squandering our legacy: new york times editor looks at america

December 31, 2007

Editorial

Looking at America

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

life as an iraqi refugee: breaking their traditions and taboos to support their families

Iraqi refugees turn to sex trade in Syria

31 Dec 2007

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent DAMASCUS, Dec 31 (Reuters) -

A score of young Iraqi women in tight, shimmering gowns shuffle across the nightclub dance floor under the hungry eyes of Gulf Arabs at nearby tables. The band blasts out Iraqi songs into the early hours as the watching youths join the dancing or summon girls to sit with them — there is little pretence about what gets transacted at this neon-lit nightspot half an hour’s drive north of Damascus.

The dancers, some in their early teens, do not want to talk, but one said she had no other way to support her family. “My father was killed in Baghdad and our money is finished,” muttered the dark-haired girl in a black and silver dress.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR calls it “survival sex”, a desperate way to cope for Iraqi refugees whose savings have run out since they escaped the violence at home.

The idea repels many of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria, but the struggle to make ends meet has forced some to share tiny apartments with other families in the slums of Damascus, put their children out to work or marry off teenaged daughters. Sometimes such early marriages are simply a cover for prostitution as young brides are swiftly trafficked, according to Hana Ibrahim, head of the Iraqi Women’s Will Association.

She also cited a growing incidence of temporary marriage, accepted in Shi’ite Muslim tradition, as another common route into the sex trade. “Mut’a (temporary) marriage is just for Shi’ites, but who said the Sunnis don’t have other ways?”

UNHCR representative Laurens Jolles said survival sex was directly proportional to general refugee impoverishment. “We are more and more confronted with examples of young girls or women who have decided on their own or through their families to get involved in night clubs to supplement the family income or just to look after their children,” Jolles added.

Some end up in Syrian detention. Those who get out are often bailed out by their exploiters and returned to the streets. Impoverishment is also the main factor driving refugees to return home — about 1,500 a day are crossing back into Iraq, compared to up to 500 daily arrivals, the UNHCR says.

A survey in November showed 46 percent were returning due to financial hardship and 26 percent because their visas had run out — Syria has recently tightened entry and residence rules.

STRUGGLE FOR DIGNITY

But among the myriad Iraqi refugee families who have sunk into poverty are many determined to get by without dishonour. “We don’t think of our future, only of our children’s future,” said Rukkaya Fadhil, a 34-year-old woman in a green headscarf who keeps smiling despite the grim reality around her.

She has to care for her husband Fallah Jaheel, paralysed from the waist down after being shot several times in his mobile telephone shop in Babil, south of Baghdad, three years ago.

The couple sold their house to pay for Jaheel’s first seven months in hospital and eventually fled to Syria with their two children, aged 11 and 7. They have lived for a year in the poor Damascus district of Sayyida Zeinab, crowded with Iraqis. Their savings gone, they depend on charity and whatever help they can get from foreign relief agencies, hoping they will one day be given funds to go abroad so that Jaheel can get advanced treatment for his paralysis — and perhaps walk again.

The UNHCR and partner agencies are handing out food and cash to the neediest Iraqi refugee families they can identify. They plan to give food packages to at least 200,000 people in the next two months, compared to 51,000 now. About 7,000 families will be getting $100 a month by the end of December.

Bushra, 39, who would not give her family name, sometimes despairs at the indignities of life as a refugee and the struggle to look after her family in a foreign land. Her troubles began, she explains, when her three brothers were killed at the behest of Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein. That prompted her husband to leave her, and the wives of the two married brothers to abandon their children.

Bushra was left to care for nine children, only one of them her own, as well as her ailing mother. One of the boys was killed by Shi’ite militia in Iraq. Sufyan, the oldest at 21, was tortured and cannot work. He sits staring at the television. “I’m so tired, God, I’m tired,” the usually feisty Bushra wept in the damp, unheated room where the family sleeps. “What’s this life? We knew no life under Saddam and no life after him.”

Her mother, a black scarf around her face, recalled their once-comfortable life in Baghdad, saying their flat in Damascus would have fitted into a corridor of the villa they once owned. “Just take me back to Iraq so I can die there,” she pleaded.

Bushra, who has worked in Iraq as a photographer and a hairdresser, cannot find a job in Damascus — officially Iraqi refugees are not allowed to work in Syria. One grown-up son is a casual labourer on building sites, earning about $3 a day.

Somehow Bushra has held her family together, but it is easy to see how refugees in similar straits might send their children to work or beg, or cast aside social and religious taboos and push their womenfolk into night clubs or dubious marriages.

eid-al-ghadeer

Iraqi Shiite followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gather for Eid al-Ghadeer at the Imam Ali shrine, Najaf, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on Friday, Dec. 28, 2007.

