejects cuts in defense spending, insisting that "Preserving the desirable strategic situation in which the United States now finds itself requires a globally preeminent military capability both today and in the future." Core missions for the U.S. military include the ability to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars" and to reposition permanent forces in Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia.

Other samples from RAD:

"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

"At present the United States faces no global rival. America's grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible."

"[N]ew methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal,' biological -- will be more widely available ... 'combat' likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, 'cyber-space,' and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

In this Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece, Jay Bookman compares "Rebuilding America's Defenses" with the current Bush defense policy.
http://www.rainbowbody.org/politics/PNACgoal.htm

You can read the entire document on PNAC's website.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

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SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
In discussing changes to America's military strategy, the RAD report regretfully admits, "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Shortly after September 11, PNAC sent a letter to President Bush welcoming his call for "a broad and sustained campaign" and encouraging the removal of Saddam even if Iraq could not be directly linked to the attacks.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm

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WHO'S STEERING THIS SHIP?
"Most neo-conservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right." Michael Lind argues in the New Statesman and Salon magazines that many were anti-Stalinist Trotskyists who became anti-communist liberals, then shifted to a "militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history."
http://dupagepeace.home.att.net/bush7.html

PAUL WOLFOWITZ is Deputy Defense Secretary, second-in-command at the Pentagon. Wolfowitz was promoting regime change in Iraq and a strategy of preemptive attack in 1992, but the elder Bush rejected his views as too radical. This is an excellent brief from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
http://www.moveon.org/r?436

RICHARD PERLE was Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration and a foreign policy adviser in George W. Bush's presidential campaign. He accepted Rumsfeld's offer to chair the Defense Policy Board, transforming it from obscurity to influence. In March, Perle resigned as chairman after a controversial lobbying scandal, but remains on the Board as a member.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact

WILLIAM KRISTOL is editor of The Weekly Standard, a conservative political magazine with a small but elite readership, funded by Rupert Murdoch. The son of neo-conservative founding father Irving Kristol, he is the president of PNAC.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/bill_kristol.htm

Other important participants are Vice-President Dick Cheney; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Iran-contra scandal convict Elliott Abrams, now Director of Middle East Affairs for the National Security Council; Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan; and special presidential envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

A fairly complete list of PNAC participants can be found here:
http://www.opednews.com/new%20american%20century.htm

------------------------------

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
The Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the primary funder of PNAC through PNAC's parent New Citizenship Project, Inc. With the largest assets of any right-wing foundation, Bradley has focused its efforts on ending affirmative action, reforming welfare, and privatizing schools. This article describes Bradley's funding of neo-conservative think-tanks, magazines, and books like "The Bell Curve."
http://www.mediatransparency.org/funders/bradley_foundation.htm

------------------------------

PAX ISRAELICA?
Nearly all PNAC participants, whether Jewish or Christian, are right-wing Zionists who support Ariel Sharon's Likud Party. In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and others drafted a paper for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to make "a clean break" from the Oslo peace process preferring "peace through strength," including the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

This essay describes many of the familiar neo-conservatives as having "dual loyalties," making policy decisions in the interests of the State of Israel as much as the United States.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison1213.html

------------------------------

POST-WAR IRAQ
PNAC participants are backing Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress in his bid to run the interim government in Iraq. From The American Prospect, who is Chalabi and why is he so popular with the neo-conservatives?
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/21/dreyfuss-r.html

------------------------------

NEO-CONSERVATISM
PNAC is in the same Washington, D.C. office building as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), another major neo-conservative think-tank. They share far more than an address: PNAC participants like Richard Perle, Thomas Donnelly, Jeane Kirkpatrick, William Schneider, Lynne Cheney (Dick Cheney's wife), and Irving Kristol (William Kristol's father) are all AEI scholars and fellows.

Similar overlap is found among all the neo-conservative think-tanks -- Hudson Institute, Center for Security Policy, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs -- giving the agenda of a few political elites the appearance of widespread agreement.