Eid al-Ghadeer is the anniversary commemorating Muhammad’s last sermon at Ghadir Khumm, Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)

ten top myths about iraq 2007: juan cole

Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007

By Juan Cole

10. Myth: The US public no longer sees Iraq as a central issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy had become more important to them than in previous months (in November only 14% said it was their most pressing concern), but Iraq still rivals it as an issue!

9. Myth: There have been steps toward religious and political reconciliation in Iraq in 2007. Fact: The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for the moment lost the support of the Sunni Arabs in parliament. The Sunnis in his cabinet have resigned. Even some Shiite parties have abandoned the government. Sunni Arabs, who are aware that under his government Sunnis have largely been ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, see al-Maliki as a sectarian politician uninterested in the welfare of Sunnis.

8. Myth: The US troop surge stopped the civil war that had been raging between Sunni Arabs and Shiites in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Fact: The civil war in Baghdad escalated during the US troop escalation. Between January, 2007, and July, 2007, Baghdad went from 65% Shiite to 75% Shiite. UN polling among Iraqi refugees in Syria suggests that 78% are from Baghdad and that nearly a million refugees relocated to Syria from Iraq in 2007 alone. This data suggests that over 700,000 residents of Baghdad have fled this city of 6 million during the US ’surge,’ or more than 10 percent of the capital’s population. Among the primary effects of the ’surge’ has been to turn Baghdad into an overwhelmingly Shiite city and to displace hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the capital.

7. Myth: Iran was supplying explosively formed projectiles (a deadly form of roadside bomb) to Salafi Jihadi (radical Sunni) guerrilla groups in Iraq. Fact: Iran has not been proved to have sent weapons to any Iraqi guerrillas at all. It certainly would not send weapons to those who have a raging hostility toward Shiites. (Iran may have supplied war materiel to its client, the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISCI), which was then sold off from warehouses because of graft, going on the arms market and being bought by guerrillas and militiamen.

6. Myth: The US overthrow of the Baath regime and military occupation of Iraq has helped liberate Iraqi women. Fact: Iraqi women have suffered significant reversals of status, ability to circulate freely, and economic situation under the Bush administration.

5. Myth: Some progress has been made by the Iraqi government in meeting the “benchmarks” worked out with the Bush administration. Fact: in the words of Democratic Senator Carl Levin, “Those legislative benchmarks include approving a hydrocarbon law, approving a debaathification law, completing the work of a constitutional review committee, and holding provincial elections. Those commitments, made 1 1/2 years ago, which were to have been completed by January of 2007, have not yet been kept by the Iraqi political leaders despite the breathing space the surge has provided.”

4. Myth: The Sunni Arab “Awakening Councils,” who are on the US payroll, are reconciling with the Shiite government of PM Nuri al-Maliki even as they take on al-Qaeda remnants. Fact: In interviews with the Western press, Awakening Council tribesmen often speak of attacking the Shiites after they have polished off al-Qaeda. A major pollster working in Iraq observed,

‘ Most of the recent survey results he has seen about political reconciliation, Warshaw said, are “more about [Iraqis] reconciling with the United States within their own particular territory, like in Anbar. . . . But it doesn’t say anything about how Sunni groups feel about Shiite groups in Baghdad.” Warshaw added: “In Iraq, I just don’t hear statements that come from any of the Sunni, Shiite or Kurdish groups that say ‘We recognize that we need to share power with the others, that we can’t truly dominate.’ ” ‘ ‘

The polling shows that “the Iraqi government has still made no significant progress toward its fundamental goal of national reconciliation.”

3. Myth: The Iraqi north is relatively quiet and a site of economic growth. Fact: The subterranean battle among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs for control of the oil-rich Kirkuk province makes the Iraqi north a political mine field. Kurdistan now also hosts the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas that sneak over the border and kill Turkish troops. The north is so unstable that the Iraqi north is now undergoing regular bombing raids from Turkey.

2. Myth: Iraq has been “calm” in fall of 2007 and the Iraqi public, despite some grumbling, is not eager for the US to depart. Fact: in the past 6 weeks, there have been an average of 600 attacks a month, or 20 a day, which has held steady since the beginning of November. About 600 civilians are being killed in direct political violence per month, but that number excludes deaths of soldiers and police. Across the board, Iraqis believe that their conflicts are mainly caused by the US military presence and they are eager for it to end.

1. Myth: The reduction in violence in Iraq is mostly because of the escalation in the number of US troops, or “surge.”

Fact: Although violence has been reduced in Iraq, much of the reduction did not take place because of US troop activity. Guerrilla attacks in al-Anbar Province were reduced from 400 a week to 100 a week between July, 2006 and July, 2007. But there was no significant US troop escalation in al-Anbar. Likewise, attacks on British troops in Basra have declined precipitously since they were moved out to the airport away from population centers. But this change had nothing to do with US troops.

disagreement on u.s. role in brokering bhutto’s political rise

U.S. Brokered Bhutto’s Return to Pakistan
White House Would Back Her as Prime Minister While Musharraf Held Presidency

By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 28, 2007; A01

For Benazir Bhutto, the decision to return to Pakistan was sealed during a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before Bhutto flew home in October. The call culminated more than a year of secret diplomacy — and came only when it became clear that the heir to Pakistan’s most powerful political dynasty was the only one who could bail out Washington’s key ally in the battle against terrorism.

It was a stunning turnaround for Bhutto, a former prime minister who was forced from power in 1996 amid corruption charges. She was suddenly visiting with top State Department officials, dining with U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and conferring with members of the National Security Council. As President Pervez Musharraf’s political future began to unravel this year, Bhutto became the only politician who might help keep him in power.

“The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability, but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact,” said Mark Siegel, who lobbied for Bhutto in Washington and witnessed much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

But the diplomacy that ended abruptly with Bhutto’s assassination yesterday was always an enormous gamble, according to current and former U.S. policymakers, intelligence officials and outside analysts. By entering into the legendary “Great Game” of South Asia, the United States also made its goals and allies more vulnerable — in a country in which more than 70 percent of the population already looked unfavorably upon Washington.

Bhutto’s assassination leaves Pakistan’s future — and Musharraf’s — in doubt, some experts said. “U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto’s participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf’s continued power as president,” said Barnett R. Rubin of New York University. “Now Musharraf is finished.”

Bhutto’s assassination also demonstrates the growing power and reach of militant anti-government forces in Pakistan, which pose an existential threat to the country, said J. Alexander Thier, a former U.N. official now at the U.S. Institute for Peace. “The dangerous cocktail of forces of instability exist in Pakistan — Talibanism, sectarianism, ethnic nationalism — could react in dangerous and unexpected ways if things unravel further,” he said.

But others insist the U.S.-orchestrated deal fundamentally altered Pakistani politics in ways that will be difficult to undo, even though Bhutto is gone. “Her return has helped crack open this political situation. It’s now very fluid, which makes it uncomfortable and dangerous,” said Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations. “But the status quo before she returned was also dangerous from a U.S. perspective. Forcing some movement in the long run was in the U.S. interests.”

Bhutto’s assassination during a campaign stop in Rawalpindi might even work in favor of her Pakistan People’s Party, with parliamentary elections due in less than two weeks, Coleman said. “From the U.S. perspective, the PPP is the best ally the U.S. has in terms of an institution in Pakistan.”

Bhutto’s political comeback was a long time in the works — and uncertain for much of the past 18 months. In mid-2006, Bhutto and Musharraf started communicating through intermediaries about how they might cooperate. Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher was often an intermediary, traveling to Islamabad to speak with Musharraf and to Bhutto’s homes in London and Dubai to meet with her.

Under U.S. urging, Bhutto and Musharraf met face to face in January and July in Dubai, according to U.S. officials. It was not a warm exchange, with Musharraf resisting a deal to drop corruption charges so she could return to Pakistan. He made no secret of his feelings.

In his 2006 autobiography “In the Line of Fire,” Musharraf wrote that Bhutto had “twice been tried, been tested and failed, [and] had to be denied a third chance.” She had not allowed her own party to become democratic, he alleged. “Benazir became her party’s ‘chairperson for life,’ in the tradition of the old African dictators!”

A turning point was Bhutto’s three-week U.S. visit in August, when she talked again to Boucher and to Khalilzad, an old friend. A former U.S. ambassador in neighboring Afghanistan, Khalilzad had long been skeptical about Musharraf, and while in Kabul he had disagreed with then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell over whether the Pakistani leader was being helpful in the fight against the Taliban. He also warned that Pakistani intelligence was allowing the Taliban to regroup in the border areas, U.S. officials said.

When Bhutto returned to the United States in September, Khalilzad asked for a lift on her plane from New York to Aspen, Colo., where both were giving speeches. They spent much of the five-hour plane ride strategizing, said sources familiar with the diplomacy.

Friends say Bhutto asked for U.S. help. “She pitched the idea to the Bush administration,” said Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador and friend of Bhutto from their days at Harvard. “She had been prime minister twice, and had not been able to accomplish very much because she did not have power over the most important institutions in Pakistan — the ISI [intelligence agency], the military and the nuclear establishment,” he said.