------------------------------

WHAT NEXT -- SYRIA?
This piece from Foreign Policy in Focus discusses a 2000 Middle East Forum study calling for military force against Syria. The report, "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role," was signed by numerous PNAC participants.
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0304uscfl.html

IRAN?
From the Washington Monthly, a smart article that compares the neo-conservative plan for the Middle East to "giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html

------------------------------

CHALLENGING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
The Peace Education Fund and California Peace Action have launched a national advertising campaign that features the infamous photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. The ads ask the question: "Who Are We Arming Now?" The ad is part of Peace Action's Campaign for a New American Foreign Policy which is building political pressure for an alternative to the bleak vision of the Project for the New American Century.
http://www.moveon.org/r?437

------------------------------

CONCLUSION
Beyond all the specifics presented in this bulletin and the linked resources, it's essential to remember how interlocked the neo-conservative organizations are. They represent the views and interests of only a tiny elite, not the popular sentiment in the United States. Most Americans would be horrified to learn how PNAC and others are shaping the Bush Doctrine -- both because of the ideology they describe and because they use money and media to gain disproportionate political influence.

Money makes it easy to organize networks and gain political influence; control of the media limits our ability to consider the various options America has for handling crises in the international community. The work we are doing as MoveOn members is organizing without massive wealth and educating without owning the media. Our work is to vocalize the love of democratic decision-making shared by all people, clearly and with the most complete information. Please let us know what information you need to do this work, and we will do our best to make it available through the bulletin.

------------------------------

CREDITS
Research team:
Leah Appet, Joanne Comito, Lita Epstein, Anna Gavula, Terry Hackett, Zaid Khalil, Kate Kressmann-Kehoe, Cameron McLaughlin , Janelle Miau, Sarah Parady, Kim Plofker, and Ora Szekely.

Editing team:
David Taub Bancroft, Melinda Coyle, Nancy Evans, Eileen Gillan, and Rita Weinstein.

------------------------------

ABOUT THE MOVEON BULLETIN AND MOVEON.ORG
The MoveOn Bulletin is a free email bulletin providing information, resources, news, and action ideas on important political issues. The full text of the MoveOn Bulletin is online at http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/; you can subscribe to it at that address. The MoveOn Bulletin is a project of MoveOn.org.

MoveOn.org is an issue-oriented, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that gives people a voice in shaping the laws that affect their lives. MoveOn.org engages people in the civic process, using the Internet to democratically determine a non-partisan agenda, raising public awareness of pressing issues, and coordinating grassroots advocacy campaigns to encourage sound public policies. You can help decide the direction of MoveOn.org by participating in the discussion forum at:
http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html

Bestseller success for anti-US war books

Ed Vulliamy, New York
Sunday April 20, 2003
The Observer

Beneath the uniformity of a US media high on victory in Iraq, a wave of books of a heretical flavour is flooding the bestseller lists.

At number five in the New York Times bestsellers and climbing Amazon's chart is The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a collection of essays by journalist Greg Palast, one of a triad known as the 'Angry White Men' - a play on the title at number six in the chart, Stupid White Men by film director Michael Moore, with 500,000 sales.

The third in the 'axis of anti' is Noam Chomsky, whose controversial 9/11 - in which he calls America 'a leading terrorist state' - has 205,000 copies in print.

The books are comfortably outselling titles which might seem at first to better reflect the zeitgeist, such as Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism and similar.

Concluding his recent book tour, Moore said: 'I look out into the auditorium or gymnasium and I see Mr and Mrs Middle America, who voted for George W Bush and believed in the American dream as defined by the Bushes and Wall Street. Then they woke up to realise it was just that, a dream.'

On Iraq, a number of fast-selling books have joined British writer Con Coughlin's Saddam: King of Terror with less conventional attacks not on the fallen tyrant but on America's war. They include Targeting Iraq: Sanctions, Bombing and US Policy by Geoff Simons and Gore Vidal's Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta .

Palast's book - published by Pluto Press in Britain last year - is the latest to appear in America. Subtitled The Truth About Globalisation, Corporate Cons and High Finance Fraudsters, Moore endorsed it with an enthusiastic 'Read this book'.

The essays include Palast's investigation into vote-rigging during the Florida campaign that won Bush the election and into the place where Americans fear to tread: alleged close ties between the Bush and bin Laden families.

Once Palast's book was published in America, the media took a cue from Tony Blair's aide Alastair Campbell, who issued a political health warning on the author in Britain.

Plans by CNBC television to have him as a commentator on the Phil Donahue chat show were reversed after one performance, following an internal company memo recommending against guests who were 'sceptical of the Bush administration' when 'other networks are taking every opportunity to wave the flag'.

But his book is selling without the name recognition or marketing behind Moore and Chomsky.

'Michael Moore was the battering ram through the media Berlin Wall,' he said, 'and Chomsky and I are rushing through.

'There is a whole number of Americans who have been hypnotised, propagandised, and short-changed, who know something is wrong. Apparently the moment has come for the awful truth.'

Don't look for a reason
All the explanations for this war are bogus - Bush only invaded Iraq to prove that he could

David Hare
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

From the moment it was first mooted, this was, for me, the impenetrable war, the war wrapped in mystery. "It's about oil." "It's about imperialism." "It's about a son avenging the failures of his father." All the answers that are supposed to tell you everything, that are always given to you in a tone of utter contempt, as if you must be a fool not to understand, in fact seem to tell you nothing. The fake certainty, the anger, the exasperation, and now the startling vindictiveness, the personal vitriol in the rhetoric of the west - as if we hated each other far more than we hate Saddam - betray our own bad faith about a conflict whose meaning eludes us.

April 3   Longing for peace

Alexandre Solzhenitsyn writes in “The Gulag Archipelago” about those who were abducted between midnight and dawn to be deported to Siberia. He refers to the remorse of some: had they known what this hour would have meant for the next ten years of their lives, they would not have gone silently; instead, they would have screamed and cried out aloud to alert at least the neighborhood.

In the face of the latest war I ask myself often: are we not too silent? Will we regret that our protest had been so limited when we realize all the consequences of this conflict after some years?

Living in Rome one is very much aware that at least our Holy Father and the Vatican diplomacy have not remained silent. The enormous headlines in the daily L’Osservatore Romano during these days could easily compete with any tabloid of the world: “There is still room for peace”, “The Madness of War”, etc. The letters are 4 cm high and occupy up to three lines!

I have personally participated in one or other pro-peace activities, like the peace march towards St. Peter’s square organized by the Sant’Egidio community on January 1^{st. What else could one do? Let me point out some of the things which are within our reach as Oblates. I would like to mention specifically two of them.}

The first is being informed about peace and war matters beyond the ordinary television news, using the network we have as missionaries.

v It is so easy to overlook the full reality of war. There have been fifty-six armed conflicts in the 1990s alone! Probably much of our lack of awareness has to do with the fact that ninety percent of the wars since 1945 have taken place in poor countries. Such countries are not often on the news. But we Oblates have a privileged access to information through our confreres, close to people in Sri Lanka and Southern Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia, etc. I myself have visited these Oblates on the spot.

v Having a chance to know about the conflicts in our places of mission, we can inform others. Let me especially draw our attention to the forgotten war of Congo DR: since 1998 there have been about two million casualties, two million displaced persons, four hundred thousand refugees. We should not hold our silence on such matters.

v Our missionary network can also help us to interpret the present events in Iraq. This war is significant not because it is worse than the others but because the events happen before the television cameras and because many will interpret it as a conflict between Christianity and Islam. Our missionaries in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nigeria and Cameroon, Chad and Sahara, the Philippines and perhaps even France will feel the threat that comes from this kind of interpretation. For the sake of peace in many countries -and not only in Iraq - together with the Pope we need to say it loud and clear: “This is not our war.”

A second thing we can do is have recourse to God through conversion and prayer.