“Without controlling those, she couldn’t pursue peace with India, go after extremists or transfer funds from the military to social programs,” Galbraith said. “Cohabitation with Musharraf made sense because he had control over the three institutions that she never did. This was the one way to accomplish something and create a moderate center.”

The turning point to get Musharraf on board was a September trip by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte to Islamabad. “He basically delivered a message to Musharraf that we would stand by him, but he needed a democratic facade on the government, and we thought Benazir was the right choice for that face,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and National Security Council staff member now at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

“Musharraf still detested her, and he came around reluctantly as he began to recognize this fall that his position was untenable,” Riedel said. The Pakistani leader had two choices: Bhutto or former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf had overthrown in a 1999 military coup. “Musharraf took what he thought was the lesser of two evils,” Riedel said.

Many career foreign policy officials were skeptical of the U.S. plan. “There were many inside the administration, at the State and Defense Departments and in intelligence, who thought this was a bad idea from the beginning because the prospects that the two could work together to run the country effectively were nil,” said Riedel.

As part of the deal, Bhutto’s party agreed not to protest against Musharraf’s reelection in September to his third term. In return, Musharraf agreed to lift the corruption charges against Bhutto. But Bhutto sought one particular guarantee — that Washington would ensure Musharraf followed through on free and fair elections producing a civilian government.

Rice, who became engaged in the final stages of brokering a deal, called Bhutto in Dubai and pledged that Washington would see the process through, according to Siegel. A week later, on Oct. 18, Bhutto returned.

Ten weeks later, she was dead.

Xenia Dormandy, former National Security Council expert on South Asia now at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, said U.S. meddling is not to blame for Bhutto’s death. “It is very clear the United States encouraged” an agreement, she said, “but U.S. policy is in no way responsible for what happened. I don’t think we could have played it differently.”

U.S. policy — and the commitment to Musharraf — remains unchanged. In a statement yesterday, Rice appealed to Pakistanis to remain calm and to continue seeking to build a “moderate” democracy.

“I don’t think it would do any justice to her memory to have an election postponed or canceled simply as a result of this tragic incident,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. “The only people that win through such a course of action are the people who perpetrated this attack.”

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

bin laden’s latest threat

Bin Laden warns Iraq’s Sunnis against joining councils By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAIRO, Egypt – In a new audiotape on the Internet today, Osama bin Laden warns Iraq’s Sunni Arabs against joining tribal councils fighting al-Qaida or participating in any unity government. In the taped message, bin Laden says: “The most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life.” He also denounces the leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, a tribal force fighting al-Qaida in western Iraq, The leader, Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was killed in a bombing in September. Bin Laden says U.S. and Iraqi officials are seeking to set up a “national unity government” joining the country’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. His message says: “Our duty is to foil these dangerous schemes, which try to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq, which would be a wall of resistance against American schemes to divide Iraq.”

bolton on bhutto: right on but wrong

Although it comes a little late, Bolton’s analysis of the u.s. role in precipitating Bhutto’s death is accurate, in my view.   (See later posting on the subject)

I do not agree, however, that we should place our support so strongly behind Musharraf.

Bolton: US ‘helped precipitate’ conditions for Bhutto’s assassination Mike Aivaz and Nick Juliano Published: Friday December 28, 2007   The US has seen its options for dealing with Pakistan crumble with Benazir Bhutto’s assassination Thursday, and a former diplomat says American foreign policy decisions helped “precipitate” the former prime minister’s death. John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, said it was a mistake to collaborate with Bhutto’s “desire to get back into the game in Pakistan” and view her as an alternative to the country’s current leader, Pervez Musharraf. “We in effect helped — helped — precipitate this dynamic that led to her tragic assassination,” Bolton said Thursday on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes. “It’s hard to see how that was the road to success.” Bolton said the primary concern of the US needs to be the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. With Bhutto’s death plunging the country into chaos, there is now a “very grave danger” the weapons will fall under control of radical Islamist militants within the Pakistani military. “What we have now is a prescription for chaos,” Bolton said. Another foreign policy expert told RAW STORY Thursday that the death of the opposition leader likely has caused the so-called atomic “Doomsday Clock” to tick closer to midnight. Thursday night, Bolton told Fox viewers that Musharraf is “the person to put our money on” in hoping for an acceptable resolution to the crisis in Pakistan, although even he faces the threat of assassination. As soon as Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October — part of a deal brokered by the US — she was targeted by assassins in another suicide bombing. US diplomats viewer her as the only hope for maintaining stability and promoting democracy, but Bolton argued perhaps the US acted to quickly in attempting to reform the country. “You can’t say this wasn’t foreseeable, and it’s obviously led to her death,” Bolton said. “Hardly a successful strategy.”

ave maria: requiem for the war in the christian tradition