^{* As Oblates we are religious, valuing highly the beatitudes on which we base our vows and at the same time conscious of the resistance the Gospel meets in our own lives. This is a time for conversion. Is there still violence in our own attitudes? Must we not totally refrain from taking pleasure in violence, even against criminals? Are the Christian communities whom we serve prone to emotions and actions which in the final analysis could lead to war? Before all else, we need to seek our own conversion and the conversion of Christ’s followers, listening anew to Jesus’ words addressed to Peter: “Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mt 26:52).}

^{+ Then, we also need to pray for peace. It is a gift from God. We find a parallel in the prayer for our daily bread. Theoretically humankind should be able to assure the daily bread to every person on this planet. In practice, however, this does not happen. Why? It is simply because of our sinfulness. So it is best that we pray for the daily bread, pray that God prevents the sins that cause starvation. In the same way we need to pray for peace, a gift which only can come from converted hearts. There is a need to disarm our hearts. And, only God’s grace can bring about that conversion.}

May the war in Iraq, and all the other wars, provide at least the salutary opportunity of converting us and many people to the peace of God. Christ showed us the way to peace when he refused to take the sword and chose rather, the path of the cross. He is himself the only way to truth and life, to freedom and peace!

Christ has conquered sin and death - he is our Peace. Best wishes to all for a grace-filled Easter.

Fr. Wilhelm Steckling, O.M.I.

April 1 Pax Christi International urges end to Iraq war

The international Catholic peace group Pax Christi has encouraged and endorsed all efforts to bring an end to the "illegal and immoral war" and is "deeply concerned about the emerging humanitarian crisis".

"The Executive Committee is heartened by the opposition to war expressed by church authorities, faith communities and public opinion, noting the opportunity to build and strengthen a global peace movement towards a new moral framework to respond to conflict. Churches and people of all faiths can and should play a constructive role in responsible political participation and conflict resolution to prevent governments from resorting to war."

March 29  -  Cook calls for UK troop withdrawal

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook today dramatically called on Tony Blair to bring Britain's troops home from Iraq.

Mr Cook - whose resignation as Leader of the Commons was the most high-profile political protest against UK involvement in the war - denounced the campaign in Iraq as "bloody and unnecessary".

And he warned that Britain and America risked stoking up a "long-term legacy of hatred" for the west across the Arab and Muslim world.

In an outspoken article for the Sunday Mirror, Mr Cook said that the US president, George Bush, and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, did not appear to know what to do now that their hopes that Iraq would swiftly capitulate had proved unfounded.

They appeared to be contemplating laying siege to Baghdad, which would result in massive civilian suffering and many unnecessary deaths, he said.

Mr Cook wrote: "I have already had my fill of this bloody and unnecessary war. I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed."

Cook calls for UK troop withdrawal

March 25

Pope cites peace movements in opposing war 

The anti-war movement around the world shows that a "large part of humanity" has rejected war as a means of solving conflicts between nations, Pope John Paul said today.

The Pope, a staunch opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, sent the message to Roman Catholic military chaplains attending a Vatican-organised course on humanitarian law.

He said the course was being held "at a difficult moment in history, when the world once again is listening to the din of arms" and that thoughts about the victims, the destruction and the suffering produce "deep worry and pain".

By now, he said, "it should be clear" that except for self-defence against an aggressor, a "large part of humanity" has repudiated war as an instrument of resolving conflicts between nations.

He cited the "vast contemporary movement in favour of peace" around the world and said he took "comfort and hope" from the efforts for peace by various religions.

In the months before the Iraq war began, John Paul lobbied in favour of a negotiated solution. He has said there was no legal or moral justification for military action.

Posted March 20

March 20
'The Bomb Iraq Song'

...If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think someone has dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

It's "pre-emptive non-aggression", bomb Iraq.
Let's prevent this mass destruction, bomb Iraq.
They've got weapons we can't see,
And that's good enough for me
'Cos it's all the proof I need
Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think Saddam's gone mad,
With the weapons that he had,
(And he tried to kill your dad),
Bomb Iraq.

If your corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding that ain't easy,
And your manhood's getting queasy,
Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We'll call it treason,
Let's make war not love this season,
Even if we have no actual reason,
Bomb Iraq...

Middle East File 2002-04-01 to 2003-02-16